Month: October 2006

You’d think that something like this, the fact that a number of the people we’ve arrested for being terrorists are…well, not, would be reason enough to reconsider George W. Bush’s latest affront to democracy. But, sadly, no.

So apparently Survivor has already ended its “social experiment” of separating teams/tribes based on race. Now I guess it can go back to being boring in a non-controversial way.

There have been rare exceptions, but I almost never watch “reality” television. But you know what I think would be a novel concept? A show where the object was to be eliminated. It almost certainly wouldn’t work, but I don’t know where else there is for the genre to go.

Torture anywhere is an affront to human dignity everywhere. We are committed to building a world where human rights are respected and protected by the rule of law.

Freedom from torture is an inalienable human right. The Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment, ratified by the United States and more than 130 other countries since 1984, forbids governments from deliberately inflicting severe physical or mental pain or suffering on those within their custody or control. Yet torture continues to be practiced around the world by rogue regimes whose cruel methods match their determination to crush the human spirit. Beating, burning, rape, and electric shock are some of the grisly tools such regimes use to terrorize their own citizens. These despicable crimes cannot be tolerated by a world committed to justice. – George W. Bush

Via Homo Sum. He’s got a lot more.

I swear, I feel like banging my head against the wall. And I don’t think I’ll feel any different until the Republicans are out of office and this reprehensible bit of legislation is repealed.

I just pray that this will be a sad footnote to our history as a nation, not a harbinger of things to come.

Bill Buford in The New Yorker:

Never in our history as a species have we been so ignorant about our food. And it is revealing about our culture that, in the face of such widespread ignorance about a human being’s most essential function—the ability to feed itself—there is now a network broadcasting into ninety million American homes, entertaining people with shows about making coleslaw.

I highly recommend Buford’s recent book, Heat, by the way.