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A Brief History of Waterboarding

We are having a heated political discussion in the USA this week wondering if waterboarding is torture or not as Michael Mukasey faces a Senate confirmation hearing on his attorney general nomination — but waterboarding has a long history as part of the human core in antiquity:

Waterboarding is a technique in which prisoners are subjected to simulated drowning by binding them to an inclined board, with their feet raised and head a bit below their feet. Then cellophane or cloth is wrapped over a prisoner’s face and water is poured over the person.

Vietnam 1968: In Da Nang, the U.S. military used waterboarding as an interrogation technique:

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Crimes of Birth: Dying Black in the Urban Core

It has always been treacherous to be Black in America — and if you’re a Black Man in America — your chances for even average survival are slimmer than your White peers.

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Does Barack Obama Have a Castrating Wife?

The sexual tension between men and women can be misunderstood, betrayed, and set on stage for public examination.
Michelle Obama, Barack’s wife, has been coming under fire for “emasculating” her husband — in Nebraska we call it “castrating” — in order to promote her own interests as “a strong black woman” who will bow down to no man… including her husband.

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Urban Bioterrorism Attack: Pernicious Tuberculosis

How do you fight an invisible danger?

In our ongoing series of conversations about Urban Bioterrorism, — we have been struck by several recent realities that confirm our policy of policing the Homeland is wide open to creative and pernicious exploitation of our febrile border defenses.

Our current policy for fighting terrorism on American soil isn’t working. We seek to only deter and then punish the body.

We log citizens and their behaviors while completely ignoring the reality that the most dangerous threats to health, freedom and liberty are microscopic and undetectable — and those dangers live inside people instead of being carried by people as recognizable weapons of mass destruction.

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Strangers on a School Bus

A city loses its innocence in increments — not in batches. I was alarmed to learn my hometown — Lincoln, Nebraska — recently had an incremental loss of its innocence blared in headlines and broadcast in frightened feelings. The incident happened between two strangers caught in the February chill on a Lincoln Public Schools bus. The city was irrevocably changed.

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Terror in the Homeland: The Fort Dix Six

I thought the whole reason we are slogging through the war in Iraq is to keep the Terrorists “there” and not “here?” That, at least, is the war drum President Bush has been beating and still beats. In a 2003 interview — published on the White House website — Bush makes it clear the Terrorists will remain “over there” as long as we stay there engaging them in Iraq (emphasis added):

Q: Well, what about the suggestion from your critics that while you won the war, the peace is being bungled? THE PRESIDENT: They’re wrong. We’re making great progress in Iraq. We’ve got a pretty steep hill to climb. After all, one, we’re facing a bunch of terrorists who can’t stand freedom. These thugs were in power for awhile, and now they’re not going to be in power anymore, and they don’t like it. And they’re willing to kill innocent people. Their terrorist activities — we’d rather fight them there than here.

 

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Enforcing the Ugly Laws

Are you aware in the early-to-mid 1900’s it was illegal to be “found ugly” on the streets of some mainstream American cities like Chicago, Illinois (Chicago Municipal Code, sec. 36034) and Omaha, Nebraska (Unsightly Beggar Ordinance Nebraska Municipal Code of 1941, sec. 25) and Columbus, Ohio (General Offense Code, sec. 2387.04)? Your punishment for being caught in public ranged from incarceration to fines of up to $50.00 USD for each ugly offense.

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Determined Democratic Demonization

The political prosecution of eight United States Attorneys by Alberto Gonzales’ Depart of Justice is blowing up the Bush presidency more than the immoral war in Iraq ever could because this issue is something everyone can understand and rally against as being un-American in its core. The Washington Post reports Gonzales’ days are numbered as Bush’s loyal legal lapdog because Republican support for the president’s pernicious policies is finally aching away:

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Condemned by the Past and Dead in the Future

If we insist on looking for something of value in this war, then maybe it is this: Maybe we finally have the painful knowledge that we can never again believe everything our leaders tell us. For years they told us one thing while they did another. They said we were winning while we were losing. They said we were getting out while we were going in. They said the end was near when it was far.

Maybe the next time somebody says that our young men must fight and die somewhere, we will not take their word that it is for a worthy cause. Maybe we will ask them to spell it out for us, nice and slow, nice and clear. And maybe the people in power will have learned that the people of this country are no longer willing to go marching off without having their questions answered first…. If we haven’t, then we are as empty and cold as the intersection of Madison and State.

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The Food Police Live Inside of Your Mouth

Do you believe your local government exists to protect you? Does your local government have the right to decide what you eat and how you eat it?
On Tuesday, New York City announced plans to require all trans fats gets cut out of your diet when you eat out whether you want it that way or not:

The New York City Board of Health voted unanimously yesterday to move forward with plans to prohibit the city’s 20,000 restaurants from serving food that contains more than a minute amount of artificial trans fats, the chemically modified ingredients considered by doctors and nutritionists to increase the risk of heart disease. …

If approved, the proposal voted on yesterday by the Board of Health would make New York the first large city in the country to strictly limit such fats in restaurants. Chicago is considering a similar prohibition affecting restaurants with less than $20 million in annual sales.
The New York prohibition would affect the city’s entire restaurant industry, by far the nation’s largest, from McDonald’s to fashionable bistros to street corner takeouts across the five boroughs. …
Officials said that the typical American diet now contains 5.8 grams of trans fats per day, and that a single five-ounce serving of French fries at many restaurants contained 8 grams of trans fats.

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