September 19, 2006
How Extraordinary?
I feel a sense of deja vu ... As congress and the commentariat discuss the secret detention, interrogation, and rendition of suspected (a crucial modifier that is seldom used) terrorists, it is crucial to take note of stories such as this one. From today's Post:
TORONTO, Sept. 18 -- Canadian intelligence officials passed false warnings and bad information to American agents about a Muslim Canadian citizen, after which U.S. authorities secretly whisked him to Syria, where he was tortured, a judicial report found Monday.
The report, released in Ottawa, was the result of a 2 1/2-year inquiry that represented one of the first public investigations into mistakes made as part of the United States' "extraordinary rendition" program, which has secretly spirited suspects to foreign countries for interrogation by often brutal methods.
The inquiry, which focused on the Canadian intelligence services, found that agents who were under pressure to find terrorists after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, falsely labeled an Ottawa computer consultant, Maher Arar, as a dangerous radical. They asked U.S. authorities to put him and his wife, a university economist, on the al-Qaeda "watchlist," without justification, the report said.
Arar was also listed as "an Islamic extremist individual" who was in the Washington area on Sept. 11. The report concluded that he had no involvement in Islamic extremism and was on business in San Diego that day, said the head of the inquiry commission, Ontario Justice Dennis O'Connor.
Arar, now 36, was detained by U.S. authorities as he changed planes in New York on Sept. 26, 2002. He was held for questioning for 12 days, then flown by jet to Jordan and driven to Syria. He was beaten, forced to confess to having trained in Afghanistan -- where he never has been -- and then kept in a coffin-size dungeon for 10 months before he was released, the Canadian inquiry commission found.
O'Connor concluded that "categorically there is no evidence" that Arar did anything wrong or was a security threat.
Oops! Sorry about that. At least we didn't execute you.
September 15, 2006
Mixing Eclipse Builders in One Project
I have one project with both Java and C/C++ code. That is, I have Project/src/C/ and Project/src/java/. I want one Eclipse project, and I want to use the Java builder to build the Java stuff, and the CDT Standard Make Builder to build the C code. And I want the Java class files and native executables to go into Project/bin/java/ and Project/bin/win32/, respectively.
That doesn't seem to be possible with Eclipse (3.2). What's up with that?
September 11, 2006
Mfume, Cardin, Arabs, Civil Rights, and Me
The Maryland primary is tomorrow, and I still don't know whether I'll vote for Ben Cardin or Kweise Mfume for Senate. To help me decide, I've been listening to their August 31st "debate" on my iPod. The candidates were cordial to each other and agreed on most issues. If anything, this was a debate between Benweise Cardfume and an absent George Bush. I was beginning to doze off, when Mfume began his answer to a civil liberties question this way:
Mfume: Any limits on civil liberties, which are not only guaranteed but protected by the Constitution of the United States, have to be done with the acquiescence and the knowledge of every branch of government. That is, if the President wants to go out and continue to wiretap innocent Americans, who are not Arab, who have not done anything wrong, who are just innocent regular people ...
Right on, Kweise. Who does Bush think he is, trampling the constitutional rights of the innocent races, like Whites and Blacks, as if we were Arab?
On the other hand, Mfume reminded me that Cardin was one of the 44 Democrats who helped Bush get his version of the PATRIOT Act renewal through the House at the end of last year (when a group of Democrats and Republicans led by Russ Feingold blocked it in the Senate.)
Perhaps I'll flip a coin.
Call Me a Nitpicker
In a speech last Wednesday, President Bush for the first time admitted what had been widely reported for some time: that the U.S. operated a secret C.I.A. prison system where high-level terrorist suspects were detained, interrogated, and, though the president denies it, possibly tortured.
For the benefit of those who don't listen to the BBC at twelve in the morning, I would like to bring to your attention a short interview I heard later the same day. The World Today wanted a conservative Bush supporter's reaction to the President's admission, so they turned to Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R - CA).
Not surprisingly, Rohrabacher defended the illegal detentions. At the end of the interview, however, he went a bit further:
Reporter: But isn't what you're trying to defend in all this, and what the attackers on 9-11 were trying to attack, is being in principle with law, in sticking to civilized values, however bad the crime you may be trying to pursue?
Dana Rohrabacher: I think that's a bunch of liberal nonsense. The fact is that the American people and the British people have been spared the slaughter of thousands of their own citizens because we have dealt with those terrorists who brought down the buildings in the United States on 9-11 and were trying to slaughter tens of thousands of our people. We have brought them to prisons that were not disclosed to the public so that their other terrorist allies could not then terrorize the jailers, and that makes all the sense in the world to me, and we can nitpick it all we want, but if it has saved the lives of hundreds of thousands of people to, for example, execute someone who is engaged in this type of slaughter of non-combatants well then that execution's been justified.
Hello.
Given the context of the rest of the inteview (listen here), the most straightforward conclusion is that Rohrabacher supports, in some circumstances at least, not only the secret imprisonment of terrorist suspects, but also their secret execution. His use of the present perfect tense is a little disturbing, too. Does he know something we don't?
September 7, 2006
September 6, 2006
Not Dead
Sandra and I have returned from Europe. We were there for a little over three weeks, and visited Berlin, Budapest, Cologne, and Vienna. At some point I hope to post pictures. First, though, I'll need to get the Internets turned on in my new pad (in a week, theoretically).
Until then, enjoy this lovely nighttime photo of Budapest's Chain Bridge and Buda Castle, on the Danube. For an added bonus, click on the picture to view a humongous raw JPEG, suitable for your wallpapering pleasure.