Stump Lane
in the dirt since history began

Waterboarding for Dummies — Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to “dam the runoff” and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second “applications” of liquid in each two-hour session—and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session—a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding—the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. — Is torture, no? —

Feds push for tracking cell phones — …the Obama administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no “reasonable expectation of privacy” in their–or at least their cell phones’–whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that “a customer’s Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records” that show where a mobile device placed and received calls. —

Democracy Now! — …the Obama administration is asking Congress to increase spending on the US nuclear arsenal by more than $7 billion dollars over the next five years. …despite a pledge to cut the US arsenal and seek a nuclear weapons-free world. The Obama administration argues that the boost in spending is needed to ensure that US warheads remain secure and work as designed as the arsenal shrinks and ages. … Part of the proposal includes large funding increases for a new plutonium production facility…

POLITICO.com — Defense Secretary Robert Gates hosted a meeting with the nation’s top defense company executives Wednesday, stressing the need for a closer partnership with them and pledging to work with the White House to secure steady growth in the Pentagon’s budgets over time[.] —

ladypoverty –  The United States, for example, prides itself on “political freedom” — which is the freedom for rich people to disagree with each other, and the freedom for everyone else to watch it on CNN; to “take part” in the manner of sporting events.  …  However, “political freedom” does not include the freedom for poor people to disagree with rich people, at least in cases where they try to express it politically…  —

Frog — While liberal and conservatives will continue to debate the hollow question of whether this denigrates democracy or elevates free speech, almost no one will ask the only important question: why the fuck are we debating the scope of a corporation’s free speech? Just like the question of whether wheat grown for personal consumption is commerce among the several states, the answer to the question of whether Corporations are persons, and therefore endowed with the freedom of speech is fucking obvious. Neither a piece of paper, some words, a collection of liabilities, or a group of people, is a person. And yet. —

Schneier on Security — Conventional X-rays show little more than the skeleton, but the new technique can reveal far more, which makes it useful for both medical and security applications.
Raw Story — While two-party consent laws were originally designed to stop private detectives and others from invading people’s privacy, in Massachusetts the law’s application has now broadened to include what civil libertarians say is an attempt by police to stop public oversight of their activities. —

Who Is IOZ? — If there is a lesson in the Christmas non-bombing, it is that you can’t defend against every nut out there any more than you can prevent every highway smash-up or household accident. To live is to accept some modicum of risk. To live in an advanced, industrialized, technological, hegemonic, militaristic, imperial society in the twenty-first century is to accept with fair certainty that someone, somewhere, wants to blow you up, like, right now.  —

IOZ — You’ve replaced a program of individual welfare with a system of corporate welfare paid for by the very individuals whose economic status would make them the recipients of the individual welfare you claim to seek. Fuck the poor, so long as it reflects well on Barack Obama, his coattails, and our chances in 2010. —

Visit the annex. — The American Dream is Dead at Stump Lane the Lesser —

Hosting the Olympics affords a city the rare opportunity to completely remake itself. It’s a chance to bulldoze slums, relocate the underclass, and crack down with increased police, security and surveillance systems. While hosting the games is an incredibly expensive endeavor, if the additional security measures remain in place, a more perfect and orderly city can emerge. — Giuliani to help Rio in pre-Olympic crime fight —

Could this NPR report possibly be Pentagon agitprop meant to counter public concern over civilian deaths in Afghanistan? The piece produces anecdotal evidence by interviewing US soldiers who are frustrated by the question of whether to shoot or not, and imply the rules of engagement are too strict and make it more difficult to do their job. (No word about Predator drone operations which have reportedly been killing 50 civilians for every one militant.) —

“How does it become a man to behave toward this American government to-day? I answer that he cannot without disgrace be associated with it.” — Henry David Thoreau — Chris Floyd takes off from there in Savvy to a Fault: Coming to Terms With Imperial Power [Via: Arthur Silber] —

Lindsay Beyerstein — The Afghan people have historically been implacably opposed to foreign occupation of any kind and they’ve been very good at resisting it. It’s not just a matter of tradition or national pride, Afghanistan is full of seasoned guerrilla fighters who cut their teeth opposing the Soviets. They’re pros. Also, time is on their side. We can leave any time, but they live there. They don’t have to drive us out, they can just harass us until we get bored and leave. —

Smedley Butler — The ships of our navy, it can be seen, should be specifically limited, by law, to within 200 miles of our coastline. … Two hundred miles is ample, in the opinion of experts, for defense purposes. Our nation cannot start an offensive war if its ships can’t go further than 200 miles from the coastline. Planes might be permitted to go as far as 500 miles from the coast for purposes of reconnaissance. And the army should never leave the territorial limits of our nation. —