Recently in the politics section:

Despite what the Bush White House may think or say, the technique of waterboarding has been declared as torture and prosecutable as such by the UN Human Rights Chief:

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Now if only the UN member countries had the teeth and courage to begin using the principal of universal jurisdiction to begin prosecuting members of the administration for approving and ordering waterboarding to be used on prisoners by the US.

I find the last sentence in the article a nice little finishing touch:

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.

Mica Rosenberg, who wrote the article at Reuters: bravo.

Man reduces waste to nothing, cancels trash pick-up, and city sues. from Planetizen

The lawsuit, filed by San Carlos Deputy City Attorney Linda Noeske in San Mateo Superior Court on Jan. 22, seeks a permanent injunction forcing House to maintain garbage service. City officials are also seeking to recoup from House the costs of the lawsuit.

The lawsuit claims House broke the city’s municipal code requiring all residential, commercial and industrial properties to contract with Allied Waste for pickup at least once a week — a standard requirement in most cities, San Carlos Deputy City Manager Brian Moura said.

[...]

House recycles paper, metal and plastics, regularly hauling them in his pickup truck to a recycling center and collecting the refund, he said. What little backyard waste he generates is ground into powder by his wood chipper and food scraps are either pulverized by his garbage disposal or eaten by his dog. House’s larger items are either sold or given to people on Craigslist, he said.

“I don’t understand a city ordinance that requires you to fill up a can. That’s downright foolishness,” he said.

His neighbors raised a stink about him raising a stink by burning garbage, but whenever the fire department has come, he was burning firewood. House also says he thinks that the city is getting back at him for complaining about the next door apartment building that causes problems.

I can understand the ordinance for sanitation issues, but why pay for a service you don't use? And the city trying to get the legal costs back out of the man who lives alone with his dog: that's just wrong.

This story is apparently being talked about in many of the science blogs out there, and Clarke brought it to my attention, via PZ Myers's blog on Science Blogs:

Narcan is the commercial name for Naloxone, a rapid acting drug used to counteract the effects of opioid overdose by combating the depression of the central nervous and respiratory systems.

It costs only $9.50 per dose and is easily administered via a nasal spray, saving the life of someone who has overdosed on heroin or morphine.

The White House's deputy director of the Office on National Drug Control Policy, Dr. Bertha Madras, opposes the use of the life saving heroin overdose antidote:

"First of all, I don't agree with giving an opioid antidote to non-medical professionals. That's No. 1," she says. "I just don't think that's good public health policy."

Madras says drug users aren't likely to be competent to deal with an overdose emergency. More importantly, she says, Narcan kits may actually encourage drug abusers to keep using heroin because they know overdosing isn't as likely.

Madras says the rescue programs might take away the drug user's motivation to get into detoxification and drug treatment.

"Sometimes having an overdose, being in an emergency room, having that contact with a health care professional is enough to make a person snap into the reality of the situation and snap into having someone give them services," Madras says.

The White House's position is absolutely absurd. These people WILL DIE without the antidote, and you want to deny people in drug treatment and response programs the use of this drug?!

The argument that it will encourage more drug use just because it makes overdose "safer" is absolutely ludicrous coming from a White House that has professed a love for all life, promoting their "Pro-Life" agenda in other issues such as abortion.

The key point is Narcan saves people from dying. A person can't go through drug rehabilitation if they're dead. They can't keep using the drug if they're dead.

Perhaps that the end goal of the White House, to let all those on the bottom rung of the drug war to die in dark, filthy corners basking in their poverty and misfortune. I doubt the White House cares enough about them, and its obvious from many of their policies that they don't.

It's a ridiculous point of view to take when you turn around and profess all life as sacred from the moment a sperm hits an egg.

Hypocrites.

The European Court of Human Rights has overruled a French court and stated that adoption by single, gay individuals is legal in the European Union:

In a 10-7 vote, the Strasbourg-based court ruled Tuesday that a plaintiff identified only as Emmanuelle B. had been the victim of illegal discrimination when successive French authorities denied her request to adopt a child in 1998. The court faulted the French courts for citing "the lack of a paternal referent in the household", and said the woman's homosexuality had been "if not explicit, at least implicit" in France's rejection of her adoption request. The Court judged France had violated the European Convention on Human Rights — to which France and the other 46 Council of Europe members are signatories — by failing to assess adoption by a lesbian the same way it would a single heterosexual.

This decision means that it is no longer legal in the EU to discriminate between gay and straight individuals in regards to adoption applications; however, the decision does not apply to couples, so gay couples can still be denied adoption.

Baby steps.

Why do people think cars will save the world? In the past month, there has been news that the Smart car will be coming out locally, that India is planning to release a small $2.5k car, and that a presidential candidate has promised to revive the domestic automotive industry. Yeah, just what we need: more cars. It's good that the smart car and the new car in India will be more fuel efficient than a lot of the vehicles on the road, but really, how much of an effect will good fuel efficiency have when, in India's case, there are that many more cars on the road? I know that where I live, if people were willing to give up their SUVs and trucks--which at first glance while riding my bike (and avoiding getting hit) seem to make up at least 2/5ths of the vehicles on the road--then there would be a definitive impact on air quality. We're talking about a jump to 40mpg city up from -5--I kid, of course. The number of people who'd drive the Smart car over SUVs won't be that large, though, since they'd only be the people who can actually afford having two vehicles (though I'd be curious to know how many people who own SUVs have another vehicle) unless they trade in their current vehicles towards a Smart Car, and on top of that the cost is prohibitive ($28k was it?).

On the more socially and globally responsible note, Planetizen makes a good point about people like me commenting on developments in "developing" countries:

Of course there is deep hypocrisy in developed countries criticizing the driving habits of the developing world. Developed countries’ environmental critiques and campaigns need to start at home. Politicians, labor unions and environmental activists have a responsibility not to brandish global warming as a stick to bash workers and consumers in India or China. Instead the argument for progressive global warming policy must begin with the acknowledgment of the destructive policies of our home governments and corporations; this includes taking responsibility for developed countries majority contribution to the climate crisis.

*points finger at Texas*

Or you could go the route of AFS Trinity and get 150mpg (and potentially unlimited). According to the Salon article I heard about the company from, it does it with technology that's available to us now (and was available years ago):

Instead of waiting for a battery that can deliver both energy and power cheaply, it uses current lithium-ion batteries for energy, and then adds something called an ultracapacitor for rapid discharge during acceleration.

Ultracaps have 10 to 100 times the power density of typical batteries, but only one-tenth the energy density, so this is a marriage made in heaven, or at least Silicon Valley. The ultracap is the electrical equivalent of the shaken champagne bottle -- although even that analogy is flawed since ultracaps do not just discharge quickly, they also charge quickly. That's another benefit that ultracaps bring to hybrids.

Regular hybrids get much of their efficiency gains from their ability to capture the energy normally lost during braking and convert it to electricity. Current hybrid batteries take up only about half of this electricity, but fast-acting ultracaps can take up much more.

So, like any other politics nut I'm following the results of the New Hampshire primaries, and upon loading CNN's front page to see the current results, I couldn't help but notice one bullet point about the results of an exit poll, pictured at right:

• Exit polls showed issues swayed Democrats but Republicans were moved by personality.

And that, I think, is exactly the difference between Democrats and Republicans right now. Are you serious, Republicans?

I always used to pull a very neat example in Debate Team whenever someone argued that it was better to judge someone by their character and personality in elections. I would describe for them several different personalities, of which I can only remember two of now:

1. One was a womaniser, a drunkard, and adulterer.
2. One was a vegetarian, clean record, etc.

I asked them to choose which they would judge as the better candidate, using their personality guidelines. Invariably, they'd choose the clean cut vegetarian.

It was at that point I told them they had just chosen Adolf Hitler over Winston Churchill. A trap question, to be sure, but it drove the point home.

Benazir Bhutto, chief Pakistani opposition leader, former Prime Minister and vocal critic of General Musharraf's recent actions, was assassinated today:

Ms. Bhutto, 54, was shot in the neck or head, according to differing accounts, as she stood in the open sunroof of a car and waved to crowds. Seconds later a suicide attacker detonated his bomb, damaging one of the cars in her motorcade, killing more than 20 people and wounding 50, the Interior Ministry said.

News of her death sent angry protesters swarming the emergency ward of the nearby hospital, where doctors declared Ms. Bhutto dead at 6:16 p.m. Supporters later jostled to carry her bare wooden coffin as it began its journey to her hometown, Larkana, in southern Pakistan, for burial. In Karachi and other cities, frenzied crowds vented their rage, blocking the streets, burning tires and throwing stones.

A nuclear power has the head of the army declare martial law, oust their Supreme Court Justices, flout democratic rule, and then the opposition leader is assassinated while leaving a political rally... This is what should be getting attention, not Iran.

Oh, that's right, admitting the situation's bad in Pakistan would entail The White House admitting they made a grave error in trusting and aiding Musharraf. Silly me, thinking The White House would admit to their mistakes.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report will be returning in January, sans writers if the strike isn't over by then, says Comedy Central:

'The Daily Show with Jon Stewart' and 'The Colbert Report' will resume production on January 7 with both shows returning to air that night without their respective writing staffs. The January 7 return follows a scheduled two-week, end-of-year hiatus that was previously built into the shows' production calendars. We continue to hold out hope for a swift resolution to the current stalemate that will enable the shows to be complete again.

Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert:

We would like to return to work with our writers. If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence.

Well, it certainly won't be the same, but dear goodness at least we won't have to entertain thoughts of kidnapping Jon Stewart in order to get our fill of wry, witty campaign commentary.

ForeignPolicy.com has a list of the top 10 foreign policy stories you may have missed (if you're not a foreign policy nut like some of us.)

Number 1? The beginning of the cyberwars:

The year 2007 will be remembered as the beginning of the cyberwars. In late April, Western experts were caught off guard when a barrage of cyberattacks emanating from Russia crippled the banking, police, and government offices of Estonia. Many called it the world's first full-scale cyberinvasion. Then in June, Pentagon officials accused the Chinese military of hacking into a computer network used by top aides to U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates. Near the end of the year, Britain's MI5 intelligence service sent a confidential letter to the CEOs of major multinationals warning them that the Chinese army was probing the cyberdefenses of their companies.

This emerging threat may explain why in September the U.S. Air Force quietly decided to form a Cyberspace Command. The new Cyberspace Command, due to become fully operational by October 2009, will be charged with helping to guard against such threats.

Frankly, I'm surprised it's taken this long for the US Military to form a command centre to take care of cyber-threats. So far, such defense had lain in the hands of intelligence gathering agencies like the NSA or CIA, that, while they have expertise in security issues, don't have the resources needed for full on network and computer infrastructure maintenance and defence. They're intelligence gathering services, after all, not defence agencies.

The questions that comes up is: will the Air Force seek to recruit some of the best qualified people to work as these cyberwarriors? I ask this because some of the best people are former black-hat hackers (black-hat refers to malicious hackers) that have turned their knowledge of systems penetration tactics into a skill set in the securities consulting business. Somehow, I think the Air Force would find that pill a little hard to swallow with their attitude tests and psychological profiling.

Update: I forgot the link to the ForeignPolicy.com article. It's now been added. Way to forget the basic premise, Ed.

Reuters has released their slideshow of the 2007 "Pictures of the Year." It's always amazing to see how much can happen in one year.

WARNING: The link resizes your window. I really, really hate it when websites resize my window. It's incredibly bad interface design. Leave my window how I want it, damn it. You're not the only tab open in my window, so hands off!

The title sequence for the movie The Kingdom has a surprisingly good recap of the history of Saudi-US relations:

I agree with this YouTube commenter:

Yeah, this is a nice, quick Hollywood recap of some of the history...Can you imagine the impact of production quality like this on educational films? Kids would start loving history class.

Indeed.

Via Kottke.

Times Online has a damning article on the US claiming it can legally kidnap British citizens, curtailing extradition procedures:

A senior lawyer for the American government has told the Court of Appeal in London that kidnapping foreign citizens is permissible under American law because the US Supreme Court has sanctioned it.

Until now it was commonly assumed that US law permitted kidnapping only in the “extraordinary rendition” of terrorist suspects.

Via: Boing Boing.

Great breaking news from Venezuela: President Hugo Chavez has accepted a referendum loss that would have provided for unlimited presidential terms and other constitutional changes:

The most controversial amendment would do away with term limits, thereby allowing the 53-year-old former paratrooper, who has already served almost eight years in power, to hold it indefinitely as long as he is re-elected.

If the amendments were approved, Chavez could have run for president in seven-year terms.

At present, the president's term runs six years, and current law would not allow Chavez to run again after his term ends in 2012.

I'm extremely happy about this news! Baby steps, baby steps.

The New York Times has an op-ed article by Stephanie Coontz regarding the sorry state of marriage law today, in respect to gay unions:

As Nancy Polikoff, an American University law professor, argues, the marriage license no longer draws reasonable dividing lines regarding which adult obligations and rights merit state protection. A woman married to a man for just nine months gets Social Security survivor’s benefits when he dies. But a woman living for 19 years with a man to whom she isn’t married is left without government support, even if her presence helped him hold down a full-time job and pay Social Security taxes. A newly married wife or husband can take leave from work to care for a spouse, or sue for a partner’s wrongful death. But unmarried couples typically cannot, no matter how long they have pooled their resources and how faithfully they have kept their commitments.

Bush's entourage, in graphic form.

There is some doubt as to this graphic being made by Reuters, but the numbers are accurate.

Via BoingBoing.

The recent Australian elections, which ousted conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and brought in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have led Rudd to pledge that Australia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Australia is the only other major developed nation besides the US to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

A UN committee of experts has declared that tasers are a deadly form of torture:

The UN committee made its comments in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest Taser X26 stun gun for use by police.

Portugal "should consider giving up the use of the Taser X26,'' as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN's Convention against Torture, the experts said.

Via: Engadget.

Speaking of Election 2008, you may have heard of the debacle Barack Obama caused when he refused to wear a flag pin. Well, Lost Brain brings us the proper etiquette on wearing your own flag pin, so that you aren't "pegged as a terrorist."

The New York Times' Ward Sutton has a gallery dissecting the current and past campaign logos of presidential candidates. Some good design comments and snarky critiques.

The MPAA comments on the previously reported bill now in Congress that would threaten federal financial aid to a college if they did not police copyrighted works for the MPAA and the RIAA:

"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright,"

Oh great, it's that stupid argument: "They have the fast Internets! They must be using it solely to infringe on our copyrights!"

Again, please tell your local Congressman to vote against this bill.

MPAA: Linking college funding, piracy is 'perfectly legitimate' [CNET News]

I knew there was a reason I didn't like NYU students, besides the horrible experiences I had with them in Union Square:

Two-thirds say they'll do it for a year's tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.

That's what NYU students said they'd take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.

Most say their vote has a price [Washington Square News]

Imagine these water guns today and how much panic they'd induce:

"The look! The feel! The sound! So real!"

Solar Power Rocks brings us an unabridged bar graph comparing the cost of the War in Iraq versus energy R&D investments in 2007.

Tallest. Bar Graph. Ever.

If you've been following the news, you know the White House has been pushing to add immunity for the telecommunications companies that complied with the NSA's illegal wiretapping program to the FISA bills currently in Congress.

Good news! The House, and the Senate's Judiciary Committee have both passed versions of the FISA Bill that do not provide immunity to the telcos. Bravo!

Now we just need the Senate to pass it sans-immunity, and Congress to override Bush's veto (which I predict might happen.) Thankfully, Congress is certainly more willing to override him these days.

Congress Keeps Telecoms on the Hook for Illegal Spying [EFF]

Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Surveillance Bill Without Telecom Amnesty [EFF]

As a follow up to yesterday's The Daily Show writers post, today we have writers from The Colbert Report chiming in:

Wil Wheaton has brought a wonderful and funny video, made by one of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart writers, explaning the writer's strike in the style of The Daily Show:

With guest appearance by John Oliver.

Wired reports on the leaked Guantánamo Bay manual that showed up on Wikileaks.org last week:

A never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002.

The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. It is unclassified, but designated "For Official Use Only."

The really heinous part of the manual? A section detailing a tagging system for the prisoners, with each category dictating how much access the Red Cross would have to each inmate:

The manual shows how the military coded each prisoner according to the level of access the Red Cross would have. The four levels are:

• * No Access
• * Visual Access -- ICRC can only look at a prisoner's physical condition.
• * Restricted Access -- ICRC representatives can only ask short questions about the prisoner's health.
• * Unrestricted Access

Even more evidence that the government wilfully denied access to detainees for the purposes of precluding oversight, in order to cover up human rights abuses.

The full document can be found on Wikileaks.

In case you missed the news all over the Internet regarding the ridiculous bill introduced by House Democrats on Friday, CNET News has a recap of the idiocy:

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill, which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

If colleges don't comply by testing "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity," they risk losing all federal financial aid. Not only that, but they're forced to provide alternatives to downloading, basically making all colleges sign up for music services. What kind of demented lobbying happened to put that in? No wonder the MPAA loves the bill.

Please tell your local representative this bill is a stupid idea that is just meant to divert money from education and into the music and movie companies' hands.

The full text of the bill can be found here.