Washington Post: A Wretched New Picture Of America

Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory — the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed — belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure — the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities — is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.

(/me hangs head in shame)

Also, still waiting for Bush’s apology to the prisoners, Iraq, and the American public.

It seems the president is allergic not just to the words but to the concept of responsibility that underlies them. To apologize would be to admit he’d made a mistake. And mistakes are forbidden in the Bush White House.

• Rape Rooms: A Chronology – What Bush said as the Iraq prison scandal unfolded. — this set of Bushisms is less funny.

• F.A.A. Official Scrapped Tape of 9/11 Controllers’ Statements – wtf?!?!
  

  The taping began before noon on Sept. 11 at the New York Air Route Traffic Control Center, in Ronkonkoma, on Long Island, but it was later destroyed by an F.A.A. quality-assurance manager, who crushed the cassette in his hand, cut the tape into little pieces and dropped them in different trash cans around the building, according to a report made public today by the inspector general of the Transportation Department.

• A leash to shake the White House – abuse reports continue; form of flying media circus
• New Prison Images Emerge – digital cameras changing reporting? almost impossible to believe that all these photographs weren’t taken on purpose
• Le Monde has posted some hand-written letters home from Sergeant Ivan L. “Chip” Frederick II. – the military is trying to pin this on low-level soldiers — sorry, it needs to follow the chain of command (if they were taking orders, shouldn’t we know?); also, Rafe is right, ultimate responsibility leads to one person, and it’s not Rumsfeld. Related: no apology?
• Calpundit’s been following this (from breaking the contractor story at the beginning of the week)
• The Red Cross Accuses: “The Photos are Shocking, but Our Reports are Worse”
• Oh, remember that other war? Thousands of Afghani POWs brutally executed, CBC alleges US military complicity
• From reporter to relief worker in Afghanistan… – life after war
• Powell aides go public on rift with Bush – Chief of staff says secretary of state is fed up with apologising for the administration and is disdainful of ‘ideological’ hawks
• GQ: Casualty of War – Four years into an embattled Bush administration, Colin Powell is hard at work at something he’s never had to worry about before: salvaging his legacy.

(warning, incoherent ranting follows) For fun, lets see how this is being treated by the idealogues:

• O’Reilly Factor, May 3 (edited for clarity) – O’Reilly has a weak apologist stance — from a pure pragmatic standpoint, I don’t think it’s sunk in yet how many Americans are going to die because of this. From a moral standpoint, well, what can I say. It’s not like half the country and three quarters of the world hasn’t been screaming about this for years. A complete aversion to truth and principaled actions will lead nowhere good. (O’Reilly is currently going off on Rumsfeld. Is he forgetting that there’s someone that Rumsfeld directly reports to every single day? — oh yeah, the Bush Admin’s motto for personal responsibility: “The buck stop at the desk over there.”)
• Rush Limbaugh, May 4 – look, no two ways about it. This guy is a moron and a monster, as is everyone else who 1) believes that this behavior is justifiable or is 2) willing to ignore how significantly this affects our chances of success, or that blowing it off is going to make things better.
  

  CALLER: It was like a college fraternity prank that stacked up naked
  men —

  LIMBAUGH: Exactly. Exactly my point! This is no different than
  what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation and we’re going to ruin
  people’s lives over it and we’re going to hamper our military effort,
  and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good
  time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I’m talking
  about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of
  emotional release? You of heard of need to blow some steam off?

• Taiwan law orders one-way writing – Official Taiwanese documents can no longer be written from right to left or from top to bottom in a new law passed by the country’s parliament.
• WiFi On Two Wheels – Yury, who I met at SXSW this year gets a writeup in /.
• Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush – gotta love Cory’s partner id
• When semantic markup goes bad
• Bruce Schneier interview on IT COnversations – Read or listen to this terrific interview in which Bruce also says what he thinks of the 9/11 hearings and answers questions from listeners regarding spam and biometrics. This is one of our best.
• Cartifact is a company that have started making some interesting Flash Maps (backed by GIS and other data sources). This is potentially pretty useful, especially if you could pass in buildings to highlight and do pathing (you can do the former, but not the latter right now)

So, did you know that the new Music Videos section of the iTunes Music Store also delivers the videos over plain HTTP? Here’s a great video by H5 (also available on the current issue of Res):

• Massive Attack – Special Cases (49.3MiB SV3 QT)

Check out the order-size of the 1-cent bid for SCO stock.

So, did you know that the new Music Videos section of the iTunes Music Store also delivers the videos over plain HTTP? Here’s a great video by H5 (also available on the current issue of Res):

• Massive Attack – Special Cases (49.3MiB SV3 QT)

Modest Mouse played a great live version of “Float On” on CBC’s ZeD last August (15MB RM, also mirrored locally)

(if you’ve not heard it, you can listen to samples of the album and buy it online — Modest Mouse are on Epic [Sony Music] these days though, so be sure to toss the EFF a couple bones (or buy it used) if you’re also of the anti-riaa predilection)

Check out the order-size of the 1-cent bid for SCO stock.

Glonoinha summarizes Sony’s new Connect music store pretty well:

DRM’ed out the ass, doesn’t work on anything besides Sony players, doesn’t work on any of the players people already own.

Yet another wonderful idea from the Sales Prevention Team at Sony!

• Taiwan law orders one-way writing – Official Taiwanese documents can no longer be written from right to left or from top to bottom in a new law passed by the country’s parliament.
• WiFi On Two Wheels – Yury, who I met at SXSW this year gets a writeup in /.
• Disney Forbidding Distribution of Film That Criticizes Bush – gotta love Cory’s partner id
• When semantic markup goes bad
• Bruce Schneier interview on IT COnversations – Read or listen to this terrific interview in which Bruce also says what he thinks of the 9/11 hearings and answers questions from listeners regarding spam and biometrics. This is one of our best.
• Cartifact is a company that have started making some interesting Flash Maps (backed by GIS and other data sources). This is potentially pretty useful, especially if you could pass in buildings to highlight and do pathing (you can do the former, but not the latter right now)