Sergeant John’s 3-D Chiller House of Terror!

Karen J. Greenberg is the Executive Director of the Center on Law and Security at the NYU School of Law. She recently took a tour of the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and has attempted to document the unwritten rules which the prison’s minders apply to press coverage:

6. After years of isolation, the detainees still possess valuable information — especially today. When asked what kind of useful information the detainees could possibly have for interrogators, many already locked away in Gitmo for over five years, the [military liaison's] answer was: “I believe that we are, in fact, getting good and useful and interesting intelligence — even after five years”…

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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Blogger Ken Marable extrapolates US casualties in Iraq to January 2009, when the next president will be sworn in. Nearly five thousand Americans will have died by then—note that previous “surges” have not dented the steady death rate—but the hawks will still be looking for their Magic Pony that is always just around the corner.

This unwavering line, and the lives and families it represents, is why Congress needs to stand its ground on setting a withdrawal date. The only shift in the angle of this line was when the administration’s incompetence led to the insurgency gaining full steam. Nothing Bush has done before or since has caused this line to level off even remotely. It just steadily climbs at the same rate for years now.

Bush’s war of conquest and occupation is a loser.

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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Business Week sorts out just how Germany fell behind in hybrid auto production.

…The original plan was to introduce hybrid versions of three SUVs: the VW Touareg, Audi Q7 and Porsche Cayenne. But that deadline has now proved to be unrealistic. VW will unveil its first hybrids next year, but they will not be available for sale by then. Wolfgang Dürheimer, who heads the research and development division at Porsche, has revised the predicted rollout to a vague-sounding “end of the decade.”

The company has barely managed to come up with prototypes of the first construction stage, which suggests that actual production would not begin for at least another two years. System supplier Bosch has developed a power supply unit that can handle high-voltage current of up to 300 ampere, but it takes up most of the trunk. “Of course, it still leaves much to be desired,” says Dürheimer, promising that the size of the wiring system will soon be reduced.

The biggest problem lies in the relatively crude drive train the German engineers have chosen. While Toyota uses a complicated engine-gearbox combination with two electric power units, the VW/Porsche system features only one electric motor between the internal combustion engine and the gearbox. This motor has to serve multiple purposes: acting as a generator and supplying the braking energy to the battery, powering the vehicle on its own when only the electric motor is operating and serving as a starter for the combustion engine…

Never mind Detroit’s lag in fuel efficiency.

Tags: Hybrids/Alternatives, Politics, Uncategorized by John
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AC/DC: “Baby, Please Don’t Go”

Tags: Gratuitous Video Feed, Uncategorized by John
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Attorneygate heats up, as Raw Story reports that a key advisor to Karl Rove is about to leave her post:

Multiple sources reported today that a top aide to President George W. Bush’s key adviser Karl Rove will soon step down from her job in the White House. The aide, Sara M. Taylor, was identified in yesterday’s hearing with a former top Justice Department official as seeking the resignation of a US Attorney in Arkansas. She could still face a subpoena, RAW STORY learned…

Taylor and Jennings were both fingered yesterday by Kyle Sampson, the former chief of staff to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, as playing key roles in the elevation of Tim Griffin, a top staffer in the Bush-Cheney 2004 campaign and a Army Judge Advocate General, as the interim US Attorney for Arkansas in place of Bud Cummins.

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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If ever there were a story that summed up America’s conflicted feelings about immigration, this is it. Our executive class loves cheap labor, while their pet politicians love pandering to our xenophobia. Sometimes the irresistible force loses:

The head of a California company hired by the U.S. government to help build a fence along the Southwest border to curb the flow of illegal aliens into the United States has been sentenced on charges of hiring illegals for the job.

Mel Kay Jr., 64, founder, chairman and president of the Golden State Fence Co., pleaded guilty in December in federal court in San Diego to felony charges of hiring the illegals and was sentenced Wednesday to six months home confinement, three months probation and 1,040 hours of community service.

Michael McLaughlin, 42, manager of the company’s Oceanside, Calif., office, who also pleaded guilty in December to charges of hiring illegals, was sentenced to six months home confinement…

The company, which built more than a mile of a 15-foot-high fence near the Otay Mesa border crossing in the San Diego area to protect against illegal immigration, agreed separately to pay $5 million on a misdemeanor count—one of the largest penalties ever imposed on an employer for immigration violations.

We might also imagine some mixed feelings among the editorial staff of the whorish Washington Times.

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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Sergeant John: still available to Chinese surfers!  What’s a brother got to do to get banned?

Note: web sites become inaccessible for many technical and administrative reasons.  Only a positive result (available) from this test is definitive.

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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More than a hundred people died violently today in and near Baghdad:

Both areas — a bazaar in the eastern Baghdad neighborhood of Shaab and the farming town of Khalis in Diyala province — are populated predominantly by Shiites, and Iraqi government officials quickly blamed the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq. The attacks followed two violent days of bombings and reprisal killings in the northern city of Tall Afar and threatened to increase the likelihood of a resurgence of open sectarian warfare despite the heightened U.S. military presence in Iraq.

The bombing in Shaab, which police said killed at least 60 people, took aim at the six-week-old Baghdad security plan, under which U.S. and Iraqi officials have sought to protect public marketplaces from such catastrophic attacks…

But Thursday evening, as shoppers stocked up on supplies before the weekend, at least one suicide bomber sneaked into the area and detonated explosives amid the bustling crowd of the Shalal market. Area residents said the market is barricaded on both ends to prevent vehicles from entering, but the attacker walked in wearing an explosives belt, police said. Soldiers from the brigade [2nd Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division] rushed to the warren of stalls to assist in recovery, U.S. military officials said…

More violence in Iraq killed at least 20 others Thursday, and 13 dead bodies were found scattered around Baghdad in the past day, Interior Ministry officials said.

Tags: Politics, Uncategorized by John
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“One of them is a plain fish, and, no doubt, marketable.”
—The Tempest, 5.1.265-66

Tags: Daily Diss, Uncategorized by John
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The Bill Evans Trio: “In Your Own Sweet Way”

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