Posts from — January 2009

I did some reading about the UN Convention Against Torture tonight, and learned some interesting things. There are 146 signatories to the Convention, which was adopted in 1984. The United States was not just a signatory, but was a major force in shaping and promoting the convention.

When President Reagan sent the the convention to the senate for approval, he sent a letter with it. An excerpt:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention . It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called “universal jurisdiction.” Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

Our moral leadership on issues like this is one of America’s best legacies of the 20th century.

Anyway, the second paragraph quoted above is important: Article 5 of the convention states (in a complicated way) that signatories are bound not only to prosecute offenders within their jurisdiction, but establishes a universal jurisdiction. This means that states are compelled to investigate and prosecute torture occurring in other states if that torture would otherwise go uninvestigated.

In other words, when the former chief judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces says that “we tortured”, inaction isn’t really an option. If we don’t handle this, there’s a very real chance that other countries would be legally compelled to. We need to do better than this. The world is much worse off without our moral leadership.

Also, before I forget, the Convention states that:

“No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political in stability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification of torture.”

Slate had a good article about the international legal implications of torture here.

And, no, I’m not a lawyer… four years of Model UN is about the only qualification I have in this area

… you may now start donating.

Interesting 9-minute video about probability and coincidence:

Nothing shocking here, but I like the way the explanation is done.

An experimental offline feature for Gmail was released yesterday. Here’s a quick video describing the feature:

I’ve been testing this for a while, and I’ve found that it’s useful on my laptop even if I’m not in an airplane (the quintessential use case). If your connection is slow, or it goes in and out, try Flaky Connection Mode. That’ll make your mail work offline but will sync in the background. The feature definitely experiences problems from time to time, but it’s really simple to turn it on and off, so I recommend giving it a try.

I live about 3 miles from the shore closest Alcatraz and I honestly don’t think having a maximum security prison with former Guantanamo inmates there would be any worse than just having a maximum security prison there in the first place. We already hold convicted terrorists in our prison system. These guys are thugs but we’re treating them like they’re all brilliant superhuman masterminds. Everyone should settle down a bit.

“Air and Simple Gifts” by John Williams, as performed at the Inauguration by Itzhak Perlman, Yo Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill:

It’s simply beautiful music, I don’t think I really have anything more to say than that. This was my favorite part of the ceremony. The multiculturalism of the quartet really adds something to the moment, too.

OBLIGATORY SPOILER: The performance itself wasn’t amplified, they had to play a recording because it was too cold out to feasibly keep the instruments in tune. Having watched this before and after learning that fact, it really doesn’t take away from it.

It looks like I need to have an awkward talk with myself:

A report from December 2008:

Trucks and sport utility vehicles will outsell cars for the first time since February, according to a December report by Edmunds.com, which tracks industry statistics.

The market is very short-sighted (though part of this was just the onset of Winter).

In case you missed this a week ago:

The top Bush administration official in charge of deciding whether to bring Guantanamo Bay detainees to trial has concluded that the U.S. military tortured a Saudi national who allegedly planned to participate in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, interrogating him with techniques that included sustained isolation, sleep deprivation, nudity and prolonged exposure to cold, leaving him in a “life-threatening condition.”

“We tortured [Mohammed al-]Qahtani,” said Susan J. Crawford, in her first interview since being named convening authority of military commissions by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in February 2007. “His treatment met the legal definition of torture. And that’s why I did not refer the case” for prosecution.

Crawford, a retired judge who served as general counsel for the Army during the Reagan administration and as Pentagon inspector general when Dick Cheney was secretary of defense, is the first senior Bush administration official responsible for reviewing practices at Guantanamo to publicly state that a detainee was tortured.

I’m tempted to stop posting things like this, as it barely even feels like news anymore. If you’re not convinced by this evidence, then I’m not sure what evidence you’re waiting for.

Charles Krauthammer agrees with me about the gas tax:

Savvy politicians (i.e., those who succeed in getting themselves elected president) know this and tread carefully. Ronald Reagan managed a 5-cent increase. So did Bush 41. Bill Clinton needed a big fight to get a 4.3-cent increase. The lesson has been widely learned. No one with national ambitions proposes a major gas tax. Indeed, this summer featured the absurd spectacle of two leading presidential candidates (John McCain and Hillary Clinton) seriously proposing a temporary gas tax suspension.

Today’s economic climate of financial instability and deepening recession, moreover, makes the piling on of new taxes–gasoline or otherwise–not just politically unpalatable but economically dubious in the
extreme.

So why even think about it? Because the virtues of a gas tax remain what they have always been. A tax that suppresses U.S. gas consumption can have a major effect on reducing world oil prices. And the benefits of low world oil prices are obvious: They put tremendous pressure on OPEC, as evidenced by its disarray during the current collapse; they deal serious economic damage to energy-exporting geopolitical adversaries such as Russia, Venezuela, and Iran; and they reduce the enormous U.S. imbalance of oil trade which last year alone diverted a quarter of $1 trillion abroad. Furthermore, a reduction in U.S. demand alters the balance of power between producer and consumer, making us less dependent on oil exporters. It begins weaning us off foreign oil, and, if combined with nuclear power and renewed U.S. oil and gas drilling, puts us on the road to energy independence.

(my emphasis)

The only thing that worries me about gas taxes is that it puts an increased cost on necessary goods, and gas constitutes a large portion of the working poor’s expenses. These things can be mitigated with smart tax policy, though. Krauthammer’s solution seems elegant:

The simultaneous enactment of two measures: A $1 increase in the federal gasoline tax–together with an immediate $14 a week reduction of the FICA tax. Indeed, that reduction in payroll tax should go into effect the preceding week, so that the upside of the swap (the cash from the payroll tax rebate) is in hand even before the downside (the tax) kicks in.

The math is simple. The average American buys roughly 14 gallons of gasoline a week. The $1 gas tax takes $14 out of his pocket. The reduction in payroll tax puts it right back. The average driver comes out even, and the government makes nothing on the transaction.

(the whole article has more details)