VP of Torture

It came out this past week Vice President Vader was ultimately responsible for signing off on and even "micromanaging" the use of "enhanced interrogation techniques" against suspected terrorist agents during a series of meetings in 2002 and 2003 which included, among others, such noted figures as Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and then CIA Director George Tenet.

What's remarkable is the sheer lack of newsworthiness about the revelation. It's been something everyone has "known" for years, it's just a question of the details being confirmed.

The torture inflicted involved more than dressing Condi up in kinky latex and whips, and even more than tying the terrorists to chairs, propping their eyes open with toothpicks and forcing them to watch around-the-clock reality television (which would either have forced confessions, true or not, or reduced the participant to the blithering state many of our fellow citizens sadly reside in). No, we're talking about all forms of physical abuse, up to and including sleep deprivation and water boarding.

For those who brush off the effects of water-boarding, or like to hide it behind euphemisms such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" or "simulated drowning", I encourage you to read this thread, written by someone who decided to find out for himself what the process was like last December. It's worth noting that, prior to conducting the experiment, the author favored the use of the technique. His thoughts after the experiment I leave for you to discover.

Don't just read the initial post ... there are a number of interesting questions and responses by the author throughout.

As has been noted, here and elsewhere, many, many times, these are techniques applied to individuals who have been found guilty of absolutely nothing. They have not been tried. They have not had a chance to confront their accusers in an open court. Many of them have been arrested under rather flimsy circumstances. A number which have been found to be innocent have been released.

This week a number of protests were organized around the world to highlight China's human rights' abuses, timed to coincide with the running of the Olympic torch prior to the Beijing Olympics this summer. Some of those protests were planned for San Francisco and the Golden Gate bridge ... something I am sure the Chinese government found quite hypocritical. Why should they be asked to adhere to standards we clearly refuse to hold ourselves to?

Eight years ago we were a beacon for the world, not perfect, but at least striving to be better, and encouraging other nations to join us in that search. Today, we are a bully who threatens and bullies smaller nations and takes away their lunch money if they don't mold their foreign policy to fit our self-interest.

I am not a pacifist ... there are just wars, and our presence in Afghanistan is, in my mind, fully justified. The leaders of that nation knowingly provided safe haven to a coterie of people who viciously attacked and killed our citizens. By doing so, it provided a legitimate cassus belli.

However, there are unjust wars as well, and Iraq unquestionably falls in that category (as will our future war with Iran, should McCain win election this fall ... but that's another issue). Our presence there, our continuing unjust occupation, and our continuing violation of basic privacy and civil liberties, both abroad and at home, have destroyed our nation's credibility for a generation, at least ... if we can ever regain it at all.

When trust is violated, it's rare to ever get it all back, no matter how contrite and sincere the subsequent remorse ... and this administration hasn't just violated trust, it's thrown it on the ground, ground it's heels on it, spat and shat upon it ...

Ultimately, it's not just the prisoners of Guantanamo, or those individuals who have suffered rendition, who have been wrongfully abused by this administration, it's all of us, the nation in it's entirety. When this leadership team came into the White House there was a great deal of talk and blather about the new "CEO" administration. I wish they had stuck with that ... at least then they might have limited their torture to our economy.

The new Jiajing Emperor

In a post at How the World Works discussing the extreme environmental difficulties plaguing China, Andrew Leonard references a citation describing the period of the Jiajing Emperor, one of the Ming Dynasty rulers:

In spite of his concentration on selfish whims and the menace on his borders, Zhu Houcong never let anyone usurp his power and authority. In his time the rich grew richer and the poor became impoverished, particularly in the Lower Yangtze area. Wealth bred leisure, which demanded luxuries and entertainment; it also encouraged the development of the theater, art, literature, and printing. The political vigor of the empire, however, began to decline, and the house of Ming showed signs of senescence.

It takes little effort to see the parallels between that period of Chinese history and our modern situation. As it was then, income inequality is becoming increasingly apparent -- the rich get richer (often regardless of actual merit, as can be seen in the millions and tens of millions taken in by poorly performing CEOs) and the poor get poorer. Our nation demands more luxuries and entertainment (represented by the increasing trade deficits, and the general populace being more aware of events regarding Paris Hilton than events pertaining to the Iraq war) while doing little or nothing to actually address the real problems the country faces (things such as education, infrastructure, health insurance, immigration, and more).

It wouldn't surprise me at all if some historical reference 500 years from now denotes the ruling period of Bush Dubya as marking the onset of our own period of senescence.

Oriental thoughts

While visiting China the last 10 days I managed to see lots of terrific sites: The Great Wall, Forbidden City, the terra cotta warriors, Shanghai History Museum and more ... all worth seeing. However, what most caught my eye from a blogging persepctive were a couple pieces of economic news.

1) There was a great deal of discussion about China's burgeoning trade surplus with the US and the various effects of it. Chinese leaders are concerned enough about it they seem willing to broker deals for materials they don't necessarily need (such as a recent agreement to purchase $4.3 billion in high-tech goods) just to help keep the trade difference closer.

What really got my attention, though, was several articles discussing China's trade surplus also mentioned China's monetary reserves. I.e., unlike the US and it's vast national debt, China actually has money in the bank (unfortunately, the articles I saw didn't give a figure -- the only one I have seen was from 2003, at which time the amount was $46 billion).

In my lifetime there have been a handful of individual years when the US ran a surplus, but the nation has never had an overall net surplus. I can think of some drawbacks -- you could argue you would rather have the money working for you on, say, freeway building rather than sitting around in the bank, for example. However, it must also be nice to not be paying billions of dollars a year in interest payments, and to have funds available for an emergancy -- like, say, a hurricane destroying the city of Anshan.

All-in-all, I don't think I would mind too much struggling with the inherent problems of having an overly large national surplus as opposed to having an overly large national debt. I suspect the problems which might come with having a surplus would be easier to deal with. Sadly, they are unlikely to be problems our nation will ever have to deal with in my lifetime, esepcially if we keep ending up with bozos in office who insist on instituting tax cuts while simultaneously instigating unjustified wars.

2) There's been a lot of angst in recent years about jobs moving to China. Many of those jobs are industrial, but it extends across to professional fields such as accounting, software development, biomedical research, etc. as well. The general perception in this country (at least, in the circles I run in) seems to be of a never-ending horde of Chinese workers willing to fill roles at lower wages.

The view in China is different.

Recent studies there show the labor pool drying up by 2009 or 2010. So far, the Chinese economy has prospered by basically being able to throw more manpower into any field where additional manpower might be needed. Labor costs have remained largely static, because there were always more laborers available.

This upcoming squeeze in labor is generally attributed to the maturation of China's Birth policy, which has been successful in limiting population growth. This squeeze will cause further increase in labor wages (which are already rising slowly, but sufficiently to cause some manufacturers to move positions from China to even cheaper locales) and will likely force Chinese industry to invest in more advanced production methods (which will allow more to be done with less manual labor).

Most interesting to me, nothing I read discussed possibly changing China's retirement policy. White-collar women in government companies or institutions have a mandatory retirement age of 55, 60 for men, For blue-collar jobs, it's 50 for women, 55 for men. You would think raising these ages (particularly for women), or simply not making retirement mandatory, would add tens of millions of potential laborers back to the pool.