Joseph Darby is the man who alerted military authorities—not the press—of the prisoner abuses at Abu Ghraib.

Being an American soldier, law enforcement officer, judge, businessman, whatever, only carries as much weight as the integrity you bring to it. If you come to it as a criminal, you are not an American solider, cop, congressman, whatever. You’re a waste of space and you should be in prison if you’re lucky and deserve another chance, at the bottom of a lake otherwise.

Joseph Darby is a stand-up man and American veteran. He saw crimes had been committed and he reported it through proper military channels. He did not just save some Iraqi prisoners humiliation, torture and possible death. He saved at least a couple soldiers in the next rotation of MPs through Abu Ghraib. He saved them from turning into monsters. He saved them from prison. He stopped something that needed stopping.

Just for the devil’s advocates out there—sure, I can get down with torture being appropriate. Talked about it before. The hiccup is that innocent people will get tortured. At least 10% of the poor bastards in Abu Ghraib didn’t even belong there. Just like the witchcraft trials in Europe in the middle-ages. You didn’t have to be a terrorist/insurgent to get thrown in the clink. You just had to have a neighbor who didn’t like you and told the nearest Marine you were a terrorist. Happened plenty. Part of how we got into this mess.

So there is no valid counter-argument. Darby did the right thing. Sad how gutless some other soldiers were in this. How few of them can step up and be heroes when it takes more than mowing down a line of badly-equipped teens and shop keepers. The very military field is predicated on bravery, not on petty sadism.

60 Minutes did a piece about Darby this weekend. They talked with Colin Engelbach who is the commander of the local Veterans of Foreign Wars chapter in Darby’s hometown of Cumberland, MD. A beautiful place to which Darby can probably never return.

The threats and local opinion of Darby were related by Engelbach. When he was asked if agreed with it all, Engelbach said–

“I agree that his actions that he did were no good and borderline traitor, yes.” Colin Engelbach

Either we have rule of law or we’re savages and the biggest, meanest, trickiest savages will rule. Either we can be free and safe or we can’t. Colin Engelbach’s view amounts to, “Only my friends can be free and safe. The rest of you are on the menu.”

Mr Engelbach, you have shown where the border is. It would have been easier for you to stand up and defend what’s right than it was for Darby but you crossed over anyway. You are the first Sedition·com pick for Real American Traitor because, in this game, Monday morning traitors count double. The award has no moneys attached but you can rest assured that it will always be here for the world to reference.

Sundays are supposed to be cartoon days. You know me. I refuse to stand in the way of tradition.

We’ll see if those ever get off the ground. I have scripts for a dozen or more but the cartooning just doesn’t come as easily as making fun of Jesus. Maybe because it’s much, much, much, much, much—E.B. White is doing 5,000 RPMs right now but Bertrand Russell is cracking a smile already—harder.

I’m taking suggestions for the title too. “Dinostories” seems a bit obvious. Anyone who suggests something better (in the comments) will get a free Devil’s Dictionary X shirt in the mail for Hanukkah.

Jody sucks number one…

…Other real numbers report disappointment.

If we get to be #1 for underage porn, it seems only fair Jody gets a slice of the pron pi3.

MMM…

Three thousand days ago today Sedition·com first lit your eyes in a wash of CRT light. I wish the eight years would continue to be cred but like the 16 year-old you lust after today, in ten years the age difference just won't be very exciting anymore.

Let’s try a new feature by burying alive the rest of this. Can’t you hear the mad scraping to get out?

[read more]

Arctic ice field could melt by 2080: European research

An asteroid could hit the Earth by 2010, ending all human life: plain old historical fact.

By the way, for all the Biblical “scholars” out there—if every ice cube in the world tray melted, the oceans would rise about 200 feet. It would be terribly unpleasant and most of the humans in the world live at that elevation—I’m just saying the blackbird and the dove won’t have far to fly.

Iraqi panel finds US underreported violence in Iraq

World panel finds underwear underutilized in the US.

10 is the new 15 as kids grow up faster

Stupid is the new smart as Americans are pummelled into Cretinville by FOXNews and DailyKos.

When I was 8 I knew kids who were getting high. When I was 13 I knew kids who were doing coke, sleeping around, and bringing guns to school. Here’s your newsflash: this was contemporary to the last news cycle to include a US President being shot and it was in a Blue state in a small town.

Judge: Paper Money Unfair to Blind

Sedition·com: Reality Unfair to Incompetent.

I do agree in this case. Different sized bills is a good idea and it’s weird how stupid we are about this kind of thing. But seriously. Is this where we’re going? That every single one of us needs to be held down to the level of the least able, the least intelligent, the quickest to cry?

The money I agree with, it only makes sense and it’s not prohibitively expensive, it could even save money, but wheelchair access to National Parks…? That’s not a joke. It’s been, or maybe still is, in the courts. The resources spent trying to keep up the stragglers would be better left in the hands of people who are trying to solve their own problems. The government doesn’t give us vaccines or new machines to make life better. Why the fuck do we let them manage the funds. [Note the rhetorical lack of interrogative.]

US actress Gwyneth Paltrow prefers British dinner talk

“I like living here because I don’t fit into the bad side of American psychology. The British are much more intelligent and civilized than the Americans.”

When my heroine Camille Paglia called Ms Paltrow “an insufferable lightweight” back in 2000 I actually flinched. So harsh. Upon some reflection I can only remark, “She got off easy.” Though being married to anyone in Coldplay is karmic retribution enough.

One more thing, deary. Brits are becoming more ass-ignorant every single day in no small part due to the industry in which you’ve made your career. Don’t believe me? In 2004 11% of them thought Hitler was a fictional character. Churchill made out better, coming in with only 9% holding him in disbelief [link]. George birds-of-a-feather Bush didn’t make anyone stupid, Gwyneth, but you sure did.

Al-Qaeda controls western Iraq: US intelligence report

So, take out your home score-cards everyone. Cross check the column 2002 with Iraq and Al-Qaeda. You should find bung. None. Nil. Zero. Not a sausage.

I sure hope someday we track down those responsible for making Iraq into a haven for terrorists. A nice show trial and a round of public executions would go down well, don’t you think?

Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95) VoilaBot BETA 1.2 (http://www.voila.com/)

–asked for–

http://sedition.com/perl/$node.html/perl/$node.html

Wonder how many 404s their current bot’s build is racking up all over the world tonight.

Pearl Harbor day snuck, sneaked, snuck up on me. [Those sneaky Japanese!] Instead of talking about how evil the Japanese used to be before they started making transistor radios and tentacle-based romance novels let’s talk about a hypothetical attack on the US. We will always have to be vigilant. It’s self-evident.

What scares me most is a direct large-scale attack on the US. Can you imagine if terrorists burned down the White House? God, I can barely contain my anger just thinking about it. I’m sure they want to do it. What if they burned down every single government building in DC? The Library of Congress, the House and Senate, all of it.

America could collapse. Think about it. No government to save us and make sure the country runs all right on a daily basis. But if by some miracle we managed to withstand such an assault, it would be our obligation to seek justice.

We’d have to crush the perpetrators utterly. If they were sponsored by any foreign governments, we should definitely, definitely, definitely, invade and not rest until the leaders of those countries were executed and their governments replaced with democratically elected bodies.

Any real patriot realizes it wouldn’t matter how long it took. We would never be safe for a moment if we didn’t show terrorists everywhere that American justice is inexorable, guaranteed. No one attacks us and walks away from it. You don’t burn down the Capitol of the United States of America and think you’ll just turn around and be our friends a few years later. You must be brought to justice!

So I propose we do something about it. Because it’s not actually hypothetical, it happened.

British forces destroyed just about every government building in DC. It was not recently but it was well after the Revolutionary War. We can’t let the distance in time stand in the way of justice. Canada helped—and to this day could attack us at any moment along a huge unguarded border—so they need to be invaded too. Think of the great park we could turn the place into!

And Australia, we’ll be keeping an eye on you.

Politics aside, kottke.org is a near perfect blog. It's short, to the point, offers the interesting next the obscure-but-worth-hearing. It really is the textbook example of how to do it and that includes the clean layout and attention to detail and brevity.

Politics included, we start to have a problem but it’s the merest smidgen of your material, so we won’t elaborate, and it has nothing to do with why I can’t link to your site anymore. The real reason is drastically simpler and in all ways harder to excuse–

4 1/2 stars for “Mallrats”

I see Comcast’s listing browser—normally too generous, willing to give anything 2 stars—gives “Mallrats” 1 1/2. I was about to remark that it was the most generous half-star ever given to a movie but I noticed that “Wisdom” received the same mercy portion of stellar material.

Your search — “preventing underage pornography” — did not match any documents.

“We know it’s not how you spell the color in English, but it’s our way of being different.” GLAY

It’s not how you spell the sexual orientation either boys but I’ll stand up for your right to be different.