Monday Confessional
Man I am busy. Running around all crazy like. Doing all sorts of things, getting into all sorts of action. I helped to put a turbine up (more coming soon) and I have been doing a lot to further my one man IT firm Dune Design. I went to Martha’s Vineyard and saw a naked guy (don’t ask) and explored some cliffs, good times all around. Tess is keeping me very very busy and she is the most amazing person ever. Life is good, and hectic, and good. Just trying to hold on to all of it.
You Want Cures, You Need Science
If you believe that the big bang theory is wrong, thats fine. If you believe that evolution is bunk, thats OK. If you think the earth is only 2000 years old, good for you. When, however, you start basing laws based on these views, we are going to have some problems. And that is what seems to be happening with a new cancer cure.
Merck & Co. Inc.’s vaccine to prevent the world’s most prevalent sexually transmitted infection sailed through a panel of U.S. health experts, despite early fears of opposition from the Christian Right that it might lead to promiscuity and a false sense of security.
The drugmaker’s efforts to educate Christian groups while touting the vaccine’s top selling point — prevention of cervical cancer — helped win them over.
But Merck may ultimately find itself at loggerheads with those same groups as it seeks to make the vaccine mandatory for school admission, a step considered key for widespread acceptance and one that many of the groups oppose.
The vaccine, known as Gardasil, with an estimated $2 billion U.S. market potential, targets four types of sexually transmitted human papilloma virus, or HPV, which is believed to cause more than 70 percent of cervical cancer cases and 90 percent of genital warts.
“We don’t think it should be made mandatory for school attendance,” said Peter Sprigg, vice president of policy at the Family Research Council, who attended the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) advisory panel meeting on Thursday.
That view is shared by evangelical Christian group Focus on the Family
From here.
If you want cures, you need science. So we could tackle this problem one of two ways, we could ignore these anti-science crusaders and continue to enjoy the plethora of benefits that science has brought us. Or we can fight fire with fire and try and use our beliefs in science to pass our own laws. Perhaps we could pass laws that say “unless you believe in science, you can’t get anti-biotics.” or “unless you believe in science, no motorized travel for you.”
I kid, but that is basically what these people are doing. They are using there faith to influence laws such that we the science champions will not reap the rewards of all that hard work.
Honestly why not cure cancer if you find such a cure? Why worry about weather or not curing cancer will lead to more sex. Cancer is bad, we should cure it. If having sex at an early age is bad, lets stop that as well. However we should never make arguments that curing X will lead to more of Y, and because Y is against my belief we can not cure X.
You can not have it both ways, if you want cures for cancer, and AIDS and even the common cold you need to embrace science. If you are reading this right now you are using products of science. Most things in life are products of science. For all its comforting ways, faith has cured very few illness (if any) and created no new technology. If you like cars, TV, Advil, flight, guns, shoes, radio, Viagra, and many many other things, then you like science.
It can bring us bad things, good thing, neutral things, but its the only way we have found so far to get new things. If you don’t like it, stop using all the things science has lead to and don’t try to hold these things from the rest of us.
What if? (Part Two)
A while ago I wrote about the Bush administration using warrant-less data mining to try and find journalists secret sources.
Now it seems that attorney general Alberto Gonzales says that it may be possible to prosecute journalists that public information that they got from secret sources, or that is classified. Revealing CIA illegal secret prisons, or illegal torturing, secret energy policies that favor the oil companies, the lack of planning for the Iraq war, all of which we as citizens need to know, could get the reporter arrested.
This is a bald faced attempt to stifle free speech and to keep the governments illegal secrets, secret. When journalists are unable to find out the illegal workings of the government our democracy suffers. Think back to all the scandals that have been revealed by journalists, conservative or liberal you should be happy that these muck raker’s are out doing there job.
Watch Alberto talk in his own words below, and then here from the ABC reporters on how they feel about there phones being monitored.
Download this video here. (wmv)
Download this video here. (wmv)
A Failure Of Justice
Imagine for a second that something like the following has happened to you. You are abducted, taken to some far off place, beaten, treated badly, tortured, and not told why or by whom.
Then lets imagine you are then dropped in some other country and told “It was all a big mistake.” Well this has actually happened to a German citizen named Khaled el-Masri.
Mr el-Masri says he was picked up in Macedonia in 2003 and flown to Kabul, Afghanistan, where he alleges torture.
The judge did not rule on the truth of the allegations, but said letting the case proceed might endanger security.
Rights group the American Civil Liberties Union brought the case on behalf of Mr el-Masri – who was never charged with any terrorist offenses.
Besides Mr Tenet, the case named 10 other CIA employees, as well as three other companies and their employees.
However, the district court judge in Virginia rejected the challenge, saying Mr el-Masri’s “private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets”.
So your picked up, tortured, held in secret for months, and when its all over you are not even able to sue, because your law suite would reveal state secrets. Kafka would be proud.
Lets follow this logic, we are going to scoop up people we think are terrorists (to protect our people and preserve freedom), we are going to torture them (to get the information out of them, to protect our people and preserve freedom), then when we mess up we wont even let them take the case to court (to protect our people and preserve freedom).
In order to keep people safe, to protect there freedom, we make them unsafe, and take away there freedom. We destroy freedom, to protect it. We abduct them, take them to another country, beat them, inject them with drugs, make them were diapers and shackle them. Then when we realize it was all a mistake we wont let them have there day in court because we are afraid that it will “reveal state secrets.”
But perhaps the case is being dismissed not for state secrets but because the Bush administration does not want the details of this highly illegal program to come to light.
“It’s simply not possible to believe the case involves state secrets,” Wizner told the judge. “The government’s moving to dismiss this case … on the basis of fiction.”
…
The Bush administration based its dismissal argument on affidavits from Porter Goss, who was CIA director before announcing his resignation last week, that officially assert the executive branch of government’s state secrets privilege. The privilege is a legal precedent that gives President George W. Bush the right to protect U.S. military and state secrets.
“By their very nature, clandestine intelligence activities are not acknowledged by the United States,” Goss said in a public affidavit. He also filed a classified affidavit with the court.
“The denial of CIA involvement may, by itself, provide the informed intelligence analyst useful information about the CIA’s capabilities and the scope and thrust of CIA activities,” the document said.
Goss also warned that public exposure from the case could undermine U.S. relations with foreign countries.
The governments position can be classified as such. “We cant let the guy who we tortured illegally to go to court because then everyone will know that we tortured him illegally, and also the fact that we tortured him illegally will make other countries, whose citizens we are torturing illegally, mad at us”
In America a lawsuit like this would be seeking millions of dollars in damages and perhaps years of imprisonment for the culprits. Masri only wants…
$75,000 but has said he would consider settling in exchange for an apology from Tenet.
Perhaps this is what they are really afraid of, being forced to say they are sorry.
This guy was a German citizen but what is to keep the same thing from happening to an American (for all we know it already has)? There is no oversight, no monitoring of these programs, we don’t know what is happening.
We have let this go too far, you can not destroy freedom to protect it. You can not remove human rights in order to preserve them, you can not become a monster to stop one.
Crooksandliars.com Seems To Be Down?
Crooks and liars seems to have been hacked, down, or purchased, by something called ziaspace.com
A WHOIS search seems to show that the John still owns the place, perhaps they are moving server companies? Lets hope its not permanent
Registrant:
4066 1/2 Lyceum StLos Angeles CA,90066 Fax. +0.1234 Creation Date: 06-Sep-2004 Expiration Date: 06-Sep-2005
Domain servers in listed order: ns1.bravehost.com ns2.bravehost.com
,
United StatesRegistered through: GoDaddy.com (http://www.godaddy.com)
Domain Name: CROOKSANDLIARS.COM
Created on: 05-Sep-04
Expires on: 05-Sep-06
Last Updated on: 18-Jan-05Administrative Contact:
Amato, John amacom@earthlink.net
4066 1/2 Lyceum St
Los Angeles CA,90066 Fax. +0.1234
,
United States
Tel. +0.3109955322Technical Contact:
, nocontactsfound@secureserver.net
4066 1/2 Lyceum St
Los Angeles CA,90066 Fax. +0.1234
,
United States
John Amato (3953701411) (amacom@earthlink.net) Fax — Tel. +0.3109955322Domain servers in listed order:
LAIN.ZIASPACE.COM
ANDROMEDA.ZIASPACE.COM
REVA.SIXGIRLS.ORGRegistry Status: REGISTRAR-LOCK
Registry Status: clientDeleteProhibited
Registry Status: clientTransferProhibited
Registry Status: clientRenewProhibited
Registry Status: clientUpdateProhibited
edit: Everything seems to be ok now, odd.
RSS XML Feed
