Oh, a change has gotta come.

Patrick Cockburn has a good summary piece up at the Independent where he mentions, in passing,

The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel, killing 70 people, the police beat and drove away a television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.

emph added

Those journalists should probably be glad they were beaten off before they got the pictures. Apparently, actually getting the pictures and letting people know what is happening can buy you a one way ticket to GITMO and if you take pulitizer prize winning pictures for the AP, it can cause you to be immediately disappeared by the US military in Iraq and held with no recourse, until you are handed over for a “secret trial” by Iraqi judges (who are good enough for AP photographers but not Blackwater killers), while still being held by — the U S military.

And prostratedragon @ 9, thanks also: on and off today I’ve been reading Solove on the “I’ve got nothing to hide” argument, which interests me — the very fact that an argument against it has to be mounted interests me. Forgive me for going on about my childhood, but I can’t have been more than ten or eleven when my dad (who was an old Tory of a kind that doesn’t exist any longer) taught me to stand up against that position. To him, it meant that the police could walk into your home at any time, tell you to go on with what you were doing while they just take a look around — “Don’t mind us: if you’re not doing anything wrong, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

I see that Solove is arguing that the variants are becoming more nuanced and therefore our defence against them has to be, but I’m not sure I agree. I found Posner’s way of putting the problem, eg, quite offensive. That doesn’t seem more nuanced to me; it seems like a degeneration of democratic thought, frankly.

But the problem is fascinating (the fact that we have to deal with it is interesting to a historian), and I haven’t finished reading yet, so I should stop there. Dürrenmatt was right: “A crime can always be found.”

Klynn, my children are now 39 and 37, but I shared your issues when they were young. We set the dial on the PBS station and took off the knob. 8-D PBS doesn’t have many award shows, no smirking advertising for personal products, and the schedule seems to honor the primetime concept.

We are all readers. Books are our vice. They played outside or did ranch chores daily.

It’s great your kids had such great parenting.

We have similar approaches. We have a TV with a “knob”. We watch PBS. We read like crazy. Our kids read two 300+ page books a week. Our kids participate in 4 sports, play two instruments each, paint, and volunteer in at-risk neighborhoods and on environmental projects plus manage to enjoy time with friends…

ROT,

Interesting dialogue. Thanks. Shared with my oldest that apparently I have a new political party to join…He laughed and just shook his head.

BD @73,

Working on a “greening” report. Can multi-task here.