There's nothing like a biased poll...

This is a weekly poll on one of msn's sites:

In your opinion, should the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay be closed?:

Yes. The reports of human rights abuses are damaging our image.

No. National security should be our primary consideration.

I'm undecided.

What about the option where you think it's wrong to violate human rights? Where it's wrong to operate a violent jail on another country's soil in order to completely bypass our Bill of Rights, the Constitution, and common decency. Or maybe just 'I think it's terrible to wrongfully imprison someone and hold them without trial for an indefinite period while toruring them'.

Maybe it's because this poll is on a women's site that they don't allow strong points of view against the government facility. Maybe they think women are only concerned with the image of things, the shallow part. We couldn't possibly be worried about the underlying causes of this prison. We couldn't have problems with the racial stereotyping that has donated many of these prisoners. We couldn't believe the reports that label the prison a 'gulag'. No, we women are concerned with the bright and shiny face of democracy. So, we'll lick a tissue and rub across the face of gitmo and put it in the corner until it realizes it should behave in front of company.

Empathy's a bitch

Another weird thing about television:

This study can be used to prove that watching television does not decrease intelligence, but rather increase our personal experience.

The current Queen's study uses human subjects to examine patterns of eye-hand coordination when performing and observing a simple block-stacking task. The researchers discovered that, both in watching and performing the task, people's gaze pattern is the same.

When watching a task being performed, subjects don't simply follow the movement of hand and block with their eyes. Instead, their gaze shifts in anticipation of the next move, and the brain patterns mimic those of someone actually doing the task.

But I find it more disturbing that I have performed some of the task (if only in my head) that I have seen played out on television. I mean, how many people would I have killed? maimed? berated? There is a rape scene in something like 1 in 7 movies. How many movies are about abuse? And with television getting increasingly violent, what is everyone learning from this empathetic response?

Why TV sucks

I was going to write a post about how stupid this article was and how telelvision doesn't make you smarter. But I won't, because I found a blog where someone has already done that with more nuance and intelligence than I could hope for given the fact that I am work. This is a great post, so I recommend reading it. But for posterity's sake, I will add a few things below.

Kathleen Murphy is worried her job will end if too many of these crazies catch on to what is really going on...

I go ballistic -- sputtering and flinging myself about like Lewis Black in full rant -- when some smug twit trumpets, "I got rid of my TV a year ago and guess what! I haven't missed it once!" This brag is typically expressed in the same tone of voice you'd expect if the person had kicked heroin or had major liposuction. And it's obvious that the dweeb looks forward to being washed in warm waves of approval from anyone within earshot. Implicit in such silliness is the hackneyed notion that, like bad medicine, TV kills brain cells, dumbing-down viewers into something very like a persistent vegetative state.

She goes on to name 7 whole shows that challenge one's intellect, of which, there was only one news show "the daily show".

She also doesn't mention the fact that television watching makes you antisocial and fat. I remember when I was at the height of my tv watching. I was completely hooked on at least seven shows, some of which cut into my sleeping patterns. And these shows were only on basic cable. I'd show up bleary eyed to work and only be able to talk about the previous night's complex plotlines until at least noon when my head would clear from the fantasy fog it was wrapped up in. I was watching a show for five of the seven nights of the week and would not go out if the activity conflicted with a scheduled show. My sister and I would be depressed when the shows went into their midseason rerun slump. Finally, I got fed up and left my tv by the dumpster, ditched my blockbuster membership and went into withdrawals.

I remember when my friend Turkey quit smoking for a few days in college and he asked my friend (who was smoking) just to blow smoke into his face so he could breathe it a little. I started to exhibit the same traits begging my sister for a tidbit from the show. How was Sydney? Did Jack start hallucinating again? Is the gardener boy still hot? She'd tell me and I'd writhe with jealousy that I hadn't seen the show. Finally I hit the cold turkey stage and just didn't care about it anymore. My sister was still watching obsessively and desperately needed someone to rehash script points with, but I wasn't having it. I had started reading the news and caring about actual events.

Then I fell off the wagon.

The KKK is as harmless as a fluffy little bunny wrapped in dynamite

A cute little tidbit from the Killen case:

The defense rested earlier Monday after a former mayor testified that the Klan was a "peaceful organization." Harlan Majure, who was mayor of this rural Mississippi town in the 1990s, said Killen was a good man and that the part-time preacher's Klan membership would not change his opinion. Majure said the Klan "did a lot of good up here" and said he was not personally aware of the organization's bloody past. "As far as I know it's a peaceful organization," Majure said. His comment was met with murmurs in the packed courtroom.

Now, I don't know how many of you are completely ignorant of this organization's past, but here's something Ulysses S. Grant published about it after a report was filed in 1870 in a grand jury investigation into the KKK.

The Klan is inflicting summary vengeance on the colored citizens of these citizens by breaking into their houses at the dead of night, dragging them from their beds, torturing them in the most inhuman manner, and in many instances murdering.

Oh, fuck. I was trying to be objective and fact based, but what the shit is this? This is a previously elected official. He is supposed to exist in this little place we call reality. What exactly is the KKK supposed to be if it is not a terrorist organization specializing in xenophobia and ethnic/racial cleansing? A church group? A gardening society? Sure, they might help old ladies across the street, but you'd better be the right fuckin' old lady or you'll be pushed under a bus and they'll burn a cross at your funeral to prove you shouldn't have voted. And for anyone who thinks the KKK died in the 60's, try looking up Michael Donald who was lynched in 1981 in Mobile, AL. If the KKK wants to be all peaceful and whatnot, they better disband, turn in their elders for the crimes they have committed and try doing something positive with their time. However, I'm as ready to believe the KKK is peaceful as I am to believe that the neo-nazis are a knitting circle.

Killen: I just can't stuff any more skeletons in this closet, better try the one in the hall

Once you start looking into the history of Edgar Killen, it just starts getting more and more fucked up. So I thought I'd start with some of the highlights.

ABOUT KILLEN: Edgar Ray KillenBorn: Jan. 17, 1925
Where he lives: Union on Neshoba County Road 515 (the same road where the three civil rights workers were killed)
Occupation: Sawmill owner. He has been a preacher at a number of Baptist churches. He's still a part-time preacher, substituting for regular preachers where needed.

You'll see why this is messed up in a minute or two. The article continues to state the following situations (which prove he would be incompetent as a preacher IMHO).

After the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., Killen said FBI agents showed up at his doorstep, wanting to know his whereabouts that morning. He said he refused to tell them.After some time passed, he said he called one of the agents, wanting to know who killed King.

"Why do you want to know?" Killen said the agent asked him.

"Man, I just want to shake his hand," Killen replied.

Killen denied any role in the killings of the three civil rights workers. Asked what should happen to those responsible for the slayings, he said of the killers: "I'm not going to say they were wrong."He explained: "I don't believe in murder. I believe in self-defense." In fliers, the Klan urged white men to join because "the issue is clearly one of personal, physical SELF-DEFENSE or DEATH for the American Anglo-Saxons."
Killen said he had no motive to kill the trio because he didn't learn until the trio turned up missing that Schwerner and Goodman were "underground agents of the Communist Party."
According to FBI statements, the Klan believed Schwerner was a "communist" prior to his killing, and after the trio's deaths, the Klan called them "communist revolutionaries" executed by their own.

It seems Killen believes that being a communist is a plausible reason to be murdered. And had he "known" before their murders of this fact, he could have presumably hunted them down and murdered them in cold blood by reason of self defense.

Killen also denies being in the Klan, however, his trial was populated with just such folk.

"Out-of-state Klansmen have attended both days of proceedings so far. “We didn’t bring any trouble to anybody,” said Charles Denton, a member of the American White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan from Florida who initially gave reporters an alias. “We came up here to support (Killen) and his family in this trial as much
as we can.”

Seems they went through a lot of trouble for someone who wasn't even associated with them. Although, one association Killen does admit to belonging to, as he was a part time preacher, wasn't noticeably present: the clergy. But they tend to ignore it when one of their own goes to trial for a more unsavory crime. I guess they figure they needn't attend as their presence was already known to the "impartial" jury.

Killen was tried on federal conspiracy charges in 1967, but the jury deadlocked 11-1; the holdout declared she couldn't convict a preacher.

And also:

He almost walked free again in his 1975 trial when a lone holdout told other jurors she didn't believe a preacher could do this, but she was finally convinced Killen was guilty.

In this trial, Killen was actually tape recorded issuing the following death threat:

"I looked at your house for the first time," Killen said. Your husband "didn't have on a light last night. He was scared to death, and you tell him he had good reason. ..."Folks die for things that he did, honey. Did you know that? ... I don't make no mistakes and get the wrong man. ... Your life is too sweet and precious to throw it away on one sorry son of a b---- like that. You hear? ... You tell him that he is exactly right, that he is dead."

Killen also claims not to be prejudiced saying the following words of racial tolerance:

"I have some very good black friends," he said. "I regret to say that there are not too many of 'em that I trust."

[Killen's] always paid his black workers minimum wage and no more, he said. "If I paid 'em 10 times that, they'd still come back to me on Monday and need to borrow money. They ain't gonna pay you back."

Oh, he certainly is a pillar of the community. But for now, he'll have to settle for being a geriatric, racist, down-home prisoner after today verdict of guilty of manslaughter.