Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo?

Who were the prisoners of Guantanamo? Andy Worthington has compiled a four-part series telling us their stories. Here's the disturbing bottom line:

[A]t least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism.

I don't pretend to know enough to know whether these accounts are totally accurate, but they are filled with details, personal anecdotes, statistics and reports regarding individual court cases. It has a strong ring of authenticity. Further, these individual accounts corroborate general accounts produced elsewhere. I have no reason to disbelieve any part of Andy Worthington's work. He is a well-reputed journalist who has published elsewhere, such as this post at Huffington Post. I am proud to be an American. America does much right in the world and has the potential to do much more that is admirable. This account by Andy Worthington, however, describes America at its shameful worst.

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Can Science Trump Religion?

This is not a question of whether science can or should prove or disprove the existence or non-existence of God or gods. Some of us believe that we are living in an era of rationalism, or enlightenment. Some, like Dawkins, even hope to see rational thinking purge religious clap trappings from society. The question is, can rational thinking ever purge society of silly ideas? I was reading the Dale McGowan post Best Practices 4: Teach engaged coexistence and he obliquely gives the answer. Consider:

  • Coperincus (ca. 1500) decisively proved that Astrology was unfounded.
  • Avagadro (ca. 1800) proved that Homeopathy was bunk.
  • John Philips (ca. 1840) proved that the Earth was at least 90 million years old (before Darwin published, or more accurate isotopic dating techniques were even imagined)
  • Hubble (ca. 1920) proved that not only was our solar system tiny compared to the galaxy, but that our galaxy is infinitesimal compared to the visible universe.
Surely we would no longer find anyone to believe that the stars predict our future, that water has memory, that the Earth is young, or that the Earth is the sole point of all creation. No amount of education of thinking individuals will ever remove the comforting effects of belief in paranormal salvation for the majority of mankind.

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Another Near Miss

In case you missed it, asteroid 2009 DD45 passed the Earth today at a distance of about 1/7th of the way to the moon. It was noticed about 3 days ago, and apparently has an orbit that will bring it close to home every so often. See here. It is relatively tiny, about 30 meters across. Therefore, when it hits it'll only make a hole a few miles across. Maybe the size of Manhattan or the Greater Chicago area. Yes, when. It'll probably hit in the ocean, in which case only seaside towns will be destroyed, like Miami, D.C, or Los Angeles. But this is only one of thousands that have been discovered so far. No need to worry. When the sky does fall, we'll find out eventually. With a bit of pork barrel spending, we might be able to predict and prevent such things. But it might cost as much as the current bailing out of mismanaged banks. But I've discussed the end of the world before.

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We get mail

At the Red Cross, we get lots of mail. Mostly it's our own reply paid envelopes with cheques in them, sent in response to a quarterly mailout. In a time of crisis (like now: redcross.org.au) it's all kinds of envelopes from all kinds of people with lots of different stamps for me to harvest and decorate my cubicle with. Sometimes, amidst the cheques and postal orders, we might also get a letter or card from an old digger or Red Cross lady with a "The War" story, or perhaps a tale of how the good ol' Red Cross came through for them when they were in a POW camp. We also get people complaining about how much mail we send them because it must cost us so much money to send all those letters (the complainants usually use our own reply paid envelopes - or call our 1800 number - to do so, which, um, costs us money). Occasionally we even get white-hot rage and four-lettered, multicoloured profanity in response to such a mailout (that's for another adults-only post). Even less frequently, we get poetry. The following - well, I guess you could call it a poem as I'm not sure what else it should be called - came in a card attached to a donation . . .

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