I’ve been keeping this under my hat for a bit, but Debt On sees its first print publication in the current issue of The Nth Degree, a publication of submitted short stories and artwork distributed at conventions. It will join such hilarious and well established cartoons as Bob the Angry Flower and Partially Clips. My thanks to the editors at Nth Degree! Hmm… guess this means I better get to work on some new material…
The Red Cross has confirmed the retracted Newsweek report alleging desecration of the Koran in Guantanamo Bay.
The New York Times reports leaked details from an Army investigation of a detention center in Bagram, Afghanistan. The report describes beatings, deprivation of sleep and water, inmates being chained to the ceiling and dying in captivity. The clincher is “many of the Bagram interrogators, led by the same operations officer, Capt. Carolyn A. Wood, were redeployed to Iraq and in July 2003 took charge of interrogations at the Abu Ghraib prison.”
Finally, a British tabloid has obtained these photos of Saddam Hussein. No word yet whether the Army plans to produce these as pinup shots to raise money for military spending. Next up: Kim Jong Il in a speedo.
I was excited to find the Wikipedia entry on my old school, Simon’s Rock College, and even more excited that whoever wrote it got all the facts right. Too often people (particularly if they went to Bard) think that the school was invented by the odious Leon Botstein, who pushed the philosophy of the school in books, talk shows and even in the New York Times. Not so, as the article points out. It was formed in the sixties as an all girls school and its policy of exclusive early admissions was intact then.
I even learned a few things from the article, like that a fellow alumnus is the creator of the awsome comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, Alison Bechdel. They also mentioned MoveOn.org director Eli Pariser, who I really wish would stop sending me email.
That is how the New York Times quoted State Department spokesman Richard Boucher regarding the recent Newsweek story that the Koran had been desecrated by guards at Guantanamo Bay. The report resulted in anti-American riots in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the report has since been retracted.
However, it is incredible to me that anyone can say that the United States has shown the “utmost respect for [the] religion” of their Muslim prisoners with a straight face. In my rudimentary understanding of Islam, I have been led to believe that their religion, which often emphasizes modesty and is not friendly to homosexuality, is not being respected if: a)Their picture is taken naked. b) They are placed in sexual positions with individuals of the same sex. c) They are led around naked by a leash.
Imagine if naked pictures in sexual positions with others of the same sex had been taken of Christian prisoners in the midwest or deep south, where their religion apparently expressly forbids homosexuality. They would cry and scream that their religion was not being respected, that their rights were being deprived them. The captors would be shocked. “How can you say that?” they’d ask. “We’ve never desecrated a Bible!”
The comedian’s whereabouts and condition have been unknown since Comedy Central abruptly announced last week that the planned May 31 launch of the third season of “Chappelle’s Show” had been postponed and production halted.
Chappelle flew from Newark, N.J., to South Africa on April 28 for treatment, said the magazine, quoting a source close to the show it would not identify. Entertainment Weekly said it had corroborating sources for its story.
Get well, Dave.
All those people off looking for it in the Middle East are sorely misled, anyone who can read a map knows that Zion is located in the south of Utah, just off I-15. But I guess it’s best we keep it under our hats. I could do without Israeli settlers in the U.S.
Got the RSS feed up and running, so if you have Firefox you should be able to create a live bookmark, or if you have your own reader just click on the handy picture 
and subscribe to Debt On!
As the federal government has been incredibly lax about supplying soldiers in Iraq with adequate armor, Oklahoma is pushing through legislation that would create Patriot Plates. Purchase of a $35 license plate would contribute $20 toward body armor for Oklahoma soldiers. I wish the Bushies would sit up and take notice that it’s not the responisbility of individual contributers to supply troops with armor. That people have to make a donation above and beyond their tax dollars for armor is ridiculous. Our military should not be a charity case.
In another expample of what seems to be a constant struggle to properly equip soldiers overseas, today The Marine Corp announced they have recalled 5,277 defective vests from troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Though they were defective enough for a recall, “The Marines defended the vests and denied risking the lives of troops in war zones by giving them poor equipment, arguing that the vests were vastly superior to the ‘outdated’ flak jacket they replaced.” (Reuters)
The continuing armor shortage was addressed in the April Government Accountability Office report GAO-05-275. (highlights) (Both PDF)
According to the report, “…body armor was not issued to all troops in Iraq until January 2004, 8 months after major combat operations were declared over.” (P. 36) “By December 2003 the worldwide number of back orders [for the vest component of soldier’s body armor] reached 328,023.” (P.76)
Because of the shortages, many individuals bought body armor with personal funds. The Congressional Budget Office estimated (1) that as many as 10,000 personnel purchased vests, (2) as many as 20,000 purchased plates with personal funds, and (3) the total cost to reimburse them would be $16 million in 2005. (P. 78 )
Another continuing problem is a lack of adequately armored HMMWVs. “Current HMMWVs are protected only by canvas tops and have no additional armor protection.” (P. 122) In this case, for protection from ambushes and roadside bombs, an add-on armor kit is required. However, “as of September 2004, the Army supplied 8,771 of the 13,872 Add-on Armor kits required by CENTCOM but still needed 5,101 additional kits to meet all requirements.” (P. 121)
The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that “Though the Army says all of its 35,000 vehicles in Iraq now have some sort of armor, 11,700 of them are protected with nothing more than crudely cut sheets of steel.” Worse, “attacks on vehicles have accounted for as many as 40 percent of the 1,037 deaths attributed to hostile action” leading many to attribute up to 400 deaths to inadequate armor.
But at least we can sleep soundly knowing that manufacturers are seeing record profits from all of this.
…I think I’ll cut it off! Via Metafilter, apparently an emerging mental disorder is Body Integrity Identity Disorder. People who suffer from this disorder will undergo voluntary amputation and “need to have certain appendages cut off in order to feel whole again.”
The closest comparison to this disorder, which incidentally is not listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, is Gender Identity Disorder.
BIID, to me, is pretty ridiculous. It seems contradictory to the point of modern medicine to put people in a wheelchair for the rest of their lives in order to make them “healthy.” Gangrene is one thing, but the psychological condition that for some reason your leg should be missing? Let’s try talking through this in therapy before chopping legs off, hmm?
I don’t know why we’re still stuck on the Christian ads on the main page, but I was amused to find that on the blog index page all the ads are for lockpicks. Thanks, Google!