The thing to remember about the public schools of today is that students are treated worse than criminals. Everyone is presumed guilty until proven innocent.

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A common justification for [surveillance] cameras is that they make students safer, and make them feel more secure. I can tell you from first hand experience that that argument is bullshit. Columbine had cameras, but they didn't make the 15 people who died there any safer. Cameras don't make you feel more secure; they make you feel twitchy and paranoid. Some people say that the only people who don't like school cameras are the people that have something to hide. But having the cameras is a constant reminder that the school does not trust you and that the school is worried your fellow classmates might go on some sort of killing rampage.

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In northern Virginia, the measures are even more Draconian. They have heavily-armed and -armored police officers roaming the halls. Students undergo a mandatory security orientation during their first week of middle school. In it, a police officer goes through the implements they carry at all times. The police women who performed the demo I attended showed us how she was always wore a bulletproof vest, and carried handcuffs, cable-tie style restraints, a large knife, a can of mace, and a retractable steel baton. "It's nonlethal, kids," she said. "But you don't want me to have to shatter your kneecaps with it."

She also wore a pistol with exactly thirteen rounds: one in the chamber, 12 in the clip. She could have taken out a terrorist or two; which I guess that is what they were expecting some of us to be. At the tender age of 12, this made quite an impression of me, and I still remember the event clearly. But these methods were useless in keeping me or any of my classmates safe. They didn't stop the kid who flashed a gun at me, or the bully who took a swipe at me with a switchblade.

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Some people say youngsters are more disrespectful than ever before. But if you were in an environment where you were constantly being treated as a criminal, would you still be respectful? In high school, one of my favorite English teachers never had trouble with her students. The students in her class were the most well behaved in the school--even if they were horrible in other teachers' classes. We were well-mannered, addressed her as "Ma'am," and stood when she entered the room. Other teachers were astonished that she could manage her students so well, especially since many of them were troublemakers. She accomplished this not though harsh discipline, but by treating us with respect and being genuinely hurt if we did not return it.

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Petty acts of rebellion--and innocent little covert activities--kept our spirits up. The school's computer network may have been censored, but the sneakernet is alive and well. Just like in times past, high school students don't have much money to buy music, movies or games, but all are avidly traded at every American high school. It used to be tapes; now it's thumbdrives and flash disks. My friends and I once started an underground leaflet campaign that was a lot of fun. I even read about a girl who ran a library of banned books out of her locker. These trivial things are more important than they seem because they make students feel like they have some measure of control over their lives. Schools today are not training students to be good citizens: they are training students to be obedient.

Salon's Mark Benjamin went spelunking in the recently released CIA torture memos and comes back with a stomach-churning account of the waterboarding practiced at Gitmo. This fine-tuned torture process repeatedly took its victims to the brink of death (one victim was waterboarded 180+ times) until many of them simply gave up on breathing and tried to allow themselves to drown, only to be revived by unethical medical personnel who collaborated with the war criminals conducting the torture.

The documents also lay out, in chilling detail, exactly what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding "session." Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to "dam the runoff" and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee's mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second "applications" of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee's nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.

"This is revolting and it is deeply disturbing," said Dr. Scott Allen, co-director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights at Brown University who has reviewed all of the documents for Physicians for Human Rights. "The so-called science here is a total departure from any ethics or any legitimate purpose. They are saying, 'This is how risky and harmful the procedure is, but we are still going to do it.' It just sounds like lunacy," he said. "This fine-tuning of torture is unethical, incompetent and a disgrace to medicine."

As a friend noted, waterboarding isn't simulated drowning, it is drowning.  "Enhanced interrogation techniques" are just mealy mouthed words for hiding the war crimes that our government carried out.

KARL: Did you more often win or lose those battles, especially as you got to the second term?

CHENEY: Well, I suppose it depends on which battle you're talking about. I won some; I lost some. I can't...

(CROSSTALK)

KARL: ... waterboarding, clearly, what was your...

CHENEY: I was a big supporter of waterboarding. I was a big supporter of the enhanced interrogation techniques that...

KARL: And you opposed the administration's actions of doing away with waterboarding?

CHENEY: Yes.

It is too late to impeach him, but there is no statute of limitations on trying war criminals.

If things are looking up, there is quite a long way to go:

It is my most popular post and interestingly many people are finding it without actually googling for it or following it from somewhere else.

The idea behind Spontaneous Ideas is that it is a place where I (and now others) can share the spontaneous ideas that enter our mind sand have a measure of sense and usefulness to them, but which we are unlikely to pursue due to time or inclination.  Anyone reading the blog is free to take an idea and run with it, free of charge beyond some form of attribution.

If you would like to be able to share your spontaneous ideas as well, and are someone I know, then please contact me.

They have open sourced the code for it at storytlr.org, so I may get a piece of the the cloud and try hosting it.  When I have the time.

Thanks to This Modern World and Salon.com!

In the US however, Pirate Party supporters seem to be a fractious lot.  Besides the Pirate Party International approved Pirate Party of the United States, there once was a United States Pirate Party.  Now there is an American Pirate Party, a USA Pirate Party and some time ago I found a third US-based Pirate Party web site.  The Greens in the US had their own schism in the 90's, that was mostly resolved in 2000, but this situation seems a bit much.

While I like their ideals and positions, they really need to concentrate on building state and local chapters instead of creating more national Pirate Parties.  sigh...