...this is how you make fucking tomato-sauce.

The default graphs were hideous at best, but now, thanks to a focus-group-tested and user-centric decision probably made by marketing drones without a brain: Microsoft Excel deliberately misrepresents data, because it turns out, users didn’t like empty cells in bar-graphs… idiots :-).

The US Senate has confirmed President Bush’s legislation that effectively lets him:

• use “coerced” testimony that would not be admissable in a civilian court of law before military tribunals with little to no oversight (read: a civilian court would not accept testimony that was tortured out of a prisoner, these “courts”, and I define the term “court” very loosely here, will).
• decide that any prisoner is an unlawful combatant and keep them in prison for any period of time without the ability to see evidence that is used against them or even the charges brought against them
• designate prisoners for torture when he wants to

The most important thing however, is that ‘unlawful combatants’ do not have the right to challenge their imprisonment, so they can’t even let the people know that they’re imprisoned. Even more interesting however, is that the legislation also protects the current executive from any backlash their actions might provoke in the future when the american people finally wake up.

9/11 was a terrible, terrible event, but I’m sick and tired of it being used to cram idiotic legislation down our throats in Germany and when I look at the United States today, I see that it will get a lot worse before it gets better. Of course the press is already in full denial, trying to find a “balanced” angle where there really should be none…

You might call it censorship… at the very least it’s embarrassing: take a look at the covers of this week’s Newsweek magazine around the world.

After all, if you call it authorized interrogation techniques, it can't be that bad, right?

I really can't express how I feel about this, language has no words.

So I’m up very early this morning, which feels great, by the way :-). Here is an immensly important article from the Washington Post about torture by someone who has actually experienced it in soviet Russia. Most interestingly he talks about the consequences torture has on the torturers. A must read!