2005/11/30

War and sacrifice

Howdy folks,

For those who don't know me, I'm James, I used to post on the old SpaceFreaks weblog and spark vicious flame wars with DDB. Art's told me I can post stuff that interests me to this blog.
Chris McMahon has said that war is a process of sacrificing the soldiers that fight it, a human sacrifice rather than self sacrifice. I think that makes a lot of sense.

The fact is that people who fight and die in war are negatively motivated (to use psycho-analytical language), they are avoiding something rather than trying to achieve something. They are avoiding "letting their mates down", they are avoiding disobedience, and in many wars they were avoiding the execution that was the punishment for "cowardice". The society that sponsors them puts them in a situation where the only way to avoid these things is to fight.

Here is an interview with the widow of the only Australian serviceman to die in Iraq, Flight Lieutenant Paul Pardoel. Apparently he wasn't a believer in the cause he was fighting for. I post this because I think that when Anzac day comes around, maybe we shouldn't talk about the sacrifices made by our servicemen, maybe we should instead talk about how our country or society has sacrificed them.

James

2005/11/28

More From The Crypt of (Anti-)Terror


Can't Be Said Enough
Pleiades has sent in this link to the Margo Kingston Web Diary where a person has written in a substantial letter of plea that she sent to the government committee. It was penned by one Olga Ohanessian of Panton Hill Victoria. She says she was born to parents who were refugees from Europe.
The recent very public raids against alleged terrorists (who may have been pre-judged in the media circus, paraded in American style orange jump suits, shackled like the convicts at Port Arthur must have been) was done so under the existing laws. The present laws are demonstrably adequate and do not need to be amended. The alleged terrorists will, (we hope) have their cases publicly tested in a court of law under the existing laws. If the amendments to the terrorist laws are passed, we won't even know who has been "disappeared", or what various tortures are being applied to them, or even if they are still in the country, or if their human rights are being abused. The veil of secrecy inevitably leads to abuses of power.

The amendments propose a draconian curtailment on the right of free speech. We already have our own camps with razor wire a la Siberia, far away from prying eyes. Will they be filled with Australian citizens whisked away in the dead of night on the basis of a suspicious or "subversive" comment? If these thoughts appear far-fetched, please do not dismiss them. In the Ukraine voices of dissent, be they poets, musicians, journalists, ordinary citizens, disappeared in their thousands. Some of their graves are now monuments of pilgrimage in the new emerging democracy. Others simply disappeared, but all over the Ukraine, the sites of the incarcerations and executions are known and publically acknowledged.

Generations of fearing secret police leaves a nasty legacy where people do not trust their neigbour. The consequences of this proposed legislation on changing the cheerful, happy, caring Australian culture into a fearful suspicious one will be longlasting.

She's right. How can we be championing freedom to the Middle East countries while we busily dismantle our own out of fear?
What did Yoda say? Fear turns to anger and anger turns to hate? Better believe it. :)
Jokes aside, the refrain I keep thinking about is the one where terrorists weren't going to change the way we live, and here we are busily changing the way we live to accommodate politicians who get so much mileage out of fear and ignorance. This, combined with the dismantling of an education system means they want more fear and ignorance out there so that they themselves don't have to be so darned clever. I would remind them of Abraham Lincoln's old adage about foolin' people: "You can fool some people all the time and you can fool all the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."

Some Thoughts On Politics On A Monday
You can't say this stuff in the public press. So I'm putting it here.

There's an old cartoon that dates to about 1984 on Sydney University in Honi Soit where somebody drew a cartoon wherein it portrayed dogs licking balls.
Frame 1: Dogs may lick their balls.
Frame 2: Dogs may lick each others' balls.
Frame 3: But one thing that dogs don't do is STUDENT POLITICS!!!

That's the way I feel about all politics - The best minds of any generation just don't do politics. they might do Sex, Drugs & Rock'n'Roll, indulge in frat-house orgies in their wayward youth, but they just don't do this stuff called politics.
They do science and art and music and law and perhaps Medicine (though I have personal experience of the fallacy of this notion that medicos are somehow intelligentzia) they just don't do politics.

So no matter how clever these plucky little self-promoters called politicians claim they are, you can bet your bottom dollar they're not the brightest sparks. The awful truth is that in their pursuit of excellence, all the people in the arts, sciences, and law (though probably not medicine) wake up one day and go "Holy Smokes! We've left the running of the ship to morons and we're about to hit the iceberg at full speed."

It's a shock, and damn right so it should be. The kid who they beat through out high school and University has somehow transformed him/herself into a suited demagogue harranguing for votes, running the damn country to ruination come, passing asinine laws, filling their pockets with ungodly Superannuation sums, and collecting accolades in pages of history that land on them because out of a process of elimination. Somebody was PM, you see...
Seriously folks, John Howard's intellect hasn't a patch on say, literary critic Don Anderson or author David Malouf.
Peter Costello's intellect hasn't got a patch on Nick Cave or Paul Kelly or Peter Carey.
Philip Ruddock is no intellectual match for David Helfgott, or a Peter Weir or even the awful, awful, Philip Noyce.
Even on her best day, Amanda Vanstone is about as ineffectual an intellectual as Nicole Kidman, known-High-School-dropout, and that's saying a lot. Yet there she is, running a ministry!
These untermenschen are running (more like ruining) our country.

The Labor folks aren't much better. Kim Beazley might fancy himself a historian but he's not really doing anything worthy of being called intellectual; he's not a Don Watson let alone a Manning Clarke.
Kevin Rudd is a born-again Flat-earth Creationist as far as we're led to believe. Well, what can you say about an ID-iot.
For all the hooha, nobody in their right mind ever thought Mark Latham was going to be the next Milton Keynes.
John Dawkins couldn't tell the difference between education and vocational training (just look at his so-called 'reforms') and Paul Keating was at best, a witty try-hard but he certainly was not the intellectual equivalent of even the most run-of-the-mill University lecturer in just ab out anything.
It's sickening. Really.

So the question that we all struggle with today is this: how does it feel to live under the second best (and worse) minds of the generation, all of them demagogues who got voted in on the fearful prejudices and stupid behaviour of the aggregate masses? And this is the system we're trying to sell to the Iraqis and Afghanistan. There are days I don't wonder why they keep getting spirited insurgencies, especially when you consider the kind of candidates they get. We're pushing a faulty product. :)

UPDATE
Pleiades sent in this other link that covers the anti-terror laws section regarding 'sedition' and the many objections to it.
Sedition around the world

5.35 Mr Chris Connolly submitted that 'sedition has a long and undignified history', and that important figures in history who have been charged and sometimes imprisoned for sedition, include both Ghandi and Nelson Mandela. He argued that:

...sedition charges are either the last desperate gasp of an authoritarian regime (eg Ghandi) or the extreme and sometimes ludicrous result of a regrettable moment in national history (eg McCarthyism).

5.36 Mr Chris Connolly concluded:

The clear lesson from the history of sedition laws is that they are used routinely by oppressive regimes, or are used by more liberal regimes at times of great national stress. Their use is nearly always the subject of considerable regret at a later date.

5.37 In the same vein, Mr Laurence Maher observed that a survey of the history of sedition demonstrates that (among other matters) 'its only purpose and use has been to throttle political dissent'.

5.38 The committee was told that many other countries have been moving away from crimes of sedition. For example, the Gilbert and Tobin Centre of Public Law submitted that:

The Gibbs review observed that the UK Law Commission found that a crime of sedition was unnecessary, since seditious conduct is already captured by the ordinary offence of incitement to crime. Reviews of criminal law in Canada and New Zealand omitted sedition offences altogether.

5.39 Mr Robert Connolly, representative of the Arts and Creative Industries of Australia, highlighted the application of sedition laws outside Australia, telling the committee that:

The countries that have repealed sedition laws, or made them inactive, are: Canada, Ireland, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, the United Kingdom and the United States. The countries that have active sedition laws that have been used or revised in recent years are: China, Cuba, Hong Kong, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, Syria and Zimbabwe. I imagine that it is perfectly clear to the majority of Australians which list we feel Australia should belong to.
...and so on. There's more and it's worth a look through if you have time.

2005/11/25

Thing Crimson


Crimson Chic
Two people posted this to me in the mailbag almost simultaneously.
After all these years, The Sydney Morning Herald has published a review on USA by King Crimson. The SMH reviewing King Crimson is a bit like the Oprah show reviewing 'Fight Club', but do hang on. It isn't exactly a trashing:
King Crimson came to represent the apogee of virtuosic prog-rock grandiloquence, which is odd when at heart - or at least live - it was often a blowing band.

USA captured the fourth Crimson incarnation - guitarist Robert Fripp, violinist David Cross, bassist/singer John Wetton and drummer Bill Bruford - on its 1974, and last, American visit. Every gig in the endless touring brought at least one free improvisation and extensive blowing on some of the composed pieces.

There is Wetton's bruising, rather dominant fuzz bass and the squalls of Fripp's guitar that constitute the wildly energised Asbury Park, as well as the sustained magic of the serene, other-worldly guitar solo on a reinvented Easy Money, which steadily builds to the violence of a malicious armed robbery.

The original LP is augmented with readings of the menacing Fracture and the anthemic Starless, so that you have the equivalent of a complete concert. Everything in Fripp's gawkily named Discipline Global Mobile catalogue is available through Didgeridoo Records.
So there. Crimso don't completely swing and miss down under after all these years. Must be all the angst in the air as I've been giving my old King Crimson CDs quite a thrashing lately. Frankly I've not felt this much angst since I was at high School.
Turns out I got another piece of inetresting info from Walkoff-HBP:
Funnily enough, I met this reviewer (John Shands) 2 weeks ago at a Jazz gig, completely unbeknownst to me that he is the SMH Jazz reviewer. We got to talking about music, as you do... (sidebar: As you know, Its what you like, not what you are like that matters - High Fidelity) ...anyhow he asked how I got into Jazz, and of course I said that is was through prog-rock, then to Jazz Fusion then to straight jazz. So we got talking about King Crimson and all the Jazz elements, like Mel Collins & Keith Tippet. So perhaps this got him thinking, six degrees and all that.
Hilarious.
By the way, I've also created this funny little tune about a Mickey Rourke anecdote I heard from Mr. Murphy.


I've posted it up at iCompositions. You can get there by clicking the badge in the right column.
Do check it out. :)

Blue Jays Get BJ


Okay, that looks rude, but this is a rude shock indeed. The Toronto Blue Jays bagged BJ Ryan for 5 years and 47million dollars. Not everybody thinks this is wise.
Ryan's contract would be the largest ever given to a reliever in total dollars — yes, bigger than anything the Yankees ever awarded Mariano Rivera, a future Hall of Famer. The last reliever to secure a commitment of five years or more is believed to be Bruce Sutter, who received a six-year deal from the Braves after the 1984 season. Sutter's total package was worth $10 million — slightly more than Ryan will earn per year.

Granted, the Jays must overpay to lure U.S.-born players to Canada. Granted, the team plans to spend $160 million in payroll over the next two seasons. And granted, the competition for Ryan was considerable; the Indians were willing to go four years and possibly five for the closer, though not at the average annual value the Jays reportedly will pay.

The Jays know they must add dominant pitching to compete with the Yankees and Red Sox in the AL East. Still, it would make little sense for Toronto, a franchise with relatively modest resources, to invest so heavily in a 70-inning closer when it also needs two hitters and a starting pitcher.

Three years, $27 million would be a more sensible price for Ryan, and frankly, even that sounds high — all but the best relievers fluctuate in performance from year-to-year. Then again, Ryan wouldn't be the last free agent who gets ridiculously overpaid this off-season. The industry is awash in revenue, and the owners are following their historical pattern, spending as mindlessly as Paris Hilton and making players wealthy enough to date her.
That's Ken Rosenthal there, so it's kind of iffy but you get the sentiment. so it'ss bacck to the drawing board there too. Meanwhile that deafening silence you hear out of Tampa isn't the sound of George's one hand clapping. It's the fact that it may be hard to even get a trade for Michaels out of Philly, as 'Stand Pat' Gillick reverts to form after his blockbuster trade that sent Jim Thome away.
According to Gillick, both Jason Michaels and Shane Victorino - both considered possible starters before the Rowand deal - are still in the Phillies plans. Gillick even floated the idea of playing Burrell at first on certain days against left-handers to get Michaels playing time and give Ryan Howard a break.

The priorities after the Wagner decision appear to be for a starting pitcher. Gillick said on Friday that would likely come from a trade and not the free agency market.
Well, unless it's Carl Pavano and cash for Jason Michaels, it's increasingly looking like a Crosby and Thompson platoon in CF next year.

Here Comes The Flood

Borat's Mountain Home?
View of Manshuk Mametova glacier melting down to a lake in northern Tien Shan mountains in Kazakhstan August 24, 2003. Ocean and so-called greenhouse gas levels are rising faster than they have for thousands of years, according to two reports published on Thursday that are likely to fuel debate on global warming. (Alexei Kalmykov/Reuters)
Aiyah.

When The Night Calls On Radio...
The seas and Greenhouse gasses are rising faster than any other time in thousands of years.
One study found the Earth's ocean levels have risen twice as fast in the past 150 years, signaling the impact of human activity on temperatures worldwide, researchers said in the journal Science.

Sea levels were rising by about 1 millimeter (0.04 inches) every year about 200 years ago and as far back as 5,000 years, geologists found from deep sediment samples from the New Jersey coastline. Since then, levels have risen by about 2 millimeters (0.08 inches) a year.

While the planet has been in a warmer period, driving cars and other activities that create carbon dioxide are having a clear impact, the Rutgers University-led team said.

"Half of the current rise ... was going on anyway. But that means half of what's going on is not background. It's human induced," said Kenneth Miller, a geology professor at the New Jersey-based school who led the 15-year effort.

Carbon dioxide emissions come mainly from burning coal and other fossil fuels in power plants, factories and automobiles.

Miller and his colleagues analyzed five 500-meter (1,650-foot) deep samples to look for fossils, sediment types and variations in chemical composition, giving them data on the past 100 million years.

They also analyzed data from satellite, shoreline markers and by gauging ocean tides, among other measures.

"It allows us to understand the mechanisms of sea level change before humans intervened," Miller said in an interview.

His team did not determine whether the rate is accelerating.

The research, funded mostly by the National Science Foundation, also found ocean levels were lower during the dinosaur era than previously thought. They were about 100 meters (330 feet) higher than now, not 250 meters (820 feet) as many geologists had thought, Miller said.

That's not good news at all. At least the good news is that oil prices are so high, people are finally balking from buying big 'Suburbans' in the USA, sending General Motors to the mat.

UPDATE:
The NYT had this article about gas levels for the last 650,000 years.
The measured gases were carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. Concentrations have risen over the last several centuries at a pace far beyond that seen before humans began intensively clearing forests and burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels.

The sampling and analysis were done by the European Program for Ice Coring in Antarctica, and the results are being published today in the journal Science.

The evidence was found in air bubbles trapped in successively older ice samples extracted from a nearly two-mile-deep hole drilled in a remote spot in East Antarctica called Dome C.

Experts familiar with the findings who were not involved with the research said the samples provided a vital long-term view of variations in the atmosphere and Antarctic climate. They say the data will help test and improve computer models used to forecast how accumulating greenhouse emissions will affect the climate.

Some climate experts not involved in the research said the findings also confirmed that the buildup of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe emissions was taking the atmosphere into uncharted territory.

The longest previous record of carbon dioxide fluctuations, compiled from ice cores collected at the Russian research station at Vostok, in East Antarctica, goes back slightly more than 400,000 years.

"They've now pushed back two-thirds of a million years and found that nature did not get as far as humans have," said Richard B. Alley, a geosciences professor at Pennsylvania State University who is an expert on ice cores. "We're changing the world really hugely - way past where it's been for a long time."

We shouldn't be comfortable about that at all.

Okay, He's A Crim, But He's Our Crim
This business of deporting permanent residents is a lot worse than we thought.
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone has defended her predecessor, Philip Ruddock's decision to cancel Mr Jovicic's permanent visa in October, 2002.
She says an application by him for citizenship in 1998 was rejected on character grounds.

She said Mr Jovicic had co-operated with his deportation to Serbia.

He was eligible for Serbian citizenship, but had not yet applied for it, she said.

Mr Jovicic appears to be one of 233 permanent residents deported in the past three years on character grounds.
So some time ago, he did apply for Australian Citizenship having lived here nearly all his life but got rejected on 'character grounds'. Now they're saying he hasn't applied again, knowing full well that he wouldn't be allowed to get one by their own guidelines. How hypocritical is that? How do these people ssleep at nights?
I'm not saying that he's a good man and should be alllowed back in. I'm saying, no matter how bad a man he is, there are bear minimum responsibilites our government should have for such a person. Chances are, he paid taxes here all his working life, right?

The other thing is the number: 233!
Here's another fellow awaitng similar 'statelessness'
The ABC's Lateline has learnt of the case of Fatih Tuncok, who moved from Turkey to Sydney at the age of six.

Since moving from Turkey, Mr Tuncok - now 39 - racked up a significant criminal record, including a conviction for armed robbery.

He is now in Villawood Detention Centre, pending his deportation back to Turkey.

Psychologist Paula Farrugia counsels Mr Tuncok; she says he will not cope if he is deported.

"He has no formal qualifications to speak of," she said.

Like Mr Jovicic, Mr Tuncok has had his permanent residency cancelled under section 501 of the Migration Act.

Under those provisions the Immigration Minister can deport permanent residents who have been sentenced to significant jail terms.

The Greens say it has affected hundreds of people, many whom know no country other than Australia.

In official documentation, the former immigration minister Phillip Ruddock spelt out clear reasons why Mr Tuncok should be deported, including his record for robbery and home invasion.

But it seems the publicity about Mr Jovicic is having an impact.

Senator Vanstone today called for a detailed report on his case.
What were they thinkng? Half of Australian residents were born Overseas. Many are still permanent resident status. They pay taxes but don't vote. How in heavens name did they think this kind of thing would not emerge as a problem?

A few weeks ago, I bagged out Kim Beazley for his stupid stance on the Anti-Terror laws, but at least he had the decency to say this:
"You take responsibility of your own mess," Mr Beazley told Southern Cross broadcasting today.
"It does no good around the globe to hand your responsibility to somebody else. He is our responsibility. He has been in this country since the age of two for God's sake."

Mr Jovicic may not be an Australian citizen but he deserved to be treated with respect, Mr Beazley said.

"All his criminal activity and everything else have been things that are the product of our system and his decisions within it," he said.

"You don't just go and dump him on the Serbs."

Asked if Mr Jovicic should be allowed back in the country, Mr Beazley said "yes".
Damn straight.

The Other Dumb Crim
Van Nguyen has one week to live. Australia is still rallying to try to save his life.
He was arrested at Changi airport in Singapore in December 2002, carrying 396g of pure heroin. His full and immediate confession has never been disputed by the defence, and the poignant details of his wellintentioned stupidity are the source of much of the sympathy for him in Australia.

He was born in a Thai refugee camp to a Vietnamese boat refugee, who raised him and his twin brother, Khoa, alone. He grew up in Melbourne, joined the Scouts, worked part-time at McDonald’s and is described by those who know him as a decent, cheerful and dutiful young man. He was working as a computer salesman when his twin began to get into trouble.

Khoa started taking drugs and ended up with two convictions and legal fees amounting to A$30,000 (£13,000). It was to pay off his brother’s debts, Van Tuong Nguyen has always maintained, that he agreed to act as a “mule” for a group of drug dealers based in Sydney.

Soon after he flew to Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, things began to go wrong. Mr Nguyen was instructed to reduce the heroin to a fine powder in a coffee grinder and strap it to his body in two slim packages.

“I didn’t really know how to go about doing that,” he told the Singaporean police. “So I just did what I thought would work.”

On the plane one of the packages became so uncomfortable that he pulled it off his abdomen and slipped it into his backpack. Changing planes in Singapore, he passed through a metal detector, which was set off by his metal-rimmed sunglasses. The guard who frisked him felt the second packet strapped to his back.

“He asked me what that was and I replied, ‘It’s heroin, sir’,” Mr Nguyen said. “He asked me if I was sure. I told him, ‘Of course’.”

After his arrest he showed consistent remorse and co-operated fully with the authorities. Information that he provided to the Australian police led to the arrest of a drug dealer in Sydney. But Singaporean law is clear and unbending: for quantities of more than 15g of heroin, death by hanging is not the maximum penalty, but the mandatory one.

So the government is presumably expending a lot of capital trying to save this person while turfing out 233 on to other nations as "their problem now". Who voted these people in again? Oh yes, Australians. I should've known.

UPDATE:
I've had a quick e-mail exchange with Walkoff-HBP who confirms one of his wife's friends who happened to have German Citizenship was hit with this horrible process and now is forced to reside in Germany.
Yes exactly the same! The German man that 'L' knew was sent to Germany, a country he has never lived in and the German authorities didn't want him either. If it wasn't for some friends of L's in Germany he would have had no place to go. Its such a smug way of dealing with Australia's problems. Its all about "sending a message" to undesirables and to the great unwashed electorate that loves racism tarted up as tough policy. Its dumb policy. Its hiding your head in the sand stuff. You know that it must mean votes, otherwise they would do something else. I sincerely hope that fear will recede and tolerance will replace it in the future, but not anytime soon I'm afraid.
Bloody hell. How do these people in government sleep at nights?

2005/11/24

Australia Invents New Class Of Human Beings


Stateless In Serbia

This is no joke.
This man had his permanent residency visa rescinded on account of his criminal record and now he is not allowed back into Australia. He was flown and dumped on Serbian soil on account of his parents' heritage, but the problem is, he was born in France, and never a Serbian citizen. To add insult to injury, he's been living here in Australia for 36 years and considers himself Australian.
Mr Jovicic arrived in Australia from France with his Serbian-born parents in 1968 when he was just two.

But last year then-immigration minister Philip Ruddock deported him on character grounds after he spent time in jail for a string of burglaries to support his heroin habit.

The Serbian Government has refused to recognise Mr Jovicic as a citizen, meaning he is now stateless and has no right to to work or obtain welfare benefits in Belgrade.

Today, his brother and sister, who live in Australia, said they were stunned at the way he'd been treated.

Dragan Jovicic urged the Australian Government to reconsider its position and allow his brother to return.

"I'm stuck for words ... I had no idea where this was at,'' he said in Melbourne today.

"I'd like to see Robert given a chance to be sent back to Australia. This is his home, he grew up here, he went to all the schools and he really is a good bloke.''

Dragan Jovicic said he'd not spoken to Robert in about six months, but his brother was involved in a "paperwork" row with Serbian authorities, and he could not obtain a passport to enable him to travel.

"The last time I spoke to Robert, I was under the impression there was a solicitor or barrister looking into it, and it would be sorted out," he said.

Dragan Jovicic said he believed the Australian Government's decision to deport his brother was "definitely" punishment for his younger sibling's brushes with the law.
I thought time spent in jail was punishment for his crimes. Is this not a form of punishing the same crime twice?
At the moment, he's *living* on the streets of Serbia with no access to welfare there, no language, no family, no contacts.
It gets worse as you read on.
Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke has criticised Mr Jovicic's deportation, saying it was too harsh a punishment for the crimes he had committed.

The director of the Edmund Rice Centre for social justice Phil Glendenning supported her call.

"First of all, this gentlemen should be able to come home to be with his family who can care for him as he recovers from the physical and mental problems that he has,'' Mr Rice said.

"Secondly, the Federal Government needs to stop deporting people out of this country on papers that are questionable.

"We can no longer have a situation where we deport people, we dump them and then we leave them.''

In an emotional interview from Belgrade, shown on ABC Lateline last night, Robert Jovicic said sleeping outside the embassy was the only form of protest left open to him.

"I've explained to the embassy if I'm considered Australian trash that I will rot on Australian soil,'' Mr Jovicic said.

"I have indicated this to them and I will. I cannot survive here.

"They've taken everything from me. I've lost everything that was worth anything to me.

"I've lost my princess, which was my wife, my home ... my hair is falling out.

"If I don't lie out front of the embassy and try and get back home I'll die. I'll die here just on medical grounds alone within a short time.''

Australia's ambassador to Serbia John Oliver has raised concerns about Mr Jovicic's situation in an email to his family in Australia.

But the Immigration Department has released a statement saying Mr Jovicic had a substantial criminal record and that Mr Ruddock, when he was immigration minister, used his discretion to cancel his visa under the Migration Act.

As a result, he is permanently banned from entering Australia.
You can just see the smug expressions on the bureaucrat faces saying, "Oh it can't be helped. The man's a criminal. There's no way we're letting him back into the country."
So somehow, Australia has managed to create a stateless person that nobody wants or owns responsibility for, and our Government is pretending it is not part of the problem. This isn't the only case that's been reported. There have been other people who have been deported like this and it is totally insane to be creating a class of people who have no state, and dumping them on other nations.

If this policy of denying people citizenship is going to spread around the world, it is going to create a lot of people without any rights whatsoever. It might give some sadistic bureaucrat short term pleasure but this is going to bite our governments in the rear. Seriously, this is not a road this country should be going down. I'm amazed Howard, Vanstone and company thought of such a ridiculous idea, but upon reflection I realise I shouldn't be surprised by what minds that hate can conjure up.

2005/11/23

Slow Off-Season For The Yanks

The Story So Far
Well, it's been a long month and a half since the Yankees got bundled out by the Angels who got trounced by the eventual World Series winners, the White Sox. Since then, the Yankees have hired a bevvy of ex-managers to their coaching ranks: Joe Kerrigan as bullpen coach; Tony Pena as first base coach to replace Roy White; and Larry Bowa to replace Luis Sojo as third base coach. all these guys have managed elsewhere to mixed results, but thee word in the WWW is that Bowa's a great third base coach, Pena is great with Latin players and that Joe Kerrigan is a superb pitching coach who can back up Ron Guidry.

Ron Guidry's appointment as pitching coach was kind of radical seeing that he hasn't coached anywhere; he's doing it on the strength of having helped out players in spring training. That's a thin resume for a coach, but he has two big things in his favour. he's a home grown Yankee as much as Don Mattingly and he never seemed fussed with George Steinbrenner's antics during the halcyon days of Steinbrenner antics (it has to be said George is a lot more calmer now).

A-Rod won his AL MVP award and the press has spent weeks trying to take him down for not being Jeter. It' a shame they have to defy reason, twist logic, destroy definitions and invent new forms of idiocy to advance this pseudo-argument that A-Rod was undeserving of the MVP. Hopefully he'll have another bumper crop year and the Yanks win the World Series and everybody will then go back to the usual, "the Yankees win because they have so much money" routines. While being equally wrong, that argument would be easier to live with because it would mean the Yanks had won in 2006. :)

Matsui came back into the fold for a 4 year 52million deal. Some are saying he's getting over-paid; which is probably true given that by the fourth year of that contract, he might haave declined substantially. Still, let's be blunt; the Yankees got him for a bargain for 3 years because he was so desperate to play for them. Now that he's passed his audition, he's getting some back-pay.
Meanwhile there have been reports that Carl Pavano wants out of the Bronx. Cashman has said that that's not something they are looking to do.

So where does that leave the holes in Center Field and the bullpen? Not very good so far.
First, the Center Field problem.
It seems where ever the Yankees turn to look for a trade, they keep getting asked for Robinson Cano and Chien-Ming Wang. I seem to recall nobody wanted Cano last year when the Yankees went shopping for Randy Johnson. It'ss amazing what a difference a season can make. It stil doesn't change the fact that Yankees have not managed to get a trade for a Center Fielder.
To date, this is what we've heard:
The White Sox won't trade Aaron Rowand; instead they flipped him to the Phillies for Jim Thome.
The Twins won't trade Torii Hunter.
The Mariners have some kind of problem wtith Ichiro, but they won't trade him to the Yankees.
The A's have Mark Kotsay but asked for Cano and Wang - thanks Billy for reminding 'Cash' how valuable they are. If there's one GM who's asking for a player of yours that you should listen to, it would be Billy Beane.
Milton Bradley would be a god fit and he's unwanted in LA; but the Yankees say they won't take on the personality problems.
The Marlins are having a fire-sale and so Juan Pierre might be available, but he is a truly un-appetising option.
Tampa Bay won't trade Rocco Baldelli, but that's not very surprising.
The Mets' displaced Center Fielder Mike Cameron has already been traded to the Padres.
Right now it's looking like the Yanks should've signed Beltran last year rather than get Pavano and Wright. Don't even get me started on the Woemack signing.

Then there's the persistent Brian Giles sounds but Cashman says he's not looking at Giles as the Centerf Felder.
The fall-back plan is that they will start with Bubba Crosby and maybe find him a platoon partner. Maybe it will be Kevin Thompson who played center in AAA Columbus. Heck, maybe Melky Cabrera will arrive next year, though it seems a little unlikely.
UPDATE: There is however the possibility they'll flip Carl Pavano for Rowand to the Phillies.

The Bullpen is another kettle of fish altogether. They seem unable to convince anybody to come over.
BJ Ryan is looking to close; even though he said he wouldn't mind setting upon.
Billy Wagner is probably going to the Mets.
Scott Eyre signed with the Cubs; that was bad.
Tom Gordon's 38, declining, and asking for 3 years; he's dreaming.
So now it's looking like Kyle Farnsworth is an option.
Here's a nice bit of thinking by Steve Lombardi:
Right now, the only thing that we know about the Yankees 2006 bullpen is that Mariano Rivera and Tanyon Sturtze will be in it. I do expect the Yankees to carry 6 pitchers in their pen to start the season next year. This means there are four spots to fill.

I'm hoping that the Yankees re-sign Aaron Small to take one of those four slots - he deserves it (based on what he did in 2005).

I also anticipate Jaret Wright getting one of the four spots (as the "last man" in the pen) - and here I assume that he is healthy, not traded, and not needed for the starting rotation. If he is not available, I suppose it would be OK to have Jorge DePaula take this role on the team - or even a prospect like Steven White. The "last man" in the pen doesn't have to be a stud - just someone who can handle a mop.

What about the other two undefined positions in the bullpen? It would be nice to have a lefty in the mix. A propect like Matt Smith or a vet like Al Leiter maybe? And, for the other spot, right now, according to who's on the roster, it will be a Scott Proctor type. Or, could it be Jose Veras?

In summary, right now, it would look like this:

Closer: Rivera
Set-up: Sturtze and Small
Bridge: Proctor or Veras
Lefty: Smith or Leiter
Long-man: Wright or DePaula or White

I could see Torre burning out Sturtze and Small in a hurry with that group.

Ideally, the Yankees can acquire another set-up type pitcher, for now call him Kyle Farnsworth, and then everyone below Mo slides down a notch, as follows:

9th Inning: Rivera
8th Inning: Farnsworth
6th and 7th Inning: Sturtze and Small
5th Inning: Wright
Lefty: Leiter/Smith

And, then, you have Proctor, Veras, DePaula, et al, pitching in Columbus, if needed, where they belong. Or, one of them replaces Wright (if needed).

So, to me, the Yankees bullpen plan should be simple:

Sign Small.
Sign Farnsworth (or someone like him).
Figure out who is your lefty.

I wonder what they're waiting for?
It ain't half bad, but that bridge has already been half-burnt already. They really need another couple of power arms, not just one. BJ Ryan would've been good, but they need more. If Leiter is the Loogy, that's fine, but we don't want him pitching an inning. Having him will always tempt Joe in to using him for more than an inning. Personally, he's a maddening pitcher to watch.
If anything, I think Small should be the long man who does the inevitable spot-starts.
And what of Jorge DePaula? Is he going to come back effective, and will that be soon enough?

The Red Sox meanwhile have traded for future ace Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell. The Marlins really are going ahead with their fire-sale. I have 2 words for the Yankee Brass: Guillermo Mota. If they can score Mota for two pennies and a tub of lard in the Marlin fire-sale, that would be nice indeed.

UPDATE 2: Guillermo Mota actually went to the Bosox in the Beckett&Lowell deal so we can all scratch that one.

Today's Gossip



The above pickie is from the SMH; it's from the electrical storm that hit Sydney last night. Pretty nice shot.

The Falcon Hasn't Landed



JAXA's Hayabusa probe sent out to land on an asteroid has missed its mark. It did manage to deliver a marker.


Hayabusa – which means "falcon" in Japanese -- is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's $170-million-dollar mission to the near Earth asteroid named after the "father" of Japan's space program, Hideo Itokawa. It is, in fact, the world's first mission to attempt to land on an asteroid, collect samples, and return them to Earth. The spacecraft – which was developed at the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS), a space science research division of JAXA -- launched from Japan’s Kagoshima Space Center on May 9, 2003 and arrived in September of this year.

The scientists and engineers in the Hayabusa mission control room lost contact with Hayabusa between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m., Sunday morning Japan Standard Time (JST), November 20, and so did not immediately realize what happened. People tuning into the mission via JAXA’s “live” website waited through the hours of silence.

After analyzing the data returned by the spacecraft, however, the team found that Hayabusa continued its slow descent following the target marker until it got to within about 10 meters (32.8 feet) of the big rock, and then it autonomously went into safe mode, according to a report issued by the Hayabusa Joint Science Team members that the mission’s Project Manager, Jun'ichiro Kawaguchi, sent to The Planetary Society yesterday afternoon. Instead of landing, the spacecraft apparently cruised above the surface for awhile, until mission control signaled to the spacecraft to abort the landing altogether.

While Hayabusa did not succeed in seizing a sample yesterday, the release of the target marker and its safe landing on Itokawa was a significant accomplishment. JAXA's Yasunori Matogawa, and Kawaguchi, of ISAS, announced the news at a press conference held Sunday afternoon around 4 p.m. JST at ISAS headquarters in Sagamihara City, Kanagawa Prefecture, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) west of Tokyo.

The spacecraft, they said, released the target marker when it descended to an altitude of about 40 meters (131 feet) above the asteroid, and at 5:46 a.m., Sunday, November 20 (JST) JAXA received the signal that Hayabusa had carried out its task successfully. This particular target marker carried special cargo – an aluminum sheet bearing 880,000 signatures gathered by The Planetary Society of Japan from people around the world – and delivered it to the surface. Moving at a velocity of 10 centimeters (about four inches) a second, the target marker landed about six and a half minutes after it left Hayabusa, settling down just as planned in the nice flat region that the team dubbed Muses Sea (after the original generic name of the spacecraft MUSES-C).

Since signals take around 17 minutes to get from Earth to Hayabusa, the spacecraft was on its own once it began to carry out the series of commands for Sunday's attempted touch-down. Its autonomous navigation relies on the Optical Navigation Camera and Light Detection and Ranging (ONC/LD&R) instrument, which measures the distance to and the shapes of the asteroid surface.

Hayabusa continued to descend toward the surface, "and successfully changed its attitude control to terrain alignment autonomous control using Laser Range Finder," according to the Hayabusa team’s report. If everything had gone as planned, the spacecraft would have continued on to a "soft" landing, touching down on the surface just long enough for its sample collector to reach out and seize just one gram of top soil, and then return to its home orbit around 7 kilometers out.

When Hayabusa descended to below 17 meters (55.7 feet), it stopped firing its engines and started into a freefall descent to the surface, according to the team's report. "We were watching it via Doppler," they wrote. "But no touch-down occurred for surprisingly 30 minutes, during which the descent continued at very slow speed of about 2 centimeters [.78 inch] per second. We estimate Hayabusa drifted at very low altitude along the surface. Therefore, Hayabusa did not touch down [on] the surface, but reached approximately below 10 meters [32.8 feet].”

Hayabusa cruised above the surface long enough for part of it at least to heat up to around 100 degrees Celsius (212 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Kawaguchi. Concerned about the temperature, the team sent up a command to Hayabusa to fly away quickly. "We directed a command to Hayabusa to make an abort, since the sub-spacecraft point might have shifted so much from the intended [landing] area," according to the report. Hayabusa heeded the command and rose to about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles).

The team is not yet exactly sure why Hayabusa fell into safe mode, but they believe it is because of an "attitude anomaly" that occurred close to the altitude of about 10 meters or so. It may be because Hayabusa failed to keep its attitude right just before touch-down and autonomously decided to put itself into safe mode in order to save fuel. Kawaguchi described this event "un-understadable," but said that "the details are under investigation."

Meanwhile the team's recovery of Hayabusa was performed successfully, Kawaguchi said, and the team will be testing the instruments to make sure each is still in good working order.

The fact that Hayabusa did not succeed the first time it tried to swoop down and grab its prey came as little surprise to most who have been following the mission – not because Japan is a fledgling country in space exploration, but because what they're trying to do, rather have the spacecraft do autonomously, from 180 million miles away, is incredibly complex, with each and maneuver involving myriad elements that all have to be working in sync. Hayabusa is as ambitious a mission as they come – and from a country young in space exploration – it probably would have been considered a miracle if it had succeeded in every objective.

During the two and a half years since it launched, Hayabusa has encountered more than its fair share of trouble, not the least of which were several life-threatening solar flares encountered en route to Itokawa. Then, on July 31 of this year, shortly before Hayabusa's arrival at the asteroid, the X-axis wheel, one of three reaction wheels onboard that control the spacecraft's orientation and are used to point instruments, antennas, or subsystems at chosen targets, just stopped. The spacecraft was designed to function just fine with the two remaining reaction wheels, Kawaguchi told The Planetary Society in an interview in September, it was able to resume attitude stability and the spacecraft had been operating normally since. Since the JAXA spacecraft arrived at Itokawa last September, however, Hayabusa has suffered the loss of a second reaction wheel.

A couple of weeks ago, Hayabusa released its tiny lander, Minerva, at the wrong time, sending the tiny, coffee-can sized robot floating off into space, instead of hopping around the asteroid for up to 36 hours taking pictures and collecting temperature data as was the plan.

Now the obstacles are looming large for Hayabusa as it enters what must be the final days of its mission at the small asteroid, which measures just 549 meters (1,800 feet long) by 180 meters (590 feet) wide. Although Kawaguchi told The Planetary Society earlier that the mission could probably succeed with only one reaction wheel if it came to that, there is now concern now about whether or not the asteroid explorer can continue to keep the attitude needed in order for Hayabusa to successfully snatch a sample due.

Meanwhile, Hayabusa is also racing the clock. The countdown to return to Earth is on, for the spacecraft needs to propel itself away from Itokawa by early December in order to place itself in the right trajectory to reach Earth. But there is a lot of hope and confidence remaining amongst the team members, and Hayabusa may swoop down and try again as early as next Friday, November 25.

"The project looks positively at the next opportunity, since almost every difficult step was now identified to function normally," the team stated in its report. This time, they noted, "the guidance and navigation to the intended point was performed quite well with the residual speed of almost several millimeters per second, that is the walking speed of worms."

One sample returned safely to the Australian outback in June 2007 is all it would take for this intrepid group to rightfully claim full mission success. Still, Hayabusa has already contributed reams of new data about asteroids like Itokawa, as well as data on ion propulsion and other technologies created by the Japanese especially for sample return missions. At the press conference, Matogawa evaluated the Hayabusa mission so far as the great success that will open "a new gateway" to Japan's space exploration.

"This is an incredible adventure unfolding at the asteroid -- and the sheer boldness of the attempt with the care obviously being taken in carrying it out is breathtaking," said Planetary Society Executive Director Louis D. Friedman. "We are on the edge of seats, with admiration and suspense, hoping it will work out."

So there we have it.

UPDATE
Hayabusa it seems did manage to land


TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) -- A Japanese space probe apparently succeeded in landing Saturday on an asteroid and collecting surface samples in an unprecedented mission to bring the extraterrestrial material back to Earth, but afterwards showed signs of trouble, Japan's space agency said.

The probe, now hovering about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) from the asteroid, appeared to be shaking vertically due to problems with its thruster, according to spokesman Atsushi Akoh of Japan's space agency JAXA.

The agency would put the probe into "safety mode" to investigate, Akoh said.

The Hayabusa appeared to have touched down for a few seconds on the asteroid -- floating 290 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth -- to collect powder from its surface before lifting off again to transmit data to mission controllers, according to spokesman Kiyotaka Yashiro of Japan's space agency, JAXA.

More data confirming the mission's success is expected later in the day after scientists have examined additional transmissions from the probe, Yashiro said.

But JAXA will not know for sure if Hayabusa collected surface samples until it returns to Earth. It is expected to land in the Australian Outback in June 2007.

If all goes well, it will be the first time a probe returns to Earth with samples from an asteroid, according to JAXA. A NASA probe collected data for two weeks from the asteroid Eros in 2001, but did not return with samples.

Saturday's landing on the asteroid was Hayabusa's second, following a faulty touchdown Sunday. JAXA lost contact with the probe during that attempt and did not even realize it had landed until days later -- long after Hayabusa had lifted off into orbit.

The space agency hopes that examining asteroid samples will help unlock the secrets of how celestial bodies formed, because their surfaces are believed to have remained relatively unchanged over the eons, unlike larger bodies such the planets or moons.

Hayabusa fired a metal projectile shortly before 8 a.m. Japan time (11 p.m. GMT), suggesting that the asteroid had landed and collected the dust that was kicked up. The whole procedure was over in a matter of seconds, as planned.

"It is only a very small amount of material, powder really," Yashiro said.

It works, it works!

Crack Foam
NASA is stil stumped about the cracked foam.


SPACE CENTER, Houston -- NASA investigators looking into what caused large pieces of foam to break free from the Columbia and Discovery have found nine small cracks in the foam of an external fuel tank.

But program administrators are not sure whether the cracks played any role in the foam separation from the space shuttles.
"Certainly, the cracks we found ... are interesting," said John Chapman, who is responsible for the production of NASA's external tanks. "We're still in the process of understanding what that means."

So more shuttle problems to deal with for NASA. has anybody noticed the problems always seem to get piled higher and deeper and the thing always gets delayed?

2005/11/21

Mailbag Stuff

Magic Of Makeup
These came in from somebody, probably in response to my quip about Zhang Ziyi's makeup problems for her FHM shoot.



Pleiades Mailbag Stuff
These came in this morning.

Link 1: Al Qaeda as a database
This one follows on on the notion tat Al Qaeda is essentially a kind of bnlowback from years of black-ops screwing over the Muslim world.
Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden's personal property . . . The terrorist actions in Turkey in 2003 were carried out by Turks and the motives were local and not international, unified, or joint. These crimes put the Turkish government in a difficult position vis-a-vis the British and the Israelis. But the attacks certainly intended to 'punish' Prime Minister Erdogan for being a 'toot tepid' Islamic politician.

" . . . In the Third World the general opinion is that the countries using weapons of mass destruction for economic purposes in the service of imperialism are in fact 'rogue states," specially the US and other NATO countries.

" Some Islamic economic lobbies are conducting a war against the 'liberal" economic lobbies. They use local terrorist groups claiming to act on behalf of Al Qaida. On the other hand, national armies invade independent countries under the aegis of the UN Security Council and carry out pre-emptive wars. And the real sponsors of these wars are not governments but the lobbies concealed behind them.

"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money." (Our emphasis, Ed.)

In yet another example of what happens to those who challenge the system, in December 2001, Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel was convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998. Bunel's case was transferred from a civilian court to keep the details of the case classified. Bunel's character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system "got him" for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group. It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of "Al Qaeda." We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.
What a drag.

Link 2: Richard Neville's Take
On the weekend I arrived in Wellington, a navy frigate shuddered from a series of explosions and burst into a ball of orange flames. Two minutes later, like a scene from Pearl Harbour, it sank to the bottom of the sand. Was Osama bin Laden grinning in his cave, or from the grave? Not really. The ship was scuttled to provide a dive attraction. In the spirit of swords into ploughshares, the wreckage will be transformed by Neptune into an artificial reef, providing a future haven for barnacles, lobsters and scuba divers. If only all weapons of war were put to such use. Who doesn’t like the new New Zealand? One person doesn’t, and his identity will come as no surprise.
Can you guess? Yup, the new United States ambassador, Bill McCormick, a seafood tycoon, who achieved his posting by tossing gold at Republicans, and probably a few crates of crayfish. McCormick warned New Zealand that its relations with Washington will “not improve” until it drops its 1985 ban on all things nuclear, including US warships. Then he attacked the nation for not attacking Iraq: "It is always disappointing when there isn't participation by a freedom-loving country . . . in a very important matter". That is, murdering civilians, torturing POW’s at will, often as a kind of recreation, and using chemical weapons (Also see HOTLINKS in the right hand column). New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Helen Clark, the former headmistress of the St Trinians Girls School, politely told the ambassador to jump in the harbour. The Australian Government, meanwhile, licks the shoes of visiting Torturer General Donald Rumsfeld and offers him the outback as a bombing range.
In Wellington, the local newspaper mocked McCormick for reinforcing the “image of the US as a swaggering superpower, strutting the world in the expectation that small countries such as New Zealand will simply fall into line”. What this nation was not willing to do, “much to US displeasure, is blindly embark on foreign adventures that are dubious ethically and ill-conceived strategically. New Zealand followed the US into the quagmire of Vietnam. Wisely, it has not repeated that folly in Iraq”. The long standing friendship between the two countries “does not and should not mean blind allegiance. A more experienced diplomat than Mr McCormick would know that”. What a change from the appeasing drivel dished up by the Australian media. But of course! New Zealand is a Murdoch free zone. Hallelulah!
I'm not normally a big fan of Nevillle and how expresses his ideas, but I will vouch for what he's written here. New Zealand have done fine in not sending troops to Iraq. After all, the last terrorist incident in their territory was by the French against The Rainbow Warrior. Then again, for better or worse, it's easy to be militarily irrelevant when you are so far away from the world.

We Do What We're Told

In case you don't believe most people just do what they're told, check this out:
She was a high school senior who had just turned 18 -- a churchgoing former Girl Scout who hadn't received a single admonition in her four months working at the McDonald's in Mount Washington.

But when a man who called himself "Officer Scott" called the store on April 9, 2004, and said an employee had been accused of stealing a purse, Louise Ogborn became the suspect.

"He gave me a description of the girl, and Louise was the one who fit it to the T," assistant manager Donna Jean Summers said.

Identifying himself as a police officer, the caller issued an ultimatum: Ogborn could be searched at the store or be arrested, taken to jail and searched there.

"I was bawling my eyes out and literally begging them to take me to the police station because I didn't do anything wrong," Ogborn said later in a deposition. She had taken the $6.35-an-hour position after her mother lost her job. "I couldn't steal -- I'm too honest. I stole a pencil one time from a teacher and I gave it back."

Summers, 51, conceded later that she had never known Ogborn to do a thing dishonest. But she nonetheless led Ogborn to the restaurant's small office, locked the door, and -- following the caller's instructions -- ordered her to remove one item of clothing at a time, until she was naked.

"She was crying," recalled Kim Dockery, 40, another assistant manager, who stood by watching. "A little young girl standing there naked wasn't a pretty sight."

Summers said later that "Officer Scott," who stayed on the telephone, giving his orders, sounded authentic. He said he had "McDonald's corporate" on the line, as well as the store manager, whom he mentioned by name. And she thought she could hear police radios in the background.

Summers shook each garment, placed it in a bag and took the bag away. "I did exactly what he said to do," Summers said of her caller.

It was just after 5 p.m., and for Ogborn, hours of degradation and abuse were just beginning.

At first, scam seemed too bizarre but then the reports kept coming in
The first report of such a call came in 1995, in Devil's Lake, N.D.; another came later that year in Fallon, Nev. The caller, usually pretending to be a police officer investigating a crime, targeted stores in small towns and rural communities -- areas where managers were more likely to be trusting.

Most were fast-food restaurants, where the male and female victims were young and inexperienced, and assistant managers were likely to be working without supervision.

At first, nobody believed store managers when they insisted after the fact that they had just done what they were told to by someone they believed to be police.

"Did the manager tell a whopper?" a newspaper headline in Fargo, N.D., asked after the manager of a Burger King there insisted that he thought it was a police officer who had told him over the phone on Jan. 20, 1999, to slap a 17-year-old employee on her naked buttocks.

"It's just not conceivable to me that there's any reasonable justification for what happened," a North Dakota state judge said as she sentenced the manager to 30 days in jail for disorderly conduct.

Restaurant owners and police often said they assumed the caller and victims were in cahoots in a bizarre scam to extract settlements from individual franchises.

But the hoaxes continued -- by the end of 2000, there were more than a dozen. By the end of 2003, there were nearly 60.

Detectives eventually would conclude the calls were the work of one man because the methods of operation were practically identical, with only slight deviations:

On Nov. 30, 2000, the caller persuaded the manager at a McDonald's in Leitchfield, Ky., to remove her own clothes in front of a customer whom the caller said was suspected of sex offenses. The caller promised that undercover officers would burst in and arrest the customer the moment he attempted to molest her, said Detective Lt. Gary Troutman of the Leitchfield Police Department.

"We asked her why she hadn't called local police, and she said she thought it was local police who had called her," Troutman said.

On May 29, 2002, a girl celebrating her 18th birthday -- in her first hour of her first day on the job at the McDonald's in Roosevelt, Iowa -- was forced to strip, jog naked and assume a series of embarrassing poses, all at the direction of a caller on the phone, according to court and news accounts.

On Jan. 26, 2003, according a police report in Davenport, Iowa, an assistant manager at an Applebee's Neighborhood Grill & Bar conducted a degrading 90-minute search of a waitress at the behest of a caller who said he was a regional manager -- even though the man had called collect, and despite the fact the assistant manager had read a company memo warning about hoax calls just a month earlier. He later told police he'd forgotten about the memo.

On June 3, 2003, according to a city police spokesman in Juneau, Alaska, a caller to a Taco Bell there said he was working with the company to investigate drug abuse at the store, and had a manager pick out a 14-year-old customer -- and then strip her and force her to perform lewd acts.

Kentucky employees say they never were warned

By the time the caller telephoned the company-owned McDonald's in Mount Washington in April 2004, supervisors had been duped in at least 68 stores in 32 states, including Kentucky and Indiana. The targets included a dozen different restaurant chains.

Managers of at least 17 McDonald's stores around the nation had been conned by that time, and the company already was defending itself in at least four lawsuits stemming from such hoaxes.

But Summers, who had worked for the McDonald's 25 miles southeast of Louisville for about eight months, said she had never heard a thing about the hoaxes. Neither had Dockery, or the store's manager, or McDonald's area manager, according to court depositions they gave later.

Company executives had sent out memos to owners and operators about the hoaxes, but as global security director Michael Peaster acknowledged in one of them in 2003, "It appears the information is not reaching our restaurant staff."

So unwarned, Summers said she did the bidding of the man she thought was a cop.

As Ogborn tried to cover herself with an apron, Summers took her clothes to her car; "Officer Scott" said police would arrive shortly to pick them up.

At one point, Summers said later in a court deposition, she asked herself why it was taking so long for police to show up -- the Mount Washington department was less than a mile away.

But "when I asked him questions about why," she said, "he always had an answer."

At the caller's instructions, she refused to tell Dockery, the other assistant manager, what was going on.

Dockery hugged Ogborn and tried to console her, and Jason Bradley, 27, a cook who Summers at one point called in to watch Ogborn, refused to go along with the caller's instructions to remove her apron and describe her. But neither of them called the police, nor demanded the search be aborted.

By now, Ogborn had been detained for an hour. Her car keys had been taken away, and she was naked, except for the apron. She would later testify that she thought she couldn't leave.

"I was scared because they were a higher authority to me," she said. "I was scared for my own safety because I thought I was in trouble with the law."

Summers then told the caller that she had to get back to the counter, and the caller asked if she had a husband who could watch Ogborn.

"She said no, I'm not married yet, but I intend to be," Bradley recalled in his deposition, adding that Summers "started laughing like she was talking to a friend." The caller told Summers to bring in her fiance, and at about 6 p.m., she called Walter Wes Nix Jr., at home.

"I asked if he would help," Summers said. "I said I had a situation."

Perceived authority carries much power, studies show
Psychological experts say it is human nature to obey orders, no matter how evil they might seem -- as was illustrated in one of the most famous and frightening human experiments of the 20th century.

Seeking to understand why so many Germans followed orders during the Holocaust, Dr. Stanley Milgram, a Yale University psychologist, took out a classified ad in 1960 and 1961, inviting residents of New Haven, Conn., to take part in what they were told was a study of the relationship between punishment and learning.

A man in a white lab coat introduced the participants to a student, and told them to shock the student each time he made a mistake, increasing the voltage with each error.

In reality, the machine was a prop, and the student was an actor who wasn't shocked. Yet nearly two-thirds of Milgram's subjects gave what they believed were paralyzing jolts to a pitifully protesting victim simply because an authority figure -- the man in the white coat -- had commanded them to do so.

"With numbing regularity, good people were seen to knuckle under the demands of authority and perform actions that were callous and severe," Milgram wrote of his results, which were later replicated in nine other countries.

Milgram died in 1984, but his biographer and protege, Dr. Thomas Blass, said in an interview that the behavior of the people duped in the strip-search hoaxes would not have surprised him.

"Once you accept another person's authority, you become a different person," Blass said. "You are concerned with how well you follow out your orders, rather than whether it is right or wrong."

Youthful victim endured physical, emotional abuse
As his fiancee had requested, Nix showed up at the Mount Washington store.

"She told me there is a girl in the office who was caught stealing," Nix said in a court deposition. Summers also advised him that "Officer Scott" had accused the girl of dealing drugs -- that police at that very moment were searching her home in Taylorsville.

Nix, 42, a father of two and an exterminator by trade, attended church regularly and had coached youth baseball teams in Mount Washington. He is a "great, super guy, a great community guy," his best friend, Terry Grigsby, said later in a deposition. "He was a great role model for kids. … I don't think he'd ever had a ticket."

Summers handed Nix the phone and left the office. The caller told Nix he was a detective. For the next two hours, Nix later told police, "He told me what to do."

And Nix did as instructed.

He pulled the apron away from Ogborn, leaving her nude again, and described her to the caller. He ordered her to dance with her arms above her head, to see, the caller said, if anything "would shake out." He made her do jumping jacks, deep knee bends, stand on a swivel chair, then a desk.

He made her sit on his lap and kiss him; the caller said that would allow Nix to smell anything that might be on her breath.

When Ogborn refused to obey the caller's instructions, Nix slapped her on the buttocks, until they were red -- just as the caller told him to do, Ogborn testified later.

Each time Summers unlocked the door and ducked back into the office, Nix handed Ogborn the apron back so she could cover herself -- as instructed by the caller. When Summers left, the abuse began anew.

Ogborn said the caller sometimes would talk directly to her, demanding that she do as she was told if she wanted to keep her job and avoid further punishment. She said she believed she was trapped. Nix outweighed her by 145 pounds and stood nearly a foot taller. "I was scared for my life," she said.

Caller described as 'a freak who plays God'
The caller was unusually persuasive, according to workers across the country who talked with him.

He had mastered the police officer's calm but authoritative demeanor. He sprinkled law-enforcement jargon into every conversation. And he did his homework.

He researched the names of regional managers and local police officers in advance, and mentioned them by name to bolster his credibility. He called some restaurants in advance, somehow getting names and descriptions of victims so he could accurately describe them later.

Summers said "Officer Scott" in Mount Washington knew the color of Ogborn's hair, as well as her height and weight -- about 90 pounds. He even described the tie she was wearing.

Around the country, many detectives initially assumed the caller had to be watching the stores from across the street with binoculars. But later officials would say he simply was a master of deception and manipulation.

For example, when the 17-year-old victim at the Fargo Burger King started crying, the caller told her to "be a good actress" and "pretend like it doesn't bother you" so the manager wouldn't "feel so bad" about what he was having to do.

Allan Mathis, the manager of a Hardee's in Rapid City, S.D, who strip-searched an employee in June 2003, said in an interview: "I didn't want to be doing it. But it was like he was watching me." Mathis spent 40 days in jail before he was acquitted on rape and kidnapping charges.

The caller wasn't always successful; phone records show he sometimes called as many as 10 stores before finding one where managers would take his bait.

Stanford University psychologist Philip Zimbardo, who conducted a renowned prison experiment in which college students assigned to play guards became so sadistic that the experiment had to be aborted, said the caller was "was very skilled in human psychology -- he may have even read about Milgram."

Zimbardo, who is a consultant to one of the restaurant chains targeted by the caller, described him in an interview as a "skilled confidence man."

The lawyer for Mathis, the Hardee's manager, told the Rapid City Journal that his client was a victim of "a freak who plays God."

Employees are trained to think, `Can I help you?'

In her book, "Making Fast Food: From the Frying Pan into the Fryer," Canadian sociologist Ester Reiter concludes that the most prized trait in fast-food workers is obedience.

"The assembly-line process very deliberately tries to take away any thought or discretion from workers," said Reiter, who teaches at Toronto's York University and who spent 10 months working at a Burger King as part of her research. "They are appendages to the machine."

Retired FBI Special Agent Dan Jablonski, a Wichita, Kan., private detective who investigated hoaxes for Wendy's franchises in the Midwest, said: "You and I can sit here and judge these people and say they were blooming idiots. But they aren't trained to use common sense. They are trained to say and think,`Can I help you?'"

Even supervisors at fast-food restaurants made ready targets, said Milton Prewitt, national editor of Nation's Restaurant News, a trade publication. "You dot your `i's, cross your `t's' and push the buttons, and after a year of that," he said, "you might be an assistant manager."

Quick-serve restaurants — as they are known in the industry — also may have been vulnerable because managers are trained to cooperate with law enforcement, said Gene James, president of the National Food Service Security Council, an industry group.

Ultimately, of the 70 confirmed locations where the calls triggered strip-searches, 53 were fast-food stores and nine were sit-down restaurants.

Sexual abuse steps up as some are eager to obey

Some managers cried as they carried out the caller's orders. But court documents show that others performed with great zeal.

At a Burger King in Pendleton, Ind., a supervisor was so intent on finishing a search of a 15-year-old girl in December 2001 that when the girl's father arrived to pick her up from work, he had to jump over the counter to end her humiliation.

And in Dover, Del., a Burger King manager who was strip-searching an 18-year-old employee in March 2003 fought off the worker's mother and boyfriend so strenuously that state police had to be called.

Court records also show that over time, the demands in the hoax calls grew more perverse.

At a McDonald's in Hinesville, Ga., in February 2003, a 55-year-old janitor was told to put his finger in the vagina of a 19-year-old cashier, supposedly to look for contraband, according to court records. In Joplin, Mo., according to a police report, a caller in May 2004 persuaded a 16-year-old girl who was managing a Sonic restaurant to strip-search and perform oral sex on a 21-year-old male cook — and then got the cook to strip-search the manager.

`I have done something terribly bad,' man says

Louise Ogborn had been in the back office for nearly 2½ hours when the caller said she should kneel on the brick floor in front of Nix and unbuckle his pants.Ogborn cried and begged Nix to stop, she recounted in her deposition. "I said, `No! I didn't do anything wrong. This is ridiculous."

But she said Nix told her he would hit her if she didn't sodomize him, so she did.

Like the rest of her ordeal, it was captured on a surveillance camera, recorded on to a DVD. And it continued until Summers returned to the office to get some gift certificates, and Nix had Ogborn cover herself again.

The caller told Nix then that he could leave but that Summers needed to find another man to replace him. She called in Thomas Simms, a 58-year-old maintenance man who did odd jobs at the store.

Simms would say in a deposition later that he was shocked by what he saw — a young woman trying to cover herself with a small piece of cloth. Summers insisted it was OK for him to watch her, that "corporate" had approved it.

Nix left, drove a few blocks to his home and immediately called his best friend, Grigsby, who recalls Nix saying, "I have done something terribly bad."

`Something is not right,' 9th-grade dropout decides

It was Simms, the Mount Washington store's maintenance man and a ninth-grade dropout, who refused to play the caller's game.

He had stopped by the restaurant for dessert and coffee when Summers pulled him into the office and handed him the phone. The caller told Simms to have Ogborn drop the apron and to describe her. Simms refused.

"He said, `Something is not right about this,'" Summers recalled in her deposition.

And finally, she realized the same. She called her manager — Lisa Siddons — whom the caller had said was on the other line. Summers discovered Siddons had been home, sleeping.

"I knew then I had been had," Summers said. "I lost it.

"I begged Louise for forgiveness. I was almost hysterical."

The caller hung up.

Ogborn was so cold she was shaking and so stunned that, as Dockery wrapped her in a blanket, she asked if she had show up for work the next morning.

Repercussions hit all of those involved

Summers watched the store video later the same night, saw what Nix had done, and called off their engagement. She hasn't spoken with him since, according to her attorney.

She initially was suspended, then later fired, for violating a McDonald's rule barring nonemployees from entering the office. A couple of weeks later, she was indicted on a charge of unlawful imprisonment, a misdemeanor. Nix was indicted on charges of sodomy and assault.

Dockery was transferred to another restaurant.

Ogborn never went back to work at the store.

She began suffering from panic attacks, severe insomnia and nightmares about "a guy attacking" her, according to a court deposition from her therapist, Jean Campbell. Riddled with anxiety and depression, Ogborn was forced to switch from one antidepressant to a second, then a third and a fourth, before she finally found some relief.

"I can't trust anyone," she testified in a lawsuit she filed in August 2004 against McDonald's, alleging it failed to warn employees about the hoaxes. "I push people out of my life because I don't want them to know what happened."

She graduated from Spencer County High School, but was too shaken to enroll at the University of Louisville, where she had planned to study pre-med, Campbell said.

"She was dealing with a lot of issues of shame, feeling contaminated, feeling dirty, questioning herself," Campbell said in her deposition. "When anything like this happens, it destroys our illusions."

Restaurant chains failed to act quickly, ex-agent says

Despite the mounting number of cases across the country, restaurant industry officials failed to act more quickly or decisively, Prewitt said, in part because "nobody could believe it, it was so weird."

Some of the strip-searches weren't even reported to police, because embarrassed restaurant officials were reluctant to publicize them, said Jablonski, the ex-FBI agent. The fiercely competitive chains also initially were reluctant to talk to each other. "For a variety of reasons, they were slow on the draw," he said.

James, the head of the industry's security group, said the quick-serve chains acted "appropriately and expeditiously," although the group's previous executive director, Terrie Dort, acknowledged last year to The Associated Press that it took until 2003 "for the pieces of the puzzle to come together and for everyone to start comparing notes and realizing the scope of the problem."

Many police departments filed their case away under "miscellaneous" because they couldn't figure out how to pursue the caller, Prewitt said, or had trouble figuring out what crime, if any, he had committed.

Several departments were able to trace the calls to phone booths in Panama City, Fla. But that was as far as any had gotten until the Mount Washington hoax.

Dockery told her no. "Take as much time off as you want," she said.

Lone detective presses Bullitt case, gets help

The lone detective on the Mount Washington Police Department, Buddy Stump, had worked only a few weeks as an investigator when he got the call.

He had spent most of his career doing factory work and was home watching an "Andy Griffith" rerun when his deputy commander assigned him the case. "I joked that I was watching my training films," Stump recalled.

He was furious when he saw the store surveillance video. "It burned me up that this had happened to an 18-year-old girl," he said.

He was able to track down the phone number the call had been made from, but it was listed to a nonexistent phone and turned out to have been made on a pre-paid calling card. "I figured we didn't have a chance to catch him," Stump said.

He eventually learned the call had originated in Panama City, and that the largest seller of phone cards there was Wal-Mart. But that didn't help much — the largest seller of everything is Wal-Mart, and it has three stores in Panama City alone.

But a Panama City detective told Stump a bit of interesting news — an officer from West Bridgewater, Mass., was hot on the same trail.

Detective Sgt. Vic Flaherty had been assigned to lead a task force investigating the crimes after the caller hit four Wendy's in the Boston suburbs on one night in February 2004.

Flaherty had traced a calling card used in some of the hoaxes to one of the Panama City Wal-Marts, but that store's surveillance video only captured customers entering and exiting, not at the registers.

After hearing about the Bullitt County call, however, he helped Stump trace that calling card to its source. This time, they were in luck: It was purchased at 3:02 p.m. at another Wal-Mart in Panama City on April 9, 2004 — just hours before it was used to call the Mount Washington McDonald's.

The camera at that store was trained on the registers, and it showed the purchaser was a white man, about 35 to 40, with slicked-back black hair and glasses. The same man could be seen on Flaherty's video entering the other Wal-Mart, where he was wearing a black jacket with small white lettering.

Flaherty and a colleague flew to Panama City on June 28, 2004, and local officers immediately identified the jacket as the uniform worn by officers of Corrections Corp.of America, a private prison company.

When they showed it to the warden at the company's Bay Correctional Facility, he identified the man as David R. Stewart, 38, a guard on the swing shift.

Stewart denied making the calls, but when confronted, he started to "sweat profusely and shake uncontrollably," Flaherty wrote in a report. Stewart also asked, "Was anybody hurt?" and said, "Amen, it's over," according to the report.

Stewart insisted he'd never bought a calling card, but when detectives searched his house, they found one that had been used to call nine restaurants in the past year, including the Idaho Falls Burger King on the day its manager was duped.

Police also found dozens of applications for police department jobs, hundreds of police magazines, police-type uniforms, guns and holsters. "It was very apparent Dave Stewart wanted ... to become a police officer," Flaherty said.

Mount Washington became the first department to charge Stewart.Stump drove to Panama City to arrest him on June 30, 2004.

Stewart eventually was brought to Bullitt Circuit Court, where he pleaded not guilty to solicitation to commit sodomy and impersonating a police officer, both felonies, as well as soliciting sex abuse and unlawful imprisonment, both misdemeanors. He was released on $100,000 bond pending his trial Dec. 13. His bond was posted by his brother, C.W. Stewart — a retired police officer from Cheektowaga, N.Y.

Suspect considers himself `a victim as well,' letter says

Married 11 years and the father of five, Stewart had worked as a mall security guard, volunteered as an auxiliary sheriff's deputy, and driven a propane truck before taking the prison guard job.

He had worked 11 months there before his arrest; he was fired a week later.

His family has stood behind him — his mother said he is "a good boy" and another relative said he's well liked in Cheektowaga, the Buffalo suburb where he grew up.

Stewart declined to be interviewed, but in a letter responding to Ogborn's suit in Bullitt Circuit Court, he said: "I received your notice but I'm in no way responsible. I feel bad for your loss because I am a victim as well. I lost my job, my home and my car all over something I did not do."

In fact, he deeded his residence, a $37,900 mobile home on a dirt road 20 miles north of Panama City, to his wife for $100, according to Florida property records.

His Louisville lawyer, Steve Romines, said his client is not bright enough to have pulled off the hoaxes. "Based on numerous conversations with my client, I don't believe he is persuasive or eloquent enough to convince somebody to do these preposterous things," Romines said in an interview.

Stewart has been charged only in Bullitt County. Flaherty said prosecutors in Massachusetts are awaiting the outcome of the Kentucky case before deciding whether to proceed against him.

Detectives in other jurisdictions say they didn't press charges because the caller's crime would be a misdemeanor for which he could not be extradited.

There has not been a reported hoax call since Stewart's arrest, according to police and lawyers for the restaurant industry. Romines said there have been two, but he declined to say where, and none have been reported by news organizations.

Some see how hoax worked, others shocked

Across the United States, at least 13 people who executed strip-searches ordered by the caller were charged with crimes, and seven were convicted.

But most of the duped managers were treated as victims — just like the people they searched and humiliated.

They all "fell under the spell of a voice on the telephone," wrote a judge in Zanesville, Ohio, in an order acquitting Scott Winsor, 35, who'd been charged with unlawfully restraining and imposing himself on two women who worked for him at a McDonald's.

Chicago lawyer Craig Annunziata, who has defended 30 franchises sued after hoaxes, said every manager he interviewed genuinely believed they were helping police.

"They weren't trying to get their own jollies," he said.

Many of the supervisors were fired and some divorced by their spouses, Annunziata said. Others required counseling.

But the duped managers have been condemnedby others.

"You don't have to be a Phi Beta Kappa to know not to strip-search a girl who is accused of stealing change," said Roger Hall, the lawyer for a woman who won $250,000 after being strip-searched at a McDonald's in Louisa, Ky.

A Fox-TV commentator asked how the managers who went along could be so "colossally stupid."

While the incidents were triggered by a "perverted miscreant" wrote a federal judge in Georgia, the managers "still had a responsibility to use common sense and avoid falling prey to such a scam."

Though the Milgram experiment may help explain why supervisors went along with the caller, even Milgram's disciples say it doesn't absolve them of responsibility.

Just as one-third of the participants in Milgram's study refused to shock the subject, some supervisors refused to go along, including a supervisor at McDonald's Hillview store, who hung up on the caller the very night of the Mount Washington hoax.

"Nobody held a gun to their heads," said Blass, whose book about Milgram is titled, "The Man Who Shocked the World."

"They had the critical ability to decide whether to carry out their orders."

Suits target McDonald's in Mount Washington case

In her suit against the $19billion McDonald's company, Ogborn contends it failed to warn Mount Washington employees about the hoaxes even though the company and its franchises were already defending lawsuits in Georgia, Ohio,Utahand elsewhere in Kentucky.

"This suit is about failure to warn, failure to train, failure to supervise," said Louisville lawyer StevenYater, who with William C. Boone Jr., is representing Ogborn.

Although a McDonald's security executive had sent a 10- to 15-second voice message to every store in the region about hoax calls about a week before the Mount Washington incident, Siddons, the manager there, said in her deposition that it didn't mention strip-searches.

The company also failed to execute a plan it had developed to send warning stickers to be placed on the headset and cradle of the phone in every store, Peaster, McDonald's global security director, said in a deposition.

Ogborn's suit, which is set for mediation Oct. 31 and trial March 30, also names Summers and Dockery as defendants, saying they "forced Louise to remain imprisoned, in the nude, for over four hours."

Dockery declined to be interviewed, although in court papers, she denied wrongdoing and said Summers had kept her in the dark about what was going on.

Summers has filed her own claim against McDonald's, alleging that the incident would not have occurred if she had been warned.

She declined to be interviewed, but in her deposition, she angrily asked how McDonald's "could have failed to spread the word."

"You've destroyed three lives," she said. "Hope you're happy."

McDonald's points fingers at others, including victim

McDonald's blamed what happened on Stewart and Nix, over whom it says it had no control. The company has sued both of them.

Its Louisville lawyer, W.R. "Pat" Patterson Jr., said McDonald's employee manual clearly noted its policy against strip-searches. "The employees didn't read it," Patterson said in an interview. "That is all I can say."

The company admits it knew of the earlier hoaxes, but Patterson said it reacted appropriately by sending memos to owners and franchisees. "McDonald's did what every quick-serve restaurant did — maybe more."

In a prepared statement, a spokesman for McDonald's USA, Bill Whitman, said, "We are keenly aware of these unfortunate incidents and will continue to take appropriate actions to safeguard customers and employees."

Asked what additional steps the company has taken since the Mount Washington incident, he said it would be "inappropriate to discuss in detail specific security and safety measures."

In court papers, McDonald's also has blamed Ogborn for what happened to her — saying that her injuries, "if any," were caused by her failure to realize the caller wasn't a real police officer.

Questioning Ogborn during a deposition, Patterson suggested that although she had no clothes, she could have walked out of the office, but stayed voluntarily to clear her name.

"Did it ever occur to you to scream?" he asked.

Ogborn declined to be interviewed for this story on the advice of her lawyers, although she agreed to be identified by name.

Her therapist said she followed orders because her experience with adults "has been to do what she is told, because good girls do what they are told."

Lawyer wonders how each of us would react

Bullitt District Court Judge Rebecca Ward initially dismissed the charge against Summers, saying she "definitely exercised poor judgment ... but was as much a victim as Miss Ogborn."

Ward later reversed herself and reinstated the charge; she set Summers' trial for Dec. 7.

Summers' lawyer, Wendi Wagner, said in an interview that "everybody agrees, in hindsight, `How the hell could you let this happen?' ... But how many times did it happen over the past 10 years?"

In a brief interview, Nix insisted that he — like Summers — thought he was following a policeman's orders.

Nix is scheduled for trial Tuesday. If convicted of sodomy, he faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison — twice the penalty that could be meted to Stewart, although his lawyer, Kathleen Schmidt, noted that plea negotiations are under way.

"I can understand how people can question what he did," Schmidt said. "But they weren't in the same position. Maybe you and I wouldn't have done this, but how do we know?"

You'd better believe it. You can't make this stuff up; though in some ways I wish I could or that it were indeed fiction. It's so terrible.
It pretty much shows that if we do what were told. What are the ramifications of this? I believe it makes us reconsider the much discredited 'Nuremburg Defense' - Don't think for a moment that the Nuremburg defense of "I was following orders" as having some kind of reality to it, we're living in an ideological construct. If indeed human beings do what we're told in most part, then it takes an extraordinary human being not to follow orders; so in turn when we convict somebody at War Crimes Tribunals, we're trying and executing people for not being exceptional and extraordinary in the face of immense evil. Most of us buckle, and by corollary, we'd all be hung at Nuremburg for our ordinary human-ness.
Thanks to PJ over at Remote Control Society.

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