05.12.09

reagan

Posted in and yet true, politics, unbelievable at 9:34 pm by paul

Props to RR: he signed the UN Convention Against Torture. We had our differences, he and I. But on this particular subject, we are in perfect agreement. I looked around for a reference to his signing statement and part of it is unequivocal:

The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today.

The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.

I’m sold, except for the part where he says the US has the right to decide upon the competence of the Committee Against Torture to investigate torture in the US; it is analogous to giving the accused the right to decide the competence of the district attorney. But I’ll forgive him that par-for-the-course resistance to outside oversight that has been typical of US foreign policy for several generations in light of his opposition to the practice of torture.

I don’t know if Reagan ever thought about a “ticking time-bomb” terror attack scenario, but I am pretty sure he thought of that in a military context. Maybe he knew that, as happened with Ibn al-Sheikh al-Libi, we are as likely as not to deceive ourselves with our own lies when we do it.

05.09.09

nert

Posted in offline at 9:07 pm by paul

Be a nert! We need all the nerts we can get!

Jacquie and I spent the past two Saturdays taking NERT training. It’s a very varied and interesting program and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

Among the highlights:

Triage: after a couple hours of training and exercises, we are all now considered able to do basic triage. People get sorted in to four categories: green (able to walk & move under your own power); yellow (immobile and/or needs medical attention); red (needs attention urgently); and finally, black (dead). My advice to you is: if you ever find yourself in some sort of large-scale disaster and you notice black tape wrapped around one of you wrists, this means a NERT volunteer has determined you are dead. While I suspect the next step is not cremation, I suggest you create the best fuss you can in the circumstances.

Fighting fires: we got to operate a fire extinguisher and put out an actual fire. Not terribly exciting, but should I ever have to use a fire extinguisher for an actual fire, I’ll be a lot more confident.

Location: earthquake awareness training involved a lot of pictures of collapsed or otherwise collapsed buildings. When asked, the firefighters revealed that all of these pictures were from San Francisco’s Marina district. We don’t live there or in a high-risk liquefaction zone, so we’re in relatively good shape on that front.

In short, kudos to the SFFD for a fine program!