The Invisible Library

Yahoo! News:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is holding terrorism suspects in more than two dozen detention centers worldwide and about half of these operate in total secrecy, said a human rights report released on Thursday.

Human Rights First, formerly known as the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, said in a report that secrecy surrounding these facilities made ‘inappropriate detention and abuse not only likely but inevitable.’

‘The abuses at Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib cannot be addressed in isolation,’ said Deborah Pearlstein, director of the group’s U.S. Law and Security program, referring to the U.S. Naval base prison in Cuba and Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq (news - web sites) where abuses are being investigated.

‘This is all about secrecy, accountability and the law,’ Pearlstein told a news conference.

The report coincided with news that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld ordered military officials to hold a suspect in a prison near Baghdad without telling the Red Cross. Pearlstein said this would be a violation of the Geneva Conventions and Defense Department directives.

She said thousands of security detainees were being held by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan (news - web sites) as well as locations elsewhere which the military refused to disclose.

So, can we impeach the bastard now? If we’re going to try a president for getting a blowjob, we should at least considder the same proceadings for war crimes.

A Thunderstorm knocked out my electricity about three hours ago and now it’s too dark to read a book so I’m running down the battery on my laptop. Blogging in the dark? Not so easy.

The fact that I’m SO bored without electricity is a problem. It underscores how dependant we as a species have become on our tools. Seriously, how the fuck did anything get done after sunset before we were all on the Grid? I’m not saying I can’t live without TV (I’ve lost the ability to watch it anyway; the comercials make me feel like I have ADD) or my computer but still, this sucks.

I guess the fact that I realise my dependance is at least a step in the right direction. The fact that I’m powerless to do anything but whine about it is still rather bothersome though.

BBC, via Making Light:

The inventor of an “invisibility” cloak has said that his next project will be to develop the technology to allow people to see through walls.

Susumu Tachi, who showed off the cloak at an exhibition in San Francisco earlier this month, said he was hopeful of providing a way to provide a view of the outside in windowless rooms.

“This technology can be used in all kinds of ways, but I wanted to create a vision of invisibility,” he told BBC World Service’s Outlook programme.

How cool is that? I can’t wait to sneak around Hogwarts in one.