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25 October 2006

 

The End of Habeas Corpus
It amazes me how unconcerned most Americans are about the loss of the single most important right a democracy can offer . . . even more important than free speech. The only mainstream television news commentator who seems to understand the seriousness of the problem that I've heard speak out is Keith Olberman.

posted by Lorenzo 10:19 AM

11 October 2006

 

What good is NSA spying if no one understands what is being said?
If you still think that evil little Georgie Bush is only spying on "suspected terrorists" then how do you explain the fact that hardly anyone in the entire U.S. government can speak Arabic? In fact, the inability of anyone in the Bush Crime Family to translate these wiretaps would be laughable if it didn't have such serious consequences for the innocent people swept up by these insane fascists in Washington.

Today's Washington Post featured a story titled "FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills", which states that only 33 of the 12,000+ FBI agents even have a little proficiency in Arabic. To give you an idea of what this lack of language skills can men to innocent people, here is just one story that a professor of linguistics told me.

"Plurals in Arabic can be terribly complicated. Making plural words is not as simple as just adding on an 's'.Words of non-Arabic origin form their plurals by adding on 'at'. Like hayawan ('animal', a word taken from Persian); animals = hayawanat. But the U.S. translators apparently are unaware of this elementary fact.

"In the Sudan there was an import-export dealer in tires. Sudanese dialectal Arabic uses the word 'tire' in singular and, naturally, 'tirat' (pronounced tayrat) as the plural.

"NOW, the word in Arabic for airplane is ta'ir, and the plural, also in pure Arabic, is ta'irat which sounds like the plural for 'tires' in Sudanese. The CIA, or whoever, tapped this poor buggers phone and thought he was talking about 'planes' when he was only talking about 'tires'. The result? 15 months in Guantanamo."

My guess is that virtually all of the people being held in Guantanamo are most likely victims of similar U.S. screw-ups.

posted by Lorenzo 11:15 AM

07 October 2006

 

Alex Grey video clip
Here is a brief clip I shot of Alex Grey speaking in the big tent at Entheon Village at this year's Burning Man festival.

posted by Lorenzo 1:25 PM