Amnesty Intl protests Iraqi TV station bombing
 

some info

At one time, I gave a good chunk of money to Amnesty International. I couldn't think of a better place to give money to; they were protesting torture and terrible treatment of prisoners worldwide and appeared to really be making a difference. What an important goal.

The left used to be against that sort of thing. Times have changed. Now they are against the use of US force, no matter what that force is meant to do. Yesterday AI issued a news release saying that the US shouldn't have taken out the TV station in Baghdad, because that's civilian.

Taking out the propaganda machine of a brutal dictatorship that may have been using the broadcasts to send information to its troops... is a bad thing to these jagoffs.

Iraq led the world in torture over the last decade. Amnesty International seeks to maintain that situation.

I guess it's good for donations.

Re: Amnesty Intl protests Iraqi TV station bombing
 

That's an awfully broad brush you're using, don't you think? I suspect many "leftists" (is there really much of a left and right anymore anyway?) are agreeable to US force depending on the situation. I certainly am...and in this situation, I don't think US force was truly necessary.

Admittedly, AI whining about the Iraqi TV station seems a bit silly.

Based on...???

The statistics in Torture Illustrated, perhaps? :D

The swimsuit issue is nice, from what I hear. :)

But seriously, how can you define a leader in torture? We know Saddam is a mean s.o.b., but look at the other incidents in the past 10 years (Rwanda, Sierra Leone, the countries of the former Yugoslavia, Kosovo). Whose to say what is the worst? They're all horrible.

It turns out that the coalition forces used a new non-lethal anti-transistor weapon on the TV station because it was located in a civilian area.

"In our name" the country spent millions upon millions of dollars to develop a weapon that could take out the opposition's power without killing the subjugated population.

Can you think of any other military that has done this? This is awesome history being made.

(OK I probably overspoke wrt who's "number one" but you can bet this band of thugs is in the top 5 anyway.)

Aren't they using EMP bombs for that? I sem to recall something in either Scientific American or Popular Science [only time you'll hear me use the two magazines in the same sentence], that they had EMP bombs. Basically an explosive charge drives a metal slug, or liquified metal through a large coil in an airburst, and it gives of an EMP. That wouldn't be kind to anything electronic in the area.

Or I suppose they could have just fried it with a maser.

It's not anti-transistor, it's purely anti-electronics. There is very little that survives these days, it'll nuke any modern cars, mobile phones, tvs, vcrs, phone systems, computers....

THere is confusion in the ati-war movement, precisely for the exact reason UT mentioned - Saddam is a brutal dictator, so why not support the war? Because of the philosophy behind it, the real anger, particualry in arab countries is coming from the neo-con imperialist bullshit that is driving this.

Removing Saddam is at the end of the day, probably a good thing (we'll see). On the other hand randomly invading countries with the kind of crap on newamericancentuary.org and then wondering why everyone from hungry to malaysia is getting shitty with the US..... Too many people appear to be executing their own little policies in this administration against the interests of thier own nation.

And just what do you surmise modern electronics are made of?

Microchips are most sensitive to EMP, because they are very tiny transistors packed tight on a silicon substrate.

Waaay back in 1975, Soviet pilot Victor Belenko defected to the US, by way of Japan, in his Mig-25. The Mig 25 was a hot-rod interceptor, basically two massive Turmanski turbojet engines with wings that could push it to Mach 3 for limited periods. The West was desperate to get ahold of one, and Belenko provided them with that chance. They discovered that it's computer system was composed of vacuum tubes, and the West laughed it off. Then they realised that vacuum tubes are fairly immune to EMP, and didn't laugh.

The Soviets stated it was to enable the radar to burn through any jamming directed at it, but it had the added benefit of being EMP hardened.

Well last i checked modern electronics still contains this like say...resistors, or capacitors......I'd love to see a mobo or for that matter, a CPU without those, dipshit. The phrase anti-transistor suggests it'd leave other electronic components along, which it most certainly will not. Even most microchips or ICs contain a range of components other than transistors and many low power capacitors such as tantalums are particualry vunerable to this thind of overcharging.

Nearly all soviet military equipment was valve based for EMP reasons - i nuke lets off EMP......

I am also a former Amnesty International contributor. Way before the big-ass concert.

AI and I parted ways after they seemed to lose interest in petty dictatorships torturing their dissidents and turned their eyes towards capital punishment in the US.

I believe there are two kinds of justice.

Regular and extra-crispy.

He can't form a coherent sentence, and I'm the dipshit?

So you're saying that an EMP will disable resistors and capacitors? What electronics lab have you been studying in? What makes you think that CPU transistors are made of different materials than the capacitors contained therein?

Have you even seen a wafer die?

The screams are heartwrenching.

And those screams aren't from the wafer. Bean counters are tramatized everytime a wafer dies.

If you look at a CPU there are a number of resistors on the packaging, i was referring to those, not any on the die itself.

Your average EMP from a nuclear explosion is rated around 50kV per nanosecond, that's going to fuse the hell out of most resistors. Obviously not all - things like MOVs are designed to withstand a hefty hit based on thier specs but many would, argueing either absolute is foolish. Capacitors once again will vary, i know from my own stuffing around years ago shoving a decent charge though even some hefty ones i was using when playing with gauss and rail guns would fry them. Electrolytics and tantalums would be far more vunerable than say inverter or pulse grade stuff.

Without a series of hard figures on both components and EMP specs this really is a waste of time.

When Nerds Fight -- Film at 11.

Damn juju, almost ruined my keyboard on that one. Water everywhere.

The flip side of the original thread topic:

http://www.cbc.ca/news/features/iraq/anti_war_iraq.html

"Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the British government for a report on Saddam’s use of torture and summary executions. The two groups usually welcome such documentation of human rights violations, but they criticized the British government for using the report as propaganda to justify an attack on Iraq."

In other words, We're all against torture and summary executions, but we hush it up in certain circumstances for political correctness.

The left used to be against torture and summary execution. Times have changed and now the very organizations charged with stopping it are actively trying to cover it up.

I imagine they would characterize their position as more along the lines of "don't use the fact that we said Saddam was a torturing murderous jerkoff to justify causing more death and destruction."

However, I'm with you...I think that AI would be pleased that someone is trying to do something about the crap that they so gleefully pointed out to the rest of the world.

You know considering the US's very two-faced approach to human rights it's not too shocking that Anmesty is wary about supporting anything which gets used as propaganda in a war like this. It's not about political correctness, it's about avoiding being politicised which for a non-partisan group such as Anmesty is something to be avoided at all costs.

Anmesty does outline thier position here if you care to look. Anmesty's key issue with the war is outlined here and can be paraphrased as:

Which i think does vindicate my point about politicisation. Of course that only applies of you care about the reality of the situation rather than sensationalised selective soundbites resulting in warped conclusions.

It's funny you would pull that particular quote, when anyone seriously watching now knows that it is insanely wrong in almost every way. It's almost as if you wanted to prove they had their heads up their ass. But you'll be happy to know that it has served to piss me off royally. In fact I've sat here for the last ten minutes, deleting one statement and writing another, trying vainly to come up with words for how insanely wrong that sentiment is. I've decided that it's better to my mental health if I just let it go.

I'm with you, UT...I've heard endlessly from our military commanders that we are attempting to minimize the civilian impact, even at the risk of our own troops (example - not blowing up the mosque from which we are being shot at...stupid military move, positive civilian sensitivity).

But since everyone is lying (as I've stated before), I'll just include AI in my list of prevaricators.

     Relax UT, surely you realize that by AI standards war is just about the worst violation of human rights there is? Yep, even worse than a plasic shredder or a mountain of skulls. Yeah, this is nutty but just shake your head and move on, it's not worth the stress. AI has a specific world view, it assumes all wars work like the ones in the past. Like we are getting to give Bagdad the Hiroshima treatment. Obviously this isn't true but it IS an organization based on moral absolutes, which means ignoring the situation around what is happening is par for the course. War=Bad=rape and torture=Awful human rights violations. They'll adapt, just not during this conflict. They'll adapt or the organization will fail. That's life, if you get too pissed your the one that suffers for their idiocy. Much like the UN (IMO anyway) it's a flawed organization that does serve a funtion.

I agree UT, my guess is that the article predates the discussions on the last week which may explain the statement. *shrugs* I'm not defending AI, merely elaborating on the rather selective cherrypicking of information.

That may be why http://dear_raed.blogspot.com/ has not been updated fom Baghdad. It was very interesting.

Various dear_raed watchers figured out that his link to the net was one of the Baghdad buildings that was bombed. I know, "Duh", but it was interesting that they worked it out down to the building, up until which had not been hit and up until which the guy was still posting.