Archive for experimentation

VIDEO: Here’s proof that carrying a gun won’t protect you in a crisis

gun aimed at camera

chart guns per country per residentVia Wiki

This post is dedicated to those who believe that the more guns we own, the safer we are. If that were true, we’d be the safest country in the world, since the U.S. has the highest gun ownership per capita in the world. Instead, we have far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.

Marketing and selling more guns (thank you NRA) is not the solution.

ABC’s Diane Sawyer participated in an experiment involving several simulated gun attacks by surprise shooters on students who had been specifically trained to react to such circumstances. The outcomes were fascinating:

“[His gun] is stuck in his shirt. He can’t even get it out to aim it.”

“Had this event been real, Joey would have been killed in the first 5 seconds.”

His endless hours of practice… meant absolutely nothing.. This is just completely different.”

“Police tell us that even …handling a gun in a holster can be tricky if you don’t stay in practice.”

A weapon alone won’t save you if your body’s in the wrong place… She took a deadly hit to the head… She’s also confused about whether her shot hit the intruder.”

One participant, Brian, froze in his seat, his hands on his desk. “In seconds, Brian was peppered with bullets.”

Police officer: “You get so jacked up, that you tend to forget to do the simple things because your body elevates, your fine motor skills deteriorate…”

Even when Diane Sawyer knew what was going to happen, her own reactions were delayed: “You still can’t get there in time.”

Police officer: “It’s too much for normal person to who’s never been trained deal with. It’s overwhelming.”

Without ongoing training, under stress, without letting up, “it’s a perishable skill. You’ll lose it.” Even a month or two without training makes you more susceptible.

yikes!

Tomthunkit on YouTube:

Guns are offensive not defensive weapons. Yet the NRA has people fooled into thinking that a gun can actually save them in a crisis. Here’s an video proof it cant.

Follow this link for more of what Tom had to say. Please watch the entire video, it’s jaw-dropping.

chart guns via WaPo smaller

Via Washington Post

H/t: @Enough_Already1

Melissa Harris Perry calls this a Footnote. I call it a Headline.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I literally teared up at this segment on women’s rights and their bodies. Kudos, Melissa, and thank you sincerely.

“We can refuse to let women’s bodies be separated from their voices.”

This is only one of many reasons why Melissa Harris Perry deserved her own show.

Walker’s budget okays disposing of unclaimed pound dogs to University research facilities

Why does Scott Walker hate animals? Because if he doesn’t, he has a funny way of showing it… in his own budget:

174.13  Humane use of dogs for scientific or educational purposes.

174.13(2)(2)  Any officer or pound which has custody of an unclaimed dog may release the dog to the University of Wisconsin System, the Medical College of Wisconsin, Inc., or to any other educational institution of higher learning chartered under the laws of the state and accredited to the University of Wisconsin System, upon requisition by the institution. The requisition shall be in writing, shall bear the signature of an authorized agent, and shall state that the dog is requisitioned for scientific or educational purposes. If a requisition is made for a greater number of dogs than is available at a given time, the officer or pound may supply those immediately available and may withhold from other disposition all unclaimed dogs coming into the officer’s or pound’s custody until the requisition is fully discharged, excluding impounded dogs as to which ownership is established within a reasonable period. A dog left by its owner for disposition is not considered an unclaimed dog under this section. If operated by a county, city, village or town, the officer or pound is entitled to the payment of $1 for each dog requisitioned. An institution making a requisition shall provide for the transportation of the dog.
174.13(3) (3) An officer or pound that has custody of unclaimed dogs shall maintain records as provided under s. 173.17.
174.13(4) (4) It shall be unlawful for any person, except a person licensed or registered and regulated under federal animal welfare laws, to take or send outside the state or to purchase or otherwise acquire in this state for the purpose of taking or sending outside the state, any living cat or dog to be used for any medical, surgical or chemical investigation, experiment or demonstration.
History: 1971 c. 40 s. 93; 1973 c. 130; 1977 c. 418, 447; 1979 c. 289; 1991 a. 189; 1997 a. 192.

Well, okay then, so long as he calls it “humane”…

Scott Walker is fast becoming one of the top 5 on my list of despicable inhuman beings.

H/t: marklainer

Added, via a commenter: That already is state law. The change is adding the words “University of Wisconsin-Madison.” Currently the University of Wisconsin-Madison is part of the University of Wisconsin System. Because of the proposed UW split, the University of Wisconsin-Madison needs to be added to the statute in order to keep the status quo.

Wolfowitz Directive Gave Legal Cover to Detainee Experimentation Program

My dear friend and absolutely terrific investigative reporter, Jason Leopold, has been telling me this report was coming for weeks and weeks. Finally, here it is, in part:

In 2002, as the Bush administration was turning to torture and other brutal techniques for interrogating “war on terror” detainees, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz loosened rules against human experimentation, an apparent recognition of legal problems regarding the novel strategies for extracting and evaluating information from the prisoners. [...]

Despite its title – “Protection of Human Subjects and Adherence to Ethical Standards in DoD-Supported Research” - the Wolfowitz directive weakened protections that had been in place for decades by limiting the safeguards to “prisoners of war.”

We’re dealing with a special breed of person here,” Wolfowitz said about the war on terror detainees only four days before signing the new directive.

One former Pentagon official, who worked closely with the agency’s ex-general counsel William Haynes, said the Wolfowitz directive provided legal cover for a top-secret Special Access Program at the Guantanamo Bay prison, which experimented on ways to glean information from unwilling subjects and to achieve “deception detection.” [...]

[T]he Wolfowitz directive also suggests that the Bush administration was concerned about whether its actions might violate Geneva Conventions rules that were put in place after World War II when grisly Nazi human experimentation was discovered. [...]

Last March, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who recently resigned, disclosed that the Obama administration’s High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG), planned on conducting “scientific research” to determine “if there are better ways to get information from people that are consistent with our values.”

Once again, BushCo used deceptive wording to create Opposite World. These thugs belong in prison. Maybe someone can write a deceptively worded directive to make that happen.

Although Jason permits us to post his work, please to read the whole thing here. It’s detailed, it’s eye-popping, and a must-read.

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All my previous posts on this subject matter can be found ; That link includes one specific to only Fayiz al-Kandari’s story here.

Here are audio and video interviews with Lt. Col. Wingard, one by David Shuster, one by Ana Marie Cox, and more. My guest commentary at BuzzFlash is here.

Lt. Col. Barry Wingard is a military attorney who represents Fayiz Al-Kandari in the Military Commission process and in no way represents the opinions of his home state. When not on active duty, Colonel Wingard is a public defender in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

If you are inclined to help rectify these injustices: Twitterers, use the hashtag #FreeFayiz. We have organized a team to get these stories out. If you are interested in helping Fayiz out, e-mail me at The Political Carnival, address in sidebar to the right; or tweet me at @GottaLaff.

If you’d like to see other ways you can take action, go here and scroll down to the end of the article.

Then read Jane Mayer’s book The Dark Side. You’ll have a much greater understanding of why I post endlessly about this, and why I’m all over the CIA deception issues, too.

More of Fayiz’s story here, at Answers.com.