Wednesday Hodgepodge

• Chris Hallquist explains what he believes in One humanist’s manifesto:

The following is in response to a couple of comments to the effect that I do nothing but attack religion. It is a simple statement of what I am for. Every one of these things, I should point out, is threatened by religious fundamentalism. That’s why I spend so much time talking about the things I do.

• I believe in reason.
• I believe in being honest with oneself.
• I believe in improving on accepted beliefs.
• I believe in having the freedom to seek the truth without worrying that the evidence will point to the “wrong” conclusion.
• I believe in having the determination to make a careful investigation and not accept the first answer that is presented.
• I believe in having the courage to face unpleasant realities.

There is more, and a lively discussion in the comments.

• Why are Iraqi civilians dying at the hands of US soldiers? Because at least some commanders don’t see anything out of the ordinary when such deaths occur:

The Marine officer who commanded the battalion involved in the Haditha killings last November did not consider the deaths of 24 Iraqis, many of them women and children, unusual and did not initiate an inquiry, according to a sworn statement he gave to military investigators in March.

“I thought it was very sad, very unfortunate, but at the time, I did not suspect any wrongdoing from my Marines,” Lt. Col. Jeffrey R. Chessani, commander of the 3rd Battalion of the 1st Marines, said in the statement.

“I did not have any reason to believe that this was anything other than combat action,” he added.

Chessani’s statement, provided to The Washington Post by a person sympathetic to the enlisted Marines involved in the case, helps explain why there was no investigation of the incident at the time, despite the large number of civilian deaths, and why it took several months for the U.S. military chain of command to react to the event.

It also provides a glimpse of the mind-set of a commander on the scene who, despite the carnage, did not stop to consider whether Marines had crossed a line and killed defenseless civilians.

It suggests that top U.S. commanders have been unsuccessful in urging subordinate leaders to focus less on killing insurgents and more on winning the support of the Iraqi people, especially by providing them security.

• Anyone who has watched even a few minutes of the nauseating product of the cable news channels this past week now knows just how fond those outlets are of dead girls. Dead girls make for dynamite ratings… but only if they are dead, blonde, and American:

But although I mind this pollution of the air waves with something that is not, whatever it is, news, the main thing I mind is the racism.

The case of Abeer al-Janabi, the little fourteen-year old Iraqi girl who was allegedly raped and killed after being stalked by a US serviceman would never be given the wall to wall coverage treatment.

That is frankly because the victim was not a blonde, blue-eyed American, but a black-eyed, brunette Iraqi.

• And it’s news only if those beautiful dead girls did not die while serving with the American military in Iraq. Wouldn’t want to remind the unwashed masses of the meatgrinder that Bushco lied us into:

We hear a lot about beautiful dead girls in the US media. Here are some that we haven’t heard about much. Their smiles haven’t been plastered over the supermarket tabloid press, and they’re not likely to be. One of the reasons is that they don’t fit the popular stereotype of beautiful-woman-as-helpless-victim. Another reason is that many people still haven’t focused on the reality of women in the military. Even here on DKos, I see comments about “sons and fathers” who have been killed and maimed. Almost NO MENTION of women in the military.

• You gotta love in-your-face science:

  
  

  A more sublime T-shirt cannot be imagined.