"Pleeeeeeeeease can we go to the dog park?! PLEASE!!!!" (The answer was yes.)
"Rub the big white fluffy belleh! RUB IT!"
Monitor Cat, Monitor Cat / Does whatever a Monitor Cat does...
Matilda, Queen of All She Surveys.
Daily Dose o' Cute
"Pleeeeeeeeease can we go to the dog park?! PLEASE!!!!" (The answer was yes.)
"Rub the big white fluffy belleh! RUB IT!"
Monitor Cat, Monitor Cat / Does whatever a Monitor Cat does...
Matilda, Queen of All She Surveys.
Priorities
So, as you may have heard, President Obama has announced a two-year pay freeze for federal workers as a partial solution to the exploding deficit—and the very first paragraph of this New York Times piece underlines two pretty ginormous problems with the policy:
President Obama announced a two-year pay freeze for civilian federal workers on Monday as he sought to address concerns over sky-high deficit spending and appeal to Republican leaders to find a common approach to restoring the nation's economic and fiscal health.Problem #1: The Republican leaders to whom he's trying to appeal are the same jackasses who got us into this mess, so their stamp of approval on any solution ought to be a red flag that it's garbage.
Problem #2: That little adjective—civilian. It means uniformed military employees are exempt, because, if they weren't, all the people who didn't give a fuck when George W. Bush zeroed out funding for soldiers with traumatic brain injury, as but one of nine gazillion examples, would start screaming about how Barack H. Obama doesn't sufficiently support the troops.
Which is not an argument in favor of freezing troops' salaries, by the way.
But it does highlight the fundamental indecency of this administration's unwillingness to even entertain the idea of cutting the defense budget—by which I mean the exorbitant funding of large-scale weaponry and mechanical beasts designed for wars we'll never fight—before it freezes the salaries of workers who are tasked primarily with keeping the country running.
Including the administration of social services currently being strained to their breaking points by desperate people who are losing their jobs and healthcare and homes and ability to be self-sufficient, because our priorities include continuing to fight
Terrorism a go go
As you may have heard, Mohamed Osman Mohamud was arrested on Friday night for attempting to detonate a dummy bomb, which he believed to be real, around Pioneer Courthouse Square here in Portland during the annual Holiday Tree Lighting. We very nearly went on Friday, only changing our minds because we didn't want to do the drive (or, rather, the drive home in the traffic).
The story, based on information released so far from the FBI affidavit, is that last August Mohamud contacted a person unknown in Pakistan discussing going there to fight. Person1 gave him contact for Person2. Person2 was apparently the person to get him overseas. He was unsuccessful in contacting Person2, though he tried for some time to do so. In June of this year, the FBI went to him pretending to be associates of Person1. Over the next few months they met regularly with him, offered him help and money, provided the bomb itself after telling him to mail them supplies, and they also offered the chance to refuse or back out--which he did not take. The Oregonian has a time line:
2009Something that's always stood out to me--and it turns out, several others--is that they went to him in June. Why? Why wasn't surveillance enough when, essentially, nothing else was happening? Why couldn't they wait for him to attempt to do something criminal on his own without their help? They did have him under surveillance after all, it's not like he would have gotten very far.
August: Mohamed Osman Mohamud e-mails unindicted associate one (UA1) in Pakistan.
December: In code UA1 and Mohamud discuss "traveling to Pakistan to prepare for violent jihad."
2010
Early months: Mohamud makes multiple attempts to contact a second unnamed associate (UA2) but uses the wrong e-mail.
June: Undercover FBI employee contacts Mohamud, posing as an affiliate of UA1.
July 30: The undercover FBI employee meets Mohamud in Portland; Mohamud says he thought of putting an explosion together but needed help doing so.
Aug. 19: Two undercover FBI operatives meet Mohamud in a Portland hotel. Mohamud says he has identified a potential bomb target: the annual Christmas-tree lighting ceremony in Pioneer Courthouse Square.
Sept. 7: The two operatives meet Mohamud again at a downtown Portland hotel. One agent tells Mohamud to do "what's in your heart." The agents ask Mohamud to buy bomb parts and find a "place to put the bomb."
Sept. 27 and 30: An undercover FBI operative receives bomb parts in the mail from Mohamud.
Oct. 3: Two FBI operatives and Mohamud meet at a Corvallis hotel and discuss logistics and the need for Mohamud to leave the country after the explosion.
Nov. 4: The three meet in Corvallis, travel to remote Lincoln County and detonate a test bomb. Mohamud gives the agents a thumb drive with maps and instructions for the attack. "I want whoever is attending that event to leave, to leave either dead or injured," Mohamud says.
Nov. 18: The operatives and Mohamud drive from Corvallis to Portland to scout the area and identify a spot Mohamud thought would inflict the most casualties.
Nov. 26: The FBI operatives show Mohamud an inert bomb in the back of a van. Mohamud says it is "beautiful." At 4:45 p.m. they leave a Portland hotel and drive the van to a parking spot designated by Mohamud. From a different location, Mohamud twice tries to detonate the inert device by dialing a cell phone. Agents arrest him.
Source: Criminal complaint filed Friday by FBI Special Agent Ryan Dwyer
I said in Saturday's Open Thread comments:
Someone asked Sam Adams (PDX mayor) on Twitter why they didn't just stop and arrest him beforehand. The answer that Adams got from the FBI was that he had to try and detonate the bomb to be charged.My skepticism, which has grown since, was written out much better by Glenn Greenwald yesterday (emphasis his):
According to NPR: "Authorities allowed the plot to proceed in order to build up enough evidence to charge the suspect with attempt."
All of this sort of bothers me in that, per the FBI, he was unsuccessful in his attempts to move forward with his plans until the FBI stepped in and offered him help to get his plans going.
Obviously he was some sort of problem (hence the surveillance--which is not yet detailed when or why he initially came under it) but he didn't appear to be going anywhere with it until he had FBI help. No, I don't think he was "set up" but it still seems...I dunno...odd. Would he have even done anything except stew in his thoughts and try and send himself overseas if the FBI hadn't intervened and now we have a terrorist setting off dummy bombs?
What's missing from all of these celebrations is an iota of questioning or skepticism. All of the information about this episode -- all of it -- comes exclusively from an FBI affidavit filed in connection with a Criminal Complaint against Mohamud. As shocking and upsetting as this may be to some, FBI claims are sometimes one-sided, unreliable and even untrue, especially when such claims -- as here -- are uncorroborated and unexamined. That's why we have what we call "trials" before assuming guilt or even before believing that we know what happened: because the government doesn't always tell the complete truth, because they often skew reality, because things often look much different once the accused is permitted to present his own facts and subject the government's claims to scrutiny. The FBI affidavit -- as well as whatever its agents are whispering into the ears of reporters -- contains only those facts the FBI chose to include, but omits the ones it chose to exclude. And even the "facts" that are included are merely assertions at this point and thus may not be facts at all.Do I think the FBI is lying? No. I'm not suspicious, I am skeptical. Skeptical that this whole ordeal didn't end up being akin something like what happened with Farooque Ahmed, who wanted to go to Afghanistan and join Taliban-allied fighters there and is now accused of wanting to bomb the metro. He didn’t get anywhere, as the guys he thought were his co-conspirators were FBI agents. From court documents it seems the plot was as much idea the agents as Ahmed. As asked in Newsweek: "If that's true, then are terrorists really planning to bomb the subway in Washington, or is that just a fantasy of the Feds?"
It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal intent on carrying out a serious Terrorist plot that would have killed many innocent people, in which case they deserve praise. Court-approved surveillance and use of undercover agents to infiltrate terrorist plots are legitimate tactics when used in accordance with the law.
But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI -- as they've done many times in the past -- found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a "Terrorist plot" which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI's own concoction. Having stopped a plot which it itself manufactured, the FBI then publicly touts -- and an uncritical media amplifies -- its "success" to the world, thus proving both that domestic Terrorism from Muslims is a serious threat and the Government's vast surveillance powers -- current and future new ones -- are necessary.
There are numerous claims here that merit further scrutiny and questioning. First, the FBI was monitoring the email communications of this American citizen on U.S. soil for months (at least) with what appears to be the flimsiest basis: namely, that he was in email communication with someone in Northwest Pakistan, "an area known to harbor terrorists" (para. 5 of the FBI Affidavit). Is that enough to obtain court approval to eavesdrop on someone's calls and emails? I'm glad the FBI is only eavesdropping with court approval, if that's true, but certainly more should be required for judicial authorization than that. Communicating with someone in Northwest Pakistan is hardly reasonable grounds for suspicion.
Second, in order not to be found to have entrapped someone into committing a crime, law enforcement agents want to be able to prove that, in the 1992 words of the Supreme Court, the accused was "was independently predisposed to commit the crime for which he was arrested." To prove that, undercover agents are often careful to stress that the accused has multiple choices, and they then induce him into choosing with his own volition to commit the crime. In this case, that was achieved by the undercover FBI agent's allegedly advising Mohamud that there were at least five ways he could serve the cause of Islam (including by praying, studying engineering, raising funds to send overseas, or becoming "operational"), and Mohamud replied he wanted to "be operational" by using exploding a bomb (para. 35-37).
But strangely, while all other conversations with Mohamud which the FBI summarizes were (according to the affidavit) recorded by numerous recording devices, this conversation -- the crucial one for negating Mohamud's entrapment defense -- was not. That's because, according to the FBI, the undercover agent "was equipped with audio equipment to record the meeting. However, due to technical problems, the meeting was not recorded" (para. 37).
Thus, we have only the FBI's word, and only its version, for what was said during this crucial -- potentially dispositive -- conversation. [...]
So, really, nothing about this makes me feel any better (emphasis mine):
After a week of public criticism for heightened security at airports, the White House suggested that the incident Friday in Portland may require federal action that some citizens might find objectionable.Portland, by the way, is not a member of the Joint Terrorism Task Force. City council voted to opt out of it in 2005.
"The events of the past 24 hours underscore the necessity of remaining vigilant against terrorism here and abroad," Abrams said. "The president thanks the FBI, Department of Justice and the rest of our law enforcement, intelligence and Homeland Security professionals who have once again served with extraordinary skill and resolve and with the commitment that their enormous responsibilities demand."
Today Mohamud will appear in federal court for his arraignment. He will be represented by Stephen Sady, an attorney who volunteered to defend prisoners at Guantanamo.
I am very interested in what will come out in court over the course of the trial. I hope that zealousness for Safety!™ didn't make a mountain out of a molehill, or rather, make an arrestable terrorist setting off a dummy bomb out of an otherwise disaffected (and yes, apparently angry and violence-fantasizing) young man who may not have amounted to anything in terms of actually being a terrorist otherwise.
Quote of the Day
"Fixing Iraq or Afghanistan ends up taking precedence over fixing Cleveland or Detroit."—Retired US Army colonel and professor of international relations at Boston University Andrew J. Bacevich, Sr., whose new book, Washington Rules: America's Path to Permanent War, argues that "the nation's national security leaders have put the U.S. on an unsustainable path to perpetual war," pointing out the oughtta-be-obvious fact that perpetual war renders us unable to invest in our own communities and thus leaves us vulnerable in ways masked by rhetoric about nebulous terrorist threats.
(Previous Bacevich being smart.)
Monday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud sponsors of Liss & Deeky's Text-a-Thon to Save Fun Garbage Television 2010.
Recommended Reading:
Happy Blogiversary to Elle!
CL: Humiliation and Healthcare [TW for institutional transphobia in healthcare system]
Sarah: Disalienation: Why Gender is a Text Field on Diaspora
Asher: Flying in the USA [TW for discussion of TSA enhanced security procedures]
Kitten Liberation: The Animal Rights Group That Shall Not Be Named is at it again. [TW for objectification of women, disembodiment, TSA enhanced security procedures]
Andy: Chicago Mayoral Candidate Gery Chico Reaches Out to Gays, Expresses Support for Civil Union Bill
Living ~400lbs: Poverty's Link to Diabetes
Shark-fu: A bitch is back!
Pam: Back home after my slice-and-dice adventure.
Leave your links in comments...
Assess Hollywood
In case anyone's forgotten, I hate Dr. Drew Pinsky. So it was with much ugh that I read the news HLN is giving him his own primetime show to debut this spring.
A certified physician who specializes in coping with addictions, creating healthy relationships and navigating struggles between parents and children, Pinsky will be reflecting on the news stories and newsmakers HLN covers throughout the day and providing relevant observations and perspectives.Yeah, great. I can't wait to see Professor Emeritus from the Dr. Bill Frist School of Diagnosing People Via the Teevee doing his version of Access Hollywood in which he not only reports on the comings and goings of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan and other "bad girls" but also helpfully adds his "insights" about their mental health and mercilessly slut-shames them with a look of faux compassion on his smug fucking face. Barf.
Dr. Drew tells CNN, "I'm looking forward to becoming part of the HLN family and digging deep to bring out the stories behind the stories that people are talking about."
Gee, I hope he does interviews. It would be great to see him sit down with Mischa Barton or one of the Olson twins for a trenchant-as-hell interview where he asks penetrating questions like, "Isn't it horrible what a horrible person you are?"
One of the things I most despise about Pinsky is that he actively feeds a culture in which young women in particular are encouraged to eat each other alive with judgment and shaming. Part and parcel of that horseshit is women viewing one another as competitors and/or each other's moral police, both of which significantly undermine female solidarity, which is the most important bulwark against female exploitation and oppression.
He also actively encourages young people (young women in particular, by virtue of his involvement with the extremely popular Teen Mom franchise on MTV) to have an unhealthy deference to authority, urging young people to work on relationships with parents (and partners) that are deeply dysfunctional and frequently abusive, even when there is no evidence that the toxicity is likely to change.
Pinsky's not even uniquely bad. He's just another anti-feminist authoritarian who shouldn't be anywhere near advice-giving to young women. Or anyone else, frankly.
WikiLeaks Open Thread
I'm not even finished reading everything I want to read about the latest WikiLeaks controversy, in which 250,000 confidential US diplomatic cables, mostly from the last three years, were leaked and published. But here are a few relevant links to open up discussion...
New York Times—Cables Obtained by WikiLeaks Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels:
A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at back-room bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.There's much more at the link.
...The disclosure of the cables is sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
¶ A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons,' he argued."
...¶ Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."
¶ Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
...¶ Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
New York Times—A Note to Readers: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents: "As a general rule we withhold secret information that would expose confidential sources to reprisals or that would reveal operational intelligence that might be useful to adversaries in war. We excise material that might lead terrorists to unsecured weapons material, compromise intelligence-gathering programs aimed at hostile countries, or disclose information about the capabilities of American weapons that could be helpful to an enemy. On the other hand, we are less likely to censor candid remarks simply because they might cause a diplomatic controversy or embarrass officials."
I might be more admiring of those principles were we not still embroiled in a war for which the NYT helped the Bush administration cook the case.
Other links of interest:
Rep. Peter King (R-Hyperbole) calls the release of the documents "worse even than a physical attack on Americans, it's worse than a military attack," and suggests that "Secretary of State Hillary Clinton [should] declare Wikileaks a foreign terrorist organization."
McClatchy: Officials may be overstating the danger from WikiLeaks.
CNN: WikiLeaks: 'Surprised' by scale of U.S. espionage.
The Guardian (who provided the cables to the NYT): How 250,000 US embassy cables were leaked and US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis and US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the powerful from embarrassment.
And Greg Mitchell is live-blogging the media coverage.
Your Morning TSA Security Round-Up
And now the media meme has become: All you hysterics are so full of shit.
New York Times—A Media False Alarm Over the T.S.A.: "If a squadron of mad scientists surrounded by supercomputers gathered in a laboratory to try to conjure a single news topic that would blow up large, they could not touch the T.S.A. pat-down story. ... But then, in the real world, nothing happened."
Washington Post—TSA says Thanksgiving travel went smoothly: "TSA plans to release final details later today, but if statistics from last Wednesday are any indication, things should have gone well over the weekend."
ABC—Were concerns over TSA security procedures hype? Travelers say 'No Problem': "Despite concerns earlier in the week about the pat downs and body scans causing back ups, things seemed to go off without a hitch."
NOTHING TO WORRY ABOUT! NOTHING TO SEE HERE! MOVE ALONG!
Except: "So far, more than 400 scanners have been deployed at 70 airports around the country, with plans for some 1,000 to be installed as the system is fully enforced."
And: "The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has received over 900 complaints in the month of November from travelers who have been subjected to the Transportation Security Authority's (TSA) new 'enhanced' screening procedures."
Also this little thing: "[Fred H. Cate, privacy expert in the Indiana University] said that the new search policies violate long-held social and legal norms about personal privacy. Even though searches might detect wrongdoing, we reject them on the basis that the 'solution' is worse than the 'problem'."
I suspect, with no evidence to back up my suspicion aside from a lifetime of observation about how things like this play out, that TSA employees were told to turn it down a notch during the holiday weekend, possibly through the holiday season, and that when the system starts being "fully enforced" with 1,000 scanners across the nation, whatever objections there are will be buried beneath ten metric fucktons of "Oh, we already did that story and decided anyone who complains is a hysterical traitor."
Anyway, it's certainly been interesting watching privileged white men get OUTRAGED! about being treated like women, and men of color, get treated all the time. Yeah, it's not fun having your body treated as public property, groped without your explicit consent, searched without cause, and exposed to a government-sanctioned experiment that may have negative physical ramifications, and then being dismissed as an overwrought hysteric who's just looking for something to get mad about, is it?
I'm sure it's too much to ask that these gentlemen remember that the next time they're inclined to tell a woman, or a man of color, to suck it up and stop whining about how they're treated—and how that treatment affects their quality of life, sense of self, and regard for the sincerity of promises made about equality in this alleged land of the free.
Open Thread
Hosted by Polkaholix.
This week's open threads have been brought to you by awesome polka bands.
The Virtual Pub Is Open
[Explanations: lol your fat. pathetic anger bread. hey your gay.]
TFIF, Shakers!
Belly up to the bar,
and name your poison!
Friday Blogaround
This blogaround is brought to you by Shaxco, makers of Dudley's Goofyloungers with extra leg room.
A Blog Around The Clock: Are you going to listen to someone today?
PalMD: Listening
Maud Newton: Stop the clocks: how Twain celebrated Thanksgiving
Geek Feminism Blog: From comments: women in science, their history as told by… men?
Hadas Shema: Who writes health news?
FemaleScienceProfessor: Novel Retraction
Ideas in Food: Pumpkin Noodles
Share your links in comments!
Daily Dose o' Cute
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
...zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz...
...peek-a-boo!
So You Think You Can Launder
Tom Delay, aspiring dancing star and professional criminal, was officially convicted of money laundering and conspiracy to commit said laundering. "The Hammer" could be facing quite a long stay in the big house:
Mr. DeLay faces up to life in prison on the money laundering charge. [...] Judge Pat Priest has wide discretion in sentencing the former majority leader, who was known as “The Hammer” for his no-holds-barred style during 20 years in the House of Representatives. Mr. Delay could be sentenced from 2 years to 20 years in prison for the conspiracy count, and from 5 years to 99 years, or life in prison, for the money-laundering count.Damn those activist judges.
[H/T to ThinkProgress]
Dolphins Rule
CNN correspondent Randi Kaye visits the Baltimore Aquarium to watch dolphins check themselves out in a mirror—and it's pretty much the most adorable thing ever.
[Transcript below.]
RANDI KAYE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Spend a day with a dolphin and you're quickly reminded of why they've always captured our imaginations. They are playful, sociable, and just incredibly fun to be around. But scientists say there's a lot more to these animals and they're just beginning to understand the intricate thinking of these so-called big-brain mammals.
KAYE (on camera): Here you go, Nani (ph). Good girl!
We came here to the Baltimore Aquarium to see just how intelligent dolphins are. You see them playing with their trainers all the time. But scientists who study them say there's a lot more happening there than just play. That their intelligence actually rivals ours.
Here you go.
KAYE (voice-over): To see up close what has scientists so excited, we climbed down into a tiny underwater lab with a window into the aquarium, where scientist Diana Reiss puts a two-way mirror up against the glass. The dolphins can't see us, but Reiss can study how the dolphins react to the mirror.
DIANA REISS, CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK: We used to think we were the only species on the planet that could think. And now we know that we're amongst many thinking species. So the questions are no longer can they think, but how do they think? And what's amazing is, in this capacity, with giving them mirrors, it looks like they're doing a lot of things very similar to us.
KAYE: Reiss has been studying dolphins' behavior for 25 years.
REISS: Most animals don't even pay attention to mirrors. So if you put a mirror in front of your dog, most dogs won't even look in a mirror. Cats don't pay much attention. Other animals do pay attention but never figure out it's themselves. They think it's another of their own kind.
KAYE: But dolphins do figure it out.
REISS: And not only do they figure out that it's them, but they show interest to look at themselves. So one thing is to understand it's themselves, it's a whole other thing to say I want to look at myself. I want to see what my face looks like or what does it look like when I turn upside down and blow a bubble.
KAYE: We saw in awe as this group of dolphins explored themselves before us, unable to ignore the mirror. Several did hang upside down.
REISS: He's upside down. He keeps on doing that. He's going to get wild now. He's being very innovative. Watch this. (INAUDIBLE) show.
KAYE: Other dolphins opened their mouths and stuck their tongue out. They put their eye on the mirror to get an even closer look.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
HARRIS: Not convinced yet? Wait until you see some of the other experiments. We're watching dolphins in the CNN NEWSROOM.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
HARRIS: Have you ever watched your pets when they see their reflection in a window? What do they do? They usually slap it, right? They think it's another animal. But what about dolphins? Our Randi Kaye has been checking their reactions under water.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
KAYE (voice-over): Take a look at this video of an earlier experiment from 2001. Scientists mark this dolphin on the side with a black pen, but did not mark the other. When released, the dolphin with the mark swims directly to the mirror and turns the mark towards the mirror, like he's trying to take a look at what's been done to him. The unmarked dolphin doesn't show the same behavior.
Dolphins aren't the only big-brain mammals who recognize themselves. Elephants do too. Watch what happens when Reiss tested them at the Bronx Zoo. This one with a white x marked on his face turns towards the mirror, over and over, to take a look.
Back at the Baltimore Aquarium, Reiss is now focusing her research on younger dolphins.
REISS: Bo is five.
KAYE: Just like human children, younger dolphins make lots of movements and watch their reflection. They quickly learn they are watching themselves.
KAYE (on camera): What are you trying to figure out with the younger dolphins?
REISS: So we're trying to figure out at what age, at what developmental age do they start figuring out that it's them in the mirror? And when are they showing interest in the mirror?
KAYE (voice-over): Foster, who is three, started recognizing himself in the mirror about the same time toddlers do, when he was about a year and a half. Reiss says some dolphins pick up on it at just six months, much earlier than children.
REISS: This is Spirit. Now Spirit's testing this. She's still figuring this out. And what's funny is, we recognize this because it's so similar to what kids do, what chimps do. It's amazing. And they go through the same stages. These are animals that have been separated from us for 95 million years of evolution. Big brains, processing things in similar ways.
KAYE: With a mirror providing a window into the dolphin's mind, Reiss believe she is discovering that their super high levels of intelligence are in many ways much like our own. And if that's true, the question is, what does that tell us?
REISS: In the end, what this tells us is that we need to look at these animals in a new light with a new respect and really provide much more protection in terms of conservation efforts and welfare efforts for these animals. And also appreciate that we're not at the top anymore. We're not alone. We're surrounded by other intelligence.
KAYE (on camera): Oh, wow. So smooth. She's beautiful.
KAYE (voice-over): Remember the old saying, that it always seems like dolphins are smiling at you. Well, maybe they are.
Korea Crisis Round-Up
Christian Science Monitor—North Korea says on 'brink of war' as US, South Korea prepare for military exercises: "Officials in North Korea have warned that they are on the brink of war with the South, as the United States and South Korea prepare to conduct a joint training exercise in the Yellow Sea."
Washington Post—Many in LA's Koreatown decry island attack: "Residents in the bustling Los Angeles sector that is the largest Korean enclave in the United States are decrying the North Korean attack on a South Korean island as they phone relatives for updates from the country many once called home."
Korea Times—Parties diverge over approach to NK:
A day after adopting a bipartisan resolution denouncing North Korea for its deadly attack on Yeonpyeong Island, ruling and opposition legislators sparred Friday over the "right" North Korea policy.New York Times—South Korea Reassesses Its Defenses After Attack: "Responding to growing public criticism after a deadly North Korean attack, President Lee Myung-bak accepted the resignation of his defense minister on Thursday and announced changes in the military's rules of engagement to make it easier for South Korea to strike back with greater force, especially if civilians are threatened."
Speaking at an extended party meeting, Chairman Sohn Hak-kyu of the main opposition Democratic Party (DP) said "The Lee Myung-bak administration is incapable in terms of security, with no ability to adequately prepare for and respond to a North Korean attack." He added that, "War can never be the solution, and we should follow the way of peace. There is no better security than peace."
Rep. Chung Dong-young, a member of the DP's Supreme Council, said that "The attack on Yeonpyeong Island has proven that the Sunshine Policy is the best policy for ensuring peace on the Korean Peninsula." Chung urged the government to shift its North Korea policy.
The DP is affiliated with the late former President Kim Dae-jung who was the architect behind the Sunshine Policy of engaging the North. Despite the bipartisan resolution on North Korea, the main opposition party has consistently been critical of the Lee Myung-bak administration's relatively hard-line stance toward the North.
The ruling opposition Grand National Party (GNP) responded to the DP's criticisms. Rep. Kim Moo-sung, the GNP floor leader said, "We are in a quasi-state of war, and we should be united in what steps we will be taking next."
CNN—S. Korea names new defense minister amid war rhetoric from the North:
South Korea named a new defense minister Friday to replace the official who resigned Thursday amid heavy criticism due to North Korea's sinking of a warship in March and Tuesday's deadly shelling of an inhabited island.A CNN crew were the first western journalists to visit Yeonpyeong Island and examine the destruction.
South Korea's government nominated Kim Kwan Jin as defense minister, a Blue House media official told CNN.
The National Assembly will hold a confirmation hearing before Kim formally takes office.
Former Defense Minister Kim Tae-young, a former general, resigned after coming under heavy criticism for the sinking of the South Korean war ship Cheonan and again after North Korea struck Yeonpyeong Island on Tuesday.
The appointment comes amid continued war rhetoric from North Korea, which said Friday that South Korea and the United States are recklessly pushing the Korean peninsula toward war by scheduling a joint military drill for this weekend.
"The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again the war exercises targeted against [North Korea] in wake of the grave military provocation they perpetrated against the territorial waters of [the North Korean] side in the West Sea," said the North's official KCNA news agency.
