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January 30, 2005

So, Jon, what did you do this weekend?

This weekend, I:
-Had a party for my birthday
-made a table out of an old door
-bought materials to mosaic and finish the table project
-raked more of the yard
-dug up a plot for the spring garden
-planted some basil, cilantro, and rosemary in inside pots
-finally installed a new light in my bathroom
-cleaned up after all that.

Posted by griffjon at 11:17 PM | Comments (0)

Ethics Conflict! Starbucks Edition

Yikes! My personal grief about my position on Starbucks is now even more off-kilter! I've always respected their internal HR -- they give their employees excellent benefits, even at just-over-part-time. But they aggresively go after local coffee shops (there's a new Starbucks going in in Austin up the road from Amy's-Guadalupe and across the street from Tazza Fresca, sure to be packed next XMas by yuppies in their SUVs trying to be cool by cruising down 37th street, but I digress).

Every Starbucks coffee cup will soon carry this on it:

Zeroes are important. A million seconds ago was last week. A billion seconds ago, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. A trillion seconds ago was 30,000 BC, and early humans were using stone tools. America's national debt is now $7.5 trillion, and it's skyrocketing, even as America's population ages. There will never be a better time to start paying off this crippling debt than today.

More by the author of the quote, and info on the "The Way I See It" coffee cups at (twitch) Starbucks.com

(I'm posting this from Mojo's Daily Grind, btw)

Posted by griffjon at 10:09 PM | Comments (0)

More Iran predictions

US energy services company Halliburton is to end its operations in Iran after existing contracts come to an end.

Several American firms have been able to legally work in the country in the face of a US trade embargo, through foreign subsidiaries.

Halliburton, once run by US vice president Dick Cheney, said its Cayman Island unit secured revenues of $30m-$40m (£16-£21m) from Iran in 2003.

It said it was winding down its work due to a poor business environment.

--BBC

Yeah, the US planning to invade and severely screw up the country is considered by many to be a "poor business environment."

Now -- immediately after that invasion... I hear business can really clean up on gouging the gov't and military through no-bid underhanded contracts. I mean, just look at Halib...oh, right.

Posted by griffjon at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)

Smoked Out

Now, I don't smoke cigarretes. I don't like the smell of 'em, either. I'm very happy that it's increasingly common for restaurants to be totally smoke-free. But Weyco has gone over the line, banning employees from smoking... at home. I'm a big proponent of responsible adults doing whatever they want within a responsible framework.

Of course, it's an effort to reduce their health care expenditures. Maybe the smokers-rights people can get together with the socialized healthcare people!

Four workers in the United States have lost their jobs after refusing to take a test to see if they were smokers.

They were employees of Michigan-based healthcare firm Weyco, which introduced a policy banning its staff from smoking - even away from the workplace.

The firm says the ban is to keep health costs down and has helped 14 staff to stop smoking, but opponents say the move is a violation of workers' rights.

BBC

Posted by griffjon at 09:49 PM | Comments (0)

Props to Ted Turner

CNN founder Ted Turner attacked US TV network Fox News on Tuesday, labelling it "propaganda" for its stance towards the Bush administration.

Turner also likened the network's current popularity to Adolf Hitler's rise to power in 1930s Germany.

"Just because you're bigger doesn't mean you're right," Turner said in a speech to the National Association of Television Programming Executives.

Fox News, owned by Rupert Murdoch, is currently leading CNN in TV ratings.

Mr Turner also attacked "gigantic companies whose agenda goes beyond broadcasting" for not criticising the Bush administration enough.

'Problems'

"There's one network, Fox, that's a propaganda voice for them," the 66-year-old media mogul said.

"It's certainly legal. But it does pose problems for our democracy when the news is 'dumbed-down'."

Fox News issued a statement, saying: "Ted is understandably bitter having lost his ratings, his network and now his mind - we wish him well."

-- TARGET="_new">BBC

Excuse me? Fox, is that name-calling? Did you promote some of your pundits into your marketing/PR department?

Posted by griffjon at 09:38 PM | Comments (0)

Hilary lays the smack down

Hilary posts some hard and fast numbers. If the pro-birth crowd (not accurate to call 'em pro-life) really wants to reduce the number of abortions, maybe they should look at the numbers again.

[Hilary Clinton] said there could be a link between a decline in so-called "comprehensive" sexual education and an increased number of terminations.

It is unclear however if abortion rates have gone up or down under Mr Bush.

Since taking office in 2001, he has tightened legislation regulating terminations.

He has also boosted funding for sexual abstinence programmes which are not allowed to promote contraception.
...

Speaking to a conference of family abortion rights supporters in New York, Mrs Clinton said that during her husband's administration, family planning funding was a priority and "we saw the rate of abortion consistently fall."

"The abortion rate fell by one quarter between 1990 and 1995, the steepest decline since Roe was decided in 1973," Mrs Clinton said, referring to the Roe v Wade decision which legalised abortion.

"The rate fell another 11 percent between 1994 and 2000."

(BBC)

Posted by griffjon at 09:20 PM | Comments (0)

Who is footing this bill? Our children, their grandchildren...

Congress already approved 25Billion more, and the Whitehouse is asking for another 80 Billion on top of that for this year. That puts us at almost 300 BILLION in spending since Sept 11 -- not on increasing understanding of America and fostering mutual goodwill, but on warmongering. I'm glad our leaders have gotten past gradeschool concepts of fairness.

(info from The BBC)

Posted by griffjon at 09:14 PM | Comments (0)

US Approves Torture

We approved Gonzales. And Rice. I think Rice is horrinly underqualified for the job, but Gonzales getting in is just sad. At least the dems held together and presented some opposition, I suppose. But -- we put a man in as the highest lawman in the country, who has confirmed violations of human rights abuses, the Constituion, and our treaties and laws. I mean, this is like putting a pair of corporate-world hacks with questionable ethics into the whitehouse.

Oh, crap.

Posted by griffjon at 07:28 PM | Comments (0)

Some good reason

Austin's Louis Black has some words of reason for everyone:

Those of us who opposed the invasion did not support Saddam Hussein or oppose democracy. Those who did are willing to say anything to obfuscate the issue. These semantic betrayals by the warmongers can trip up almost any argument or make black seem white, but they can't drown the truth forever. Those of us who believe in democracy and believe in the desirability and inevitability of all governments to embrace democracy and become some form of constitutional republic know this can't be done at the end of a gun. It can't be done quickly, nor can it be accomplished with military invasions and bombing raids.

We've seen the peaceful electoral revolution in Ukraine, and though nervous about the long run, we saw the huge voter turnout in Afghanistan. We saw the Palestinian elections, and we have to hope that those in Iraq go better than almost anyone expects (no matter what they may be saying publicly). Many have worked for free and fair elections in countries around the world for much of their lives.

There is something else we know. The anti-war protests in democracies throughout the world encouraged freedom.

It was not the invasion of Iraq that inspired the Ukrainian people to take to the streets; it was all those protests against that war. The world did watch. They watched as protesters marched. They watched as protesters were not attacked by the police, as they were not imprisoned or killed. By the hundreds of thousands, they made their voices heard, their opinions known. They watched people who got up in the morning, spent a day at a protest, and went home – not to hide or wait in fear, but to resume their ordinary lives.

Posted by griffjon at 07:18 PM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2005

Yesterday in the Life of Jon

The party was pretty excellent -- cool, calm, with good friends -- lots of people, even a few RPCV peeps from Jamaica were able to show up! Good times, good ritas, and a call from Kathy.

Posted by griffjon at 11:21 PM | Comments (0)

Today in the Life of Jon

Blanu and I headed up to his dad's place in Round Rock to take advantage of the crazy number of tools he has available, and we did the majority of work on turning an old door into a coffee table for my living room, photos will follow of the completed project. It's looking pretty nice so far.

We got home too tired and late to bother with food, so we went over to a take-out chinese place, where some police were eating -- and having an in-depth discussion about how to pirate their DVDs and XBox games. It took a lot of effort to neither laugh nor ask them what they thought the moral implications of police pirating DVDs were, and if they supported Bush.

Posted by griffjon at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2005

Johnny 5 is ALIVE

BBC reports that we're:

planning to deploy robots armed with machine-guns to wage war against insurgents in Iraq.

Eighteen of the 1m-high robots, equipped with cameras and operated by remote control, are going to Iraq this spring, the Associated Press reports.

Is it just me, or does this look almost exactly like Johnny5?

Maybe this is the Iran plan?

Posted by griffjon at 10:39 PM | Comments (0)

Bloggers against Torture

Add your blog to the list.

Posted by griffjon at 10:27 PM | Comments (0)

more $Job

I've finally whacked some moles in $job, and am getting Stuff accomplished. I was a bit worried for most of last week, as I was at the bottom of a Lot of Really Steep learning curves.

Things I've gotten into in about a week:

-ISA (Internet Security and Accelleration) Server management, routing, and firewall/vpn'ing
-mysql installation, backups/restores
-Apache2/Tomcat setup (a really good webserver, plus a java server page server)
-Continuing development on this craaaazy perl parser that reads Word documents
-IIS (MS's web server) installation (it's only to play with an old version of the site, not for anything live)

Plus, the office's byzantine filing system, and the process by which we license things, and I've gotten to read all these nifty new inventions which I can't really talk about.

Posted by griffjon at 10:22 PM | Comments (0)

January 24, 2005

A reminder

The Daily KOS reminds us who owns the US Debt:

The People's Bank of China has let it be known that China increased dollar reserves by $207bn (€159bn) in 2004, financing nearly a third of the US current account deficit, estimated at $650bn.

Self-interest has supported much of this flow of cash. The US has lapped up cheap finance to fund its unquenchable appetite to spend. Asian governments have until now been keen to oblige, in order to keep their currencies from appreciating. But all investors have their limits and they may start worrying about their degree of exposure.

If new official flows to the US were to be curtailed, the dollar would plunge, creating a huge hole in the accounts of central banks holding dollars.

Posted by griffjon at 06:59 PM | Comments (0)

January 23, 2005

Just to get it down on "paper"

We're gonna do something unpleasant in Iran.

Remember: Canada has extradition treaties for draft-dodgers. Go south of the border, and keep going.

Posted by griffjon at 02:42 PM | Comments (0)

The Terminator, terminated?

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Austrian citizenship should be ended over the execution of a convicted killer in the US, a politician in Austria has said.

Peter Pilz, of the [Austrian -J] Green Party, said the Californian governor broke Austrian law by allowing Donald Beardslee's death by lethal injection on Wednesday.

He said Mr Schwarzenegger, who has dual nationality, had "heavily damaged the reputation of the republic."

He has submitted a formal written request to the Austrian government.

"Schwarzenegger is possibly the most prominent Austrian abroad, and he shapes the picture of Austria," Mr Pilz said.

"I don't want that picture shaped by someone who commits state murder. That does not correspond to the political culture of this country."

Capital punishment 'unacceptable'

Mr Pilz said Austrian law states that citizenship can be revoked if an Austrian "in the service of another country substantially damages the interests or reputation of the republic by his or her behaviour."

Mr Pilz said: "Capital punishment is unacceptable in Austria and in Europe, and no Austrian citizen may take part in it or arrange it."

--BBC

heh.

Posted by griffjon at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

Hubble...

The gov't spends untold billions on an unjustified war, but we have to yell at it to get it to pony up for relief for the biggest disaster in recent history, and we won't commit to maintaining the Hubble telescope. Let's think about priorities, and values, shall we? Killing people is obviously the most important "moral value" of our Pres, outreaching any humanitarian aid or scientific discovery.

Posted by griffjon at 02:33 PM | Comments (0)

We're all humans here

Possibly the most damage done by American news media is their Us/Them divide, which just underlines the American xenophobic tendencies to begin with. Let's remember that the Iraqi people are Just Like Us. They have mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters. It's amazing to think about it, but this whole family thing is a global phenomenon! Every person we kill in a war, justifiable or not, is part of a family there. We're all humans, here. Nothing special about it, but nothing wrong about it either. We cannot accept the media simplification of "they." Different skin, still human.

This was originally just meant to be a post on BBC's translation of various newspapers responding to their countries being labeled "outposts of tyranny" by Condi:

Media in the states dubbed "outposts of tyranny" by Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's nominee as secretary of state, have hit back in no uncertain terms.

A Cuban commentary says the declaration is reminiscent of President Bush's "Axis of evil", while state radio in Belarus accuses her of prejudice.

In Zimbabwe and Iran, papers view her comments as part of a broader campaign against them. Burma and North Korea have been slow to react, a fact media analysts say is not unusual, as both states often take days to formulate a response.

---

Among the outposts of tyranny she [Condoleezza Rice] of course includes Cuba. She includes Belarus... She includes Iran, Burma, North Korea, and Zimbabwe, the so called 'outposts of tyranny,' a term reminiscent of President Bush's famous 'Axis of evil,' which included Iran, North Korea, and Iraq. We can see what this administration's policy will be: a policy based on aggression and US hegemony.
--Commentary by Eduardo Dimas on Cuban Radio Rebelde

The foreign ministry said that the mention of Belarus shows Condoleezza Rice's understanding of the situation in Belarus is far from reality. False stereotypes and prejudices are a poor basis for the formation of effective policy in the area of interstate relations.
--Belarusian Radio

The three-day state visit by the president of Iran, Mr Seyyed Mohammad Khatami, is providential as it comes at a time when Western nations, led by Britain and the United States, have openly declared their hostility to the aspirations of our two nations, and the entire developing world... It is, thus, imperative that the countries of the east and the south gang together, just as the north and west do, for it is from mutual co-operation that we can present a formidable front against the common enemy.
--Zimbabwe's Herald Government daily

It is obvious that the US does not want democracy to rule the world since it has already toppled many democratic systems... It can be concluded that White House officials are incensed by Iran's independent stance and that is why they make baseless accusations against Iran every now and then.
--Iran's Tehran Times

--BBC Americas

Posted by griffjon at 02:24 PM | Comments (0)

January 21, 2005

Why can't all believers be like this?

Why can't all you theists (people who believe in god, as opposed to us atheists, who don't) be cool like this?

TELL IT LIKE IT IS

Dr. Robin Meyers

Oklahoma University Peace Rally, November 14, 2004

As some of you know, I am minister of Mayflower Congregational UCC Church in Oklahoma City, an Open and Affirming, Peace and Justice church in northwest Oklahoma City, and professor of Rhetoric at Oklahoma City University. But you would most likely have encountered me on the pages of the Oklahoma Gazette, where I have been a columnist for six years, and hold the record for the most number of angry letters to the editor.

Tonight, I join ranks of those who are angry, because I have watched as the faith I love has been taken over by fundamentalists who claim to speak for Jesus, but whose actions are anything but Christian. We've heard a lot lately about so-called "moral values" as having swung the election to President Bush. Well, I'm a great believer in moral values, but we need to have a discussion, all over this country, about exactly what constitutes a moral value - I mean what are we talking about? Because we don't get to make them up as we go along, especially not if we are people of faith. We have an inherited tradition of what is right and wrong, and moral is as moral does. Let me give you just a few of the reasons why I take issue with those in power who claim moral values are on their side:

• When you start a war on false pretenses, and then act as if your deceptions are justified because you are doing God's will, and that your critics are either unpatriotic or lacking in faith, there are some of us who have given our lives to teaching and preaching the faith who believe that this is not only not moral, but immoral.


• When you live in a country that has established international rules for waging a just war, build the United Nations on your own soil to enforce them, and then arrogantly break the very rules you set down for the rest of the world, you are doing something immoral.


• When you claim that Jesus is the Lord of your life, and yet fail to acknowledge that your policies ignore his essential teaching, or turn them on their head (you know, Sermon on the Mount stuff like that we must never return violence for violence and that those who live by the sword will die by the sword), you are doing something immoral.


• When you act as if the lives of Iraqi civilians are not as important as the lives of American soldiers, and refuse to even count them, you are doing something immoral.


• When you find a way to avoid combat in Vietnam, and then question the patriotism of someone who volunteered to fight, and came home a hero, you are doing something immoral.


• When you ignore the fundamental teachings of the gospel, which says that the way the strong treat the weak is the ultimate ethical test, by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest among us so the strong will get stronger and the weak will get weaker, you are doing something immoral.


• When you wink at the torture of prisoners, and deprive so-called "enemy combatants" of the rules of the Geneva Convention, which your own country helped to establish and insists that other countries follow, you are doing something immoral.


• When you claim that the world can be divided up into the good guys and the evil doers, slice up your own nation into those who are with you, or with the terrorists - and then launch a war which enriches your own friends and seizes control of the oil to which we are addicted, instead of helping us to kick the habit, you are doing something immoral.


• When you fail to veto a single spending bill, but ask us to pay for a war with no exit strategy and no end in sight, creating an enormous deficit that hangs like a great millstone around the necks of our children, you are doing something immoral.


• When you cause most of the rest of the world to hate a country that was once the most loved country in the world, and act like it doesn't matter what others think of us, only what God thinks of you, you have done something immoral.


• When you use hatred of homosexuals as a wedge issue to turn out record numbers of evangelical voters, and use the Constitution as a tool of discrimination, you are doing something immoral . . When you favor the death penalty, and yet claim to be a follower of Jesus, who said an eye for an eye was the old way, not the way of the kingdom, you are doing something immoral.


• When you dismantle countless environmental laws designed to protect the earth which is God's gift to us all, so that the corporations that bought you and paid for your favors will make higher profits while our children breathe dirty air and live in a toxic world, you have done something immoral. The earth belongs to the Lord, not Halliburton.


• When you claim that our God is bigger than their God, and that our killing is righteous, while theirs is evil, we have begun to resemble the enemy we claim to be fighting, and that is immoral. We have met the enemy, and the enemy is us.


• When you tell people that you intend to run and govern as a "compassionate conservative," using the word which is the essence of all religious faith-compassion, and then show no compassion for anyone who disagrees with you, and no patience with those who cry to you for help, you are doing something immoral.


• When you talk about Jesus constantly, who was a healer of the sick, but do nothing to make sure that anyone who is sick can go to see a doctor, even if she doesn't have a penny in her pocket, you are doing something immoral.


• When you put judges on the bench who are racist, and will set women back a hundred years, and when you surround yourself with preachers who say gays ought to be killed, you are doing something immoral.

I'm tired of people thinking that because I'm a Christian, I must be a supporter of President Bush, or that because I favor civil rights and gay rights I must not be a person of faith. I'm tired of people saying that I can't support the troops but oppose the war- I heard that when I was your age, when the Vietnam War was raging. We knew that that war was wrong, and you know that this war is wrong - the only question is how many people are going to die before these make-believe Christians are removed from power?

This country is bankrupt. The war is morally bankrupt. The claim of this administration to be Christian is bankrupt. And the only people who can turn things around are people like you - young people who are just beginning to wake up to what is happening to them. It's your country to take back. It's your faith to take back. It's your future to take back.

Don't be afraid to speak out. Don't back down when your friends begin to tell you that the cause is righteous and that the flag should be wrapped around the cross, while the rest of us keep our mouths shut. Real Christians take chances for peace. So do real Jews, and real Muslims, and real Hindus, and real Buddhists-so do all the faith traditions of the world at their heart believe one thing: life is precious. Every human being is precious.

Arrogance is the opposite of faith. Greed is the opposite of charity. And believing that one has never made a mistake is the mark of a deluded man, not a man of faith. And war - war is the greatest failure of the human race - and thus the greatest failure of faith.

There's an old rock and roll song, whose lyrics say it all: War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And what is the dream of the prophets? That we should study war no more, that we should beat our swords into plowshares and our spears into pruning hooks. Who would Jesus bomb, indeed? How many wars does it take to know that too many people have died? What if they gave a war and nobody came? Maybe one day we will find out.

Time to march again my friends. Time to commit acts of civil disobedience. Time to sing, and to pray, and refuse to participate in the madness. My generation finally stopped a tragic war. You can, too!

Posted by griffjon at 07:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 20, 2005

Don't remind me

OK? I know. Coronation day. They win. I get it. Please don't remind me.

Posted by griffjon at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)

January 19, 2005

More House Repairs

Installed (ghetto) curtains in my bedroom, replacing the stick-curtain things that didn't really suffice to block out streetlights at night, and had dubious privacy qualities.

I moved one of the stick curtains to the kitchen.

Hopefully I'll at some point be motivated to nice-up the curtains, they're not hemmed or anything, but that's a lot of work to take something that's already functional to looking better.

Posted by griffjon at 08:43 PM | Comments (0)

Have you heard about Social Security recently?

You should definitely read up on the (lack of) Social Security Crisis.

Posted by griffjon at 06:45 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2005

Worldview

More than half of people surveyed in a BBC World Service poll say the re-election of US President George W Bush has made the world more dangerous.

Only three countries - India, Poland and the Philippines - out of 21 polled believed the world was now safer.

The survey found that 47% now viewed US influence in the world as largely negative and such unfavourable feelings extended towards Americans as a whole.

None of the countries polled supported contributing their troops to Iraq.

"This is quite a grim picture for the US," said Steven Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA), which carried out the poll with GlobeScan.

"Negative feelings about Bush are high and are generalising to the American people who re-elected him."

On average across all countries, 58% of people - and 16 out of 21 countries polled - said they believed Mr Bush's re-election to the White House made the world more dangerous.

--BBC

This is when I get to say, I told you so.

Posted by griffjon at 08:21 PM | Comments (0)

The UN/Iraq Oil Scandal!1!1!one!!!

We all knew that the dirty UN was fudging the oil-for-food program to covertly help Iraq, right? Lots of inside-deals and bribes and whatnot? Turns out the first conviction is against an Iraqi-American:

An Iraqi-American businessman has pleaded guilty to charges related to the UN oil-for-food programme for Iraq.

Court papers said Iraqi-born Samir Vincent did business with Saddam Hussein, earning millions of dollars in the process.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)

Wrrk, Day 2

$job looks to be busy, but not hectic. It's a good job, the only problem being it's the heavy weight of The Job as an abstract concept of something I go to every morning, every weekday, and it doesn't save the world. I get to see interesting new tech, which is fun. I can certainly enjoy it for a few months, and basically I just need to defeat the mindgame around working a 9-5 in Austin as opposed to Doing Real Work That Helps People, like Chanita is doing.

Once I get a bit more settled and comfy with a schedule here, I'll be seeking out some local projects to do free or cheap IT geekery for. Well, I'll continue to do remote tech support for Chana's Esperanza En Accion, naturally, but she already has geek support.

Posted by griffjon at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

January 17, 2005

Cogent look at torture

Ann Applebaum (Washington Post) writes on torture, talking with retired military personnel on the problems with torture.

Posted by griffjon at 07:41 PM | Comments (0)

You down with OKC? Yeah, you know me!

This extended weekend, I road-tripped up to Oklahoma City to meet Chana before she flew back to Nica in a week or two. This involved crashing at the ever-gracious Chad's, and meeting a whole bevy of people in their friend group at their weekly Drunken Games Night and Food Nights.

I'm writing this down at the Austin Games Night, after the long drive, so my already-fragmented thoughts on the weekend are further fragmented by very odd comments floating in and games being organized.

It was all very amusing -- Chana's friends remind me strongly of the Austin crowd of my friends, with many of the same foibles and fun as my group, so we played well together. Chana and I didn't have too much time to hang and exchange PC and 3rd World stories, because she's insanely busy with getting all the Ts crossed and Is dotted before she flies back. Even given the lack of time and mutual wiped-outedness from driving and such it was still great to put a face to the name (or something like that?).

The drive was gruelling, but not too bad, I've done worse, (and not regretted it, either). Forth Worth sucked, as they closed down all but one lane of traffic (but kept all the on-ramps open!), so as to do minor repairs to one off-ramp. This took ~45 minutes to get ~2mi down the road. Beyond that, I made great time. I-35 people speed like demons, so even by being in the slow crowd I probably averaged ~75mph.

OKC itself is HUGE and sprawly, which is unpleasant, but the bricktown section was nice (Chana gave me a driving tour), and the memorial is awe-inspiring.

Posted by griffjon at 07:37 PM | Comments (0)

January 15, 2005

OKC

I'm going up to OKC this weekend to visit Chanita while she's in the States, and plan world-changing development! Or just chill and share PC and living-in-the-third-world stories.

Posted by griffjon at 11:20 AM | Comments (0)

Fridge, II

GAH, the replacement fridge died yesterday. I moved everything over to Blanu's fridge this morning, hopeuflly I didn't wake him up. Called the appliance recycler people, and they say they'll replace it Monday afternoon, so hopefully I can get back into town by then. This is almost as bad as Ja in getting and keeping things working!

Posted by griffjon at 11:15 AM | Comments (0)

January 14, 2005

More on US Torture

"...You would try to exhaust every means you could to extract the information to save hundreds and thousands of people" --Tom Ridge

To give him (some) credit, this was in the case of a nuclear bomb threat. But, a threat is easy to make, or fabricate. Why can't we just not torture people, straight up? How's that for a Good Idea?

Posted by griffjon at 07:08 PM | Comments (0)

Job, Day 1

The first day on the $job went pretty well. I'm more confident I can handle it all, and so on. Interesting crowd of people and students working there. Not sure what else to report on that front right now.

Posted by griffjon at 06:08 PM | Comments (0)

January 13, 2005

Desertion

An estimated 5,500 men and women have deserted since the invasion of Iraq, reflecting Washington's growing problems with troop morale.

--Telegraph News, via Daily KOS

Posted by griffjon at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)

Daily KOS, Salon remind us: Bush WAS AWOL

Daily KOS reposts the major points from Salon.com:

• Upon being accepted for pilot training, Bush promised to serve with his parent (Texas) Guard unit for five years once he completed his pilot training.

  But Bush served as a pilot with his parent unit for just two years.

• In May 1972 Bush left the Houston Guard base for Alabama. According to Air Force regulations, Bush was supposed to obtain prior authorization before leaving Texas to join a new Guard unit in Alabama.

  But Bush failed to get the authorization.

• In requesting a permanent transfer to a nonflying unit in Alabama in 1972, Bush was supposed to sign an acknowledgment that he received relocation counseling.

  But no such document exists.

• He was supposed to receive a certification of satisfactory participation from his unit.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to sign and give a letter of resignation to his Texas unit commander.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to receive discharge orders from the Texas Air National Guard adjutant general.

  But Bush did not.

• He was supposed to receive new assignment orders for the Air Force Reserves.

  But Bush did not.

• On his transfer request Bush was asked to list his "permanent address."

  But he wrote down a post office box number for the campaign he was working for on a temporary basis.

• On his transfer request Bush was asked to list his Air Force specialty code.

  But Bush, an F-102 pilot, erroneously wrote the code for an F-89 or F-94 pilot. Both planes had been retired from service at the time. Bush, an officer, made this mistake more than once on the same form.

• On May 26, 1972, Lt. Col. Reese Bricken, commander of the 9921st Air Reserve Squadron at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, informed Bush that a transfer to his nonflying unit would be unsuitable for a fully trained pilot such as he was, and that Bush would not be able to fulfill any of his remaining two years of flight obligation.

  But Bush pressed on with his transfer request nonetheless.

• Bush's transfer request to the 9921st was eventually denied by the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver, which meant he was still obligated to attend training sessions one weekend a month with his Texas unit in Houston.

  But Bush failed to attend weekend drills in May, June, July, August and September. He also failed to request permission to make up those days at the time.

• According to Air Force regulations, "[a] member whose attendance record is poor must be closely monitored. When the unexcused absences reach one less than the maximum permitted [sic] he must be counseled and a record made of the counseling. If the member is unavailable he must be advised by personal letter."

  But there is no record that Bush ever received such counseling, despite the fact that he missed drills for months on end.

• Bush's unit was obligated to report in writing to the Personnel Center at Randolph Air Force Base whenever a monthly review of records showed unsatisfactory participation for an officer.

  But his unit never reported Bush's absenteeism to Randolph Air Force Base.

• In July 1972 Bush failed to take a mandatory Guard physical exam, which is a serious offense for a Guard pilot. The move should have prompted the formation of a Flying Evaluation Board to investigation the circumstances surrounding Bush's failure.

  But no such FEB was convened.

• Once Bush was grounded for failing to take a physical, his commanders could have filed a report on why the suspension should be lifted.

  But Bush's commanders made no such request.

• On Sept. 15, 1972, Bush was ordered to report to Lt. Col. William Turnipseed, the deputy commander of the 187th Tactical Reconnaissance Group in Montgomery, Ala., to participate in training on the weekends of Oct. 7-8 and Nov. 4-5, 1972.

  But there's no evidence Bush ever showed up on those dates. In 2000, Turnipseed told the Boston Globe that Bush did not report for duty. (A self-professed Bush supporter, Turnipseed has since backed off from his categorical claim.)

• However, according to the White House-released pay records, which are unsigned, Bush was credited for serving in Montgomery on Oct. 28-29 and Nov. 11-14, 1972. Those makeup dates should have produced a paper trail, including Bush's formal request as well as authorization and supervision documents.

  But no such documents exist, and the dates he was credited for do not match the dates when the Montgomery unit assembled for drills.

• When Guardsmen miss monthly drills, or "unit training assemblies" (UTAs), they are allowed to make them up through substitute service and earn crucial points toward their service record. Drills are worth one point on a weekday and two points on each weekend day. For Bush's substitute service on Nov. 13-14, 1972, he was awarded four points, two for each day.

  But Nov. 13 and 14 were both weekdays. He should have been awarded two points.

• Bush earned six points for service on Jan. 4-6, 1973 -- a Thursday, Friday and Saturday.

  But he should have earned four points, one each for Thursday and Friday, two for Saturday.

• Weekday training was the exception in the Guard. For example, from May 1968 to May 1972, when Bush was in good standing, he was not credited with attending a single weekday UTA.

  But after 1972, when Bush's absenteeism accelerated, nearly half of his credited UTAs were for weekdays.

• To maintain unit cohesiveness, the parameters for substitute service are tightly controlled; drills must be made up within 15 days immediately before, or 30 days immediately after, the originally scheduled drill, according to Guard regulations at the time.

  But more than half of the substitute service credits Bush received fell outside that clear time frame. In one case, he made up a drill nine weeks in advance.

• On Sept. 29, 1972, Bush was formally grounded for failing to take a flight physical. The letter, written by Maj. Gen. Francis Greenlief, chief of the National Guard Bureau, ordered Bush to acknowledge in writing that he had received word of his grounding.

  But no such written acknowledgment exists. In 2000, Bush spokesman Dan Bartlett told the Boston Globe that Bush couldn't remember if he'd ever been grounded.

• Bartlett also told the Boston Globe that Bush didn't undergo a physical while in Alabama because his family doctor was in Houston.

  But only Air Force flight surgeons can give flight physicals to pilots.

• Guard members are required to take a physical exam every 12 months.

  But Bush's last Guard physical was in May 1971. Bush was formally discharged from the service in November 1974, which means he went without a required physical for 42 months.

• Bush's unsatisfactory participation in the fall of 1972 should have prompted the Texas Air National Guard to write to his local draft board and inform the board that Bush had become eligible for the draft. Guard units across the country contacted draft boards every Sept. 15 to update them on the status of local Guard members. Bush's absenteeism should have prompted what's known as a DD Form 44, "Record of Military Status of Registrant."

  But there is no record of any such document having been sent to Bush's draft board in Houston.

• Records released by the White House note that Bush received a military dental exam in Alabama on Jan. 6, 1973.

  But Bush's request to serve in Alabama covered only September, October and November 1972. Why he would still be serving in Alabama months after that remains unclear.

• Each of Bush's numerous substitute service requests should have formed a lengthy paper trail consisting of AF Form 40a's, with the name of the officer who authorized the training in advance, the signature of the officer who supervised the training and Bush's own signature.

  But no such documents exist.

• During his last year with the Texas Air National Guard, Bush missed nearly two-thirds of his mandatory UTAs and made up some of them with substitute service. Guard regulations allowed substitute service only in circumstances that are "beyond the control" of the Guard member.

  But neither Bush nor the Texas Air National Guard has ever explained what the uncontrollable circumstances were that forced him to miss the majority of his assigned drills in his last year.

• Bush supposedly returned to his Houston unit in April 1973 and served two days.

  But at the end of April, when Bush's Texas commanders had to rate him for their annual report, they wrote that they could not do so: "Lt. Bush has not been observed at this unit during the period of this report."

• On June 29, 1973, the Air Reserve Personnel Center in Denver instructed Bush's commanders to get additional information from his Alabama unit, where he had supposedly been training, in order to better evaluate Bush's duty. The ARPC gave Texas a deadline of Aug. 6 to get the information.

  But Bush's commanders ignored the request.

• Bush was credited for attending four days of UTAs with his Texas unit July 16-19, 1973. That was good for eight crucial points.

  But that's not possible. Guard units hold only two UTAs each month -- one on a Saturday and one on a Sunday. Although Bush may well have made up four days, they should not all have been counted as UTAs, since they occur just twice a month. The other days are known as "Appropriate Duty," or APDY.

• On July 30, 1973, Bush, preparing to attend Harvard Business School, signed a statement acknowledging it was his responsibility to find another unit in which to serve out the remaining nine months of his commitment.

  But Bush never contacted another unit in Massachusetts in which to fulfill his obligation.

Posted by griffjon at 01:02 PM | Comments (0)

Human Rights

Reposted from the BBC:

US 'erodes' global human rights

The report is critical of the 'coercive interrogation techniques' of the US Violations of human rights by the US are undermining international law and eroding its role on the world stage, a leading campaign group says.

Human Rights Watch says the US can no longer claim to defend human rights abroad if it practises abuses itself.

It urges the creation of an independent US commission to examine prisoner abuse at Iraq's US-run Abu Ghraib jail.

Washington is currently investigating alleged abuses at that facility and at its jail in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

'Defiance'

HRW says the US can no longer claim the moral high ground and lead by example.

A Guantanamo Bay inmate in his cell
Attacks on repressive regimes cannot justify attacks on the body of principles that makes their repression illegal
Human Rights Watch

Guantanamo 'torture letter'
Abu Ghraib inmates remember

It cites coercive interrogation techniques at Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib jail as particularly damaging.

The group, the largest US-based rights organisation, says the actions of the US in such detention centres have undermined Washington's credibility as a proponent of human rights and a leader of the war against terror.

"Its embrace of coercive interrogation [is] part of a broader betrayal of human rights principles in the name of combating terrorism," HRW says.

The group calls for the Bush administration to set up a fully independent investigative commission, similar to the 9/11 Commission, to look into the Abu Ghraib allegations.

It also urges a special prosecutor to be appointed to determine what went wrong and to hold those responsible to account.

Last August, an independent commission came to the conclusion that the American soldiers who ran the Iraqi jail were mainly to blame.

Trials of a group of soldiers accused of being at the heart of the Baghdad prison scandal are under way at a military court in Texas.

Last week the US defence department announced a new investigation into allegations of prisoner abuse at Guantanamo Bay.

'Inaction'

However, according to the report, the impact of the abuse scandals has already seriously damaged the US's role as champion of human rights, reverberating worldwide.

When the US classified what was happening in Sudan's Darfur region as genocide it was immediately accused by the country's government of using Darfur as part of "a global American assault on Islam and Arabs", the report notes.

HRW criticises the US and other Western powers for handing the situation to the relatively inexperienced African Union.

"The situation cries out for the involvement by major military powers but they have chosen to be unavailable," the report says.

"Continued inaction risks undermining a fundamental rights principle: that the nations of the world will never let sovereignty stand in the way of their responsibility to protect people from mass atrocities," HRW concludes.

Posted by griffjon at 12:46 PM | Comments (0)

We're not all crazy

It looks like private aid to tsunami victims is about to overtake our Gov't's still-kinda-paltry $350 mil sum.

Unfortunately, this supports the "compassionate conservative" idea, but hey. At least we show we still have a heart if something gets media coverage.

Posted by griffjon at 12:35 PM | Comments (0)

January 11, 2005

More House Repair

Jan 8

• Moved last of stuff in (desk, TV, etc)
• Plants!
• More work on Bench of Zen area
• Put kitchen in order

Jan 9

• Finished raking north side of yard
• Began Porch Renewal Project, adding another pathway, planning for burn-pit access, etc.
• Fridge received!
• Bought $100 of groceries
• baking-powdered the carpet.
• Began a more sane re-wiring to reduce the crazy amount of cables running around for no reason.

Jan 10

• Re-string lights in yard
• Finished second path to porch
• Re-wiring of data, tv, phone cables with Blanu for better cable ability
• Vacuuming

Jan 11

• Stone bench/stools around burn pit
• Birdseed!
• Rat poison!
• More raking
• Plant re-potting and bringing inside
• Linux desktop install
• Smell-pretty plugin for living room
First meal -- Arepas and Asparagus!

Posted by griffjon at 08:31 PM | Comments (0)

Abu-Ghraib trials

Man, are these going to expose some bad juxtapositions. I almost feel bad for their defense attorney.

Defence attorney Guy Womack insisted a tether is a "valid tool", and denied that the photos depicted real abuse.

He compared pictures of naked Iraqi prisoners in a human pyramid to cheerleaders at US sports events, who form pyramids "all over America".

"Is that torture?" he asked, opening Spc Graner's defence on Monday.

--BBC News

Just for the record, yes, I think it just may be torture. But you should probably call some Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders on to corroborate that.

Posted by griffjon at 10:56 AM | Comments (0)

Suspect until proven innocent

More amusing news;

Police in a small town in Massachusetts are hoping to test the DNA of the entire adult male population as they try to solve a three-year-old murder.

Truro officials say the 790 men in the town have a right to refuse but those who do so will be closely checked.

The initiative has been prompted by slow progress in the case of fashion writer Christa Worthington, who was killed in her home in January 2002.

The broad sweep of the test is alarming civil rights campaigners.

American Civil Liberties Union spokesman Barry Steinhardt told the New York Times that a refusal to undergo the tests in itself aroused suspicion.

"They're not very effective and they're certainly not voluntary," he said. "It's either give a sample or you're a suspect. It turns the classic American concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' on its head."

--BBC

(Why, yes, I am trying to catch up on my news, how could you tell?)

Posted by griffjon at 10:50 AM | Comments (0)

CBS and the Bush documents

CBS is now firing people connected to the questionable Bush documents they aired on 60 Minutes:

Four staff of US TV network CBS have been sacked over the use of allegedly false documents in a report about President Bush's military service.

An independent inquiry concluded the channel showed "myopic zeal" in pushing ahead with the 60 Minutes programme.

The news report questioned Mr Bush's Vietnam War record, which was a major issue in the presidential race.

After the ensuing controversy, presenter Dan Rather apologised and said he was taking early retirement.

The network fired Mary Mapes, the report's producer, Josh Howard, executive producer of 60 Minutes Wednesday and his senior deputy Mary Murphy and senior vice-president Betsy West.

Credulity

Mr Rather, who narrated the report, "asked the right questions initially, but then made the same errors of credulity and over-enthusiasm that beset many of his colleagues in regard to this segment," said CBS senior executive Leslie Moonves.

--BBC News

In a better world, they'd be re-assigned to uncovering where these documents came from...

But, there is some good news,

A top US black commentator has been dropped by a major syndication service for taking public money to promote President Bush's education policies.

Armstrong Williams last week admitted his firm was paid $240,000 (£128,000) by the Education Department to promote the No Child Left Behind law.

In response, Tribune Media Services said it was halting distribution of Mr Williams' weekly newspaper column.

The conservative commentator later apologised for his "bad judgement".

However, Mr Williams said he would not return the money, because the Education Department also "bought advertising, and they got it".

--BBC News

Uh, advertising generally isn't considered using your position as a journalist to promote it in the context of giving informed opinions and news. Just FYI.

Posted by griffjon at 10:39 AM | Comments (0)

January 10, 2005

Learning from history

"Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history." --George Bernard Shaw

Because in the past, we've had so much luck in the training of the enemies-of-our-enemies in South America and, say, Afghanistan, for example;

one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads, most likely hand-picked Kurdish Peshmerga fighters and Shiite militiamen, to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers

Read more: 'The Salvador Option' at CommonDreams.org

(News heads-up props to JP)

Posted by griffjon at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)

January 07, 2005

Some quotes on American Facism

"And yet, we are oppressed by one nightmarish idea: if a dictatorship in Hitler's style should ever rise in America, all hope would be lost for ages. We in Germany could be freed from the outside. Once a dictatorship has been established, no liberation from within is possible. Should the Anglo-Saxon world be dictatorially conquered from within, as we were, there would no longer be an outside, nor a liberation. The freedom fought for and won by Western man over hundreds, thousands of years would be a thing of the past. The primitivity of despotism would reign again, but with all means of technology. True, man cannot be forever enslaved; but this comfort would then be a very distant one, one a plane with Plato's dictum that in the course of infinite time everything that is possible will here or there occur or recur as a reality. We see the feelings of moral superiority and we are frightened: he who feels absolutely safe from danger is already on the way to fall victim to it. The German fate could provide all others with experience. If only they would understand this experience! We are no inferior race. Everywhere people have similar qualities. Everywhere they are violent, criminal, vitally capable minorities apt to seize the reins if occasion offers, and to proceed with brutality." -- Karl Jaspers, The Question of German Guilt (1946) (thanks, la_chispa!)

"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross" -- Sinclair Lewis

"Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government's purposes are beneficent . . . The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding." -- Olmstead v. U.S., 277 U.S. 438, 479, Brandeis dissenting (1928).

Posted by griffjon at 02:25 PM | Comments (0)

Lots of Good News

Good: Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones (D-OH) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-CA) forced 2 hours in each house of discussion on Ohio election fraud. Didn't come to anything, but at least two congresswomen had the ball^H^H^H^H gumption to do it.

I hope neither of them have significant others in undercover or otherwise perilous jobs.

At least a few people, like Sen. Leahy, called Gonzales out on torture. Daily KOS gives a good breakdown of the transcript.

Good: We're giving 350mil to tsunami relief. After first pledging 15, then 35M, both paltry sums. Talking with some people about this, I've heard "where's the rest of the world? Why do we have to be expected to pay so much?" (a) the rest of the world is already paying and helping, probably at a greater percentage of their GDP than we are, and (b), have you checked our per-capita income recently? The USA is rich. The annual income of people effected by the tsunami is often closer to a monthly income in the States. Think about that. Keep going... Yeah.

Great: Daily Show is back with new episodes. Man, I wish their job was more difficult.

Posted by griffjon at 10:26 AM | Comments (0)

January 06, 2005

Austin House Repairs, round 1

Dec 28:

• Clean up trash out of living room, move in furniture
• more cleaning

Dec 29:

• sweep, vacuum, mop all rooms
• organize and move around stuff
• set up hifi

Dec 31:

• Move in hifi cabinet (thanks Ben!)

Jan 1:

• hah, RIGHT.

Jan 2:

• Nothin' much

Jan 3

• During Games Night I finshed the tile job in the kitchen that had been started long ago.

Jan 4

• began raking backyard
• moved bricks around into pathways
• Created Bench of Zen
• Organized kitchen
• cleaned doors
(first night to sleep in house!)

Jan 5

• Made path to foundation
• more raking
• more bricks to BoZ area
• decorative rocks
• dug out burnpit
• strung xmas/yard lights higher, found a short the hard way
• weather stripping
• tiled/caulked (most of) bathroom
• got speaker wire set up, Dolby 5.1 surround sound working on hifi

Jan 6

• Maintenance man came by, installed oven connection, works well (no pilot light, but hey)
• Fridge getting replaced tomorrow. Sad to see kegerator gone, but saved the keg/tap connection for possible re-use.
• Weather-stripping/caulking of some windows

Posted by griffjon at 01:06 PM | Comments (0)

January 05, 2005

New Years Sum-up

I drove in to Austin on the 28th to move large furniture items in, arrange my lease, and so on. My new flat-mate blanu helped in the very difficult task of moving my futon frame up the stairs. I stayed with Mo and Mike. The next day I spent cleaning the apartment (it was very messy, to say the least), and then in the afternoon going around in preparation for Kathy's arrival that evening, which included checking in to the Omni Hotel (thanks to a reasonable price garnered through Priceline).

The 30th, we lolled in the Omni for as long as possible, then went by my apartment for awhile, and then down to MisterNihil's, where we would camp for the next few days. For dinner, we hung out with some of Kathy's friends in Austin, recently married with cute cats.

On the 31st we slept in and putzed around, and then went crazy going around doing pre-NYE-party chores and trying to find a shirt similar to one K had bought in Austin a few years ago, but with no luck. . We got out to the party house in Spicewood around 7 and I "whipped up" a huge batch of veggie chili, which seemed to be popular.

The party was excellent -- great reunion of all the exAustinites, and it turns out one of Kathy's close college friends was the best friend of the host (small world effect), and they both "had friends in PC/Jamaica... wouldn't it be funny if they knew each other...?" We had massive amounts of mostly healthy food, fun drinks, games (including Drunk or Nude, which is like truth or dare, but for friendly, non-vindictive people), and chillin. The party began to wind down around 5AM, so I set up the back of the truck with a tarp and my futon matress as our bed for the "night", and it was surprisingly comfy. Sorry about the shocks, Dad ;)

The rest of the 1st was spent lounging around, cleaning up, walking down to th Green Hole on the pedernales river, making and eating homemade breakfast burritos, and collaging (the traditional post-NYE party activity). Scans of the collage will be available shortly. I was all intent on making a cool retro-computer collage with these 70s and 80s era computer magazines, but got horribly side-tracked. The night of the first, K and I tried to walk around Town Lake, but it was too dark to go very far, I think we might've gone a mile or so.

We had planned to go out to Enchanted Rock on the second, but it was rainy and misty in the morning, so we turned the 6AM alarm clock off...and slept till noon. I guess we needed to catch up on sleep a bit? We hiked around down at the greenbelt when it cleared off in the afternoon, and talked about religion a lot. I realized I've become a pretty hardened atheist.

For lunch on the third we went out to Opie's, so Kathy could get the authentic Texas BBQ experience, and came back to meet a friend of hers at Amy's Ice Cream (yum), and then walked around to BookPeople, Treaty Oak, and such. It was Games Night, so we went by that (it's currently being hosted in my living room, luckily Blanu has a spare key, so I didn't need to be there to open up or close down, as K and I were pretty worn out. We went out for dinner at Ararat.

On the 4th we had to get up pre-dawn and get Kathy to the airport, where she got special consideration by the security folks, so it took her forever to get through, but she did, and reached Maryland safely.

That's our third parting. I can only say they don't get any easier. Having her in Austin for NYE was great fun tho.

Posted by griffjon at 11:55 PM | Comments (0)