GriffJon.com Blog: politics Archives

September 23, 2009

Rachel Maddow Interviews Tom Ridge On Politicizing Terror Level

Posted by griffjon at 09:41 AM | TrackBack

September 09, 2009

Franken talks down angry mob at State Fair

Franken answers questions and deals with doubt around health care reform.

Posted by griffjon at 11:46 AM | TrackBack

August 26, 2009

Whistleblowing from Health Care

Via Boingboing; High-ranking insurance PR flack defects, explains dirty tricks used to fight universal healthcare:

BILL MOYERS: Was [Michael Moore's SICKO] true? Did you think it contained a great truth? WENDELL POTTER: Absolutely did.
BILL MOYERS: What was it?

WENDELL POTTER: That we shouldn't fear government involvement in our health care system. That there is an appropriate role for government, and it's been proven in the countries that were in that movie.

Posted by griffjon at 10:01 AM | TrackBack

August 25, 2009

Pray against health reform

Minnesota's Michell Bachmann is calling for prayer and fasting to defeat healthcare reform:

“That’s really where this battle will be won — on our knees in prayer and fasting,” she told the listeners. “Remember: faith without works is dead. So we’re asking you to do all of it: pray, fast, believe, trust the Lord, but also act.”

As well as repeating misinformation and lies and a whole lot more insanities.

I am all for this. I think prayer and fasting are the best opposition to health care reform -- and also the solution! Have cancer? Just pray! High blood pressure? Pray! (actually, fasting might really help there). Can't get insurance because your new pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition and thus you're breaking the laws by not getting prenatal care? God'll make sure you birth that baby -- you might die in the process, but hey, mysterious ways, right? Who needs insurance if you've got god on your side.

Also, guns. I think gun ownership for "protection" reveals a lack of faith in your savior to protect you. If God sends a thief to steal your money, molest your wife, or pillage your home, maybe he's sending you a message? I mean, there's that story about the guy with the boils and stuff - do you think he'd have learned his holy lesson if he'd had good health insurance and a gun?

Seat belts also are the cradle of the devil. If it's your time, then it's your time. All this safety stuff is blasphemy.

I welcome a national prayer-and-fasting against healthcare reform. Indeed, I think it is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING for god-fearing opponents to reform to take action on right now. Stop watching Fox News, stop emailing your congressman and start praying or risk being caught worshipping false idols.

Posted by griffjon at 01:19 PM | TrackBack

January 19, 2009

Inauguration Concert Photos

A and I went to the concert on Sunday. There were a few people there. I guess if you get U2, Bruce, Steview Wonder, Beyonce, Usher, and more - as well as the Bidens and Obamas, people will show up?

More...

Posted by griffjon at 04:25 PM | TrackBack

January 17, 2009

Inauguration Insanities

So, I realized in talking to on of my old Austin friends that DC is really it's own unique snowflake right now. Let me share the insanity which is the Inauguration.

We're closing all bridges from VA into DC. Take that for not funding the Metro system more, VA! If VA residents want to share the celebration, they get to drive around through Maryland or *gasp* take public transit (Virginians are known for driving - a lot). Also, for any tricksy outdoorsy-type Virginians, the Coast Guard is dispatching over 40 boats to patrol the potomac against kayakers. Really.

We're shutting down huge portions of downtown to secured-access, no cars, etc. It will be a great, if cold, day for pedestrians and bikers - the local bike advocacy group secured a deal with the City to offer a free Bike Valet program for bike riders. The street in front of our house is a designated pedestrian pathway, and they're going to tow all the parked cars from it on Monday night.

My work building is within a "lock-down" area, so I'll have to have my secure-entry card, photo-ID, and be on a pre-approved list if I want to get inside on Tuesday.

Which is fine, because Tuesday is a DC-only federal holiday. Everything is shutting down.

Except for the Metro, which is operating very extended hours (opening at 4am on Tuesday!) and ... bars, which got an emergency ordinance passed to allow them to stay open and serving booze until 5am all weekend. So - monday night, party until 5, then take the metro to stand in line for the inauguration security checkpoint drunk! (note: not my current plan)

They're setting up ~6 jumbotrons along the National Mall between the museums and the Washington Monument to rebroadcast the event.

I mean, all of that is crazy enough, right? It goes deeper. All the craft vendors at Eastern Market are selling Obamabelia, there's a store downtown that /only/ sells Obamabelia, and each and every random street-vendor, who usually makes their money from emergency umbrellas, ties, and hats, is selling obama hats (with blinged-out glittery Obama faces, etc.).

We were doing some emergency stock-up shopping at the local Safeway last night. They had photo-on-icing obama cookies (we bought some), cakes, and patriotic-themed cupcakes, and were blasting orchestral versions of classic American jingoistic songs - you've never shopped until you're selecting avocados to the tune of "Johnny Comes Marching Home" by a full orchestra)

Everyone's trying to cash in - people are trying to rent their homes out for extravagant amounts on Craigslist (http://dcist.com/2009/01/has_the_inauguration_rental_bubble.php), and despite the posted "prostitution free zone" (http://dcist.com/2009/01/dc_tries_to_ban_prostitution_for_in.php), there's also a hot trade of dates-for-ball-tickets (http://lostintransition.nationaljournal.com/2009/01/inaugural-ballers.php).

Half of DC is battening down the hatches and not even planning to venture out, the other half is getting ready for a 4-day-long bacchanalia.

Good times.

Posted by griffjon at 11:57 AM | TrackBack

September 05, 2008

Two things you must read/watch

First, Jon Stewart attacks pundit hypocrisy - using their own words:

Second, Douglas Rushkoff on the RNC:

I realized I was no longer filtering a speechwriter’s intentional manipulation; I was trying to look beyond real hate. These folks were gritting their teeth, shaking their fists, and smiling the way gladiators do when going into combat against barbarians. And this is the incumbent party. The ones currently in power.
What is it they hate? Guiliani and Palin both made it pretty clear: community organizing. Community organizing is energized from below. From the periphery. It is the direction and facilitation of mass energy towards productive and cooperative ends. It is about replacing conflict with collaboration. It is the opposite of war; it is peace.

Posted by griffjon at 08:16 AM | TrackBack

July 25, 2008

Great roundup on the war on terror

CNN reporter critical of TSA gets pestered every time he flies:

CNN's Drew Griffin reported on the bloating of the watch list, which an ACLU count pegged at 1,001,308 names Wednesday afternoon. Griffin's is one of those names, he says.

"Coincidentally, this all began in May, shortly after I began a series of investigative reports critical of the TSA. Eleven flights now since May 19. On different airlines, my name pops up forcing me to go to the counter, show my identification, sometimes the agent has to make a call before I get my ticket," Griffin reported. "What does the TSA say? Nothing, at least nothing on camera. Over the phone a public affairs worker told me again I'm not on the watch list, and don't even think that someone in the TSA or anyone else is trying to get even."

Yankees stadium bans sunblock:

Security guards collected garbage bags full of sunblock at the entrances to Yankee Stadium over the sweltering weekend, when temps hit 96 degrees and the UV index reached a skin-scorching 9 out of 10 - a move team officials said was to protect the Stadium from terrorism. The team contends that sunscreen has long been on the list of stadium contraband, but there is no mention of it on the Yankee Web site.

Four weeks ago, Stadium officials decided that sunscreen of all sizes and varieties would not be permitted, a security supervisor told The Post before last night's game.

"There have been a lot of complaints," he said. "We tell them to apply once and then throw it out."

For fans who bring babies or young children to cheer on the home team, the guard had suggested they "beg" to take the sunblock in.

Luckily, the stadium sells 1-ounce bottles of SPF 15 sunblock for $5 a pop. But it's to prevent terrorism, not to turn a huge profit.

And Amnesty continues doing their job of trying to remind us that people have now been in Gitmo with no hope of release or even trial for years.

GO AMERICA! GOOD JOB THERE!

Posted by griffjon at 09:51 AM | TrackBack

May 05, 2008

Waterboarding

Seriously, can the debate be over now?

Amnesty International video on waterboarding -- showing as a movie trailer in theaters now!

Posted by griffjon at 08:00 AM | TrackBack

February 23, 2008

Blast from the past

Edit: OK, I was really excited about this article below until I got to the end when it started talking about "So dramatic are the report's scenarios, Watson said, that they may prove vital in the US elections. Democratic frontrunner John Kerry is known to accept climate change as a real problem. Scientists disillusioned with Bush's stance are threatening to make sure Kerry uses the Pentagon report in his campaign." -- it was published in 2004. Sigh.

Ok; so now can we get something done?

A secret report, suppressed by US defence chiefs and obtained by The Observer, warns that major European cities will be sunk beneath rising seas as Britain is plunged into a 'Siberian' climate by 2020. Nuclear conflict, mega-droughts, famine and widespread rioting will erupt across the world.
The document predicts that abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies. The threat to global stability vastly eclipses that of terrorism, say the few experts privy to its contents.

'Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life,' concludes the Pentagon analysis. 'Once again, warfare would define human life.'

The findings will prove humiliating to the Bush administration, which has repeatedly denied that climate change even exists. Experts said that they will also make unsettling reading for a President who has insisted national defence is a priority.

The report was commissioned by influential Pentagon defence adviser Andrew Marshall, who has held considerable sway on US military thinking over the past three decades. He was the man behind a sweeping recent review aimed at transforming the American military under Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

Climate change 'should be elevated beyond a scientific debate to a US national security concern', say the authors, Peter Schwartz, CIA consultant and former head of planning at Royal Dutch/Shell Group, and Doug Randall of the California-based Global Business Network.

Bob Watson, chief scientist for the World Bank and former chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, added that the Pentagon's dire warnings could no longer be ignored.
'Can Bush ignore the Pentagon? It's going be hard to blow off this sort of document. Its hugely embarrassing. After all, Bush's single highest priority is national defence. The Pentagon is no wacko, liberal group, generally speaking it is conservative. If climate change is a threat to national security and the economy, then he has to act. There are two groups the Bush Administration tend to listen to, the oil lobby and the Pentagon,' added Watson.

Posted by griffjon at 09:54 AM | TrackBack

Disenfranchise this!

Students at Prarie View A&M in Texas (a democratic stronghold) have a seven mile trek to their polling place -- not horrible, except that they're students with a lower than average number of cars (and certainly there's a place on or near campus to host a polling location?). Regardless, they marched, en masse, to go vote -- and blocked the highway in protest as they did it.

Posted by griffjon at 09:47 AM | TrackBack

February 16, 2008

Peace Corps, Espionage, and Bolivia, Part II

Bolivia charged a US embassy official with espionage. He's been removed from the country with promises from the US Embassy that he will never set foot in Bolivia again, after it came to light that he's been asking Fullbright scholars and Peace Corps volunteers to spy on Venezuelans and Cubans in Bolivia, says ABCNews:

... the first time in history that the Bolivian government has charged a U.S. embassy official with a criminal offense -- let alone for one as serious espionage.
Officials from the two countries met for hours yesterday in La Paz in an attempt to quell the growing tension and called a truce last night. Both sides declared their intentions to better relations and made clear that the official in question -- Assistant Regional Security Advisor Vincent Cooper -- would not return to Bolivia.

"We accept the [U.S.] ambassador's explanations, and we want to get past the issue," said Foreign Relations Minister David Choquehuanca at the press conference that followed the more than three-hour-long meeting

A sad footnote that scooted in to the end of the ABC News article:

The U.S. Embassy in La Paz acknowledges the July incident, having received complaints from Peace Corps staff last year about the matter. But both the embassy and the State Department claim it was "an error," emphasizing that it should not have been interpreted as a request for U.S. citizens to spy.

What was the error? That the volunteers and scholars were asked at all, or that the ask was "interpreted" as espionage?

Posted by griffjon at 02:45 PM | TrackBack

December 16, 2007

Torture

Salon.com has an exclusive article detailing the detainment of an innocent Yemeni citizen in CIA's black site prisons:

The guards wore black masks and black clothes. They would not utter a word as they extracted Bashmilah from his cell for interrogation -- one of his few interactions with other human beings during his entire 19 months of imprisonment. Nobody told him where he was, or if he would ever be freed.
It was enough to drive anyone crazy. Bashmilah finally tried to slash his wrists with a small piece of metal, smearing the words "I am innocent" in blood on the walls of his cell. But the CIA patched him up.

So Bashmilah stopped eating. But after his weight dropped to 90 pounds, he was dragged into an interrogation room, where they rammed a tube down his nose and into his stomach. Liquid was pumped in.

Mark Twain once said; "Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it." I haven't supported my government for a long time, and I've almost lost all support for even my country when things like this come to light on a weekly basis and fall on deaf ears.

Posted by griffjon at 09:13 AM

August 07, 2007

Smells like facism

Former DOJ Lawyer's home raided - the FBI took his computer and his childrens' laptops. He's suspected of... wait for it... leaking the news about illegal warrantless wiretaps to the press (back when they were still illegal, oh how I long for last week).

Posted by griffjon at 08:28 AM | TrackBack

July 31, 2007

Midnight Oil

I re-acquired my old Midnight Oil tunes (they'd been trapped on the tapes - yes tapes - I'd bought in the early 90s and have been listening to their songs a lot the past few days. I'd forgotten how strong their lyrics were, and am constantly surprised by their frankly disturbing applicability to today's global political situation.

Take Short Memory, for a prime example:

Conquistador of Mexico, the Zulu and the Navaho The Belgians in the Congo short memory! Plantation in Virginia, the Raj in British India The deadline in South Africa short memory! The story of El Salvador, the silence of Hiroshima Destruction of Cambodia Short memory!
The sight of hotels by the Nile, the designated Hilton style
With running water specially bought
short memory!
A smallish man Afghanistan, a watch dog in a nervous land
They're only there to lend a hand
short memory!
Wake up in sweat at dead of night
And in the tents new rifles
hey! short memory

'cuz, y'know, that's not suggestive of anything in current events.

It somehow pleases me to see that while the band has broken up, it's because their lead singer is now in the Australian House of Representatives and is the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment & Heritage, Arts...

A few more choice lyrics after the cut.

One Country

was it just a dream, were you so confused
was it just a giant leap of logic
was it the time of year, that makes a state of fear
methods, were their motives for the action

and did i hear you say
my country right or wrong?

i hear you say the truth must take a beating
the flag a camouflage for your deceiving
i know we all make mistakes

US Forces

US Forces give the nod, it's a setback for your country
Bombs and trenches all in rows, bombs and threats still ask for more
Divided world the CIA, who controls the issue
You leave us with no time to talk, you can write your assessment

Will you know it when you see it, high risk children -- dogs of war
Now market movements call the shots, business deals in parking lots
Waiting for the meat of tomorrow

Everyone is too stoned to start emission
People too scared to go to prison
We're unable to make decision
Political party line -- don't cross that floor!

Blue Sky Mine

The balance sheet is breaking up the sky
So I'm caught at the junction still waiting for medicine
The sweat of my brow keeps on feeding the engine
Hope the crumbs in my pocket can keep me for another night
And if the blue sky mining company won't come to my rescue
If the sugar refining company won't save me
Who's gonna save me?

Posted by griffjon at 09:20 PM | TrackBack

What normal looks like

Bruce Schneier, one of the clearer and more levelheaded voices in security and privacy, recently interviews Kip Hawley, the TSA chief shoe-inspector. Bruce asks Kip hard questions, and Kip dodges or gives you the distinct impression that he's straight up lying. After a chain of questions about the pointlessness of shoe checking and the "War on Liquids", Kip responds that indeed, the TSA is adaptive, and not just reacting to foiled plots:

Our security strategy assumes an adaptive terrorist, and that looking backwards is not a reliable predictor of the next type of attack. Yes, we screen for shoe bombs and liquids, because it would be stupid not to directly address attack methods that we believe to be active. Overall, we are getting away from trying to predict what the object looks like and looking more for the other markers of a terrorist. (Don't forget, we see two million people a day, so we know what normal looks like.)

Well, that'd explain why my long-haired-hippie self always gets special treatment at the 2-gated San Angelo airport, which recently upgraded to skybridges so you don't have to deplane onto the tarmac anymore.

PS, if you know Bruce, you should check out some Schneier facts to see if you *really* know Bruce.

Posted by griffjon at 09:00 PM | TrackBack

July 19, 2007

Well, there goes more civil liberties

The UK Guardian reports:

President Bush unveiled an executive order that allows the administration to block bank accounts and any other financial assets that might be found in this country belonging to people, companies or groups that the United States deems are working to threaten stability in Iraq.

Bush cited the ``unusual and extraordinary threat'' to national security and foreign policy of the United States ``posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people.'

Of course, this is limited only to people materially supporting efforts to undermine Iraqi stability. Unfortunately, that could be a pretty board term encompassing anyone who supports withdrawal, from Sen. Reid down to your everyday anti-war protester, or even donor to non-profits/NGOs supporting alternative development strategies. And as we learned last week, pot smokers support terrorists, so their assets could be seized as well, because we know they're a big threat.

Even the geek-news site slashdot has weighed in.

You can read the full text of the executive order at Whitehouse.gov yourself, if this kind of blatant abuse of power is still surprising you.

Can we impeach him now? (does calling for impeachment make me an underminer of Iraqi stability?) Guess I better take some cash out of the bank, huh?

Posted by griffjon at 03:17 PM | TrackBack

July 10, 2007

Dems bend over again

The Democrats have dropped their call for giving TSA employees the right to collectively bargain as part of the bill aimed to respond to the critiques of the 9/11 Commission report.

First, uh, guys, it's 2007. Why have we been worrying about immigration reform and Iraq legislation if we haven't even fixed the massive gaping holes the report uncovered?

Second - who cares if Bush has threatened to veto it. F it. Make him veto the damned thing. Make him clarify that he hates legal unionization of a small group of Federal employees more than he values the safety of the entire American public. Make the rest of the GOP make their views on unions vs safety clear if by their vote on overturning the veto. Who knows, creating a union of TSA employees might help security by streamlining their work and dropping the pointless endeavors they've been forced to enact (shoes, water...)

In other words: stop trying to cooperate. The neocon crowd won't return the favor and won't come to the table unless they get their way. If your goal is to pass legislation, you're going to have to give in to the neocon crowd every time; this isn't compromise, this is surrender. You have control of the house, start acting like it, start sending bills to the hill, regardless of Bush's veto threats. If it's a good bill, you have a decent chance of overturning it with some aisle-crossing vote-pandering republicans.

Posted by griffjon at 01:32 PM | TrackBack

Dems bend over again

The Democrats have dropped their call for giving TSA employees the right to collectively bargain as part of the bill aimed to respond to the critiques of the 9/11 Commission report (many already belong to unions, but are denied the right to bargain collectively).

First, uh, guys, it's 2007. Why have we been worrying about immigration reform and Iraq legislation if we haven't even fixed the massive gaping holes the report uncovered?

Second - who cares if Bush has threatened to veto it. F it. Make him veto the damned thing. Make him clarify that he hates legal unionization and the concept of collective bargaining of a small group of Federal employees more than he values the safety of the entire American public. Make the rest of the GOP make their views on labor rights vs safety clear if by their vote on overturning the veto. Who knows, enabling collective bargaining of TSA employees might help security by streamlining their work and dropping the pointless endeavors they've been forced to enact (shoes, water...)

Posted by griffjon at 01:32 PM | TrackBack

July 02, 2007

But can he pardon himself?

Bush pardons Libby

This is... what's that word? bullshit. the word is bullshit.

Posted by griffjon at 08:57 PM | TrackBack

June 26, 2007

Buttle? Tuttle?

Somewhere in London, a Rob Buttle is about to get a Â£1,484,765 bill for unpaid congestion charges (the BBC bia BoingBoing:

"The majority of missions pay the congestion charge on time and do not incur fines. We also wrote to all missions owing over Â£1,000 in fines urging them to settle their debts with Transport for London."
The US embassy - along with many others - has refused to pay the congestion fee on the grounds that it is tax; and therefore diplomats are exempt from paying it.

It has led to stinging criticism from London mayor Ken Livingstone, who branded US ambassador Robert Tuttle a "venal little crook" for his refusal to pay.

It saddens me that neither BoingBoing nor the Freakonomics blog took the Brazil joke.

Posted by griffjon at 08:31 AM | TrackBack

June 14, 2007

More terrorism because of liquids

Of course, the real terrorists here seem to be the TSA staff who fly off the handle because of a sippy cup with water in it. This security theater has really got to stop.

I explained that the sippy cup water was filtered tap water. The sippy cup was seized as my son was pointing and crying for his cup. I asked if I could drink the water to get the cup back, and was advised that I would have to leave security and come back through with an empty cup in order to retain the cup. As I was escorted out of security by TSA and a police officer, I unscrewed the cup to drink the water, which accidentally spilled because I was so upset with the situation.
"At this point, I was detained against my will by the police officer and threatened to be arrested for endangering other passengers with the spilled 3 to 4 ounces of water. I was ordered to clean the water, so I got on my hands and knees while my son sat in his stroller with no shoes on since they were also screened and I had no time to put them back on his feet. I asked to call back my fiancÃ©, who I could still see from afar, waiting for us to clear security, to watch my son while I was being detained, and the officer threatened to arrest me if I moved. So I yelled past security to get the attention of my fiancÃ©.

"I was ordered to apologize for the spilled water, and again threatened arrest. I was threatened several times with arrest while detained, and while three other police officers were called to the scene of the mother with the 19 month old. A total of four police officers and three TSA officers reported to the scene where I was being held against my will. I was also told that I should not disrespect the officer and could be arrested for this too. I apologized to the officer and she continued to detain me despite me telling her that I would miss my flight. The officer advised me that I should have thought about this before I 'intentionally spilled the water!'"

Posted by griffjon at 03:11 PM | TrackBack

March 04, 2007

The kid's probably a terrorist, anyhow (or will be, after this)

The Globe and Mail has a story about an Iranian family who lost their refugee plea with Canada and was in the process (after ~3 months of the father's detention and torture in Iran) of smuggling themselves back in to Canada. Their flight got re-routed through the U.S. where their (forged) papers triggered their detention:

â€œThey say we have to pass immigration, and they say because we have Greek passport, you need to get a visa for United States. I said no, our ticket is to Toronto, we have no plan to come here.â€

After being held in Puerto Rico for five days, the family was brought to Taylor, Tex., about 45 kilometres northeast of Austin, to the main U.S. family detention centre for immigrants.

â€œMy luggage go to Toronto,â€ said Majid, 42, â€œand we have to stay here.â€

Now, the three of them are locked inside the centre that, U.S. refugee advocates recently alleged, features inadequate medical care, lack of privacy and abusive behaviour by staff toward the green-uniformed detainees.

Posted by griffjon at 07:52 PM | TrackBack

February 02, 2007

Bribing is not good science

The Guardian reports:

"Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments [up to $10000 plus travel and "additional payments"] for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)

The letters were sent by Kenneth Green, a visiting scholar at AEI, who confirmed that the organisation had approached scientists, economists and policy analysts to write articles for an independent review that would highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the IPCC report.
"Right now, the whole debate is polarised," he said. "One group says that anyone with any doubts whatsoever are deniers and the other group is saying that anyone who wants to take action is alarmist. We don't think that approach has a lot of utility for intelligent policy."

But, bribing, on the other hand, is a time-honored tradition in policy making.

The AEI, for what it's worth, is clearly a non-partisan group (up there with Diebold!):

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees.

Posted by griffjon at 12:02 PM | TrackBack

January 21, 2007

Fox News Email Virus?

My mailbox is currently full of a virus/spam with titles like:

"Third World War has Started"
"(Chinese|Russian) missile shot down (Russian|USA) (aircraft|satellite)"
"First Nuclear Act of Terrorism"
"Supreme Court attacked by terrorists"
"(Hugo Chavez|Fidel Castro|Putin) Dead"
"Radical Muslim drinking enemies' blood"
"Saddam Hussein safe and sound!"
"The commander of a U.S. nuclear submarine lunch [sic] the rocket by mistake."
"Venezuelan leader: "Let's the War beginning"

Yay. Just what we need. Viral spam fearmongering.

Posted by griffjon at 02:33 PM | TrackBack

December 06, 2006

WTF?

The Dept. of Health and Human Services, on behalf of the president, would like to ask you to not have sex if you're single and under 30.

...Can we figure out some secession plan now?

Update:

From the NYT, via CNN, 95% of Americans are doomed to burn in hell, er, I mean, engage in premarital sex:

More than nine out of 10 Americans, men and women alike, have had premarital sex, according to a new study. The high rates extend even to women born in the 1940s, challenging perceptions that people were more chaste in the past. ... "The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government's funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12- to 29-year-olds," Finer said ... "It would be more effective," Finer said, "to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active -- which nearly everyone eventually will."

The Bush adminstration has responded to critiques on their HHS anti-premarital-sex report and their absintence-only sex-ed:

Wade Horn, assistant secretary for children and families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, defended the abstinence-only approach for teenagers.
"One of its values is to help young people delay the onset of sexual activity," he said. "The longer one delays, the fewer lifetime sex partners they have, and the less the risk of contracting sexually transmitted disease."

He insisted there was no federal mission against premarital sex among adults.

"Absolutely not," Horn said. "The Bush administration does not believe the government should be regulating or stigmatizing the behavior of adults."

...So is this a new policy about not regulating adult activity, or do you not consider homosexuals (or, say, terminally ill patients wishing to end their lives) "adult"?

Posted by griffjon at 07:16 PM | TrackBack

November 08, 2006

Wha... Huh?

28 seats gained in the House, and teetering on a lead in the Senate also? Rummy quit (before he could become the target of an investigation, perhaps?)

GREAT!

Now, how about that PATRIOT act, those warrantless wiretaps, and Habeas Corpus? We've got some house cleaning work to do...

Posted by griffjon at 12:45 PM | TrackBack

November 07, 2006

Voting

CNN reports:

(AP) -- Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead...."We got five machines -- one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a troubleshooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.
In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues.

Election officials in Delaware County, Indiana, planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there. County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly....With a third of Americans voting on new equipment and voters navigating new registration databases and changing ID rules, election watchdogs worried about polling problems even before the voting began.

And we're calling Nicaragua's elections, which match predictions, independent quick-counts, and have received the EU, OAS and Carter Foundation blessings full of anomalies.

Posted by griffjon at 12:07 PM | TrackBack

November 06, 2006

VOTE

Vote early, vote on paper!

Inform people about the GOP Scam making it seem like Democrats in over 50 congressional campaigns are repeatedly robo-calling voters, failing to comply by the FCC regulations on such calls. Of course, this won't get resolved until after the damage is done. Again.

Posted by griffjon at 09:28 PM | TrackBack

Nica Elections

Not content to muddle with our own elections, the US is trying to continue its policy of choosing the winner in Nicaragua's elections:

Rep. Dan Rohrabacher (R-CA), in a letter asked Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff "to prepare in accordance with U.S. law, contingency plans to block any further money remittances from being sent to Nicaragua in the event that the FSLN enters government." Many Nicaraguan families rely on money sent home from relatives working in the United States. Even though Rohrabacher's statement is total "muscle flexing" according to an expert on remittances at the InterAmerican Dialogue, who pointed out that the US hasn't even cut off remittances to Cuba, some Nicaraguans may cast their vote out of fear. Congressmen Tom Tancredo (R-CO), Ed Royce (R-CA) and Peter Hoekstra (R-MI) wrote variously to Nicaragua's US Ambassador and Condoleezza Rice threatening actions if Nicaraguans vote wrong. All their threats, of course, reverberate in Nicaragua where US Ambassador Paul Trivelli has intervened so loudly that even the usually quiescent Organization of American States has condemned US interference.

OK, I mean, cutting off aid is bad, ask Lebanon. But remittances? That's cruel. That's below the belt, even for the US. Now, this is just some war-mongering congresscritter, but the reality is that we have and continue to muck with their electoral process:

The most public example of this campaign of manipulation is the US Ambassador to Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli. His statements are a constant reminder of the US governmentâ€™s true agenda in Nicaragua. For example, he has stated many times, the US â€œwill establish cordial relationships with any administration that is elected democratically . . . that has a reasonable economic policy and is ready to cooperate with us.â€
The Bush administration has made clear that a government â€œready to cooperate with the USâ€ is one that will do the following: (1) support CAFTA and other free trade policies, (2) participate in all the US requests concerning the war on terrorism, (3) ensure that the Nicaraguan national police receive training that blurs the time-honored distinction between civilian policing and military action, and (4) not maintain friendly diplomatic relationships with either Cuba or Venezuela.

Ambassador Trivelli has also made it clear that the election of the candidate for the PLC party cannot be former President Aleman, nor anyone he selects, and that the election of the FSLN party candidate, Daniel Ortega, will not be accepted by the present US government.

Now, José Serrano has spoken out against this:

â€œIt is simply unacceptable for American officials to pretend our government will take punitive measures if Daniel Ortega is elected president in Nicaragua,â€ Serrano said. â€œOur position should be clear: we support free and fair elections and will work with the winner as we would any other elected head of state in the world. Perhaps some in the executive branch and elsewhere have forgotten that the U.S. does not have the right to intervene in other nationsâ€™ affairs. They would better serve our nationâ€™s interests in democracy and rule of law by avoiding partisan commentary about other nationâ€™s elections and candidates. To do otherwise is unseemly and counterproductive.â€...
â€œI am particularly troubled by the statements of Embassy spokesperson Kristin Stewart. She publicly linked Ortega with terrorist groups and said that the U.S. would revise its policy toward the Nicaraguan government should he win. I believe her words were unfortunate and wrong, and merit a withdrawal. Electioneering is not the proper role of an Embassy or its spokesperson.â€

Stewart told the Nicaraguan newspaper La Prensa that â€œIf a foreign government has a relationship with terrorist organizations, like the Sandinistas did in the past; U.S. law permits us to apply sanctions. [...] Again, it will be necessary to revise our policies if Ortega wins.â€...

â€œI pledge that I will do everything in my power to make sure that the government of the United States will respect the wishes of the Nicaraguan people regardless of who wins their presidential election,â€ Serrano concluded. â€œOur nation desires nothing more than a flourishing democracy in Nicaragua.â€

U.S.: It seems that you do not understand the concept of democracy. It means a people choosing their leaders through election processes. Some are more direct, some are, like yours, done via representation. It is expressly not having your leader picked by foreign nations based on economic alliances. Please check your work and definitions, and please revise. D-

Posted by griffjon at 11:21 AM | TrackBack

November 04, 2006

Papers, Please

Slashdot links to an article (the site is slashdotted currently, see Google's cache)

Forget no-fly lists. If Uncle Sam gets its way, beginning on Jan. 14, 2007, we'll all be on no-fly lists, unless the government gives us permission to leave-or re-enter-the United States.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (HSA) has proposed that all
airlines, cruise lines-even fishing boats-be required to obtain
clearance for each passenger they propose taking into or out of the
United States.

It doesn't matter if you have a U.S. Passport - a "travel document"
that now, absent a court order to the contrary, gives you a virtually
unqualified right to enter or leave the United States, any time you
want. When the DHS system comes into effect next January, if the
agency says "no" to a clearance request, or doesn't answer the
request at all, you won't be permitted to enter-or leave-the United
States.

*blink* What. The. Fuck. Are we Nazi Germany now, restricting our own citizens from leaving?

I suddenly miss being less than a day's drive from the Mexican border.

Posted by griffjon at 10:13 AM | TrackBack

November 02, 2006

more religious right hypocrisy explosions

I think preaching and/or campaigning against deviant lifestyles must lead to deviant lifestyles:

Pastor Ted Haggard, the leader of the gigantic evangelical Christian New Life Church in Colorado Springs and president of the National Association of Evangelicals, resigned after being accused of having an affair with another man. Haggard is the guy who kicked famous atheist Richard Dawkins out of his church in the documentary The Root of All Evil.

via boingboing

Posted by griffjon at 09:31 PM | TrackBack

November 01, 2006

The Dems don't even need to TRY to lose!

With Florida voting machines giving Democrat votes to Republicans (see also here and here).

Remember kids, vote early, vote with paper.

Posted by griffjon at 06:16 PM | TrackBack

October 28, 2006

The Emperor

Through gritted teeth; repeat after me: "The Emperor has clothes. The Emperor has clothes... Your house will be broken into and your belongings stolen by the FBI in the middle of the night if you point out that the Emperor is naked.

Posted by griffjon at 09:58 PM | TrackBack

October 25, 2006

5% of 35,000 "Secret" Prisoners are terrorism-related

Corrente reports on Powell's chief of staff coming out with a number closer to 35k people in Bush's secret prisons, with only 5% of those being terror subjects. Which makes 95% of them, what, exactly? Detractors? People Bush didn't like?

Please Democrats, get it together and turn this guy into a lame duck and start opening up investigation after investigation. The Republicans were all over Clinton for a real estate deal he was formerly involved in, surely we have the balls and mental coherence to go after Bush for wiping his ass with the US Constitution? Bush is doing more harm to the US than any terrorist could ever hope for. Maybe he should spend some time getting waterboarded in Gitmo.

I want my country back.

Posted by griffjon at 08:22 AM | TrackBack

October 24, 2006

Things I never thought I'd read

Now that habeas corpus and other basic rights, including the right not to be tortured while interrogated, have now been deemed unnecessary, more Americans than ever have been thinking of getting out the door while they still can. Getting Out: Your Guide to Leaving America (Process Books, January 2007) provides an informed consideration for all potential expats: where to go, how to get there, and how to live best outside the U.S....

(Via boingboing)

Kinda reminds me of a few quotes:

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

"Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger."-- Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials

Posted by griffjon at 10:28 AM | TrackBack

October 19, 2006

On the terror bill

This is seriously bad stuff. It also appears that Fox news is now writing material for the BBC:

President George W Bush has signed into law a bill that sets standards for the interrogation and prosecution of foreign terror suspects held by the US.

The law aims to enshrine defendants' human rights, but still restricts their right to challenge their detention.

It follows a Supreme Court ruling in June that military tribunals set up to prosecute detainees at Guantanamo Bay violated US and international law.

A US spokesman said preparations would now begin to try Guantanamo suspects.

At a ceremony in Washington, Mr Bush said it was a rare occasion when a president signed a law that he knew would save American lives.

"I have that privilege this morning," he said, calling the Military Commissions Act "one of the most important pieces of legislation in the war on terror".

'Fair trials'

The president said the Central Intelligence Agency's programme of questioning terror suspects had proved invaluable, and the new law would reinforce this.

The Military Commissions Act, he said, would allow the CIA "to continue to question terrorists and save lives", adding: "It complies with the spirit and letter of the US's international obligations."

The law also set out a system of special tribunals, which would give defendants a fair trial, Mr Bush said.

Sorry, I think I must've missed the memo, when did closed military tribunals, dropping habeus corpus, and defining which torture methods could be used become a positive thing, showing our progress and fairness?? I was hoping for the article to end in some acerbic british wit, damning Bush with faint praise, but it's attempt to show "the other side" is pitiful.

Posted by griffjon at 08:23 AM | TrackBack

October 04, 2006

Fox

Fox reveals the truth that's not supported by reality, only Democrats have sex scandals, because as Fox repeatedly has pointed out, Foley, the Republican from Florida, is a Democrat.

In unrelated news, DNA testing on the white splatters on Fox News reveal them to be from the GOP.

Posted by griffjon at 06:42 PM | TrackBack

October 03, 2006

Foley

I have to admit that watching the GOP spin cycle try to deal with Foley is like watching the spin cycle when you finally get around to tossing your mud-caked tennis shoes in the wash. You wince, but somehow, it's still amusing. Case in point, the GOP was covering for Foley not to loose face with the zealot right, but to be sensitive to gays:

Gingrich suggested that House Republican leaders would have been responding "overly aggressively" if they took action against Foley after reading his alleged emails because "the actual notes were relatively innocuous, there was nothing sexual in those notes."

Maybe they should've looked not at the emails (which merely complimented the fitness of various pages, asked for pictures, and ages), and looked at the instant messaging transcripts from 2003 (via ABCNews):

Maf54 (7:46:33 PM): did any girl give you a haand job this weekend
Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:38 PM): lol no

Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:40 PM): im single right now

Xxxxxxxxx (7:46:57 PM): my last gf and i broke up a few weeks agi

Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): are you

Maf54 (7:47:11 PM): good so your getting horny

Xxxxxxxxx (7:47:29 PM): lol...a bit

Maf54 (7:48:00 PM): did you spank it this weekend yourself

Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:04 PM): no

Xxxxxxxxx (7:48:16 PM): been too tired and too busy

Maf54 (7:48:33 PM): wow...

Maf54 (7:48:34 PM): i am never to busy haha

At the end of the day, it's sad that the GOP was covering for what looks to be four years of pedophilia and sexual harassment by Foley, it's sad that Foley is such a putz, and it's really, really, really sad that one of our elected officials can't even get your/you're right.

BTW - keep a barf bag handy if you start reading the ABCNews chat transcripts.

Posted by griffjon at 09:24 AM | TrackBack

September 23, 2006

Emergency Contraception: about morality or health?

This story from rural Ohio reminds us that even large swaths of our highly educated medical practicioners are more concerned about our morals than our health.

Posted by griffjon at 09:42 AM | TrackBack

September 18, 2006

Diebold and Security

Honestly, how do we trust our Democracy's central tenet of voting rights to a company whose idea of securing their digital, no-paper-trail voting system employs a lock with a generic office key?

Hey, companies have all these rights as "individuals" - can an entire company also be charged with treason?

Posted by griffjon at 09:53 PM | TrackBack

September 17, 2006

File this under...

... too little, too late:

what is most anomalous about the irregularities in 2004 was their decidedly partisan bent: Almost without exception they hurt John Kerry and benefited George Bush. After carefully examining the evidence, I've become convinced that the president's party mounted a massive, coordinated campaign to subvert the will of the people in 2004. Across the country, Republican election officials and party stalwarts employed a wide range of illegal and unethical tactics to fix the election. A review of the available data reveals that in Ohio alone, at least 357,000 voters, the overwhelming majority of them Democratic, were prevented from casting ballots or did not have their votes counted in 2004(12) -- more than enough to shift the results of an election decided by 118,601 votes.(13) (See Ohio's Missing Votes) In what may be the single most astounding fact from the election, one in every four Ohio citizens who registered to vote in 2004 showed up at the polls only to discover that they were not listed on the rolls, thanks to GOP efforts to stem the unprecedented flood of Democrats eager to cast ballots.(14) And that doesnâ€™t even take into account the troubling evidence of outright fraud, which indicates that upwards of 80,000 votes for Kerry were counted instead for Bush. That alone is a swing of more than 160,000 votes -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

Posted by griffjon at 08:43 PM | TrackBack

September 11, 2006

National Security

I wasn't intending to write a 9/11 blog, I'm sure there are lots of better entries out there, but I read via boingboing about Greg Palast, and had to pass it on. Five years after 9/11, we've managed to throw a county into outright civil war and give Al Queda a foothold into it, and are much more secure at airports, as long as would-be terrorists promise to limit their nefarious plans to shoe soles and toothpaste. I saw that someone was caught smuggling a knife in a book, and now I'm just waiting to see the pile of burning books next to the pile of discarded "liquids" at each security aisle.

Anyhow. Back to poor Greg:

On August 22, for LinkTV and Democracy Now! we videotaped the thousands of Katrina evacuees still held behind a barbed wire in a trailer park encampment a hundred miles from New Orleans. Itâ€™s been a year since the hurricane and 73,000 POWâ€™s (Prisoners of W) are still in this aluminum ghetto in the middle of nowhere. One resident, Pamela Lewis said, â€œIt is a prison set-upâ€ â€” except there are no home furloughs for these inmates because they no longer have homes.
To give a sense of the full flavor and smell of the place, we wanted to show that this human parking lot, with kids and elderly, is nearly adjacent to the Exxon Oil refinery, the nationâ€™s second largest, a chemical-belching behemoth.

...

So now Matt and I have a â€œcriminal complaintâ€ lodged against us with the feds.

...

After I assured Detective Pananepinto, â€œI can swear to you that Iâ€™m not part of Al Qaeda,â€ he confirmed that, â€œLouisiana is still part of the United States,â€ subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser.

Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations.

So I rang Americaâ€™s top petroleum pusher-men and asked their media relations honcho in Houston, Marc Boudreaux, a simple question. â€œDo you want us to go to jail or not? Is it Exxonâ€™s position that reporters should go to jail?â€ Because, all my dumb-ass jokes aside, that is whatâ€™s at stake. And Exxon knew we were journalists because we showed our press credential to the Exxon guards at the refinery entrance.

The Exxon man was coy: â€œWell, weâ€™ll see what we can find outâ€¦ Obviously itâ€™s important to national security that we have supplies from that refinery in the event of an emergency.â€

Really? According to the documents our team uncovered from the offices of Exxonâ€™s lawyer, Mr. James Baker, the oil industry is more than happy to see a limit on worldwide crude production. Indeed, the current squeeze has jacked the price of oil from $24 a barrel to $64 and refined products have jumped yet higher â€” resulting in a record-busting profit for Exxon of nearly $1 billion per week.

Read the rest at GregPalast.com

Posted by griffjon at 09:49 PM | TrackBack

September 09, 2006

Ronald McHummer

The Ronald McHummer website lets you create your own McD's marquee in protest of their adding Hummers as HappyMeal toys.

(via boingboing)

Posted by griffjon at 08:28 AM | TrackBack

August 31, 2006

Seriously, now...

Without pens, we had nothing with which to fill out the immigrations and customs forms required for international flights arriving at their first port of entry to the United States. We ended up -- all 172 of us -- sharing the chief flight attendant's pen, passing it from row to row.

The war on moisture's been extended to PENS? (uncorroborated blog from UK only thus far), via boingboing.

I think we should ban all unapproved books and burn them at the gate, since books can spread subversive thought (and give nasty papercuts!). In fact, it'd prolly be best if we were just shackled and ball-gagged before walking down the gangplank, and then securely buckled into our seats. A few deaths from deep-vein thrombosis is a small price to pay for freedom. Catheters or adult diapers could take care of bathroom needs. They could play pro-democracy readings of the US Constitution (censored, naturally).

Posted by griffjon at 08:24 AM | TrackBack

August 26, 2006

Airport Security

The War on Moisture is pure insanity. This past trip to Nicaragua was the first time I checked luggage (only coming back, mind you) since leaving Jamaica. It's a hassle, adds time pre-departure, adds the risk of loosing luggage, and takes forever when you arrive, at least in comparison to lugging your carry-on and going. Now, unless I want to buy a new set of toothpaste/deoderant/etc. at every place I go, this means I always have to check some piddling piece of luggage.

Can we cut it with the paranoia?

Even better is poor Raed, who was detained for wearing a shirt that read "We will not be silent" - in English and *gasp* Arabic script! Evidentially it's not cool to wear anything in an entire language in the airport. Luckily there's now a shirt that reads very clearly, "I am not a terrorist" (in Arabic script of course), with the $1 profit off of each shirt going to the ACLU.

Posted by griffjon at 10:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

August 05, 2006

Dollars and Sense

I have recently been gifted a subscription to Dollars & Sense, a magazine of economic justice. It's a pretty excellent source of independent thought on economic and labor issues. I'm now shilling for their blog, because hey, blogs.

Posted by griffjon at 03:50 PM | TrackBack

July 20, 2006

Kinky for Guv

On the TX Governor's race, I think this says it all:

The Democrats, who haven't won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, nominated Chris Bell, an obscure former one-term congressman from Houston. Bell doesn't have a nickname, but he's frequently referred to as "What's-his-name, the Democrat."

The rest of the story at the Washington Post is informative for you folks not indoctinated into the Kinky life, and it has more gems, such as:

Kinky is one of Texas's most famous animal lovers. He donates the proceeds of his line of salsa -- Kinky Friedman's Private Stock -- to the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch, a central Texas facility for abandoned animals that's on land donated by Kinky's late father, Tom. (Laura Bush is on the board of directors.)
"We've saved more animals than Noah," Kinky says. "It's Gandhi-like work, and I'm a Gandhi-like figure. Meaning I don't do any of the real work, I just promote it."

Posted by griffjon at 12:33 PM | TrackBack

June 20, 2006

I miss republicans

I miss republicans.

Posted by griffjon at 10:14 PM | TrackBack

June 14, 2006

Ah, religion

I think this means that Fox is approaching singularity.

Posted by griffjon at 07:11 PM | TrackBack

June 13, 2006

Fun with neocon

[Sarcasm follows]
Just read a piece about a policy in Ghana that had unfortunate side-effects of increasing the abortion rate, increasing children born out of wedlock, and complications or deaths during childbirth (to young mothers). Obviously, if the religious right in America is concerned about reducing these effects in America, we only have to take the reverse policy decision that Ghana did. No, it wasn't teaching sex-ed, making contraceptives available, legalizing abortions, or taking religion out of schools, it was making female genital mutilation illegal (often more euphemistically called female circumcision or clitoridectomy).

Looking at the immediate consequences of this policy change, I think leading republicans such as Frist should take up legalization of FGM as a moral issue to reduce abortion rates.

[end sarcasm]

That being said, I think it's an important lesson that changing a culture's values is hard work and will have lots of unintended consequences. FGM is one of those (few) issues that's abhorrent enough to make it worth the fall-out (IMHO).

Of course, as friends have pointed out, this is the group of mouthbreathers that delayed a vaccine for HPV, the cause of over 90% of cervical cancers which kills almost 5000 American women each year, out of fears that it might increase promiscuity. One wonders what will happen to an effective HIV treatment, or if FGM isn't too far.

I'm not one for conspiracy theories, but the neocons just seem to invite them.

Posted by griffjon at 08:49 AM | TrackBack

May 31, 2006

Whistleblowers

Via the BBC

The US Supreme court has limited the rights of government whistle-blowers by ruling that they will not be protected under the First Amendment.

The ruling, which was passed by a 5-4 vote, means employees are not protected by free speech laws when speaking out during the course of their duties.

The decision will affect all of the nation's 20 million public employees.

But it was criticised by civil rights groups, who said it would discourage employees from exposing misconduct.

In practice, it will strengthen the government's ability to discipline public employees who make allegations of official misconduct.

Right, because our government has been acting so transparently, without graft, corruption, bribery, kickbacks, or collusion of late. *sigh*

Posted by griffjon at 02:46 PM | TrackBack

May 15, 2006

Spying on the media?

ABC News is reporting that they've gotten a leak (heh) that the record of their phone calls is being monitored to... try and stop leaks.

Posted by griffjon at 08:24 PM | TrackBack

April 25, 2006

Fox is evil. Seriously.

Evidentially, billboards and airplane banners reading "6+6+06" are popping up in major metro areas:

A billboard in Chicago's Morgan Park community near the 111th Street exit of I-57 reads: "6-6-06 The signs are all around you."
The mark of the beast is being used by 20th Century Fox to promote a remake of the 1976 chiller "The Omen," which will open in theaters June 6. The thriller stars Mia Farrow, Julia Stiles, newcomer Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick as the devil incarnate, and Liev Schreiber, a horror movie regular with roles in "Scream" and "Scream 2."

Banner tows and billboards have also popped up in New York, L.A., on Chicago's North Side and even in Harvey.

Spring breakers in Arizona's Lake Havasu and Panama City, Fla., spotted the "666" banner flying behind a plane and called 911, news stations and even the FBI. "The reaction confirms that the numbers 666 affect people as they have throughout history," Fox spokesman Jeffrey Godsick said.

The "Omen" campaign also includes signs and airplane banners with the menacing date and "You have been warned."

A publicity stunt, which has the extra added benefit of also stirring the 9/11 pot for their neocon friends, reminding us all about the terror threats all around us. The person who thought up trailing a banner behind an airplane reading "you have been warned" should get shot. Actually, I'm surprised that someone hasn't taken the law into their own hands and taken potshots at the plane.

Posted by griffjon at 12:34 PM | TrackBack

April 09, 2006

...

I feel sick.

A government consultant with close ties to the civilian leadership in the Pentagon said that Bush was â€œabsolutely convinced that Iran is going to get the bombâ€ if it is not stopped. He said that the President believes that he must do â€œwhat no Democrat or Republican, if elected in the future, would have the courage to do,â€ and â€œthat saving Iran is going to be his legacy.â€

â€œThis is much more than a nuclear issue,â€ one high-ranking diplomat told me in Vienna. â€œThatâ€™s just a rallying point, and there is still time to fix it. But the Administration believes it cannot be fixed unless they control the hearts and minds of Iran. The real issue is who is going to control the Middle East and its oil in the next ten years.â€
A senior Pentagon adviser on the war on terror expressed a similar view. â€œThis White House believes that the only way to solve the problem is to change the power structure in Iran, and that means war,â€ he said.

" â€˜Decisiveâ€™ is the key word of the Air Forceâ€™s planning. Itâ€™s a tough decision. But we made it in Japan.â€

Have we become so myopic, so coddled and distracted 24-hour-news and Fox that not only are we dooming ourselves to repeat history, but to repeat mistakes that we're currently suffering through?

Posted by griffjon at 12:40 PM | TrackBack

April 04, 2006

Delay resigns?

Delay announces resignation:

The decision, first reported last night, came three days after Tony C. Rudy, his former deputy chief of staff, pleaded guilty to conspiracy and corruption charges, telling federal prosecutors of a criminal enterprise being run out of DeLay's leadership offices. Rudy's plea agreement did not implicate DeLay in any illegal activities, but by placing the influence-buying efforts of disgraced Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff directly in DeLay's operation, the former aide may have made an already difficult reelection bid all but out of reach.

DeLay, who will turn 59 on Saturday, did not say precisely when he would step down, but under Texas law he must either die, be convicted of a felony or move out of his district to be removed from the November ballot. DeLay told Time magazine that he is likely to change his official residence from Sugar Land, Tex., to Alexandria by the end of May. He said he informed President Bush of his decision yesterday afternoon.

Well, 2 outa three ain't bad, but it looks like he's just going to move into the beltway and keep active, according to his statement

I will determine the new ways from various arenas outside of public office that will allow me to continue to contribute to and engage in the policy, political, and cultural issues of national importance to the conservative majority.
With that plan in mind, I also intend to relocate to my Virginia property and reside closer to Washington, so that I can dedicate the necessary time and energy to making a successful transition from the public to private sectors for myself and family.

Posted by griffjon at 11:40 AM | TrackBack

March 28, 2006

McCain and Falwell

Kos links to news of McCain giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty U

Actually, this may be a good thing if it gets mainstream press, to break the remaining moderates out of their McCain daydream. I liked the guy for a long time, but he's thrown out any moderate cred he had this past year.

So, Obama/Stewart, 2008?

Posted by griffjon at 10:04 PM | TrackBack

McCain and Falwell

Kos links to news of McCain giving the commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty U

So, Obama/Stewart, 2008?

Posted by griffjon at 10:04 PM | TrackBack

March 27, 2006

"Straight Rights"

Savage Love has an interesting spin on recent GOP policy pursuits:

Earlier this month Republicans in South Dakota successfully banned abortion in that state. Last week the GOP-controlled state house of representatives in Missouri voted to ban state-funded family-planning clinics from dispensing birth control. "If you hand out contraception to single women," one Republican state rep told the Kansas City Star, "we're saying promiscuity is okay." On the federal level, Republicans are blocking the over-the-counter sale of emergency contraception and keeping a 100 percent effective HPV vaccine-a vaccine that will save the lives of thousands of women every year-from being made available.
...

What's it going to take to get a straight-rights movement off the ground? The GOP in Kansas is seeking to criminalize hetero heavy petting, for God's sake! Wake up and smell the freaking Holy War, breeders! The religious right hates heterosexuality just as much as it hates homosexuality. Fight back!

Posted by griffjon at 07:09 PM | TrackBack

March 23, 2006

Our Veep

The Smoking Gun provides the Internet with a copy of the tour instructions to hotels housing Cheney:

Now, OK, all TVs tuned to Fox news -- hardly surprising. Whatever. A pot of... DECAF??? I'd've never guessed. Scribbled in: Newspapers: NYT, USA Today, WSJ, Local Paper, (Wash Post?) Sure, makes sense.

At the end: "Extra Shampoo."

...?

(Via This Modern World)

UPDATE: My bad, I believe it actually reads "lamps" which makes slightly more sense.

Posted by griffjon at 08:12 PM | TrackBack

March 21, 2006

Net Regulation

The Miami Herald has an interesting article on some emerging problems of regulating things such as discriminatory housing ads on the Internet, particularly CraigsList:

The Chicago Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights recently filed a lawsuit against Craigslist for allowing ads the group deems discriminatory.
The suit argues that since July 2005, Craigslist has allowed more than 100 ads to run unchallenged on its Chicago-based site. The ads include such language as ''No Minorities'', ''Christians only'' and ''Non-Women of Color need Not Apply.'' Similar ads have appeared in South Florida postings on Craigslist.

$375 -- Christian Female to Share 1-Bedroom Miami Beach Apt.

I am looking for a Christian female to share a clean and simple 1-bedroom apartment two blocks from the beach.

Internet companies have long argued that they are immune from any liability based on a section of the 1996 Communications Decency Act.

Their interpretation of federal law: Internet providers are not liable for users' postings because the sites are merely facilitators and not publishers. Although sites such as Craigslist derive income through partnerships with other Internet companies, many of the services provided are free.

Of course, who's to blame? CL doesn't moderate posts, CL users do, sporadically, and generally only for the worst offenders. It seems like the posters themselves are the most liable party, but then the burden of prosecuting it will be piled on the person discriminated against.

Buckmaster posted on the site a lengthy defense to the lawsuit: ``These lawyers demand that we impose ill-conceived, mistake-prone and potentially illegal controls on the Craigslist community, which if adopted would actually reduce fair housing opportunity while eroding important free speech and privacy rights.''
The suit, Buckmaster writes, ``ignores the fact that Craigslist is not a publisher but, rather, a community-moderated commons run by its users, who self-publish and . . . use a flagging system to police the site.'

[...]

The lawsuit has rekindled the debate about how best to regulate the Internet -- if at all.

Michael Masinter, a law professor at Nova University who specializes in constitutional, civil rights and anti-discrimination law says Congress -- not the courts -- should make such decisions.

Until then, Craigslist and others should be allowed to exist as they are, Masinter said. ``The Internet has to be permitted to flourish, otherwise we would all be reduced to an Internet serviceable to 12 year olds. If they were required to prescreen the millions of ads posted on their site, it would be the end of Craigslist.'''

Requiring moderation would definitely kill CL's business model, and in fact most of "Web 2.0," where the motto is to let the user do all the work. Suing CL would be like suing the owner of an unprotected community bulletin board because someone had posted a racist housing ad on it. Suing the posters of these ads, similarly, is a difficult proposition, as it ends up placing the burden on the already-discriminated-against. I'd argue further that for the peer-to-peer world of craigslist, why bother? Even if the selection process for a new roommate was colorblind, I can't imagine many people interested in living in such a hostile environment. As a white male I wouldn't want to live with some mouthbreathing racist (though admitedly, I'm speaking from the position of being a white male, with very, very few housing opportunities being ruled out for me because of that (OK, the Christian ones would fail to get me, but I could potentially lie about that situation).

The obvious underlying problem is racism, which, sadly, will take education and contact/familiarity to get past, which these people are depriving themselves of. From a policy standpoint, however, focus should be on systematic racism (does an apartment complex have racist policies?) over people looking for roommates (or mates, for that matter -- does a dating service that allows filtering based on race/religion cross the same line? Shouldn't it?). This is hard for me to say, though, because it's still unfair, and it presumes that there are other viable housing/roommates options, which may not be the case in some (many? most?) areas.

For CraigsList, perhaps it should further the effort to remind not just posters, but people browsing the housing ads about the illegality of race in housing decisions, and enable/encourage the user community to flag these racist posts as such.

Posted by griffjon at 09:09 AM | TrackBack

March 09, 2006

China v US

It's a sad state of america when International organizations of doctors and China are BOTH dissing on your human rights.

Posted by griffjon at 09:09 PM | TrackBack

March 08, 2006

Patriot Act

Dear US Gov't,

Please give us our civil liberties back, they are important to us. Thanks.

--Citizens.

14 of the 16 expiring Patriot Act provisions have been made permanent, with the last two getting four year extensions.

Posted by griffjon at 10:01 AM | TrackBack

S. Dakota, look at your future

Pregnant rape victims are intimidated, insulted and threatened.
Humiliation drives over 90% of women away from ever even reporting their rape

For example, some public prosecutors have told rape victims that having an abortion would kill them.

Human Rights Watch likens this to a second assault.

It says rape victims may feel reluctant to approach prosecutors for fear of being humiliated or thought to be reporting a rape in order to get an abortion.

"That humiliation drives over 90% of women away from ever even reporting their rape. And as a result, without reporting the rape, they're not entitled to an abortion," says executive director, Kenneth Roth.

The report says that this forces many into having backroom abortions at great risk to their health.

-- Mexican rape women 'denied help', BBC

Posted by griffjon at 09:53 AM | TrackBack

March 07, 2006

Filtering for our Military

Wonkette reports that Marines are also subject to filtered news ... along somewhat curious lines:

Unfortunately anonomizers don't work out here (never have). Anyway, I had a few minutes today and thought I'd look and see what else was banned on the Marine web here. I think the results speak for themselves:
Wonkette - â€œForbidden, this page (http://www.wonkette.com/) is categorized as: Forum/Bulletin Boards, Politics/Opinion.â€
Bill Oâ€™Reilly (www.billoreilly.com) - OK
Air America (www.airamericaradio.com) - â€œForbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.â€
Rush Limbaugh (www.rushlimbaugh.com) - OK
ABC News â€œThe Noteâ€ - OK
Website of the Al Franken Show (www.alfrankenshow.com) - â€œForbidden, this page (http://www.airamericaradio.com/) is categorized as: Internet Radio/TV, Politics/Opinion.â€
G. Gordon Liddy Show (www.liddyshow.us) - OK
Don & Mike Show (www.donandmikewebsite.com) - â€œForbidden, this page (http://www.donandmikewebsite.com/) is categorized as: Profanity, Entertainment/Recreation/Hobbies.â€

Posted by griffjon at 02:54 PM | TrackBack

March 06, 2006

Because Republicans like restricting financial flows

Capitol Hill Blue reports that paying down your credit card debt can mark you as a terrorist.

So Deana Soehnge called the credit-card company. Then Walter called.
"When you mess with my money, I want to know why," he said.

They both learned the same astounding piece of information about the little things that can set the threat sensors to beeping and blinking.

They were told, as they moved up the managerial ladder at the call center, that the amount they had sent in was much larger than their normal monthly payment. And if the increase hits a certain percentage higher than that normal payment, Homeland Security has to be notified. And the money doesn't move until the threat alert is lifted.

Posted by griffjon at 08:58 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

States I don't like

S. Dakota, Mississippi, Georgia, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee.

S. Dakota just passed it's anti-woman law, the others have similar laws in the works.

Posted by griffjon at 08:23 PM | TrackBack

February 21, 2006

Yahoo doesn't like Allah

From slashdot, it seems that Yahoo doesn't allow the string "allah" (among a few others) to exist in screen names (which annoys entire families named Callahan):

http://quickwired.com/kallahar/stories/2005-Yahoo//allahyahoo.php

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/02/20/yahoo_upsets_religious/

Jesus, Nazi, yahweh, Jehovah and other more offensive ones get through just fine, though.

In fact, I just signed up for nazi_paraphernalia@yahoo.fr . I love the Internet.

Posted by griffjon at 05:40 PM | TrackBack

February 20, 2006

Inappropriate

The State Department thinks that the publication of the new Abu Ghraib photos is inappropriate:

"We felt that it was an invasion of the detainees themselves to have these photographs come out," said John Bellinger of the state department.
It could also "fan the flames around the world and cause potentially further violence", he added.

Hey, OK, look here. Just because we're the U.S. doesn't mean we're right. We've been wrong before. Lots. Especially when dealing with foreign affairs. Step back and look at what you're saying, man. The photos expose and embarrass the U.S., not the prisoners -- they've already had much worse done to them (By US and possibly British troops) than anything the entire Internet working in concert could possibly ever do to them.

At some point, you have to accept that we're committing atrocious acts of humiliation and extreme physical and mental torture. We have caused 10 Iraqi civilians to die for every 1 person who died in the World Trade Center, and not even their leader had anything to do with it. We are torturing, we are holding civilians without due process of law or access to lawyers or the outside world.

We are not good guys. Accept it, and realize that the American people are ashamed of and disgusted with their leaders who are continuing to perpetrate these acts of terror.

Posted by griffjon at 08:29 PM | TrackBack

More Ricean Sabre Rattling

Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez is one of the biggest dangers facing Latin America, Washington has said.
US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said Mr Chavez was trying to influence others away from democracy, and called for a united front against him.

--BBC

I continue to have very mixed feelings about Chavez. On the one hand, he is a megalomaniac and has authoritarian leanings. On the other hand, just 'cus you're paranoid doesn't mean that they're not out to get you. He's weathered one coup, and I wouldn't be surprised if his accusations towards the US had some merit, but the US certainly isn't about to say "yup, we were trying to foment revolution." Regardless, he is loved by the poor, and has implemented a lot of pro-poor policies, as well as helping their Caribbean and South American neighbors with cheap oil. Not to mention TeleSur, as a non-American news source for Latin America.

Posted by griffjon at 08:57 AM | TrackBack

February 17, 2006

Global Internet Freedom: Policing the local libraries

I think it's abhorrent that China is even sending uniformed patrols to local libraries to enforce what citizens can and cannot read on the often-already-filtered government-supported public terminals.

Wait. Did I say China? I meant the US.

Posted by griffjon at 08:23 PM | TrackBack

February 15, 2006

Global Internet Freedom

The news about the "Global Internet Freedom Task Force" hit the blogosphere yesterday;

The State Department announced plans Tuesday to step up a campaign to combat efforts by foreign governments to restrict use of the Internet. At a news conference, Josette Shiner, a top State Department trade expert, called the Internet "the greatest purveyor of news and information in history" but said too often the flow is blocked by government censors.
Shiner announced the formation of a task force that will consider, among other issues, the foreign policy aspects of Internet freedom, including the use of technology to restrict access to political content.
(...)The United States, she said, has "very serious concerns" about the protection of privacy and data throughout the Internet globally, and in particular, some of the recent cases raised in China.

Now, demonstrably, the US is not the biggest fan on "privacy," unless you're trying to keep communications private from them (which, cynically, may be the underlying issue here) with their track record of not only the pains that it took to establish EU/US Safe Harbor, but also the most recent NSA wiretaps, previous methods such as Echelon.

I'm going to chalk this up to grandstanding. I'd hope that human rights issues have a higher priority than Net access, and we've done such a good job at convincing China to address those so far.

Besides, to issue a unilateral statement like that rings false; if anything, we should push this up into the UN and work on it there (Though, I guess it might get shot down too quickly? Can you even see the US signing something like this were it proposed by the EU, for example?)

Being the good little hacker-type I am, I'm taking for granted that government censorship is bad, and information wants to be free, yadda yadda yadda. If the US wants to press something like this, I feel that they'll have to start locally, regulating Internet companies that do business in restrictive regimes (Yahoo, Google, we're looking at you guys) and make it a higher barrier to jump over, force them, for example, to make Google.cn a fully separate entity with trademark/copyright agreements or somesuch.

(Oh, but then, that might open the door to lots of really, really nasty possibilities; say, a township wants to restrict net pr0n locally, there's now legislation giving a blueprint on how to create that effect.)

I can't see how this, though a laudable goal, is at all realistic or enforceable. This has and will continue to be an important issue for China, and we don't have much leverage.

If free, unrestricted, and private communication is what the US gov't really wants to promote, maybe they should grant the EFF and a few choice F/LOSS projects like GnuPG...?

Ah, the times, they are a'changin'

Copyright, 1993. The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
SAN JOSE, Calif. (AP) -- A federal grand jury is investigating exports
of a controversial computer program in a case that could affect how
software is distributed worldwide.
U.S. Customs officials asked for an investigation into ViaCrypt of
Phoenix and Austin Code Works of Austin, Texas, and the companies' plans
for foreign distribution of software, including PGP, a program that turns
data into an indecipherable code using encryption technology.
William Keane, an assistant U.S. attorney, confirmed that an
investigation is continuing, but declined to comment on the case.
The PGP program has been distributed worldwide over computer networks
by some computer enthusiasts who oppose the U.S. government's trade
regulations on encryption.
The National Security Agency, which monitors international
communications, has supported strict encryption technology export
regulations, arguing that it would be difficult to keep tabs on hostile
governments and foreign terrorists.
But opponents say the restrictions hurt sales and violate the First
Amendment that protects the right to publish information about encryption.
"I wrote PGP to make democracy healthier. I didn't do it to make
money," said Philip Zimmermann, a computer consultant who developed PGP.
"We believe everything we are doing is above board and well within the
law," said ViaCrypt president Leonard Mikus. He said the company had no
intentions of violating export regulations.

--PGP Subpoena

Posted by griffjon at 09:14 AM | TrackBack

The Role

The Washington Post led today with this story about the lack of an apology from Cheney:

The Republicans said Cheney should have immediately disclosed the shooting Saturday night to avoid even the suggestion of a coverup and should have offered a public apology for his role in accidentally shooting Harry Whittington, a GOP lawyer from Austin. Whittington was hospitalized Saturday night in Corpus Christi, Tex., and was moved back into the intensive-care unit after suffering an abnormal heart rhythm yesterday morning.

Excuse me, role in accidentally shooting Harry Whittington?? Was this some elaborate plot? Were those shifty little quail involved? Has the NRA been lying all these years, and guns do, in fact, kill people of their own volition? Was Loki/Coyote/Ananzi/Lucifer there pulling the trigger while Cheney's role was just holding the gun?

For chrissakes, the sentence should read "should have offered a public apology for ~~his role in~~ accidentally shooting Harry Whittington"

At least, I guess, they didn't talk about his role in accidentally peppering Harry? (Also, my idea of what "peppering" means does not involve having pellets getting lodged in my heart. JSA.

On that note, I would like to publically apologize for my role in not getting my policy papers written, my role in the current smell of the bathroom, my role in the unmadeness quality of my bed... and there's some other things which I think I'll hold off on for at least another 18 hours before discussing.

Posted by griffjon at 08:39 AM | TrackBack

February 13, 2006

Gitmo

This would make a fascinating splash ... if it ever sees the light of day in American media, that is:

BBC reports Gitmo == torture

Treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay constitutes torture in some cases and violates international law, a leaked UN draft report says.
The document, seen by the Los Angeles Times, suggests that investigators will recommend the prison camp is shut down.

It also questions the legal status of the camp and the classification of detainees as enemy combatants.

The US State Department has criticised the draft report as "hearsay".

ThisModernWorld does a good job of summarizing the numbers game in Gitmo "protestors":

... the number of hunger strikers is now down to only four. But thereâ€™s a good reason for that. Eating is not exactly voluntary. Guards have begun strapping detainees into "restraint chairs" like the one pictured to the left, using riot-control soldiers to keep them still (no details on that), and forcing long plastic tubes down their nasal passages and into their stomachs. The tubes are inserted and removed so violently that prisoners bleed and pass out. Too much food is put in the tubes, which causes prisoners to defecate on themselves.
If youâ€™re strapped into a "padded cell on wheels," while a tube is forced down your nose, that means youâ€™re no longer refusing meals.

All this and they can't even shoot straight.

Posted by griffjon at 07:46 PM | TrackBack

January 29, 2006

Wikified Politics

Wikipedia entries are getting "cleansed" by US House staffers:

The change deleted a reference to Meehan's campaign promise to surrender his seat after serving eight years, a pledge Meehan later eschewed. It also deleted a reference to the size of Meehan's campaign account, the largest of any House member at $4.8 million, according to the latest data available from the Federal Election Commission.

Crap! They found it!

Posted by griffjon at 03:31 PM | TrackBack

January 25, 2006

Venezuela: Where US citizens can safely criticize our gov't?

Seems that Venezuela is the new hotspot to go and criticize our gov't; Cindy Sheehan is there this week speaking to anti-war protestors during the World Social Forum, following Harry Belafonte's speech.

I hope Chavez can chart a solid course and cooperate with the rest of Latin America as a foil to Bush, but I fear he gets to radical most of the time.

Posted by griffjon at 10:27 AM | TrackBack

Georgetown students representing

As a GWU student, I think I'm supposed to take part in some rivalry thing with Gtown, but until we get organized over at GWU to pull something off like this, I can only say that they have my total respect.

Posted by griffjon at 09:42 AM | TrackBack

January 22, 2006

GoogleBomb: Destroyed by Bush

The Bill of Rights has been Destroyed by Bush. Iraq and Afghanistan too, but who's counting?

Posted by griffjon at 12:30 PM | TrackBack

January 21, 2006

eCivilDisobedience

The recent illegal wiretapping done by King George II reminded me of my old email headers from Jam Echelon (Wikipedia on ECHELON), and so I updated them to more current events and have added a piece in my wiki on how you can add custom civil disobedience headers to your email to add more noise to the wires and maybe get you on a watchlist even.

(I'd recommend switching up the words to make it more fun for everyone)

Posted by griffjon at 11:39 AM | TrackBack

January 17, 2006

Lincoln Video

I finally watched the video at the Lincoln Memorial downstairs with my friends this past weekend. E pointed out the best part of the display of photos surrounding the TV screen: MLK issuing his "I have a dream" speech on the left, a modern dance performance adjacent, captioned "Even today, the Lincoln Memorial provides a venue for important cultural performances."

Anyhow, some nice links about how the current administration created this new video and display:

People For the American Way:

The records also reveal that in late 2004 â€“ perceiving that their earlier effort to remove the video had been stymied â€“ administration officials decided to replace all of the memorial exhibits some time this summer and at considerable expense to the cash-strapped Park Service. The planned renovation is so extensive that it may force closure of portions of the memorial during the height of the tourist season.

CNS News:

Pro-family groups in Washington are angry about the video's message. Rev. Louis Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition visited the Lincoln Memorial after reading the original CNSNews.com article. "We stopped what we were doing and saw the video twice," Sheldon said.

"It stinks. I have never seen such a perversion and revision of American history," Sheldon explained.

"I am outraged that tax dollars are paying to promote such a lie that Lincoln would have supported gay causes, abortion rights and feminism," he added.

Robert Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, an affiliate of Concerned Women for America, said he became aware of the "pure propaganda" Lincoln video several years ago.

"We checked it out. It was as bad as advertised: pure propaganda designed to equate abortion and gay rights with the civil rights movement," said Knight in an interview with CNSNews.com.

...Right, because equal treatment under the law for gays and women is NOTHING like civil rights.

Posted by griffjon at 09:57 AM | TrackBack

Add "Independent" to the list of lost concepts

Gonzales responding to Gore's call for and independent investigation into the unconstitutional domestic spying by Bush, via DailyKOS:

... what I can tell you is that from the very beginning, from its inception this program has been carefully reviewed by the lawyers at the Department of Justice and other lawyers within the administration and we firmly believe that the president does have the legal authority to authorize electronic surveillance...

More info on the ineffectiveness of the program

Posted by griffjon at 09:50 AM | TrackBack

January 11, 2006

foreheadslap

BTCnews via KOS, on Bush's use of bill-signing statements to avoid being bound by congressional laws:

In 2003, lawmakers tried to get a handle on Bushâ€™s use of signing statements by passing a Justice Department spending bill that required the department to inform Congress whenever the administration decided to ignore a legislative provision on constitutional grounds.
Bush signed the bill, but issued a statement asserting his right to ignore the notification requirement.

Posted by griffjon at 07:17 PM | TrackBack

December 26, 2005

Holidays vs. Xmas

I of course am celebrating Saturnalia this year, but if anyone out there was still wondering who one, "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays," I'd like to remind you of the settler of all such fights -- GoogleFight.

Google Fight makes the baby Jesus cry.

Posted by griffjon at 04:21 PM | TrackBack

December 19, 2005

Boggle

This Hawaiian news story, mostly from a Fox story, gives a decent rundown of the current insanities regarding spying and Patriot Act.

My favorite part is:

"These senators need to explain why they thought the Patriot Act was a vital tool after the Sept. 11 attacks but now feel it's no longer necessary," Bush said, adding that the filibustering lawmakers "must stop their delaying tactics." "It is inexcusable for the United States Senate to let the Patriot Act expire."

There was a reason why those special priviledges had an expiration date.

I think we should all start calling him King George II, because he obviously believes that he is above the law.

Posted by griffjon at 10:18 PM | TrackBack

Domestic spying

A cryptography mailing-list moderator writes a nice little summation of the felony that our president has admitted to:

As you may all be aware, the New York Times has reported, and the administration has admitted, that President of the United States apparently ordered the NSA to conduct surveillance operations against US citizens without prior permission of the secret court known as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (the "FISC"). This is in clear contravention of 50 USC 1801 - 50 USC 1811, a portion of the US code that provides for clear criminal penalties for violations. See:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode50/usc_sup_01_50_10_36_20_I.html

The President claims he has the prerogative to order such surveillance. The law unambiguously disagrees with him.

There are minor exceptions in the law, but they clearly do not apply in this case. They cover only the 15 days after a declaration of war by congress, a period of 72 hours prior to seeking court authorization (which was never sought), and similar exceptions that clearly are not germane.

There is no room for doubt or question about whether the President has the prerogative to order surveillance without asking the FISC -- even if the FISC is a toothless organization that never turns down requests, it is a federal crime, punishable by up to five years imprisonment, to conduct electronic surveillance against US citizens without court authorization.

The FISC may be worthless at defending civil liberties, but in its arrogant disregard for even the fig leaf of the FISC, the administration has actually crossed the line into a crystal clear felony. The government could have legally conducted such wiretaps at any time, but the President chose not to do it legally.

Ours is a government of laws, not of men. That means if the President disagrees with a law or feels that it is insufficient, he still must obey it. Ignoring the law is illegal, even for the President. The President may ask Congress to change the law, but meanwhile he must follow it.

Our President has chosen to declare himself above the law, a dangerous precedent that could do great harm to our country. However, without substantial effort on the part of you, and I mean you, every person reading this, nothing much is going to happen. The rule of law will continue to decay in our country. Future Presidents will claim even greater extralegal authority, and our nation will fall into despotism. I mean that sincerely. For the sake of yourself, your children and your children's children, you cannot allow this to stand.

(Full text at Cryptome.org

Posted by griffjon at 08:32 PM | TrackBack

December 13, 2005

Diebold CEO resigns

Slashdot reports that the Diebold CEO is resigning. I wonder what he knows?

Posted by griffjon at 06:24 PM | TrackBack

November 26, 2005

Kinky Friedman for Gov

Just so you all remember, I'm a proud supporter of Kinky Friedman, the next governor of Texas. Y'all should watch his cartoon.

Posted by griffjon at 06:33 PM | TrackBack

November 22, 2005

Like anyone's surprised

Throw up your satan-worshipping horns, Pat!

From Fortean Times via BoingBoing

(note the important difference from UT's "hook 'em horns", with the closed fist and thumb over the middle finger.)

Posted by griffjon at 12:15 PM | TrackBack

November 20, 2005

"Push"

Some images just beg for slight modifications:

Bush - Push

Posted by griffjon at 11:58 AM | TrackBack

November 11, 2005

Dogs and Cats... living together! CHAOS!

The RIAA/MPAA-friendly Bush regime chides Sony's use of a rootkit to "protect" their CDs as going too far:

Stewart Baker, the Department of Homeland Security's policy czar warned would-be DRM makers: 'It's very important to remember that it's your intellectual property -- it's not your computer. And in the pursuit of protection of intellectual property, it's important not to defeat or undermine the security measures that people need to adopt in these days.'

More at WaPo and Slashdot

Posted by griffjon at 03:46 PM | TrackBack

November 10, 2005

Wha..huh?

Not only did the Alaskan oil drilling get pulled out of the budget-cutting bill, but then the entire bill which attacked a lot of social programs instead of cash-cow programs has fallen apart.

More at dailyKOS

...what's with all this good news? (At least on the federal level.)

Texas of course passed all of its conservative-twitch legislation, including it's anti-gay proposition. There's something to be said here about divorce rates among republicans, but I'm not sure exactly what.

Posted by griffjon at 09:01 PM | TrackBack

November 08, 2005

Leaky

So, DailyKOS and CNN are reporting on the call and return fire for investigation into the leak of the information about the "black site" prisons. The initial call seemed like a way to balance the Plamegate scandal, but then the backfire was that Lott reveals that he suspects a Republican senator. (DKos story.

DKOS is all celebratory at the ongoing implosion of the Reps, but I wonder that this came out mere days after McCain said, "If necessary - and I sincerely hope it is not - I and the co-sponsors of this amendment will seek to add it to every piece of important legislation voted on in the Senate until the will of a substantial bipartisan majority in both houses of Congress prevails. Let no one doubt our determination." (referring to an anti-torture piece of legislation).

I remain... dubious and curious.

Posted by griffjon at 04:26 PM | TrackBack

November 07, 2005

DC Area Politricks

DailyKOS has been following the pleasantly horrific gov race in Virginia, where the Republican candidate has been sending out flyers and now automated phone calls advertising themselves to be from the Dem. party and the Dem. gov. campaign office. From the Raising Kaine (the Dem candidate) site:

All told, this (ironically named) group has given $2,852,603 (100%) of its money to Jerry Kilgore this year, and $0.00 (0%) of its money to Democrats. Itâ€™s also Jerry Kilgoreâ€™s #1 donor - by FAR! Hmmmâ€¦doesnâ€™t sound like a bunch of Tim Kaine supporters to me. So how can this group be making robocalls that begin, â€œIâ€™m Tim Kaine and I want you to know where I stand on the issues.â€ Isnâ€™t that a bit strange, at the minimum? Illegal? Thatâ€™s up to the State Board of Elections to determine, along with possible civil and/or criminal penalties.

The Republicans have found the best strategy in politics -- campaigns are non-repeated prisoner's dilemmas, so dirty, illegal, and suboptimal actions are "preferred" -- so what if these fraudulent phone calls earn the candidate a stiff fine a few months down the road? Probably no jail-time, and by then who cares? They'll do their damage just in time for elections, and the legal system is far too slow to catch up and do anything, the election result will be final...

Regardless, the Dems need to stop whining and retaliate. Either blanket out phone calls decrying this practice; "
Dear resident, phone calls that begin with "..." were in fact made fraudulently by the opposing campaign. If you don't support this kind of outright lieing to the people of NoVa..." or pull out the same damned dirty trick in return.

Posted by griffjon at 08:54 AM | TrackBack

October 30, 2005

2000

An anti-war group in Oregon is using (with permission, mind you) my render of many flag-draped coffins I made a while back when the Bush regime stopped allowing photos to be taken of them. Yay Internet!

Posted by griffjon at 04:24 PM | TrackBack

Iran

The Independent has a short article; "Ten very surprising things about Iran" (linked from BoingBoing), that is at least a small chink of information against the US propaganda on Iran.

Of interest:

8 Iran has one of the only condom factories in the Middle East, and actively encourages contraception as a means of family planning. Sex education for married couples and major advertising campaigns helped Iran to slow its booming population growth.
9 Satellite television is banned in Iran, but receiver dishes sit in plain view on top of many houses. The most popular channels are run by Iranians based in Los Angeles, who broadcast Iranian pop music and a steady stream of anti-regime propaganda - though many Iranians also scoff at the radical tone taken by the stations.

Ah! They're pro-condom! That's why we wanna invade!

Posted by griffjon at 09:23 AM | TrackBack

October 29, 2005

Fitz

Oh, it's a great week to be a liberal.

The Washington Post captures this gem of what they describe as a textbook case of what can go wrong in the second term:

House Government Reform Committee Chairman Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.) was stinging, saying he was "very disappointed in Libby, and the White House, and the vice president and the president."
"They should have taken care of this a long time ago," Davis said in an interview. "They should have done their own investigation. They're going to get very little sympathy on Capitol Hill, at least from me. . . . They brought this on themselves."

They also exerpted the best part of his press conference:

his appearance was as much about answering the charge that will inevitably be lodged against Fitzgerald himself: that he exceeded his charter and brought charges on "technicalities" rather than major crimes.
The prosecutor had prepared his defense well. "That talking point won't fly," he said when a questioner raised the anticipated criticism. "If it is proven that the chief of staff to the vice president went before a federal grand jury and lied under oath repeatedly and fabricated a story . . . that is a very, very serious matter," said Fitzgerald, 44, licking his lips frequently and moving his eyes back and forth across the line of eight cameras. "The truth is the engine of our judicial system, and if you compromise the truth, the whole process is lost."

And the Village Voice breaks down the timeline of the events, and the Seattle Times reminds us that this could still capture Cheney in it as well:

The indictment says that Cheney was the third person, after an unidentified undersecretary of state and a CIA officer, to discuss with Libby the fact that Plame was a CIA officer. It is not illegal for senior officials with security clearances to talk about classified matters. What was illegal, Friday's indictment charged, was the alleged false statements Libby subsequently made about the Wilson affair in interviews with the FBI and testimony before the grand jury investigating the CIA leak case.
Libby's conversation with Cheney took place around June 12, 2003, about the time Libby and unidentified other "officials in the office of the vice president" discussed how to respond to Wilson's allegations that the administration was lying about Iraq's alleged purchase of uranium from Niger, a claim that formed part of President Bush's rationale for invading Iraq.

advertising
The indictment hints that Cheney and Libby may have discussed how to handle the Wilson problem and the media coverage of Wilson's charges. It says that on or about July 12, on the return leg of a trip to Norfolk, Va., with Cheney, Libby talked over "with other officials aboard the plane" how Libby should respond to media inquiries, including some from Time magazine reporter Matt Cooper.

The indictment did not indicate whether Cheney participated in that discussion.

Posted by griffjon at 09:20 AM | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

Creative Destruction

Just to note, I am taking great pleasure in watching the NeoCons fall apart this week. Delay, Frist, and now Libby, Rove and maybe even Cheney.

It's a good time!

Posted by griffjon at 03:38 PM | TrackBack

USA Today on Peace Corps

USA Today has an op-ed piece on the need for a makeover for Peace Corps.

While I will certainly agree that the PC programs need some updating and revision, this piece... uh... how does one kindly and professionally say "is smoking crack"?

Laura Vanderkam opens with a great PC-success-story of a volunteer who organized his community to bring piped water in over the course of his assignment, then attacks the cost of this. With 7,700 volunteers serving worldwide, and the PC budget of over 300 Million (less than the cost, I might point out, of one bomber), then each volunteer costs $40k/yr to support. First -- hold on. This number means the same as taking the entire defense budget and dividing it by the number of servicemen and women overseas only, and claiming that that is then the cost to support them per year. The 300M number includes salaries for the PC/W staff, salaries for the staff at each post, insurance, supply, office space rental or purchase for each post HQ, transportation costs, medical supply costs... In other words, this masks the massive administrative and other fixed costs, and claims that each volunteer is only a variable cost, so if we send one less, that's 80k not coming out of the tax payer's burden. I can let you know that my stipend for living and housing expenses, total, was under $500/month, that's 6k/yr. Total per year after you amortize plane tickets and medical supplies that went to me and specific non-fixed program costs might push it to...almost 10k/yr. So this alone undermines her point that an 80k project done by "development professionals" would provide more value to the community rings false.

Further, drop an 80k project (or even a 10k one), and watch how fast it disentegrates. The value add of the PCV is not necessarily what they do, but how they do it. PCVs are trained to focus only on sustainable, community-supported projects that they can organize the community members to take part in and take ownership of. This, ideally of course, leads to the community gaining power over their own destiny and being able to do more self-upliftment projects with less and less outside intervention.

Ms. Vanderkam continues on, nonetheless, and complains that reforming the Peace Corps to focus on sites where the volunteers have more access to technologies such as the Internet would provide better results. True! You can make larger strides with better technology/support infrastructure. But... Where do the people who don't have access to the Internet end up? This is a horrible and short-sighted arguement. According to 2003 numbers, whereas 50% of the world has made or received a phone call (dramatically up due to the cell phone leapfrogging revolution), only about 1% of the world's population has an email account. So by focusing on these, we will ignore huge numbers of people who undoubtedly need more help than ones who already have community access to the Internet (which requires some combination of electricity and phone or cell networks).

Further, every PC HQ in the world has and has had Internet access for quite a while. You can always take a trip into the HQ (might be a long trek, might be 3 hours), and check and send email. Many volunteers have cell phones worldwide (currently mostly bought from savings or their own stipend, perhaps PC should subsidize them), which closes the gap dramatically. And (the list just goes on) PC HQs provide immense resources for most development projects, from schemata on how to build a ventilated pit latrine to reproductive health best-practices to language guides.

She also argues that PC should charge fees to the organizations that it send volunteers to. Often these are community-based organizations with no appreciable budget, already being staffed solely by volunteers. They have to go through training on how to work with PCVs effectively, and provide contacts and support for the volunteer in housing options. This already is a high barrier to entry for many deserving organizations, charging a fee would be reprehensible. Requiring the target of a development project to pay a fee to the developers is not development, it's consulting.

She also suggests volunteer teams. This in fact is done in many cases, it's called "clustering," and has a variety of effects, some good, some bad. It provides a close support network for the volunteers, and often allows for better cross-sector development projects, and more complicated projects. BUT, it reduces their interaction with the local population and often reduces the sustainability of the project. It's being tested already, presuming it hasn't is presuming that all of modern PC is like the 1962 version. It's not.

"Hire volunteers with useful skills" is a direct quote of a suggestion. Let me, for the record, state that you cannot logically speaking hire a volunteer. PC receives applications from volunteers and does its best (which I have to admit is often a mysterious and not wholly logical science) to place them. They do not and cannot just post a job search seeking out experts willing to do development work for 6k a year plus health. Try it yourself, see if you can find 7,700 people.

She finishes her diatribe with a request for accountability. Again, she exposes her lack of research into the realities of the Peace Corps system. Peace Corps reports to congress, and volunteers report in quarterly to their country's PC HQ with an exhaustive account of number of community members affected/trained, projects completed, and so forth. If a volunteer is not performing, they most likely are having a rough time of it, or were one of the ones (you get a few in every batch) who've given up and are partying. In either case, they'll get a review, perhaps get moved to a different assignment, or in extreme cases get sent home.

In the end, does PC have problems? Surely. Are some jobs overly vauge? Yes. Why? Well, there's a push to double the number of volunteers serving -- with only a 1/3rd increase in funding, which means no additional staff to work on finding valid projects for new volunteers. And, in the end, as a volunteer, you have to remember that you're there to help your community -- you forever have a solid mission statement to work with.

Ms. Vanderkam perhaps should do more careful research before launching in on PC. Perhaps she might even take a 2 year sabbatical from her journalism gig and see how the rest of the world really lives. I bet that she'd denounce her own article, and realize that spending two years to organize her community to bring in piped water might provide her the most rewarding shower of her life, realizing that the community will be able to sustain this gift for all their future, and will have an understanding of Americans that goes deeper than what they hear in their news or see on TV.

Maybe, just maybe, providing 7,700 annual experiences to Americans, and 7,700 multiplied by the members of the communities whose lives they affect globally like that is worth the cost of one additional bomber plane per year. Maybe, just maybe mind you, it might reduce the need for bomber planes!

Posted by griffjon at 12:57 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 06, 2005

Senate votes against Bush and Torture

The Washington Post is running an article today about the Senate, led by McCain, passing a referendum to set specific interrogation limits; quoth McCain, "what we lose when by official policy or by official negligence we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget . . . that which is our greatest strength: that we are different and better than our enemies."

In his closing speech, McCain said terrorists "hold in contempt" international conventions "such as the Geneva Conventions and the treaty on torture."
"I know that," he said. "But we're better than them, and we are the stronger for our faith."

In its statement on the veto threat, the White House said the measure would "restrict the president's authority to protect Americans effectively from terrorist attack and bringing terrorists to justice."

But as new allegations of abuse surface, the chorus of McCain supporters is broadening. McCain read a letter on the Senate floor from former secretary of state Colin L. Powell, who endorsed the amendment and said it would help address "the terrible public diplomacy crisis created by Abu Ghraib." Powell joins a growing group of retired generals and admirals who blame prison abuse on "ambiguous instructions," as the officers wrote in a recent letter. They urged restricting interrogation methods to those outlined in the U.S. Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogation, the parameters that McCain's measure would establish.

McCain cited a letter he received from Army Capt. Ian Fishback, who has fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. "Over 17 months, he struggled to get answers from his chain of command to a basic question: What standards apply to the treatment of enemy detainees?" McCain said. "But he found no answers. . . . The Congress has a responsibility to answer this call."

I guess it's a bad day when the good news is about the US Congress restricting our use of torture, but... compared to the bad news of the last 5 years, this is a breath of fresh air. The congress critters are standing up to the White House and their Great Leader more and more.

Posted by griffjon at 08:17 AM | TrackBack

October 05, 2005

Be happy..

This NYT article (seen in BoingBoing) talks about happiness as a measure of development and well being.

What is happiness? In the United States and in many other industrialized countries, it is often equated with money.
Economists measure consumer confidence on the assumption that the resulting figure says something about progress and public welfare. The gross domestic product, or G.D.P., is routinely used as shorthand for the well-being of a nation.

In 1972, concerned about the problems afflicting other developing countries that focused only on economic growth, Bhutan's newly crowned leader, King Jigme Singye Wangchuck, decided to make his nation's priority not its G.D.P. but its G.N.H., or gross national happiness.

...

Around the world, a growing number of economists, social scientists, corporate leaders and bureaucrats are trying to develop measurements that take into account not just the flow of money but also access to health care, free time with family, conservation of natural resources and other noneconomic factors.

The goal, according to many involved in this effort, is in part to return to a richer definition of the word happiness, more like what the signers of the Declaration of Independence had in mind when they included "the pursuit of happiness" as an inalienable right equal to liberty and life itself.

It goes on to show that this actually has an impact;

While household incomes in Bhutan remain among the world's lowest, life expectancy increased by 19 years from 1984 to 1998, jumping to 66 years. The country, which is preparing to shift to a constitution and an elected government, requires that at least 60 percent of its lands remain forested, welcomes a limited stream of wealthy tourists and exports hydropower to India.
"We have to think of human well-being in broader terms," said Lyonpo Jigmi Thinley, Bhutan's home minister and ex-prime minister. "Material well-being is only one component. That doesn't ensure that you're at peace with your environment and in harmony with each other."

And that mony != happiness

In the early stages of a climb out of poverty, for a household or a country, incomes and contentment grow in lockstep. But various studies show that beyond certain thresholds, roughly as annual per capita income passes $10,000 or $20,000, happiness does not keep up.

Posted by griffjon at 07:35 PM | TrackBack

October 03, 2005

Miers

OK, so Miers, at first glance, has some positive aspects. Heck, she's even donated money to the Democrats, including Al Gore it seems. But haven't we learned from the Michael Brown episode that putting old buddies into important offices when their background is not a great match?

Guess not.

Posted by griffjon at 10:04 AM | TrackBack

September 28, 2005

Scopes II

3 monkeys sittin' under a coconut tree Discussing things as they are set to be Said one to the others Now listen you two There's a strange rumor that can't be true They say man was descended from our noble race But the very idea is a big disgrace No monkey ever deserted his wife Or her baby to ruin their lives YEAH, the monkey's drift is mine.

-- Damien "Jr. Gong" Marley, "Educated Fools"

Well, we don't throw our crap as much anymore, except metaphorically...

Posted by griffjon at 09:25 PM | TrackBack

Brown off script?

Also, Michael Brown, our favorite horse-man, seems to have gone off script. After attacking Blanco and Nagin, he goes on to spread the blame a little wider:

But he also spread responsibility widely for what President Bush has called an inadequate response -- to a White House that he said was fully apprised before Katrina's Aug. 29 landfall, to a Department of Homeland Security whose leaders cut money and staff for three years as they pursued the "emaciation of FEMA," and to a military he said was slow to react.
Brown admitted that FEMA's ability to move life-sustaining supplies was flawed and "easily overwhelmed" by Katrina's scale. He said that emergency communications broke down because the country made little "real progress" in learning from the 2001 terrorist attacks, and he warned that if U.S. authorities remain focused on preparing for terrorism instead of natural disasters, "then we're going to fail."

Brown said he is "happy to be a scapegoat . . . if it means that the FEMA that I knew when I came here is going to be able to be reborn and we're going to be able to get it back to where it was" when he joined the agency in 2001.

...

In Baton Rouge, La., Blanco spokeswoman Denise Bottcher said, "Mike Brown wasn't engaged then, and he surely isn't now. He should have been watching CNN instead of the Disney Channel."

Nagin spokeswoman Sally Forman said, "The governor and the mayor were totally on the same page."

The much-anticipated testimony of Bush's ousted disaster management director came against a backdrop of partisan fighting over the administration's handling of the Katrina crisis. It handed new ammunition to leaders in both parties who have expressed growing misgivings over the course of homeland security.

--WaPo

Word is that he's shopping his resume around town with not much luck.

Posted by griffjon at 11:54 AM | TrackBack

Delay indicted!

Wow, this makes me happy.

DeLay indicted on conspiracy charges House majority leader's position in jeopardy. Advertisement
MORE ON THIS STORY

* Past coverage and related documents

By Laylan Copelin

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

A Travis County grand jury today indicted U.S. House Majority Leader Tom DeLay on one count of criminal conspiracy, jeopardizing the Sugar Land Republican's leadership role as the second most powerful Texan in Washington, D.C.

The charge, a state jail felony punishable by up to two years incarceration, stems from his role with his political committee, Texans for a Republican Majority, a now-defunct organization that already had been indicted on charges of illegally using corporate money during the 2002 legislative elections.

From the Statesman

Posted by griffjon at 11:47 AM | TrackBack

September 25, 2005

Make Levees, not War

That was my favorite protest sign yesterday. I went down to the Mall near the end of the actual protest and hung around for the first few bands and speakers for the afternoon, and then wandered home, as I didn't find anyone I knew there and the protest was done with. It was a good turnout, even by the late hour that I'd gotten there.

I forgot my camera, so I took some photos with my phone, but still have no easy/free way of getting those off it (25 cents to email it)

(standard rant about text messaging -- it's effectively free for the phone companies, so why do they charge 10 cents to send and an additional 10 cents to receive, so they make 20 cents revenue per in-network text? Oh yeah, because it's a profit cow and people will pay)

Posted by griffjon at 12:43 PM | TrackBack

September 17, 2005

Gitmo-eas corpus?

128 prisoners are refusing food in gitmo. 13 are hospitalized and are being force-fed by tubes.

US citizens on US soil can now be detained as 'enemy combatants'.

I guess I should take this opportunity to go by the National Archives and see the Constitution and Bill of Rights before they're hidden from public view as dissident documents written by anti-authoritarian deists and atheists rebelling against a government.

Read Wikipedia on habeas corpus.

I just watched the Daily Show with Kurt Vonnegut. I loved his mini-rant on democracy (paraphrasing): 100 years after you become a democracy, you have to let your slaves vote. 150 years after, you have to let your women vote. And at the begining, there's a lot of ethnic cleansing and genocide...

I feel that liberal, Constitution-supporting, types need to either reclaim "patriotism" or adopt a new phrase. I love the USA as a concept, but the current realities honestly disgust me on pretty much a daily basis, and currently identifying with "patriotism" means putting a magnetic $3.95 sticker on your gas-guzzling, oil-dependency-increasing SUV and voting for the Republican party, with a nice scoop of xenophobia with cultural imperialism on top.

I want my country back.

Posted by griffjon at 06:49 PM | TrackBack

Ahh, free trade and markets!

As if you needed any more reasons to boycott Wal-Mart and Sam's Club (try CostCo instead, they pay a living wage.)

US retail giant Wal-Mart has been hit with a lawsuit that claims it ignores sweatshop conditions at many of its suppliers' factories around the world.
The class-action suit has been filed in Los Angeles on behalf of 15 workers in Bangladesh, Swaziland, Indonesia, China and Nicaragua.

Each claims they were paid less than the minimum wage and not given overtime payments. Some say they were beaten.

...

The lawsuit alleges that Wal-Mart has failed to monitor working conditions at its overseas suppliers.

It further claims that the low prices Wal-Mart demands force some suppliers to resort to sweatshop conditions.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 06:44 PM | TrackBack

Sick

BBC mentions that the people who planted a human finger they bought in a bowl of Wendy's chili so as to sue Wendy's plead guilty.

Now, certainly buying chili from a fast food place I would argue comes inherent with an "EULA" about accepting the possiblity that non-beef meats might be included. But buying and chewing on someone's finger to fraudulently sue a chain and cause them to internally investigate any missing fingers of their own employees and suppliers is just twisted.

Posted by griffjon at 06:41 PM | TrackBack

"Dem"ocracy

A twist of the term coined by Owen "Blacka" Ellis, a Jamaican poet, playwright, and comic. In Jamaican patois, "dem" is "them" (also it pluralizes other nouns), so "Dem"ocracy is rule by "Them".

I mention this because the BBC posts some interesting results on a survey determining if a people felt that their government represented their will. EU countries scored in the mid-80s... US scored in the mid fifties.

Posted by griffjon at 06:34 PM | TrackBack

Tariffs and Subsidies

BBC reports:

President George W Bush has renewed his pledge that the US will abolish all trade tariffs if others do the same.
His comments came as US trade representative Rob Portman and European Union Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson meet for fresh trade talks.

The two are trying to come to agreement on abolishing agricultural subsidies.

Interesting pledge from Bush. They're trying to abolish subsidies, and he pleges only to end tariffs. That's America's concept of free trade for you, sure 'nuff, and the likelihood that any congresscritter who votes to end ag subsidies who has a rural continengent (and that's a lot of 'em) will get re-elected is just about nil.

As long as subsidies are a reality, I feel that there should be tariffs on exporting subsidized goods to pay for the cost (or at least part of it), which would have the added benefit of not exporting things under cost, which has a long history of gutting local markets in the developing world and destroying the local capacity to produce, which, if the real cost of production ever is revealed, will cause serious food shortages in those nations.

Posted by griffjon at 11:28 AM | TrackBack

September 16, 2005

The Blame Game

First, they're not playing the blame game, then, Bush "takes the blame", now, they're trying to find someone else to pin the blame on. While they may not be playing the "blame game," it does look a lot like hot potato(e?).

The federal government is trying to find evidence of any past efforts by environmental groups to block work on New Orleans' levees, according to a published report.
The Clarion-Ledger said Friday it obtained an internal Justice Department e-mail sent out this week to U.S. attorneys that asks: "Has your district defended any cases on behalf of the (U.S.) Army Corps of Engineers against claims brought by environmental groups seeking to block or otherwise impede the Corps work on the levees protecting New Orleans? If so, please describe the case and the outcome of the litigation."

Cynthia Magnuson, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, told the newspaper she could not comment on internal e-mails.

Y'know, if the Dems had their act together, this is when we'd pull a Rove and send them on a high-stakes goosechase to discredit their media mouths, but, their media mouths don't admit mistakes, so what's the point?

Y'know, I heard that the NAACP resisted levee repairs...

Posted by griffjon at 02:50 PM | TrackBack

September 10, 2005

I should just stop reading the news

Because it gets me to web pages like this Red Cross FAQ page:

Hurricane Katrina: Why is the Red Cross not in New Orleans?
* Acess to New Orleans is controlled by the National Guard and local authorities and while we are in constant contact with them, we simply cannot enter New Orleans against their orders.

* The state Homeland Security Department had requested--and continues to request--that the American Red Cross not come back into New Orleans following the hurricane. Our presence would keep people from evacuating and encourage others to come into the city.

* The Red Cross has been meeting the needs of thousands of New Orleans residents in some 90 shelters throughout the state of Louisiana and elsewhere since before landfall. All told, the Red Cross is today operating 149 shelters for almost 93,000 residents.

* The Red Cross shares the nationâ€™s anguish over the worsening situation inside the city. We will continue to work under the direction of the military, state and local authorities and to focus all our efforts on our lifesaving mission of feeding and sheltering.

Posted by griffjon at 10:43 AM | TrackBack

September 07, 2005

Firemen to... the Bush PR camp!

Via DailyKOS and TPM, an article from the Salt Lake Tribune on firefighters, 1,000 of them, brought to the disaster areas to... hand out FEMA flyers and walk with Bush for PR shots:

ATLANTA - Not long after some 1,000 firefighters sat down for eight hours of training, the whispering began: "What are we doing here?" As New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin pleaded on national television for firefighters - his own are exhausted after working around the clock for a week - a battalion of highly trained men and women sat idle Sunday in a muggy Sheraton Hotel conference room in Atlanta. Many of the firefighters, assembled from Utah and throughout the United States by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, thought they were going to be deployed as emergency workers. Instead, they have learned they are going to be community-relations officers for FEMA, shuffled throughout the Gulf Coast region to disseminate fliers and a phone number: 1-800-621-FEMA. On Monday, some firefighters stuck in the staging area at the Sheraton peeled off their FEMA-issued shirts and stuffed them in backpacks, saying they refuse to represent the federal agency. Federal officials are unapologetic.

"They've got people here who are search-and-rescue certified, paramedics, haz-mat certified," said a Texas firefighter. "We're sitting in here having a sexual-harassment class while there are still [victims] in Louisiana who haven't been contacted yet."
The firefighter, who has encouraged his superiors back home not to send any more volunteers for now, declined to give his name because FEMA has warned them not to talk to reporters.

But as specific orders began arriving to the firefighters in Atlanta, a team of 50 Monday morning quickly was ushered onto a flight headed for Louisiana. The crew's first assignment: to stand beside President Bush as he tours devastated areas.

Reuters
(Reuters)

The key to this regime is that they live in their own reality created with props, seeded questions, and hollywood-style special effects and scenes, and they pump these images and stories out, fully developed, to news stations, which can use them easily. The key to defeating this is to force the media to deal with reality again, for which Katrina might be our only real wedge, the reality being so grim and at such loggerheads with the regime's imagining of it.

BoingBoing points out this wonderful photoshop of two photos taken on the same day:

Posted by griffjon at 08:16 AM | TrackBack

September 06, 2005

Didja get the memo?

From today's WaPo:

The proposed airlift of 400 Hurricane Katrina evacuees to the D.C. Armory yesterday was temporarily delayed by federal officials who sought more time to develop a comprehensive national plan for placing victims across the country, authorities said.

"We temporarily paused some airlifts while we identified cities and states who were ready and willing to receive these evacuees," said Russ Knocke, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

"It is very important that we have an organization in place so that there are city and state officials as well as nonprofit groups ready and willing to receive and care for these individuals," he said.

Knocke said evacuees could be airlifted to the Washington area as early as today.

The postponement frustrated some city officials who had stocked the cavernous D.C. Armory with supplies and hundreds of cots in anticipation of the arrival of evacuees. It also reflected confusion nationwide as federal officials contend with dwindling shelter space in the deep South and a mass movement of displaced people that has sometimes been chaotic.

Right, because obviously, the local officials who already had cots and supplies laid out weren't prepared, and the evacuees need there to be a committee much more than sanitary living conditions and food. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about planning and coordination, but it's September 6th, for crissakes. I would've hoped that either the past 4 years of disaster preparedness work in the wake of Sept 11th would've created some form of basic contingency plan, or, at the very least, sometime during the week since Katrina, for FEMA to peek out into the sunlight and get something in place, instead of now.

To be fair, as I write this 200 of the 400 for the DC area have arrived, so it's "only" one day delayed. I guess everyone's finally getting back from vacation?

Posted by griffjon at 02:07 PM | TrackBack

Time Lines

On the afternoon of September 11, 2001:

I want to reassure the American people that the full resources of the federal government are working to assist local authorities to save lives and to help the victims...

at 9AM, the first plane struck, and tho Bushie finished reading "My Pet Goat", he delivered an initial response by 9:30, and a fuller one by 10a. For this attack, we had zero warning.

That evening, he gave a fuller response:

Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York city and Washington D.C. to help with local rescue efforts. Our first priority is to get help to those who have been injured, and to take every precaution to protect our citizens at home and around the world from further attacks. The functions of our government continue without interruption. Federal agencies in Washington which had to be evacuated today are reopening for essential personnel tonight and will be open for business tomorrow. Our financial institutions remain strong, and the American economy will be open for business as well.

September 12th, he began banging the war drum, on the 13th, he called for a national day of prayer and rememberance.

Compare that to Katrina. We had a LOT of warning, but very little preparation was done, and those without independent transport were left behind.

Mom-is-always-right-EDIT: N.B., we did have some credible warnings that Osama was planning an attack using planes, and we didn't do anything with that warning either... (end edit)

During the worst of the storm and the 2 days following, the president was strumming a guitar on vacation. The Vice President was on vacation, Condi was taking in a performance of Spamalot on Broadway.

And now, a week later, we get this from the AP:

Bush also announced he is sending Vice President Dick Cheney to the Gulf Coast region on Thursday to help determine whether the government is doing all that it can.
"Bureaucracy is not going to stand in the way of getting the job done for the people," the president said after a meeting at the White House with his Cabinet on storm recovery efforts.

"What I intend to do is lead an investigation to find out what went right and what went wrong," Bush said. "We still live in an unsettled world. We want to make sure we can respond properly if there is a WMD (weapons of mass destruction) attack or another major storm."

But Bush said now is not the time to point fingers and he did not respond to calls for a commission to investigate the response.

"One of the things people want us to do here is play the blame game," he said. "We got to solve problems. There will be ample time to figure out what went right and what went wrong."

Bush was devoting most of his day to the recovery effort. After the Cabinet meeting, he was gathering with the congressional leaders, representatives of charitable organizations and with Education Secretary Margaret Spellings to talk about assistance for displaced students and closed schools.

Actually, now IS the time to point fingers, because the time for action was last week, and you certainly took your own sweet time in taking the action, so now you get to face the blame for that. Republicans will tell you that it's Blanco's fault for not ceding control to the Feds, and that they can't go in without permission.

Hey, guess what? she still hasn't ceded control! But wait, the Feds are in there now! How's that POSSIBLE? (Blame Game...

The other defense is that Blanco didn't declare a state of emergency; as reported by NewsWeek and Washington Post by an anonymous Senior Bush official. Except said Bush official was lying, the state of emergency was called on the 26th of August.

(9/11 speeches quoted and available as mp3s from American Rhetoric.com.)

Posted by griffjon at 11:25 AM | TrackBack

September 05, 2005

WTF?

BBC reports on New Orleans Dome conditions:

"They killed a man here last night," Steve Banka, 28, told the Reuters news agency before he left on Sunday.
A body lies face down in water next to the Superdome
Death was everywhere, both inside and outside the Superdome
"A young lady was being raped and stabbed.

"And the sounds of her screaming got to this man and so he ran out into the street to get help from troops, to try to flag down a passing truck of them.

"He jumped up on the truck's windscreen and they shot him dead," Mr Banka said.

...

Inside the Superdome, a National Guard soldier charged with keeping order confirmed the brutal reality of life after Katrina.

"We found a young girl raped and killed in the bathroom. Then the crowd got the man and they beat him to death."

...

Hillary Snowton, 40, sat with a white sheet wrapped around his face to shield himself from the smell of a dead body that lay, untouched, just metres away.

He had watched the body lie there for the past four days, decomposing in the sultry Louisiana climate.

Posted by griffjon at 09:53 AM | TrackBack

The Roberts court?

I guess it's better than the Scalia court, but I'm increasingly nervous about Roberts in the there-must-be-a-reason department. Read more at The BBC

Posted by griffjon at 09:36 AM | TrackBack

September 04, 2005

Eep.

Rehnquist died.

Posted by griffjon at 08:25 AM | TrackBack

September 03, 2005

Dismantling Emergency Response

A timeline of the rismantling of emergency response by the Bush Regime.

Posted by griffjon at 09:38 PM | TrackBack

Shaking my head

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. ADVERTISEMENT
Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process. The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.

--Houston Chronicle

Can we get Enron to provide energy, and KPMG to do their taxes? Ooooh, and Andresen to do financial consulting?? And WorldCom can provide the comm infrastucture...

Posted by griffjon at 09:18 PM | TrackBack

September 02, 2005

Opposite Day

It's Opposite Day in DC; CNN compiles a nice list of fed statements from their DC offices and cross-checks them against reality reported from NOLA.

The federal response:
* [FEMA chief] Brown: Considering the dire circumstances that we have in New Orleans, virtually a city that has been destroyed, things are going relatively well.

* Homeland Security Director Chertoff: Now, of course, a critical element of what we're doing is the process of evacuation and securing New Orleans and other areas that are afflicted. And here the Department of Defense has performed magnificently, as has the National Guard, in bringing enormous resources and capabilities to bear in the areas that are suffering.

* Crowd chanting outside the Convention Center: We want help.

* [NOLA Mayor] Nagin: They don't have a clue what's going on down there.

* Phyllis Petrich, a tourist stranded at the Ritz-Carlton: They are invisible. We have no idea where they are. We hear bits and pieces that the National Guard is around, but where? We have not seen them. We have not seen FEMA officials. We have seen no one.

Posted by griffjon at 03:29 PM | TrackBack

Give Robertson money!

Visit the FEMA donation site

Witness:

Donate Cash
American Red Cross
1-800-HELP NOW (435-7669) English,
1-800-257-7575 Spanish;

Americaâ€™s Second Harvest
1-800-344-8070

Operation Blessing
1-800-436-6348

Humane Society of the United States
1-888-259-5431

UJA Federation of New York
212 836-1880

Notice #3? (down from #2)

Operation Blessing? Who's THAT run by? Pat Robertson? Oh, wait, it is. SCREW YOU ALL YOU GODDAMNED TASTELESS MOTHERFUCKERS.

Wait. And humane society? Honestly, FEMA, just list Red Cross and stop there next time.

PS: Sorry that you've been taken over by the Reds.

Posted by griffjon at 12:01 PM | TrackBack

AUUUGH

The lack of a pulse from the Republican Regime on this is disgusting. Bush valiantly cut his vacation short by two days, but was sttumming the guitar during the first hours of disaster. Cheney's still on vacation. Rice was enjoying Spamalot, and the party uppers are going after the estate tax instead of even giving a nod to the victims.

Also, Left Behind by KOS is another good read.

Posted by griffjon at 10:37 AM | TrackBack

Compassionate Conservatism?

From CNN via usucumsane:

"It makes no sense to spend billions of dollars to rebuild a city that's seven feet under sea level," House Speaker Dennis Hastert said of federal assistance for hurricane-devastated New Orleans.
"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said in an interview Wednesday with the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois.

Democratic Sen. Mary L. Landrieu of Louisiana issued a statement to "disagree strongly" with Hastert, and he sought to clarify his comments during the day.

Hastert, in a transcript supplied by the suburban Chicago newspaper, said there was no question that the people of New Orleans would rebuild their city, but noted that federal insurance and other federal aid was involved.

"We ought to take a second look at it. But you know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild too. Stubbornness."

There are "some real tough questions to ask," Hastert said in the interview. "How do you go about rebuilding this city? What precautions do you take?"

Hastert later issued a statement saying he was not "advocating that the city be abandoned or relocated."

"My comments about rebuilding the city were intended to reflect my sincere concern with how the city is rebuilt to ensure the future protection of its citizens and not to suggest that this great and historic city should not be rebuilt," the statement said.

Uh... Mr. Speaker? You have your foot so far down your throat that it's met your head in your lower intestines. Not only is that dangerous, it violates a few laws of physics. Your statements reveal the depth of your stupidity. We built this capitol on top of a swamp. Let's bulldoze it (actually...) and move it to somewhere safe.

Posted by griffjon at 10:19 AM | TrackBack

September 01, 2005

From the mouth

this blog is being posted from some geeks holding steady at their ISP in N.O. .

Posted by griffjon at 08:34 PM | TrackBack

More Katrina

First, funds which previously were being used to maintain and improve the anti-flooding measures in N.O. were of course diverted to Iraq:

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain. At least nine articles in the Times-Picayune from 2004 and 2005 specifically cite the cost of Iraq as a reason for the lack of hurricane- and flood-control dollars.

Plus, FEMA, the gov't agency tasked with dealing with exactly this kind of emergency, has been all but eliminated by the Bush regime:

the advent of the Bush administration in January 2001 signaled the beginning of the end for FEMA. The newly appointed leadership of the agency showed little interest in its work or in the missions pursued by the departed Witt. Then came the Sept. 11 attacks and the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. Soon FEMA was being absorbed into the "homeland security borg."
This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

But surely, the Homeland Security folks, who've been working oh so very hard, spending our civil liberties, privacy, and tax dollars have been helping? Nah. They're too busy preventing Canadian medical relief and fresh-water filtering systems from getting to N.O.:

Planes are ready to load with food and medical supplies and a system called "DART" which can provide fresh water and medical supplies is standing by. Department of Homeland Security as well as other U.S. agencies were contacted by the Canadian government requesting permission to provide help. Despite this contact, Canada has not been allowed to fly supplies and personnel to the areas hit by Katrina

I'm just glad our president was busy doing this:

During this:

(images via BoingBoing and credited to AP Photo/ABC News, Martha Raddatz and Ben Sklar / AP respectively)

Posted by griffjon at 07:26 PM | TrackBack

Integrity in Gov't ... oh, wait, she left.

From the NYT via KOS:

Susan Wood, director of FDA's Office of Women's Health, announced her resignation in an e-mail to colleagues at the agency. The e-mail was released by contraception advocates.
The FDA last Friday postponed indefinitely its decision on whether to allow the morning-after pill, called Plan B, to be sold without a prescription. The agency said it was safe for adults to use without a doctor's guidance but was unable to decide how to keep it out of the hands of young teenagers without a prescription -- a decision contrary to the advice of its own scientific advisers.

"I can no longer serve as staff when scientific and clinical evidence, fully evaluated and recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been overruled," wrote Wood, who also was assistant commissioner for women's health. "The recent decision announced by the Commissioner about emergency contraception, which continues to limit women's access to a product that would reduce unintended pregnancies and reduce abortions, is contrary to my core commitment to improving and advancing women's health."

Posted by griffjon at 07:20 PM | TrackBack

To paraphrase...

...my ever-eloquent friend JP, (who for wholly inadequate reasons refuses to get a blog of any sort, leaving us to paraphrase, quote, and plagarize), except without using quite as much profanity:

I am ever so glad we've sacrificed so many civil liberties and personal privacies, not to mention tax dollars, for disaster preparedness and relief in the post-9/11 world that the crisis in New Orleans is going so swimmingly (pardon the pun) well, with adequate evacuation procedures beforehand, functional shelters, and ample staffing and equipment to help in the search-and-rescue and rebuilding tasks.

Also, the UK Mirror reports:

Mr Bush was at Coronado Naval Base in Texas with entertainer Mark Wills as Hurricane Katrina's 145mph winds killed hundreds on the the Gulf Coast when he committed the PR blunder.

Mr Bush finally cut short his holiday in Texas by two days to fly to Washington when the scale of the disaster became clear. He was spurred into action after Veteran CNN anchorman Jack Cafferty asked: "Where's President Bush? Is he still on vacation?"

"Based on the latest polls my guess is getting back to work might not be a terrible idea."

Those ratings show that support for Mr Bush has slipped to a career low of 45 per cent on concerns over the Iraq war and spiralling US fuel prices.

I hear that his first choice in musical instruments to play while New Orleans got flooded, the violin, was not available on base.

Oh, and we also have BushCo to thank for disassembling FEMA into Homeland Security and stripping it of its disaster-relief capabilities. Because one terrorist attack that is the first ...ever... in our country's existance, is a much higher disaster-preparedness priority than, oh... hurricanes, 10-20 of which happen EVERY SUMMER, and at least one big and damaging one every 5-10 years or so.

Posted by griffjon at 03:43 PM | TrackBack

August 29, 2005

Please step away from the brink, thank you.

Fron BoingBoing:

Fox News nutbag contributor and former US prosecutor John Loftus read the address of a "terrorist" residence in California on-air. Oh, wait -- whoops -- no terrorist home, just an innocent family of five who are now the target of angry threats.

Since the report aired on Fox News on Aug. 7, people have shouted profanities at Randy and Ronnell Vorick and spray-painted "terrorist" (spelling it "terrist") on their property.

LA Times story

Newshounds follows up: Loftus got fired

Posted by griffjon at 06:31 PM | TrackBack

August 24, 2005

Let's take Robertson out!

Because obviously, it's not just killing anymore!

From The BBC:

But [Robertson] argued that there were a number of possible meanings for the phrase "take him out", including kidnapping.

Please. Have the balls to issue an apology, don't insult our intelligence.

Posted by griffjon at 07:39 PM | TrackBack

August 23, 2005

More on American Terrorists

Our own home-grown religious extremist terrorist Pat Robertson of course. The BBC has a good article about Venezuela's and the OAS' response, as well as some nervous-sounding statements from the US State Dept. denying that Roberston represents US policy towards Venezuela. Of note:

Venezuelan Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel responds: "This is a huge hypocrisy to maintain an anti-terrorist line and at the same time have such terrorist statements as these made by Christian preacher Pat Robertson coming from the same country."

The vice-president also said the Organization of American States could take up the case, saying an inter-American anti-terrorism accord includes provisions against inciting others to kill.

The BBC adds at the end;

Venezuela is the fifth-largest oil exporter and a major supplier of oil to the United States.

A bit more discussion here:

Posted by griffjon at 10:21 PM | TrackBack

Christian Assassination Politics?

As already reported at ThisModernWorld, our favorite "Christian" Pat Robertson is calling for the assassination of Chavez, and there's a fuller story on CNN.

Roberston:

There was a popular coup that overthrew him [Chavez]. And what did the United States State Department do about it? Virtually nothing. And as a result, within about 48 hours that coup was broken; Chavez was back in power, but we had a chance to move in. He has destroyed the Venezuelan economy, and he's going to make that a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism all over the continent.

You know, I don't know about this doctrine of assassination, but if he thinks we're trying to assassinate him, I think that we really ought to go ahead and do it. It's a whole lot cheaper than starting a war. And I don't think any oil shipments will stop. But this man is a terrific danger and the United ... This is in our sphere of influence, so we can't let this happen. We have the Monroe Doctrine, we have other doctrines that we have announced. And without question, this is a dangerous enemy to our south, controlling a huge pool of oil, that could hurt us very badly. We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability. We don't need another $200 billion war to get rid of one, you know, strong-arm dictator. It's a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.

Things wrong with this statement:

This is a person who claims to be a Christian arguing for the murder of another human being. Honestly, dude, you're going to hell if there is one.

Venezuela's a Catholic country, not exactly a hotbed of extremist Muslims. Or Catholics, for that matter.

True, it's a bit left of the center, politically... but mainly to protect itself from the encroachment of US imperialism. Which, if you look at countries in South America who haven't protected themselves from that, you see why it's a Good Idea

We actually did do a lot to support the coup. Even during the short coup, there were a lot of rumors around that coup (you might recall, I was in Venezuela for it) that the US had a decently strong role in supporting the coup. Newsweek later revealed that the US Embassy had been made aware beforehand and that the US provided financial and military support to the plotters. We recognized the coup's gov't immediately (which, as it only lasted 3 days, took some effort!). (Read more about the April 11 Coup in Venezuela and the US support of the coup)

If we're honestly still worried about communism, why don't we take out Castro? Oh right, we tried, and that didn't work too well. Obviously, if South America was on the edge of going commie, I think that it already would have (luckily, the US has been placing puppet dictators throughout to make sure that it's merely an oppressive, anti-democratic area, not commies. Phew! close call!

This guy sickens me. Billmon over at This Modern World has it right:

As far as the political aspects of a remark like this, I think it's high time that the Democratic party borrow a page from the Republican playbook and insist that high-profile conservatives like George Bush, James Dobson, Bill Frist, John McCain, Rick Santorum, Tom DeLay and the like go on record about whether or not they agree with Pat Robertson's call for the killing of Hugo Chavez. Do you agree that Chavez should be assassinated or not? Since you've been so willing to speak for Jesus in the past, do you think he'd support sending someone to murder the democratically elected leader of a foreign country?

Posted by griffjon at 10:40 AM | TrackBack

August 20, 2005

SCOTUS v Roberts

In 1983, under Reagan, Roberts wrote:

"The federal judiciary today benefits from an insulation from political pressure even as it usurps the role of the political branches"

Funny, I thought that was the whole idea of the judicial branch, to be politically buffered, and to pull rank on the other two branches when they overstepped the Constitution.

I guess the times, they are a changin'

August 19, 2005

Kinky Friedman for Gov... heck, President

"I'm for you," Cook said, sitting down to write the campaign a check. "I'm sick of these assholes who don't represent me, or represent people." By now, this sentiment had become a common refrain. "They represent A.T. & T. and Enron. How you gonna come and beg for my vote and then have nothing to do with me? Did Enron elect you or did I? I'm paying your salary, hoss. How'd it be if someone went up to the capitol and did what they said they would?"
"It'd be a first," the candidate said.

"I believe it, hoss," Cook said. "That's why you're gonna win."

A few notes on Kinky -- first, his investments pay off well. He invested $200 at Harah's in Nawlin's and made over 45k (ironically, 45k is the number of signatures he needs to get on the ballot.

Second, the New Yorker ran a huge piece on him, with insights such as:

Kinky Friedman's candidacy is bound to be something; what that something is is still up for debate. He is surely the only candidate for governor to have written extensively about his past cocaine use, or to have flown in Led Zeppelin's private plane, or to have performed at the Grand Ole Opry.

and

...he intends to capitalize on voter dissatisfaction, and on whatever's left of the tradition of Texas populism. In his latest book, a collection of essays called â€œTexas Hold 'Em,â€ he writes, â€œMy platform is to remember that when they went out searching for Sam Houston to try to persuade him to be the governorâ€”and he was the greatest governor this state has ever hadâ€”rumor has it that they found him drunk, sleeping under a bridge with the Indians.â€

Give the website of the next Governor of Texas a whirl -- take a good look at his policies. Underneath his flippant ways, you might actually find that you're nodding and hoping he gets elected... President.

(I also like him because he's a fellow UT/Plan II grad and returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Borneo, 66-68).)

Posted by griffjon at 01:00 PM | TrackBack

August 18, 2005

American Dream

Interesting piece in the BBC on the American dream:

"If you are born into poverty in the US," said one of its authors, "you are actually more likely to remain in poverty than in other countries in Europe, the Nordic countries, even Canada, which you would think would not be that different."

Posted by griffjon at 09:11 PM | TrackBack

August 17, 2005

Some Quotes

(Gleaned from DailyKOS)

"Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?" --Sean Hannity, Fox News
"[The] President . . . is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation's armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy."
--Sen. Rick Santorum (R-PA)

"If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy."
--Karen Hughes, speaking on behalf of George W Bush

"I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning . . I didn't think we had done enough in the diplomatic area."
--Senator Trent Lott (R-MS)

"Victory means exit strategy, and it's important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is."
--Governor George W. Bush (R-TX)

Of course, they're all talking about Clinton's committing troops to Bosnia. Which actually did what it was supposed to do, didn't destroy our economy, and didn't lose US troops in the process.

Hypocrites. Lieing, jealous, stupid, malicious carpetbagging hypocrites.

Posted by griffjon at 03:58 PM | TrackBack

August 16, 2005

Terrorism: Finding the puppetmasters

In the 60s, this organization enabled a small cabal of masterminds who ruled their area of expertise for decades to come, influencing countless numbers of Americans, even today, with their art.

But finally, the US Dept. of Homeland Security has caught up to 'em, in San Francisco, no less, and frozen their bank accounts during a transition of power in the cell.

Yup, they've frozen the funds of the San Francisco Bay Area Puppeteers Guild, when the transfer of the bank account from the retiring treasurer to the new one flipped some alert. (Link from BoingBoing)

Between going after puppeteers and toddlers, Homeland Security's really on top of the modern, post-9/11 terrorist threats!

Posted by griffjon at 07:56 PM | TrackBack

Gold Star Mothers vs Hilary? Not so much

If you ever get someone talking about Hilary's "Infamous" snubbing of the Gold Star Mothers, a group of mothers who have lost children in the military (not connected to Cindy's new group). Please note that it's proven false, and that our president is currently snubbing, very blatantly, a similar group.

I direct you to The Daily KOS for more reading.

Posted by griffjon at 04:09 PM | TrackBack

Finally, the boneless chicken ranch!

lab grown, but real, meat

Posted by griffjon at 12:01 PM | TrackBack

IMF and Iraq: Ooh, can we create a new debtor state?

The Beeb reports:

Iraq faces "daunting challenges" as it struggles to rebuild its battered economy, the International Monetary Fund has warned.
The violent insurgency and political uncertainties pose "major risks" to Iraq's economic recovery, the IMF said.

In its first review of the country in 25 years, the IMF called for reforms in Iraq's oil and finance industries.

If we do this "right," maybe we can create another State that's in debt up to its eyeballs such that we can puppet it into doing whatever we want? 'cuz that'll certainly make everything work out just peachy!

[/sarcasm]

Posted by griffjon at 11:58 AM | TrackBack

Stem Cell Nerves!

English Scientists have grown human nerve stem cells from embryonic stem cells.

Man, it'd be nice if we could devote some research dollars to that new-fangled technology over on this side of the pond, and y'know, cure some serious diseases or something.

Posted by griffjon at 11:55 AM | TrackBack

Aren't you a little .... short... for a terrorist?

Beware, the new face of globahl terra:

Ingrid Sanden told AP that her one-year-old daughter was stopped in Phoenix while trying to board a flight to Washington last November.
"I completely understand the war on terrorism, and I completely understand people wanting to be safe when they fly," she said. "But focusing the target a little bit is probably a better use of resources."

Another woman, Sarah Zapolsky, told the agency that her and her husband were stopped at Washington's Dulles airport after an airline agent told them their 11-month-old son was on the list.

They were only allowed to board after their son's passport details were faxed through by a travel agent.

-- BBC

Seriously, folks. Why does working in security deprive you of your ability to step away and apply logic to the situation? I don't think toddlers have had the time to make it through terrorism boot camps.

Posted by griffjon at 11:51 AM | TrackBack

Could the War on Drugs cost us in Oil?

The BBC writes:

Oil exports to the US could stop amid growing tensions between the two countries, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has said.
He described recent US government actions as "aggressive" in a speech at a youth festival in Caracas.

As a result, Venezuelan oil "instead of going to the United States, could go elsewhere," he said.

Venezuela exports about 1.3 million barrels a day to the US and is the world's fifth largest oil producer.

Tensions between the two countries have escalated since President Chavez accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) of spying on his government.

Washington denies the charge and has accused Caracas of failing to co-operate in the fight against drug-trafficking.

Remember that Venezuela is the only Western OPEC member, has more oil reserves than Saudi Arabia, and we don't play very nice with them. (Chavez and Castro are buddies)

Posted by griffjon at 11:47 AM | TrackBack

Vanishing

Vanishing Point searches headlines and articles from major G7 newspapers and shades the countries they mention, leaving unmentioned countries transparent.

I wish it could be more granular, and you could filter out, say, just Fox News stories and see only USA, Iraq, Iran, and maybe China, North Korea and Afghanistan, and have the entire rest of the globe invisible...

(Linked from WorldChanging)

Posted by griffjon at 10:27 AM | TrackBack

Yay WaPo headline writers

And I'm not just sayin' that because I live with one. Today's headlines from the WaPo front page:

Roberts Not Likely to Face Significant Fight
Barring unexpected developments, Democrats say a contentious nomination battle would be futile.

Memo Cited 'Abortion Tragedy'

Roberts Backed [Funeral protest] Service for Fetuses

I think Roberts is a surprise candidate from the White House because he's generally an acceptable candidate. He's not a whacknut neocon. He has support from some groups on the left side of center. This, in itself, should be a big huge alarm.

My fear is that with his blatant denial of the 4th Amendement = Privacy guarantees link, and his anti-abortion-rights history coming into light, that he's the ideal neocon candidate, as he won't engender enough activism to enable a filibuster, but he will be anti-privacy, upholding such gems of the Bush Regime as the misnomered PATRIOT act, and probably anti-abortion. Which, considering some anti-abortion groups consider murdering doctors as completely within the realm of acceptable measures, I'm sure there are many more who refrain from such extremes who will be more than willing to find cases to push up to the SCOTUS once Roberts is sitting.

I miss representative democracy.

Posted by griffjon at 10:04 AM | TrackBack

August 13, 2005

Google Bombing, Defending Texas

So, we all remember the amusement of typing miserable failure into Google and getting W's homepage. Not to mention where you end up if you type in Santorum. These are both cases of Google bombing.

I think we need to add a new google bomb onto the list -- carpetbagger. You can read more about the history of the term. Wikipedia explains;

Today, the term "carpetbagger" is used to describe "an outsider who moves someplace to exploit the natives and enrich himself at their expense," or "a politician who moves to another state for political reasons, such as ease of election."

Seeing as how W was born in New Haven, Connecticut, went to a private boarding school at Andover, technically Phillips Academy, in Massachusetts, and then went to college at Yale, he only actually spent a few grades in the Texas system, and even fewer in the public schools. He dodged the draft by serving in the National Guard, and then went to business school at Harvard.

He used his Daddy's money to float a variety of failed business ventures and then moved into politics using his daddy's contacts.

And his famous Crawford Ranch, where he has spent almost all of his vacation time (20% of his time in "office" as the president, he's been on vacation -- not a bad vacation package for possibly the most powerful and important jobs in the world!), is not like some mythical, been-in-the-family for ages, this-is-my-home type thing. They bought the land in 1999.

It's interesting to note that while Texas elected Bush Gov, we kept Bob Bulloch, a Dem, as Lt. Gov, which is the more powerful position in terms of real abilities in Texas. Think about that, and also remember that Kerry got 38% of the vote in Texas, despite the fact that Texas is red, and Bush's "home" state. It was a much narrower margin that one might expect in those circumstances.

The word for this kind of trickster, putting on the accoutremont of Texas, but failing to understand what it means to be Texan, is carpetbagger.

(Idea for this GoogleBomb from here.)

Posted by griffjon at 12:09 PM | TrackBack

August 12, 2005

Who needs labor rights?

Well, so much for using jobs to find people who share common interests, and professions to hang out with or date;

It is a regular pastime for co-workers to chat during a coffee break, at a union hall, or over a beer about workplace issues, good grilling recipes, and celebrity gossip. Yet a recent ruling by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) allows employers to ban off-duty fraternizing among co-workers, severely weakening the rights of free association and speech, and violating basic standards of privacy for America's workers.

-- ThisModernWorld

Posted by griffjon at 05:25 PM | TrackBack

Cindy

ThisModernWorld has a good scroll of quotes and stories about who is serving in this war, and who's being hypocritical. I'm sure you can all guess, but the stories are compelling.

Posted by griffjon at 05:22 PM | TrackBack

August 10, 2005

Roberts

The Daily KOS has a good story on the foreheadslap that is the Roberts nomination. Note to self: If I ever nominate someone to the supreme court, DO MY HOMEWORK BEFORE NOMINATING!!

Posted by griffjon at 03:40 PM | TrackBack

August 08, 2005

Daily KOS for the lazy, 'cuz...

Vietnamization of Iraq

Wow, Consitutional trials still work, even post-9/11!

Curmudgeon (White House refusing to divulge documents on Roberts to the Senate under the same tactic that Clinton got in hot water for using)

Dude, where's my 4th amendment?

And, did Roberts support clinic bombing?

With all this going on, you'd think our pres would be on the job more?

49 - the number of vacations that Bush has taken since he was inaugurated in 2001

5 - the number of weeks that Bush will spend on vacation, starting yesterday. It is the longest presidential vacation in at least 36 years.

319 - August 3, 2005 was the 319th day Bush has spent on vacation since his 2001 inauguration.

20% - the fraction of Bush's presidency that he has spent on vacation

Posted by griffjon at 07:15 PM | TrackBack

August 05, 2005

Chevron

Boing Boing runs a story on what happens when capitalism goes without any checks.

The bodies of the dead Nigerian villagers had not yet grown cold when the Nigerian navy captain presented Chevron with a bill: 15,000 naira, or $165 for responding to ``attacks from Opia village against security agents.''
Within 24 hours Chevron paid up. It would be years before the San Ramon-based energy company would acknowledge the role it played in the destruction of Opia and another small village called Ikenyan in Nigeria's oil-rich delta in January 1999.

The receipt for the January 4 army raid, which left four villagers dead and nearly 70 missing and presumed dead, came to light only this summer as part of a federal lawsuit filed on behalf of the victims in U.S. District Court in San Francisco. It is being reported first on MercuryNews.com. The receipt also is among documents obtained by the Mercury News.

Chevron has denied any responsibility for the death or injuries that occurred that day. Charles Stewart, a Chevron spokesman, said the payment to the captain reflected ``a longstanding industry practice of paying a small amount for each day'' to military personnel who protected ``the people and the property of the oil companies located in the Niger Delta.''

...

Still, Chevron's involvement in the events in Africa are crucial, human rights activists say.

``It's important to look at Chevron's own record, '' said Cindy Cohn, legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of several law firms representing the plaintiffs.

``It's important to look at the allegations of this lawsuit against the backdrop of violence and communal unrest in Nigeria,'' Stewart countered.

In a motion requesting dismissal of the lawsuit, Chevron initially cited press reports that Opia and Ikenyan had been destroyed by a rival tribe. But company documents later surfaced describing how the attacks had occurred a day after Opia youths had visited a nearby Chevron rig and demanded compensation.

Such demands have been common since the mid-1990s, as tribal communities around the Delta have sought a greater share of oil wealth and compensation for spoiled fishing areas and blighted farm land.

When oil exploration began in the 1950s, residents hoped for an economic bonanza. But the anticipated boom never materialized. Half a century later, the 20 million residents who live in the Niger River Delta continue to eke out a bleak existence while the oil fields surrounding their communities rank among the top producers of high-grade petroleum in the world.

(From Mercury-News (BugMeNot REgistration works)

Posted by griffjon at 07:00 PM | TrackBack

Why I read BBC

Posted by griffjon at 06:38 PM | TrackBack

Bolton

Just registering my disgust with Bush going behind the backs of the Senate to put Bolton into office. It's sad and scary when a president is so nervous about a nomination that he can't even risk putting it through the Congress, where his own party is in the majority.

BBC on Bolton.

Also, usumcusane on livejournal makes some good points about what this means as to where Bolton's loyalties lie -- with the Pres, not the Congress or the nation represented therein.

Posted by griffjon at 10:28 AM | TrackBack

3 hand; bunch!

So, you all know the Harry Belafonte Banana song, right? One foot, two foot, three foot, punch!

Well, it actually is a banana loading song, sung by banana farmers selling their bananas to the ships; and it's one hand, two hand, three hand, bunch!. Each "hand" of bananas (a bunch in American terms) that they can't sell, they have to take back to the farm with them, often carrying them back one their heads.

Anyhow. I learnt this through watching Life and Debt and listening to Miss Lou.

I get to this because, especially after the US/WTO subsidies/tariffs problem in the last post, and CAFTA, we see what happens to countries giving preferred trade as a favor to their former colonies which are now struffling to get by, as opposed to trying to make a profit; they actually get slapped down, as opposed to ignoring the rules.

The new tariff had aimed to safeguard exports from countries in the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) group.
Most were former colonies, and for years their banana crop had received preferential treatment.

--BBC

It's actually nowhere near as bad as the WTO claim that the US made a few years back (under Clinton) to attack this preferential treatment for the improvement of Dole.

Posted by griffjon at 10:01 AM | TrackBack

"Free Trade"

When I talked about CAFTA, subsidies and tariffs like this was what I was referring to:

Japan has hit back against the US in a spat over a controversial anti-dumping trade law and said it plans to raise import tariffs by 15% on 15 products.

The trigger for the move has been the US's Byrd Amendment, a law that hands out the money collected in anti-dumping levies to the industries most affected.

Japan, along with other nations, challenged the law and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) declared it illegal.

The European Union and Canada already have imposed retaliatory sanctions.

Despite the WTO ruling and assurances from the US that it would phase out the amendment, it is still operating and earlier this year millions of dollars were distributed to US firms.

We need to work on this definition of "free" we're using.

Posted by griffjon at 09:45 AM | TrackBack

August 04, 2005

Para-military Corps?

The Washington Post among others reports on the ability to use Peace Corps as a way to complete your military service requirements.

I can't begin to describe how bad of an idea this is.

First off, the whole military mindset is generally 180 degrees away from the Peace Corps mindset. This is rather obvious.

Of course, some military do do humanitarian work, but it's still not sustainable development. In the military, you get to throw money at problems until they go away (or get hidden); in Peace Corps, there is zero money to throw. It's community development; if you can't help the community to organize and do something, if you can't teach their children better, you haven't really done anything.

Further, I'm not sure the military servicemen know what they're getting in to. The Marine contingent in Jamaica that guarded the embassy was forbidden to wander into parts of Ja where Peace Corps volunteers work except when guarding an US Mission envoy. Hell, they got hazard pay there. We got.... jack shit for pay, and that's how it's supposed to be.

Posted by griffjon at 10:08 PM | TrackBack

July 29, 2005

Resisting searches in NYC

BoingBoing posts a link to how to peacefully resist your bags being searched in NYC subways.

Also, I heard that at the Leaning Tower of Piza, a backpack was left at the top for over an hour undisturbed in a paranoid test.

Man. Low crime rate, huh? No one even checked for a wallet or spare cash?

WTF. Not everything is a bomb.

Posted by griffjon at 10:17 AM | TrackBack

Grudge Match

Seriously, people!

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has announced the creation of a new post to help "accelerate the demise" of the Castro regime in Cuba.
Caleb McCarry, a veteran Republican Party activist, was appointed as the Cuba transition co-ordinator.

--BBC

Hey! If we invade Cuba (it worked so well last time!), we can just throw "enemy combatants" straight into gitmo!

Honestly, tho. What do you think will happen when Casto dies/retires/is assassinated? A new and better, pro-US president will miraculously appear? Only if we inset our own dictator and falsify the elections. Which, I guess, is our standard practice for South America...

There are serious issues of poverty, trade imbalance, and political freedoms that the US has spent the past, what, 40 years now making worse through trade embargoes, and making it very difficult for Americans to travel to Cuba, even on aid missions?

And we're hoping to depose the leader that's kept Cuba together through all that, without offering a better, planned out solution?

Yeah. Great plan. Worked like a charm in Iraq. Nothing going wrong over there, for sure.

Sigh.

Posted by griffjon at 10:05 AM | TrackBack

Stem Cells, Frist

Frist, who's certainly not my favorite person, is breaking from the rest of the Republican party and supporting a bill for expanding stem cell research. Of course, in an ethical manner (one would hope!), and only from fetuses which "would otherwise be discarded"

Could be Frist is going towards the center in his presidential bid?

Or, maybe (man, I'm cynical!) Frist sees the way the Supreme Court wind is blowing, and after Roe v Wade is overturned, there won't be any "discards" to be had (well, through "ethical" means, I'm sure), and this will be a moot point.

Posted by griffjon at 09:52 AM | TrackBack

July 28, 2005

CAFTA

Well, CAFTA passed. Free Trade is one of those wonderful-sounding terms that is nothing like what you imagine it to be. It basically means "easier to exploit international labor and send jobs to wherever the worst worker's rights and environmental laws are." It does not mean fair import tariffs, reducing the imbalance caused by government subsidization, or anything that'd actually be, well, useful.

The real barriers that US policies never ever touch are subsidies. The documentaty Life + Debt shows how US dairy subsidies destroyed the entire Jamaican dairy market, because the US can sell milk so dramatically below cost that the increased cost via shipping still combine to lower than the price of local milk.

Tariffs are often a target of free trade, and I have mixed feelings about them. Generally, I think, no tariffs would be great. What usually happens is that everyone agrees to no-tariffs, and then the US finds a way to bully people into paying tariffs, but refuses to pay other countries' tariffs. If, for example, Ja could have placed a tariff on subsidized milk, the price would have risen to local market values, and provided more revenue to the gov't that didn't increase the tax burden (80% of tax income goes to debt repayment, so Ja has very, very little money for social programs).

Failing outright tariffs, the US does things like requiring all importers to get an ID (with an annual fee based on how much you import) for "security" reasons.

I have a great friend who runs a non-profit in Nicaragua which works with local artisans and farmers to get them a fair price on their work and reduce poverty, and she has this to say on CAFTA:

Many people are confused about what free trade is. The legislation that just passed was about "eliminating trade barriers." The "barriers" they are referring to are "barriers" to the United States corporations and government like:
* having to pay someone a fair wage for their work (= more money in labor costs paid out by U.S. corporations)

* respecting intellectual property rights instead of stealing them

* respecting environmental protection laws instead of destroying the environment in their wake

* paying any taxes to the countries where you have your sweatshops

"Free trade" essentially means that you trade for free.

Poverty has increased 20-30% in countries with free trade

"Free trade" means exploiting people in the name of profit. This means that corporations in the U.S., and the politicans who cater to them, are all about to get a lot richer.

IF THIS IS "FREE," THAN WHAT DOES "FREEDOM" MEAN???

To which I'd only add a quote from Owen "Blacka" Ellis, a Jamaican poet and playwright -- "Freedom: Who's free? Who's Dumb?"

Posted by griffjon at 11:06 AM | TrackBack

July 27, 2005

Video Gaming

The LA Times has a great opinion piece on the whole GTA "sex scene" and violent video games, and reminds us that over the past decade, which has sxeen the most violent and bloody video games ever, from Quake to GTA, teen violence has been dropping like a rock, and is lower than it has been since the Duke University's Child Well-Being Index has been tracking it (1975).

It makes a good argument that video games are not categorically different from other amusements, and in fact more mentally challenging than many traditional board games, TV, and so on, and less violence-inspiring than, say, football.

Posted by griffjon at 03:07 PM | TrackBack

July 26, 2005

TelSur

A new pan-Latin American TV channel, Telesur, has begun its first broadcast from the Venezuelan capital, Caracas.
It is backed by the governments of Venezuela, Argentina, Cuba and Uruguay who say they want it to promote Latin American integration.

Last week the House of Representatives voted to enable the US administration to begin broadcasting its own TV signals to Venezuela.

The US plan is intended to counter what it called anti-US propaganda.

A few minutes later than scheduled, just after midday Venezuelan time, Telesur's presenter, Patricia Villegas, welcomed viewers to "this new television station of the south".

--BBC

Having seen what US Cable has done to Jamaican culture, I fully support any country's efforts to maintain their own identity.

Posted by griffjon at 11:43 PM | TrackBack

The new face of Catholicism?

Nine Roman Catholic women have been unofficially ordained as priests and deacons in North America, risking excommunication by the Vatican.
The ceremony took place aboard a tour boat near Canada's capital, Ottawa.

The women - seven Americans, a Canadian and a German - were ordained by three female bishops, who were also unofficially anointed in 2003.

Seven women who were ordained in 2002 despite the Vatican's ban on female priests were later excommunicated.

--BBC

Now, I'm not up on my dogma, but last I checked, excommunication was a one-way ticket to hell in the Catholic world. Seems ... a bit harsh of a punishment for people trying to spread the faith and widen its audience?

But then again, I never really understood most religions anyhow...Logic is rarely their strong point.

Posted by griffjon at 11:24 PM | TrackBack

July 20, 2005

Need for better healthcare

When a 60-year-old electrician shoots a postman so he can get life in jail to escape his medical bills, we really need to think about improving the healthcare system to make it reasonable and affordable, instead of a huge profit industry...

BBC Story

Posted by griffjon at 08:00 PM | TrackBack

Thanks again, Santorum

Santorum introduced a bill back in April to restrict the tax-dollar-funded National Weather Service from duplicating any service provided by commercial weather companies (like, perhaps, AccuWeather, who shares Santorum's home town?)

Lots of people support the NWS's data being open and free to the public, and unsurprisingly, only the weather business types support the bill.

It really pisses me off that our "representatives" are represent business over their consituents.

Posted by griffjon at 07:09 PM | TrackBack

Moving Target

The Bush strategy laid clear by the Washington Post is to keep a moving target for action. In the past month, we've had return scandals of Abu-ghraib and Gitmo, the Downing Street Memo, and the revelation that Rove outed Plame as a CIA operative in a way to take revenge on Wilson, her husband. To get the heat off Rove, Bush announced his Supreme Court nominee, an Anti-Roe, pro-business judge.

There are too many horrible, horrible things to keep focus and take care of any one.

Posted by griffjon at 03:24 PM | TrackBack

July 12, 2005

Distraction

Do you ever wonder if the current revelation that Rove outed Plame as a CIA operative is just a master machination, possibly of Rove's own design, to get the blogosphere off of the investigation into Downing Street Memo?

Just a thought.

Posted by griffjon at 06:28 PM | TrackBack

July 07, 2005

Invading Iraq has spawned terrorism

KOS compiles a few different articles with a very definite point -- our ignoring the Taliban to go after Iraq have done nothing but generate more support for and more actions from terrorists.

Posted by griffjon at 07:46 PM | TrackBack

July 06, 2005

Fashion Police

A reader of BoingBoing points out that Miami airport now has fashion police:

(regarding the reader's girlfriend carrying a purse with a brass knuckle-ish handle

After holding her for a few hours and some serious questioning (during which she was terrified), they took the bag BUT let her on the plane. She has to return in August for a Court date, the charges are unclear so far, but serious enough that she needs a lawyer.

Posted by griffjon at 07:11 PM | TrackBack

July 05, 2005

Santorum

KOS points to some excerpts from Santorum's book, such as this gem:

"The notion that college education is a cost-effective way to help poor, low-skill, unmarried mothers with high school diplomas or GEDs move up the economic ladder is just wrong." (It Takes a Family, 138)

or this:

"Many women have told me, and surveys have shown, that they find it easier, more â€œprofessionallyâ€ gratifying, and certainly more socially affirming, to work outside the home than to give up their careers to take care of their children. Think about that for a momentâ€¦Here, we can thank the influence of radical feminism, one of the core philosophies of the village elders." (It Takes a Family, 95)

Can we return to the 21st century? Please?

(and no entry can be complete without a link to Information about Santorum (not work safe))

Posted by griffjon at 09:12 PM | TrackBack

July 03, 2005

Gonzales not an option for SCOTUS?

Quoth my favorite news organization and yours, too, the BBC

Members of conservative groups around the US are rallying to head off the nomination of US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to the Supreme Court....

Last week, a delegation of conservative lawyers met the White House chief of staff to warn that appointing Mr Gonzales would divide conservatives, the New York Times reports.

Paul M Weyrich, chairman of the Free Congress Foundation, said he had told administration officials that nominating Mr Gonzales would divide the president's supporters.

"We have let the administration know through whatever channels we have that Gonzales would be an unwise appointment because of the opposition of some of the groups," he said.

He said some groups would actively oppose Mr Gonzales, while "others like the Southern Baptists and myself would simply not help".

Posted by griffjon at 01:40 PM | TrackBack

July 02, 2005

"Fair Game"

In early October 2003, NEWSWEEK reported that immediately after Novak's column appeared in July, Rove called MSNBC "Hardball" host Chris Matthews and told him that Wilson's wife was "fair game."

--Newsweek

How stunningly patriotic to use one of your own operatives in a personal political fight back home, endangering her, her contacts, and destroying her mission. Can we expect the same level of honor to be shown to our troops? Are they just pawns for the Whitehouse's little games? For oil companies?

I can only hope that in some future, Jeff Gannon gets to share Rove's prison cell.

Posted by griffjon at 08:55 PM | TrackBack

Did Rove leak Plume's ID?

DailyKOS links to Lawrence O'Donnel's piece in the Huffington Post:

I revealed in yesterday's taping of the McLaughlin Group that Time magazine's emails will reveal that Karl Rove was Matt Cooper's source. I have known this for months but didn't want to say it at a time that would risk me getting dragged into the grand jury.
McLaughlin is seen in some markets on Friday night, so some websites have picked it up, including Drudge, but I don't expect it to have much impact because McLaughlin is not considered a news show and it will be pre-empted in the big markets on Sunday because of tennis.

Since I revealed the big scoop, I have had it reconfirmed by yet another highly authoritative source. Too many people know this. It should break wide open this week. I know Newsweek is working on an 'It's Rove!' story and will probably break it tomorrow.

I'm with KOS on this -- caution. I'd love to see it be true, and for Karl to fall, hard -- couldn't happen to a nicer guy. Seriously.

Posted by griffjon at 02:03 PM | TrackBack

GWU, Internet, and Politics

DailyKOS talks about Carol Darr, who heads the Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet at GWU, and supports the media exemption for campgaining, except for bloggers.

Carol talks aout the media exemption:

At its essence, [the media exemption] allows a media corporation, through certain of its employees -- reporters, editorial writers, and cartoonists -- to spend an unlimited amount of corporate money communicating with candidates, asking them anything about their campaigns, with no question relating to money or strategy off limits, activities, in short, that would be considered "coordination" if the person doing the asking were not considered media.

Looks like there's still a need for some cluesticks :)

Posted by griffjon at 10:50 AM | TrackBack

July 01, 2005

A sad Day

The Stateman has an article about O'Connor's planned retirement from the Supreme Court, possibly giving Bush not one but two apointments to the SCOTUS. Gonzales, our favorite pro-torture nutcase, is in the running.

The only word of that I can think to express my thoguhts on this is "fuck"

(Seen at http://www.livejournal.com/users/usumcasane/27057.html)

Posted by griffjon at 09:42 AM | TrackBack

June 30, 2005

Reagan

Former US President Ronald Reagan has been voted the "greatest American" of all time by his fellow citizens.
Mr Reagan, who died last year aged 93, topped a list of 10 contenders, which featured six former presidents.

He edged out Abraham Lincoln, who abolished slavery, and civil rights leader Martin Luther King

(BBC)

Sigh. Indeed. "Star Wars" missile defense and trickle-down economics and a 6 billion dollar debt created during his presidency are worth so very much more than, say, civil liberties.

Posted by griffjon at 07:00 PM | TrackBack

Chavez had surgery?

...to remove his head from his ass?

Proof part I:

The Venezuelan President, Hugo Chavez, has launched a regional oil initiative to provide fuel at cheaper prices to 15 Caribbean nations.

Mr Chavez announced the Petrocaribe plan at a regional summit in Venezuela's city of Puerto La Cruz.

He said the region had suffered centuries of imperialism and needed to strike out on its own.

(BBC)

And part II:

Telesur is a new pan-Latin American TV channel based in Venezuela. It aims to rival CNN and the other Spanish-language news channels coming out of Miami and Atlanta.

Some have already dubbed it Al-Bolivar - a combination of the Arabic news channel, Al-Jazeera, and President Hugo Chavez's favourite independence hero.

'Street-level view'

"It's a question of focus, of where we look at our continent from," says Mr Botero, Telesur's news director from Colombia.

"They look at it from the United States. So they give a rose-tinted, flavour-free version of Latin America. We want to look at it from right here.

"We want our cameras to get into places that their cameras have never been, to give a real, street-level view - like the girl said: 'The true face of Latin America.'"

...

Another part of the inspiration comes from Venezuela's community TV movement.

"Don't watch television. Make it" -- Slogan of community station Catia TV

[Iain Bruce] joined Iris, Gladys and Wilfredo, of Catia TV, in a small community hall in the Caracas shanty town of San Juan. They were beginning to recruit and train another of Catia TV's so-called community production teams.

The idea is to give poor communities like this their own say, by teaching ordinary people, from children to pensioners, to make television programmes for themselves.

(BBC

Posted by griffjon at 06:52 PM | TrackBack

Spies, like, in the US

US President George W Bush has ordered the creation of a domestic intelligence service within the FBI, as part of a package of 70 new security measures.
The White House says it is enacting the measures to fight international terrorist groups and prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction.

The authorities will also be given the power to seize the property of people deemed to be helping the spread of WMD. An independent commission recommended the measures earlier this year.

Quoth the BBC

Who's placing bets that they don't need warrants to find "WMD" or "terrorist related material"?

Posted by griffjon at 06:36 PM | TrackBack

June 23, 2005

Circuit City Rebate Scam

So, I've yet to receive my rebate for a purchase I made back in January, I sent the form in, waited 8 weeks, nothing, waited a bit longer, called -- no record. Submitted my info, 4-6 weeks for "processing", waited... waited... still nothing. So I email today -- ooops, no record, please re-submit. So I send a snipy letter with the info, and a demand for it to be postmarked next week or I call the Better Business Bureau.

We'll see. This of course in the grande scheme of things is silly, but it pisses me off that they've made 6 months of interest off of my money and caused extra work for me.

If it comes to a point of a BBB resolution, I'll ask for interest plus 2 hours of my time charged at $40/hr to deal with this crap.

Posted by griffjon at 11:36 PM

June 18, 2005

Debt Relief: good start

BBC reports on the G8 100% debt relief for 18 countries (mostly in sub-saharan Africa), with another 20 possibly eligible. Sadly, Jamaica is not among either of these lists.

Posted by griffjon at 08:44 PM

Need new translators?

One wonders if perhaps English/Korean translators are just playing with us all:

"[Vice-Foreign Minister, Kim Gye-gwan] said North Korea had enough atomic bombs to protect itself against attack by the US and was building more. "

"Bush has meanwhile said Pyongyang must show it is ready to give up its nuclear weapons programme in a "serious and substantive" way."

Or maybe the Korean word for "give up" is easily mistakable for "build up" ?

Posted by griffjon at 08:33 PM

Global Warming

Philip Cooney removed or adjusted descriptions of climate research that had already been approved by government scientists, the newspaper said. ...
The reports were "based on the best available science", spokesman Scott McClellan said.

...

Before working at the White House, Mr Cooney was a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest oil industry trade group.

He is a lawyer by training, with no scientific background.

...

They included the insertion of the phrase "significant and fundamental" before the word "uncertainties", and tended to produce an air of doubt about findings most climate experts say are robust, the paper reported.

(BBC)

I have some significant and fundamental doubts as to whether a former petrochem lawyer should be editing scientific papers discussing pollution. It's fair and balanced, I guess, just like Fox News!

Posted by griffjon at 02:08 PM

BioBrazil

In the mid-1980s - before any other country even thought of the idea - Brazil succeeded in mass-producing biofuel for motor vehicles: alcohol, derived from its plentiful supplies of sugar-cane.
Differently-powered cars were actually in the majority on Brazil's roads at the time, marking a major technological feat.

But the programme that had put the country so far ahead was very nearly consigned to history when oil prices slid back from high levels seen in the 1970s.

Alcohol-powered cars fell out of favour and languished in obscurity until last year, when production picked up again in a big way.

Now Brazilians can buy cars that give them the chance to mix and match alcohol with regular fuel - and conventional motor vehicles that run purely on petrol are looking old-fashioned once again.

(BBC)

I swear, one day we'll wake up and Brazil will be a world power.

Posted by griffjon at 02:06 PM

Upping some news

Venezuela is seeking the extradition of Cuban-born Luis Posada Carriles, who is currently in jail in the US.
The new documents purportedly prove his role in masterminding the 1976 bombing in which 73 people died.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is accusing the US of double standards in its fight against terrorism.

Mr Posada Carriles is now a Venezuelan citizen.

The documents reportedly include testimony by a former employee of Mr Posada Carriles, photographer Hernan Ricardo, who admits placing an explosive device in one of the plane's toilets before disembarking.

(From the BBC

I'm actually not sure what to make of this. I'm not sure I trust Chavez any more in this case...

Posted by griffjon at 02:02 PM

Pot. Meet Kettle

From the BBC:

US President George W Bush has criticised the presidential election taking place in Iran on Friday as ignoring the demands of democracy.

"Iran is ruled by men who suppress liberty at home and spread terror across the world," he said in a statement released by the White House.

The front-runner is former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani.

However, he faces a tough challenge from two rivals, meaning a run-off vote may be needed for the first time.

Mr Bush criticised Iran for blocking hundreds of reformist candidates from running.

"Power is in the hands of an unelected few who have retained power through an electoral process that ignores the basic requirements of democracy," [Bush] said.

How many countries has Iran sent into political upheaval recently?

How fair and democratic is the US electoral-vote system?

How many of the hundreds of independent candidates were on the US presidential ballot?

Unelected few? Do I even need to go there?

Posted by griffjon at 01:26 PM

Stall Graffiti

So, I watched Stall Graffiti down at the Blue Theater last night; a show based on graffiti scribbles on bathroom walls around Austin.

It revealed through various pieces a sort of leftist volksgeist hanging around, of a disenfranchised 48% who feel betrayed, and beyond that, dumbstruck by the blatant hypocrasies of the Jeff Gannon insanities, Abu Ghraib and the lack of accountability, and the lack of mainstream reporting on these issues. Multiple pieces (there were ~10 short performances by the troupe) referenced one or more of these topics.

The current scandal that's not getting reported is of course the Downing Street Memo, revealing that indeed BushCo had made up his mind to go to war in Iraq, and "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

A word to anyone reading this from over seas who is naturally aghast at the US right now; most people don't see this news. I read BBC, blogs, and listen to the possibly-now-doomed public radio (the House proposes to cut its funding).

Posted by griffjon at 12:26 PM

US Deficit: $195,100,000,000

"This is not the direction markets were hoping to see for the mammoth current account deficit," said economist Allan Seychuk at RBC Capital Markets.
"The US dollar has lost a great deal of ground because markets are uncomfortable with a deficit that has now reached record levels."

Drew Matus, economist at Lehman Brothers, agreed that the latest deficit increase was cause for concern.

"Overall, the data clearly points towards continued problems related to US appetite for imported goods and suggest that US still has very large financing need in order to pay for consumption," he said.

(BBC)

Investin money abroad has never looked so... necessary...

Posted by griffjon at 12:21 PM

June 17, 2005

Downing Street Memo

Who else is holding their breath in fear that the smoking gun of the Downing Street Memo is just another plant of hot information that will soon be discredited, dragging down reporters and unbiased or non-right-leaning news sources with it?

The memo of course is the proof we've always suspected that BushCo cooked intelligence to match their desire to go to war:

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.

It's also caused some stir among Congress demaning a response, and Nader's making impeachment rumblings.

How wonderful would it be to see Shrub impeached? Of course that's prolly no more than a fantasy with the neocon power to spin news and control of Faux News and ClearChannel radio, but hey, a man can dream?

Posted by griffjon at 12:08 PM

June 15, 2005

Blink

I hope the hypocrasy of the "moral-values" GOP cutting funding for public broadcasting, the only source of decent children's programming. I'm sure you've seen all the news on this, but let me just add to the list of people shaking their heads.

Posted by griffjon at 02:13 PM

June 08, 2005

Creationism at the Zoo???

Tulsa Zoo to have creationism display. Seriously. W.T.F.?!?

OK, so, the current theme is to wedge religion in to scientific debate and lecture, right? So, I think it's only fair if part of church services include lectures on the theories of creation (big bang, abiogenesis, and evolution) and for cryin' out loud, a few basic logic lessons!

Posted by griffjon at 09:09 PM

Border Security

A man carrying a home-made sword and what looked like a blood-stained chainsaw was allowed into the US from Canada, the Associated Press reports.

The news agency says Gregory Despres' weapons were confiscated, before US custom officials in Calais, Maine, let him cross the border on 25 April.

The next day he became a murder suspect after bodies of his two neighbours were found in his hometown in Canada.

Mr Despres, 22, was arrested on 27 April and is now awaiting extradition.

BBC

note to customs officials: people who look like this should prolly raise your awareness level.

People who look like this, carrying a HOMEMADE, BLOODY, CHAINSAW-SWORD, brass knuckles, a knife, and a hatchet, should probably NOT be permitted to cross a border, incoming or outgoing.

Posted by griffjon at 06:50 PM

June 07, 2005

Wal marts around, comes around

BBC reports that Wal-Mart shareholders are getting miffed at the contuing wally world employment scandals which they say are hurting the stock price.

Now, we have to figure out how their unfair business practices and destruction of small town economies is bad for their bottom line...

Posted by griffjon at 08:19 PM

Koran Handling Policy

Brig Gen Jay Hood, commander at Guantanamo, said in his report: "We defined mishandling as touching, holding or the treatment of a Koran in a manner inconsistent with policy or procedure.
He confirmed that five of these alleged mishandling incidents by US guards did take place.

In one instance, a guard was said to have urinated near an air vent.

The wind allegedly blew his urine through the vent, soiling one detainee and his Koran.

--BBC

My dog ate my paperwork about the policies regarding Koran handling.

(bonus points if you leave sarcastic commentary about how everything Newsweek claimed and then retracted (loosing cred in the process) is becoming "true" again)

Posted by griffjon at 08:11 PM

tit for tat

Venezuela is threatening to refuse entry to US officials in response to the decision to bar Venezuela's top judge from entering the United States.

(BBC)

heh.

Posted by griffjon at 07:52 PM

Welcome to Jamrock

Jamaica continues its downwards spiral -- the daily murder average is inching up to 7 per day:

A STAGGERING 746 Jamaicans have been murdered since the start of the year, 193 more than for the corresponding period last year.

Police records show that the majority of the victims, 555, were killed by the gun. Sixty-nine women are numbered among the dead.

The month of May has seen the highest number of homicides with 167, making it one of the bloodiest in the nation's history. This is followed by March with 157, January with 145 and April 127. With 155 murders, October was the bloodiest month in 2004.

An average of seven Jamaicans were killed every day last week, bringing to 49, the total number of homicides for the week ending June 4. At least nine persons have been killed since the start of the week, with two double murders recorded since Sunday.

Update
For comparison, the City of Austin (roughly 600k) had 26 murders in 2004. Running the numbers quickly, that'd be equivalent to a pop of 2 mil (such as Ja) having 43 murders. Jamaica had more than that last week.

Posted by griffjon at 11:33 AM

June 02, 2005

Rebate Hassle/Fraud : Circuit City?

Since returning to the States, I've bought 3 things from Circuit City, all were special deals through rebates.

All three times, there've been glitches in the rebate process which would have led to me failing to receive the rebate had I not followed through with web and eventually phone calls to deal with it. I've recieved (or, been promised to receive, in the most recent case).

It occurs to me that if there is organized rebate fraud, the way to combat it is to begin posting about it in the hopes that a pattern begins to emerge.

I notice that this (even this most recent problem I had) does indeed show up on Ed's Gripe Log

Posted by griffjon at 06:20 PM

June 01, 2005

"Pregnant? Need Help?"

So, I've been seeing a lot of "Pregnant? Need Help?" signs around town, and just saw an ad for one while watching Daily Show promising that they're a resource, and they "won't judge" or "force you to do anything". I've googled them, and while I didn't turn up any dirt, it's a definitely anti-abortion religious organization, which is hosting Oliver North at their annual benefit. It seems to be another of the "pro-birth" style groups, more interested in reducing abortions through adoption (which is fine, mind you, but should be part of the whole) instead of combining it with education on safe sex and such.

Anyhow, I don't really know, and their websites are intentionally opaque on the subject, has anyone heard anything about these type of organizations?

Posted by griffjon at 10:21 PM

Amnesty International

The fact that the current regime in control over my country is the latest in a long line of fine governments to dismiss Amnesty International reports as absurd makes me sick.

Posted by griffjon at 10:16 PM

Newsflash! Deep Throat not liked by former Nixon aides

G. Gordon Liddy, a Nixon operative who engineered the 1972 break-in at the Democratic National Campaign headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington, and served four and a half years in jail for it, said Wednesday that Felt "violated the ethics of the law enforcement profession." ... "If he possessed evidence of wrongdoing, he was honor-bound to take that to a grand jury and secure an indictment, not to selectively leak it to a single news source," Liddy, now a popular conservative radio talk show host, told CNN television.
...
Leonard Garment, Nixon's chief legal counsellor from 1969-1973, said he thought Felt kept his role in Watergate secret for 31 years "because he felt that what he had done could well be considered dishonorable."

Garment said the question was "when government persons, having private, secret, confidential information, are justified to become the whistle-blower and defy or ignore their sworn obligation to maintain security and go to the press with it."

Chuck Colson, the head of White House communications in 1972, Felt could have helped America avoid a wrenching political crisis, the ripple effect of which was felt in the country for decades, if he had gone through proper channels.

"Mark Felt could have stopped Watergate," said Colson, who served time in jail and is now an evangelical Christian broadcaster. "He was in a position of that kind of influence. Instead, he goes out and basically undermines the administration."

So, wait, let me clear this up -- people who were involved in the scandal, on the illegal action side, many of whom served jail time after their condemnation by our legal system, are pissed at the whistleblower.

Pardon me if this is absolutely silly.

Evidentally, Liddy added:

"It certainly does not make him a hero. Right now, he's a pitiful, pathetic old man who can hardly stand and whose mind is there sometimes and is not at other times,"

Bitter much?

Posted by griffjon at 10:09 PM

May 26, 2005

Amnesty International

Governments around the world betrayed their commitment to human rights in 2004, Amnesty International says.
In a 300-page annual report, the group accused the US government of damaging human rights with its attitude to torture and treatment of detainees.

This granted "a licence to others to commit abuse with impunity", the human rights advocates said.

The report also criticised the world as a whole for failing to act over crises, notably in Sudan's Darfur region.

Afghanistan was slipping into a "downward spiral of lawlessness and instability", it added.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 07:38 PM

May 21, 2005

My secret reason for my wanderlust

This article by the Washington Post that Dad forwarded me is a perfect description of why I want to find a career that gets me out of this country on occasion, an gives me contacts globally. Beyond the attraction of travel and development work, it's a nice back-door when US turns into Argentina II:

The timing could not have been more apt. On the eve of a titanic partisan clash in the Senate, eggheads of the left and right got together yesterday to warn both parties that they are ignoring the country's most pressing problem: that the United States is turning into Argentina.
...

With startling unanimity, they agreed that without some combination of big tax increases and major cuts in Medicare, Social Security and most other spending, the country will fall victim to the huge debt and soaring interest rates that collapsed Argentina's economy and caused riots in its streets a few years ago.

"The only thing the United States is able to do a little after 2040 is pay interest on massive and growing federal debt," Walker said. "The model blows up in the mid-2040s. What does that mean? Argentina."

"All true," Sawhill, a budget official in the Clinton administration, concurred.

"To do nothing," Butler added, "would lead to deficits of the scale we've never seen in this country or any major in industrialized country. We've seen them in Argentina. That's a chilling thought, but it would mean that."

...

The unity of the bespectacled presenters was impressive -- and it made their conclusion all the more depressing. As Ron Haskins, a former Bush White House official and current Brookings scholar, said when introducing the thinkers: "If Heritage and Brookings agree on something, there must be something to it."

...

And where is that? "No republic in the history of the world lasted more than 300 years," Walker said. "Eventually, the crunch comes."

Posted by griffjon at 12:25 PM

May 20, 2005

Fedex, and do you have an FBI file?

The ACLU has a cute quiz on things that are likely to get you into an FBI file somewhere. Among them is this gem;

Have you ever sent a package using FedEx?
You might think your privacy is ensured, but you should know that FedEx maintains its own deputized police force and is part of a Joint Terrorism Task Force. We don't yet know what kind of information FedEx is sharing with the FBI and other law enforcement officials, but given what we know about JTTF activity, we thought you'd want to know about the relationship.

FedEx has a deputized security force?? How can I get one? Can any corporation get their internal security deputized? Just what we need -- Wally World rent-a-cops with actual authority...

Maybe you should take the quiz yourself?

Posted by griffjon at 10:39 PM

May 12, 2005

Got Ike?

Daily KOS links to a quote turned up by sirota;

"Should any political party attempt to abolish social security, unemployment insurance, and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group, of course, that believes you can do these things. Among them are [a] few other Texas oil millionaires, and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid."
- President Dwight D. Eisenhower, 11/8/54

Posted by griffjon at 11:15 PM

Abuse

Nour Miyati had to have several fingers amputated.
She said the Saudi couple who employed her had bound her hand and foot and left her on a bathroom floor for a month without food.

She also said the wife had accused her of dressing immodestly around the house and had beaten her with a shoe knocking out several teeth.

Incredulity

But after a newspaper showed the maid black and blue, with bandaged hands, the authorities launched an investigation.

That has now concluded the gangrene came from an existing but unspecified disease but other injuries were caused by cleaning fluids used in the maid's work and that the bruising was self-inflicted or caused by a falling wardrobe.

Nour Miyati has now been charged with making false allegations.

Some Saudis are incredulous at all this.

--BBC

No doubt. A falling wardrobe? Honestly. She prolly fell down the stairs.

Sigh.

Posted by griffjon at 09:45 PM

May 10, 2005

First we got the bomb....

N Korea may have up to 6 nukes

Greaaaaaat....

Posted by griffjon at 11:11 PM

May 07, 2005

Papers, Please

What's all the fuss with the Real ID Act about? President Bush is expected to sign an $82 billion military spending bill soon that will, in part, create electronically readable, federally approved ID cards for Americans. The House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved the package--which includes the Real ID Act--on Thursday.
What does that mean for me?
Starting three years from now, if you live or work in the United States, you'll need a federally approved ID card to travel on an airplane, open a bank account, collect Social Security payments, or take advantage of nearly any government service. Practically speaking, your driver's license likely will have to be reissued to meet federal standards.

--News.com

Just great.

Posted by griffjon at 04:14 PM

April 26, 2005

UN Nominee Hope

US senators have again delayed a vote on President George Bush's nomination of John Bolton as ambassador to the UN, to examine new allegations against him.
The vote by the Senate Foreign Relations committee is now due to take place in May to allow fresh hearings.

The decision came after Republican Senator George Voinovich indicated he would side with the Democrats who oppose Mr Bolton's nomination.

He has been accused of being a poor manager and influencing intelligence.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 09:53 PM

Prison

The US prison population has risen further, with one in 138 people now in jail, new official figures reveal.
There are more than 2.1 million US citizens in jail - more than in any other country, the Bureau of Justice Statistics says

--BBC

I hear about 1 in every 2 people is a liberal, so there's a lot of room for improvement over the next 4 years.

Posted by griffjon at 09:27 PM

April 23, 2005

Life in Debt

"How many children have to die before these seven men in suits develop a sense of urgency?" Jonathan Hepburn, of Oxfam International, told the AFP news agency.
"There was complete silence from the G7 on the sale of gold. Yet the IMF has clearly said the gold can be sold to help cancel poor countries' debt," he said.

--BBC

At least a dramatic re-shuffling of debt with a huge, decades-long interest free period; so many developing countries are trapped in their development by have no money to do it with; as all tax revenues go to paying interest on existing debt. Maybe they shouldn't have accepted a loan in the first place, and turn let their country turn into a war zone and then get bailed out by UN Peacekeepers later on down the line, with a huge loss of life and wounds between whatever factions form that cause civil unrest for a unknown long period of time; and then end up having to take loans anyway...

Posted by griffjon at 01:11 PM

April 22, 2005

Death Penalty

A team from the University of Miami looked at information on anaesthesia and awareness in prisoners.
They suggest some suffer unnecessarily, and claim standards do not meet those for putting animals down.

--BBC

Hardly surprising, sadly

Posted by griffjon at 06:05 PM

April 17, 2005

Stating the Obvious

Now, I love the BBC. It's my primary news source nowadays. But sometimes, even the best news organization in the world can stoop to stating what can only be considered very obvious:

Plagge, who died in 1957, was honoured by the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.
It is unusual for Yad Vashem to bestow the "Righteous Among the Nations" title on a German who was part of the Nazi war machine, the memorial's chairman Avner Shalev told the BBC News website.

Really? Unusual? gee gosh willikers!

(seriously, tho, Plagge saved ~1200 Jews (mostly women and children) using his factory

Posted by griffjon at 12:44 PM

Clinton Foundation

Former US President Bill Clinton's foundation is to spend an additional $10m to fight Aids among children in the developing world, he has announced.

The foundation aims to provide Aids-suppressing drugs to 10,000 children in countries from China to Africa and the Caribbean.

"These children need hope," the former president said, launching the drive.

He said children accounted for one in six Aids deaths worldwide, but only one in 30 receiving treatment was a child.

He said Cipla, an Indian-based company that makes anti-retroviral drugs for children, had agreed to provide medication at less than half the market price.

--BBC

Hey, maybe Clinton can be up there with Carter as a great ex-president if he keeps on this line of work...

Posted by griffjon at 12:28 PM

Bolton v UN

Not to overly defend the UN -- any bureacracy of that immense size is going to have a nightmarish maze of red tape and paper, BUT, honestly, Bolton? A guy who would've cheered if one of the 9/11 planes had hit the UN building instead?

Le sigh.

Posted by griffjon at 12:22 PM

Birth Control

The pharmacies-not-filling-birth-control-pills really makes me furious. the BBC ran a good story on it recently.

Phillips said: "In essence, I would be causing a chemical abortion, and as a Christian, I am impelled not to do anything that destroys life."

Let's give him that he means human life. Were I a vegan or a Jainist, perhaps I'd get nitpicky about that, but let's accept that for now. How many objects in our daily life negatively impact another's life; through poor working/sweatshop conditions, through unbalanced trade? What about supporting the war in Iraq? Oh, I forgot that foreigners don't count, only potential babies.

Heck, what about women for whom the Pill is as much a medical device as birth control?

Gah. Hopefully, this will blow over; some states are passing laws forcing pharmacies to fill prescriptions, but some are defending a pharmacist in not filling prescriptions that go against their morals.

I actually worked for a pharmacy back in high school, and have problems with a law forcing them to fill scrips -- sometimes, the pharmacist catches things doctors don't; a person may be seeing multiple specialists but only one pharmacist, and the pharm will catch drugs which won't mix (of course scammers will get around this, but this is a great stopgap against accidental problems happening to innocent people). But I'm sure a law could be written to encompass that without giving leeway to make moralistic judgement calls.

Why is this even an issue?

Posted by griffjon at 12:09 PM

April 09, 2005

Unitarian Jihad

My Unitarian
Jihad Name is: Brother Spikey Mace of Reasoned Discussion.

Get yours.

Posted by griffjon at 06:29 PM

April 07, 2005

Public Transport?

I guess there are situations which would make me happy with the state of Jamaica's public transport system; and that being the Indian-Pakistani bus that gets grenades tossed at it...

Passengers on the first cross-Kashmir bus service in nearly 60 years have crossed the Line of Control that divides the region.
Some passengers on the buses between Srinagar in Indian-controlled Kashmir and Muzaffarabad in the Pakistan sector cried with joy as they crossed.

Indian PM Manmohan Singh called the new service "a caravan of peace".

The bus from Srinagar earlier survived a grenade attack at Pattan, about 27km (16 miles) from the city.

The bus had already passed when the grenade went off, injuring four people, including a policeman.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:28 AM

Those crazy drug smugglers!

Our troops in Colombia have been unusually entrepreneuring, it seems:

A group of US soldiers arrested for alleged cocaine smuggling cannot be allowed to stand trial in Colombia, Washington's envoy to Bogota has said.
Colombian senators have been calling for the men, who were based in the country, to be extradited from the US.

But US ambassador William Wood said the soldiers are immune from prosecution.

More than 200 Colombian citizens have been extradited to the US to face trial for drug trafficking, under a bilateral deal between the two countries.

Colombian politicians have asked the government to push for the US to hand over the men, arguing that the extradition agreement works both ways.

"In practical terms, these military personnel committed the alleged crime in Colombia, and according to the extradition treaty, which is bilateral, they should be tried here," legislator Gustavo Petro said.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:25 AM

April 06, 2005

Support the Military

Vote out right-wing congress-critters in 2006
Reducing Veterans' Benefits, redefining "veteran"

So, what is happening here? Buyer [R-NJ] is trying to redefine "veteran," and in so doing, reshape benefit programs to meet his new definition. In short, this means fewer benefits for fewer veterans.
The two keys here are Buyer's references to "intent of Congress" and "core constituency." By rejecting the "intent of Congress" when they passed legislation defining benefits and eligibility, Buyer is telling us Congress was wrong and he is going to change it. By referring to the VA's "core constituency" as "disabled and indigent veterans," he is eliminating veterans who do not fall into those categories.

Posted by griffjon at 11:21 AM

April 01, 2005

Ah, delicious hypocrisy

On Thursday, Hudson died after a Texas hospital removed his feeding tube, despite his mother's pleas. He had a fatal congenital disease, but would have been kept alive had his mother been able to pay for his medical costs, or had she found another institution willing to take him. In a related Texas case, Spiro Nikolouzos, who is unable to speak and must be fed through a tube because of a shunt in his brain â€“ but who his wife says can recognize family members and show emotion â€“ may soon be removed from life support because health care providers believe his case is futile.
The Hudson and Nikolous cases fall under the Texas Futile Care Law, which was signed into law by then-governor George W. Bush.

--AlterNet

Posted by griffjon at 10:45 AM

March 20, 2005

Canada!

Link from DKOS, but wow, go Canada:

Dear Condi,
I'm glad you've decided to get over your fit of pique and venture north to visit your closest neighbour. It's a chance to learn a thing or two. Maybe more.

I know it seems improbable to your divinely guided master in the White House that mere mortals might disagree with participating in a missile-defence system that has failed in its last three tests, even though the tests themselves were carefully rigged to show results.

But, gosh, we folks above the 49th parallel are somewhat cautious types who can't quite see laying down billions of dollars in a three-dud poker game.

As our erstwhile Prairie-born and bred (and therefore prudent) finance minister pointed out in presenting his recent budget, we've had eight years of balanced or surplus financial accounts. If we're going to spend money, Mr. Goodale added, it will be on day-care and health programs, and even on more foreign aid and improved defence.

Sure, that doesn't match the gargantuan, multi-billion-dollar deficits that your government blithely runs up fighting a "liberation war" in Iraq, laying out more than half of all weapons expenditures in the world, and giving massive tax breaks to the top one per cent of your population while cutting food programs for poor children.
Just chalk that up to a different sense of priorities about what a national government's role should be when there isn't a prevailing mood of manifest destiny.

Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defence can be made openly.

You might also notice that it's a system in which the governing party's caucus members are not afraid to tell their leader that their constituents don't want to follow the ideological, perhaps teleological, fantasies of Canada's continental co-inhabitant. And that this leader actually listens to such representations.

Your boss did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defence in front of a highly controlled, pre-selected audience.

Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire.

If you want to have us consider your proposals and positions, present them in a proper way, through serious discussion across the table in our cabinet room, as your previous president did when he visited Ottawa. And don't embarrass our prime minister by lobbing a verbal missile at him while he sits on a public stage, with no chance to respond.
Now, I understand that there may have been some miscalculations in Washington based on faulty advice from your resident governor of the "northern territories," Ambassador Cellucci. But you should know by now that he hasn't really won the hearts and minds of most Canadians through his attempts to browbeat and command our allegiance to U.S. policies.

Sadly, Mr. Cellucci has been far too closeted with exclusive groups of 'experts' from Calgary think-tanks and neo-con lobbyists at cross-border conferences to remotely grasp a cross-section of Canadian attitudes (nor American ones, for that matter).

I invite you to expand the narrow perspective that seems to inform your opinions of Canada by ranging far wider in your reach of contacts and discussions. You would find that what is rising in Canada is not so much anti-Americanism, as claimed by your and our right-wing commentators, but fundamental disagreements with certain policies of your government. You would see that rather than just reacting to events by drawing on old conventional wisdoms, many Canadians are trying to think our way through to some ideas that can be helpful in building a more secure world.

These Canadians believe that security can be achieved through well-modulated efforts to protect the rights of people, not just nation-states.

To encourage and advance international co-operation on managing the risk of climate change, they believe that we need agreements like Kyoto.

To protect people against international crimes like genocide and ethnic cleansing, they support new institutions like the International Criminal Court -- which, by the way, you might strongly consider using to hold accountable those committing atrocities today in Darfur, Sudan.

And these Canadians believe that the United Nations should indeed be reformed -- beginning with an agreement to get rid of the veto held by the major powers over humanitarian interventions to stop violence and predatory practices.

On this score, you might want to explore the concept of the 'Responsibility to Protect' while you're in Ottawa. It's a Canadian idea born out of the recent experience of Kosovo and informed by the many horrific examples of inhumanity over the last half-century. Many Canadians feel it has a lot more relevance to providing real human security in the world than missile defence ever will.

This is not just some quirky notion concocted in our long winter nights, by the way. It seems to have appeal for many in your own country, if not the editorialists at the Wall Street Journal or Rush Limbaugh. As I discovered recently while giving a series of lectures in southern California, there is keen interest in how the U.S. can offer real leadership in managing global challenges of disease, natural calamities and conflict, other than by military means.
There is also a very strong awareness on both sides of the border of how vital Canada is to the U.S. as a partner in North America. We supply copious amounts of oil and natural gas to your country, our respective trade is the world's largest in volume, and we are increasingly bound together by common concerns over depletion of resources, especially very scarce fresh water.

Why not discuss these issues with Canadians who understand them, and seek out ways to better cooperate in areas where we agree -- and agree to respect each other's views when we disagree.

Above all, ignore the Cassandras who deride the state of our relations because of one missile-defence decision. Accept that, as a friend on your border, we will offer a different, independent point of view. And that there are times when truth must speak to power.

In friendship,
Lloyd Axworthy

Lloyd Axworthy is president of the University of Winnipeg and a former Canadian foreign minister.

--Winnipeg Free Press

Posted by griffjon at 05:33 PM

WTO slaps the US for a change

US loses cotton fight with Brazil Cotton pickers in West Africa Brazil said the US policy hurt other cotton-producing nations The United States has lost the final round of a high-profile dispute with Brazil over US cotton subsidies.
A World Trade Organisation (WTO) appeals body on Thursday upheld an earlier ruling ordering the US to stop the payments to its farmers.

The organisation had found in its initial September ruling that the subsidies violated global trade rules.

Brazil said the US practice depressed world prices and hurt cotton producers both in Brazil and other countries.

Cotton growers in West Africa say that they have been especially hard hit by subsidies for US cotton farmers.

The US will now have to bring its cotton subsidies, which wrongly include export credits for producers, in line with global trade rules.

(BBC)

Now, if they could make that an across-the board ruling, or at least make us pay trade penalties for crops we subsidize, to lessen the impact of their deflated costs...

Posted by griffjon at 04:38 PM

There goes Ecuador's rainforests...

One of South America's poorest countries, Ecuador, is believed to be sitting on huge untapped reserves of oil and gas.
Much of it, though, lies beneath remote areas of the Amazon rainforest.

Now the indigenous people of the region are starting to organise themselves politically in a bid to keep the oilmen out of their ancestral homes.

In global oil terms, Ecuador is a relatively small player. But revenues from its existing Amazon oil reserves are critical in keeping the country's economy afloat.

Now, with the country sitting on huge potential new reserves, there is enormous pressure to expand production.

(BBC)

Posted by griffjon at 04:09 PM

Goundspan day?

When Alan Greenspan takes his head out of his ass and sees a looming deficit, does it mean he'll urge the right thing?

Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan has warned that allowing huge US budget deficits to continue could have "severe" consequences.
Speaking to the House Budget Committee he urged Congress to take action to cut the deficit, such as increasing taxes.

Crazy. (BBC

Posted by griffjon at 04:06 PM

Americas

Uruguay elects a left/centrist who started with quite an impressive level of coolness: (BBC)

Vazquez welcomed "the Cuban people once again at this house" A day after his inauguration as Uruguay's first left-wing president, Tabare Vazquez has bolstered links with leftist leaders in the region.
Mr Vazquez signed a deal for energy co-operation with his Venezuelan counterpart, Hugo Chavez.

He completed agreements on human rights with Argentine leader Nestor Kirchner and held talks with the Brazilian President, Luis Inacio Lula da Silva.

(more after the break)

Uruguay is the fifth Latin American nation to move to the left recently.
Venezuela, Chile, Brazil and Argentina also have left-wing governments.

The BBC's Elliott Gotkine in Buenos Aires says Mr Vazquez appears to be making good on his promise to put regional integration at the top of his foreign policy.

Meeting the left

President Vazquez restored full diplomatic relations with Cuba immediately after being sworn in.

Uruguay broke off diplomatic ties with Cuba three years ago under outgoing President Jorge Battle.

Cuban leader Fidel Castro accused him of being a traitor for supporting US efforts to condemn Cuba's human rights record in a United Nations vote.

President Vazquez said that ties should never have been broken off and he welcomed "the Cuban people once again at this house".

Crowds of supporters celebrate the inauguration of Tabare Vazquez
Vazquez's election brought to an end almost 180 years of two-party rule

The Venezuelan leader and Mr Vazquez agreed to exchange Uruguayan food for Venezuelan fuel, and to work together on a state-run regional TV channel.

Mr Vazquez asked Mr Kirchner to help to look for the bodies of a reported 150 Uruguayans who disappeared on Argentine soil in the 1970s and 1980s, when both countries were under military rule.

After holding talks with President Lula, the new leader and his Brazilian counterpart inaugurated a Brazilian-owned brewery in the north of Uruguay.

Correspondents say that despite his warm meeting with President Chavez, Mr Vazquez's economic policy will be closer to the cautious centre-left approach of President Lula.

Posted by griffjon at 03:59 PM

Political Strategy

So, the blogger types have uncovered the Republican playbook for media-spin, with fun tidbits such as using 9/11, and word usage:

NEVER SAY: Undocumented Workers
INSTEAD SAY: Illegal Aliens

The Dems have adopted the phrase "undocumented worker" but you shouldnâ€™t. Call them exactly what they are. In fact, instead of addressing "immigration reform, "which polarizes Americans, you should be talking about "border security" issues. Securing our borders and our people has universal support.

It gets pretty incriminating, so you won't actually see this in your normal media channels. Damn that liberal media, y'know.

September 11th changed everything. So start with 9/11. This is the context that explains and justifies why we have $500 billion dollar deficits, why the stock market tanked, why unemployment climbed to 6% and why we are still in a rebuilding mode. Much of the public anger can be immediately pacified if they are reminded that we would not be in this situation today if 9/11 had not happened, and that it is unfair to blame the current political leadership or corporate America for the consequences of that day.

Right. No blame. Right.

Posted by griffjon at 01:12 PM

March 16, 2005

Censors***

A retired Texas judge on the telecom bill banning "indecent" speech:

This is bullshit -- unconstitutional bullshit and also bad policy bullshit. To violate your ban on indecency, I have been forced to use and overuse so-called indecent language. But if I called you a bunch of goddam motherfucking cocksucking cunt-eating blue-balled bastards with the morals of muggers and the intelligence of pond scum, that would be nothing compared to this indictment, to wit: you have sold the First Amendment, your birthright and that of your children. The Founders turn in their graves. You have spit on the grave of every warrior who fought under the Stars and Stripes.
And what mess of pottage have you acquired in exchange for the rights of a free people? Have you cleansed the Internet of even the rawest pornography? No, because it is a worldwide system. You have, however, handed the government a powerful new tool to harass its critics: a prosecution for indecent commentary in any district in the country.

Have you protected one child from reading dirty words? Probably not, if you understand what the economists call "substitution" -- but you have leveled the standards of political debate to a point where a history buff would not dare to upload some of the Federalist v. Anti-Federalist election rhetoric to a Website.

Since the lobby reporting requirements were not law when the
censorship discussion was happening, I hope you got some substantial reward for what you gave up. Thirty pieces of silver doesn't go far these days.

--Steve Russell, a retired Trial Judge and and Assistant
Professor of Criminal Justice at the University of Texas

Posted by griffjon at 09:02 PM | Comments (2)

March 11, 2005

Neighborhood Watched

A friend linked me to this, but it wasn't in a place I could link to, so here's a bit of info.

Homeland Security is in the process of co-opting the Neighborhood Warch program, and asking their members to help them update their databases of volunteers nationwide.

Check The 1984-esque Citizen Corps site for more info.

Edit: You can see the original info that turned my onto this at my friend's LJ

Posted by griffjon at 06:38 PM

March 04, 2005

Verified Voting Act

(Yeah, I'm catching up on my blog-news between interviews)

Sens. Boxer and Clinton have introduced a great law, if only it's been on the books this time last year, to require paper, voter-verified ballot reciepts for evoting machines. Read more about this sliver of good news on Boxer's website.

Posted by griffjon at 02:48 PM

NYT on torture

Herbert interviews Arar on his US-sponsored torture in Syria:

...
In the fall of 2002 Mr. Arar, a Canadian citizen, suddenly found himself caught up in the cruel mockery of justice that the Bush administration has substituted for the rule of law in the post-Sept. 11 world. While attempting to change planes at Kennedy Airport on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunisia, he was seized by American authorities, interrogated and thrown into jail. He was not charged with anything, and he never would be charged with anything, but his life would be ruined.

Mr. Arar was surreptitiously flown out of the United States to Jordan and then driven to Syria, where he was kept like a nocturnal animal in an unlit, underground, rat-infested cell that was the size of a grave. From time to time he was tortured.

He wept. He begged not to be beaten anymore. He signed whatever confessions he was told to sign. He prayed.

Among the worst moments, he said, were the times he could hear babies crying in a nearby cell where women were imprisoned. He recalled hearing one woman pleading with a guard for several days for milk for her child.

He could hear other prisoners screaming as they were tortured.

"I used to ask God to help them," he said.

The Justice Department has alleged, without disclosing any evidence whatsoever, that Mr. Arar is a member of, or somehow linked to, Al Qaeda. If that's so, how can the administration possibly allow him to roam free? The Syrians, who tortured him, have concluded that Mr. Arar is not linked in any way to terrorism.
...

What a moral and christian thing for Bush to do, torture a father of two. (hey, that has a ring to it. K -- wanna make a rhyming couplet "children's book" on our current admininstration?)

Posted by griffjon at 02:22 PM

Free WiFi. Or Not.

Ah, the promise of WiFi. Everyone connected, low-cost, instantaneous network rollouts. It's a nightmare that evidentially keeps the telecom industry up at night, to the extent of convincing a Tx republican to sponsor a bill prohibiting gov't support of such initiatives.

It's not the end of the world that many have been bemoaning, as far as I can tell it's not banning a coffeeshop from providing free connections, but it's certainly limiting non-profit and community organizations from getting the all-important city funding for their projects. Cuz, y'know, East Austin is going to bankrupt Ma Bell.

Posted by griffjon at 12:03 PM

humming the wrong tune

There's an increasing body of evidence that we're going to war with Iran, possibly as early as June by some accounts.

Reading these recent essays, we're missing a very important cognitive note. The proper thing to say is not, "We're going to war with Iran" rather, it is "We cannot go to war with Iran." Otherwise, we're just humming along, off-key, to the neocon's tune when we should be shouting at them to shut it.

Posted by griffjon at 07:48 AM

February 24, 2005

Gannon/Guckert, Hannity, Rathergate

We're either on the tip of the largest still-in-one-piece-after-global-warming iceberg and media scandle, or straddling many, many smaller icebergs.

Check TalkAboutGovt and NewsHounds for more from the original Raw News story, here's the scoop from Raw News:

Gannon bragged about passing a scoop on who obtained the troubled Bush National Guard memos to Fox Newsâ€™ Sean Hannity on the conservative forum Free Republic.
â€œMary Mapes is DEFINITELY [sic] behind the story,â€ Gannon wrote in Free Republic on Sept. 10, 2004. â€œThis is who I told Sean Hannity got the documents. She also obtained the Abu Ghraib photos.â€

â€œI got the scoop and passed it to Hannity,â€ Gannon added. â€œLook for my detailed story on Monday at Talon News. There is much more to this story. Mary Mapes is just the beginning.â€

That storyâ€“that CBS producer Mary Mapes was the source of the troubled Bush Guard documentsâ€“shredded the credibility of anchor Dan Rather and killed any chance the facts that Bush had failed to adequately perform his duties as a member of the Texas Air National Guard would be taken seriously.

A producer at a rival network told Aravosis she received a call from Gannon informing her that Mapes had obtained the documents. That network then broke the tie between Mapes and the questionable â€˜60 Minutesâ€™ report.
â€œI am more concerned with each passing day that the relationship between Gannon and the White House was anything but typical,â€ Slaughter said. â€œAs long as this Administration continues to stonewall I will seek the truth.â€

So wait, an uncredentialed fake news reporter (who's a gay hooker on the side), not only has press passes into the White House, but is receiving documents in advance of their release, now shows to have some connection to Rathergate?

There's more going on here... I'll make a prediction, as my earlier call on Iran is inching ever closer to reality, I think we're soon going to uncover a hugely interconnected propaganda effort by the neocons. CBS was set up, Fox is on the payroll, as are half of the other rightwingnut reporters.

Posted by griffjon at 09:37 PM

Torture Administration

Posted by griffjon at 09:26 PM

February 22, 2005

NYT editorial chimes in on tortue

American intelligence is still secretly detaining prisoners - a practice that has become embarrassing enough for the Central Intelligence Agency to fret publicly about it. And the administration continues to insist that the president has an imperial right to sweep aside the law and authorize whatever he wants. That includes flouting treaties that prohibit sending prisoners to other countries to be tortured. That abhorrent practice has become more common since 9/11 and is reported to include sending prisoners to Syria, a repressive nation counted by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Members of Congress from both parties are proposing new laws on interrogations. Their intentions are honorable, and new legislation may be needed. But drafts of these measures risk endorsing some terrible practices, as well as the idea that the president can declare himself above the law. Anyway, it's too soon for new laws; we still don't know what happened and who approved it.

But that task is now way beyond the purview of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which held important hearings on prisoner abuse. Republican Congressional leaders have made it painfully clear that they will not hold a real investigation. And no inquiry by the executive branch can be credible because the stain of prisoner abuse spreads so far. The Justice Department can't do it; Attorney General Alberto Gonzales was part of the problem.

We strongly agree with the American Bar Association, which wrote to President Bush on Feb. 1 to urge the appointment of an independent, bipartisan commission with subpoena power. The bar association talked about Iraqi civilians in military custody, but we believe that a panel should look at all prisoners, all detention centers and all involved government agencies.

Only a full accounting can begin to heal the nation's image in the world, clarify the rules, punish those responsible and clear the names of the hundreds of thousands of other uniformed Americans who risk their lives to preserve human dignity and the rule of law.

Emphasis mine, go Bar Assoc!

--NYT

Posted by griffjon at 07:47 PM

Social Security Calculator

Posted by griffjon at 07:31 PM

All you ever wanted to know about Negroponte

DailyKOS pulls together a good CV for the new director of national intelligence.

Posted by griffjon at 07:29 PM

February 15, 2005

Firewalling Morality?

Futzing with the firewall at $job today, I came across its content filtering categories. So nice to see Sex Education in with such good company... sigh.

-Violence -Sexual Acts -Satanic/Cult -Sex Education -Partial Nudity -Gross Depictions -Drug Culture ...

Click for the pic...

Sex Ed?

Posted by griffjon at 07:31 PM

February 13, 2005

Shoot the Messenger

Thirty-six journalists - and 18 media support workers - have been killed since the beginning of hostilities in Iraq in March 2003, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).
At least nine have died as a result of American fire, said Ann Cooper, executive director of the CPJ.

Nine from US fire? Uh?

That does indeed look suspicious, as Eason Jordan, the (former) chief newsie at CNN pointed out (and backpedaled afterwards, and also resigned from CNN.

More at BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:33 PM

Ignore the consequences

The continued destruction of the Earth is an often-forgotten problem of the current US regime, what with torture being a daily headline and all. But let's not forget:

The US, the world's largest polluter, withdrew from the treaty in 2001, citing economic concerns

The other 136 counties, with economies worse than ours, seem to still be solvent.

Posted by griffjon at 08:30 PM

February 12, 2005

IBM Commercial

I just saw this IBM commercial on TV. Caveat: I actually like IBM, they've made impressive and positive changes, particularly remarkable for a big stodgy business corporation. Anyhow.

The commercial is this cute chinese girl asking a guy in a large white room "is this the help desk?" and then barraging him with questions about science. He asks her why she didn't learn this in school, and she responds that she lives on a farm in China, and there is no school. Of course, this is the Internet, so she can join in the existing classroom -- IBM helps teachers create virtual classrooms for everyone, etc and so on.

Sorry, IBM -- if there's not a classroom, there sure as hell ain't gonna be Internet connection that can handle any of the creappily designed virtual classroom systems (ok, maybe Moodle.

Posted by griffjon at 09:30 PM

February 10, 2005

Sorry, Citizen, the Computer says you can't be here

Electronic ID cards?

It's just another step closer to a national ID card system.

Posted by griffjon at 09:42 PM

Wait, there's supposed to be a happy ending

AMMAN (AFP) - A budding romance between a Jordanian man and woman turned into an ugly public divorce when the couple found out that they were in fact man and wife, state media reported.
Separated for several months, boredom and chance briefly re-united Bakr Melhem and his wife Sanaa in an Internet chat room, the official Petra news agency said.

Bakr, who passed himself off as Adnan, fell head over heels for Sanaa, who signed off as Jamila (beautiful) and described herself as a cultured, unmarried woman -- a devout Muslim whose hobby was reading, Petra said.

Cyber love blossomed between the pair for three months and soon they were making wedding plans. To pledge their troth in person, they agreed to meet in the flesh near a bus depot in the town of Zarqa, northeast of Amman.

The shock of finding out their true identities was too much for the pair.

Upon seeing Sanaa-alias-Jamila, Bakr-alias-Adnan turned white and screamed at the top of his lungs: "You are divorced, divorced, divorced" -- the traditional manner of officially ending a marriage in Islam.

"You are a liar," Sanaa retorted before fainting, the agency said.
-- Yahoo

Posted by griffjon at 09:03 PM

There is a great need

For Iraq to be pretty and shiney right now. Or at least interesting, because we can't have this news getting any coverage:

The White House said on Thursday it was committed to a peaceful resolution of the dispute over North Korea's nuclear arms program after Pyongyang publicly acknowledged it possessed atomic weapons.
"We remain committed to the six-party talks. We remain committed to a peaceful, diplomatic resolution to the nuclear issue with regards to North Korea," White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters traveling with President Bush.

U.S. officials sought to take Pyongyang's announcement in stride. McClellan said: "We've heard this kind of rhetoric from North Korea before."

He said the U.S. intelligence community had long since publicly stated its belief that North Korea had nuclear weapons.

--Reuters.

If North Korea had oil, I feel that might have read:

North Korea announces it has WMD and the capabilities to strike at major US cities. The US responded that all US personnel have been pulled out from the region, and that as of 8pm tonight, we will now refer to South Korea as the "Island of Korea"

Posted by griffjon at 08:17 PM

More fake news

Just go read Salon on Gannon

Props to the bloggers who uncovered this fraud.

Posted by griffjon at 08:09 PM

More Enron

A Washington state utility released audiotapes Thursday that it said revealed bankrupt energy trader Enron Corp. plotted to take a power plant off-line in 2001 to jack up electric prices in Western states.
That same day, shortages of power forced rolling blackouts in northern California that affected about 2 million customers.

Snohomish Public Utility District in Everett, Washington, released the tapes as part of its effort to void a $122 million lawsuit Enron has filed against it seeking payment for electricity it was contracted to provide.

The utility says an Enron employee and a worker at a power plant in Las Vegas, Nevada, made up phony repairs, taking the plant off-line January 17, 2001.

"We want you guys to get a little creative ... and come up with a reason to go down," the Enron worker tells the plant employee on one of the tapes.

"Anything you want to do over there? ... Cleaning, anything like that?" the Enron employee says.

"Yeah, yeah," the other replies. "There's some stuff we could be doing."

What upstanding guys we had in that company. Glad they're all in prison like Martha Stewart. Wait, what? They're not? They're free?
Sigh.

Posted by griffjon at 08:02 PM

I'll take over-funded programs other than the Military, Alex

Daily KOS has a good set of articles and linkage on Bush increasing funding to abstinence-only education programs, 'cuz, y'know, they've been so effective... Daily KOS

Posted by griffjon at 08:00 PM

Some interesting thoughts

BOPNews posts an interesting set of thoughts in the form of a conversation, on the goings on between Venezeula and Colombia, Russia, and Iran, among others. check it out.

Posted by griffjon at 07:30 PM

February 03, 2005

Gonzales, Abrams

AAAAUUUUUUGGGGGGHHHHHH!

At least there was some opposition.

Democratic Senator Robert Byrd: "I simply cannot support the nomination of someone who, despite his assertions to the contrary, obviously contributed in large measure to the atrocious policy failures and the contrived and abominable legal decisions that have flowed from this White House over the past four years."

Thanks.

And now, Bush has requested Elliot Abrams for National Security Adviser. This is a guy who pled guilty in the Iran-Contra scandle, and has been praising Sharon for his hard-line policies in Israel.

Can we get non-criminals on the cabinet?

Posted by griffjon at 09:07 PM

SotU

To quote Air America;
"[The State of the Union and Groundhog Day falling on the same day] is an ironic juxtaposition: one involves a meaningless ritual in which we look to a creature of little intelligence for prognostication, and the other involves a groundhog."

Others have said it all better than I:

BobHarris

BOPNews

Posted by griffjon at 07:51 PM

February 02, 2005

SotU

I feel sick. I'm not sure I can watch this. He's already hitting on SS one the second sentence in.

Posted by griffjon at 08:11 PM

February 01, 2005

Oh, and

the SotU drinking game.

Man, too bad it's a wrrk night.

Posted by griffjon at 10:34 PM

Setting the record state: State of the union 02-04

American Progress lists the claims from the 02 State of the Union vs. the reality.

e.q. :

CLAIM: "America is committed to keep dangerous weapons from dangerous regimes."

STATUS: Under Bush's watch, North Korea's nuclear arsenal is thought to have quadrupled. Charles Pritchard, formerly Colin Powell's top official dealing with North Korea, has warned for months that "the White House lacks an effective strategy to dissuade North Korea from building up its nuclear arms." And, according to Pritchard, the situation has deteriorated because "the administration has neither offered much of a carrot nor wielded a stick." [New York Times, 5/7/04]

Posted by griffjon at 10:31 PM

Cogent thoughts on Social Security

My friend John-Paul Ferguson wrote this in response to a thread on the social security crisis and payroll taxes and such. Since that thread's pretty much impossible for anyone to find, he gave me permission to re-post it:

Payroll taxes are regressive because they kick in on the first dollar you earn (whereas income taxes for example kick in once you pass a certain threshhold) and are only collected up to a ceiling. It varies slightly for each tax; the current SS ceiling is $76,000. So, if you earn less than $76,000, you pay X percent of your income in payroll taxes; if you earn $152,000, you pay X/2 percent; if you earn $228,000, you pay X/3 percent, and so on.
Social Security is funded out of payroll taxes because, when it was created in the 1930s, it was understood as a pension program that workers basically paid for themselves. You pay money into the SS trust fund during your working life, and collect money out of it after you retire. In today's political climate, this is a really God-Damn important point. Social Security isn't a transfer program; it doesn't involve redistribution, a la the income tax (not that I think redistribution is a bad thing). The people who use it, fund it. The cap on earnings subject to the SS tax is also a result of political compromise. Since the idea was to create an equitable pension system, Social Security has a cap on the size of the payments you can collect from it. Rich people squawked that they should not have to pay unlimited contributions to a program from which they could get limited rewards. So, the compromise was to cap earnings subject to SS taxation, to roughly correspond to the cap in payments receivable.

Social Security taxation is "dedicated"; that is, the money from SS taxes goes into a separate budget--the trust fund--from general government revenues. This too was intentionally built into the system: that money was money that the government was not supposed to touch, because it had to be there in some form several decades down the line, when someone retired. The folks who designed Social Security were smart enough to realize that, if the rest of the government could borrow from SS revenues, the money wouldn't last. Hence the division. This, incidentally, is why people are always talking about the Social Security surplus or deficit as well as the budget surplus or deficit; they're two different things, coming from two different budgets.

(Incidentally, the Clinton administration is responsible for some of the most shameful mis-characterization of the Social Security system to date. The "record budget surpluses" of the Clinton years are partly a result of counting the SS surplus along with the fiscal surplus/deficit. The real (fiscal) surpluses were much smaller, and in some years non-existent.)

The Social Security Administration (SSA) takes its surpluses and buys US government treasury bonds. Like most bonds, these appreciate in value over the years; they're also almost universally considered one of the safest investments on Earth (Really. One of the only things safer are World Bank bonds, but for different reasons). This is another interesting thing to note: whenever a US Treasury Secretary, like Paul O'Neill, says that Social Security's surpluses are "meaningless" because they just involve "one part of the federal government borrowing money from another part of the federal government," he is either a) lying or b) implying that his own department's bonds, the core of most people's investment portfolios and one of the main pillars of the dollar's role as a global currency, are meaningless. Which of those do you think is more likely?

The problem that several of you mentioned in the IRC thread is that the number of retirees is growing relative to the number of workers. Thus, around 2014, the SSA will begin paying more in benefits than it takes in taxes. (Already you should be suspicious: why is an administration that won't publish accurate budget statistics for this year, and won't make budget predictions at all past 2010, except on Social Security, so concerned about something that is still a decade off? Why farsightedness on this and only this problem?) After 2014, we're hardly in big trouble: the SSA can cash in some of those T-bonds each year to plug the gap between revenues and benefits. Doing that, Social Security can continue to pay its current benefit levels through 2042 or 2052 (depending on whose projections you use). I should note that many of us will have retired by then.

After the surplus is spent, Social Security would either have to reduce its benefit levels or receive some funding from the general budget. This would only be fair: remember that George W. and his ilk wanted to return some of the late-90s budget surpluses to us in tax cuts? He was talking about the Social Security surplus. If he was willing to tap SS in the name of the general budget, why do Republicans think it would be impossible to tap the general budget to aid SS? I mean, we're financing the entire war in Iraq with borrowed money!

But that's beside the point: saying that SS will start running a deficit in 2042/52 assumes that we will make no changes to the system whatsoever. We can make changes. We can for example raise the earnings cap on payroll taxes. We could increase the payroll taxation rate for higher earnings (which in its own way would be fair, since wealthier people tend to live longer and thus collect more SS benefits). We could raise the minimum wage--which would effectively transfer some money from employer's pockets to workers', and thence to the SS trust fund (and, yes, other parts of the government). Any of these reforms could keep SS solvent right into the 22nd century--by which time the coasts might be underwater and all of this will be a moot point.

So why not privatize it? For starters, privatization doesn't patch SS up. Think for a moment about how such a trust fund works: it's not that you pay in money while you're working, and that money sits in a vault for a few decades, only to be pulled back out and handed to you when you retire. Money you pay in goes right back out in the form of benefits to current retirees. The benefits you've earned exist from year to year, but they are actually paid with revenues taken in in the year you collect them. It's like a conveyor belt. It works fine, as long as people are still paying in when you decide to collect.

What happens if, instead of paying into the system, working people instead put their money into private accounts? Suddenly, the SSA does not have current revenues with which to satisfy earned benefits. The system can only be maintained by the government borrowing massive -- massive -- sums of money to cover benefits of people who retired under the old system. This is exactly what the British and Chilean governments, who privatized their pension plans under Thatcher and Pinochet, respectively, had to do; and it's exactly what the Bush plan proposes.

It's this component that I think gets lost in a lot of debates. Yes, it's true that investing your pension money in the stock market is a fundamentally stupid idea: it removes the stability of the pension's expected value, which is the whole goddamn point of a pension. You end up only doing better if you retire into a bull market--and retirement isn't something you can necessarily wait a few years on. In addition, no one has explained to me how having millions of working people alternately pumping in and sucking out billions of dollars from the stock market is not going to introduce wild volatility into said market. And while we're on this point, note that the British government, which has labeled its pension privatization a failure, has often complained that the "waste" (from a pension plan's perspective) of broker's fees drastically lowers the return that the private pension system yields, compared to the old public one. Any one of these reasons, taken by itself, is justification enough not to start dumping SS tax money into private investment accounts.

But that stuff, awful as it is, is only part of the problem. Sure, privatization would remove the security of pensions and potentially immiserize millions of people in their golden years. But that's really not the worst effect. The worst effect is the one I mentioned above: the catastrophic effects such a privatization would have on the federal budget. You think our debt is bad now? How about adding the odd $10 trillion or three over the next few decades? What do you think that'll do to investor confidence, the foreign-exchange rate, the capital account? Not good things, probably.

...Look, it's late. I've said enough. The main point is this: any idiot can get up to speed on the mechanics and finances of Social Security really quickly. It's just not that complicated. In a time like this, when the government is actively lying to the population to try to gut it, the most successful (and solvent!) progressive social program in our history, we as citizens have a responsibility to learn how the thing works, so we can form an intelligent opinion on the matter. So, read up. Read anything Paul Krugman, or Thomas Frank, has written on the subject. Go check out www.thereisnocrisis.com. Hell, go read the Congressional Budget Office's own reports--they don't support Bush's plan! But don't just parrot third-hand disaster scenarios you sort of remember. This is serious shit; our use of the program quite literally depends on it.

Posted by griffjon at 09:25 PM

Glimmer of hope

If we can get rid of gitmo, we can recover some shred of respect.

Judge backs Guantanamo challenge
Many inmates have been held without charge or access to lawyers
A US federal judge in Washington has ruled that special military tribunals being used to try hundreds of detainees at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba are illegal.

Judge Joyce Hens Green said the tribunals denied the detainees their basic rights under the US constitution.

Her ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which argues the inmates have no constitutional rights.

But a BBC correspondent says the decision is unlikely to be the end of the matter.

'Fundamental rights'

Judge Green said the tribunals in 11 cases she had examined were unconstitutional, and that the detainees were not accorded due process of law.

She noted the widespread allegations that detainees were abused during interrogations and said this cast doubt over any confession made under such circumstances.

The war on terror "cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over 200 years," she wrote.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:40 PM

Sigh

Some 83% of students polled felt people should be allowed to express unpopular views, as opposed to 97% of teachers.
Roughly half the students polled wrongly believed the US government had the right to censor the internet, while two-thirds believed it was illegal to burn the US flag - another misconception.

--BBC

Posted by griffjon at 08:31 PM

January 30, 2005

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

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 (Â£16-Â£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

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

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

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

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

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 â€“ not to hide or wait in fear, but to resume their ordinary lives.

Posted by griffjon at 07:18 PM

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

Bloggers against Torture

Add your blog to the list.

Posted by griffjon at 10:27 PM

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 (â‚¬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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 19, 2005

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

January 11, 2005

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

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

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 (Â£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

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

(News heads-up props to JP)

Posted by griffjon at 02:36 PM

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

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

December 25, 2004

UNDP report being muddled?

Quoth the BBC:

The BBC's Heba Saleh in Cairo says this year's report is the third in a much-acclaimed series of studies commissioned by the UNDP.
The reports, she says, are the work of dozens of independent Arab scholars who dissected their own societies to present a frank and comprehensive picture of their weaknesses and failings.

US state department spokesman Tom Casey said: "We have not seen a draft of the forthcoming Arab Human Development report. We have not urged deferral or postponement of the report, as has been alleged."

A UNDP statement said the report was in the "final stages of preparation".

It went on: "While at different times, concerns have been raised by some governments about the content of the forthcoming report, no formal discussions on editorial content have taken place, no government has asked for their suppression."

Press reports that Washington had threatened to cut future funding for UNDP over the report "are inaccurate," it added.

Posted by griffjon at 08:30 PM

December 24, 2004

Merry Whatever-the-fuck

Bill O'Reilly has ruined my holiday season. Traditionally, I've laid down my atheism and happily participated in Christmas traditions, particularly the gift-giving and general holiday cheer of friendlinessand brotherhood. There's something nice about a holiday that's all about, in these modern times, getting along and giving things to people.

But O'Reilly is on this rampage (Salon.com article) about people trying to be, of all things, tolerant of other religions and saying "Happy Holidays" instead of "Merry Christmas." First off, holiday comes from "Holy Day" -- not exactly secular that, but it at least manages to include people celebrating other holy days in December, like, oh, Chanukkah, Solstice celebrations, heck, even Kwanzaa. Thing is, it's a popular time of the year to celebrate. In the North, you're now past the halfway point of winter, in the South, you're harvesting your crops.

If you want to get down to the nitty-gritty, Christmas lost its Christianity a long, long time ago. Do a bit of searching on the Christmas tree, yule, and the winter solstice and I'm sure "yule" find a lot of surprising things about what you thought were good Christian traditions. here's some traditions to start off with.

At least he's revealed himself fully as an intolerant, anti-semetic right-wing-nut, and some people are calling him on it:

But during his Dec. 3 radio show, O'Reilly got more specific. When a caller identified himself as Jewish and began to complain about "the secularization of Jews and about Christmas going into schools," O'Reilly shot back that "overwhelmingly, America is Christian. And the holiday is a federal holiday honoring the philosopher Jesus. So, you don't wanna hear about it? Impossible. And that is an affront to the majority. You know, the majority can be insulted, too. And that's what this anti-Christmas thing is all about."

At one point, O'Reilly told the caller, "Come on, if you are really offended, you gotta go to Israel then." (Media Matters for America, a liberal media monitoring organization, quickly posted transcripts from the radio show.) "It was offensive and over the top," says Steven Freeman, associate director of the civil liberties division at the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish civil rights organization.

Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., is circulating a letter among colleagues on the Hill that urges O'Reilly to apologize for his remarks. "By suggesting that Jews do not have a place in American society unless they accept without comment its 'predominantly Christian' nature, you are brushing aside the basic freedoms guaranteed to all by our Constitution," she writes. Lowey tells Salon, "Bill O'Reilly's comments were the tip of the iceberg from some conservative news outlets that are suggesting minorities should keep quiet or leave the country. It's really dangerous and I'd hope wiser heads would understand this and cease and desist."

"O'Reilly crossed the line to overt anti-Semitism," adds Michael Lerner, head of the progressive Jewish organization Tikkun. "He's trying to tell his audience that Jews have no legitimate role in public life except as second-class citizens."

If anything is destroying Christmas, it's crass commercialism driving this buying frenzy inspiring people to trample each other on the day-after-thanksgiving shopping day. Here's a concept -- give donations to charities in the names of everyone on your gift list, or make crafts, or just simply enjoy each others' company this holiday season, and celebrate nothing more or less than your friends and family. But really, be happy, and be kind to others, regardless of their race, creed or color (red or blue).

Posted by griffjon at 01:07 PM

December 23, 2004

The Rapture

I had a fantastic idea for a novel, so lemme write it down here before I forget it. In the vein of "Left Behind", my novel begins with the end -- all the True Believers and Fanatics are taken straight up into Heaven, leaving us atheists and secular humanist types stuck down on Earth. Maybe the devil comes up and takes his due of the murderers, politicians, and other hard-core sinners, maybe not.

Within weeks, the left-overs on Earth begin to transform the Earth into its own Paradise. So it turns out that there was some truth to a lot of the different varying religions, and some lies. There always was just One True God, but maybe it's a Gnostic-type thing, where the "God" is really just some gone-made deity.

Anyway, with all the fanatics from all the religions gone, war dies down, new life is breathed into worldwide environmental protection (this is - seriously - all we got, we better fix it up nice!). Better yet, the population problem is helped out, and the problem of SUVs is solved (turns out, most SUV owners are borderline fanatics!). Since GW Bush is obviously raptured up, we have to immediately hold a new election, and it's a tight run-off between the Green Party candidate and the Democrat candidate.

And so on. I'm thinking a trilogy.

(apologies to my friends who manage to be religious and not hypocrites, which is I think, all my friends who are religious, even tho it seems to be such a small percentage of religious people in general)

Posted by griffjon at 07:24 PM

December 22, 2004

If we don't have a fair voting system, we don't have a democracy

The Daily KOS posts links and graphics driving home the point that this was not an election, it was a ruse.
Quoting:

In battleground states such as Florida and Ohio, obviously, concerted efforts were underway before and during election day to undermine Democratic turnout as much as possible. What is most telling about these various efforts is how similar they were in various states; a perusal of both Ohio and Florida via voteprotect.org shows surprising consistency among some types of complaints.

Among the more common reports in both states:

* Phone calls and flyers telling voters that their polling places had changed, when in fact they had not. Other reports cited people standing outside the polling places themselves, falsely redirecting some voters to other precincts.

* Intimidation efforts (such as anonymously distributed flyers) aimed directly at the minority community, implying for example that minority voters would be scrutinized for illegal activities if they were to vote.

* Precinct "observers" challenging voters for unnecessary identification and being generally disruptive, especially towards minority voters. In Florida, some Republican observers even carried papers with pictures of voters who were to be challenged; in Ohio, there is a sketchy report of two black voters in Shaker Heights being arrested after being singled out as having active warrants by election "challengers". Certainly, if nothing else, unnecessary ID challenges helped contribute to long lines in urban polling places.

* Longtime voters finding themselves inexplicably removed from the voting rolls, and having to cast provisional ballots, as a result of state "purging" of the rolls. In some areas, the "affidavit" lines for casting provisional, HAVA-required ballots were themselves an additional hour long, or longer, in addition to whatever time the voter had already spent in the original precinct lines; needless to say, the reports are filled with instances of voters turning away without voting.

The Cuyahoga county reports from voteprotect.org, especially, read like a (dark) comedy of errors; one would surmise, from reading the reports, that this particular county had never before successfully conducted an election. Besides the endemic reports of very long lines and generally glacial pace of voting, which from reports appears to have been a problem even in the morning hours, especially noteworthy are reports from several precincts of minority voters being asked for ID, while white voters were allowed to vote unchallenged.

Posted by griffjon at 03:36 PM

December 21, 2004

Turn of phrase

I popped this out in a discussion over the torture post. See it in context at the LJ mirror.

"I refuse to fight with gloves on against people wearing brass knuckles."

Posted by griffjon at 07:22 PM

I think they broke Irony

From the BBC:

A large figure 75 is picked out in neon, inside a large circle, in reference to the number of Cuban dissidents jailed last year.
After complaining to Mr Cason, Cuban officials set up a billboard including images of abused Iraqi detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and a swastika.

The US diplomat said last week that any action taken by Cuba against US personnel or the US mission in Havana would not affect his government's determination to draw attention to human rights.

Yeah, 'cause we're certainly in a position to make a fuss about human rights, with our huge Iraqi civilian death and injury toll, and what with Bush ordering torture on POWs and all. The fact that this diplomat can say this from across the street of the Abu Ghraib billboard indicated a level of gall I didn't know was possible.

Posted by griffjon at 03:50 PM

Investigate the vote!

Also, see MoveOn.org's Investigate the Vote petition.

I wrote:

I believe that the unique repetition of statistical differences between exit polls and results in e-voting districts, as detailed in the Harper's Magazine, Jan 2005 edition, is the bail of hay that breaks the camel's back, when you combine it with the political motivations of the private companies providing e-voting machines.

With the state of computer security constantly in question, evoting without physical audit trails and independent scruitiny of the systems and source code is more of a threat to our Democracy than any terrorist -- it now takes one motivated hacker to change election results...

Posted by griffjon at 02:59 PM

Executive Order for Torture

What kind of "Christian" do we have in the Presidential office who not only overlooks ongoing torture, but indeed ordered it? You can claim to be on God's side all you want, but if you're going to profess to be a Christian, shouldn't you follow the rules your God has laid down, in stone no less?

Jesus proclaims liberty to the captives and freedom to the oppressed, and lists concern for the prisoner among the issues for judgement (Matthew 25:35-40).
We should be concerned about the conditions in which prisoners are held and the treatement they receive (Hebrews 13:3).

The ACLU had to file a lawsuit to obtain these documents, as the government "failed" to respond to their Freedom of Information Act for them.

To quote the ACLU's press release:

NEW YORK -- A document released for the first time today by the American Civil Liberties Union suggests that President Bush issued an Executive Order authorizing the use of inhumane interrogation methods against detainees in Iraq. Also released by the ACLU today are a slew of other records including a December 2003 FBI e-mail that characterizes methods used by the Defense Department as "torture" and a June 2004 "Urgent Report" to the Director of the FBI that raises concerns that abuse of detainees is being covered up.
"These documents raise grave questions about where the blame for widespread detainee abuse ultimately rests," said ACLU Executive Director Anthony D. Romero. "Top government officials can no longer hide from public scrutiny by pointing the finger at a few low-ranking soldiers."

...

Another e-mail, dated December 2003, describes an incident in which Defense Department interrogators at Guantánamo Bay impersonated FBI agents while using "torture techniques" against a detainee. The e-mail concludes "If this detainee is ever released or his story made public in any way, DOD interrogators will not be held accountable because these torture techniques were done [sic] the 'FBI' interrogators. The FBI will [sic] left holding the bag before the public."

The document also says that no "intelligence of a threat neutralization nature" was garnered by the "FBI" interrogation, and that the FBIâ€™s Criminal Investigation Task Force (CITF) believes that the Defense Department's actions have destroyed any chance of prosecuting the detainee. The e-mail's author writes that he or she is documenting the incident "in order to protect the FBI."

"The methods that the Defense Department has adopted are illegal, immoral, and counterproductive," said ACLU staff attorney Jameel Jaffer. "It is astounding that these methods appear to have been adopted as a matter of policy by the highest levels of government."

...
* Another FBI agent's account of interrogations at Guantánamo in which detainees were shackled hand and foot in a fetal position on the floor. The agent states that the detainees were kept in that position for 18 to 24 hours at a time and most had "urinated or defacated [sic]" on themselves. On one occasion, the agent reports having seen a detainee left in an unventilated, non-air conditioned room at a temperature "probably well over a hundred degrees." The agent notes: "The detainee was almost unconscious on the floor, with a pile of hair next to him. He had apparently been literally pulling his own hair out throughout the night." (Aug. 2, 2004)

I've archived a set of the documents: ACLU FOIA archive on torture.

What kind of animals have we become? Not just those perpetrating these horrendous acts of torture, not just those condoning it, not even just Bush ordering it -- but us. We're sitting here.

I just sent an email too McCain, in the hope that his unfortunate experiences as a POW himself, and his position in the Republican party, could provide a voice of reason from within the GOP. Read on for the text of the letter...

Senator McCain,

I have always respected your independent view as a traditional conservative, and your impressive history of service to our country.

I am very interested in your feelings on the recent ACLU discovery of possible executive orders authorizing the use of inhumane torture against our POWs (http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=17216&c=206), and the ongoing support of not abiding by the Geneva Conventions as seen in Bush's pending appointment of Gonzales to the Secretary of State?

It seems to me that when the US, the strongest (by far) military power in the world, and (formerly, at least) respected Democracy, is using methods of torture against captives in extra-judicial settings, we have absolutely no moral ground to stand on when we request or even expect humane treatment of our soldiers and American POWs by their captors.

I beg of you, as a prominent Republican, to try and persuade your fellow congressmen and women to come out against the use of such inhumane treatment of our captives, for the sake of common moral decency if not for the sake of our current and future American POWs.

I am sure you, having been the victim of torture as a POW, understand this issue in a way I hope to never know.

Posted by griffjon at 02:18 PM

December 19, 2004

14 Features of Facism

14 Features of Facism, by SecularHumanism.org. Hm. Looks.... a lot like home, right about now.

Seen at BOP, whose XML feed won't work for me.

Posted by griffjon at 08:38 PM

December 18, 2004

Web Logs -- the server kind.

So, year-end reviews of my web traffic for 2k4 are a bit scarier than usual. The US Military comes in at #5, with 5k pageviews, 10k hits (inclusive of non-html things like stylesheets, images, scripts). .US holds strong at #13 on the charts, .gov at #27 (230 pages) and .arpa (?!) hangs in a lot lower down with 67 pageviews. the .mil opens up into lots of NIPRNet hits, and some army, navy, and airforce. It's my optimistic hope that they're all surfing the old role-playing game site for ShadowRun that is still hosted here, as it seems to be a favorite among military types.

I'm not paranoid, but I'm working on it.

Posted by griffjon at 12:27 AM

Next: Internment camps? (one step closer to facism)

From ABC News:

Nearly half of all Americans believe the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans, according to a nationwide poll.

The survey conducted by Cornell University also found that Republicans and people who described themselves as highly religious were more apt to support curtailing Muslims' civil liberties than Democrats or people who are less religious.

...

The survey showed that 27 percent of respondents supported requiring all Muslim Americans to register where they lived with the federal government. Twenty-two percent favored racial profiling to identify potential terrorist threats. And 29 percent thought undercover agents should infiltrate Muslim civic and volunteer organizations to keep tabs on their activities and fund-raising.

...One nation, except for them other folks, with liberty and justice for rich white people.

Remind me, please, that when we have an Anti-Islam Kristallnacht, it's seriously time to go very, very far away. We CAN learn from history, and we can chose not to be the permissive populace.

Posted by griffjon at 12:08 AM

December 17, 2004

Great quote

"The people can always be brought to the bidding of the
leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being
attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to greater danger."

Quote by Herman Goering, at the Nuremberg trials

Posted by griffjon at 09:18 PM

The Cost of the War

The Center for American Progress has a very interesting map of the cost of the war, broken down by state, and compared to spending on domestic issues such as homeland security and education. For example -- Texas contributed 11.5 Billion to the Iraq war, and has received about 4B split between education and security. And Texas has a decent ratio! Washington spent 4B, and got just over 400M for both programs.

Posted by griffjon at 09:04 PM

G'night Bill

NOW, with Bill Moyer will no longer be with the esteemed Mr. Moyer, who is joining the exodus of journalists in the post-election doldrums. Walk good, Mr. Moyer, we'll miss your fair and balanced look at those who can only claim to be fair and balanced.

I worry about what's left of our Democracy. I really do. We're fighting an unending war, there is little if any protection of our most private sanctuaries (the FBI can take your computer records (i.e. your hard drive), your library records, credit card records -- all without even a subpoena), and it's all being done in the name of "patriotism." Sorry, when did patriotism mean burning the Consitution??

Posted by griffjon at 07:58 PM

Cuba = (Balls + Irony)

Cuba, with its historical ballsiness, has erected a huge billboard with photos of Abu Ghraib torture scenes and a huge swastika labeled "Made in the USA." They put it up across the street from the U.S. Interest Section's offices.

Cuba Billboard, Photo by AP

Classy? No. Ballsy? Yes. Appropriate? Hells yes.

Apparently, this is in response to the US Missions Xmas decorations, which included a "75" in reference to Cuban dissidents jailed by their own government. Cuba's not such a big fan of free speech, but, we're not in a position to critizie them, as Wayne Smith, who served as US Mission head in Cuba under both Carter and Reagan, pointed out.

(Seen at BoingBoing)

Posted by griffjon at 02:56 PM

December 14, 2004

More US v Human Rights

As reported by the BBC, "It's time for the United States to come clean about crimes committed by US forces in Afghanistan," -- Brad Adams, Human Rights Watch.

I mean, how long does it take for the world to realize the the current American regime (arguably, every American regime, the Bushies are just more abrasive and less subtle about it) does not apply the rule of law to itself.

We like making rules, but not following them.

Posted by griffjon at 10:23 PM

December 09, 2004

NZ and civil unions

New Zealand had a good idea on civil unions, making them for everyone -- even heterosexual couples who didn't want to "marry," but still needed/deserved civil union status for children, medical coverage, and so on, following a few EU countries.

Do the states like Vermont and Mass. with civil unions for homosexuals enable these things for heterosexuals? Maybe it'd be a good tactic to take, if not. It then becomes an issue not about Leviticus (not the killing people who cook on Sunday part, the part about homosexuality), but rights, the well-being children, and medical coverage.

Posted by griffjon at 10:14 AM

Disconnect

By now, you've all seen and heard or read Spc. Thomas Wilson of the 278th Regimental Combat Team complain to Rummy "We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, bustedâ€¦ picking the best out of this scrap to put onto our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armourment vehicles to carry with us north."

The amusing part of the story is that the Pentagon was evidentially surprised by the tools used by the insurgents. IEDs, you know. High tech "Improvised Explosive Devices."

Huh? The most well-funded military (beating the combined defense spending of the next top three nations) is not equipped/prepared to deal with homemade bombs?

The sad part of the story, however, is commentary from Spc. Wilson's wife:

"It's all about duty, and he felt compelled to be over there," Wilson said, adding that both she and her ex-husband voted for President Bush in November and support him "100 percent."

Interesting side-note, the Dallas Morning News print edition, where I first found this, inserted this fact into the AP story, but didn't add it to their online edition of the same story. I found it finally at Access N. Georgia.

Part of me really just wants to say to these people -- WTF did you expect? Honestly? That Bush would fix things? He caused this mess, and isn't about to be able to undo it all. He's not capable, and for sure Rummy isn't, and who, who was the only Cabinet member (so far) asked to come back?

Posted by griffjon at 09:27 AM

December 08, 2004

What you say?

For the conspiracy theorists among us, here's a great timeline.

Late Edition, last weekend - Musharraf calls the Iraq war a mistake, and says that we are less safe than before.

Immediately afterwards, the Pakistani Gov't issues a "...but he didn't really mean it like that" statement (Quoth John Stewart, "Oh, shit!")

Yesterday, security papers detailing his UK visit were found in the street, just hours before he was scheduled to land. They disclosed security info about his hotel and movements in London.

I'm sure Richard Clarke and his wife are experiencing a bit of deja-vu.

Posted by griffjon at 09:17 PM

December 07, 2004

Jam Echelon 2k4

I thought it was time to bring back my old X-Jam-Echelon header, as well as a few other fun X-headers, but it turns out that this is not as easy in Thunderbird as you'd think.

OK, actually, it's pretty darned easy, but finding out how to do it is less than easy. It took me a good 30 minutes to google together an answer for this, so to save others the hassle: http://ilias.ca/Xnoarchive.html has the best info. Basically, load up your prefs.js in your application data folder, and find the id# for the account you want to tag on x-headers for, then create (or modify) the plain text file user.js in the same dir, and add one line with aliases for each header you want to add in, for example:

user_pref("mail.identity.id2.headers", "noarchive,echelon,pgp-link,pgp-fingerprint");

Then, make a line for each of those with the actual header, for example:

user_pref("mail.identity.id2.header.noarchive", "X-No-Archive: yes");

or perhaps:

user_pref("mail.identity.id2.header.freedom",

"X-Civil-Liberties: ACLU 1st amendment freedom of speech protest flashmob peaceful assembly nationwide free speech zone civil disobedience");

user_pref("mail.identity.id2.header.echelon",

"X-Jam-Echelon2k4: spies like you iraq terror bomb iran korea pakistan nuclear kahn nigeria yellowcake UN bush conspiracy lies regime change domestic revolution");

More fun tips at Texturizer, with good links on doing the steps above - http://texturizer.net/thunderbird/tips.html

BTW -- what ever happened to Echelon? It disappeared from the news, but evidentially it (still) has some pretty kickass hardware.

Posted by griffjon at 07:44 PM

December 01, 2004

IMPEACH THIS BASTARD

I'm overwhelmed. This is, continues to be, beyond the fucking pale. Why have no pol called for impeachment? It's not like there's a lack of reasons.

Posted by griffjon at 07:43 PM

Torture in Gitmo

From the NYT:

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantanamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in GuantÃ¡namo.The [Red Cross International] team of humanitarian workers, which included experienced medical personnel, also asserted that some doctors and other medical workers at Guantanamo were participating in planning for interrogations, in what the report called "a flagrant violation of medical ethics."

Posted by griffjon at 07:41 PM | Comments (2)

Let's get this straight

Let's get a few words out here. Torture. War. Vote Fraud. Lies. Incompetence. Ignorance. Unconstitutionality. Anti-freedom. Anti-Civil Liberties. Anti-family.

These are the values that Bush stands for. I hope you Bush supporters are enjoying it. I find it absolutely abhorrent that Bush has not been impeached and arrested for his flaunting of the Geneva Conventions, dramatically unconstitutional "free speech zones" and other methods of squelching opposition, the destruction of the education system (why, WHY are we modeling the national system after Texas, who comes in second-to-LAST (thanks, Mississippi)?), the removal of funding from any pro-family group that considers abortion an option? LOOK AT THE FACTS, people! Abstinence-only programs are proven to backfire in terms of teenage pregnancy and STD rates.

We are living a nightmare. I hope in our thrashing about, we don't hit any of our neighbors too hard.

Posted by griffjon at 04:36 PM

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