Friday, May 26, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
[random][geek] Housekeeping
Monday, May 22, 2006
[random] (news.None == news.Good)
Sunday, May 14, 2006
[random] It's gonna be a light week
4 Comments:
- Brian Dunbar said...
-
Incidently, how does one get your attention in the non-blog world? I've looked in vain for an 'contact me' link on your site.
At any road - Liftport had edited a book. It's about space elevators - duh. You blog. We'd be thrilled to death to have you review it. Email me at brian dot dunbar at liftport dot com for the login credentials. - protected static said...
-
What is this 'non-blog world' of which you speak...?
Seriously, the lack of a contact address has far more to do with my own issues with spam than anything else, but 'protectedstatic.com' has a 'static' mailbox that will work just fine. - teh l4m3 said...
-
Why don't I read the book you just donated to my library???? You, sir, are a prince, and are entitled to do whatever the hell you please.
Actual shout-out to come... - protected static said...
-
If you read it, I hope you enjoyed it... ;-)
No shout out necessary - it's a cool idea.
[geek][politics] good Fair Use summary
Saturday, May 13, 2006
[politics] I'm stunned that this is even a question
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. - Democratic Party leaders are wondering what to do about a candidate for attorney general who denies the Holocaust occurred and wants to “reawaken white racial awareness.” Larry Darby, the founder of the Atheist Law Center, made an abortive bid for the attorney general job as a Libertarian in 2002, but only recently have his views on race and the Holocaust come to light. [...] In an interview Friday with The Associated Press, Darby said he believes no more than 140,000 Jewish people died in Europe during World War II, and most of them succumbed to typhus. Historians say about 6 million Jews were slaughtered by the Nazis, but Darby said the figure is a false claim of the “Holocaust industry.” Darby said he will speak Saturday near Newark, N.J., at a meeting of National Vanguard, which bills itself as an advocate for the white race. Some of his campaign materials are posted on the group’s Internet site. “It’s time to stop pushing down the white man. We’ve been discriminated against too long,” Darby said in the interview."[W]ondering what to do"? About someone who believes in the "Holocaust industry" and who is going to speak at a neo-Nazi conference?!? Dump his ass! There, done, was there a dilemma there somewhere? Jesus Haploid Christ, people - he's a power-seeking lunatic, that's all there is to it. Dump him. Do I think you can change political affiliation over a lifetime? Sure. Do I think it'll happen between election cycles? Well, let's just say that I find that pretty damn convenient - particularly a change from Libertarian to Democrat. He's looking for funding, he's looking for publicity, he's looking for power. Standing behind him out of some misbegotten sense of party loyalty (particularly when he is unlikely to reciprocate) is
3 Comments:
- Brian Dunbar said...
-
Jesus Haploid Christ, people - he's a power-seeking lunatic, that's all there is to it. Dump him.
Well yes but he's a Democrat. Dump him and the Republican might win. That would be bad.
I kid because I love; I want a viable two-party system. Supporting nutjobs is the way to go about doing that. - Watch 'n Wait said...
-
Unless the Democratic platform has upheld that individual's views...and it has not...then he cannot claim to be a Dem and should be called on it by ever available means...and damned straight, thrown out of the party. Disowned. He's a disgrace. Disgusting creature.
- protected static said...
-
I can only imagine what the AL party's reaction would have been if he was their only candidate running in the primary... I'm afraid that it would have been "well, we can't have a Republican win, so..."
Gaaaah. Sometimes principle is more important, people. It's what I've always asked of political parties (which probably goes a long way to explain my disenchantment with both of them).
Of course, this is what the Libertarians have been dealing with for years...
Thursday, May 11, 2006
[politics] Under the radar? Or over the rainbow?
Lastly, I don't know how many readers caught this, but Secretary of State Rice told a reporter the administration already has all the congressional authorization it would need to attack Iran. Yes, she did say that. When I have thought about how to protest such a policy, I have realized we are likely to awake one morning to discover it has already happened.No shit!? I read the news fairly carefully, and that slid past me entirely, so I decided to go through the official transcripts of Secretary Rice's remarks. I've read all of May and half of April, and I can't find a statement like that anywhere. What I have noticed (and perhaps this is what the letter referred to) is an article in The Nation by Jeremy Brecher and Brendan Smith. Published on 21 April 2006, and titled "Attack Iran, Ignore the Constitution" (and widely mis-cited around the internet as 'Attack Iran, Destroy the Constitution'), it contains the following:
Bush is calling news reports of plans to attack Iran "wild speculation" and declaring that the United States is on a "diplomatic" track. But asked this week if his options included planning for a nuclear strike, he repeated that "all options are on the table." [...] Bush's top officials openly assert that he can do anything he wants--including attacking another country--on his authority as Commander in Chief. Last October, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was asked by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee whether the President would circumvent Congressional authorization if the White House chose military action against Iran or Syria. She answered, "I will not say anything that constrains his authority as Commander in Chief."[emphasis added] And, truth be told, this squares with statements to be found over and over again in the remarks by Secretary Rice that I did read: "All options are on the table", "All options are being considered". "All options" has been famously hashed and rehashed on the internet, so I'm not going to go into it here. Do I think that Rice has openly stated that Bush has all the authority he needs to attack Iran? No - she's not stupid, however much I might disagree with her. But I do think that this Administration's single-minded adherence to an Imperial Presidency model makes this very believable. The President has already stated, through words and deeds, that he is not constrained by Congressional authority with which he disagrees. His approval ratings are heading south - he has nothing to lose by attacking Iran, and might, in fact, benefit from it. The American public has a long history of coming together in times of crisis, of extending the President the benefit of the doubt. This President is alientating his conservative base - he might be able to reclaim some of their loyalty by initiating military action on Iran, standing fast and striking hard against Islamofacism or some such nonsense. From the earliest days of this Administration there have been efforts to make nukes more palatable weapons - I remember reading with some disbelief even before September 11th about the Pentagon's efforts to 'normalize' tactical nuclear weapons - and after 9/11, that tempo increased: if we'd only had these weapons, Tora Bora would never have happened, and the talking heads all nodded seriously with a chorus of yes, that's sensible, but isn't that just a little extreme? Well, came the response, 9/11 changed everything. New weapons for new wars, don't you know. And the bobbleheads went on bobbing, yes, that sounds reasonable, do they have to be nukes? Do they? Oh, they do? Hmmm. We'll have to think about that. We're standing on a scary threshold, if we haven't crossed it already. Like the letter writer, I find it all too likely that I will wake up one morning to find that large chunks of the Iranian countryside have been turned to radioactive slag and ash. The drumbeat has already started, the same pattern is being followed as the lead up to the invasion of Iraq - how do you stop it? After all, it worked so well the first time (for both factions, come to think of it...). I want to believe that I'm just being negative, or overly paranoid. But I just can't help feeling that certain courses of action have already been decided upon - the script has been written, it's just the staging and coreography that remain to be arranged.
[geek] Magicandspells-online.net sucks
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
[geek] 'scuse me while I attend to some... personal business.
[politics] "...x has always had a leftist bent..."
Too often the agency has performed [its] job miserably, the greatest example being its gargantuan miscalculations about the Soviet Union. In retrospect, this is perhaps unsurprising. The CIA has always had a leftist bent, well represented in its upper echelons even under directors of staunchly anti-Communist and pro-national-security orientation.Wow. Just wow. Read it in full, and get a full understanding of what 'leftist' means to what is ostensibly a mainstream conservative (intellectual!) publication: leftist is anyone who disagrees with Bush. These are the bounds of the debate, as established in the mainstream: you aren't even liberal - apparently it isn't enough that you be tagged with this favored label of invective - now you're a leftist. Disagree with the Iraq war? Leftist. Disagree with the scale, scope, or timing of Bush's tax cuts? Leftist. Disagree with Bush's environmental policies? Leftist. Think Bush's pro-business policies might go too far? Leftist. Think that perhaps science should be the only thing taught in the science classroom? Leftist. Think torture is un-American? Leftist. This is no longer a rational position or a principled position - this is a cult. I haven't decided if it's a Stalinist-style personality cult or a tax-cutting cargo cult, but cult it definitely is. And I fear that its warped sensibilities have bent the current political scene so far off true that it will be decades before the damage is undone.
Saturday, May 06, 2006
[geek] Splogs suck
4 Comments:
- Brian Dunbar said...
-
Not to mention it clogs up search queries making my life tedious. I have rss queries from search engines - that's probably how I found your blog - on topics I care about.
I think today I've seen eleventy dozen hits from our website (which has all of the key words I'm searching on) but sucked up by splogs.
After the first several repitions I know it's a splog and can move on but I shouldn't have to mentally process that information. Farging lowlifes. - protected static said...
-
Oh, I know it's all spiders looking for keywords. My post on atheism & compassion? Ganked for, of all things, advertising for an online Christian dating service... Talk about being totally devoid of context.
And scruples. - Saskboy said...
-
If the war on spam wasn't so fruitless most of the time, I might bother to see if I could get ICANN to pull the plug on inmyfinger.com
- protected static said...
-
Yeah - I think for the next few months I might post a 'pissing in their google juice' post. See if I can't make this the first site that comes up if anyone Googles 'em.
I complained to their US-based host and the site that had my stuff came down; the other bastards are based outside the US, so I have limited recourse.
I'll settle for pissing in their Google juice.
[music][random] The song remains the same
2 Comments:
- Brian Dunbar said...
-
I'm this close to downloading a few of those. For some reason I really dug the Dolly Parton version when it was on the radio a few years back.
- protected static said...
-
The Leningrad Cowboys backed by the Red Army Chorus is absolutely hysterical...
Dhere's dis lay-dee who's sure all dat glit-ters is gold (solemn polyphonic chant joins in here) Und she's buying dhe stairvay to hea-uh-van.
Friday, May 05, 2006
[random] Adventures in arts and crafts
2 Comments:
- said...
-
Hahaha! I guess I shouldn't be laughing too much - Big Girl has another year+ to go before we have to face that - but it's still funny.
I can't understand the need of some parents, moms in particular, to grab hold of their kids' projects and not let go. Let the kids do it. It's not easy and might not look as pretty, but at least it'll be theirs. - protected static said...
-
With The Boy going to Dr. X's Mansion for school next year, one of our sick jokes has been that since there should a fair number of parents there with Aspberger-ish social skills (or who have kids with Aspberger-ish social skills), there should be a lot less of this interfering sort of nonsense...
Of course, that cuts both ways...
[music][random] Friday random 10: "Who shall I say is calling?" edition
Thursday, May 04, 2006
[politics] Who wrote this?
The cable news has kept the home folks fully informed as to the progress of this "raghead" hunt, so it is unnecessary to recount any details of battles. The cruelties of Saddam toward these people have been fully discussed, but if the thing were written up by a recent arrival here, he would make a tale just as harrowing. But the old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness, or justice.... With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt "no quarter" as a motto, and fill the hajii full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemiesGuesses? Anyone? Bueller? Anyone? Actually, this quote is attributed to a private from Utah - serving with the state militia in the Philipines, sometime circa 1900 (It is unclear exactly when. This could be a quote from the fighting in the Philipines during the Spanish-American War proper, it could be from the subsequent Moro Insurrection.). I've changed three words from the original, which may be found here - I've bolded the words I changed:
The cable news has kept the home folks fully informed as to the progress of this "goo-goo" hunt, so it is unnecessary to recount any details of battles. The cruelties of Spain toward these people have been fully discussed, but if the thing were written up by a recent arrival here, he would make a tale just as harrowing. But the old boys will say that no cruelty is too severe for these brainless monkeys, who can appreciate no sense of honor, kindness, or justice.... With an enemy like this to fight, it is not surprising that the boys should soon adopt "no quarter" as a motto, and fill the blacks full of lead before finding out whether or not they are friends or enemiesOne racial epithet, one oppressor, one racial/cultural mischaracterization. That's it. The language is slightly archaic, but it really could have been written yesterday about Iraq. (I love the reference to 'cable news' - not CNN but Western Union!) Now, there are commonalities in all wars. Racial and ethnic stereotyping play a part in many conflicts, as they are useful tools in dehumanization. They make it easier for soldiers to distance themselves from the carnage; they make it easier for the leadership (civilian and military) to convince soldiers to kill. But I've said before that the Iraq War has quite a few parallels with the Spanish American War. In that earlier piece, I compared the subjugation of the Moros to Afghanistan, but the overall acquisition and occupation of the Philipines also presents some useful and possibly illuminating lessons for Iraq:
7 Comments:
- Brian Dunbar said...
-
Interesting - I will re-read this in full but two things stand out.
Moro rebellion, bet on it. There was little ground combat when we wrested PI from Spain. A day's naval combat in the bay against a completely outclassed Spanish squadron, a truce until the troops arrived, then Dewey bombarded an abandoned fort to preserve notions of Spanish honor and landed troops to keep order.
The Phillipines would have had their own governement years and years before they did had not WW II happened. Probably at least - they were on their way to it in 1941 then got their economy and civil government kicked into a bucket by two invasions and years of horrid occupation. - protected static said...
-
What I found interesting was that the governor of the Philipines encouraged a general uprising once it became clear that we were not, in fact, kicking out Spain and then leaving. Some of what I read would suggest that by labeling it the "Moro Rebellion", the US was downplaying the wider anti-US sentiment that existed in the Philipines.
- protected static said...
-
Let me clarify - the US-installed Filipino governor, who had originally welcomed the US, not the deposed Spanish-appointed governor.
(I'd expect the Spanish-appointed governor to order resistance of some kind...) - Brian Dunbar said...
-
I'd expect the Spanish-appointed governor to order resistance of some kind..
He didn't. Dewey tore up the Spanish navy, the governer surrendered.
Which meant something to men in those days. Surrender the government, the army downs arms and surrenders. That's how gentlemen do these things, eh wot? - protected static said...
-
I know, pretty amazing. (If you ever make it to Philadelphia, one of Dewey's ships is moored there - it's (as you'd probably expect) a jarring mish-mash of Edwardian gilt & splendor and lethally-efficient-looking pre-Dreadnought hints of things to come, like, oh, Jutland...).
Do you really think we'd have walked away from the Philipines in the 1930s or 1940s? We certainly kept hold of Guam & Puerto Rico. - Brian Dunbar said...
-
if you ever make it to Philadelphia, one of Dewey's ships is moored there
I had to google that - I had no idea Olympia was there.
Amazing - and small by our standards, with deplorable living conditions.
Do you really think we'd have walked away from the Philipines in the 1930s or 1940s?
Define 'walked away'. The Commonwealth of the PI did achieve semi-indepeant status in 1935, in 1937 MacArthur was tabbed to be field marshall in their Army. Ah, crap you just made me go and commit Wiki to supplement my horrible memory. Damn you.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_the_Philippines
The Commonwealth of the Philippines was the political designation of the Philippines from 1935 to 1946 when the country was a commonwealth of the United States. Before 1935, the Philippines was an insular area with non-commonwealth status; it had been a U.S. territory since the 1898 Treaty of Paris, following Spain's loss of the Philippines in the Spanish-American War. The Commonwealth of the Philippines was envisioned as a transition government to rule for 10 years, preparatory to full Philippine independence. The Commonwealth was established after the acceptance by the Philippine Legislature of the Philippine Independence Act, popularly known as the Tydings-McDuffie Act. The law authorized the drafting of a constitution for the Philippines, by a popularly-elected constitutional convention. Upon the ratification of the constitution by the Filipino people, it would then be submitted to the President of the United States who would certify its having met certain requirements in the Independence Act.
It does seem clear (not just from Wiki of course, but that is a handy reference tool) that we were in the act of giving the PI independance. Which isn't the same thing as giving it all up - Manila Bay is the finest deep water anchorage in Asia and a superb place to use for power projection. If you have vested interests in Asia (and we do, and did) then having a place to use as a base is paramount.
The American occupation of the PI was ungood, perhaps. As conquerers however we wanted to give it back, while making sure the place would friendly to our interests and a more-or-less stable democracy. This took too long, aye, but we did do what we said we would.
For an example of occupation with truly evil intent see the Japanese occupation 1941-1944. - protected static said...
-
Yeah, I couldn't remember if it was Olympia or not... She definitely projects a different aura than Old Ironsides, that's for sure.
As for commiting wiki, well - we try to stay open-minded here. What you do behind the privacy of your computer screen is your own business ;-)
What I found fascinating about the post-Spanish American War period was our ambivilence about Cuba. Prior to the war, it was clear that the jingoists and other manifest destiny fans were dead set on annexing Cuba outright and admitting her to the Union as a state. During & after the war, an odd alliance of anti-imperialists and Southern racists pretty much killed that idea: the anti-imperialists weren't so hip on our colony, period, while the Southerners weren't so hip on the idea of a state that would have been what? 90% black?
Now there's an interesting alt. history exercise - how would the early 20th century have looked if we'd annexed Cuba and granted her statehood? Would Jim Crow have ended sooner? Would the Harlem Renaissance even be able to happen?
(I'm seeing Fidel becoming a pro baseball player, then a mainstream politician affiliated with a mildly-separatist Cuban political party.)
As for the Japanese - I've got a great uncle whose bones are still in Bougainville somewhere. If I was going to be occupied by someone in the 1930s, I could do much worse than the US. It would still suck if you were, say, politically involved, but it sucked a lot less for regular folks than under the Japanese.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home