Posts from — February 2005

No More Mister Nice Blog

He has been one of my morning reads since I entered blogtopia [yes, skippy, etc.]. Hopefully, after a break he will re-emerge, possibly as part of a group to reduce the pressure.

Syria was asked by the government of Lebanon to provide peacekeeping troops during the civil war, and Syria agreed.

The 1967 Six Day War was a pre-emptive strike by Israel [the Israelis have admitted it, so don’t argue with me], which resulted in Israel occupying Syrian territory, the Golan Heights.

While Iraq and Syria were both controlled by Ba’athist parties for an extended period, the leaders in the two countries, Saddam Hussein and Hafez al-Assad definitely did not like or trust each other. When Assad died and his son Bashar al-Assad took power, there was no warming of relations.

In the 1991 Gulf War Syria sided with the coalition that pushed Iraq out of Kuwait.

Since September 11, 2001 Syria has provided the US with information and assistance on al-Qaeda, and cooperated with the US request to accept and hold the naturalized Canadian citizen, Maher Arar, since returned to Canada.

Syria has not totally closed its border with Iraq, but that might be due to the cross-border raids by American forces which have resulted in Syrian border guards being killed inside Syria, by US forces.

As Jack, the Grumpy Forester, notes Syria just turned over Saddam’s half brother and other Ba’athists to the Iraqi government.

The latest human rights report by the US State Department is more concerned with abuses by Russia and Saudi Arabia than Syria.

When the former prime minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, was blown up in Beruit, the US recalled its ambassador to Syria, implying complicity in the attack, but providing no evidence.

Following the latest attack in Israel, Israel is adamant on Syria’s ‘guilt’, but their claimed evidence will not be made public.

NTodd informs us that Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Texas) has reportedly told Bush that he would personally fly an F-15 to Syria to drop a couple of nukes and eliminate the “Syrian problem”, because Saddam shipped all his WMDs to Syria.

The Syrian government is populated with murderous thugs, just like most of the other governments in the area, so why are we picking on Syria; it doesn’t even have oil?

Jill also covers this Bank Of America Security Lapse covered by CBS.

But the important story for ordinary people is this CBS article An Identity Theft Nightmare.

This whole mess needs a rewrite and the responsibility laid at the feet of those who profit. The corporations are the one’s gathering the information that makes such large scale thefts possible. The corporations are the one’s who are failing to protect their systems.

After the individual discovers that their identity has been stolen there should be a central registry that would be notified when the police report is filed. Since companies like Choicepoint don’t tell you that they are gathering your information, how can you be responsible for notifying them that you are the victim of a crime? Understand that most of what credit bureaus collect is considered “private” information, but your status as the victim of a crime is “public” information. Why are you, as an individual, required to inform these companies of public information?

There should be a central database paid for by the companies that profit from the collection of consumer information. When you file a report about identity fraud, and only when you file such a report, your name and account numbers should be entered into the database by a police agency. Companies and courts should recognize this database as proof that you have become a victim.

The companies should then be required to provide the originating police agency with records of suspect transactions, rather than requiring police agencies to obtain subpoenas for each of them. [Hey, I had to do it. It was a pain even with a release from the victim, and judges don’t appreciate it either. It’s a waste of taxpayers’ time and money.]

Victims shouldn’t have to go court repeatedly to prove to yet another company that the company failed to verify the identity of the person they’d given credit. My Dad died 15 years ago and companies are still sending credit card offers to him.

The Post Office once had a “slot machine” in the lobby that was one of the only sources for one-dollar coins outside of a bank. You put in a ten for a book of First Class and you received twenty stamps, two dollar coins, two quarters, and a dime.

Now they have a touch screen terminal that only takes credit or debit cards. You select a book of First Class and you get 18 stamps and your card is charged $6.66.

A coincidence, you say. Right, everyone thinks 18 is the right number for stamps. Eighteen is three sixes which cost three sixes. The rate increase to 37 cents was part of the plan to steal our souls.

My neighbors are out of church so I’ll certainly have to call and warn them about the threat to their souls from using the Postal Service. The meaning is clear, it didn’t happen under Clinton.

[EDIT: See what living with these people does to your mind.]

Digby of Hullaballoo uses the Cooper Union speech, arguably one of the major reasons Lincoln was nominated by the Republican Party for President in 1860, in his continuing effort to understand the rightwing.

Digby has been trying to make sense of the incomprehensible: why the rightwing continues to cry of discrimination when they are in control of the government. I agree with his analysis that they have to have the total acceptance of their ideology, not simply the political power they have managed to win.

The Cooper Union speech is important beyond this point. Lincoln constructed an argument and proof that should be studied for its effectiveness in dealing with many of the claims of the so-called conservatives. In the speech Lincoln uses the original sources to show the actual opinions of the “Founding Fathers”, not the opinions later created to justify a break with the true history and traditions of the country.

By now we all have groaned at the revisionist history that is used to justify every bad idea anyone has ever come up with, and this is not limited to any particular group, although some are more egregious than others.

Having lived through the last half of the previous century I can assure you that there was no “Golden Age” in that time span, and based on the personal testimony of relatives that extend back to the last half of the 19^th century, life was not a “bed of roses” in the 100 years before I was born, although there were a lot of thorns. People remember the fun they had as children, but if you got serious they would tell you that life at the time was harder and more brutal than modern times. People forget that until the 1950s and antibiotics the hospital was where people went just before they died, not where they were cured.

If people think that things were so wonderful at some previous period of history they should become re-enactors. I would warn you that serious re-enactors do real research and demand authenticity. Spend a summer in the clothing of 150 years ago and then we can talk about how great things were. Pick your period and try living with nothing available that was invented after that time.

To quote myself: How can people learn and understand history when so many spend so much time and effort distorting it?

John Burt is currently in prison for sexual assault on a minor. Michael Griffin is serving a life sentence for murder. Paul Hill was executed for multiple murders. Randall Terry is the former head of Operation Rescue having left that organization as the result of lawsuits. Phil Kline is the attorney general of Kansas. They have all proudly proclaimed themselves to be Christians, based on their personal definitions of Christian. They have all proudly proclaimed themselves to be champions of life, based on their personal definitions of life. They have all proudly proclaimed themselves to be champions of public morals, based on their personal definitions of morals.

You have probably read posts recently about Terri Schaivo and Phil Kline’s fishing expedition in Kansas. Steve Bates and Musing Michael have written on Terri Schaivo, while Atrios, Steve Bates, Steve Gilliard, and Tbogg, among others have written on Kline.

Randall Terry is one common factor. He along with Burt, Griffin, and Hill were regulars among the “pro-birth” protesters in Northwest Florida. He was also a regular in Kansas. Having been sued to penury by various groups that faced violence at the hands of his supporters, he started anew with the Society for Truth and Justice [based on his definition of truth and justice], and has been called in by the parents of Terri Schaivo to organize protests and force the Florida legislature to pass another unconstitutional law.

As Terry’s brand of intimidation failed in Kansas, Phil Kline is using his office to try a different form. Kline makes the standard claim of all those who believe the world should accept their values without question: it’s to protect the children.

I was in law enforcement. I have applied for warrants and subpoenas to gather information in furtherance of an investigation. You have to have a crime, and provide probable cause to believe that the requested writ or warrant is relevant to the crime. I find it hard to believe that there is so little crime in the state of Kansas that its attorney general must acquire private medical information to see if he can discover some work for the police and courts in the state.

Based on what he claims he is looking for, he can find most of what he seeks in public vital statistics that record the births in Kansas. That should be sufficient to provide him with decades of statutory rape cases. It is rather obvious that he isn’t interested in those that have been born and are citizens of the state of Kansas. His purpose is to harass medical professionals he, personally, doesn’t like. No one should take the law into their own hands and become a vigilante, especially the attorney general of a state.

[^TM Kevin Drum]

C.C.

If you were my friend, you’d cut the rope.
[Edit: Crazy Cat was hand-raised by my Mother and now lives next door. Yes, she’s on a leash.]
Friday Ark

He also has the ad up that USA Next intended to use to attack AARP.

You may be aware that the ad disappeared rather precipitously, which was explained as part of the plan by USA Next: the ad was designed to cause the liberals to overreact.

Except that Steve Gilliard reports that one of the individuals shown in the ad was annoyed by the use of his picture.

Apparently USA Next used a photograph of a gay wedding that was copyrighted by a newspaper, without permission.

The newspaper is unhappy; the people in the photo are unhappy; USA Next is in a bit of legal trouble.

This is an amateur mistake. You can do almost anything to politicians, but regular people have rights and crossing newspapers is a really bad idea.

Today in Bratislava Bush told a crowd that Slovakia was the model for Iraq based on its transformation following the fall of the Soviet bloc.

I would wonder if anyone realizes that he has just said that Iraq should break up into separate countries based on ethnicity, because that’s what happened to the former country of Czechoslovakia following the Communist’s collapse in Eastern Europe.

One would assume that in an administration clogged with Cold-warriors at least one person might have been aware of this detail and mentioned it. Americans may not remember these annoying little facts, but the Europeans do, and now they are going to be wasting time trying to figure out if this signaled an American acceptance of the partition of Iraq.

It is about the discovery of bacteria in an Alaskan core sample that when brought to room temperature came back to life. The section of the sample being studied was 30,000 years old and consisted of permafrost.

If this bacteria can withstand being frozen for millennia, It is possible that the 16 million year old bacteria in the previous sample was only actually “alive” for a very short period of those years, going dormant when life wasn’t sustainable.

Some reptiles go dormant for extended periods in underground cells during drought, there’s a frog in Canada that is frozen during the winter, and we just went through the miracle/annoyance of the cicadas.

Given what we know about the extended dormant life of spores, this is a reasonable hypothesis, but study needs to be done.

[Edit: It would be nice to take a few years off and come back in September, 2008.]

Scientists suggest between 60 to 70% of all bacteria live deep beneath the surface of the Earth, far from the Sun’s life-giving rays.

Some of the new bacteria identified are about 16 million years old, surviving 400 metres below the sea bed.

This hostile habitat might be where life first evolved more than 3.8 billion years ago, researchers believe.

Note that it says that they have discovered bacteria that has been alive for the last 16 million years, not that existed that long ago. These things are still alive.

With that in mind, why do businesses have the right to total control of their property and to take control of the property of individuals?

If the powers-that-be believe that people need to pay separate fees for the same song on tape, CD, DVD, MP3, etc., how do they justify business gathering the personal information of individuals and selling it.

What is the difference between going into a concert with a recorder and making a tape of the concert to sell to others without the knowledge or permission of the performers, and a business gathering financial and personal information without the explicit permission of the individuals and selling it.

Choicepoint is an information bootlegger. If you don’t own the copyright to your life, there is no meaning to copyright. Agreeing to provide a business with information by filling out a form doesn’t automatically give that business the copyright to your life. They aren’t sending a copy to a friend; they are selling your information. This isn’t “sharing”; this is “piracy”.

I don’t want to hear about “opt in” versus “opt out”. The assumption is that if you aren’t explicitly given permission to tape a concert, it is illegal to do it. The same assumption should be applied to your personal information. If your information is sold, at a minimum you are due a royalty.

On a related note, this BBC article: Courts question anti-piracy rule, would seem to indicate that the courts feel that the FCC is over-reaching in its attempts to push the “rights” of business, requiring hardware manufacturers to build equipment to the specifications of some copyright owners.

Sound familiar? Of course, it’s 18^th century France and it resulted in the series of events that are grouped as the French Revolution. Gee, what did you think?

Oh, by the way, no one said: “Let them eat cake.” “Qu’ils mangent de la brioche” would be closer to “Let them eat cheese blintzes.” Marie Antoinette was about 10 years old when Jean-Jacques Rousseau wrote it in Confessions, published after his death. The Swiss philosopher attributed it to an unnamed princess, but the appearance of the book in 1782 may be why people assumed the reference was to her.

The Committee to Protect Bloggers has asked people to observe February 22^nd as Free Mojtaba and Arash Day.

It can’t hurt to highlight the problems people are having around the world saying things their governments don’t like. I don’t think many doubt that there are a few people who think that some of us belong in prison.