The Mandelbear's Musings

Copy this sentence into your livejournal if you're in a non-same-sex marriage, and you don't want it "protected" by the bigots who think that gay marriage hurts it somehow.

(seen several places this morning)

“Since passage of the Patriot Act, many companies based outside of the United States have been reluctant to store client information in the U.S.,” said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington. “There is an ongoing concern that U.S. intelligence agencies will gather this information without legal process. There is particular sensitivity about access to financial information as well as communications and Internet traffic that goes through U.S. switches.”

But economics also plays a role. Almost all nations see data networks as essential to economic development. “It’s no different than any other infrastructure that a country needs,” said K C Claffy, a research scientist at the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis in San Diego. “You wouldn’t want someone owning your roads either.”

Indeed, more countries are becoming aware of how their dependence on other countries for their Internet traffic makes them vulnerable. Because of tariffs, pricing anomalies and even corporate cultures, Internet providers will often not exchange data with their local competitors. They prefer instead to send and receive traffic with larger international Internet service providers.

cryptome

I want my country back, and the only way to get it back is to vote for a Democrat in every damned election I'm qualified to vote in.

The Department of Health & Human Services moves to define "contraception" as "abortion".

I live in California. Our initiative process has made it entirely clear that any small, cynical group of greedy bastards can cobble together enough special-interest votes to get almost any hare-brained scheme that benefits them passed by a simple majority. The Bush administration and their puppet masters have done that on an even larger scale; the entire Republican party has been turned over to the religious right as a way of keeping a small group of extremely rich, extremely cynical people in power. This latest move is a blatent attempt to drag mainstream Catholics into the conspiracy, and it may very well succeed.

One more term with a Republican in office, and there will be a right-wing nutcase majority on the US Supreme Court. DO YOU WANT THAT? If you have to think hard about it, I'm not sure I want to know.

I am old enough to remember people driving across state lines to get abortions. To buy contraceptives. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when Jews and Catholics, as well as African-Americans (as we call them now) were routinely discriminated against in jobs, housing, and college admissions. When restrooms, drinking fountains, and schools were segregated. When Jewish kids like me were routinely teased -- if not worse -- at school. DO YOU WANT THOSE DAYS BACK?

I am old enough to remember when a divorced-and-remarried relative couldn't go back home to Italy for fear of being arrested for bigamy, because divorce wasn't legal there. DO YOU WANT THAT HERE?

Think about whether you want the bad old days back before you vote Republican, because that's what you're going to get, and worse. Much worse.

We are one Supreme Court justice away from a right-wing religious dictatorship. If that. It may already be too late, because the ones pulling the puppet strings aren't necessarily tied to the religious right. That's just where they can get the votes now. If that coalition falls apart, they'll start to cobble together a different set of single issues. We may only have one or two terms to root them out. They already have a head start.

I am also old enough to remember when Richard Nixon was considered by many to be a corrupt right-wing nut case, and to remember that he was somewhere to the left of most of today's Democrats. I am old enough to remember when "liberal" was considered middle-of-the-road. I am old enough to have been proud to call myself a radical.

I am old enough to remember when the US had a middle class. When most rich people paid their fair share of taxes. When we learned the Bill of Rights in school, and knew that our government was there to enforce it and not to undermine it.

I am old enough to have learned the Pledge of Allegiance before a Republican administration added the words "under God" to it, and I still say it as I learned it.

DAMN IT, I WANT MY COUNTRY BACK!

Thanks to this post by snobahr, this post by kyburg, and this post by ravan. Planned Parenthood has an online petition.

The morning was almost entirely eaten up taking chaoswolf and selkit to the bank so they could set up a joint account. The bank we've been using since before we were married, Union Bank of California, is one of the few with a branch in Canada, which made it an obvious choice as well as convenient for all. It still took two hours for them to figure out how to handle a Canadian's identity. Feh!

After that, we piled the whole gang plus the wheelchair (Igor), into the flower_cat's minivan (the Rambling Silver Rose -- yes, the song was an afterthought) and went to the local Greek Orthodox church's Greek Festival. It's not about the music, the dancing, or the hucksters: it's about the food. Everyone in the family has something they like there, even the normally-super-picky Younger Daughter, who invariably has the deep-fried squid strips and a big box of honey-dipped, deep-fried dough balls for desert. Colleen had lamb, and I had a skewer of pork cubes; both of us drank retsina. Yum. The Cat and I finished lunch with Greek coffee (sometimes described as caffeinated sludge served in tiny cups at knife-point) and baklava.

Went over to the stage, and I joined a line dancing a Syrtos. Took a while for the pattern to come back to my feet, but I eventually got it. Left after that because the music really was a bit too loud. No walkies, but I got my exercise with the RollyCat. I'd parked only a couple of blocks away, so it wasn't worthwhile going around for a pickup.

After that, I took selkit to Fry's to exchange the Fujitsu tablet laptop he'd bought back in March, and which has been giving him considerable trouble, for a new Sony. Tedious but straightforward; I got a smile out of the salesdroid by mentioning to Selkit that one of the reasons I really like Fry's is their return policy.

Welsh rabbit (yes, that's really what it's called, not "rarebit" -- hint: it's an English dish) for a quick, light dinner.

After dinner the Cat, Emmy and I got dressed up and went out to the Mountain View Masonic Center for the installation of the Y.D.'s best friend Kaylee as Worthy Advisor of the local Rainbow Girls assembly. Needless to say, this was far, far outside my experience, or Emmy's for that matter. (Colleen had been to one, four decades ago.) K. seemed a little surprised, but delighted, to see us (it was her Mom who had given us the invitation). But, you know, you have to support your friends.

I found it fascinating. Girls in long dresses floating in precise patterns across the floor, simple but effective ritual hand-offs from the old officers to the new, a little bit of ad-hoc silliness to lighten things up... Light reception afterwards -- we came home with a plate of cucumber sandwiches. Emmy's sotto voce remark was that it was too religious for her -- too explicitly Christian, in fact; she described herself on the way home as "spiritual but not religious". It's a part of her friend's life that she's never going to share to any great extent, but we were all glad to have been there.

I said the Pledge of Allegiance as I originally learned it, without "under God". It's a small protest, but I do it anyway.

... and keepin' old Cheney down (with apologies to Phil Ochs). But I couldn't resist, now that Chris Dodd (D-CT) has succeeded in stopping the FISA bill with its retroactive immunity for telco wiretapping.

It'll be back in January, but that's a whole new year, and a few more senators may be thinking about how it will look on their record.

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all.

Naomi Wolf
Tuesday April 24, 2007
Guardian

Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down: the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel, and took certain activists into custody.

They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy - but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated today in the United States by the Bush administration.

Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree - domestically - as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government - the task of being aware of the constitution has been outsourced from citizens' ownership to being the domain of professionals such as lawyers and professors - we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security - remember who else was keen on the word "homeland" - didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable - as the author and political journalist Joe Conason, has put it, that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realise.

vixyish

technoshaman

But not long ago, in a conversation about this kind of thing with a co-worker who follows news & politics pretty heavily, I asked him rather bleakly, "what can we do?"

He said, "Keep talking about it."

The MySpace generation is a "somewhat alien life force," a Navy recruiting presentation contends -- with a language and lifestyle that's almost unrecognizable to adults. And because the kids are such "coddled," "narcissistic praise junkies," they'll be beyond tough to bring into the military. Propensity to join the armed forces among these so-called "millennials" has dropped to as little as 3%; that's down from 26% in 2001.

Entropic Memes uncovered the bleak, often unintentionally hilarious report from the Annual Navy Workforce Research and Analysis Conference, which also glumly notes that the Iraq war has brutalized recruiting efforts. Up to two-thirds of millennials are "less likely to join the military" because of the war, according to the presentation.

In the interest of not feeding my depression, I don't think I'll make any political posts today other than pointing at ravan's annotated copy of the Declaration of Independence.

I find the name of our country's current president theocratic dictator ironic in the extreme.

added: Also go watch/listen to this opinion piece by Keith Olbermann, or read the text which has the last paragraph that was cut off in the video.

"The Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended." -- U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez

(from jenkitty and mcgath_blog)

update: you can find your congresscritter's contact info, including a phone number, here. Yes, I've called. I very rarely do that.

THIS VIDEO IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK. It is, however, funny as hell, highly political, and dead-on accurate. (From filkertom.) Offensive to Republicans, prudes, and the humor-impaired.

A group of zombies have risen up to claim the city of Minneapolis and Hennepin County violated their free rights and discriminated against them.

The six adults and one juvenile who were arrested while impersonating the undead in July filed their lawsuit Thursday.

The ragged group were arrested for "simulating weapons of mass destruction" during a dance party near the Minneapolis entertainment district.

Police alleged that wires protruding from the zombie's backpacks could have been bombs or were meant to imitate bombs. It was later learned the wires were actually radios.

Oh, wait.

Get out there and VOTE the bums bastards party of torture, war, right-wing religious nuts, Guantanamo party that gutted the Bill of Rights Republicans out.

The persistent delusions of senior Republicans in Congress and the President have led to the leaking of sensitive documents on nuclear weapons via the Web, the New York Times reports.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra (Republican, Michigan), and Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (Republican, Kansas) were instrumental in establishing a Web archive called the "Operation Iraqi Freedom Document Portal". It was Hoekstra's, Roberts's, and apparently the President's, hope that by disseminating documents recovered from Iraq, some right-wing amateur researcher might eventually find a flaky shred of evidence suggesting that Saddam's regime had been involved in banned weapons production, which could then be trumpeted to the press.

The problem with clinging to vain hopes in this way is that a number of the documents (since removed) were believed to be far too graphic in describing nuclear weapons technology to be suitable for public exhibition.

I have been told a thousand times at least, in the years I have spent reporting on the astonishing and repugnant abuses, lies and failures of the Bush administration, to watch my back. "Be careful," people always tell me. "These people are capable of anything. Stay off small planes, make sure you aren't being followed." A running joke between my mother and me is that she has a "safe room" set up for me in her cabin in the woods, in the event I have to flee because of something I wrote or said.

I always laughed and shook my head whenever I heard this stuff. Extreme paranoia wrapped in the tinfoil of conspiracy, I thought. This is still America, and these Bush fools will soon pass into history, I thought. I am a citizen, and the First Amendment hasn't yet been red-lined, I thought.

Matters are different now.

filkertom

Pope Benedict's admission that he was "deeply sorry" for offending the sensitivities of Muslims does not necessarily mean that the worst crisis of his papacy is over yet. Speaking in Rome yesterday, the Pope said that the views of the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaeologus that he quoted last week - describing Islam as "evil and inhuman" - were not his own.

NSA's Warrantless Wiretaps: How NSA Does It by Jerry Nelson

The Executive Branch has refused to tell very many Congressman very much about how the NSA system works. The secrecy seemed pointless to me, since any good technologist could figure it out. So I did. Not even your elected representatives could find out what I am about to tell you.

[...]

I leave you with one thought: neither God nor Nature owe the United States of America a democracy. If citizens give away all their freedoms, eventually they will have none. When the powerful have all the options and you have none, you are toast.

Democracies are not conquered. Democracies do not end when outsiders force them into subjugation. Democracies end when their citizens vote for a strongman who promises to protect them.

Here is how the National Security Agency is protecting you.

Remember what I've been saying about warrantless wiretaps? Nelson is saying it, too. Nothing new here, but it's thorough and well-written. As he says, "any good technologist could figure it out", but apparently not any politician. No surprise.

(Via cryptome)

We’re Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore -- In These Times -- a well-written tirade against the current Republican party, by Garrison Keillor. (From filkerdave)

Here in 2004, George W. Bush is running for reelection on a platform of tragedy—the single greatest failure of national defense in our history, the attacks of 9/11 in which 19 men with box cutters put this nation into a tailspin, a failure the details of which the White House fought to keep secret even as it ran the country into hock up to the hubcaps, thanks to generous tax cuts for the well-fixed, hoping to lead us into a box canyon of debt that will render government impotent, even as we engage in a war against a small country that was undertaken for the president’s personal satisfaction but sold to the American public on the basis of brazen misinformation, a war whose purpose is to distract us from an enormous transfer of wealth taking place in this country, flowing upward, and the deception is working beautifully.

Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Arlen Specter (Republican, Pennsylvania) has crafted proposed legislation, pre-approved by the White House, enabling the FISA star chamber court to rubber-stamp the NSA's massive, warrantless wiretap program, and decide that it is constitutional. Clearly, the Republicans don't want the Supremes to get their hands on this one, although it is hard to imagine them letting the FISA court have the last word.

Was the 2004 Election Stolen? (from Rolling Stone by way of this post by ravan.)

Republicans prevented more than 350,000 voters in Ohio from casting ballots or having their votes counted -- enough to have put John Kerry in the White House.

Like many Americans, I spent the evening of the 2004 election watching the returns on television and wondering how the exit polls, which predicted an overwhelming victory for John Kerry, had gotten it so wrong. By midnight, the official tallies showed a decisive lead for George Bush -- and the next day, lacking enough legal evidence to contest the results, Kerry conceded. Republicans derided anyone who expressed doubts about Bush's victory as nut cases in ''tinfoil hats,'' while the national media, with few exceptions, did little to question the validity of the election. The Washington Post immediately dismissed allegations of fraud as ''conspiracy theories,'' and The New York Times declared that ''there is no evidence of vote theft or errors on a large scale.''

But despite the media blackout, indications continued to emerge that something deeply troubling had taken place in 2004. Nearly half of the 6 million American voters living abroad never received their ballots -- or received them too late to vote -- after the Pentagon unaccountably shut down a state-of-the-art Web site used to file overseas registrations. A consulting firm called Sproul & Associates, which was hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters in six battleground states, was discovered shredding Democratic registrations. In New Mexico, which was decided by 5,988 votes, malfunctioning machines mysteriously failed to properly register a presidential vote on more than 20,000 ballots. Nationwide, according to the federal commission charged with implementing election reforms, as many as 1 million ballots were spoiled by faulty voting equipment -- roughly one for every 100 cast

You'd think that after what happened in Florida in 2000, people would be on the alert for something like this. Not that anything could have been done about it -- what we've seen in this country is a very quiet, very deliberate right-wing coup.

I'd like my country back, please.

A senior federal law enforcement official tells ABC News the government is tracking the phone numbers we (Brian Ross and Richard Esposito) call in an effort to root out confidential sources.

"It's time for you to get some new cell phones, quick," the source told us in an in-person conversation.

ABC News does not know how the government determined who we are calling, or whether our phone records were provided to the government as part of the recently-disclosed NSA collection of domestic phone calls.

Other sources have told us that phone calls and contacts by reporters for ABC News, along with the New York Times and the Washington Post, are being examined as part of a widespread CIA leak investigation.

Or at least a strong indication of the Party Line, from this article

Former NSA Director Bob Inman said the use of telephone and other databases might not have violated privacy rights. That's because the initial explorations were automated and personal information wouldn't have spread any further in most cases \u2014 a position supported by a former Bush administration official familiar with the monitoring program.

"Computers may have sorted through hundreds of millions of messages without a person ever seeing it. So no one's e-mail or phone call has been compromised," Inman said. "The problem only starts when the information goes to an analyst to read."

So there you have it, just as I said here. Computer wiretapping isn't really wiretapping, torture that doesn't leave a mark isn't really torture, laws the president disagrees with aren't really laws, speech on the internet isn't really speech, and don't even get me started on freedom of religion.

Catholic News Service: Vatican says freedom of expression does not mean offending religions

The Vatican, commenting on a series of satirical newspaper cartoons that have outraged Muslims, said freedom of expression does not include the right to offend religious sentiments.

At the same time, the Vatican said, violent reactions are equally deplorable.

"Intolerance -- wherever it comes from, whether real or verbal, action or reaction -- always constitutes a serious threat to peace," Vatican spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said in a statement Feb. 4.

(From The Volokh Conspiracy by way of DocBug.)

Bad church: no cookie. Any deity that can't handle satire, scholarly scrutiny, scientific facts, and even consumer complaints is obviously not omniscient, not omnipotent, and in fact has a serious inferiority complex. The Jews have been poking fun at, studying, and even complaining about (and to) their deity for thousands of years, and He apparently hasn't abandoned them yet. Any religion that can't handle satire, scrutiny, hard facts, and skepticism is clearly inhabiting a fantasy world of its own making.

And any religion that claims to have a corner on religious truth, in spite of the obvious fact that every other religion has claims of roughly equal validity, has a very high probabability of being simply wrong. That's the essence of fanaticism, folks -- being so certain of one's own beliefs that you can use them to justify any action, no matter how evil. It's not the only excuse for terrorism, to be sure, but it's a common one.

From gridlore:

A Nation Under God

Let others worry about the rapture: For the increasingly powerful Christian Reconstruction movement, the task is to establish the Kingdom of God right now--from the courthouse to the White House.

...

In this worldview, the mandate for Christians is not just to live right or to help their neighbors: They are called upon to take over or eliminate the institutions of secular government.