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I LOVE MY COUNTRY…BUT I THINK IT'S TIME WE BEGAN
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE.
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I LOVE MY COUNTRY…BUT I THINK IT'S TIME WE BEGAN
SEEING OTHER PEOPLE.
Naomi Wolf has an article in The Guardian where she lays out a ten-step program for democratic societies to gradually shift into authoritarian states. So, how many of these steps has this administration embarked on over the last six years? Looks like all 10.
Here are the steps:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy2. Create a gulag
3. Develop a thug caste
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
5. Harass citizens' groups
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
7. Target key individuals
8. Control the press
9. Dissent equals treason
10. Suspend the rule of law
Here is the entire article. Important read.
The sister of the Virginia Tech student responsible for the killing rampage on Monday made a public statement through an attorney on behalf of the Cho family. It is heartbreaking to read. Each paragraph expresses such deep compassion for those who have died. In such times as these it is important to remember that they are a grieving family as well.
Here is a portion of her statement:
We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed forever because of what they witnessed and experienced.Each of these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut short by a horrible and senseless act.
We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person.
We have always been a close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of so much violence.
He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.
Read the full statement below the fold.
April 20,2007
Statement by Sun-Kyung Cho, sister of Seung-Hui Cho, on behalf of herself and her
family
On behalf of our family, we are so deeply sorry for the devastation my brother has
caused. No words can express our sadness that 32 innocent people lost their lives this
week in such a terrible, senseless tragedy.
We are heartbroken.
We grieve alongside the families, the Virginia Tech community, our State of Virginia,
and the rest of the nation. And, the world.
Every day since April 16, my father, mother and I pray for students Ross Abdallah
Alameddine, Brian Roy Bluhm, Ryan Christopher Clark, Austin Michelle Cloyd,
Matthew Gregory Gwaltney, Caitlin Millar Hammaren, Jeremy Michael Herbstritt,
Rachael Elizabeth Hill, Emily Jane Hilscher, Jarnett Lee Lane, Matthew Joseph La Porte, Henry J. Lee, Partahi Mamora Halomoan Lumbantoruan, Lauren Ashley McCain, Daniel Patrick O'Neil, J. Ortiz-Ortiz, Minal Hiralal Panchal, Daniel Alejandro Perez, Erin Nicole Peterson, Michael Steven Pohle, Jr., Julia Kathleen Pryde, Mary Karen Read, Reema Joseph Samaha, Waleed Mohamed Shaalan, Leslie Geraldine Sherman, Maxine Shelly Turner, Nicole White, Instructor Christopher James Bishop, and Professors Jocelyne Couture-Nowak, Kevin P. Granata, Liviu Librescu and G.V. Loganathan.
We pray for their families and loved ones who are experiencing so much excruciating
grief. And we pray for those who were injured and for those whose lives are changed
forever because of what they witnessed and experienced.
Each of these people had so much love, talent and gifts to offer, and their lives were cut
short by a horrible and senseless act.
We are humbled by this darkness. We feel hopeless, helpless and lost. This is someone
that I grew up with and loved. Now I feel like I didn't know this person.
We have always been a close, peaceful and loving family. My brother was quiet and
reserved, yet struggled to fit in. We never could have envisioned that he was capable of
so much violence.
He has made the world weep. We are living a nightmare.
There is much justified anger and disbelief at what my brother did, and a lot of questions are left unanswered. Our family will continue to cooperate fully and do whatever we can to help authorities understand why these senseless acts happened. We have many unanswered questions as well.
Our family is so very sorry for my brother's unspeakable actions. It is a terrible tragedy
for all of us.
The Yangtze River, which supplies as much as 35% of the country’s fresh water, may be “irreversibly” polluted.
Here is the AP report via ABC News.
Google Maps software technology has radically altered the way we gather geographical information – whether it be finding a friend’s address across the country to seeing where refugee camps are situated in Darfur. Now, a Silicon Valley company, Locus Technologies, is marrying that Google maps mashup capability with EPA Superfund site data in their "ePortal".
Just by entering a zip code anyone can find out if there is a superfund toxic site in the area. So far it is only available for IE 5 and above, but soon those of us who use other browsers will have access.
Information is power has never been more true than it is today.
Here is the Locus’ press release with all the links.
The new, soon to be smash-hit, Helvetica, premiers this week in The New School’s Tishman Auditorium in New York to a sold-out audience. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the font’s introduction to the world of type.
Here is a fabulous review (of sorts).
Someone needs to pull out his constitution and check in on who reports to whom in this frayed, old republic of ours.
Yesterday, President Bush, in a speech before a friendly audience comprised of members of the American Legion in Fairfax, Virginia, said, “I'm inviting congressional leaders from both parties...to meet with me at the White House next week. At this meeting, the leaders in Congress can report on progress on getting an emergency spending bill to my desk…”(emphasis added)
Yet, here is what the United States Constitution says about reporting [Article 2, Sec.3]:
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union…
So, it is the president who gives information to Congress. It is he who does the reporting; not the other way around.
I wish Speaker Pelosi would give him this civics lesson.
As of this writing, the cost of the Iraqi War to US taxpayers is approaching $416 Billion. So, what’s the difference between a billion and a million?
Well, imagine that you have a large basket filled with $1 Million in $1000 bills. Each day you take out and spend one of those thousand dollar bills. In a little less than three years your basket would be empty.
Now imagine that you have a larger basket filled with $1 Billion in $1,000 bills. If you began taking out those bills during Jesus’ lifetime (OK, Roman bills back then, but you get the idea), you would still be taking out those bills today – and for the next 732 years.
So $416 Billion sure adds up fast. Now imagine this as borrowed money (not hard to imagine actually, since it is), and our children and grandchildren have to put those $1000 bills back in that basket…
What have we done?
Here is a running tabulation of the cost of the war, along with some tables describing what we might do with that money besides burning it bill by bill.
In the 70s while Richard Nixon was doing his particular impersonation of royalty, and the MSM was doing its best to bring him down a notch, or two, or three, something was happening in Chicago.
A federal judge was hearing a case about POTS – plain ole telephone service – and the judge (Green if memory serves) became the overseer of the eventual dismantling of AT&T and the Bell System. However, since so much of the bandwidth (even though we didn’t call it that in those days) of the major newspapers' front pages, and the networks’ leading stories were about all things Nixonian, this story garnered relatively little attention.
History, if as they say is not repeating itself, certainly is beginning to rhyme. While the Iraqi War, and Gonzogate and all the other emerging scandals are soaking up loads of media attention, there is an important controversy brewing deep in the tubes of the internets. It seems that the US government (in the form of the Department of Homeland Security) wants access to the master keys that control the worldwide domain name system.
This can have a far-reaching impact on the continued evolution of this remarkable technology. There is a long, involved (and not uninteresting) history about our government’s role in the creation and early development of the tubes. But the global internet has gown beyond any one county’s capacity to control it, and frankly, other countries will no longer tolerate that kind of dominance.
This may be one of those events that seemed too technical, too arcane, to pay attention to, until later, when we realize that it was not.
Here (from the UK notably) is a brief article laying out the issues.
Sometimes, actually many times, a great cartoon can say more than any blog entry. This one really captures the controversy surrounding John McCain’s remarkable assertions about the relative safety of various Baghdad neighborhoods.
Where were you when you saw Dr. King’s bloody shirt outside the motel in Memphis? Dr. King was assassinated 39 years ago today. We sure could benefit from his soaring oratory now in these days when oratory seems to barely get off the ground.
Still in beta, but version #2 should be the bomb!
Check it out here.
Happy April Fool's Day!