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20060220
And that's that... again.
I have very little to say in this space anymore. So, a year after I first said "I'm done!," this time I'm pulling the plug.
At this point, what else can be said about the BushCheney Balrog on Pennsylvania Avenue? To paraphrase El Presidente himself, you're either for them or against them. After five years of this nonsense -- recently flavored with the warrantless wiretaps, the shotgunning of the hunting buddy, the tired monologue of staying the course and winning the war in oil- and blood-soaked, DU-contaminated Iraq -- what else can I say? What else do you need to read?
Let's focus on envisioning and manifesting the world and the social order we want, not grousing about the flaws, foibles and follies of those who think they can force the world (natural, political and conceptual) to bend to their criminal, corporate will.
GOTO 22/7
HST RIP, one year on
"The widow of Hunter S. Thompson said she would let fans download a rarely seen photo of the gonzo journalist posted to his Web site to mark the anniversary of his death.
"Hunter S. Thompson was 67 when he shot himself to death Feb. 20, 2005, in his home in Woody Creek, apparently despondent over health problems.
"Anita Thompson said she took the photo at the Chateau Marmont in Los Angeles, when her husband had friends over as he was writing one of his columns.
"He has a special look in his eye that he had once in while when he was up to something but was totally at peace," she said. 'I've taken thousands of pictures of him, but this one is my favorite. And nobody has seen it.'
"Anita Thompson said she is still working on organizing a symposium on her husband for the summer in either Aspen or San Francisco."
20060206
Egypt Extra
So... way back when, when we lived along the Nile, I had scribbled down a number of weblinks and publication titles that came to my attention.
We're in Korea now and I just cleaned out my wallet (American and Thai phone cards, Taiwanese bookstore and restaurant cards, a miniature page of the Koran (that I found on the floor of Trabant chai house, an hour before I left Seattle)... There was also the ticket stub from the Khalil Musuem in Cairo, but there's a whole other story connected with that.
For now, please peruse:
Kmt, A Modern Journal of Ancient Egypt
The Bulletin of the Egyptian Exploration Society
The Giza Archives Project
Cairo Magazine
Egypt Today... with a special mention of an article on the zar, an indigenous healing ceremony that was illegal to perform since Islam forbids the practice of magic. "It's one of the few healing ceremonies performed mainly by women for women in an attempt to pacify the spirits and win some measure of inner harmony."
Bedouin of the Sinai
(a coffetable photo book)
The Sinai Widerness: endangered wildlife and vanishing cultures
Reflections on fieldwork with Sinai Bedouin women
And that's that.
20060204
"Google's recent legal spat with the U.S. Department of Justice highlights not only what information search engines record about us but also the shortcomings in a federal law that's supposed to protect online privacy...
Q: Does that mean Google has the technical ability to link a person's searches together and divulge them when legally required?
Yes. Google says in its FAQ that it records Internet address, date, time, browser type, operating system and a cookie ID.
Author and entrepreneur John Battelle received word from Google this week that the company can perform two important types of matches. (We confirmed this with Google and followed up with additional questions.)
First, given a number of search terms, Google can produce a list of people (identified by Internet address or cookie) who searched for a given term. Second, given a collection of Internet addresses, Google can produce a list of the terms searched by the user of a given address. That effectively creates an electronic dossier of an individual.
Q: What about other search engines?
We surveyed AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo as well. Microsoft and Yahoo gave us the same response as Google did."
20060130
Justice in Vermont (with your help)
"A citizen in United States should never expect to gain justice through the judicial system. The system is so corrupted that in the rare case when justice prevails, it is not because of, but it is in spite of, the system."
~Rosemarie Jackowski
We are posting this call to action today because a kind and decent woman needs your help. Rosemarie Jackowski is a 68-year-old grandmother, Air Force veteran, writer, anti-war activist, and an advocacy journalist living in Vermont.
"On March 20, 2003, I participated in a peaceful protest against the war. I was arrested, incarcerated, handcuffed, booked, fingerprinted, photographed, arraigned, tried, convicted and sentenced. My conviction is currently under appeal in the Vermont State Supreme Court. Courtroom procedure allows the condemned the Right of Allocution. This was the first time that I was allowed to speak freely and openly to the court. Below are my words, as I spoke them, to Judge David Suntag, in Vermont District Court, in Bennington, Vt., on October 7, 2004."
A Courtroom Speech by Rosemarie Jackowski
To get an idea of where Rosemarie is coming from, I would suggest you read the above article as well as: "Silence is the greatest of all crimes," an interview with "Peace Grandma" Rosemarie Jackowski
by author Mickey Z. The details of Jackowski's trial can be found at the Veterans for Peace website.
The idea of a jury steamrolling a grandmother for committing an act of civil disobedience is, unfortunately, not very surprising in America’s current political climate.
BUT… that is not subject of today's appeal to you. The current injustice facing this amicable woman has to do with her actions as a plaintiff stemming from a traffic accident in Vermont in the year 2000.
While waiting in a line of traffic, she was rear-ended by a loaded logging truck. Many eyewitnesses reported the truck driver was "distracted" by some young ladies on the roadside and clearly the negligent party in the accident. It would seem like a straightforward case, but for the fact that the truck was owned and operated by the State of Vermont.
It gets worse. It has taken FIVE YEARS for the government to even begin her deposition. I urge you to read the horrific details of this matter in her recent article, "The Deposition."
Being deposed by a government lawyer for a case where the state is the defendant is, no doubt, a rough ride. It would seem that the State of Vermont had an intimidation card up its sleeve when the lawyer's questions began to stray far from the case at hand into the realm of Rosemarie's political beliefs and personal life. An excerpt:
"The big day arrived. I was taken into a small, windowless room in the state's attorney's office complex. I looked around. There was a one-way mirror opposite to where I was seated. There were some metal bookshelves with black garbage bags on them. It reminded me of Abu Ghraib.
"I was told to raise my right hand and was sworn in. Then the interrogation by an assistant to the state's attorney general began. She asked questions about my political activities... questions about my political writings. She had copied all of them from the Internet and waved them about with great emotion. She seemed excited by the fact that some of my articles had appeared on a website that has a four-letter word in its name. Obviously, she thought that this would embarrass me. It did not. I calmly explained to her that I do not have a website and I have no control over what name other people give to their websites. I don't know if she believed me or not.
"Then the interrogation got even more interesting. She asked questions about my sex life. She asked questions about my marriage that had ended 35 years prior. Then she started to ask detailed questions about the fact that I had been the victim of a brutal rape. The rape, which is irrelevant to this case, had occurred 40 -- yes,40 -- years ago during a time when I was working in Florida. By now, it had become very clear to me what was happening. There was no doubt in my mind that this was an attempt to intimidate me."
Whether or not you agree with Rosemarie's political beliefs, those beliefs should not hold any bearing in her case against a state-owned trucking company that caused her much physical anguish and financial devastation. As for the exceptionally private matters of sexual assault or divorce -- the representative of the State of Vermont has gone too far!
This is not the progressive state that I have read about over the years. This is brutal. The harassment and obfuscation by the assistant to the state's attorney general, and the dragging out of this otherwise uncomplicated matter, are justice delayed and justice denied.
We are appealing to you, dear reader, to take a few moments to write to one or all of the people listed below and join us in demanding a fair and equitable conclusion to this rather straightforward case of negligence on the part of an employee of the State of Vermont.
Dick Sears, Chairman of the State Judiciary Committee:
rsears@leg.state.vt.us
Speaker of the State House, Gaye Symington:
speaker@leg.state.vt.us
Governor of the State of Vermont, Jim Douglas:
http://www.vermont.gov/governor/contact.html
A succinct sentence or two is all we ask.
If you are a blogger, we would ask that you perhaps utilize your own space to help spread this appeal with your own article or a link back to this one. Thank you very much.
-- Amelopsis and Youngfox
20060124
All the rest: nmazca.com/taipei
20060123
Oh, damn, I forgot:
"When the President does it,
that means that it is not illegal."
Not-so-wise words spoken
by the last Executive Wiretapper,
Richard Milhous Nixon.
"OK, everyone who has studied the unitary executive theory of the presidency, raise your hand. Anyone? Anyone?
"If you are not raising your hand, you're not alone. Only recently has the world received notice that President Bush's 'I can do anything I want' approach to governance has a name: the unitary executive theory of the presidency. Not having heard of this concept, and thinking perhaps that I had missed something in Constitutional Law, I decided to survey a random sampling of attorneys about it.
"The group included civil practitioners, prosecutors, a federal judge, a former federal prosecutor who has a PhD as well as a JD, defense attorneys, and a US magistrate. The precise question was: 'When did you first hear about the unitary executive theory of the presidency?' Most said, 'The past few weeks.' But my favorite was, 'A few seconds ago, when you asked about it.' All agreed that the term does not appear in the US Constitution and that, the last time they checked, we still had three branches of government.
"Discussion of this 'theory' has been prompted, of course, by President Bush's recent confession to a crime: repeatedly authorizing the National Security Agency (NSA) to intercept domestic electronic communications for foreign intelligence purposes without a court order, in violation of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA contains no exception for the President, but Bush claims his action is legal because: (1) Congress endorsed it in its September 18, 2001, authorization to use military force in response to Al Qaeda's September 11 attacks, and (2) he has inherent power as Chief Executive to act as he deems necessary in wartime. Many scholars, including Georgetown University's David Cole and former New York State Congressional Representative Elizabeth Holtzman, have thoroughly debunked these arguments.
"You don't have to be a constitutional scholar to know that Bush's legal justifications are weak. You merely have to consider the Administration's duplicitous conduct. The Bush team has deliberately concealed this program, not only from the public and Congress but, most damning of all, from the very agency that is responsible for executing the laws of this country: the Justice Department. It has been widely reported that even Bush appointees, such as former Assistant Attorney General James Comey, and possibly former Attorney General John Ashcroft, objected to the NSA's wide-ranging warrantless spying.
"After 20 years as a federal prosecutor, I am absolutely certain that the vast majority of career attorneys at the Justice Department and criminal prosecutors from US Attorneys' offices around the country, as well as federal law enforcement agents, would have refused to participate knowingly in this program. Bush and his coterie knew that their legal arguments were weak and intellectually dishonest, if not ludicrous, so rather than making their case honestly -- even to their own people -- they avoided dissent by acting in secret and affirmatively misleading the entire country. Using a tragically familiar modus operandi, Bush has carried out his unlawful spying scheme by acting not as a unitary executive (whatever that is) but as a solitary executive -- as if the President Knows Best."
20060120
Beyond Viet Nam
(now Iraq and Afghanistan)
"Somehow this madness must cease. We must stop now. I speak as a child of God and brother to the suffering poor of Vietnam. I speak for those whose land is being laid waste, whose homes are being destroyed, whose culture is being subverted. I speak for the poor of America who are paying the double price of smashed hopes at home, and death and corruption [overseas] in Vietnam. I speak as a citizen of the world, for the world as it stands aghast at the path we have taken. I speak as one who loves America, to the leaders of our own nation. The great initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours.
"This is the message of the great Buddhist leaders of Vietnam. Recently one of them wrote these words, and I quote, 'Each day the war goes on, the hatred increases in the heart of the Vietnamese and in the hearts of those humanitarian instinct. The Americans are forcing even their friends into becoming their enemies. It is curious that the Americans, who calculate so carefully on the possibilities of military victory, do not realize that in the process they are incurring deep psychological and political defeat. The image of America will never again be the image of revolution, freedom and democracy, but the image of violence and militarism...'
"We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time...
"We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words: 'Too late.' There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Kayam is right: 'The moving finger writes, and having written moves on...' We still have a choice today: non-violent coexistence or violent co-annihilation.*
"We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight."
Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., "Beyond Vietnam,"
Riverside Church, New York, April 4, 1967
* Said another way:
"We must learn to live together as brothers
or perish together as fools."
I wrote about the murder of Stephanie Hummer in March 2004, 10 years after her body had been found near downtown Columbus, Ohio. I was a reporter for the campus daily at the time, and I wrote several articles about the case. And I, like others, had seen years go by, occasional leads pop up, but there was no resolution.
Twenty minutes ago, I received an email alerting me to the news of a suspect linked to the murder by way of a DNA database for which the State of Ohio requires convicted felons to submit samples. A man who was convicted in a child-support case had to submit a sample in 2003/4, but it wasn't tested until this week. Soon afterward, detectives called him for questioning in regard to Hummer's murder, and it was reported that he confessed to the crime.
My mind and mood went here and there as I read the text of the Washington Post story that was sent to me: tears welled up, the scene in that field the overcast day I visited, the depression in the ground where her body was found; the phone call to her parents, my own struggle with how the story was presented (and how people reacted to what was printed)... Also, I felt discouraged to see that the man who's been brought in is African-American, because that will reinforce some people's fear and prejudice. And then there's the program of compulsory DNA submissions: it obviously brought a resolution to this case, and can potentially set free or exonerate people in other cases, but I still regard it as Orwellian (a way to put or keep people in The System). And the billion-dollar bond... that not only seems unnecessary, but melodramatic (return to my concern about perceptions about ethnicity and crime).
In the end, though, I just think about the time that has passed between then and now. I was not yet 22. Hummer died at 18. I saw a photo of her father on a TV station's website and it seems he's aged so much. I looked at the face of the suspect and I wondered if perhaps I'd seen him before... But that's neither here nor there. These are the facts:
"Jonathan J. Gravely, 35, was brought to Franklin County Municipal Court this morning to face a charge of murder in the March 1994 death of 18-year-old Stephanie Hummer... [He pleaded not guilty, in spite of a reported confession, which I don't understand. -- Ed.] Some of Gravely's relatives cried in court as Judge Scott VanDerKarr set the bond at $1 billion, an extremely high level last used in the case of a prostitution ring when there was a fear the people charged could leave the country...
"Gravely, who had never been idenfitied as a suspect in the case, was arrested Wednesday after his DNA was linked to evidence in the case. Ohio last year became the 37th state to require anyone convicted of a felony to submit a DNA sample to be kept in a state database...
"Police yesterday said they went to Gravely's workplace at a Columbus warehouse where he was working for a temporary agency and asked him to come to police headquarters to answer questions about the Hummer case. He came in willingly, they said.
"During questioning, Gravely confessed to killing Hummer, said Columbus police homicide detective Russell Redman. Gravely didnt know Hummer, and the crime appears to have been random, Redman said."
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"Don't tread on me, either."
HST 1937-2005
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