I wrote a little something about the hurricane over at Seattle Real Estate Talk. I think it says pretty much what I want to say about the whole situation. For now, at least.

I’m checking out the new photo service by Flickr. It’s pretty slick, and it just may end up replacing iPhoto for me.

I took this photo in Vancouver, BC, last week. These dogs were out for a walk and were as friendly as their owner was.

From Reason Online, we learn that syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker has found the root cause of atrocities at Abu Ghraib. Get this: it’s all thanks to the geniuses behind There’s Something About Mary. Hit & Run: Revealed: The Root Cause of Abu Ghraib!

The images from Abu Ghraib, now irreversibly tattooed on the Arab brain, were every frat-house cliche magnified. The human pyramid, males mooning, masturbation, bags over heads. What we saw, at least in part, was “The Farrelly Brothers Do Baghdad.”

How else to explain the giddy photographs of young soldiers mugging for cameras and giving the thumbs-up sign beside humiliated prisoners, naked and masturbating?

How else, indeed! Here’s the response I left to the full article at the Woonsocket Call

It would be easy for me to misplace my outrage at this scandal in Iraq onto Ms. Parker’s colossally simple-minded article, yet I find myself appalled at the suggestion that somehow two movie makers could be in any way contributors to these atrocities. Ms. Parker shows a complete lack of understanding of the chain of command or of accountability. Would Ms. Parker stand by her story if she read this headline in the Guardian today: UK forces taught torture methods? According to that article, special forces soldiers are taught the brutal humiliation techniques we’ve seen in these prison pictures. That, it seems, is where our boys and girls picked them up. That our soldiers felt confident enough to use these techniques themselves speaks to either incompetent supervision or outright tolerance – if not encouragement – of the methods in question.

This article is an embarrassment. The responsible parties for this torture are the soldiers themselves and the authorities in the chain of command who trained soldiers in these techniques and encouraged their use. Try as you might to wish the responsibility elsewhere, it just won’t stick. Reasonable people understand the difference between watching abuse onscreen and inflicting it in real life. Reasonable people also understand that the torture that took place at Abu Ghraib was all part of the same package and cannot be compartmentalized into “naked torture” and “other torture.” Ms. Parker should be embarrassed at minimizing and manipulating this atrocity to suit her personal cultural agenda, as should any news organization who reprints it.

This is disturbing…

Boing Boing: FBI translator says she was bribed not to spill beans on 9-11 cover-up

FBI translator says she was bribed not to spill beans on 9-11 cover-up
During the 9-11 Hearing, the spotlight was on Richard Clarke’s testimony, because they’ve been so devastating to the Bush administration. But there’s hardly any media mention of Sibel Edmonds’ tesimony. She’s a Farsi and Turkish translator who worked for the FBI from Sept. 20, 2001 to March 2002. Here’s what Govenment Executive magazine had to say about her testimony.
Edmonds said she was hired to retranslate material that was collected prior to Sept. 11 to determine if anything was missed in the translations that related to the plot. In her review, Edmonds said the documents clearly showed that the Sept. 11 hijackers were in the country and plotting to use airplanes as missiles. The documents also included information relating to their financial activities. Edmonds said she could not comment in detail because she has been under a Justice Department gag order since October 2002.

p 61 ”[Toussaint} knew that the Negroes were oppressed not becase they were Negroes, but because they were weak. Epictetus and millions of other white men had been slaves. The chieftains who sold war prisoners and even their own subjects into slavery were of the same race as their victims. White planters were often cruel, but mulatto planters were said to be even worse.”

This quote is exactly what I’ve been looking for. For too long we have confused slavery as being a cruelty that only white people do to only black people. Slavery is a human embarrassment. It has nothing to do with race.

I’ve been thinking about presenting the Toussaint story much in the manner of a Shakespearean play that has been updated. What if his story could be told in today’s terms, placing him in today’s context, so that readers could relate to how respected he was and how important he was to his time? Do I have Clue One about how to pull this off? No really, but I really like the idea. Dispensing with the race issue might jar people’s understanding just enough to relate.

“Patience bat la force” = Patience overcomes strength.
“Doucement alle’ loin” = Gentleness goes far.

Singed a bit, were we?

I can barely believe it. I’ve successfully navigated through the MovableType Fire Swamp, dodging exploding configurations, climbing out of confusing syntaxes, and battling SEOUDs (Server Errors of Unusual Description). And here I am, with a web site hosted and an actual blog started.

Beware, voyagers. The dread Pirate Stumax is here for your SOULS!