Entries from February 2003 ↓

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about Kurt Vonnegut and of his thoughts on the upcoming war. Several news items I’ve heard recently have kept him in my mind, so this morning I decided a new entry was in order. It turns out, it was an appropriate day to write about Mr. Vonnegut.

We’ve been hearing, over the past couple of weeks, about the Bush Administration’s plans to use a military technique known as “Shock and Awe” to frighten and demoralize the Iraqi people and Saddam’s army to such an extent that they lay down their arms and pick up their white flags. In the first day of an attack on Iraq, our forces would fire 400 missiles at Iraqi military targets, command-and-control sites, at communications and infrastructure. The second day would see a repeat performance. With communications, utilities and chain of command destroyed, the Iraqi army would see the hopelessness of their situation and the war would be over with little loss of life.

Beautiful, except… where will those bombs be going? Haven’t we heard that Saddam keeps his missiles and other targets in civilian areas to confound the humanitarian impulses of his enemies? And 400 missiles a day? What we will be doing is creating a firestorm like the one we unleashed on Dresden, Germany in 1945. The firestorm which Kurt Vonnegut, a POW, survived on February 13, 1945… 58 years ago today. There are no coincidences.

Vonnegut said that, on that day, the British Royal Air Force “burned the place down, turned it into a single column of flame. More people died there in the firestorm in that one big flame, because there was nothing to breathe, than died in Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined.” Shock and Awe. Anywhere from 135,000 to 250,000 people died in 48 hours of bombing. Bush and his unholy cabal, so enamored of their high-tech weapons, are leaving us with the impression that Gulf War II will be a “clean war”. Ain’t no such thing.

From his experiences cleaning up Dresden, burying the thousands of bodies, wading through pools of melted flesh, Vonnegut created a masterpiece of modern fiction. Slaughterhouse Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, a survivor of the Dresden firebombing who becomes “unstuck in time” and finds himself living his life in random order. The book was made into a movie, which left out one of the most visual scenes in the novel: the scene where Billy is watching a war documentary, only… being unstuck in time, he sees the movie in reverse. Explosions collapse inwards, reassembling themselves into bombs which leap from the ground to be accepted into the waiting, open hatches of airplanes, which fly backwards to the airbase, where bombs are unloaded and shipped back to America to be dissassembled in huge factories, with the raw materials finally buried in remote mountainsides. (I’m paraphrasing, since I don’t have the book in front of me. Read the book and see why he’s Kurt Vonnegut and I’m not.)

On NPR the other day, John Nielsen filed a report on the high tech efforts used in discovering what went wrong with Space Shuttle Columbia. He interviews Gordon Wells, a mapping specialist at University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Space Research. Wells says that by precisely identifying the exact spot where each fragment of debris landed, by carefully evaluating films, telemetry and all other data, NASA will be able to create a computer model which will describe the trajectory of each tiny little fragment. They’ll run the simulation thousands of times, if necessary, until they come across the fiction which recreates reality.

The model will be like Billy Pilgrim’s movie: the tiny pieces leaping upwards from where they rested in swamps and brush and rivers and fields, defying gravity, flying through the pellucid skies, until they assemble into a whole shuttle and seven whole lives.

Art resonates. Hi-ho. So it goes.

So, like all good lefty bloggers, I’m reading Eric Alterman‘s What Liberal Media?. (Buy the book here and support the great work of TalkLeft.)

I’m enjoying Chapter 6 and his dissection of the conservative punditocracy, especially his eviscerating of Charles Murray’s The Bell Curve. (No, I haven’t read the book — and I won’t link to it. Nor have I read the “Protocols of the Elders…”, which Timothy McVeigh found so enlightening. That doesn’t mean I have no right to regard it as a bad book — even if Alterman hadn’t made clear how bad it is.)

Anyway, on page 102, in his criticism of Dinesh D’Souza’s The End of Racism (won’t link there, either), he mentions how D’Souza’s history is

For their own safety. Amazing how racists like Coble and D’Souza and so many others are always committing their evil acts with the good of others in their hearts.

He still doesn’t get it. A week after he declared his support for Japanese-American internment during World War II, Representative Howard Coble (R-NC) still hasn’t apologized for his remarks. (Unless you consider one of those “I regret you found my words offensive” statements an apology — I don’t.)

Neither does Professor Eric Muller, whose “IsThatLegal?” blog has been staying on top of the story. Coble claimed he would apologize if he were shown proof that the internment was not for the Japanese-Americans’ own safety. Muller faxed him the proof and has posted a number of scanned copies of documents relating to the internment which definitely show that it wasn’t for the internees’ own safety. No word from Coble.

Orcinus, the website of journalist David Neiwert, is another great source of info on the Coble affair, including strong refutation of the claim that the Magic cables (intercepted Japanese diplomatic communication from before the attack on Pearl Harbor) had anything to do with the decision to inter the 120,000 Japanese-Americans (as well as 15,000 German-Americans and Italian-Americans, as reported in this article.) He also reinforces the Monkey Media Report‘s discussion of FDR’s personal racism and the general prejudices against Asian-Americans of the time.

Moving from stupidity to stupidity, Coble has also refused to meet with Rep. Mike Honda, D-CA, Rep. Robert Matsui, D-CA, and Rep. David Wu, D-OR to discuss with him their “…concerns for the appropriate balance of homeland security and constitutional civil rights…” This is an appropriate topic for discussion with the newly appointed chairman of the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, Terrorism and Homeland Security.

The criticisms of Coble and petitions for his removal are coming from all over the map, and it is a testament to the seriousness of this issue that we find the Arab-American Institute and the Jewish Anti-Defamation League on the same side of the debate. However, as several commentators have pointed out, not a word of Coble criticism has come from the leadership of the Republican party. Their feeling must be, “Lott’s gone, let’s move on.”

One last frightening note: there are probably some good people in North Carolina, but they’re being very quiet. Coble’s office reports “…80 percent to 90 percent of e-mails and letters Coble received were either supportive of his position or believed he was being unfairly criticized.” Now what state did Jesse Helms hail from?

Okay, it’s not really a game, as the author, Dermot O’Connor says:

It’s actually a very funny — and scary — scenario of what could happen in a Second Gulf War, taking into account nearly all the players, including Kurds, Turks, Taliban, Pakistani and Saudi Islamists, Egyptians, Hamas, Palestinians, Israelis and Brits. (The one significant group it does leave out is Europe, but maybe that scenario will show up in Gulf War 3.)

The artwork is really good and the caricatures of the Bushistas are spot-on. (While you’re there, check out his “Ashcroft Online (AOL)” movie, for a glimpse of the newest ISP.)

Dermot’s getting tons of email about the game since CNN and other media started pointing it out, (but since the game is only a 97K Flash file, the load doesn’t seem to be delaying the site access.) He shares some of the mail on his homepage and it’s pretty enlightening itself. (I found my way there via The Register.)

Frost’s poem, rather than agreeing with the proposition that “good fences make good neighbors”, is actually challenging that notion, raising the possibility that fences may actually offend. Our government seems to have read the poem incorrectly, since, according to this report from the Canadian Broadcasting Company,

I’ve read most of the <expectorate>US Patriot Act</expectorate> but I don’t remember this part. Because of this provision, however, Canada’s Minister of Immigration, Dennis Coderre says,

This, of course, feeds into the debate raging in Canada (and other countries, including the UK) over the implementation of a nationwide ID card. The Canadian Privacy Commissioner, George Radwanski, has railed against Minister Coderre’s introduction of ID card legislation, calling it a “huge blow” to privacy rights.

You might think that the rules would be different for good allies and good neighbors, but Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that “no country is exempt” from the new rules.

We’ve bombed Canadian servicemen in Afghanistan, introduced tariffs on their lumber industry, pressed for sanctions against their wheat farmers, and drenched their country in acid rain. We might as well build that wall.

TalkLeft, among dozens of other blogs, is reporting on what’s being called “USA Patriot Act II”. The Center for Public Integrity has obtained a copy of the draft legislation (in pdf and very slow to download since the server is being hit very hard. Try the pdf at this alternate site.)

There are many frightening provisions of this bill including:

• restrictions on Freedom of Information Act requests,
• creation of a DNA database for those suspected of terrorism,
• expansion of the surveillance powers of the FBI,
• exemptions from civil liability for people and businesses who voluntarily turn info over to the government,
• discontinuation of consent decrees imposed on police departments found to be violating civil rights and other laws (although, the language of this provision specifically exempts any departments guilty of racial profiling…),
• extradition of foreigners to countries with which we have no extradition treaties,
• criminalizing the use of encryption to conceal incriminating communications,
• removal of the statute of limitations for any terrorist crimes, including cyberterrorism,
• expansion of the list of crimes eligible for the death penalty,
• and freezing assets of any individual planning or acting against a foreign state while in the US.

Quite a list, huh? And this monster touches everything from OSHA to the IRS to the Fair Credit Reporting Act. To me, however, the scariest section is Section 501, “Expatriation of Terrorists.” According to the analysis at the Center for Public Integrity:

What is a ‘terrorist organization’? It’s what the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the Attorney General, says it is.

It is such a loose definition that, for example: if a member of the Friends of the Earth UK slashes the tires of an Exxon oil-tanker truck scheduled to transport a load of crude to the refinery, and if you — an American — have given money to the society, or helped do fundraising for them, and if the Secretary of State, under pressure from all the petroleum-coated hacks in the current administration, has declared that FoE should be added to the list of terrorist organizations, then you, having provided material support to that group, are subject to expatriation. (Don’t believe it? Check out the definitions of terrorist activities here.)

The US Supreme Court, in the 1967 case Afroyim v. Rusk, (387 U.S. 253) stated that

That decision was sustained in 1980 in Vance v. Terrazas, (444 U.S. 252), where the majority stated

Under the standards set out in Terrazas, it would be up to the government to show by “a preponderance of the evidence” that you knew that the money you gave to FoE would be supporting these “terrorist attacks”. It would be assumed that the donation was voluntary, and the burden of proof would be on you to show that you gave the money under duress.

How the forced expatriation of this new Act would (will?) hold up under the gaze of this Supreme Court — especially since both Terrazas and Afroyim were 5-4 decisions — anyone’s guess.

Still, the thought of becoming another Philip Nolan — a Man Without a Country — for a donation or the support of a cause, is a truly horrifying future.

RuminateThis has a terrific example of what I call “censorship by neglect.” Seems Reps. Peter DeFazio (D-OR) and Ron Paul (R-TX) have introduced a bill which would overturn the “Iraq Use of Force Resolution” passed by the Congress last October.

In an entry titled, “WE DECIDED NOT TO RUN IT…”, Lisa E. demonstrates the utter lack of interest by the US media in this bill. The Washington Post is the source of the title, giving no reason other than an editorial whim to quash the story. Some of the commenter’s on Lisa’s blog suggest that it’s not an important story because there is virtually no chance of it passing. If that standard were applied to sports, the only baseball games that would be broadcast would be the New York Yankees. Others comment that its only sponsored by two representatives out of 435, but that ignores the 28 other representatives who have signed on as co-sponsors.

I agree with Lisa that the real reason is the press is too busy lobbing Nerf-balls to Colin Powell (and giggling about wacko Michael Jackson) and is therefore stretched too thin to cover any other stories.

Which calls to mind the possibility that we may be getting ourselves into two wars right about now — Iraq and North Korea — and our official dismissal of the North Korean situation as a minor crisis. Perhaps our Secretary of Defense is right and we can fight two wars at once, but maybe the reason we’re ignoring one of them is that our government is so tightly focused on Iraq, they are unable to do the multi-tasking necessary to deal with North Korea at the same time. Too bad the choice lies with Pyongyang.

The “Patent Clause” of the US Constitution (Article I, Section 8, clause gives Congress the power “To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” For a long time, the standard for what was patentable required the invention contain a “flash of genius.” In 1952, Congress lowered the standard to “nonobviousness” to a person of ordinary skill. In the early 1980s, the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) began issuing patents on animals and plants, and in the 1990s, it began issuing “business methods” patents.

The problem with all this expansion of patentable inventions is that the PTO relies on the person filing the patent to disclose evidence of “prior art” — earlier implementations of the invention which is being submitted for patent protection. No conflict of interest there, right?

This has led to some moronic patent approvals, including British Telecom’s patent (rescinded) on hyperlinking, Amazon’s “1-Click Checkout“, Forgent’s claim to have a patent on the JPEG file format, and so many others.

The past couple of weeks have brought another batch of idiocies to light. SBC (one of the Baby Bells) claims to have a valid patent on a “Structured Document Browser,” or what you and I (and any long-time Web-user) would call a framed navigation system; this is where the menus stay put, while the content of the page changes.

As I reported to LawMeme, a company called Test Central, Inc. has received a patent for a “…method of making tests, assessments, surveys and lesson plans with images and sound files and posting them on-line for potential users.” Non-obvious, right?

And a company called Acacia Technologies, is sending requests for licensing fees to companies providing streaming content. Acacia’s patent is for a “… system of distributing video and/or audio information [which] employs digital signal processing to achieve high rates of data compression.” That seems to include online radio, video, perhaps JPEG images and who knows what else.

The Los Angeles Times has a 2-part story (1, 2) about recent patent issues, including the patenting of crustless peanut-butter & jelly sandwiches and last year’s joke patent for a method of swinging on a swing, “…in which a user positioned on a standard swing suspended by two chains from a substantially horizontal tree branch induces side to side motion by pulling alternately on one chain and then the other.”

The “Progress of Science and the Useful Arts” is being stymied by such ridiculous patent approvals; companies with legitimate challenges to patents are discouraged by the exorbitant costs of defending themselves against patent infringement lawsuits. Part of the problem is defining exactly what an “invention” is. Is it something you yourself have created? Or is it just something you’ve file papers on?

Japanese-American and Arab-American groups are (understandably) demanding an apology from Rep. Howard Coble for his remarks approving of Japanese-American internment during World War II. Coble claimed that it was done because, for “…many of these Japanese-Americans, it wasn’t safe for them to be on the street.” (Coble’s official website contains no mention of the remark, the reaction, or his spokespersons’ statements on the matter.)

The San Jose Mercury News quotes Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA), who, as a child, was interned in one of the camps in Colorado: “If we were incarcerated for our safety, why were we inside the barbed wire fences, and why were the gun towers facing us?”

Rep. Honda is introducing a resolution [pdf] in the Congress declaring February 19 — the day in 1942 when President Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the internment — as a national “Day of Remembrance.”

Meanwhile, in Eric Muller’s IsThatLegal? blog, the UNC Chapel Hill law professor has answered Coble’s challenge to prove that the internment wasn’t done for the benefit of the internees. (Coble claims that if this is proven, he will issue an apology. Since Coble already voted against the 1988 act which gave reparations to the survivors and families of the internees, I’m not holding my breath for an apology.)

In a clear and lucid essay, Professor Muller explains the history of the decision to inter the Japanese-Americans, including the revelation (to me anyway) that the issue of potential Japanese-American disloyalty and what to do about it was being discussed well before the Pearl Harbor attack. His research easily disproves any supposition that there were any beneficent facets of the internment.

Professor Muller boasts some expertise on the era, having authored “Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II“, an incredible account of the drafting of the interned Japanese-Americans.

One passage in particular stays with me from the excerpt of Professor Muller’s book available on the web:

Some very wise words which need to remembered today, when newpapers which depend on the First Amendment for their very existence disgustingly equate protest with treason.

Theres about 7″ (~18cm) of snow on the ground and it’s still falling. One of the benefits of the modern workplace means I get to work from the comfort of my own home. Unfortunately, my wife manages a retail store and in retail, the show must go on. Meaning… I’ve gotta go shovel the driveway.