Dec. 1st, 2005

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Next week I'm off to San Diego.

A conference, for an exercise in Ukraine. With luck (here's hoping) This one will be at Naval Station Coronado again. I have no idea how the conference will be run, nor yet if anyone I know (from the Ukrainian/European side of things) will be there.

I will have a car, probably at least one evening to myself and the name of a dojo in the area; so I might be able to train while I'm in SD, which would be nice. Last night was probably very good for me, but I felt as though I was uncoordinated, never able to relax enough to enter the moment (ten minutes of work with Paul is great, for precise technique, but can make one feel as if breathing is the far limit of one's skills, and that a very basic breathing, not more than merely exchanging O2 for CO2. I am probably better at Tenchi Nage as well as all the building blocks in the technique [I know this to be true, because some of it carried over to the next thing we were working on] but it's hard work training with Paul, because, while one need not be perfect, he doesn't give anything away. On the other hand, it isn't as if he treats anyone differently. I saw him exploit Michelle Sensei's lack of extention to reverse things in a demonstration last night too). Since I don't think I'll get to train much in January, and latter part of Dec. is likely to have a lot of lost training days, grabbing a night visiting another dojo would be nice.

I also might be able to break away, if anyone wants to meet for dinner, though I can't make any promises.

So, from Friday to a week from Monday I may be a tad out of the loop here (unless I can get my computer's internet to work by reformatting the damned thing) since I'll have limited time, and limited access.

Now to work on todays sourdough loaf, and maybe some beer bread (the seasonal brew from TJ's [despite the horror of the label "Brewed once a year in limited quantity, please enjoy Trader Joe's inaugural Vintage Ale"] is very good, though potent. Sweet, lots of malt it's a dark ale on lees, 9 percent alcohol. Put up in 750ml bottles from UNIBROUE, a Belgian style brewery in Canada, which the staff at my favorite Belgian restaurant {Mon Grenier, in Encino} said good things about last week. It ought to improve well, and I think a few more bottles are in order] and bottle of Anchor's 2004 Christmas Ale are both sitting here with some unfinished bits) will fill the day, as I do the laundry, set up a new rack of ribbons for the inspection Sat. Morning, prep some dough to make small kaiser rolls for the C. Co. Holiday Party to follow the inspection and pack for the next week.



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Buses

Dec. 1st, 2005 09:07 am
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Today may be busy here.

Today is "Blog Against racism day, but I can't think of anything trenchant to say.

Today is also the anniversary of Rosa Parks' arrest. She was no shrinking violet, and her decision (as she told it) to remain seated wasn't because she was tired (which makes her one sort of martyr, but a sort of accidental one) but one of princible, she'd had enough (which makes her a more compelling martyr, as she went into it with her eyes open).

A friend of mine sent me an article the day before yesterday, about a different woman, on a different bus, dealing with a different (and no less compelling) problem.

Our creeping police state.

Refusal to present ID sparks test of rights

Arvada woman said 'no' at Federal Center while on public bus
By Karen Abbott, Rocky Mountain News
November 29, 2005


Federal prosecutors are reviewing whether to pursue charges against an Arvada woman who refused to show identification to federal police while riding an RTD bus through the Federal Center in Lakewood.

Deborah Davis, 50, was ticketed for two petty offenses Sept. 26 by officers who commonly board the RTD bus as it passes through the Federal Center and ask passengers for identification.


Irksome, but perhaps not so bad. She was entering a federal facilty, and they wanted to check ID.

Here's what was said about it, on Papers Please

The bus she rides crosses the property of the Denver Federal Center, a collection of government offices such as the Veterans Administration, the U.S. Geological Survey, and part of the National Archives. The Denver Federal Center is not a high security area: it's not Area 51 or NORAD.

On her first day commuting to work by bus, the bus stopped at the gates of the Denver Federal Center. A security guard got on and demanded that all of the passengers on this public bus produce ID. She was surprised by the demand of the man in uniform, but she complied: it would have meant a walk of several miles if she hadn't. Her ID was not taken and compared to any "no-ride" list. The guard barely glanced at it.

When she got home, what had happened on the bus began to bother her. 'This is not a police state or communist Russia', she thought. From her 8th grade Civics class she knew there is no law requiring her, as an American citizen, to carry ID or any papers, much less show them to anyone on a public bus.

She decided she would no longer show her ID on the bus.


And I can agree with that. She wasn't specifically trying to enter the complex. In fact she has no choice but to enter it, if she want's to take public transit.

On Monday, September 26th 2005, Deb Davis headed off to work on the route 100 bus. When the bus got to the gates of the Denver Federal Center, a guard got on and asked her if she had an ID. She answered in the affirmative. He asked if he could see it. She said no.

When the guard asked why she wouldn't show her ID, Deb told him that she didn't have to do so. The guard then ordered her off the bus. Deb refused, stating she was riding a public bus and just trying to get to work.

The guard then went to call his supervisor, and returned shortly with a federal policeman. The federal cop then demanded her ID. Deb politely explained once again that she would not show her ID, and she was simply commuting to work. He left, returning shortly thereafter with a second policeman in tow.

This second cop asked the same question and got the same answer: no showing of ID, no getting off the bus.

The cop was also annoyed with the fact that she was on the phone with a friend and didn't feel like hanging up, even when he 'ordered' her to do so.

The second cop said everyone had to show ID any time they were asked by the police, adding that if she were in a Wal-Mart and was asked by the police for ID, that she would have to show it there, too.

She explained that she didn't have to show him or any other policeman my ID on a public bus or in a Wal-Mart. She told him she was simply trying to go to work.

Suddenly, the second policeman shouted "Grab her!" and he grabbed the cell phone from her and threw it to the back of the bus. With each of the policemen wrenching one of her arms behind her back, she was jerked out of her seat, the contents of her purse and book bag flying everywhere. The cops shoved her out of the bus, handcuffed her, threw her into the back seat of a police cruiser, and drove her to a police station inside the confines of the Denver Federal Center.


The upshot was that she was cited, and released. I don't know what the charges are, the Rocky Moutain News only saying she was, "ticketed for refusing to show her ID."

So her cell phone was tossed across the bus, she was forcibly arrested, and hauled away, and the upshot was... a federal jaywalking ticket.

She was also told that if she ever (ID or not) came onto the Federal Center property again (with, I assume an exeption for her court date) she'd be arrested.

The argument is this a security issue.

Bullshit.

What it sounds like is contempt of cop.

As a security issue it's a non-starter. She wasn't going into the Federal Center, she was riding a bus which happens to go through it. I'd allow as they have the right to place a guard at the bus stop, and check the ID of those who get out. It's stupid (unless the guy has a watch list, and checks it, then nothing other than looking busy, or perhaps intimidating the public, is actually happening), but it's probably legal.

But she wasn't getting off the bus. The cop (probabaly a member of the Federal Police, who have bery limited jurisdiction, pretty much limited to places like the Federal Center... which is to say they have less power in Westwood, Calif. than the Univerity Cops, who are granted jurisdiction in the city, as well as the campus. Security guards on steroids is what they are) came on the bus an asserted an authority he ought not have.

And she called him on it. Not only that she didn't show him the deference he thought he desserved (the tossing of her cell phone across the bus is one of the things which makes me think this is the case, given the result of the arrest)

What crime was ocuuring? None. From the reports he did an eyeball scan of every passenger's ID. Whoopee. I've been in a lot of such scans (being in the Army will give one lots of chances to show ID). A guy gets on, everyone takes out ID, he glances at it; probably doesn't so much as touch it and gets off.

Maybe, and I mean maybe, this guy is looking for signs of guilty concsience, but I doubt it. Why? Because the people on the bus weren't getting off. If someone was going to be a suicide bomber, or plant anthrax, or go on a shooting spree, or (name the possibility which gives you the greatest case of the creeping horrors) there isn't anything an ID will prevent.

There's a damned simple answer to this,

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated...

Black letter law, US Constitution, Fourth Amendment.

Because, if you ask me, random checks of ID, as Security Theater, counts as unreasonable.



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Digby (who reminds me of someone I know by that name, but I am sure it isn't him... it's very strange. I want to meet him just so the disconnect of hearing his words in someone else's voice will go away) has a piece up (Burning Witches about torture, and why we need to keep railing against it.

Why it must remain completely beyond the pale of what we will accept.

Do I think the US has used, winked at, conived and suborned torture? Of course I do. Do I think it recent, and only of such recent ilk as the present flap has brought to light? Of course not.

We supported death sqauds in El Salvador. We knew they existed, and the Reagan administration broke laws (a lot of them, from the Boland Amendment to letting cocaine come in the side door while we were slipping illegal arms out the back) to keep the people who had them in funds so they could keep up the killing.

Digby points out one of the crucial things about torture, it isn't really about getting information, not when it becomes an instrument of policy.

One might assume that there is no one on the planet who thinks that torturing innocent people is right. Certainly, it's going to be hard to find intelligent educated people who believe that it is a moral good to do so. But not impossible. As it turns out there is a moral argument for torturing innocent people:

From Orrin Judd:
You might want to go back and brush up on your history, witchcraft was quite popular, even within the Church, for an awfully long time. In fact, it's back today in the form of Wicca. In its denial of the basis of Western Civilization it is so transgressive that it deserved to be and was persecuted. People who deny there were witches because they don't like how the religious treated them are akin to the Left denying there were Communists because they don't like that Americans reviled them. Jews too were justifiably, though unnecessarily, persecuted for their beliefs and inability to conform to social norms. The great injustice was the persecution of the conversos in Spain, who were sincere converts to Christianity.


I think he understands something I failed to understand about this argument. This isn't about terrorism. It isn't about national security. It isn't about the rule of law or enlightenment values. It's about conforming to social norms. That puts the whole thing in perspective, doesn't it? What I call "innocent" isn't innocent at all. Just being a practicing Muslim makes one guilty.

It's nice to know that we shouldn't be persecuting those who have converted to Christianity (or properly protestantised Islam, which translates into an embrace of Western Civilization.) The good news is that "protestantising" (forcing Western conformity on) the billion Muslims out there will be a cakewalk:

You can have a number of voices so long as everyone has just one hymnal. That's the essence of the protestantism that the End of History requires. It'll be easy enough to Reform Islam, just as we did Catholicism, Judaism, and the rest.
Posted by: oj at November 25, 2005 10:56 AM


And here I thought the whole "End of History" thing had been laughed out of town by the events of 9/11. Apparently History has only been postponed. Protestantism is still on the march, "reforming" witches and Muslims alike. And if it takes a little waterboarding or burning at the stake to get the job done, so be it. These people have to understand that we're going to end History one bloody non-conformist bastard at a time if we have to.


It's all of a piece. Hussien used torture to make people conform, to suppress dissent. Stalin did the same. Say something out of line to the wrong person, and "poof" you disappeared. Hitler, well he could be kinder. Von Stauffenberg was slowly killed, as an example. Rommel, implicated in the same plot was allowed to kill himself, which would spare his family the same, inevitable, fate, if he was publicly accused, and then; of course, convicted.

What could Rommel do? Even if he was innocent, his fate was sealed. Suicide, and his family lives, insist on his innoncence, and they get killed.

Torture works; if a state where fear of the denouncement is the place you want to live.

To quote A.E. Houseman, slightly out of context,

He gathered all the springs to birth
From the many-venomed earth;
First a little, thence to more,
He sampled all her killing store;
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound,
Sate the king when healths went round.




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San Diego

Dec. 1st, 2005 10:37 am
pecunium: (Default)
I will be on Coronado.

The nominal Duty Day ends at 1630 (call it five in the afternoon, what with changing, and all) so I ought to have at least three nights free.
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My computer will once again talk to the internet.

All I had to do was reformat it.

Feh.

Now I have to deal with all the little things I was used to being wrong. First up, I have to swap out the horrible desktop, install Spybot, AdAware, move my copy of CS from this machine to that (as that one has a gig of RAM, and this one only 512Mb) and all the housekeeping that three years worth of using the machine involved.

Feh.

But, I will have connectivity in SD.

[livejournal.com profile] ckd, if you have time, we might meet for supper.

Expletives

Dec. 1st, 2005 12:19 pm
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Newsmax, (a right of center, very right, publication, which bills itself as "America's News Source") is trying to spread the meme that torture works.

Nearly forty years ago, however - when McCain was held captive in a North Vietnamese prison camp - some of the same techniques were used on him. And - as McCain has publicly admitted at least twice - the torture worked!

Which isn't what McCain has said. He said that threats to refuse him medical treatment made him talk. He also said that what he gave up was useless (this last is questionable, because absent the reports, and what the Vietnamese did with it we can't really know that; altough I can't really see what benefit his giving them the name of the Packer's offensive line was. We can give him the benefit of the doubt if we want. We could also say Newsmax is right, when they say McCain gave up information because he was tortured, though the specific torture, withholding of medical aid, is the sort of thing the present administration says isn't really torture... knife cuts both ways).

Pain was also used to get him to confess to war crimes. Crimes we don't recognise as crimes, and which (more to the point) he wouldn't have thought of as crimes. In short the torture got him to confess to things he hadn't done.

This is the crux of the "pragmatist" dilemma. It's funny, for thirty years we touted the response of pilots in Vietnamese custody as proof torture didn't work. We claimed none of them broke in ways which gave up intel. We pointed out that they had been forced to confess to things they hadn't done. We used them as teaching points in our schools.

And now, there are people who want to take the same points (that they didn't break, or gave up information which was useless; or out of date, and that they confessed to crimes they didn't commit) as evidence of the efficacy of torture.

Gotta love it, the same data, but now it means the something else.



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South Africa just had its supreme court say that same-sex marriage was cannot be prohibited by law.

The decision gave the government one year to draft the legislation making it happen. It was a unanimous ruling, on the part of a 10 member court, with one dissent, of sorts. That judge felt there was no reason to not just make it happen immediately.

It puts South Africa in the company of just four other countries, Belgium, Canada, Holland, and Spain.

Given that this is AIDS Awareness Day, and lots of folks think AIDS is scourge, laid on man because of nasty homosexuals; combined with a general antipathy towards homossexuality in Africa, this is stunning.
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Limbaugh has been at it again.

This time maligning Quakers.

I know a little about Quakers. Maia is a Quaker, her family is Quaker. I have an ex-girlfriend who is a Quaker. Now Limbaugh, he doesn't really care that the people he's maligning are Quakers, he doesn't care if they are Christians; then again he's said in the past that lots of people who call themselves Christians aren't and the definition he seems to use is runs along the line of "fag-hating, standing on streetcorners while praying, warmongering, Bush-idolizing = Christian Anything else = non-Christian.

Here, for those of you who can't stomach to go and read his site, are his words.

Well, here's why I like it. I like any time a bunch of leftist feel-good hand-wringers are shown reality. So here we have these peace activists over there. I don't care whether they're Christian or not; they're over there, and as peace activists they've got one purpose. They're over there trying to stop the violence.


Yep, he is against them because they are trying to stop the violence.

I wish I was ripping that out of context, and that there was something which mitigated the evil of that idea (that kidnapping people who are against violence was a good thing), but he makes it clear that this is something he finds not only acceptable, but laudable.

they believe that if they just go there, like these idiot human shields before the war. "If they just go there, Mr. Limbaugh, it's real simple -- something you wouldn't understand because you've never been to conflict resolution. But it's real simple. If we go there, and we show them that we are people of peace, and that we want to stop the violence, and that we don't hold them responsible, they will see and understand. This is the way we bring peace." Fine, they get kidnapped. They get kidnapped at gunpoint. If that version of this is true, then, okay. You've met the bad guys, and you tried your technique on them, and now you're blindfolded in a room with guns pointed at you and knives at your throat. I don't like that, but any time a bunch of people that walk around with their heads in the sand practicing a bunch of irresponsible, idiotic theory, confront reality, I'm kind of happy about it because I'm eager for people to see reality, change their minds, if necessary, and have things sized up.


Given the size of his audience, and the nature of the things he things are good; and which make him happy, he may be right when he calls himself "the most dangerous man in America."

But (and I know this might be hard to believe) it gets worse.

Limbaugh says that the only way this isn't a stunt is if they get killed. By inference that means he thinks it would be a good thing for them to get killed (as Coulter would say, as an example to all the other liberals out there who might want to stop the violence).

what will happen next is that these peace activists will be released in two or three days but with the news that they have changed the hearts of their captors. Well, let's just see. That's how we'll know if this is a stunt. Now, for this to be a stunt these captors cannot be terrorists or insurgents. They wouldn't go along with it. So it has to be a bunch of other peace activists pretending to be terrorists or insurgents. If this is a stunt. If it's a stunt it won't be long before these people are released and they will have eaten better than they have in the past three weeks and their captors will not be caught and their captors may issue a statement after talking to these people, "We realize they are not our problem, and we cannot hold these people accountable. They made excellent points to us, they connected with our hearts," blah, blah. If that happens, I guarantee you this is a stunt,


Which is where the knowledge of Quakers comes into this.

One of the tenets of quakerism is testimony. Public testimony. It happens that, for some reason unknown to me, testifying where there is grave risk of bodily harm, or death, is appealing. This is why Massachussetts had Quaker activists, and Rhode Island didn't. Massachussetts would pierce thier tongues with awls (for speaking heresies) and tell them if they came back they would be hanged; which is what happened when they came back.

Quakers are also painfully honest. Not agressively so, they may avoid personal confrontation, but in dealings; and especially in things where war, violence and testimony are involved, they don't truck with hedging. So when I heard this morning on the news that an active Quaker had been abducted, I knew it was real.

Tom Fox, of Baltimore (who has a name which makes one think of Quakers) was in the Marine Band. He isn't unacquainted with violence, at least not in the abstract, and not as one who has never been ready to mete it out on orders, so he can't be called lily-livered in that way. He came to his Quakerism through introspection.

Limbaugh, well I, at the risk of delving too far into pop-psych, think him a phony of the first water. Pressed to hold to his faith and die, or turn apostate and live, he'd be running for the altar to bow down to whatever was behind it. He can't concieve of not giving in to force and so people like these terrify him, because they shame him.

I wish there was some way I could make it plain to the people who pay him that promulgating his loathesome rhetoric is unprofitable, but I can't, there are too many cretins who like to be told that turning the other cheek is weak, that crushing all who oppose you, in the least way, need to be eradicated (not just beaten, but eliminated from the face of the earth, save a few, kept as examples to all who might think to oppose the Grand Order of Life, as Limbaugh sees it... just look to what he said about liberals, and not killing all of them. It means he was talking about killing most of them. Once might be satire, but things like this make me disbelieve him).

But I can't. So I have to testify in my own small ways.

But I'm not a Quaker, so pity the fool who strikes at me, I'm not turning the other cheek to them.



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