Dead Blinger

The king of bling, Mr. T, has announced that he has ditched his trademark gold necklaces. But it’s not just in the interest of making over his look for his upcoming daytime advice show “Pity the Fool.” He claims it is a decision of conscience after having spent time with the victims of Katrina as they try to rebuild. To him, bling is like shoving one’s wealth in the face of people living in poverty. I personally wouldn’t rush to that conclusion about the meaning of bling, but when the man who started it all denounces it as insensitive, it’s cause for pause. Perhaps it’s just as immoral today to wear bling as it is to drive a brand-new Hummer.

In the UK, Ofcom, roughly the British FCC, legalized the use of iTrip devices, which are FM radio transmitters for iPods. It’s not particularly great news for British iPodders, as the iTrip is the lowest-quality way to play the music on your iPod on your car stereo and requires near-constant frenquency-switching. Regardless, the news reminds us of an important fact we’re liable to forget: the airwaves belong to the public. The iTrip had been banned from usage because it was considered to violate the government licenses granted to radio stations to use particular frequencies. Thankfully, Ofcom came around and remembered that the airwaves belong to the people in the first place, and when the public right to use a resource that belongs to them clashes with a private license to use the same resource, the public should always come first. Shouldn’t we view the Internet the same way—as ultimately a resource belonging to the public?

Geneva Intervention

The President was wrong, and acted improperly. He will not admit that or apologize. But at least, at long last, he and his administration are changing their policy regarding treatment of detainees. U.S. captives in the Bush administration’s so-called “war on terror” are now officially extended the rights they are guaranteed under the Geneva Convention. Hallelujah. A huge step in the right direction. (Read about it in the Washington Post, New York Times, FOX News, or BBC, as your fancy takes you.)

This is better news than if the Guantanamo Bay prison camp were to be closed, because the new policy applies to all U.S. detainees around the world. It is a cause for celebration.

The truth continues, of course, that such detainees are not in fact prisoners of war, because the “war on terror” is not a real war, just like the “war on drugs,” “war on hunger,” or “war on poverty.” It's an international policing operation.

The next step is for Congress and the administration (including the Pentagon) to decide exactly how to follow the terms of the Geneva Convention—most importantly, how to try detainees and decide their fate.

Regardless, this is a great day for human rights.

Lieberate (tr. v.)

With a tip of the hat to Mark Tebben.

lieberate
tr.v. leib·er·at·ed, leib·er·at·ing, leib·er·ates

1. To create a false third way; to pass as different an amalgamation of empty ideas
2. To pretend a compromise position is original

Although I think the Senate race to watch this year is Democrat Harold Ford’s challenge for the Republican seat Bill Frist is leaving open (perhaps to pursue the presidency), last night’s debate between incumbant Joe Lieberman and his fellow Democrat and challenger Ned Lamont was certainly a revealing one. (The full debate is online at NBC30.com if you missed it.) (Disclosure: I worked as a volunteer for the Gore/Lieberman 2000 campaign in York County, PA.)

I’ll boil down my response in two categories.

Style
Lieberman had a comfortable poise in front of the camera that should be expected of a veteran senator and former vice presidential candidate, yet he lacked fire, mumbling worse than usual as if he was nearly disinterested in the whole thing. Lamont (disclosure: I’m a big fan of Sanford and Son, where the “Son” is named Lamont) was rough around the edges, as is to be expected for a newcomer to national politics, but he grew more comfortable throughout the course of the debate. Unlike Lieberman, Lamont actually looked directly at his opponent when he leveled attacks at him. Lamont clearly has “fire in his belly.”

Content
Lieberman’s message in last night’s debate was twofold: 1) I’m damn good at pork-barreling, and 2) better the devil you know than the devil you don’t know. It was a huge disappointment. He spent all his energy labelling himself as a “bread and butter” Democrat (read: a guy who pork barrels a lot for Connecticut) and asserting that no one knows where Lamont stands on most issues. Lamont retaliated in kind, but he also discused his positions on substantive issues like universal health care, the failure of the Iraq occupation, and the loss of good jobs.

In short, Lieberman is not a new breed of Democrat. He’s just a weak one.

Hell Still Burns Hot

Henry Allen of the Washington Post has an opinion piece in today’s Washington Post that gives voice to a popular reaction to the death of Enron chief conspirator Kenneth Lay. The reaction goes like this: Why did he have to die, before spending a day in prison? It’s like he got off scot-free!

There was a day in America (an era we celebrated Tuesday), when no one publicly spouted such secular boloney. Most believed then, as many of us still do today, that at its best human justice was a noble attempt at mimicking the pure justice of God. Death was not a way out; it was merely a change in jurisdiction that placed criminals before a judge who saw right through their b.s. and gave them exactly what they deserved (though never without a degree of mercy).

Expressing disappointment at Kenneth Lay’s death is an act of hubris. It is to imply a belief that humankind’s feeble attempts at justice are better—more reliable, more firm, more tough, more fitting—than God’s justice.

That simply is not the case. Whether or not Kenneth Lay has gone to “a better place” only God knows. We can know for certain, however, that he has gone before a better judge.

How to Free Government

In political theory, the United States government runs on the power granted it by the populace of these united States. On a more concrete level, it runs today on money and software.

Here’s what every American wants: a government that does more helpful stuff without raising taxes. We all want safer streets, cleaner restaurants, less corporate crime, and a bigger chunk of our own paychecks.

Well, the Brits may have a really good idea here: stop giving money to Microsoft and other proprietary computer software companies, and switch to freedom (i.e. move computer networks to GNU/Linux). The Kent police needed to upgrade their crime-tracking computer system. They got two quotes: one from their existing provider, which called for proprietary (read: greedy) software running on Windows, the other from Dell, running on SUSE’s distribution of the GNU/Linux operating system. The quote from Dell was one tenth the cost.

It’s hard to get an exact and accurate breakdown of the federal government’s IT costs, but one recent figure suggests that the feds are in the middle of a $500 billion program to protect their databases. Guess what? There are a dozen open-source databases systems that are as secure as you could hope for, because they are designed intelligently. Know what you could do with $450 billion saved? Hire a hell of a lot of policemen, for one.


On the Iraq front, an Army lieutenant who refused to “deploy” (we don’t just travel and march anymore) to Iraq has been charged with three counts and could be looking at up to eight years in prison.

I have long been of two opinions on this sort of thing:
1. As a soldier, even as an inferior officer, your job is to obey orders intelligently and not to think about the moral and ethical elements of what you are doing. I think that the safest and most humane way to proceed. You learn the fundamental rules of the U.S. military as well as you can (which should teach you, among other things, how you can and should handle detainees and civilians), and as long as your direct orders don't violate those rules, you follow them. Try to weigh every ethical decision (which is every decision during war) and you're dead or heading straight to the psych ward. Leave the moral and ethical thinking for later, once you’ve made it out alive.
2. The Iraq war is in fact immoral, and has been all along.

So while I respect the stand taken by First Lieutenant Ehren Watada, I also believe that the Army is doing the right thing by prosecuting him. (Thoreau meant it when he said that the only place for a just man in an unjust society was in jail—not just as a rhetorical exercise.)

My larger question, which I still haven’t resolved, is this:

Obviously we should support all our troops (and their families) who are already in the military, even if we disagree with the war-making decisions of their superiors. But, should we support a young man or young woman who is entering the military now, who knows that he or she will likely wind up playing a part in this immoral war?

In other words, it is immoral to join the military today? Should new recruits (who know that they’re getting into the Iraq occupation) receive our undying support with no reservations?

Tyranny Gets a New Face

You’ve gotta read this to believe it. See if you agree with these statements and if you can identify their (modified) source.

• President Bush has refused his assent to laws, which are essential to the public good.


• The President’s attorney general and the Supreme Court has forbidden state legislatures to pass certain laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless they were held from being put in efffect until their assent should be obtained.


• President Bush and Congressional Republicans have endeavored to finely control the composition of the population of the United States by making more stringent or nearly impossible the laws for naturalization of foreigner immigrants. They have refused to pass new laws to encourage their immigration into our country.


• President Bush has obstructed the administration of justice by refusing to follow and enforce laws that establish proper judiciary review and schemes of jurisdiction.


• President Bush has erected a multitude of new departments and roles in the federal government, sending across the country swarms of officers that do not help the people but rather hinder them.


• President Bush has declared a national defense operation a “war” and has used that as an excuse to keep among us, in a time of peace, standing armies without the consent of local legislatures.


• President Bush has affected to render the military independent of and superior to the power and will of the people.


• President Bush has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution, the overreaching of the executive branch of the federal government. The power he claims as his own is unacknowledged by our laws; he has given his assent to his administration’s acts of pretended legislation:


• For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us,


• For protecting them, by a mock trial, from punishment for any murders, rapes, and war crimes which they should commit on the inhabitants of the world,


• For imposing taxes on us without our consent,


• For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of seeing white-collar and political criminals face trial by jury,


• For transporting foreign nationals overseas to be tried or tortured for made-up offences.


• Through inaction in the face of corporate crime and natural disaster, President Bush has effectively plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of many of our fellow citizens.


• Presient Bush and his administration is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to Iraq to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny to the President’s will there. He has already begun with circumstances of cruelty, torture, and imprisonment scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally inappropriate behavior for the head of a civilized nation.


• He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A President whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.


You’ve probably figured it out by now: it’s a lightly modified selection from the United States’ Declaration of Independence, the document we celebrate this weekend.

I’m Being Oppressed!

Nothing unites conservatives and defines their collective mindset more than the shared notion that the United States is controlled by a legion of liberals with no self-restraint and a vendetta against conservatives.

This shared worldview at once explains the relative strength of the conservative coalition compared to the loose confederation of individualistic liberals (nothing pulls people together like a common enemy) and demonstrates how vapid contemporary conservatism is as an ideology: conservatives aren’t so much pro-life as they are anti-abortion (why else this flagrant disregard for impoverished children and the eldery, not to mention staunch opposition to healthcare for every citizen?); they aren’t so much in favor of responsible government as they are opposed to big liberal government; even their enthusiasm for guns and bombs is overshadowed by their resolve to fight any sort of gun control.

This newsflash should come as a devestating blow, then, to conservatives: you aren’t oppressed anymore.

Though she draws ridiculous conclusions, Peggy Noonan’s column in today’s Wall Street Journal features an astute observation from a conservative perspective:

[The New York Times is] not what it was. Once it was such a force that it controlled the intellectual climate. Now it’s just part of it.

Rather than celebrate the apparent victory for conservatives this would indicate (the far-right editorializing and reportage of papers like the Journal and the Washington Times are no longer overshadowed by the mammoth influence of the Times), Noonan of course opts for the negative path. The diminishing influence of the Times on America’s “intellectual climate” can only mean one thing: the paper has gotten worse and is finally reeping what it sowed as seeds of liberalism.

Noonan completely misses the real story, as most pundits (and the White House) have this week. The real story is that the New York Times no longer needs to be singled out by right-wingers as an instrument of their continued oppression. All this inane faux-indignation directed at the Times (while the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, and deeply conservative Wall Street Journal all ran with the financial espionage story as well) is a waste of breath. Conservatives no longer need to fear the New York Times. They need only fear one thing: that the end of their oppression, which has been realized, may be the cripling blow to their movement they never expected.