Ok, so, the blog is obviously back up and running, but it’s acting funny. In fact, this post keeps coming to the top, despite the fact that it’s rather old.

I’m working on rebuilding the blog from scratch so we’ll see what happens.

In the meantime, stay tuned, kiddies, and we’ll return you to your regularly scheduled dose of the meanderings of my brain shortly.

Thanks for your patience.

So, I was at the most recent Hackday and I start talking to this pleasant guy with an iBook. He tells me about some French Hip-hop that he’s been listening to and, in fact, he just spun it for a bunch of people at the Go Bar the night before. Not only was he nice enough to burn me a CD, but he burned me a data disc full of tracks.

Now I’ve been listening to French/Algerian/Senegalese hip-hop all month and it’d been driving Kate crazy, but I just can’t help it. The beats are fresher than the gangsta bullshit that has become mainstream American’s idea of hip-hop, the lyrics are (from what I can understand with my un peu de Fran�ais) are about what made hip-hop the sensation that it was in the first place: oppresssion, the downtrodden and fighting back accordingly.

Anyways, I’ve finally gotten this blog running and I just wanted to thank Patrick for all his help in that department as well as to plug the World Hip-hop blog that he’s made me a part of. Oh, and did I mention he makes incredible blackberry jam?

Ok, I’m babbling. I’ll stop.

~D~

I mentioned hackday in the last post and I should probably clarify that a little bit. Since last year I’ve been in touch with a group of guys who like to get together, drink beer, eat food, talk politics and play with computers. We call ourselves the Classic City Computer Partnership and we meet every month or so. All are welcome to attend, linux gurus and total n00bs alike. Just bring some beer, a computer (or two), a box of junk and some attitude and you’ll fit right in.

Our next hackday is at Adam’s House on Saturday the 24th. You can email me if you’re interested.

I’m a Random Gentle Love Master.

I am.

I’m an ENTP.

I am.

I’m an Aquarius.

I am.

Really bored and self-reflective at the moment.

I like cake, too.

The cargo plane worker who took this picture of the flag-drapped coffins of 20 dead American soldiers returning home has been fired.

Tami Silicio, 50, was ‘let go’ yesterday by her employer, Maytag Aircraft Corp, for violating company and federal procedure.

Daily Kos has more.

Yes, Virginia, there is an SS in this country and apparently, they’ve got so much time on their hands that they think it’s important to investigate a 15-year-old boy school-assigned artwork.

The student, who’s name has not been released, was told by his art teacher to keep a notebook of drawings depicting the current conflict in Iraq. The student choose to draw what included ‘President Bush, drawn as a devil, launching a missile’ and ‘a picture of the president’s head on a spike being carried by a Mid-Eastern militant.’ The alarmed teacher called administrators who in turn called the police who in turn brought out the Gestapo, errr SS, oops, Secret Service to interview the boy and determine if he was a threat to national security.

Jeez guys, way to fight terror.

Further discussions going on at Catch.com and Metafilter.

What’s wrong with this picture?

15,000 private mercenaries X ($1000/day)X(365days/yr)= ~5.5 billion/yr

130,000 US troops X ($1600*/month)X(12months/yr)=~2.5 billion/yr

We could more than double the number of US troops in Iraq and still save the taxpayers 500 million dollars.

*average monthly wage of army private in Iraq

(thanks Pat)

Unfortunately, in my opinion, the mercenary Private Contractor situation will only get worse in Iraq. Much like in Colombia, where highly-paid ex-military personnel spend the majority of the money that funds America’s War on [some] Drugs using Agent Orange indiscriminantly and shooting down civilian planes. No word yet on whether they have underage sex slaves for sale yet. The private firms that employ these soldiers-for-hire are making money by filling the holes left by Rumsfeld’s early 90s cuts.

It’s not just American military personnel lured by the promise of high five-figure salaries, but some former South Africans, School of the Americas Veterans and Chileans are being hired at unheard of rates by Blackwater USA. These highly-trained individuals, many of whom cut their teeth under the US-sponsored military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, will soon be ‘keeping the peace’ in Iraq at the behest of an unaccountable private organization while the US military struggles to properly equip it’s own citizen-soldiers.

They’ve even resorted to using these mercenaries to guard the CPA offices of US Administrator Paul Bremer. Do these people not know their history at all?

With tactics like these, any ‘Victory’ might be worse than a defeat.

There will be no recording devices allowed in the 9/11 hearings tomorrow featuring Bush and Cheney. Notes will be taken, but no one will be allowed to record the proceedings. Looks like W & Co. have finally wised up to Nixon and Reagan’s mistakes: no tape, no evidence and no need for plausible deniability. If there’s no record of it being said, it didn’t happen.

I think I’m going to be sick.

Sattelite photos of the blasted train station before and after.

An explosion like this in a place like North Korea is a worrisome thing, indeed. Besides the suffering of the people near the train station, we must also take into account the suffering of the country as a whole due to the nature of juche ideology. While there is little we will ever know about this situation directly, there is much we can surmise and some we can hope for. I would hope, for example, that the Western Relief missions are able to help the desperately poor and brainwashed people of the DPRK. Maybe seeing Americans or Japanese assisting them will create conflict within their heads and maybe they will begin to see through the smokescreen that Dear Leader has them living in.

Personally, I think it was an assassination plot against Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il. Notice how he hasn’t been seen him in public SINCE the explosion that occured, according to DPRK propaganda organs, several hours after he left the station. We know Kim does not like to fly and we only found out about his recent trip to China (from which he was returning) while he was there. The strangest thing, to me, is that the DPRK ‘media’ has been strangely silent this whole time. I would have thought they would have immediately decried the explosion as an American Plot and lashed us with their amazingly inflammatory rhetoric. Instead, they have been rather subued about the whole incident which makes me suspect that there is more than meets the eye.

Ideas?

**UPDATE**
Some questions have been raised about the authenticity of these photos. I have found this site which chastises a South Korean news agency for cropping an unrelated picture of an Iraqi explosion and attempting to pass it off as a picture of the North Korean blast. The site then links to a Global Security Statement that explains the situation in more detail, but suffice it to say that those photos appear authentic.

From the site:
According to a KCNA release, the radius of the damage caused by the explosion was 2 km, with the most serious damage concentrated within the radius of 1.5 km. The wagon explosion was reported to have made a 15 meter deep crater.

Few laws in recent memory have generated the response that the USA PATRIOT Act receives. Lauded by law enforcement, the President and its authors at the DoJ as the preeminent terror-fighting weapon the bill has suffered the slings and arrows of many a critic due to its perceived over-reaching effects on Civil Liberties. Critics have called for its repeal and continue to point out its abuses, complaints that often fall on deaf ears, but the DoJ has not been dissuaded and indeed President Bush himself has supported making the so-called Sunset Provisons permanent.

The latest salvo by the ACLU was fired over three weeks ago, but due to the gag order on cases related to the act, not known to us until yesterday. What it boils down to is the issuance of National Security Letters (NSLs) and whether the FBI should have the right to demand private corporate-held data without judicial oversight. You heard that right. NSLs allow the FBI to:

demand sensitive customer records from Internet Service Providers and other businesses without judicial oversight. Before the Patriot Act, the FBI could use the NSL authority only against suspected terrorists and spies. Thanks to Section 505 of the Patriot Act, the FBI can now use NSLs to obtain information about anyone at all.

To the ACLU the issue is a basic Constitutional one, but to those in law enforcement, these sacrifices are necessary to protect our way of life and our safety as a nation. However, it seems that some uses of provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act have been used in ways best described as “creative.”

The Bush Administration’s support appears unwavering and it doesn’t look like this will make the impact it could in an election year due to gag rules like this. Which, I think, seems to be the point.