Short Post Weekend Roundup

- The chickens are coming home to roost. Now the city of San Diego wants to bill the Federal government more than 100 million dollars for costs related to illegal immigration. You know, maybe it's just me, but I would think that if illegal immigration was too expensive for my city, then maybe I would try cooperating with federal immigration authorities, instead of making it a "sanctuary city". ¿Entienda? Plenty of heated discussion here.

- If you thought gay-related American scandals involving Senators Mark Foley, Larry Craig, or Barney Frank were news, think again. They are nothing compared to allegations made by Hamas and Fatah rivals in Palestine. Video tapes, photographs, and documents back up allegations of gay sex, sex with boys, and homosexual orgies by many different members of the Palestinian authority. Most of the evidence came to light after Hamas raided Fatah offices in the Gaza strip, but both sides have made credible accusations against the other. One of the allegations even involves an imam. What makes it even more disturbing is that the mountain of evidence gathered was not for the purpose of law enforcement, or even religious enforcement, but purely for blackmail. Apparently, that's been business as usual in Palestine. Charles Johnson calls this the "Queer Eye for the Terrorist Guy". In spite of the fact that they can be executed in many countries, homosexuality is rampant in the Arab world.

- Something free you can do to assist in the fight against breast cancer. At the breast cancer web site, all you have to do is click on the site, you don't have to buy anything or register there. All advertising money for the site goes toward charity partners who provide free mammograms to underprivileged women.

- The protests in Burma have certainly stirred up a lot of outrage, especially the reports of raids on monasteries and attacks on Buddhist monks. One thing to keep in mind though, this same government has been in power since 1962, and it's been roundly condemned year after year. Frankly, it will take more than peaceful protests and worldwide condemnation to effect a real regime change there. According to one index, Burma (Myanmar) is tied with Somalia as the most corrupt nation on Earth.

- Jackpot Justice in America Alert. Back in 2005, Judge Ernest B. Murphy sued the Boston Herald newspaper for libel, concerning a story that he claimed falsely portrayed him as soft on crime and unsympathetic to a rape victim. Apparently, he needed a cool $2 million to heal the emotional damage that caused him. After two years of appeals and interest accrual, this has turned into $3.4 million, which the judge has now received. It's one lucky and rich guy (not a great day for free speech in America though). But there's more: In spite of the multimillion dollar payout, judge Murphy claims to be still so distraught from the ordeal that he suffers from PTSD and can't possibly do his job. He's currently vacationing while on indefinite leave, and still drawing his $129,694 a year salary, all courtesy of the good taxpayers of Massachusetts (via Overlawyered).

- Reversing his predecessor's rule, Governor Elliot Spitzer of New York wants all people in the state to be eligible for driver's licenses. Even illegal immigrants. But he might face a revolt. NYC Mayor Bloomberg has blasted the policy, and at least some licensing clerks have already stated they won't follow the new rule, which might cost them their jobs. I have a better idea. Since driver's license applications include addresses, simply issue the license. At the same time, however, report the name, address, and other pertinent information of any illegal immigrant to ICE authorities. Somehow, I'll bet few will come in your office after that. There is another solution that is worth trying though. If you want to keep the roads safe but don't want to encourage more illegal immigration, simply don't allow driver's licenses to be used for anything but driving. If they weren't valid for boarding an airplane, getting a job, registering to vote, etc, that would solve the problem immediately.

- Interesting information about Iran's new jet fighter by an aerospace expert. Not surprisingly, it's based on 30 year old technology. Still, he forgets to mention that a 500 kg bomb dropped from this plane is still just as deadly as one dropped from the F/A-22 Raptor.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

The Hardest Part of Leaving for War... [Updated]

One soldier saying goodbye over and over... with one daughter too young to understand anything that is going on

My Division, the Germany-based 1st Armored Division, is deploying to Iraq again for the first time since 2004. Most of its soldiers just shipped off within the last four days. I am one of the few who are staying behind, because I returned from my last deployment back in February of this year and was allowed some dwell time.

I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, I can't stand to see my unit and friends leaving without me. On the other hand, my daughters have already had to live without their father for more than 26 months out of the last five years.

If you have family, you know what's the hardest part about deploying? It's the very last few hours of the last day. You can't relax because you have so many last minute things to do, and are constantly looking at the clock because you are worried about being late. And looking at the clock is a continuous reminder about how little time you have left. I only have 5 hours left with my family, four hours left, three hours left, etc... What should I tell them? What should I do? How can I make these last moments count? It also doesn't help that the hours you ship off are sometimes not the easiest for small children; these pictures here were taken between midnight and three in the morning.

Some soldiers assembled for last minute roll call. The center figure in the black jacket is the commander of the 1st Armored Division, Major General Mark Hertling

Then you have the agonizing problem of exactly when to say goodbye. At home? before you get in line to draw your weapon? Or just before your unit actually boards the bus to take you to your military flight? Both times I've had to deal with this I had crying children clinging to me, and it was very difficult to extricate myself (especially when I didn't want to leave either!). You can get around this problem by leaving home while the children are asleep, but then you feel like you missed being able to really say goodbye to them. Either way, it's a very difficult situation to deal with.

On top of this, it's especially hard for families dealing with going to war for the first time. Even though the odds of any one soldier being killed are statistically very small, everybody's worried that they won't see their loved ones again.

Still, it's much easier for families to stay in touch than it was in 2003, and it's light years ahead of the level of communication possible during previous wars. Phoning home is easier, internet is much more available, and mail arrives faster too. The military is also much better at dealing with family members back home as well. We create what are called "family support groups", in which volunteers set up an email list to keep everyone informed, hold regular meetings, and offer support to spouses who need it. To make things simple, there is also a single web site, MilitaryOneSource.com, that will refer family members to the answer for almost any conceivable problem they might have.

Another couple making their farewells

This is more important than you might think, since it makes it very hard to concentrate on your job in a theater of war when you are worried about the welfare of your loved ones back home.

UPDATE 28/09/2007 11:10:00 PM:
Since a few military spouses seem to be interested in hearing "the other side" of deployments, I'll expand on that a bit: After you finally say goodbye, and you are riding/flying away, the first feeling is a bit of relief that the painful goodbye episode is finally over. Then comes a bit of guilt that you're feeling so relieved. Then sets in a bit of panic worrying about the 100 things you're sure you forgot to take care of before you go.

After that, the first few days are not too hard. You are generally so busy and adjusting to a fresh environment, and confronted with so many new things that you hardly have time to think about the family back home. But after settling in, that's where the worries kick in too; Are the kids OK? Is my wife being faithful? Are the bills going to be paid? After a few months of no indications of problems at home, you feel a little more comfortable that everything will be OK, so your worries decrease a bit. But that's replaced with homesickness as the long period of separation makes you miss the family more. Photographs are particularly painful. On my first deployment, I had family pictures all over the wall next to my bunk and sometimes they would drive me to tears... On my second deployment, I didn't put out any photos of the family at all, and I hate to say it, but I missed them a lot less, and the separation was much easier to deal with.

But during the days you have to do something. You watch movies or TV shows on DVD and see people doing normal things - the things you used to do. You miss simple things like just going to the grocery store or driving your own car. You are standing on a Baghdad streetcorner at night, weapon in hand, watching out for snipers, and thinking: "What day is it? Isn't this Saturday? Tonight my buddies back in the old neighborhood are out on the town, hitting the nightclubs, or getting laid, while I'm living like a monk out here with no women or alcohol, and dodging bullets at the same time".

Sorry to be brutally honest, but that's what 90% of the guys are thinking. Guaranteed.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Uneven Justice: The Warren Jeffs Case [Updated]

Until he was caught, Warren Steed Jeffs was on the FBI's "10 Most Wanted" list, alongside other notorious criminals such as Osama Bin Laden. Yesterday he was found guilty in a court in Utah, and when he is sentenced, he faces the possibility of life in prison. Jeffs has been portrayed by the media as a polygamous cult leader, which is more or less true. But there is a lot of misunderstanding here. The crime he was charged with had nothing to do with polygamy. So what did he do? To help explain, I'll have a conversation with my imaginary friend:

So this guy was on the ten most wanted. So what was he? A terrorist, serial killer, or what?
Actually, it's in connection with rape.

Ahh... so he's a serial rapist then?
Well, no.

But he is a rapist at least?
No, he didn't even rape anyone. He was charged with being an accomplice to the crime of rape.

So, like, he held a girl down while someone else raped her?
No, it was nothing like that. This was statutory rape, since the girl was only 14 years old. There was no physical force involved, and Jeffs wasn't even there at the time of the crime (when the couple had sex). He performed a marriage ceremony between her and a 19 year old man, and later encouraged them to have marital relations. Incidentally, if the groom was just two years younger, then it wouldn't have even been statutory rape.

OK, so the guy that married her committed the actual rape, right? So if they are going to this much trouble over Jeffs, they must have really thrown the book at that guy.
Nope. In fact, they didn't charge the man, Allen Steed, with anything. And it's unlikely that he cut some kind of deal, since his testimony strongly supported Mr. Jeffs, not the prosecution. In fact, this is one of the biggest non-sequitors of this case, and as a US citizen, I believe the FBI, the State of Utah, and the Prosecutor owe us an explanation.

Now I'll make one thing clear: I am not trying to defend Jeffs or his lifestyle. He portrayed himself as a prophet, essentially conned people into turning over their property to him, took dozens of wives, and isolated his religious community from the outside world. I simply would not want to live in his community, and it reminds me an awful lot of some of the worst aspects of Middle Eastern societies. But most of these crimes were essentially abetted by the people who were stupid enough to follow him, and he wasn't even charged with any of the above. The fact is, in this particular case, politics simply trumped the pursuit of justice.

After all, why the hell was this guy on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list? Can the FBI honestly swear that there was not one single murderer, kidnapper, or actual rapist at large to put on that list in place of Mr. Jeffs? Why was the DOJ wasting their resources publicizing a man, who was no threat to the public at large, over actual killers?

Here's a partial explanation from Chip Burrus, the acting assistant director of criminal investigations at the FBI, during an interview last year with Greta Van Susteren:

VAN SUSTEREN: All right. So when you picked up the last, 10th person [from the Most Wanted List], did the word go out to all the areas, "We picked up number 10, so we now have a vacancy?"

BURRUS: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: And how did Mr. Jeffs get on?

BURRUS: Well, here's what happens. We canvass the field offices for nominations. And there are two factors that go into the selection for the top 10 list: No. 1, you have to be accused of a particularly heinous crime. And No. 2, there has to be some indication that perhaps publicity will help find you and bring you to justice.

In Mr. Jeffs's case, he had the particular heinous crime, he's charged with child molestation, conspiracy, and he's got two federal warrants on him called "UFAP," Unlawful Flight to Avoid Prosecution. And in this case, too, because he's been wanted for about a year and he travels between various compounds, we think, we thought the publicity would really do us some good to bring him on the list and make people aware that he is wanted and, hopefully, bring him to justice safely.

VAN SUSTEREN: Is there ever a big debate, almost like a little argument, about who should go on, like, someone might have his or her candidate for it?

BURRUS: Oh, they all have their candidates, all the 56 field offices. And it's interesting to hear them make their various arguments for it. But in the end, I make a recommendation to the deputy director, and he decides the final person.
...
VAN SUSTEREN: In terms of Mr. Jeffs, so the publicity is the thing that puts him on, pretty much, I mean, because there are lots of child molesters out there with, you know, lots of warrants sitting on them.

BURRUS: But this one's a particular case, Greta. In this case, you have a guy who not only is a child molester, an accused child molester himself, but he facilitates it. He's been in charge of a fundamental group for many years, and he facilitates it. It's not just the fact he's a child molester, but he also facilitates it. He's been charged as an accomplice. He's been charged with conspiracy. And we think that makes him pretty dangerous.

VAN SUSTEREN: In terms of the crimes he's charged with, the federal crimes, are they the unlawful flight and not the sex crimes? They are not federal crimes, are they?

BURRUS: No.

VAN SUSTEREN: So it's just the unlawful flight that makes it a federal crime.

BURRUS: Yes.

VAN SUSTEREN: So in order for that to be sort of powerful, you have to talk to the state people to see how — underlying, how serious their charges are, right?

BURRUS: That's right.

What's interesting here is that Mr. Burrus keeps harping the "child molester" angle, but Mr. Jeffs was never charged with child molestation except as an accomplice. So that accusation must have been pretty weak, and probably should never have been made in the first place. And Burrus admits that the only reason this got the FBI's attention was the "flight to avoid prosecution" charge. But the problem is, this crime is hardly unique to Warren Jeffs; in other words, Jeffs was just trying to avoid being caught (like every other criminal in the entire world...). And that crime can't be even prosecuted if the other charges don't stick.

I really wish Ms. Susteren would have asked him why Allen Steed wasn't also charged with a crime...

The interview confirms several of my suspicions. It's obvious that what is really going on here is Utah authorities are embarrassed by the existence of polygamous Mormons like Warren Jeffs, and they deliberately played up the case to draw the FBI into it in order to send a message to others. Look, I want Utah to pursue criminals. If he's a child molester, prosecute him with that, but don't publicly announce that he has molested children when he hasn't. If he's an accomplice to rape, then charge him and the actual rapist too. Is that too much to ask? And don't put him on the FBI's 10 most wanted and label him "armed and dangerous" without any evidence.

And here's a question for the blogosphere at large:
When is Andrew Sullivan, Glenn Greenwald, the NYT, and the rest of the gay marriage advocates going to come out and also support marriage rights for all adults, including polygamists?

Just thought I'd ask. What's good for the goose and all...


UPDATE 26/09/2007 09:15:00 PM:
Wow, that was a quick change of heart. Prosecutors just announced this hour that the former husband of the statutory rape victim will be charged with rape after all. It's about time; but I guess better late than never. Wouldn't most people think that going after an actual rapist would have already taken priority over going after the accomplice?
And why now? Did public pressure force their hand? Was this retaliation after Allen Steed testified in favor of Mr. Jeffs? Or maybe they just read my weblog...? (highly doubtful, but I can dream).





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Midweek Roundup

Adam & Eve sculpture; one of many on the columns of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris

Right now, the 1st Armored Division, based in Wiesbaden Germany, is deploying to Iraq for the second time. Things have really been hectic here, so blogging has been light. However, here is a roundup of news you might have missed:

- France is going bankrupt? In a socialist state that rewards people for rioting and not working? Impossible!

- Frances B. Semler, a 73 year-old woman, sits on the Park board of Kansas City, Missouri. Not a terribly powerful position, but somehow she has drawn the ire of various groups such as National Council of La Raza, and the NAACP, who plan to boycott the entire city just because Ms. Semler works there. Her crime? She is a member of the Minutemen, a group that assists the Border Patrol, and opposes illegal immigration.

"We see the Minutemen as an extremist group that espouses hate and vigilanteism and some violence," said Janet Murguia, president of NCLR. "A member of such a group, no matter how upstanding in other ways, should have no place representing Kansas City."

This is rich. "La Raza" literally means "the race", and it's a race-based Hispanic power group; in other words, a racist institution. It's a real sign of the times when a group like this is trying to claim the moral high ground over another group that is simply based on obeying immigration law (the Minutemen have also never been charged with acts of violence). It's a no brainer who I support here. Interestingly, the mayor of KC, Mark Funkhouser, is himself a member of the NAACP, and supports Ms. Semler. We live in interesting times indeed.

- Ban Ki-Moon, the UN Secretary General, is planning to get the UN involved in Iraq again. It's about time. I remember distinctly when both the UN and the International Red Cross headquarters were suicide bombed in the Summer of 2003. Both pulled out immediately, which handed the terrorists one more victory. The UN can't work miracles, but they lose any credibility when discussing Iraq if they can't even show they are concerned about it. Captain's Quarters also discusses this here.

- The NYT admits that The General "Betray Us" Advertisement was charged at a far lower than normal rate, and went against it's own policy. This puts some of the more hysterical defenders of the advertisement in an uncomfortable position. At least some are furiously backpedaling or trying to change the subject.

- In the US, you often need to show a photo ID when buying a pack of cigarettes, but not when voting. That may change soon. Finally, the US Supreme Court has decided to hear a case over the issue.

- Heartbreaking story; a soldier is killed in Iraq one day after his son is born.

- US politics probably seem alien to the rest of the world. Jesse Jackson, a self-styled black civil rights leader, accuses a presidential candidate of "acting white". Some civil-right leader. No explanation on why this is necessarily a bad thing, but there's another troubling assumption here too. Why shouldn't the candidate "act white" sometimes? Barak Obama, the candidate in question, is half white after all, born of an American mother and Kenyan father. Why do some black activists believe that a person's African ancestry should automatically trump all the rest?

- Future shock. A little off topic: Some predictions about the future from 1961. They range from the way off the mark:

[House] doors will open automatically, and clothing will be put away by remote control. The heating and cooling systems will be built into the furniture and rugs.

To the uncanny:

You'll have a home control room - an electronics centre, where messages will be recorded when you're away from home. This will play back when you return, and also give you up-to-the minute world news, and transcribe your latest mail.

Wow.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Antarctic Cooling

Gorgeous shot of Antarctica by *christopher*

If we are going to talk about global warming and the retreat of the Arctic polar ice cap (such as in my earlier post) then it's only fair that we take a look at what's happening with the ice at the South Pole as well.

Incredibly, in the face of all expectations to the contrary, the amount of ice in Antarctica hit a 30 year record high this year. How is that possible?

Antarctic ice levels for the last 30 years

Several anti-global warming skeptics took this information and really ran with it. It's true that this story didn't get quite the coverage it deserved (but on this weblog you get all the facts!) - however, it's worth noting that this high was only slightly greater than previous years, as you can see above. The Arctic ice, on the other hand, dipped as low in the last year as in the last nine years before it combined. That's why that issue is so much more worrying.

After reading several articles on subject, it seems that no one is able to give a definitive answer on why this is happening:

[Dr. Mark Serreze, a senior researcher at the snow and ice center] and other scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.

I'm far from the expert on this issue. Here are some other possibilities that I've seen floating around:

1) The Northern Hemisphere is more severely affected by carbon emissions since the vast majority of industrialized nations are located there;

2) Rather than simply warming the planet, increased CO2 levels lead to greater temperature extremes in both directions;

3) The hole in the ozone layer at the South Pole is responsible for greater cooling there;

4) (My own theory) Weather patterns are being disrupted, which cause the temperature loss/gain to be uneven for different areas of the globe.

Any ideas? There's also quite a bit of discussion on this issue here.

Whatever the conclusion is, I think it's safe to say two things: 1) that much of the consequences of having over 6 billion people and their industry on this planet is still unknown (since it's never happened before, obviously); and 2) it couldn't possibly hurt anything in the long run to cut down carbon emissions as much as possible.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

No Advertising

This weblog is one of the few that doesn't use any advertising. Yet. So enjoy it while you can. There are a few other features that might be mistaken for advertising, but honestly I only put them here for your enjoyment. I don't get a cent from them or from anything on this web site. Honest.

Recently, I added a comic at the foot of this weblog called "Day by Day" by Chris Muir. It's not too bad either, and updates itself every day. If it works well, I'll continue it.

Some notes about other stuff on the blog:
- The top right "subscribe in a reader" only applies if you are using a newsreader to read your favorite blogs. Otherwise, ignore it.

- Clicking on the little flags on the right will automatically translate the page. They will only translate the current article you are looking at, so it's better to do it when you are looking at the whole article, not just the piece on the main page. It's a very literal translation, so it doesn't always work well. I've been told the Korean translation is rather poor. The German translation is passable, however. It's the best I can do for now; I have toyed with the idea of writing this site in German as well, but I just don't have the time to do a parallel blog.

- In the middle of the second sidebar are some photos. Those are random samples from my Flickr page.

- At the bottom of the blog, above the copyright info, is the Google newsreel. It displays current articles about favorite issues. It's actually a very nice feature.

- The "clocklink" in the sidebar is there purely for convenience.

I recently took out the "Amber Alert" ribbon that I had running for awhile. The reason is because this weblog is focused more on international issues than the US only. The alerts were also hard to read and slowed down the site. I will continue to write about missing person cases on a case-by-case basis, however.

If you have any suggestions one way or the other, please let me know.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Exploitation of the Innocent?

A very cute Allison Chang

If you are interested in the future of Flickr photosharing, then this story might worry you. It also doesn't bring out the best characteristics of the US legal system. I'm normally a healthy skeptic about lawsuits involving physical or financial harm, so when people demand cash as compensation for purely subjective and non-tangible injuries such as damage to reputation, or emotional harm, I am very cynical indeed. This lawsuit is no exception. The story is really about four months old, but it just hit the mainstream media:

DALLAS — A Dallas family has sued Australia's Virgin Mobile phone company, claiming it caused their teenage daughter grief and humiliation by plastering her photo on billboards and Web site advertisements without consent.
...
The picture of 16-year-old Chang flashing a peace sign was taken at an April church car wash by Alison's youth counselor, who posted it that day on his Flickr page, according to Alison's brother, Damon. In the ad, Virgin Mobile printed one of its campaign slogans, "Dump your pen friend," over Alison's picture.

The ad also says "Free text virgin to virgin" at the bottom.

The experience damaged Alison's reputation and exposed her to ridicule from her peers and scrutiny from people who can now Google her, the family charged in the lawsuit.

"It's the tag line; it's derogatory," said Damon Chang, 27. "A lot of her church friends saw it."

I'm having a hard time understanding what is supposed to "derogatory" here; the ad isn't clear if it's telling the reader to dump this girl, or if she is the one who should do the dumping. After all, she looks like a cute, friendly girl; why would anyone want to dump her? Moreover, I'm not sure how "dumping your pen friend" would be derogatory anyway, since the advice is just to switch to text messaging. Or is "virgin to virgin" the objectionable phrase? Is being associated with the word "virgin" damaging to your reputation, even among Church friends?

Also:

Alison's elder brother, Damon, said he believed the advertisement showed her as a "loser" and "dumb" and "makes fun of her".

"It is an invasion of her privacy because what they're writing is something derogatory. They're basically saying dump any friends that look like my sister," he said.

(That's your insecurities, Damon. Not ours. You're assuming a lot of things that aren't even in the picture)

The reason why the photo was used "without consent" is that the advertisers didn't need it. Flickr uses a wonderful system, known as the creative commons license, that lets users choose their level of copyright, so they can easily share their photos with others, if they wish. The particular photo in question here was marked "attribution only", which means that anyone is allowed to use it for any reason as long as they credited the photographer for it (which they did).

Allison wasn't the only "victim" either. Apparently, Virgin mobile used a great number of photos from Flickr as part of their campaign. Some people were angry, some flattered. How this one photo, used in Australia only, could cause damage to this girl in the US, is beyond me.

But many believe she has been victimized. One blogger thinks anyone who uses the creative commons license is "dumb" and likens Allison to a victim exploited by pornographers! Another claims she has been "abused" and says the advertisers could have at least tried to contact her. This would be nice, but not terribly realistic. How exactly? Many of the subjects in my photos are unknown to me; I couldn't find their name or address if I tried.

The original photo can be seen here, along with a little discussion. "Chewywong" has over twelve thousand photos uploaded!

I've read through several discussion threads, including here or here, where plenty of lawyers and copyright experts (and some less than experts) weighed in. The consensus seems to be that while they had every right to use the photo, they should have separately secured model rights from the subject (some disagree though, and claim it's the photographer's responsibility to get permission from the model). Many claim you even need permission to use any visible brand-name products at all in your photos. Of course, some lunatics claim the photo is illegal because she is a minor (forgetting that the conversation isn't about pornography), and predictably, other lunatics claim that it's "racist". Bottom line is, there is a lot of legal arguments floating around. To make it worse, the "victim" lives in the US but the "crime" occured in Australia.

Anyway, does anyone want this big legal morass? The whole point of the creative commons license was to allow people, if you wanted them to, to use your photos without worrying about being sued. But people are suing nonetheless. *Sigh*. The idea was to make things simpler, not open up a new field of law all over again.

Let's run down some "what ifs":
1) What if I use a CC picture of a crowd with many hundreds of recognizable faces? Do I need to get a signed release from them all? What if the person/people are deceased?

2) What if I digitally alter the person's photo just enough so it's not clearly recognizable as the original person?

3) What happens if I get a signed release and an identical twin of the subject claims the picture still exploits him/her?

4) What if I simply take a picture of a car on the road. Since automobiles are distinctive, and the logo is often clearly visible, do I need a release from the car manufacturer?

These are all questions that were hammered out for regular photography a long time ago. Let's don't do this for photo-sharing services; if they are free, let them remain free.

Additional notes:

While I have little sympathy for Allison Chang as a victim here, she's not a bad photographer. She didn't take the photo in question, but she does have a Flickr account under the name "aleeviation", and she doesn't have many photos on the site. But the ones she has are very good, especially considering they are from a 15 year old.

Also, an unrelated note on the photo above: The "V" sign seems to be an Asian thing; when I take pictures of Korean kids they all insist on holding up their fingers this way. Now my kids do it too. It's very annoying...

Finally, if you haven't already visited, my own photos are located here.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Irish Independent: "No country has ever accepted, never mind assimilated, the volumes of foreigners now present in this state"

Sign of the times; grocery in Dublin selling "Asian, Arabian & Irish Food", July 2007.

One hell of an opinion piece in the Irish Independent two weeks ago (found it today via The Brussels Journal)

Immigration is now not merely the dominant feature of Irish life, it is the greatest threat to the existence of the Irish nation as a coherent, and cohesive whole.

No country has ever accepted, never mind assimilated, the volumes of foreigners now present in this state. We have some 400,000 legal immigrants; but everyone knows that the army of illegals, especially Africans and Chinese, is vast, and probably tops 200,000. In all, Ireland has received at least 600,000 immigrants, most of them within the past five years. It could be many more. No one has the least idea.

In the US, such immigration would translate into an inward population movement of 45 million. In the UK, the figure would be nine million. Needless to say, neither state would be so idiotic or feckless as allow such vast numbers to enter.

Of course, even though most of these are Eastern Europeans, pointing this out draws the predictable cries of "racism":

And of course, we haven't got the resources to cope with the consequences of such an influx. But worse than our lack of resources, is our lack of courage in confronting the issue.

We do not have policies, but inept evasiveness: and perhaps worst of all, we have a posturing gallery of home-grown jackanapes ready to shriek "racism" wherever and whenever they see that things are not going quite the way that immigrants want.

I'm not sure exactly what a "jackanape" is, but I think the idea is pretty clear...

Part of the problem is not just the numbers of foreigners, but the sheer speed of the change. Unlike the UK, Ireland is only relatively recently a nation of immigrants. One classic quote:

On the News at One on Monday, African after African in Balbriggan complained there were no places for their children in the existing local schools.

Not once was the question posed: what was the real reason for the Africans not having places in schools? Answer: they'd only just come here.

Instead, Africans who were just off the boat were allowed to accuse us of racism for not having school places awaiting their children.
...
This is the land of the Red Cow Roundabout and motorways without service stations, rest-stops or toilets. So how could we be expected seven years ago to have planned school-building projects in north county Dublin for Africans as yet unborn?

Alas, common sense is "racist" too...

The author, Kevin Myers, also wrote another amusing article back in July:

In Luton, 44pc of school pupils are Muslim, though only 30pc of the population of the town are. Which means that Muslim families have 50pc more children than those of the indigenous population - in other words, within a couple of generations, the two groups in Luton will be swapping demographic places.

Better still, Dr Nazia Khanum, the "Chair" of the splendidly named Luton Multicultural Women's Coalition, (no, I didn't make it up: I just couldn't) has complained that in many village schools near Luton - in rustic Bedfordshire - both teachers and pupils were almost entirely white. What? White Christians? In England? How perfectly shocking.

Some of the absurdities of this situation were apparent in an incident that was in all the headlines while I was in Ireland this year. A large group of gypsies came from Romania and started camping out in the middle of a median of highway M50, not far from the Dublin International Airport. Since Romania is now a member of the EU, they felt they had the right to live and collect welfare benefits there. No such luck. They were soon deported. The absurdity is that they couldn't claim asylum, since they come from another EU state. But any non-European (African, Saudi, or Pakistani, or presumably even an American) could claim asylum, and by law would be allowed to stay for a time, and in the end would be almost impossible to remove. I'm not sure if any of this really makes sense.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

The Northwest Passage

Satellite photos of the North Pole

This news is a few days old, but I felt I really had to comment on it. The fabled Northwest Passage is now open for the first time since it has been monitored in the last 30 years:

Historically, the Northwest Passage linking the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans has been ice-bound through the year.

But the agency says ice cover has been steadily shrinking, and this summer's reduction has made the route navigable.

The findings, based on satellite images, raised concerns about the speed of global warming.

The Northwest Passage is one of the most fabled sea routes in the world - a short cut from Europe to Asia through the Canadian Arctic.

Recent years have seen a marked shrinkage in its ice cover, but this year it was extreme, Esa says.

It says this made the passage "fully navigable" for the first time since monitoring began in 1978.

This is not entirely unprecedented. After hundreds of years of attempts, the passage was successfully navigated for the first time by Roald Amundsen in 1906. Since then, ships have occasionally sailed through, but most of these were icebreakers who went through the ice, rather than around it.

He [Leif Pedersen of the Danish National Space Centre] said it was "about 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006".

"There has been a reduction of the ice cover over the last 10 years of about 100, 000 sq km (38,600 sq miles) per year on average, so a drop of 1m sq km (386,000 sq miles) in just one year is extreme," Mr Pedersen said.

This is what's really worrying. Assuming he's right, that's a loss of two million square kilometers, or 672,000 square miles, since 1996 - an area greater than the entire country of Mexico!

This may be an economic boon for certain countries. If it opens further, travel between Europe, Russia, and North America could be greatly shortened, not to mention bypassing the Panama Canal altogether.

But one big loser would be the polar bear. It's already finding it difficult to cope with the ice loss as it is:

[Researchers] found a striking shift in the bears' habits. From 1979 to 1991, 87% of the bears spotted were found mostly on sea ice. From 1992 to 2004, the percentage dropped to 33%. Most of the remaining bears have been found either in the ocean or on beaches, congregating around carcasses of whales butchered by hunters. In the past, polar bears were rarely seen at such kill sites, because they spent their time hunting their favorite meal -- seals -- on sea ice.

Not only is their population dwindling, but the bears themselves are getting smaller:

"[The polar bear is] not as fat as he would have been 15 years ago. He's probably 80-90 kilograms lighter than he would have been 15 years ago."

So if the passage fully opens up, what will the bears do? It's unlikely they could be transplanted in Antarctica and switch to a diet of penguins instead of seals; they are accustomed to living off their fat in the Summertime and raising their cubs in grassy fields.

Some people might call me a "green conservative", but I don't embrace that label because I don't consider myself particularly conservative, in the true definition of the word. Compared to the general trend of the current time, I do lean rather politically to the right, however. So one thing I can't understand about conservatives or other right-wing pundits - why doesn't this worry them? I admit that the science of global warming is not precise and the whole thing may be overblown. It is certainly exaggerated by some environmentalists. But the sheer volume of anecdotal evidence is overwhelming, and it would be foolish to simply dismiss it altogether. In addition, there's no way you could expect to triple the world's population in the last 100 years, without it dramatically impacting the environment (although the overpopulation issue is now taboo to the political left, for other reasons I'll mention in another article).

In other words, I'd rather be safe than sorry. I think about this the same way I do about illegal immigration - small increases every year end up with an unmanageable increase after several years... it would be better to deal with this problem right now, than trying to fix it later. And if we were wrong, what have we lost? Any attempt to clean the air and reduce pollutants is good for its own sake anyway, even if there was no global warming.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

One Sin of Commission and One of Omission [Updated]

If anyone's confused whether there are evil people in the world (my last post, for example), look no further than this. This is one of the most disturbing things I've ever read:

A day after a double homicide took the lives of a 7-month old baby and his young father, detectives announced the unthinkable Saturday: the infant had not been accidentally caught in gunfire but was intentionally shot, execution-style, in his car seat.

Seconds after shooting down 21-year-old Sean Paul Aquitania during a suspected home-invasion robbery in southeast Sacramento County Friday afternoon, two suspects fled the house, authorities believe. They stopped just long enough at Aquitania's Chevrolet Malibu to fire a single bullet into the head of the man's infant son, Sean Paul Jr., before disappearing.

By Saturday, the suspects had not been located.

The second half of the story can be read if you register with the site, but it's not necessary; it simply provides a little background on the surviving family members.

Why in God's name would anyone execute an infant? He wasn't involved in the robbery/drug sale/altercation, or whatever the case may have been. He was also too young to possibly serve as a witness or testify against anyone. A child that age is completely helpless and completely innocent, which is what makes a crime like this so much more abhorrent than your typical homicide. The father was also very strongly committed to his son; Fox News reports that he had the baby's hand and footprint tattooed on his forearms.

The only motive I could possibly think of, is that the baby was either shot out of pure spite against Mr. Aquitania, or it was done for the sheer thrill of it. This is an evil act, and the men that committed it are evil. I would like to see anyone try to defend this act or describe it in any other way.

There's also something else disturbing about this case.

There is a huge gap in the Sacramento Bee's reporting. Here is their description of the suspects:

-- one of whom reportedly was wearing a black, hooded sweat shirt, the other, a green shirt and a green Oakland A's hat.

An earlier article from the Bee said the same thing:

Authorities described one as an adult wearing a black hooded sweatshirt, the other as an adult wearing a green shirt and a green Oakland A's hat.

That's it. Notice anything missing here? The description is of their clothes only. No mention of age, gender, height, weight, or - heaven forbid - race!

Why is that? Some of that information is certainly available. On the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department web page (which came out more than a full day before the article), they describe one suspect as a black male, the other a Hispanic male.

Granted, in California, that doesn't narrow the field very much but it is better than no description at all! Someone may happen to know a black and a Hispanic man who were out together that night and put two and two together from the other clues available.

There are plenty of angry remarks about this omission in the newspaper's comment section. I don't enjoy accusing the paper of pandering to political correctness, but I can't see any other explanation here. If we were only talking about a misdemeanor, that would be one thing. But when we are talking about two murderers on the loose, with the public at large in danger, it not only defies all common sense but it is essentially journalistic malpractice and a serious breach of their public trust to keep information like this from the public.

If you are as disturbed as I am, you can let your feelings be known. The author of the article is "Kim Minugh", and she can be reached at (916) 321-1038 or kminugh @ sacbee.com. She appears to have a college web site with photos that she set up here.

I wrote her the following letter:

To Kim Minugh,

My name is John Rohan, and I am the author of the "Shield of Achilles" web site. I also have previous experience in law enforcement. I read with interest your article "Baby intentionally shot in head" and "Baby's killing shocks, angers", about the tragic case of the father and baby Aquitania.

I just have three questions that I would really appreciate if you could answer for my readers:

1) Why was so little information given about the description of the suspects? You only wrote that the suspects were wearing: "a black, hooded sweat shirt, the other, a green shirt and a green Oakland A's hat". There was no mention of either gender or race, even though the information was already available, and even publicly posted on the Sacramento County Sheriff's web site more than a day earlier.

2) Was this an accidental omission or is it a policy of the Sacramento Bee to not mention this information? If it is the Bee's policy, can you please provide the text of the policy or a link to it?

3) Finally, if it is the Sacramento Bee's policy to omit describing suspects by gender or race, don't you think this is hampering the efforts of citizens to aid in identifying suspects, therefore putting the community at needless risk?

Thank you for your time. I eagerly await your reply.


JR

UPDATE 19/09/2007 03:58:00 PM:

I received the following reply from the author of the article:

Hi John,

Thank you for writing. There has been a great deal of discussion at our paper in regards to this story and this issue. However, the decision not to report on the suspects' race was not made by myself, so I don't feel I can best respond to your email. Please await an email from an editor.

Thanks very much,

Kim

So if the author didn't make that decision, that means that someone else, likely an editor, did. I have not received a response yet.

However, since I wrote this, two other stories on the case were printed in The Sacramento Bee. One titled "Slain dad's last-gasp fight", and another "Mom, 19, grieves for infant son, sweetheart". These articles are even worse; they are flat out wrong (I'll avoid the word "lying" for now) about the information offered by authorities:

Authorities on Sunday would only release minimal descriptions of the suspects, offered by the home's residents: one was wearing a black, hooded sweat shirt, the other, a green shirt and a green Oakland A's hat.

That statement is simply not true, as I showed previously. The Sheriff's department had publicly announced that one was a black male and one a hispanic male. And what's really ironic, is that they plead for the public to help:

[Sheriff's homicide Sgt] Wyant stressed that he's hoping anyone who has any information about the double homicide will come forward.

...Anyone with information about the case can call sheriff's officials at (916) 874-5115.

One commenter at the site puts it succinctly:

A lie of omission is still a lie. It's amazing irony how this article speaks about the people at that house not being forthcoming with information that would help identify the killers while this paper does the exact same thing. I'll let the editors chew on the ethics of their decision to help these people go uncaught.

If The Bee continues to leave out important information such as a person's race in a search for suspects, what other information can we assume they leave out? What's the point of telling us what they were wearing? They can change clothes easily, but they can't change their whole physical appearance without a great deal of work.

The author of the two more recent articles on the case was a Christina Jewett, at cjewett @ sacbee.com. Today I wrote her the following letter:

To Christina Jewett,

My name is John Rohan, and I am the author of the "Shield of Achilles" web site. I also have previous experience in law enforcement. I read with interest your article "Slain dad's last-gasp fight" and "Mom, 19, grieves for infant son, sweetheart", about the tragic case of the father and baby Aquitania.

I just have a few questions that I would really appreciate if you could answer for my readers:

1) Why did you obfuscate the information about the suspects? Was this deliberate or accidental? You wrote: "Authorities on Sunday would only release minimal descriptions of the suspects, offered by the home's residents: one was wearing a black, hooded sweat shirt, the other, a green shirt and a green Oakland A's hat." This is simply untrue, since the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department publicly provided both the gender and race of the suspects on their website more than two days earlier: http://www.sacsheriff.com/media/0914_double_homicide.cfm

2) If it is the Bee's policy not to mention gender or race of suspects, can you please provide the text of the policy or a link to it? If this was simply a decision made for this article, can you explain the reasoning behind this? Also, why did you imply that it was the authorities who failed to provide more information?

3) Finally, if this was a deliberate omission, don't you think this is hampering the efforts of citizens to aid in identifying suspects, therefore putting the community at needless risk? This especially seems strange since one of your articles was headlined with "Police cite lack of witness cooperation". Shouldn't your paper also provide as much cooperation as possible?

Thank you for your time. I eagerly await your reply.


JR

Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

"Good vs. Evil" on 9/11 [Updated]

WTC aftermath. Photo embedded from Global Security.org

I just realized why I bother reading Andrew Sullivan's site. He provides so much material that it's like shooting fish in a barrel.

Sullivan doesn't allow comments on his site, but every once in a while he pulls out a selected email to post on his front page, without commenting on it. That way, he can promote the most ridiculous statements, while retaining the option of the "plausible deniability" defense if it gets bad publicity. He can simply say:"I didn't write it, after all..."

This letter from yesterday is a classic:

Your comment about Bush trying to frame the Iraq war as a simple battle between "Good" and "Evil" reminds me of my one 9/11 joke. I know it's wrong, insensitive, and politically incorrect to have a 9/11 joke, but since I don’t have a TV show to lose (and it speaks to your point), here it is.

On 9/11 my youngest son was 5 years old. The attack was mentioned in his school, and he saw some of the story on TV when my wife and I were watching. Being curious, he asked why people would do such a thing. We always try to be as honest as we can with our children, while keeping in mind their intellectual and developmental limits. So we told him that there were some bad people who don't like America and they did this bad thing because they wanted to hurt us. That seemed to satisfy his curiosity at the time, but I felt very conflicted with what I had said. I didn't like that I'd resorted to overly general categories like bad people or that I felt I had to completely skip over some of the rationale for anti-American sentiment, even though I believe some of it is justified [emphasis mine]. I just wondered if I had done him a disservice by glossing over it so superficially. But then a couple days later, Bush finally addressed the nation on the attack. And his speech was filled with overgeneralizations about the "evil doers", their acts of evil and how we would track them down and good would prevail over evil. Suddenly I felt better about what I had said to my 5 year old because I realized that Bush's parents had obviously explained it to him the same way.

I've got news for this anonymous letter writer. I hope that Bush's parents explained it to him this way, because it's the truth. It may be a shock to some, but put in the simplest terms, the 9/11 hijackers were bad people. History is full of many moments that were free from moral ambiguity, and this was absolutely one of them.

There are evil people in the world, and whatever Al-Qaeda's "justifiable" grievances with the USA were, it didn't even come close to justifying hijacking four planes and killing thousands of men, women, and children. As Tony Blair once remarked in a speech shortly after 9/11:

They have no moral inhibition on the slaughter of the innocent. If they could have murdered not 7,000 but 70,000, does anyone doubt they would have done so and rejoiced in it?

So there is no compromise possible with such people. There is no meeting of minds, no point of understanding with such terror. Just a choice: defeat it or be defeated by it.

I'm curious, when the letter writer explains the Holocaust to his children, does he feel conflicted that he isn't presenting the other side of the argument? Should I feel guilty labelling Nazi ideology as "evil", and not explaining the (extremely few) justified gripes the Germans had against their Jewish neighbors in the 1930s?

Of course, people are complicated, and under extreme circumstances, even good people can be driven to do horrible things. But that wasn't the case here. By and large, the hijackers came from wealthy families in Saudi Arabia. They lived privileged lives, and were sent overseas to be educated in the very nation they later attacked. Nor could they blame this atrocity for the influence of drugs, alcohol, or "temporary insanity". The operation was fully financed, carefully planned over a span of years, and with the specific goal of killing as many innocent people as possible.

But anyone can can be redeemed. And if the hijackers were caught before they committed this act, it's possible that one day they could have realized the error of their ways, and become "good" people once again after lengthy and intimate self-reflection over their personal beliefs. But since they deliberately killed themselves on Sep 11, they denied themselves the chance to do this, and at that time, they were "bad", "evil", "wicked", "immoral", or any number of other adjectives you wish to use.

And I am not the least bit "conflicted" in using them.

UPDATE 17/09/2007 07:45:00:
Glenn Reynolds of instapundit wrote me (paraphrasing Sullivan's view):

"Bad People" is a christianist category, showing simpleminded absolutism. Unless it refers to opponents of gay marriage.

This jogged my memory a bit. Look at this posting on Sullivan's site from June, after Ann Coulter publicly called Democratic Presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot":

The only tiny silver lining of my friend Chris Matthews' decision to give hate-monger Ann Coulter a platform is that Elizabeth Edwards called in to confront her - in particular the callous way in which Coulter once spoke of Edwards' dead son. Watch Coulter wither and flinch. It's rare to see a simple confrontation on cable television of good versus evil. And it's encouraging to see evil lose.

So in other words, being "callous" or calling someone "faggot" is "evil", but terrorism that indiscriminately kills is not necessarily. In Sullivan's view, anti-gay statements are far worse than, well, "anti-human" acts of mass-murder. It's great to see that some people have their priorities straight (no pun intended)...





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...

Everyone knows that Democrats are smarter than Republicans? Right? [Updated]

The WTC site, then and now. So who caused 9/11 anyway? Embedded from National Geographic

Some people are certainly going to a lot of trouble attempting to prove it.

According to a Zogby poll of Americans, about 40% of Republicans and 27% of Democrats believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the attacks of 9/11. Wow! Those stupid Republicans! The left-wing blogosphere is just eating this stuff up.

Only one problem. If they merely took the time to read the actual poll, they would have found some rather embarrassing beliefs in other myths, like about who was responsible for 9/11... Look at page 8 in particular; 42.6% of Democrats believe that the US government either “allowed 9/11 to happen” or they “made it happen”. In contrast, only 19.2% of Republicans and 30.5% of Independents are tinfoil hat wearers (Unfortunately, I had to link to a 9/11 conspiracy site, since they are the ones that commissioned the poll). More discussion at Hot Air here.

Incidentally, while no link between Saddam and 9/11 was found (or ever claimed by the Bush administration) I would still consider it a far more likely possibility than 9/11 engineered by the US government. Saddam did have proven links to Al-Qaeda (a run-down can be found here), and the two groups were equally united in their hatred of the US and Israel.

This is reminiscent of a public knowledge poll done by the Pew research center back in April. The poll measured public awareness on current issues across a broad variety of spectrums. However, like kids in a candy store, several left-wing web sites gleefully chose to focus on one aspect only: That "Daily Show" viewers supposedly knew more than "O'Reilly Factor" viewers (54% vs. 51%), and that CNN viewers were more knowledgeable than those that watch Fox News (41% vs. 35%).

In truth, the data was not so simple, since most people claimed they used several different sources for their news, and the margins were small. Still, here's some advice. If you want to use this as "proof" of your intellectual superiority, then it's probably a good idea to act like an intellectual and read the whole thing... If they had bothered to look a little further into the survey, they would have found this:

Republicans and Democrats are equally likely to be represented in the high-knowledge group. But significantly fewer Republicans (26%) than Democrats (31%) fall into the third of the public that knows the least.

Ouch. If that double negative is confusing (it confused someone here), I will translate: more Democrats than Republicans fall into the low-knowledge group.

Moving into psychology, there have been quite a few similar attempts on the political left to diagnose conservatism as some sort of "mental illness". Check out this ludicrous piece last month in The New Republic (the same folks that brought us Scott Beauchamp), entitled: "How Political Psychology Explains Bush's Ghastly Success." (Dissected here).

Or, check out this psychoanalysis that widely circulated on the web earlier this year. In it, a Professor Allan Schnaiberg of Northwestern University, diagnoses Bush with "narcissistic personality disorder". The Professor is real, but the article might have been a hoax. If it's genuine, then someone forgot to tell Prof. Schnaiberg that it's unethical to diagnose a patient without examining him, or reviewing his medical records.

Even a dullard like myself is intelligent enough to know that.

UPDATE 17/09/2007 09:48:00:
via Little Green Footballs, here's a Slate article about how many of these intelligence studies are run by liberals and rigged in favor of themselves. Not sure if I totally agree, but if liberals disagreed, that would be rich. For decades, they have been telling us that the black/hispanic/white/asian/male/female IQ and SAT test gaps are due to testing bias. Either intelligence tests work, or they don't. They can't possibly have it both ways.





Interested in reading more? Click on any label below to read related articles, bookmark this site, or subscribe to my  RSS Feed

Click here for more...