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GOP does not understand the Geneva Convention

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But what else is new, they don’t even understand the U.S. Constitution, let alone the Foreign laws, like international Law.

You can’t be accused of war crimes if you don’t commit any! Now GOP congressmen are afraid that;

“means that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes. I think Congress is going to want to deal with that,”

Isn’t that why they passed an anti torture law? A law that the president chooses to ignore?

The Geneva convention was established to protect American soldiers, not to attack them. If the U.S. held themselves up to the Geneva Accords there is nothing to worry about.


prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Honest American values!

From under what rock did these Congressmen crawl?

“WWIII Started in 1979”, paranoia

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I can usually usually judge the level of paranoia flowing through the GOP, NeoCons and the far right, from the propaganda email forwarded from my brother in the central United States. These usually follow some talking point or another that the White House would be proud of, but are cloaked in “personalization’s” like ‘joe’ told me, or a “friend of mine” something, to allude to a personal first person truth. Often, as in the last one, titled “WWIII Started in 1979” it resorts to paranoid delusion and vastly over simplified history and the motivations of the depicted (read spun) events. In this case many unrelated events are painted in a ‘pro-war with the Arabs’ fashion using little more commonality than of race. An enemy easily identified as Muslim, those “vicious anti-west, infidel killing religious fanatics”.

You get the picture anyway.

This brings me back to the point, that this represents another attempt to deflect attention from the GOP corruption, lawbreaking and embezzlement of the public trust. and an attempt to elevate paranoia, and create fear of “The ENEMY them, those people, that sleeper cell down the street that behaves strangely.

The real question, do we really question anymore? When do we stop believing in the ‘Bush who cried wolf”. When are we going to require real accountability for improving the security we really desire? When, if ever, are we going believe which “Terror Alerts” are real?

Why would anyone give up their freedoms, liberties and privacy, the very things that have made us great for the illusion of security being offered by the NeoCon GOP. Why would you believe any politician, for that matter.

People must believe in themselves, trust to the good elements of our chosen society, represent them, educate with them, and work to prevent the hate, paranoia and fear from blinding us to the truth that we are all human. And that the rights which we have fought for over the years must be applied to all equally.

Ok I’ll get off the soapbox.

The Founding Fathers are rolling over in their graves.

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The Founding fathers of the United States Constitution are rolling over in their graves. When the Top court allows evidence in illegal home entry It just doesn’t

“…destroy the strongest legal incentive for the police to comply with that constitutional requirement.”

It violates the 4th Amendment of the Constitution!

Amendment IV – Search and Seizure. Ratified 12/15/1791.

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Web 3.0â„¢, and push clarity

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I have been hearing all kinds of talk about web 2.0 being ‘push’ technology. But it’s not. And for the sake of clarity, Blogging and Web 2/3.0 is not PUSH! Back in the old Web 1.0 day’s you could do the same thing as web 2.0 except that with the old HTML pages the ‘posting’ date was available as a file creation date, and there were plenty of tools around to check for ‘refreshed’ html pages. Which is more or less what RSS and Atom do, check for refreshes of posts.

Web 2.0 is not Push!.

Haughey dies

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I know enough about Haughey to know he should have died in prison, as much for all the corruption that he splashed upon the republic, as for being corrupt himself. But knowing the Irish press you probably won’t hear a bad word spoken.

Ex-Irish Taoiseach Haughey dies

You will probably never learn how the master passed down his wisdom to Bertie either.

Remember next time someone asks you to tighten your belt?

A Religious reason is a misnomer

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I’ve been reading about What did Canadians do to deserve this? And while the article makes a strong argument that Islamic Terrorist believe things like this.

Sayed Qutb, the Marx of Militant Islamism, stated unequivocally: “Truth and falsehood cannot coexist on earth…the liberating struggle of jihad does not cease until all religion belongs to God.” Looking at the world through such eyes, freedom, tolerance and democratic values are not virtues – they are symptoms of weakness and moral decline.

The author Clifford D. May has ask the some of the hard questions

What were these young men taught by the religious leaders in their mosques? Did their neighbors not see where they were heading? Was it sympathy or fear that prevented them from speaking up? If it was fear – fear of whom?

His belief that the Muslim community has any more control of their radical members than any right wing Christian fundamentalist is misplaced. The problem is this; in a secular democracy where “freedom, tolerance and democratic values” are truly valued, religion is the problem. Religion is the antithesis of common sense, of reason, and truth. If you take any religion to extremes you might as well perform a frontal lobotomy. A person so conditioned is beyond reason.

You can’t reason with someone, who didn’t start out that way.

And the only hope for Democracies, who wish to preserve their “freedom, tolerance and democratic values” is education. Teaching reason, freedom and tolerance. And the first step, is practicing what they preach. To hold themselves up as a model, they should be proud to look in a mirror. In a war of ideologies, insure that your’s is the best.

UPDATE: A christian example: Fox News host to guest: ‘You’re going to hell!’

Myth of the individual, and the poison pill.

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While Zarqawi is dead, the belief that the individual is responsible for the insurrection in Iraq is misplaced. While I don’t believe that he was a myth as described here Ding Dong, the Witch Isn’t Dead or that he was a created artifact of political minds. The Idea that he was a symptom, a poison pill if you will, is as solid as any other belief you might have. And even though the pill has been removed, it had already poisoned the well. And while there is hope that his removal resulted from information that derived from people who were or had been close to him. There is no reason to believe that the poison has not contaminated the whole of Iraq.

A real Inconvenient Truth, the earth will survive without us.

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There has been a lot of talking about An Inconvenient Truth (the movie) and how it makes sense to start taking action on environmental concerns. The real inconvenient truth it more frightening. The Earth does not need us to survive! Think about that, for more than a minute, if global warming kills off humanity, and many other species, it won’t kill the earth. It will recover and any remaining animal and plant life left will recover and adapt to the new conditions. What climate change will do, is eliminate humans from the equation. So, with that in mind, the real concerns about the climate, aren’t economic, they are no less than the extinction or preservation of Mankind. That, and any other species we choose to allow to survive with us.

Just remember, the Earth doesn’t care if we are here or not. It was here long before us, and it will continue, with or without, us along for the ride.

IT Media migration

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I am reminded that in any information technology as the media changes from papertape, to Hollorith card decks, from 9 track tape to DLT Tape or from any media containing vital information.

It’s important to maintain legacy hardware to prevent the loss of vital data as NASA has discovered.

A lot of the remaining data (more than 19 years of it) were stored on old 7- and 9-track magnetic tapes needed to be saved and converted to modern media.

I was reminded of this as my wife had me checking for dublicate VHS movies against the current selection of DVD’s this weekend 😉

Terrorist, is a great label for freedom fighter.

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I’ve been seeing a lot of arrests for ‘terrorist’ in the UK, Canada and there seem to be terrorist all over the U.S. But if the MinuteMen of the American revolution were called Terrorist. Would they have managed to overthrow a corrupt government and an oppressive King?

If you can label anyone who opposes the Bush or Blair governments as a Terrorist, how do you restore freedom and democracy to once proud countries?

I love the term “al-Qaeda-inspired” as it makes a great label.

Iran nuclear bomb ‘in 10 years’

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Iran nuclear bomb ‘in 10 years’

I could build a nuclear bomb in 10 years, this is like saying that they haven’t made any progress. But I’ll bet the Bush and company will make this out to be a great threat to ‘Freedom and Liberty’ and I see another axis of evil speech coming.

Any, and I do mean ANY physics student at any university could make a nuclear bomb in less than 10 years. And if you are interested, let me know, and I’ll post you some clear instructions.