News

Work + Sick + Twitter + TAB

bob — Wed, 12 Mar 2008 14:27:29 -0400

Just wanted to drop a note to everyone that I am, in fact, not dead. I do feel dead, mostly due to this illness that’s been hanging on for a while. Doc says it’s viral, so rest and symptom relief. Between work, being sick, Twitter, infrequent TAB posts & the fam, it’s been waaaay to hectic to personal blog, plus I’m trying to start a non-personal blog as well.

Doc sez I should start feeling better by the end of the weekend. Joy. Expect massive posting thereafter :-)

If you’ve sent e-mail, I should be able to get to it within the next couple of days. Been too unfocused to even skim through GMail…

Singer Robert Goulet dies at age 73

bob — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 02:42:57 -0400

He was one of the better actor/singers more talented deceased than the majority of people alive on TV & in film these days.

Singer Robert Goulet dies at age 73: “LOS ANGELES — Robert Goulet, the handsome, big-voiced baritone whose Broadway debut in ‘Camelot’ launched an award-winning stage and recording career, has died. He was 73. The singer died Tuesday morning in a Los Angeles hospital while awaiting a lung transplant, said Goulet spokesman Norm Johnson.”

Other Real Tragedies

mary — Sun, 10 Sep 2006 07:56:14 -0400

[Editor’s note: Mary’s blogging!]

Some of the other real tragedies of 9/11 as reported by Bloomberg:

there were senior members of the Bush administration determined to “get” Saddam Hussein
George Bush was looking for just the right reasons to get the goods on Hussein
senior officials in Hussein’s own government were secretly hoping to see him fall
the ones who would suffer the most from a war in Iraq would be Iraq (at least in the short term)
the only justification now for going to war in Iraq is to liberate the Iraqi people, and that is not good enough
the secondary reason for going to war in Iraq was to keep the terrorists from coming to America, and that is an unthinkable excuse for putting our own soldiers on foreign soil defending American freedom that increasingly is becoming a memory
The biggest tragedy is that we may have created a bigger monster than before. By seeking to fashion Iraq into a maleable tool to be used for our purposes, we may have played right into the enemy’s hands. The Bush plan may backfire. I hope our children don’t have to see the results of that mistake.

Warrants: bad; lipstick: good (again)?

bob — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 10:14:28 -0400

According to Chertoff on Meet the Press this past weekend:

“We have to make sure our legal system allows us to do that. It’s not like the 20th century, where you had time to get warrants.”

It’s not like we can’t trust the enforcement arm of the law or anything [warning: the pic on that page of someone who was beaten is not exactly breakfast material]. Personal rights and freedoms are overrated anyway.

Thankfully, we seem to have found a way to nullify the impact of lipstick-based-explosives.

To those of you who think those actions are A Good Thing, can you tell me what happened to make the treat of lipstick-based-explosives any less real in the past two days? Do you not see how arbitrary and senseless this reactionary approach to security is?

What happens when a meeting you attend attached to some organization suddenly ends up on the suspicious list? Are you *sure* you have nothing to hide in your house…your car…your computer…your shed?

As I said in an earlier post, this whole thing now wreaks of deliberate attempt to give more power to the authorities.

I hate it when I agree with Schneier

bob — Mon, 14 Aug 2006 08:02:01 -0400

Thankfully, though, some folks who can do something about the morons in power do listen to him. If you’re as frustrated about the new “safety procedures” at airports, take a look at his latest blog entry:

…Banning box cutters since 9/11, or taking off our shoes since Richard Reid, has not made us any safer. And a long-term prohibition against liquid carry-ons won’t make us safer, either. It’s not just that there are ways around the rules, it’s that focusing on tactics is a losing proposition.

Sadly, the whole entry is worth reading.

(why can’t he go back to fluff IT security reporting!)

Re-thinking the current "thwarted terror" crisis

bob — Thu, 10 Aug 2006 22:53:57 -0400

I admitted to a few folks today that halfway through the NPR reports (this morning) about the current “thwarted terror” crisis, I actually believed the story. I believed there were 20-ish people detained and that there was a plan in place to coordinate liquid bomb making and synchronized airplane detonation.

After looking at these two pictures (one from CNN - you’ll need to hunt alot for it since I can’t find the original story it was attached to) and the other from The Citizen-Times):

I’m beginning to wonder.

Let’s see…we are worried abotu a bomb coctail whose components are spread across disperate liquids being carried on the same flight. It would be a *great* idea to mix them all together in one big vat then, right? No worries there. Nope.

Looks like it’s what I predicted would happen in the near future. Let the manipulation begin! The ring-leaders of the whole “war on terror” needed to re-engage the masses somehow. What better way then to impact their business and vacation travel (again) and relay an elaborate plot that sounds kinda plausable. Then, have it originate in a country where they almost have no personal freedom left (since the courts there can do pretty much anything they want to do).

Now, we just need a “successful crisis” to warrant suspending the two-term Presidency law. It’s gonna get ugly, folks.

Civil Liberties: 1, NSA: 0

bob — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 21:26:43 -0400

SCOTUS Blog reports on U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker’s rejection of the government’s plea to dismiss a lawsuit challenging the legality of the “Terrorist Surveillance Program”. You’ll remember that program as the one where the NSA was given power to monitor all calls and e-mails by U.S. citizens (and if you think for one second it was limited to contacts with terrorist suspects you live in a dream world).

From the ruling:

While the court recognizes and respects the executive’s constitutional duty to protect the nation from threats, the court also takes seriously its constitutional duty to adjudicate the disputes that come before it,” the judge wrote. (At that point, he inserted in his opinion a quotaton from the Supreme Court’s 2004 decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld saying “Whatever power the United States Constitution envisions for the Executive in its exchanges with other nations or with enemy organizations in times of conflict, it most assuredly envisions a role for all three branches when individual liberties are at stake.

The EFF has a good take on the whole situation, including a PDF link to the full decision.

The fight is not over, however. The Bush Administration is working with Specter to have FISA (that secret court that rules over these secret endeavours) handle all approvals of anything like this in the future, and Congress looks to be on target to giving them a full pass.

A few days ago, we finished watching (one more time) the end of season two of Babylon 5 (episode entitled “The Fall of Night”). The “Ministry of Peace” is really starting to show it’s true colors by that point and it might not be a bad idea for you to take a look at how that whole movement progressed and how it ultimately turned out.

We need to be very careful at the amount of power we just hand over to the Executive branch and how much we put our trust in them to have all of our best interests at heart.
And, the next time you criticize someone (internally or out loud) for speaking their minds on their opinions of the current conflict and how related domestic affairs are being handled you might want to stop and think about just how far you are willing to go to have peace here at home.