A farewell to Japan.

Jonathan Watts has been living in Japan for 13 years and covering it for the Guardian for the past few years. In an article, Japan Slips Into Cozy Retirement he reflects on his years there and the changes he's seen in the Japanese economy. It's a sad story, but well worth a read.


A good read. He's now moving to become their correspondent in China, where the action in Asia is now. For more on Japan, see the Guardian's special report on Japan.



Economist's open letter to Berlusconi.

For the last two years, the Economist has been attempting to get Italian President Silvio Berlusconi to answer questions about his various business dealings, and numerous allegations of corruption and political favoritism. Today they published an extraordinary open letter to him, backed by 8,000 pages of evidence, in which they formally ask him to answer their questions.


It goes on. It's an amazing story. He's as corrupt as any politician could be, and in a position of enormous power. Kudos to the Economist for continuing to pursue this. There are numerous articles linked to the main story, along with the 8,000 pages of questions and allegations.

July 31, 2003

Edinburgh-festivals.com.

The arts have a big place in Edinburgh's summer scene, and this year's season is beginning. Via The Scotsman is this wonderful page of listings and all sorts of other information.

The Edinburgh Arts Festival is the world's largest cultural gathering, as far as I know, and is surrounded by a summer's worth of other events. It began with the Edinburgh International Jazz & Blues Festival and continues as we speak. One of these years I'm going to have to get there. In the meantime, why aren't there festivals of this type in the US. There are lots of different types of festivals, but not large-scale events that combine all the different kinds.

There's an ongoing Photo Blog of the events as well.



Buying peace and tolerance.

Two articles in the Guardian struck my fancy. Entirely different problems and parts of the world, but the same approach: giving money.

This one, by Cesar Garcia, reports on the Columbian governments new plan to buy peace by paying soldiers on both sides to stop fighting.


An expensive approach though, and one that doesn't address the roots causes of the wars. Although in Columbia it would appear that the fighting has taken on a life of its own, and that it's no longer about anything but survival and profit.

The other article reports, by Gary Younge, on a pastor in Louisiana that is attempting to address the segregation in southern religion by simply paying white people to come to its services.


And I guess I could also mention the American government's decision to pay $30 million reward money to those who helped capture Hussein's sons. Money is an awfully strong incentive sometimes, that's for sure. For most people anyway. But not true believers. True believers are willing to even pay to die for their cause.

"For fifteen hundred dollars, you can have anybody killed." -- Bob Dylan, I forget the song.



Stupid Israeli marriage law.

And certainly the Israelis aren't always right either. They just passed a law forbidding any Palestinian who marries an Israeli from living there. Stupid, stupid, stupid. It just plays into the hands of Israel's enemies. Guardian article on it. It will split families and turn the Israelis in those families against the government. Altho I do note that it has to be renewed annually. All laws should be like that.

And it belies the major difference, at least until now, between the Israelis and the Palestinians, namely that the Israelis were willing to share and live with others, while the Palestinians weren't. Israel always gave Arabs civil rights, if not fully equal to Jewish ones, but generally more than they had in their own countries. While the Palestinians have pretty much denied even the right of Jews to live, much less live with them, and have never been willing to share anything.

So stupid law. But inevitable I guess. Until the Palestinians remove Arafat from power the Israelis have to assume that they are enemies intent on the total destruction of Israel, just as Arafat has always demanded. They can hope for peace, but it will take more than words to make that happen. There have to be substantial movements by Palestinians against Arafat and what he represents. More than words. Abbas may want peace, but Arafat doesn't. And he remains in the top position.

Still it is a disturbing sign of the increasing power of the Orthodox right wing in Israel. The article also tells about the government's decision to expand a settlement in Gaza, despite the commitment to freeze the settlements in the road map.


Long quote, but I want to show that I realize that I don't think the Israeli government are exactly angels either. It should be remembered however that the "road map" was not created by the Israelis and/or the Palestinians, but by outside powers. Its goals are not necessarily those of the people who created the road map.

As I've said before, any lasting peace must come from within the two parties fighting, not from outside. No matter how well intentioned the outsiders are. (Which is not to imply that I think the US, British, Russian and UN quarter behind the road map are well intentioned. They're not. If they want peace in the Middle East it's only when and if it suits their own purposes.)



British not always right, though.

I think generally the English-speaking press from outside the US is a bit more objective and accurate than most of the American. But not always. There's this article in the Bush Just Doesn't Get It from the Guardian, Simon Tisdall reports on the recent meeting between Bush and Sharon, and pretty much blames all of the problems on Sharon and Israel, which is very clearly biased.



How much should I blog the wars?

Can't decide how much I want/should talk about the mess in Iraq, or the other American wars going on. I know there are a lot of people blogging it a lot, and lots of reports about it. But at the same time it really seems as though most people aren't really aware of what's going on. Polls show that a significant percentage of Americans really believe that WMDs were used by Iraq during the initial part of the war, not to mention possessing them at all. So I guess it's worthwhile to report on it some.

But it sure is boring and tiresome. And not really what I want to blog about. I want to focus more on writing, history, art and literature, and things like that. Be a more general purpose blog than a political one. More like the extraordinary Wood s Lot, which is a marvelous source of creative input. Perhaps a bit too cerebral, but that's the general idea.

Still the war is part of history and I guess I'll continue to link to interesting articles on it. Perhaps what I think may be more accurate and objective reports about it from media free of American control. Such as the Guardian and Observer family and the Scotsman, which I think are pretty good. And Asia Times, they're very thorough.

Once in a while I might also mention that the US is heavily entrenched in an ongoing and growing war in Columbia and neighboring countries, a real mess with just as extensive loss of life as in Iraq, that no one ever seems to mention. Did you know that Coca-Cola has full-on private armies down there fighting labor unions? Do a google for coca-cola and columbia sometimes. Amazing things going on.

But there's a lot going on in the world besides war. I think a lot of people like to focus on them to distract attention from things perhaps a bit closer to home, or more difficult to confront. Certainly the American government since 911 has been very successful in using "terrorism" as a way of avoiding domestic difficulties, and plenty of Americans are willing to go along with it. You'd almost never think that it all stems from one single incident lasting less than two hours nearly two years ago. Just one incident. Hardly enough to call a battle, much less a war.



TruthOut Report to Those in the Battle Zone.

Via Follow Me Here is this "truthout" report to those serving in Iraq.


Interesting. Reminds me of the 60s "teach-ins", where responsible Americans tried to get the facts about Vietnam out to the public. Although really at that time it was the returning vets themselves who led the way, who were the first to speak out about what was really going on. I imagine when those serving there begin to return that we'll start to hear all sorts of stuff.



US scraps nuclear weapons watchdog.

Writing in the Guardian Julian Borger reports that the Bush administration has quietly scuttled a Department of Energy group charged with overseeing the US nuclear weapons program.


For those not aware of it, the American people operate an enormous program producing Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMDs) of all sorts, nuclear, biological, chemical, and who knows what? All entirely outside the boundaries of international law and numerous internationally recognized agreeements and treaties.

The Department of Energy group was one of the few semi-independent groups with the power to oversee these enormous and expensive programs. Since the US remains utterly opposed to international law and to honoring its agreements with the UN, it is unlikely that UN weapons inspectors will be able to enter the country, so the loss of one of the few American groups with such authority is troubling. Especially as it comes on the eve of a meeting to decide on the future of mini-nukes and the latest generation of atomic weapons.

In turns out though that the issue of the panel's survival is already moot. The article also reports that the the group actually has not been meeting at all. Again, in defiance of national law.


"They just didn't call us." Typical. If something doesn't go their way, they just ignore it.



Amazed at the effort behind a web site.

After transferring everything over, and redesigning the sites and such, I'm again amazed at just how much work and time-consuming details are involved in getting a good-sized site up. Goodness. It just eats up the time.

I guess it's worse for me since I'm an eternal perfectionist and can futz forever, but even so it's a real challenge. Trying to deal with PERL, PHP, mySQL, MovableType, the browsers, Mac and Windows, mail settings, domain name stuff, nameservers, and on and on and on.

I don't think I'm going to be redoing this one for quite a while. Will add on to it, but I think I'm going to let well enough alone.

I must say that the software is starting to get very good and even well documented. Movable Type is very well done, and with good documentation and online support as well. So is the forum software, Invision Power Board. My new domain hosts, ipowerweb.com are also pretty good, with extensive user control over the settings and good help. I'd recommend any of them. I also use easyDNS.com for domain name management. They're really good as well.



Oops, been missing my mail.

I just transferred the galileolibrary.com domain to a new host and server, and it turns out that while trying to get the accounts set up and going I inadvertently messed up the settings. And ended up caught in an infinite loop where any mail kept getting forwarded to itself and going anywhere. (Kind of like my life these days, come to think of it.)

And so any mail sent to mike@galileolibrary.com in the last week didn't get to me. If you tried you probably got those DAEMON notices saying delivery didn't work.

So if you tried to contact me please do so again. Everything's working fine now. In fact that goes for the entire site. It should all be in place now. If it isn't please let me know.

July 30, 2003

Afghani situation continues to deteriorate.

Also writing in the Guardian, Isabel Hilton reports that the warlords in Afghanistan continue to regain power, and that the country in general is in bad shape.


What a sad situation. Basically it's getting like it was before. Brutal warlords in charge, backed by American aid, either directly or indirectly.


I really hate to keep bashing Bush and company like this. I don't really admire those on the web who do nothing but that. But it makes me so mad. So much wasted energy, so much rhetoric and fancy talk, and so little focus, intelligence or real accomplishments. And I suppose it's just coincidental that an American company got the road contract.



Why the US fears Cuba

Writing in the Guardian, Seamus Milne offers some interesting comments on American-Cuban relations on the fiftieth anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban war against the Batista dictatorship.

I like what he says. In particular how he puts the intense criticism of Cuba following the recent crackdown on dissidents in some perspective.


He goes on. It's nice to see Cuba's successes as well documented as its failures. for once. It's worth reading if you think Castro's been a failure. But compared to the other similarly-sized countries in the area, Jamaica, Guatemala, Haiti, El Salvador and so on, things are better off there. Maybe not good; but better. And that's what counts. But the assumption is automatically made that since it's called communism, then it must not work. Curious how the utterly grotesque situation in Haiti, or the poverty and violence in Jamaica, two nearby islands of similar size and population, never seem to be blamed on capitalism.

Accusing Castro of not respecting the law and human rights is absurd. Not that he does. But no more so, if as much, as so many other nations the US has absolutely no problem doing business with. A list too long to give here.

The fact is that is the US that is showing contempt for the law here. For fifty years, the American people have been attempting to illegally overthrow the government of a sovereign nation, and are continuing to do so. Despite overwhelming international disapproval and attempts to stop it. In fact, it's stepping up its efforts now.

And as Mr. Milne points out, the real human rights violations in Cuba currently are at Guantanamo Bay, where the American prison is operating beyond the pale of either American or international law. Even the dissidents Castro's recently arrested are going to have trials, with at least some right of self-defense. Rights entirely denied by those going before the military tribunals on the ther side of the island.



Masked and Anonymous.

Well Bob Dylan's new movie, Masked and Anonymous, is out. Doesn't seem to have been much publicity, not for the A-list cast, but I imagine it'll get discussed. That would seem to be the point.

The NY Times has an interesting review of it. I also saw one in Salon but haven't had a chance to read it yet. Looked good though, probably worth the day-pass thingie they have.

I remember going to see Renaldo and Clara when it was released in the mid 70s. It got roundly panned by the critics, but I thought it was great. The music alone was awesome. But this one sounds much more professional. And with a stellar cast: John Goodman, Jeff Bridges, Jessica Lange and more.

Sounds like a bleak vision of life tho, and especially of America. It also sounds like Dylan is having fun with it all too.



Bush wants to prevent gay marriage.

The New York Times reports that President Bush is looking for legislation that would formally define marriage as that between a man and a woman.


I still don't think people fully get that these folks really want to repeal everything that was accomplished during the thirties and sixties, and pretty much the rest of the 20th century. They want to go back to white, male, Christian supremacy. They don't say so straight out, but that's the intention. They believe that that's what God wants, and that it is their duty to do this. If lives are lost or just destroyed, they're the lives of infidels, and don't matter.

The fact that the Supreme Court and most of the rest of the country feel entirely different about it also doesn't matter. These people don't believe in real democracy, or the rule of law, or constitutional process. They just want things their way. But any means necessary.



New forum software too.

In addition to moving the blog over to Movable Type, I've installed some great new forum software, Invision Power Board, and set up a much beter community center.

It's got discussion forums and all that, but it's much more than that. There's a calendar that you can use for both public and private events, mailing lists and such. You can have private forums that nobody else knows about and all sorts of stuff.

Still a lot to discover about the software though. It's a sophisticated British product, with tons of features. Please come visit and help figure it all out. Click on any of the Community Forum links, or go to www.galileocommunity.com.

I just set it up because I think people could use some sense of community these days. And I think it'd be a good place to expound on the history readings and other stuff. You can, of course, comment directly on any entry though. But comments in entries tend to get lost in the archives, while forum discussions are a bit longer lasting.

Anyway, all are welcome.



I keep forgetting the categories.

Movable Type allows one to assign categories, even multiple ones, to each entry. a feature that Blogger didn't have, and one I've really wanted. It allows you to organize and arrange entries in an unlimited number of ways. Especially since you can have multiple ones. That makes all of the difference.

Warning, though. I still have to go back through and assign categories to most of the entries I imported into this new setup. Most of them are just labeled general. If you select the general category listing, you'll get a huge file.

But I'll fix that soon. It will take some thought though. Have to define and set up the categories first, and then go through and assign them. It also takes keywords, which is also great, and which also opens up new possibilities.

But keying and categorizing aren't that easy. For instance, where does Bob Hope go? Film, music, entertainment, art, theatre? Lots of choices. And most of all, as the title indicates, you have to remember to assign them on each entry.

I actually forgot to do that for this entry. Ha. :)



Thanks for the memories.

Have to get in my own goodbye to the ever funny Bob Hope. Found some great links in all of the stories. Particularly on the official Bob Hope site itself. There's a link to the new Bob Hope Gallery of American Entertainment at the Library of Congress, I think, that's got some incredible American history to browse through.

The web site is a comprehensive look at the history of 20th entertainment through the souvenirs, papers and memorabilia he and his wife donated. The page on vaudeville was fascinating. I'll have to go back and make some more specific links and comments. Lots to see, and some amazing old graphics. Very well done.

Glad he made it to 100 though. Very classy touch. What a lucky fellow.

The New York Times has a nice special section on him.



OK, back to blogging.

OK, good, it felt good to make that first real post in this new site. I've been moving my blog from Blogger to Movable Type, and also moving my domains to another server. And reconceiving the whole site arrangement while I'm at it. Mainly because Movable Type is an awesome program, and it allows me to tie things together in a way I've never been able to do before. Really great.

I think the new site(s) are up and running well now. Still a few glitches with email at the new server. If mail to galileolibrary.com doesn't get through, try presky@yahoo.com. But I'm real happy with the new arrangement itself, and it's basically finished. Lots of room to add on things but ready to go. It should be pretty simple to operate. You can view the blog entries individually, or by the day, week or month. Hopefully it's self-explanatory.

What I've done is centered the different sites I had, my personal site, my weblog, the library, the world history and so on into the Galileo Library. So that's the weblog now, which in turn contains direct links to the history readings and all of the other stuff. This allows me to comment on and link to various things. And integrates better with the writer's services business I'm doing now.

So go to galileolibrary.com for my weblog now, and to find out what's up in general. It used to be newpajamas.com, but I think Galileo Library is more generic, and better expresses what it is. I see a whole new way to link the blog to my ebooks and readings now. The newpajamas.com link will still work though. I do like the name. :)



Dead finish first leg of tour

The good ol' Grateful Dead have finished up the first leg of their Summer Getaway tour, the part with Steve Winwood and Willie Nelson, with an amazing night run at Red Rocks amphitheatre in Colorado, where they've played 25 times over the years. Mickey Hart continues to blog the tour on his Trip Diary. Sounds like the last shows came off well.


Second leg is through the midwest with Bob Dylan and Robert Hunter, and then a couple of California shows. But just a few. Closest to me is in Irvine, don't know if I want to drive down there or not. It'd be a lot of hassle. But these shows are each jewels, something to savor, really worth it in the end. Dylan's a big dead head, these guys playing at their best could inspire to who knows what?

Robert Hunter, longtime songwriter for the Dead, has also been keeping a journal of his own recent touring. Also worth a read.

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