August 14, 2003
Iraqi children being held without trials.
Writing from Baghdad for the Guardian, Jonathan Steele
reports on the lengthy imprisonment without trial of hundreds of Iraqi children by American troops.
Hundreds of Iraqis civilians are being held in makeshift jails run by US troops - many without being charged or even questioned. And in these prisons are children whose parents have no way of locating them. Jonathan Steele reveals the grim reality of coalition justice in Baghdad
... After 33 days there, and 66 of detention in all, Ahmed was brought back to Baghdad and released. "At no time was I questioned or interrogated, or charged. It was just punishment without trial. When the Americans first came to Baghdad I was happy, but I don't want to speak about my feelings towards them now," he says.
One reason for Iraqi suspects' lengthy stays in the tented camps at Baghdad airport and Abu Ghraib is the coalition authority's decision to award itself 90 days before a detainee needs to be brought before a magistrate or judge. Amnesty International, which has produced a detailed memorandum of concern about the coalition's handling of law and order, points out a bizarre double standard: suspects held by the Iraqi police have to have their case reviewed by a magistrate within 24 hours.
Amnesty also reported that the coalition's rules require that suspects should be allowed to consult a lawyer within 72 hours of "induction" into a detention camp. In practice, there is no deadline for induction and "detainees appear to be invariably denied access to lawyers, sometimes for weeks," it said.
Another reason for the chaos is the coalition's failure to keep an accurate central list of detainees, with names in Arabic, to which searching families can refer.
... In their defence, coalition spokespeople point to the appalling legacy of the Saddam regime. "In his time people had to scrawl their names on cell walls to get remembered. There was no list of any kind," says Charles Heatly, a spokesperson seconded from the Foreign Office.
... The message is that things are getting better. But the occupation forces' shocking handling of civilian prisoners will not be forgotten quickly by the victims. They are one more example of how badly those who planned the war on Iraq failed to plan the peace.
And it doesn't look like it's going to be getting better any time soon. The US government just got a UN resolution allowing them to continue to run things without an effective UN supervision. In fact they're specifically looking for help from countries who don't care about that.
Relocating to LA for a bit.
I have to go down to LA for a bit and do some work, and so won't be on the web much for the next few days. If you want to see what's happening in LA these days,
LA Craigslist seems to be really hopping.
It's too bad there isn't that much work available in Santa Barbara. It's so beautiful I can't believe it. But most of the people here are either seniors who have retired, or students at the gorgeous colleges here. The "newly wed and nearly dead" they call it. Neither group does much business, or what they do they don't do here. The only thing booming here right now is real estate, and working on houses in general. Web design certainly isn't happening these days.
But I'll be back. I lived here for many years during the seventies and eighties, and it's much nicer than I remember it. In fact, the nicest place to live I've ever seen. I didn't appreciate it back then since I hadn't seen as many different places. But now I have and can appreciate what a wonder it is. Maybe make the money in LA, or travel there some, but it'd be worth it to live here.
If you want to see what's happening in Santa Barbara these days, try the
SB Independent. a weekly paper, and the
SB News Press, the local daily. You won't believe the real estate prices. Highest in the country I hear.
Microsoft exploiting the holes in its own software.
Business Week reports that Microsoft, who of course makes the software that has the security holes in it, is now getting into the business of protecting people from its own products.
In January, 2002, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates declared security to be the new top priority at the world's biggest software maker. In a speech to employees and in a public statement, he declared war on bugs and vowed to shore up product security. Of course, the bugs keep popping up, and serious security vulnerabilities continue to be exploited in Microsoft's ubiquitous operating system and applications. Witness the horrific MSBlaster worm that crashed untold thousands of Windows 2000 and XP machines worldwide during the week of Aug. 11.
So how's this for a delicious irony: Microsoft (MSFT ) now appears to be targeting security software products as a new growth opportunity. That's an area where the Colossus of Redmond has previously shown only faint interest, but now savvy observers say the giant is locking in on it.
Microsoft won't break out exact figures, however, most estimates say it will derive less than 1% of its estimated 2003 total revenues of $32 billion from security software and related services. This is in a global information-technology security market for hardware, software, and services that's now worth $17 billion and is set to grow at a 15% clip for the foreseeable future, according to John Pescatore, research director at tech consultancy Gartner. And that would seem to be an alluring opportunity for a company so dependent on the slow-growth Windows operating system and Office software suite. Not to mention so unable to build bug-free, unassaultably secure software itself.
So the fox is charging the chickens for protection from the wolves. OK, business in America.
Interview with Roger Ebert.
Via
The Progessive is this
interview with film critic Roger Ebert by Matthew Rothschild.
Q: With the hostility about free speech that we were talking about a little while ago, do you think we're entering into a New McCarthyism period?
Ebert: I don't know. I don't know that anyone is going to stand up in the Senate with a list, although there is, of course, a website with all the traitors listed on it. I mean, anyone can open up a website. The web is wonderful that way. I'm kind of glad the web is sort of totally anarchic. That's fine with me. I just feel that essentially the country is in the grip of some very bad information. I think a lot of working class people don't understand that their money is being stolen. I saw an interesting article that said 10 percent of the American public would put themselves in the top 1 percent in income.
Q: This is why Americans favor the repeal of the estate tax.
Ebert: Yeah, they all think they're going to leave a big estate, and they love Bush's theories because they all think they're going to get rich someday. But the fact is, most people are not going to be rich someday. And we've had a concerted policy of taking money away from the poor and giving it to the rich wholesale, and at the same time, we have the runaway corporations, and the greed. Look at [Richard] Perle's resignation; look what's really behind that. I feel ordinary people really should be angry. Yet a lot of them seem to be voting conservative and thinking that the conservatives represent them. And they don't.
Q: Why is that? You deal with people's perceptions in the movies and in your op-ed columns. Why do they have this odd perception?
Ebert: I think most people are more susceptible to prejudice than to reason. And the parrots of talk radio are just sending out the same stuff. When I look at my e-mails, I see the same Limbaugh rhetoric; apparently, people don't have any ideas of their own. And there's just this drumroll of anti-progressive thought.
He's such a bright man. His
own page of movie reviews at the
Chicago Sun-Times is always great reading. New reviews plus huge archives of old ones.
The Other Side - Twisted animations.
The Lazy Guide to Net Culture led me to
this utterly ridiculous site full of silly animations, most with a very definite attitude. Someone named Mata with the
matazone. Flash required.
"Less a piece of web art than a full on A-Z of urban isolation and alienation." -- Sam Jones, The Guardian.
Don't miss
The Ace of Spaces - A singing kitten animation, the first full length flash music video I've ever seen. Pretty trippy.
Woman in an Office is also rather interesting.
This is a nice way to display old photographs. And this is
sick, sick, sick.
This art is definitely advancing. Lately I've seen some beautiful pieces of work.
Lazy Guide to Net Culture: Random personal pictures.
Via the
Scotsman, and a good example of why it's one of my favorite sites, is this ongoing series,
Lazy Guide to Net Culture.
This one focues on people's personal pictures. Quotes by Stewart Kirkpatrick.
If you want to appear like you’re at the cutting edge of net culture but can’t be bothered to spend hours online, then never fear. Scotsman.com’s pathetic team of geeks, freaks and gimps will do the hard work for you. While you sip wine, read a book or engage in normal social interaction, they will burn out their retinas staring at badly designed web pages and dodge creeps in chatrooms to prepare for you: Scotsman.com’s lazy guide to net culture.
... Personal photos have fuelled the next evolutionary stage in blogging: photoblogs. These are, as the name suggests, online journals illustrated with pictures. (OK, it's not the most earth-shaking innovation but it is proving very popular.)
Photoblogs.org contains a list of fairly decent examples.
Even we at scotsman.com have succumbed and have an Edinburgh Festivals photoblog
here.
Quite a few more links there. Even better are these random picture generators.
By far the best use of personal pictures on the internet can be found at
diddly.com/random.
Dave Mattson's Random Personal Picture Finder generates random numbers and puts them in the default filename structure of some makes of digital cameras. It then runs these through a
Google image search.
The result is a page full of pictures with those filenames (because they were taken by a digital camera and put online without the filename being changed). They are pulled from people's websites across the world.
If you want, you can click on the images to see the different website where they appear. But the point of the Random Personal Picture Finder is that it misses out the middleman completely. Instead of having to wade through commentary, personal recollections and an account of what Tiddles had for breakfast you can just look at what pictures are being put online.
Warning: you can waste a lot of time looking at these. I've resisted for the most part so far, but there are some talented people out there.
Luckily I don't have a digital camera yet, or I'd be doing it myself. I've seen a lot of beautiful country lately. It'd be nice to wander around and take photos and put them up. Pretty soon it'll be possible to do it entirely wireless from almost anywhere.
A couple sites they don't mention, but which are two of my favorites for photos are:
burningbird.net, from the American midwest, I think, and
Andrea's site, from Germany.
Add: Just checked out photoblogs.org a little. Like I say, you could waste a lot of time, they have a LOT. The first one I tried,
George Bailey's Nature Images, was beautiful. Incredible colors. So is this one,
Digiteyesed Photography, by Sean David McCormick.
I can't believe some of these photo sites. I've done some sites, and it takes a lot to build sites of this kind of complexity, especially involving lots of graphics that must load quickly. Impressive. And photographers seem to possess the ability to focus on detail that also makes great sites.
Pirates attack ships in Malacca Strait.
The
NY Times reports that the latest in the global oil wars extends to the sea.
Heavily armed pirates have attacked two ships in the Strait of Malacca in the last week and are still holding the captain, chief engineer and an assistant engineer from one of the vessels as hostages, a sign of continued security problems in one of the world's busiest sea lanes.
Because both incidents appear to involve pirates operating from bases on the Indonesian side of the strait, the International Maritime Bureau regional piracy center in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, has urged vessels passing through the strait to stay close to the Malaysian side of the waterway.
With half the world's oil shipments by sea passing from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Malacca to east Asia, the strait trails only the Strait of Hormuz at the mouth of the gulf as an oil shipping lane. Fears that pirates and terrorists might join forces have been high since last autumn, when a speedboat packed with explosives hit a French tanker off Yemen, the Limburg, in an attack attributed to Al Qaeda.
The first of the two most recent attacks took place last Saturday night, when a large Taiwanese fishing trawler, the Dongyih, was fired upon by two tugboats at the northwest entrance to the strait, off the northern coast of the Indonesian island of Sumatra.
I don't remember hearing about Al Qaeda using speedboats to attack tankers. You'd think the novelty of that alone would attract some attention. Article goes on to say attacks in those straits aren't uncommon at all. Some worse than ever.
Pirates armed with assault rifles attacked three chemical tankers in the Strait of Malacca in February and March. During one of the attacks, the vessel traveled down the strait for an hour with no one in control.
Free news getting scarcer.
I noticed this morning that both the Guardian and the LA Times have made certain sections of their sites subscriber only. I can't say I blame them, but it's disappointing. Especially if you want to link to articles, and have the links remain for the long-term. The LA Times has long required free registration for visitors, but now it's starting to charge. Oh well.
What I really dislike, and what I think is a bad business practice, is this increasingly common practice of just charging for separate services or sections of the paper. It's frustrating when you click a link in a free area and get a "subscribers only" message. And having to keep track of which sections are available and which aren't makes for an unpleasant browsing section.
I also think that they're still charging too much. At least more than the web will bear. They seem to think that if they just charge a little bit for certain sections people won't notice or mind, and maybe they're right. But I always get the feeling I'm being nickel and dimed to death. I'd rather pay $10 a month for a paper, $10 a year would be more realistic though, than $2 for this section, $3 for that one and so on. It's confusing and sort of scares customers away.
The part of the Times that occasioned these thoughts was their CalendarLive section. Entertainment news, that is. Somehow I think that if anything really important happened in this area that I'd have no trouble hearing about it. Do they really think people will pay to hear about this or that star's latest contract, or a movie review when there are thousands of free reviews already available?
3,000 die in French heat wave.
Via the
LA Times and AP is
this report on the effects in France of the devastating heat wave hitting Europe and other places this summer.
About 3,000 people have died in France of heat-related causes since abnormally high temperatures swept across the country about two weeks ago, the health ministry estimated Thursday.
It was the government's first official death toll estimate. One of the few organizations to issue an estimate, France's emergency hospital physicians' association, had earlier this week said the death toll was at least 100.
"We can now state what's happening to us is a veritable epidemic," Health Minister Jean-Francois Mattei said on France-Inter radio.
Over the past few days, various city and regional governments had issued death estimates in their areas. The national government said it was working to compile full, nationwide figures.
Morgues and funeral directors have reported skyrocketing demand for their services since the heat wave took hold. General Funeral Services, France's largest undertaker, said it handled some 3,230 deaths from Aug. 6-12, compared to 2,300 on an average week in the year -- a 37 percent jump.
Over 3,000 people? Wow. That's amazing. More people killed by global warming than on 9/11. And this is just France. The same thing seems to be happenng throughout Europe. Pretty frightening.
LA Times covers recall.
The LA Times has started a
special section to track California's absurd recall campaign. Lots of stories of what is shaping up as one of the strangest campaigns in American political history.
Guardian's Onlineblog
The
Guardian seems to be the first major paper to really get on the blogging phenomenon. Besides their regular
weblog page they have a separate
Onlineblog where they cover blogging and related issues. Pretty nice page and links as well.
Here's some interesting comments on blogging itself.
Right: first, the technology’s reason for existing is a Good Thing: it’s letting people express themselves on the web more easily. I think freedom of expression is important. To argue against something that allows such expression, by removing the very real barriers to entry of coding and designing and FTPing and the rest, is a lot like arguing against freedom of speech (as Jack has said here before). When people bash these websites, what they are often saying is that such freedom should only be granted to those who meet their criteria as interesting, or literate, or clever.
Second, if what some people produce using this new-found freedom isn't very good, how much does it matter? On the web, there's an unlimited amount of space to hold all this stuff. Don't like what you see? Move on. It’s all pretty democratic. People don’t need to visit your page. And unlike TV, radio or newsprint, you’re not filling airwaves, or newsprint, that could be better used in another way.
A GI blogs from Iraq.
Via the Guardian's
weblog page, is this ongoing journal by an American GI stationed in Iraq, called
...turningtables....
Really an amazing thing, that you can read the daily thoughts of an ordinary soldier in a war zone. Lots of links to other war news and bloggers as well. Here's a commentary on this particular blog from
War in Context.
Here he describes chatting with an Iraqi foreman of an electric repair crew.
while i sit there next to the foreman...i tell him how the weather in arizona is about the same as here right now...that peaks his interest and he turns closer to me..."arizona?"..."yeah it's by california"..."california!?"...i can tell he's heard of cali...every one seems to have heard of that state...hollywood and baywatch...the land of the beautiful people...i tell him how even though it is really hot here it is nothing compared to afghanistan...he's really into what i'm saying now...he has many questions about afghanistan...i tell him that the weather was very extreme there and the people were very very poor...i ask him about what he thinks of all that is going on..."do you think america did the right thing"...he thinks for a few seconds..."yes and no"...he tells me that the old regime was very bad...and just about anything is better...but he is a little unpleased that we are going to be here for so long...but he understands why...he says a lot of the iraqi people are acting very crazy...stealing and killing...raping and littering..."they think freedom is doing absolutely anything that you want...they don't understand what freedom is...they are creating an anarchy not freedom"...he tells me about the gangs...they steal anything and everything..."they are cutting the copper electrical lines and pulling them up...they drive them to jordan and sell them on the black market...they will steal your car at gunpoint and sell it across the border"..."yeah we have gangs like that too in america"..."really"...he is very surprised to hear this...they must not see much american gang activity on the television pictures of california..."yeah it's called car jacking in the states"...he looks at me and cranes his neck trying to understand what i just said..."car vacking"...yeah something like that...
And here are some thoughts on the French and the war in general.
i think it's hilarious when people bash on the french because they didn't support this war...the whole 'you're either for us or against us' spiel is so old...i'm here in freaking baghdad and i don't even know if i'm for us or against us...changing the name of french fries to freedom fries...and french toast to freedom toast...so petty...i guess we are pretty quick to forget which country helped make our country...and even when america gained it's independence with the help of france...i'm sure they didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts...they hated england...and they had an agenda...i guess all those france haters think we should pack up the statue of liberty and send it back to the land of the eiffel tower...they did give it to us you know...
no political leadership does what is right simply because what is right is the right thing to do...that reason simply is not entirely worth it to the powers that be...people get real caught up in thinking that there are actually rules in the world scheme...i don't think that's the case...it's all about who comes out on top...at any cost...it pays to be the top dog...because you can make and break the rules...do i think that this is right??? hell no...it's so screwed up that i want to start screaming...
I really wonder what these vets are going to say and do when, if that is, they come home. Popular mythology is that the Vietnam war protesters were against the Vietnam vets; but actually it was the vets themselves coming back from there that began telling the truth about what was happening and starting the protests.
August 12, 2003
Following California's crazy politics.
Via Tom Tomorrow's
This Modern world, is this
Rough And Tumble guide to the latest California's insanity. "A daily snapshot of California Public Policy and Politics" they say. With 500 candidates for a job no one in their right mind would want, we're going to need all of the help we can get. Interesting little tidbits of information. Such as this one.
Arnold Schwarzenegger, labeled by polls the early leader in California's recall election, did not vote in five of the past 11 statewide elections, records revealed Monday. Schwarzenegger aides said they were researching four of those five elections to see why absentee ballots were requested by the actor but not recorded as being received by elections officials. They said the actor, an Austrian immigrant who became a U.S. citizen in 1983, takes voting seriously.
Sure seems as if everyone is assuming that Davis will be recalled, even though the success rate for these kinds of elections is rather low. But we'll see. I think it's sad that 35 million people are choosing to blame one person for their problems and greed, but that's Californians for you.
Arnold may be a more entertaining governor, by far, but more effective? Permit me to doubt. California is a huge state, in all ways, and its problems are legion. It's going to take extensive experience and hard work to solve its problems, not sound bites. And certainly not more business. Not with so much traffic that it's practically impossible to even get to work as it is. But what do I know?
My ebooks are finally online.
It only took ten years or so, but I finally managed to get my collection of ebooks up on the web. They've been up there for downloading as Mac files, but now they're all available for online reading.
Check it out, the complete list is on the
ebooks home page, which is also frequently linked to within this site.
You can go directly to each book by the links on the right side of the home page, or those in the panel inside the frame sets. The panel is particularly neat, since it allows you to sort of browse around the library without leaving where you are. For some reason the so-called web experts don't like frames, but I think this approach is quite useful.
Oh, the old Mac books are also listed on the ebooks page, all now available for freeware downloading. If you're an oldtime Mac fan, especially a Hypercard one, you might want to check these out. They run great under OSX, and of course under earlier systems as well.
The world of Vermeer.
Via
Dublog is this great site,
The Essential Vermeer, devoted to the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer.
The complete catalog it looks like, plus videos, newsletters, tons of links to academic and other publications and so on. He didn't do very many works, but each one is a carefully considered jewel.
Extraordinary images at Dublog.
Via
Booknotes. Absolutely extraordinary images and links by Chris Waltrip over at
Dublog. All different kinds. Some photographs, some computer art, all different.
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