Sleepycatz

Sadness & Hope

I have been slammed at work all week, so I haven’t had any time to devote to things unrelated to the broken Internet. Therefore I have a lot of catching up to do this weekend. But I have been deeply struck by the horrific and slightly hopeful bits of information coming out of Burma this week.

About ten days ago, Buddhist monks in Burma began protesting the repressive government’s increase of fuel prices. Over the next few days the protests continued to grow as students and others joined in. The government responded by sending in combat troops and murdering several of the monks.

Throughout the protests Burmese citizens and expatriates pushed pictures, stories, and videos out on to the Net to illustrate the horror of their plight. Using blogs, file sharing, and e-mail ordinary Burmese cried out to the world for attention. If there is anything repressive regimes cannot stomach it is attention. Approximately thirty hours ago, the Burmese regime tried killing the voices of the people by cutting Internet service and shutting down Cell systems. But it is too late. Communications have been established; alternate routes for information to travel have been set up; words and pictures continue to flow out of the country.

I’ll never claim to be more then marginally familiar with the history and political situation in Burma. I know something of its post-colonial history — the wacky Ne Win, who superstitiously reissued Burmese currency so all denominations would be a factor of nine (his favorite number); thus, wiping out years of Burmese savings. I am aware the Burmese regime uses rape as a weapon against ethnic minorities and prisoners to sew fear, shame, and compliance. And, like many, I have watched the plight of Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyl. But I am also aware that the Burmese state has been, and continues to be, protected from international pressure by China.

It is in this last area where some difference can be made. China desperately wishes the upcoming Olympics to be seen as a great success and renewal for their country. Already pressure is being placed on them to change their Burmese policy, but a slightly more pressure may provide the tipping point. The US Campaign for Burma has begun organizing events and a petition to persuade the Chinese to change their policies. I urge people to sign their online petition.

At a time when so many leaders claim to be acting in the name of their people, let us listen to the people of Burma. They are calling, and maybe we can help.

For updates, blogs and news sites like Ko-Htike’s, Dawn_01, Burma Diegest, the Democratic Voice of Burma, and, of course, the BBC have some of the latest news and images coming out of the country.

Expulsion from the Garden

Someone alerted me this evening to the story of Steve Bitterman, who was dismissed from teaching at Southwestern Community College in Iowa for telling his students that not to take the story of the Garden of Eden literally. Students viewing a simulcast of the class at a neighboring college complained that Bitterman had denigrated their religion and threatened to sue; the college responded by firing the adjunct professor. Here’s the irony: Bitterman was teaching a class in western civilization.

Anyone who has had to go through the intro to western civ sections as a college freshman understands that it was the re-introduction of reason and logic from the ancients which fueled the expansion of western knowledge and civilization. Even as early as the fifth century St. Augustine wrote:

It not infrequently happens that something about the earth, about the sky, about other elements of this world, about the motion and rotation or even the magnitude and distances of the stars, about definite eclipses of the sun and moon, about the passage of years and seasons, about the nature of animals, of fruits, of stones, and of other such things, may be known with the greatest certainty by reasoning or by experience, even by one who is not a Christian. It is too disgraceful and ruinous, though, and greatly to be avoided, that he [the non-Christian] should hear a Christian speaking so idiotically on these matters, and as if in accord with Christian writings, that he might say that he could scarcely keep from laughing when he saw how totally in error they are.

By rejecting the idea that reason should trump doctrine, Bitterman’s students are rejecting the very core of the class they are taking. They are telling their college that knowledge should not challenge their preconceptions or beliefs. By firing Bitterman the college has sided with this ignorance. Instead of telling the offended students that they should grow up — or perhaps find a different class — the college has said all students now must bathe in the ignorance of the few. They have sacrificed Bitterman to the modern inquisition of fundamentalism.

It is very apparent that if the complaining students have their way there would be no western civilization, and certainly no study of it. For they have decided to reject the fruit of the tree of knowledge and embrace ignorance. Unfortunately, they want to drag the rest of us to their fairy tale land with them.

The Grand Diversion

The United States Senate, the most deliberative body in the world, this week affirmed,in a bold move, by a vote of 72 to 25 that

A recent attack through a full-page advertisement in the New York Times by the liberal activist group, Moveon.org, impugns the honor and integrity of General Petraeus and all the members of the United States Armed Forces.

Just to be clear, the advertisement did not suggest that Gen. Petraeus received his bronze star under false pretenses or behaved questionably under fire; yet, these assertions were made quite regularly against a decorated officer by those now rushing to defend the honor of the military. Additionally, the doggerel presented in the MoveOn ad did not go so far as to suggest that Gen. Petraeus is an enemy of the United States, as so many others have suggested, using a similar lyrical device, of a sitting United States Senator. There is an inherent hypocrisy in the Republican discourse being foisted on America. Under the rules of this discourse proponents of the administration are always presenting logical facts while those who question the administration are always ‘playing politics’ or worse, unpatriotic cowards. The fact that a minority of Democrats in the Senate failed to vote against the measure only reinforces how successful this hypocrisy has become.

Meanwhile, on the same day that the US Senate voted to condemn the uncouth folks at MoveOn.org, three American soldiers lost their lives in Iraq. That’s three Americans who will never see their family or loved ones again; three Americans who cannot pursue their dreams and hopes; three Americans who cannot participate in debate over Iraq.

Of course, unsatisfied with the bloodshed in Iraq, on the same day the condemnation of political speech was approved by the Senate another was introduced by supporters of Gen. Petraeus, one which would allow the President open authority to extend his war to Iran. And it can be guaranteed that anyone questioning the need to offer up more human suffering in sacrifice for the honor of of military will be dismissed as unamerican or defeatist.

Billions and Billions

Yesterday, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell offered some enlightening and frightening testimony before the judiciary committee. McConnell testified to what a number of us have been for years:

[the] Director of National Intelligence acknowledged that the terror attacks of Sept. 11, which he invoked to justify expanding US spy powers, “could have been prevented” under existing laws if intelligence agencies had “connected the dots” in analyzing intelligence.

That’s right, there was no real need for the Patriot Act, FISA revisions, or the myriad of other ‘enhancements’ to surveillance laws to prevent another 9/11. Those events could have been prevented but for the incompetence of the agencies involved. Instead, we have provided the alphabet soup of security agencies with more unfettered access to our personal data. Has this made us more secure? Well, the numbers suggest that perhaps we are less secure.

When questioned about the number of Americans currently under surveillance, McConnell responded: “It’s a very small number considering that there are billions of transactions [intercepted] every day.” Let us consider this for a moment: if the agencies are intercepting billions of transactions a day how can these be processed? Assuming that McConnell was engaging in some hyperbole, let’s assume 1bn transactions a day. Throw away 50 percent for obvious misses, and assume an average of 10 seconds to review and classify a transaction (a very generous average, given translation time) would mean that it would take 155.5 man years (56,757.5 days) to review one day’s collection of data. This enormous amount of data, obviously, cannot be properly analyzed, so they are simply collecting and storing it for future reference and correlation. This suggests that quality of intelligence data has simply been replaced by quantity. So the odds of actually preventing an event are actually less then they were prior to this massive collection simply due to the volume that needs to be plowed through. In other words: analysts would be unable to “connect the dots”, because the dot are buried in mounds of background noise.

McConnell, and his supporters, though keep insisting that huge amounts of data collection is necessary to prevent an attack. If the data was there prior to 9/11 to prevent that attack and could not be analyzed properly, how can exponentially more data be handled to prevent an attack? It can’t . For the supporters of the security state the entire debate is really about pushing acceptance of wholesale government surveillance not about useful intelligence gathering.

It’s Raining Money

The Fed today decided to drop the target rate for Federal funds by 50 base points, to 4.75 percent. The board felt as though this was necessary to help stabilize investments in the mortgage and stock markets after the recent unpleasantness related to default rates and MSO devaluations. Of course, this sent the stock markets into a buying frenzy — putting the DOW at +300, as I write this. Wall Street loves cheap money that can be bandied about and thrown into risky investments. But at the same time stock trading surged, the global ramifications also became apparent: the dollar dropped to a record low and gold is approaching a record high — two signs that overall confidence in the American economy are waining. As borkafatty succinctly stated on Calculated Risk:

Consider this: In 2000, when Bush took office, gold was $273 per ounce, oil was $22 per barrel and the euro was worth $.87 per dollar. Currently, gold is over $700 per ounce, oil is over $80 per barrel, and the euro is nearly $1.40 per dollar. . . According to economist Martin Feldstein, “The falling dollar and rising food prices caused market-based consumer prices to rise by 4.6% in the most recent quarter.” (WSJ). That’s 18.4% per year—and yet, Bernanke is cutting interest rates and further fueling inflation?!?

With this cut, it appears the Fed is propping up a failing economic model. For the past several years, the American economy has been built on consumer spending and financial shenanigans. 70 percent of US economic activity is related to this consumer spending which has been fed by low interest rates resulting in ever rising consumer debt. As real world wages have remained stagnant, and food and transportation costs continue to rise, this system becomes unsustainable. At some point creditors will have to be paid and consumer spending will have to decline significantly. Without artificially high consumer spending a large portion of service jobs will disappear causing further recession. Our present economic situation is built on an illusion of free markets and a never ending, never inflating, money supply. This is the Bush policy of neo-reality applied to economics — “If I say everything is good, then by nature it is good”. This administration has tried to force their reality on the American people for years whether is was with regards to Iraq, Afghanistan, the War on Terror, Global Warming, or the economy.

Badges? We Don’t Have No Stinking Badges

The Iraqi government said today that it would revoke the license of the private security firm BlackwaterUSA, due to the reckless actions of its employees. Blackwater is is best known for supplying the contractors who were killed in Fallujah — an event which sparked a major siege of the city costing thousands of lives. Lesser known, of course, is their construction of private military bases in California and Illinois for training, and their deployment to New Orleans shortly after Katrina. The problem with the Iraqi government announcement is that Blackwater does not currently have a license to operate in Iraq to revoke. According PSCAI, Blackwater started the certification process, but hasn’t completed it. Blackwater operates in Iraq under contracts provided by the State Department and CIA, and it can be guaranteed that neither one of those organization is going to take its queues from the government of Iraq. So what’s all the hubbub about then? The news may suggest that the Iraqi government is getting tired of the wild west antics of private security contractors, or it may suggest that the Iraqi government is trying to show they are not the obedient puppies of American corporate interests. Nonetheless, very little, if anything will change with the Iraqi government’s announcement. If nothing else it is simply a diversion to suggest a more just reality where none really exists; for — you would imagine — in a just world a government would be able to expel a private foreign army from its soil. But not in Iraq.

Very Cool

The worldwide lack of potable water is one of the least covered crisis facing man. Michael Pritchard, of Ipswitch UK, decided to do something about it after watching coverage of the great tsunami of 2004 and hurricane Katrina in 2005. Mr. Pritchard was shocked that people had to wait for days to receive potable drinking water. He set out to invent a portable, chemical-free, filtration system; and viola the “Life Saver” bottle was born.

The bottle incorporates a filter system which can remove bacteria, viruses, and foreign matter down to 15nm. The bottle is designed to treat about 4000 ltr per filter. Unfortunately, he bottle remains a little expensive at £190 — about $400; however, pricing will no doubt drop as manufacturing increases and variations appear on the market. This kind of personalized filter offers hope for the millions in disaster struck areas around the world, as well as those in under-developed regions with no water treatment facilities.