Maliki: No wall in Baghdad
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2007 22:26 - Category: Anti-war ;
Even the puppets can no longer stomach the actions of the invaders.
Archive for April 22nd, 2007
Warming climate reverses sex of lizards
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2007 18:42 - Category: Climate change ;
High temperatures can reverse the sex of dragon lizards before they hatch, turning males into females.
Leading neocons used this to angrily denounce “the liberal agenda that perverts our basic values, as well as our friends in the dragon lizard kingdom” before announcing their new anti-terrorist initiative, “Leave No Dissenter Untortured.”
The politics of saying ‘genocide’
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2007 08:47 - Category: Uncategorized Tags: Armenian genocide;
More than 90 years after the Armenian genocide, the U.S. is deadlocked in a humiliating linguistic debate.
The L.A. Times has an excellent backgrounder on why D.C. still refuses to call it genocide. The primary reason is they don’t want to upset Turkey where they have an air base, among other things. No matter that this makes a mockery of stated US goals to end genocides elsewhere. and invites charges of massive hypocrisy.
So in February 2005, while speaking in California, [former ambassador to Armenia John Marshall] Evans said: “I will today call it the Armenian genocide. I think we, the U.S. government, owe you, our fellow citizens, a more frank and honest way of discussing this problem.” For that remark he was recalled from his post so that Washington could get back to the business of evading the historical truth.
It’s important to note that previous presidents. Bill Clinton included, also refused to recognize the genocide, and for the same slimy reasons.
A bill to recognize the genocide is in Congress and looks like it could pass. But Democrats in their usual timid manner have delayed the vote until after the upcoming April 24 anniversary of the event. Goodness, they wouldn’t want to do anything rash, we’re only talking about the slaughter of 1.5 million people here.
Tech bloggers and Virginia Tech
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2007 00:20 - Category: Unfiled ;
Cluetrain derails in Blacksburg, Virginia, says Rogers Cadenhead, citing a number of tech bloggers who appeared to use the tragedy as a way to hype their favorite technologies, apparently oblivious of the carnage or the impression they were giving.
He has a point. It’s not that the tech bloggers are insensitive, far from it. Nor is it a matter of financial self-interest. Nope, it’s that too often the tech blogger world spins madly around in a tiny hyperspace, making endless self-referential comments, rarely peeking its head into the outside world, thinking its own universe is the one the matters the most. It’s not.
Making comments like that, especially so soon after the bloodbath, is politically naive to the point of obtuseness. I mean, they may be on the Cluetrain when it comes to tech, but they haven’t even found the station when it comes to politics.
Politics in the real world requires timing, sensitivity, and knowing what to say and when to say it. That’s how you get your point across, that’s how you win allies and change things. Not by immediately blogging about how a tragedy might result in smarter phone systems or pump up vlogging, then being astonished when others are appalled by your insensitivity. And again, these bloggers aren’t jerks. I know most of them by reputation. They’re good folks - but sometimes tone deaf when it comes to the political implications of what they say.
The needle and the damage done
Bob Morris @ Apr 22nd 2007 00:08 - Category: Unfiled ;
Call them Fred and Sally. They met in Alcoholics Anonymous, both were drug addicts trying to stay clean. They didn’t get it, couldn’t get it. Instead they went back to drugs, while their friends (including me) watched as they ended up mostly homeless, smoking crack, shooting drugs, and destroying what was left of their lives.
He blew up a successful business and now lives at the Salvation Army, and might be clean, we don’t know. He burned too many bridges and is too untrustworthy to get close to now. She was recently found dead, overdosed on cocaine. She leaves a sixteen year old daughter who now has no parents (thankfully her grandmother stepped in a while back and is raising her.)
A classmate of mine destroyed his life on alcohol, abandoning his family. When his sister finally tracked him down, she learned he was on life support in a hospital. She called his son, saying you need to know your father is dying. He said, they can pull out the tubes for all I care.
That’s the damage that addiction and alcoholism do. There’s many victims and too much collateral damage. And none of it had to happen.
I recently met a man whose father was a heroin addict for decades. He never knew his dad until his final two years, after he got clean. He said, wow, my dad was a great guy once he stopped using, and they had a good two years until the physical damage of decades of drug use caught up with his father and killed him. But he died having a son who cared for him, rather than one who loathed him. That’s what getting clean and sober can do. Families heal. Lives get put back together again.
(I’m not a bystander in all of this. Today, I celebrate seventeen years without alcohol and drugs. A fitting day indeed. Earth Day 1990 was the day I returned to the planet.)
