What Happens When I Press This Button? - Taking over the world, one button-push at a time..

Why the SCOTUS Guantanamo Decision Is Meaningless

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 13:12:49 -0500

Lots of noise is being noised about the Supreme Court's 5-3 decision ruling the military tribunals contrary to military law and the Geneva Convention. Some folks seem to be under the impression that this means the end of Gitmo, or that the Administration has been told that everything it's doing is Bad and Wrong.

It isn't, and it hasn't.

What the Administration has been told -- and admittedly quite sternly -- is that it acted without the support of the law. That is, Congress never told the Bush administration it could set up tribunals like this. The Uniform Code of Military Justice does not contain any definition that can be applied here. It's also been told that its information gathering methods are a violation of the Geneva Conventions and that the Conventions do apply to these detainees.

Getting back into the swing

Wed, 22 Mar 2006 11:05:10 -0600

Right, so, when I started this thang, it was with the thought that I had lots of thoughts in my head that were better suited to this sort of environment than, say, LiveJournal. Mainly because LiveJournal fosters the idea of "community" and hence, more personal sharing, while an independent blog/column/whatever is exactly that -- independent. And I liked that idea.

Well, I actually do have all those thoughts in my head, yet, but for the last two months, I have gotten caught up in a strange kind of writer's block.

It's not that I have nothing to say. It's not even that I don't know how to say it. It's that, once I've written the article in my head, the actual effort of typing it out so others can read it (note how I presume others read when I post stuff :-D ) seems too much like work.

F**king Spammers

Thu, 09 Mar 2006 14:59:31 -0600

It was bound to happen eventually.

We got spammed.

I've deleted (I think) all the spam comments. Readers now must create an account if they want to comment here. Sorry.

Readers from LiveJournal who don't want to create yet another account somewhere are welcome to just leave any commentary on LiveJournal. I'll probably read it eventually, if not right away.

Thoughts after the passing of Andreas Katsulas

Wed, 15 Feb 2006 17:00:12 -0600

First of all, an apology for the long drought here. I shan't bother making excuses. I'm just going to start writing stuff again and hopefully do it more often :-)

Now, on with the show.

As many of you already know, Andreas Katsulas, who is best known for his role as Ambassador G'Kar on the science fiction series Babylon 5, passed away on 13 February 2006 from lung cancer.

To a fanboy like me, this is a fairly significant loss. I'm both blunt enough and honest enough to admit that it isn't so much Mr Katsulas' loss that I'm speaking of, but that of G'Kar.

Is G'Kar just a fictional character? Yes, he is. But there's really no question of anyone else ever portraying that fictional character now that Mr Katsulas is gone. Completely aside from JMS's pronouncement, it simply wouldn't make sense. No one else would have the right cadences, the right facial expressions, needed to bring the character alive in the same way.

Voice, actually, is what most comes to mind when I think of Mr Katsulas. With his face largely hidden within the prosthetic makeup that transformed him from a human being into a Narn, his incredibly expressive voice was a large part of what brought the character to life. Deep, sonorous, capable of an incredible range of emotional expression, Mr Katsulas' voice enabled JMS to make all the many transformations of G'Kar's personality -- from freedom fighter (in his backstory) to dissolute and corrupt politician, back to freedom fighter and from there to mystic and statesman -- and keep it credible.

Fans of classic Star Trek could always hope, as late as 1999 when De Kelley died, for more productions involving the classic cast. Fans of Star Trek: The Next Generation and B5's contemporary Star Trek: Deep Space Nine can still hope for more, some day, as all their principal cast members are still alive.

But Babylon 5 fans must now come to terms with the fact that there will never be any more Babylon 5. Between the death of Richard Biggs (Dr. Stephen Franklin) last year, and Andreas Katsulas this year, there really wouldn't be much point. You could postulate stories that included others in the B5 cast but not them...but you'd always know they were missing, and somehow, a lot of the fun would be missing with them.

This might be just as well. Most of JMS's attempts to extend the B5 universe past the original series really haven't fared so well. But still, the part of me that's still a fanboy, despite my efforts to grow up, is saddened to realise there will probably never even be an attempt, now.

A Space Phone Odyssey: Prelude

Sun, 15 Jan 2006 15:35:50 -0600

For the three or four readers out there who don't already know this particular prejudice of mine, I prefer not to carry a separate PDA and mobile phone. I find the functionality of the two devices to be sufficiently complementary that there's no really good reason not to have them married in a single device. I need the functionality of both devices to survive my busy and geeky lifestyle, because my memory is crap, and my handwriting is crap, and I'm hardly ever home.

A little less than a year ago, I found my old portable brain, a Kyocera 7135, was becoming inadequate for my needs. The biggest issue initially was not the feature-set of the K7135, but the instability of the hardware. Three successive handsets each failed me in various ways that pointed to hardware, rather than software flakiness. Eventually that, combined with a jones for a particular feature, sent me looking elsewhere.

It was kinda sad, too, because K7135 was a Trek Geek's dream. It looked similar to a 1967-era Star Trek communicator, although the top half of the clamshell was actually functional, containing the earpiece and display screen, rather than just a protective cover. In the hand, it felt not unlike I imagined a Trek communicator would feel. It had an interesting feature whereby one could have it play sounds when you flipped it open, and one of those sounds, called 'Dolphin' by Kyocera, sounded suspiciously like a Trek communicator's chirp; and since it could play converted MP3s as ringers, one could also make it sound the Trek-style bosun's whistle when it rang.

Software-wise, the older Palm platform that was running on the thing was actually pretty good. It worked well as an actual CDMA mobile telephone, both held up to the ear and via a headset. It had rudimentary voice dialing. It was based on the PalmPilot, so it included an address book and calendar functionality I was used to (having had a separate PalmPilot for quite a while). Text messaging was fairly easy to do. There was a simple but functional web browser that worked over Verizon's now-aging 1xRTT data network at about 14.4Kibps. The built-in mail program was a bit lame, but Eudora for Palm ran on it as well, enabling me to get basic access to mailboxes if I needed it. It had only a numeric keypad rather than a keyboard, but until about a year ago, I didn't really care.

Two things started me looking for a new spacephone (correctly pronounced 'spaaaaaaaaaaaaace phoooooooooone' unless you're in a hurry or the joke's wearing thin in coversation). The first was the aforementioned instability. It was ridiculous, in my opinion, that having paid a not insignificant sum for the thing, each successive incarnation would flake out on me after only a few months. Verizon were very good about replacement, but that didn't change the annoyance of having the thing flip out and forget everything it was supposed to know about my life.

The second was a week spent at a conference at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. As advanced a city as SF is, you would think a convention center like the Moscone—which harbours many a geek convention—would have WiFi permeating the place, but in fact, there were only two rather weak hot-spots set up by the Embedded Systems Conference people, themselves, and they didn't reach into the classrooms. Yes, I'm that much of an addict—I wanted at least minimal connectivity to peeps and my stuff while I was absorbing nifty new knowledge, and the only way I could get it at all was by using the rarely used Internet features of my portable brain.

Shortly after this trip, the second instance of the K7135 I'd owned started to go wonky. I let Verizon send me a replacement again, but I'd also determined it was time to move on. I started looking at the state of the art, and was really sort of disappointed.

The only Palm-based entries were the Treo600 and 650. The 600 was reputedly pretty solid, but actually lacked certain features I'd liked about the 7135. The main advantage was the full keyboard. The Treo650, at the time, updated the feature set fairly significantly, including Bluetooth support for wireless headsets and support for Verizon's new, faster data system, 1xEVDO, but was reported to be dreadfully unreliable. I'm told that many of its problems have been fixed by now, but at the time, it was really quite horrid.

I looked at the Blackberry offerings at the time. Blackberries are reputedly very stable (their primary audience is business, and it shows). It looked like Research In Motion (RIM) were groping toward something really well-rounded, but their devices were still heavily geared toward the messaging side, with somewhat lackluster performance as actual telephones. Bluetooth was only starting to appear on some models (and not yet on the full-keyboard models), and other features I like—admittedly chrome, like MP3 or WAV ringers that could be customised— were absent. There was also some question as to whether RIM was going to survive a nasty little patent fight they were (and still are) embroiled in with patent shark NTP, Inc.

That left me with Windows Mobile, and a decision I've come to regret. The device that had the feature set I was looking for in the end was variously known as the XV6600 on Verizon, the PC6600 on Sprint, and the Siemens 66 on Cingular. They were all the same device, made by a mysterious Chinese entity known as HTC. Decent but not fantastic performance as a phone, a slide-away keyboard, a nice screen, good handwriting recognition (even with my lousy handwriting), a half-decent browser and mail capabilities, Bluetooth, including the ability to synchronise data over Bluetooth. It looked kinda cool, as well, although like nearly all similar entrants in the field, it felt a bit clunky in the hand. But Bluetooth means never having to actually put a phone next to your ear, anyway.

Initially, I really kind-of liked it, despite its Windows provenance. I had occasion to use the wireless data features almost immediately, and found them useful, if not always pretty. Through Verizon's Wireless Sync, I was able to back things up over the air, and even enable a kind of push-email not unlike the feature that makes Blackberry so hot. The keyboard, tho' small and membrane-like, was surprisingly easy to use reliably.

But after a couple of months—sadly, after the return period was over—I realised I'd made a bit of a blunder, when the device, as all Windows-based devices will eventually do, crashed and reset itself. Only when a Windows Mobile 2003 phone crashes and resets itself, it forgets everything it ever knew and has to start over from scratch, one of the exact kinds of instability that had driven me nuts on the K7135.

I really, really should have trusted my instincts with this one. I dislike Microsoft as a corporation, and dislike Windows in all its many incarnations because the software engineers who write it seem to have absolutely no interest in prioritising writing robust code. I don't even have the excuse of not having read up on the device. I did read up on it, and I concluded that any negative vibes I was getting were a combination of user stupidity on the part of various people complaining, and my own stubborn anti-Windows prejudices, and since prejudice is bad, something to be gotten over.

Like I said, I should have trusted my instincts. The XV6600 didn't have to suck, and it didn't entirely suck, but it turned out to suck enough to make me embarrassed for having spent good money on it and unwilling to consider reselling it on eBay because I can't imagine foisting it off on anyone else.

(The third incarnation of the K7135, by contrast, I wound up giving to a friend, and as far as I know, she's still using it in good health).

I should have waited until the market produced something more robust, knowing that eventually, someone would. But I was impaitent for the geeky wireless networking features, and allowed my desire for shiny new toys to overcome my good sense.

Well, now it's not quite a year later, and the market has indeed produced the phone I really wanted a year ago. The Blackberry 8700c. My first impressions of that new toy will follow in the next installment.

The Israeli Politics Story Remains Delayed...

Wed, 04 Jan 2006 16:28:19 -0600

...because Israeli politics keep changing every time I get a chance to sit down and look at them again.

For example, Ariel Sharon is reported to have just suffered his second stroke in three weeks, this time a significant one.

Combine this with the shifts in the political parties going on and...well, just at the moment, I'm not entirely sure where I'd start.

So, the article will happen, but not today...

Fun with Holidays and History

Sun, 25 Dec 2005 07:21:16 -0600

This year, as many of you know, Christmas and Chanukah coincide more or less exactly, with the first light of Chanukah being kindled at sundown on 25 December.

The coincidence is more appropriate than most people appreciate, I think. The events commemorated by the kindling of the Chanukah menorah are direct antecedents to the events set in train by the birth of Jesus of Nazareth.

The Maccabee Rebellion against the Seleucids ultimately established Judah Maccabee's brothers and their descendents as a royal dynasty. Civil war between two rival claimants a century later left the door open for Roman annexation and the installation of Herod in their place.

The resulting discontent in the Jewish population, combined with the internal tensions between Saudecees and Pharisees, led to the rise of preachers and would-be rebels. The questionable legitimacy of Herod, and for that matter, the Hasmonean descendents of the Maccabees, none of whom were descendants of David, led people to hope for a true descendant to lead them. Jesus was born into this millieu, and less than a century after he lived, preached, and died, a full-fledged uprising led to the eviction of the Jews from Judea and nearly two millenia of diaspora.

The Rebellion of the Maccabees

In 165 BCE, the Land of Israel was a subject province of the Assyrian king Antiochus IV, who claimed succession from Alexander the Great. He had usurped the throne from his brother's son, however, and killed another son not long after.

For a couple hundred years, Israel had enjoyed considerable autonomy under first Persian and then Greek rule and had flourished. Internal tensions had begun building up, however, between those Jews who were happy to adopt and adapt to Greek ideas and customs (stopping short, of course, of Greek worship), and those who saw the Hellenistic influence as a corruption of Jewish culture and therefore, ultimately, Jewish religion.

165 BCE was a bad year, for Antiochus. Having tried to extend his authority to Egypt and Cyprus, he ran afoul of the expanding Roman Republic. The Roman envoy sent to 'negotiate' Antiochus' withdrawl grew tired of fruitless discussions and finally drew a circle in the sand around Antiochus' feet. Negotiation turned to ultimatum: if Antiochus stepped outside the circle without agreeing to withdraw, he would be declaring war upon Rome. Not willing to commit to such a war, Antiochus capitulated and withdrew.

Incensed, humiliated, and looking for someone to beat, Antiochus turned his attentions toward his subject province of Judea. The priest Mattathias had, a couple years earlier, refused to offer a sacrifice to the Greek gods at the temple, and even slain another Jew who had been willing to capitulate. He then killed the Assyrian representative and fled with his sons to found an insurgency campaign. Antiochus decided to crush this campaign, and the Jewish traditionalists, by sacking Judea and defiling the Temple.

The sacking of the temple catalysed the insurgency. Mattathias was dead, but his sons, led by Yehudah ha-Makabi—Judah the Hammer—rallied the people of Judea to a full-fledged uprising. The campaign was successful for a while, which merely fueled the idea that the traditionalists had been right all along and that G-d was on their side.

Nes Gadol Haya Sham: A Great Miracle Happened There

Judah Macabee's army recaptured Jerusalem at the battle of Beth Zur, and immediately set about restoring the Temple, destroying the statue of Zeus that had been erected and rebuilding the altar.

As part of the rededication, Judah and his followers wanted to light the oil lamps that illuminated the place of worship. But most of the oil had been destroyed or fouled by Antiochus' forces. Only one container—enough for one day's light— could be found sufficiently intact. Preparing more would take eight days. Despite this, Judah ordered the lamp lit.

The lamp burned for eight days, on one day's oil. This is, ostensibly, why the Chanukah menorah involves eight candles and a shamash—a helper.

Continued War and a New Dynasty

The reconquest of Jerusalem and rededication of the temple, however, were not the end of the war. An empire that claimed Alexander as its founder was not about to let a fundamentalist rabble have the last word if they could help it. The war lasted another two years, seeing both Antiochus and Judah dead before the end.

Judah's brother Jonathan led the Jewish forces after Judah's death at the battle of Elasa, returning to insurgency with the renewed success of the Seleucid forces under general Bacchides. Bacchides believed he had successfully pacified Judea again, and left the region. Jonathan and his followers continued to fight, mainly against the 'Hellinised' Jews, whom they saw as collaborators. Ultimately, the latter sued the Seleucid king Demetrius for assistance, and Bacchides returned.

But Jonathan was a smarter general now than he had been, and Bacchides found himself stalemated. Furthermore, Bacchides repeatedly took his frustrations out upon the Hellenists who had summoned him, driving more into the Maccabee camp. Ultimately, Jonathan and Bacchides reached a truce, and Bacchides went home.

Jonathan became the de facto ruler of a part of Judea. When conflicts elsewhere required Demetrius to withdraw his remaining garrisons from the rest of the province, Jonathan became High Priest, and recognised as a near-equal by both the Demetrius' successor Alexander Balas and Ptolemy VI, a recognition that was culminated when Alexandar Balas named Jonathan governor of the province, essentially granting Judea autonomy.

Jonathan was never crowned king, but ruled as one until 145BCE, when he was tricked, captured, and ultimately killed by Assyrian forces. His brother Simon was named both High Priest and Prince by a council gathered in 141BCE. Simon's title was recognised by the Roman Senate, which was enough to secure Israel's independence for a time. Although the Assyrian kings would never really recognise the Hasmonean title, they would never again be able to successfully challenge it.

Civil War and Roman Occupation

The title of king was seen by many Jews as being reserved for decendants of David, which the Hasmoneans were not. As a result, both Simon and his son John styled themselves 'nasi'—prince. Jonathan's grandson, Aristobulus, declared himself 'melech'—king, and all his successors retained this.

Aristobulus' successor was his brother, commonly named Alexander Jannaeus but whose Hebrew name was likely Jonathan, like his great-uncle. In the Talmud, he is remembered as the tyrant 'Yannai', for he was a strong partisan of the aristocratic Sauducees, and is remembered for severe oppression against the Pharisee faction.

Alexander chose on his deathbed to bequeath the throne not to his sons, but to his wife, Salome Alexandra. This was a wiser move than anything else he had done in life. His wife was herself related to the Pharisee faction, and her accession to the throne, unchallenged by either faction, brought a pause to the civil war. Pharisees gained not only freedom but increased political power, cemented when the queen installed her son, Hyrcanus, an adherent to the Pharisee party, as High Priest.

The death of Israel's first reigning queen was also the deathknell of the Hasmonean kingdom. Her sons, High Priest Hyrcanus and Aristobulus, fell into civil war over the throne, each appealing for help to the Romans, who were in the process of consolidating power over the old Seleucid Empire. The Romans in turn decidced instead to help themselves to Judea. For a time, Hyrcanus was allowed to rule as a puppet, but he was ultimately deposed by his nephew, Antigonus. After a brief reign, Antigonus was deposed by Herod the Great with Roman assistance, ending the Hasmoneon line.

Herod, in turn, would be the last recognised King of the Jews, dying shortly after the birth of Jesus. Pontius Pilate was installed as procurator over the province of Judea, and Herod's sons were bequeathed governorships over various territories King Herod. His son Herod Antipas, for example, became the governor of Galilee, in which role Pilate would send Jesus to him to be judged.

Thus the stage was set for the life and death of Jesus, the destruction of the Second Temple and Jerusalm in 70CE, and the final Roman expulsion of the Jews from the region after Bar Kochba's rebellion in 130CE.

Random World Politics, Part II

Wed, 14 Dec 2005 10:46:39 -0600

Right, so, where was I. Oh, right...

Canada

(Thanks to Jocelyn Wirth and her unnamed co-worker for some fact-and-sanity checking on this section, and some insight into the current state of affairs. Any errors of fact, however, should be assumed my own, not theirs)

Prologue: The Sponsorship Scandal

Canada is in the grips right now of a messy money scandal generally referred to the 'sponsorship scandal'. It has its roots in the governing Liberal Party's reaction to the 1995 referendum in Quebec on independence—a referendum that failed. However, the federal government decided to try to reduce the chances of future referenda—or at least improve the chances of such referenda continuing to fail—by initiating an advertising campaign within the province.

By 1999, there were already some concerns in the Chrétien government that the money was being misused, an investigation was begun. A couple years later, the minister responsible for the program was quietly replaced and sent to Denmark as ambassador.

An investigation was finally completed and a report issued in late 2003. It did not become public knowledge yet, however, because Prime Minister Jean Chrétien prorogued Parliament for the winter, thus preventing the report from being tabled. Chrétien retired while Parliament was still recessed, leaving Paul Martin, until then the Finance Minister, as Prime Minister, with the dubious honour of getting to make the whole mess public and deal with the fallout.

Parliament reconvened in February 2004 and the scandal thus became a public one with the tabling of the report. The report made it clear that lots of money had been spent for work that had never actually taken place, and that an alarming number of government departments, Crown Corporations, and private entities were involved. The report did not directly finger either the former or the new Prime Minister, but the public was left wondering how such a broad scandal could have been missed. It was a classic no-win scenario, particularly for former Finance Minister Martin. If he was involved, obviously that was bad. If he had no idea, it made him look like an incompetent overseer of the nation's money.

Martin countered this impression by insisting that Chrétien, long a rival within the Liberal Party, had kept him out of the loop on many policy issues—notably issues involving national unity. His take was that the entire mess was perpetrated by a small, well-organised cadre within the government who kept their doings carefully hidden from their bosses. Initially, his remarks attempted to shield Chrétien as well, but over time, this shifted to a position where the former PM was blamed for involvement.

An investigatory commission, headed up by retired Justice John Gomery, was convened almost immediately, and has been active ever since. A preliminary report was released in early November 2005, seeming to exhonorate PM Martin.

Meanwhile, Martin allowed himself to be pursuaded to go to the polls to secure a proper mandate for his government in the wake of the February 2004 report, and asked the Governor General to dissolve Parliament and call an election for June 2004. The electorate delivered something of a rebuke to the ruling Liberal party—enough to keep them out of the majority in Parliament, but still giving them the largest block. The result was a minority government, rather than a coalition: the Liberals retained full control over the government with the backing mostly of the New Democratic Party (NDP), but the NDP did not actually join the government. This is fairly rare in most modern Parliamentary states, and turned out to be as fraught with peril as it sounds.

The Current Situation

The official plan was always that Paul Martin would call another general election after the release of the Gomery Report, scheduled for February 2006. The various opposition parties appear to have become impatient, however, and so Canada is going to the polls before this crucial report on government corruption is released.

If you're beginning to suspect that the report, and the scandal it's about, might all just be flimsy excuses to force a new election, you might be right. Hang on a sec and we'll get to that.

They're also going to the polls in the dead of winter. In Canada. Think about that for a minute, especially if you live in any northern climate, like I do here in Minnesota.

Unsurprisingly, the Canadian populace—or at least, the Candian press—seem to be unamused by the idea of slogging through the cold and snow of a Canadian January to vote, and equally unimpressed by the idea of having their Christmas &c season made all the more irritating by political campaigning. In fact, they seem rather unimpressed by their politicians in general.

Reading between the lines of a speech Mr Martin made on the first day of the election season, he appears to be counting on the electorate to blame the three opposition parties—the Conservaites, the New Democrats, and the Bloc Quebecois—for the timing of the election. Strictly speaking, I suppose, he's correct. The No Confidence motion was introduced by Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservatives. However, the motion seems to have been the end-game of a series of negotiations attempting to reach a compromise over the originally-intended post-Gomery-Report elections. Since it's arguable that Mr Martin, as a minority PM, should have recognised he was in no position to be inflexible unless he wanted to cause a fuss, the fuss thus caused is at least as much his fault as Mr Harper's.

At any rate, the campaign so far is covering a pretty intense range of issues—tax reform, possible reform of the Canadian Senate (Canadian Senators are appointed by the Governor General on advice of the Prime Minister; they serve until they're 75 or dead, whichever comes first), some really messy ideas for child care and child sports credits. There's some US-bashing going on (in fact, the US Ambassador to Ottawa told them to stop using the US as their bogeyman, and Paul Martin told him to stuff it). There's posturing on gay marriage.

You'll notice there's very little in there about the Gomery Report, or the scandal that it's about, or about reforms to prevent that sort of thing happening again. Curiously, nobody seems to want to talk about it—not even the opposition, which really would have been better served waiting for the report and using it to tear the Liberal Party to itty, bitty pieces, when you think about it.

(Note, this is not an anti-endorsement of the Liberal Party. I'm not Canadian. I don't much care who wins as long as they're smarter than the monkey in charge here in the US, which all the candidates appear to be. It just seems odd to me that the opposition parties didn't wait, that's all).

Meanwhile, surveys are turning up some interesting results. Keep in mind that the Liberal Party has governed for most of the century, with a few stints of Tory government. The New Democratic Party has never governed or come close to it.

Except that at the moment, in Manitoba at least, the three parties are running close to even! Specifically, the Liberals and Conservatives are slipping and the NDP is climbing.

There's still several weeks, of course, and the campaign is quite intense—as you might imagine when there are only a few weeks to do it in and a holiday in the middle of it. Lots could happen, and there's really no clear telling who is going to wind up the next Prime Minister of Canada....

A new symbol for the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement

Thu, 08 Dec 2005 13:08:16 -0600

Today, after nearly fifty years of pressure and five years of negotiation, a Third Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions was agreed. The protocol adds fourth—and final, dammit— symbol to denote non-combatant aid workers under the Geneva Conventions. The official description is a white background with an open red square on edge: the Red Crystal.

To date, various national societies that make up the Red Cross-ish Movement have had the choice of being represented by either the Red Cross (white background with a red Swiss cross), the Red Crescent (white background with a red Islamic crescent), or the Red Lion and Sun (white background with a stylised lion and sun in red). The latter has not been used since the Iranian Revolution, and was really exclusively Persian. The official images can be seen here.

The problem is that not every nation identifies itself as being Christian or Muslim, obviously; and the only nation that could identify itself as Persian prefers not to any more. America, while it's never had a direct objection to using the Red Cross, is not Constitutionally Christian, for example. But the real sticking point comes from organisations like Magen David Adom¹, the Israeli equivalent organisation, which adheres to a charter that's fully compatible with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement, but cannot formally become a part of that movement as long as they persist in using religious symbols it finds objectionable. To date, the MDA has used a red Magen David—that is, a Red Jewish Star— on a white field, but of course, this isn't universally recognised.

The Movement has been very conservative about allowing a proliferation of additional symbols. While they're largely sympathetic with the MDA's stance on the matter, they fear that if they allowed every national organsation to come up with its own symbol based on its own values, the purpose of having a single (the original ideal) or at least a small set (since World War I) of recognisable symbols that mean "Don't Shoot Me!" would be lost. However, just about everyone —including, now, the Palestinian Red Crescent—except the rabid anti-Semites, agree that not having the Magen David Society directly participating in the Movement is a farce.

Contributing to the issue is the fact that the American Red Cross has, in solidarity with the MDA, withheld its ICRC dues for the last 50 years, to the tune of 35 megadollars US.

And so, a compromise was reached. Diplomats from signatory contries agreed to add a completely neutral symbol to the pantheon, and allow national societies to chose it or not depending on their needs and politics. Initially, only the MDA is actually expected to do so, but several other nations have expressed interest in using it, possibly displaying a Red Cross or Crescent inside the voided lozenge of the Red Crystal.

The story is not yet over. The next step is a conference that will bring together the ICRC, the various national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, and diplomats from the Geneva signatories. That conference will be aimed at amending the charter of the so-called Movement to formally include the new emblem and recognise universality as being an official goal. It is still at least theoretically possible that this stage will get scuttled by remaining arch-conservatives, thus delaying the entry of the MDA into the Movement yet further. But this seems unlikely.

¹That's really the site for the US 'boosters' of the MDA. The MDA's own site is in Hebrew, which most of my readership doesn't know how to read!

US to World: "Why, Yes, The Ends DO Justify the Means"

Mon, 05 Dec 2005 14:53:54 -0600

We interrupt our calm review of the electoral situation in various other nations to take a look at something more specific and a bit less calm.

Today, the US Administration made perfectly, brazenly clear what its principles are in persuing Mr Bush's War, and they can be summarised more or less thusly:

We don't torture. No, really. Honest. Although it may depend on how you define 'torture'.
But we do abduct people we've decided are 'enemy combattants' and take them places we're not going to tell you about.
What we're doing is legal by US law, and that's the only law we actually care about.
These people have information. No, we don't know what information they have—if we knew that, we wouldn't need to...um...talk to them
This is the kicker The information we've pried...er...extract...er...obtained from these people has helped save European as well as American lives, and therefore the Europeans should shut the fuck up.

That, in a nutshell, is the message that Secretary of State Condaleeza Rice is carrying on her trip to Europe. The very last part in particular. Not, "Hrm, OK, I see you have some concerns here. You're all democratic nations and your demos are pretty pissed, so maybe we should talk about this." But, "Shut the fuck up, and tell your people to shut the fuck up. We're the Global Police and we're keeping you safe."

Now, I'm not known for being much of an internationalist. I don't believe there's any such thing as international law, I don't believe the UN is much more than a corrupt money sink that hosts an occasionally useful debating club, and I don't believe that all uses of force are inherently bad or wrong.

But how in hell can we claim to want to spread democracy when we're doing everything we can to suppress it, manipulate it, or discredit it?!

Random World Politics, Part I

Fri, 02 Dec 2005 11:29:32 -0600

The politics in various Western nations are undergoing some interesting upheavals right now, some of which are getting press, some of which aren't. Here's a bit of a round-up (with my own opinions, of course :-) ).

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

On the surface, there's not much new going on here -- Tony Blair is still Her Majesty's Prime Minister, and is slated to be for a little over four more years¹. His Labour Party still commands a majority in Parliament. For the most part, he's able to get stuff done.

For the most part. That's where things get interesting.

You see, Tony Blair made two interesting decisions—one recent, one a bit longer ago—that are making his life a bit festive. The more recent decision was to announce ahead of time that this would be his last term in office. This essentially makes him a five-year-long lame-duck.

This shouldn't be problem. Five years is more than enough time to develop and implement meaningful policies that will improve the lives of Her Majesty's subjects and, more to the point, keep Labour in power for a while. If Blair were in firm control of a united party, there's probably be no issue at all.

But Mr Blair is not in firm control of a united party, because of that other decision he made a few years ago.

That decision being to support Mr Bush's War.

Much of Labour have never forgiven Blair for that. They support him because they have to, because they want to remain the party in power, and Blair has that Clintonian charisma that keeps him popular even when some of his policies are dodgy. The war doesn't really have much support in the UK, but neither do the Tories, yet, which also helps Labour cling to their majority.

But it may not help Blair cling to the PM's seat for his full term. His Government was recently (well, a couple months ago, now) handed a defeat on a bill that was very important to Blair—a bill reforming the National Health System. It faces an uphill battle on an education reform package coming up, and on its budget proposals. And just recently, a new firestorm broke out when Mr Blair announced that he would consider giving up a portion of the 'rebate' the UK currently receives from the European Union as part of the Byzantine financial arrangements of the EU (see sidebar).

The upshot is that Mr Blair is in trouble inside his own party. His announcement that this is his last term already had many in the party clamouring that he should at least start indicating whom he would like to succeed him. Many think that he should step aside significantly before the next set of elections, so that a new PM has a chance to establish himself and his programme ahead of those elections, and pick up that glow of incumbency. And now, it's increasingly clear that for many in his party, 'significantly before' means, 'today would be nice'.

Federal Republic of Germany

Germany has just finished an extraordinarily bruising political season, one that ultimately resulted in a significant change in its leadership. Parliamentary elections held back in September resulted in a photo-finish, with the vaguely conservative Christian Democrats and Christian Social Union², headed up by Angela Merkel, barely edging out the vaguely liberal Social Democrats, led by then-current Chancellor, Gerhard Schröder.

The result bore some striking similarities to our own electoral crisis in 2000, when the election between Messers Gore and Bush was neck-and-neck, although the machinery behind the mess was very different, because of the fundamental differences in the electoral processes.

The problem here was not only that both the ruling SDP and the opposition CDU/CSU polled almost equally, but that the CDU/CSU's narrow combined victory was not enough to establish a majority in the Bundestag. This left both the incumbent party and the party with a narrow plurality scrambling to find coalition partners that would put them over the top.

The problem is, that wouldn't work, either. If the CDU/CSU had maintained their early lead, they would have wound up either with a clear majority on their own, or a majority in combination with their closest natural ally, the Free Democrat Party. As things actually fell out, however, this combination was left just shy of a majority—36.9% for the CDU/CSU and 9.9% for the FDP, for a combined 46.8%.

Similarly, the SDP had manged to stay in power in recent years by bonding with its closest natural ally, the Greens—not actually all that good a fit given the SDP's more centrist view these days, but as close as they could get. In final polling, SDP wound up with 36.2% and the Greens with 8.3%, for a combined 44.5%.

Oddly enough, nobody wanted to caucus with the so-called Left Party, whose leader, Oskar Lafontaine, is highly controversial, and whose antecedants include the East German Communist Party. The Left Party, in turn, didn't really want to caucus with any of the others, either, proclaiming they preferred opposition to alliance with either currently-major party.

Througout the early stages of the debacle, Merkel and Schröder both claimed the right to be the next Chancellor—Schröder by right of incumbency and a track-record he stands behind, and Merkel by right of electoral plurality. This delayed the inevitable—talks between the SDP and CDU/CSU to form a Grand Coalition—for several weeks. Negotiations, once entered, dragged on this point, along with several more salient differences between the two parties as to how the Government should be composed and what its policies should be.

In the end, Merkel prevalied, and on 21 November was installed as Chancellor, presiding over a mixed left-right government that will pursue a watered down version of the CDU/CSU platform. Schröder is, for the moment at least, out of politics.

Next Time...

A look at Canada and Israel...

¹The British Parliament sits for a maximum of five years, as per the Parliament Act of 1911. The Prime Minister can ask the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call a new General Election any time before that, however. This is somtimes done if either a bill significant to the Government fails, but usually only if a formal motion of no-confidence makes it clear that the PM no longer commands a majority in Commons.
²Minnesotans will be familiar with this concept: the Christian Democrats have no direct presence in the state of Bavaria; instead, they have a 'sister' party, the Christian Social Union. In Minnesota, we have a similar thing, where the Democrats are actually the Democratic Farmers and Labourers Party.

Armistice, Rememberance, and Veteran's Day

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 10:42:04 -0600

Originally, it was Armistice Day. At 11:11 on 11 November 1918, a cease-fire was declared across the Western Front of the Great War -- what is now known as World War One. It's commonly supposed that this was the day the First World War ended, but this is not strictly true. Combat continued on the Russian and Ottoman fronts for some time. In fact, the Turkish part of the war did not end until 1923.

After the Second World War, both the British Commonwealth and the United States changed the day a bit. In the Commonwealth, it's now Rememberance Day; in the US, Veteran's Day. France, by contrast, and I think Germany as well, continue to remember Armistice Day.

On the surface of it, the decision to change the day was something of an odd choice. While not the true end of the war, the original Armistice Day marked a significant turning point in world affairs. The cease-fire itself was more an expression that everyone had recognised the war had become too costly -- in literal and political terms -- than because anyone had really won or lost. Oh, the Central Powers were doomed to lose regardless, but they hadn't lost yet.

But most of the Central Power governments -- and some of the Allied ones as well! -- had already been thrown overboard by their populace by the time Armistice Day rolled around. The armistice was as much a declaration of a new chapter in European governance as anything else. "You can stop shooting at us because the guys who started all this are all dead, exiled, or otherwise defunct."

And yet, as important a moment as this was, and as much as it made sense to commemorate it as such between the First and Second World Wars, it does make some sense that, outside of Continental Europe, it's now seen as a more general day of recognition for veterans. America was really just barely involved in the Great War. Britain was involved heavily, but was never in direct territorial danger, as they would be in World War Two. They lost plenty of people, but World War One did not leave their country scarred with trenches and laced with mines.

The US has, by and large, gotten kind of bad about its own veterans and active duty service personnel. The strong isolationist streak that ran through the US's collective unconscious up through and even after the Great War has a habit of kicking in at odd moments, and how we think of our military gets rolled into that. Oh, there certainly are people who do support them, mind you, but there are many more who are indifferent, either taking them for granted or believing that if we'd just keep ourselves to ourselves, we wouldn't need much of a military in the first place.

Supporting the military and the men and women in it becomes harder when you hear of crap like Abu Graib. One starts to wonder exactly what one is supporting. Why should I spend a day commemorating sadists like Private England?

The answer, of course, is that, despite its occasional efforts to appear otherwise, our military is not all of a piece. Like any large collection of human beings, it has its heroes and its goats, brave and cowardly, smart and dumb, sadistic and sane. Even if you suppose that the crap at Abu Graib was sanctioned by the chain of command (and I'll admit that I'm someone who thinks it probably was, although we'll never prove it), that still does not mean that every soldier, or even most soldiers, think it was a good idea or would want to be associated with it themselves.

Even at its best, the military life is not the easiest life to live. When you become part of the modern military, you become part of a machine. You will be expected to do things you wouldn't choose to do, pursuing an agenda you didn't devise for an aim you may not understand even if you know what it is. It is not, bluntly, a life I have chosen or would choose for myself.

But I'm damned glad that there are people who do, and have done in the past. And I think perhaps we should make more of a big deal than we currently do -- whatever we call it -- about 11 November.

And It Shouldn't Surprise You At All

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 10:33:30 -0600

So, we in the United States had another Erection...er...Election Day yesterday. It's a necessary ritual, and in some cases honestly instructive and interesting. But really, this year's election produced no surpises, and while some people will be looking for any signs -- any signs whatsoever -- for hope that our long national nightmare is nearing an end, this election really didn't provide it.

On the off-chance that anyone from outside the US is reading this, this year was what we call an 'off-year' election, meaning that it was focused entirely on local and state business, rather than federal business. School board elections, local tax referrenda, mayor and city council races, ballot initiatives, a couple state governor races, that sort of thing.

It's the sort of Election Day that pundits hope will give some guidance toward the next federally-focused election -- in this case, November 2006, when all of the US House of Represenatives and 1/3d of the US Senate go back to the polls. Specifically, there are an awful lot of people hoping for signs that the next great political revolution is coming and that the Bush Doctrine of cronyism, executive privilege, warmongering and lying about it, is about to be trashed out by the American Electorate.

For those of you wondering just how much hope there is for this sort of thing, I refer you to this editorial from 8 November 2005's New York Times, in which we have the interesting specatcle of one of the world's most respectable newspapers coming right out and saying that the king and his cronies are finks. No beating around the bush (pun intended) here. They're all but openly calling for Bush and everyone associated with him to resign. They know it won't happen, but the gauntlet was thrown.

The point here is that, for good or ill, no such signals got sent by yesterday's election.

[Click 'read more' below to, well, read more :-D ]

I'm very glad that I don't work for Blizzard

Mon, 07 Nov 2005 22:10:57 -0600

Blizzard, for those of you who don't know, are the lovely folks who gave us Warcraft, Starcraft, and, of course, that crackalicious addiction of so many here, World of Warcraft.

So you might, from that description, assume the opposite -- that I would wish that I did work for a company that produces so many titles that keep geeks happy.

Except for tonight, when the WoW login servers are gummed up and people can't get into the game.

Or last Monday, when the same thing happened.

Or last Tuesday, when morning weekly maintenance stretched most of the day.

I've been a system administrator -- heck, I still am, through Itasca. And I'm a software engineer. I know, in excruciatingly painful detail, the many things that can go wrong, that can take a server off-line and leave you scrambling to find a way to fix or replace what's busted and get it back into functioning shape as quickly as possible.

And I know all too well how often 'as quickly as possible' stretches into several hours longer than anyone really wants it.

Unfortunately, it doesn't change the fact that there are over a million subscribers paying $15/month to play a game that's been inconsistently available for the last several weeks. Many of those subscribers are quite irate, and quite vocal about it -- the Blizzard support forum thread on tonight's outage alone has accrued 420 messages, most of them whining, ranting, or threatining legal action.

So, yeah, I'm happy not to be on the receiving end of that abuse, right now. Many years ago, when I worked for Cornell, I'd get woken up at 0300 because some grad student couldn't read his pr0n on USENET 'cos the server had coughed up a hairball. That was bad enough. But to have hundreds of people out for my blood because...well, we don't really know why these servers are down, 'cos Blizzard are remarkably opaque about such things, but let's assume, for the moment, something really beyond their control, like a disk went farming.

Once upon a time...

Tue, 18 Oct 2005 18:04:40 -0500

...there was an escalator with a big red button, a four year old boy with more curiousity than sense, and a mother who threatened to sell him back to the gypsies.

...there was a geek with access to lots of toys. And one of the toys he had access to was a small server farm where he could play with software to provide various web content. After many years of helping others do this exact thing, he decided it was time to start providing some content of his own.

...there was another publication, also called What Happens When I Press This Button? That previous instance was a Star Trek fan club newsletter. Despite what you might think, I was rather proud of it at the time. Actually, thinking back on it, I think I still am, for all its inherent Trek-geekyness. Regardless, this is not a rebirth of that publication. I just like the name too much to not revive it, and it fits what I intend to do in this space several different ways.

"How so?" I hear you ask. Well...

This site is where I will write when I indulge my curiousity on a topic, and start delving deeper. I actually thought of calling it 'Deep Geekery', which is a tag I've used on LJ for a similar range of topics, but decided I liked this better. So it fits on two levels right there: the title nicely sums up my curious nature; and it's also similar to the question you, the reader, might be asking yourself when I'm done nattering, altho' that's likely to be more along the lines of, "Jeez, what button did I push?"

This is also where I will occasionally write about controversial topics, and hence, possibly pushing your buttons. Again, I will be trying to cover them in some degree of depth -- I'm not just going to throw a bald assertion out there to piss people off...well, not most of the time. Sometimes, I might need some help focusing my thoughts, and toss a question out that I know will get polarised responses. If you've read my LJ over the years, you've seen me do both.

So why not just keep on doing these things on LiveJournal? Good question. I'm still participating in LJ. While it's dysfunctional, it still allows a certain amount of 'connectedness' I might not otherwise have with the lives of people who are flung all over the globe.

But what I've discovered is that, because LJ has deliberately encouraged that idea of 'community', it is really better suited to the personal than the technical, political, or otherwise in-depth. So the personal is what I will continue to use it for. I will also post links there to here and syndicate to there so that people who want to can find my deeper ravings, because I do kinda like having an audience. I know some writers say that you should write for writing's sake, but if I don't think at least one other person is going to read it, I don't see much point in actually writing it down.

There may also be fiction here, after a while. I haven't written fiction seriously in quite some time, but I may do so here.

Anyway, that's what this site is about. For the moment, it's mainly my own thoughts. If people are reading it and want to join in the spirit of the deeper articles I write here by writing their own and sharing them through this site, just ask, and I'll probably let you. The original Button was a collaborative effort, and I wouldn't mind seeing this one become one, eventually, as well.