Questions in my House

My three year old has been asking as of late "Do you have questions in your house?", to which I always answer "Yes, there are always questions in my house."

Sometimes he tells me what color the questions are as well, but that is grist for another entry.

Many things have changed here at Moronathon. We have moved a vast distance to a place filled with muggles (smuggle, juggle, snuggle, muggers - no muggles in the spell check). We have another child - PAK2 - who is quite a nice bundle of baby stuff. Mrs. set.element is getting ready for medical school and is freaking out. I am counting on my medication to carry me through the next few winters...

I have not been posting at all over the past half year or so and it has bothered me to no end. I have, in short, debited to return to my soap box and join all the other crazy people yelling out into the ether.

Just finished "Five Years of My Life, an Innocent Man in Guantanamo" by Murat Kurnaz. Perhaps somebody out there thinks that the official position Human Rights abuses over the past eight years or so has some sort of attachment to reality. I have been somewhat skeptical. This is a well written first person account which contradicts everything in the sack of 'common knowledge' about US (and allied) complacence in the mockery of Human Rights in Kandahar, Guantanamo and dozens of other so called Dark Facilities across the globe.

Thinking back on my time in Kandahaar, I can't cry, and when I talk to someone who was in Guantanamo, we laugh about it. We laugh a lot - about how we were beaten and how we used to listen to one another screaming. What else are we supposed to do? Sit down and cry? It happened, and not it's over. Either I talk about it seriously, or I feel like I have to laugh. So I laugh. But I haven't forgotten a thing.

So let us talk seriously for a moment.

Remember for a moment the dream that the Obama administration would bring an enlightened notion of Justice to the Human Rights abuses brought on by the last eight years and close Guantanamo Bay? That there would be Change? From The Nation

The Obama administration, fearing a battle with Congress that could stall plans to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, is drafting an executive order that would reassert presidential authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely, according to three senior government officials with knowledge of White House deliberations. Such an order would embrace claims by former president George W. Bush that certain people can be detained without trial for long periods under the laws of war. Obama advisers are concerned that bypassing Congress could place the president on weaker footing before the courts and anger key supporters, the officials said.

Presidential Authority to incarcerate terrorism suspects indefinitely.

Think long and hard about that one.

I have questions in MY house Mr. Obama. Who the fuck are you - someone who ran on a platform of Change, directly highlighting the need to restore a balance of power between the three corners of government, who directly stated the need to close Guantanamo not just from inconvertible Moral grounds but from legal grounds as well - who the fuck are you to allow this mockery of Justice to stand.

The Law does not incarcerate suspects indefinitely. Common Law has provided at least kabuli Justice over the centuries which would be an enlightened change from the crap that we are being fed here.

I do not want to hear that the republicans will throw a hissy fit if they don't get their way. Fuck them too. We are illegally holding human beings and torturing them. Period. If they don't like the Constitution and the legal system that has been built around it, perhaps they can go find some other place that has more plastic notions of human rights? Take the entire group of people responsible for the architecture of this mess - Republican and Democrat alike - and throw them at the World Court. Releasing the population that we are currently holding is only the beginning of Justice. We need to see impartial juries and Rule of Law for the creators of this mess as well.

Any way I have a great deal of work to get done so it is time to go. Good to be back.

Numbers bake off

I am sitting in a room that would give the cast of Revenge of the Nerds a run for their money. We sit and watch "A Robust and invisible Non-Blind Watermark for Network Flows". I am enjoying myself.

Dork Dork Dork.

Rock Star

Mrs set.element, M.D.

Kick Ass.

Deep Breath

Just a quick stop here.

Like so many, I watched today as the adults moved in to clean up the mess left by the warring thieves who have taken control of government for the last eight years.

Like so many, I watched today as the new president stood up and asked us to dare to look forward rather than back.

Like so many, I watched millions of normal people brave the cold and to stand in line for hours to be part of something which was much bigger than themselves.

I do not know what will happen in the coming months and years. Change and heartbreak. Hard work. A grudging hope.

Today for the first time in years I took a deep breath and was happy for the country that I live in. Brought home some flowers for Mrs set.element just to make her happy.

A Ponderous Chain

I think that this made it up here last year at this time, but not nearly enough has changed in the world since then so back it returns. We start with a delightful tidbit of reading, then finish with the much loved feel good retort.

To begin, take a look at Frozen Scandal a New York Review of Books discussion on Scandal in America. Quick snippet:

Scandal is our growth industry. Revelation of wrongdoing leads not to definitive investigation, punishment, and expiation but to more scandal. Permanent scandal. Frozen scandal. The weapons of mass destruction that turned out not to exist. The torture of detainees who remain forever detained. The firing of prosecutors which is forever investigated. These and other frozen scandals metastasize, ramify, self-replicate, clogging the cable news shows and the blogosphere and the bookstores. The titillating story that never ends, the pundit gabfest that never ceases, the gift that never stops giving: what is indestructible, irresolvable, unexpiatable is too valuable not to be made into a source of profit. Scandal, unpurged and unresolved, transcends political reality to become commercial fact.

Weigh this against the constant stream of nonsense on television.

Now comes our man Marley:

"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
[...]
"You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?"

"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"

Scrooge trembled more and more.

"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full as heavy and as long as this, seven Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"
[...]
"But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"

Perhaps next year at this time it will be somewhat less applicable? I suspect not.

Punch Drunk

Things have been, as usual, a little busy here at the set.element household. Life in the body politic has been quite busy as well. Not everything happening is bad for a change so I am still trying to get my head around it.

I will take a moment of Peace while I think of an actual Scientist being places in the position of Secretary of Energy. I have had the pleasure of meeting and working with Dr. Chu in the past and am thrilled that he will be in a position to influence policy and create the possibility of change.

Moment of Peace complete.

That out of the way, I have a couple of things on my mind. The first is something that has received considerable press - and quite reasonably so. There is little original to add to this, but still a little complaint seems to be in order. Rick Warren is a smirking pinhead used car salesman (again, my apologies to that profession). He is a graven homophobic shit who deserves nothing but spite but will get the sort of recognition that will improve his Dr. Phil like book sales tremendously. I do not know what the real rational is for the Obama administration to provide a nod of acceptance, but Warren is the shiny face of false centrism. I am not an Obama Fan Boy and feel quite comfortable complaining about this - lord knows the right has been whining like a bunch of little kids for months now. If we do not complain about this and any other decisions that are made, the left will not get a place at the table.

By the way, that fucktard Warren demonstrated yet again why I dislike him so. From this:

All of the great questions of the 21st century will be religious questions.

Feh.

This thought being tempered by the inclusion of a number of actual adult like people in the administration.

The second thing is the drect confession of the Vice President in war crimes and the continuing whitewashing of the (still) current administrations wrongdoings. In yesterdays Boston Globe a column by Derric Jackson said the following:

VICE PRESIDENT Dick Cheney said this week that he directly approved waterboarding to torture terror suspects. "I was aware of the program, certainly, and involved in helping get the process cleared," Cheney told "ABC News." Asked if he believes the simulating of drowning is an appropriate technique, he said, "I do." ...

...Cheney told us after 9/11 that the administration would protect us by working on "the dark side . . . in the shadows in the intelligence world." Cheney, Rumsfeld, and President Bush turned the dark side into a blind eye, the shadows into a shroud, and obliterated intelligent discourse on terrorism with raw fear. That was only the warm-up for twisting intelligence to invade Iraq for weapons of mass destruction that did not exist.

Currently there are no serious plans for repercussions for the wholesale violation of international, constitutional and local violations of the law. Crimes against humanity, theft of trillions of dollars, countless infractions of individual rights will go punished by lucrative positions in NGOs and Boards of Directors.

At the same time there is a great deal of 'aw shucks' going on by the press and the series of players. They know that nobody is going to do anything about this and honestly do not seem to give a shit.

I have been saying this for years now. With the dissolution of Rule of Law, comes the dissolution of Constitutional Democracy. We have come to a period of hard choices and if we do not make them, they will be made for us.

Must go. BAB will be waking shortly and I have to get some graphs done on a research paper.

Social Networking

Tired of being mocked as a grumpy old fart, I have established a Facebook presence. This will probably get to be as ignored as my blog here in light of the frantic state of work and life, but the style of dialog seems to be driven less by the essay and more by the blurby stream of conscience. I am doomed.