Ian Lewis' Blog

While I was out and about reading about the 2009 budget proposal I came across the fact that the CIA has a kids page. Interesting.

Starting two days ago, Japan will be fingerprinting any foreigner that enters Japan. You can check out some of the media response in my shared news items. Japan becomes the second nation in the world to start finger printing foreigners entering the country. However, unlike the U.S. even foreign residents, not just visitors, will be fingerprinted. Of course SOFA members are exempt, as they exempt from most other overreaching programs like Foreigner Registration Cards.

I hope that I could go home sometime soon but I'm not looking forward to a long line at immigration and a fingerprinting on the way back.

I just read this article on the BBC and it seems like O'Hare Airport had about 100 workers with fake badges. 23 were arrested. Umm. WHAT!?! 100 workers had fake security badges at an airport?? How did that go unnoticed? Perhaps I don't have all of the story but that seems pretty damn serious. The article notes that many were from Mexico and a few from Guatemala.

While I have no info to back it up I speculate that they were given fake badges because they have no SSN because they were illegal immigrants. If that's true it would unfortunately would give a stick that directly ties illegal immigration to national security to conservatives to bludgeon liberals with.

When I searched for Chicago O'Hare in my trusty Google Reader I found this story on NPR News from not just last month, that Chicago O'Hare and Los Angeles Airport failed to detect about 60% of bomb tests that were put through the screening system. Kind of makes me think that somethings not being managed right at O'Hare.

I recently watched this video on the Union of Concerned Scientists Website linked to from this post on Fox Attacks. It seems to be pretty easy to understand and has some pretty damning reasons, if they are true, why bunker busters would be ineffective at destroying underground targets and would cause massive damage to the environment and kill millions of people.

Bush added funding for the nuclear form of the bunker buster to his recent budget proposal. There is a Washington Post article here but you need to register. Why would he add this kind of thing to his budget proposal when even the Pentagon realizes how much damage it could do? I sincerely hope it's just a bluff.

Recently there has been a number of problems with the quality of Chinese goods entering the U.S. and other countries.

Am I alone in thinking this news is all too timely?

Before I continue, let me say that I don't doubt that many products from China are sub-standard and not terribly fit for consumption. But we have been importing cheap Chinese goods for a long time. So while China's growing economy might be causing more goods, and thus more defective goods, to enter the market, I can't believe that these problems have not always existed and that we are just now deciding to scrutinize it because China is starting to turn into a U.S. rival.

China's economy is growing and is fast approaching a level that could challenge the U.S. and Japan's dominance as the largest economies in the world. Japan is a friendly nation which protects the U.S. status quo. But China does not, so naturally the U.S. is worried that it might have to compete with China. But I keep feeling like we just let China be up until now because they gave us cheap labor and goods, but only now as they start challenging U.S. dominance did they invite scrutiny of their products.

I just feel like I'm being led to think a certain way when I read stories like this . I imagine dark men in high places tapping their fingers like Mr. Burns thinking everything is going according to plan (though more likely it's just a result of how the media/gov't work). Can't I think for myself instead of just following the latest news trend?

I read conservative pundit Michelle Malkin's blog which mentions the 9th circuit's decision to allow the military to conduct sonar exercises without previous measures to ensure that they weren't hurting whales. While I understand the need to protect the country and that sonar exercises have a degree of necessity (though I'd be lying if I said I didn't think it was largely of our own making), I wonder what was wrong with some of the measures the military was taking to protect wildlife and why it wouldn't be a good compromise between military and the environment.

Read more »

Last week, I was watching Ainori which is a favorite TV show in Japan of Reiko and me. Ainori is a reality TV show where the members of the show travel to different countries together and try to find someone to fall in love and return to Japan with.

So this week and last Ainori was in Venezuela the home of the infamous Hugo Chavez. Hugo Chavez is known for socialism, not respecting free speech, and for his harsh criticism of the U.S. He gets particular disdain from the United States for his comments about G.W. Bush and his refusal to play ball on things like oil pricing.

However, they mentioned that as part of Chavez's domestic policies aimed at improving poverty, thousands of new medical clinics for the poor were constructed, and thousands of people have become literate via education programs.

When I heard this I thought to myself, "No way would this ever be broadcast on T.V. in the 'States". Indeed, I'd never heard anything good that Chavez had done in Venezuela before watching that episode of Ainori. I suppose it goes to show you that while the U.S. values free speech, no reputable broadcasters would dare publish something that radically goes against the government's agenda lest they not get invited to press conferences or something.

While it hasn't turned me into a Chavez supporter or anything, It's very interesting and refreshing to hear different views than those of the main U.S. media outlets on foreign leaders and countries that are traditionally opposing the United States and views on the foreign policies of the United States itself.

I just read on BBC that the figures of civilian deaths are generally inflated or exaggerated. It appears that media outlets are taking witness accounts but not verifying the number of deaths when the witnesses themselves may not know all the facts or are pressured to exaggerate the numbers. It seems that the insurgents are pressuring people to report higher numbers than are accurate.

From the article:

"Gen Azimi from the defence ministry said the Taleban regularly forced villagers to phone media outlets with inflated figures, threatening to behead them if they did not do so."

There has been somewhat of a debate before about whether insurgents are carrying out attacks to cause media attention. Many liberal bloggers or commentators have said that the real reason is likely that they are just struggling for power etc. and that the media attention is not really a insurgent objective. While I'm far from a conservative I found the notion that insurgents commited attacks in such a way that it attracts the most media attention to be entirely believable. This just gives evidence to the fact that the insurgents are using the media to affect the war.

Unfortunately, arguing about such a thing is really pointless as it doesn't change the situation on the ground in Iraq. The only thing we could do with this information is use it as a reason to increase or not-decrease war spending. But we are already spending too much on a conflict that we dubiously started in the beginning.

I used to think that the war was a mistake but that staying in Iraq was better than pulling out because Iraq would immediately spiral into civil war and become like Afganistan was before the war, ruled by regional warlords (e.g. Business as usual in the Middle East). But over the last year, I've started thinking it's inevitable. There is nothing that the U.S. could possibly do at this point to stop it. Whether we end the occupation tomorrow or 5 years from now it won't stop Iraq from spiraling into a bigger conflict the second we reduce numbers. Even if we stay for the indefinite future, such as having a situation like Korea and staying in Iraq 50+ years as President Bush has hinted at, we would never be able to justify the occupation to the world or the American or Iraqi people. It would always be seen (and rightly so) by most in and outside the U.S. as protecting U.S. oil interests in the Middle East with occupation.

Today I read a story that Rush Limbaugh has been playing a song on his radio show called "Barak the Magic Negro" to the tune of "Puff the Magic Dragon". While just being a liberal is enough for me to not like Rush Limbaugh, he seems to go out of his way to upset liberals by doing the exact thing that liberals stand against. One being making fun of someone based on their race.

From the article, "Limbaugh said liberals upset about the term should be aware that "magic negro" is a historical cultural term, a reference to benevolent African-Americans portrayed in old films".

Basically it fuels my feeling that many Conservatives just don't get it. Saying that a person is a "Good Negro" is not equality. It's patronizing. Basically, by saying that, you say "Blacks are inferior, but you're a good one". And playing songs on your radio show that are racially ambiguous is not intellectual. It's, as the Barak campain put it, dumb.

Apparently the Army is in the business of fabricating stories about soldiers to make them seem more heroic and glorify the war in Iraq. CNN carried a story yesterday about the testimony of Bryan O'Neal and Jessica Lynch about how the Army fabricated stories about soldiers.

In Jessica Lynch's case the stories were about herself and how she was shot and stabbed during a heroic and intense firefight where the 11 other soldiers in her group died. The army then attacked an abulance that was attempting to return her to American forces, and later staged a rescue that was neither necessary or daring as they made it out to be. The hospital staff where she was held indicated that there were no insurgents in the hospital.

In O'Neal's case the Army fabricated a story about how Pat Tillman was killed in Afganistan. The Army reported that he was killed leading a counterattack on insurgents in Afganistan who abushed his group. However, Tillman was shot by friendly fire, shot 3 times in the head, by a fellow platoon member. Bryan O'Neal, the last person to see Tillman alive, at the time knew exactly what happened and that Tillman was killed by another soldier. But O'Neal testified that he was ordered not to tell Tillman's family about the incident.

I can't help but wonder what the Army was thinking. Did they think that the truth would not eventually come out? Did they think that soldiers like Bryan O'Neal would just stay quiet? Did they think that Jessica Lynch would just keep quiet as she was hailed as a hero, even though she was alive and knew the truth that she did nothing special and her rescue was staged? I admit that based on the info at the time it was reasonable to conclude that the rescue wasn't all they said it was (though I don't remember Lynch saying anything to the contrary at the time). But yesterday was the first time where it came from the horse's mouth that the Army deliberately fabricated stories about soldiers that were killed or injured in ways a lot less movie-like.

I think this might help illustrate my view of the fallacy of viewing war as glorious. There is nothing glorious about war. As many, many WWII vets have said about their service (which I might add had a more clear and agreed upon need than our current quagmire), war is not glorious and should not be villified. I think it's a bit disturbing that the 'States has built this kind of culture that glorifies a soldier's actions and suppressing the more gritty and realistic aspects of war. Not every soldier can die for heroic reasons. Some will be killed rather senselessly. That's just the way it happens.

I don't mean to say that soldiers themselves are not great people. Those that I have met who served in the military were in general, good at prioritizing important aspects of their lives (family, education etc.) ahead of trivial things, and excellent and considering others above themselves.

However, I cannot ever see war and military as something that should be viewed as beneficial rather than a necessary evil. Some say that military provides many technological advances that civilans make use of. But if all the wars in the past never happened and we also didn't have the technological advances that came from it, would you trade all the millions of lives of the people that didn't die in those wars for the technological advances? Somehow I can't see anyone saying that a greasy burger is good for you because it has tomato in it.

My good buddy Matt let me know about a plan to put in a resort on a nature preserve near his home on the eastern shore. From the site: "The developer has requested growth allocation or special permission to build in protected areas". In order to do that they would need to drastically change the ecosystem (currently a wetland) of the area by adding soil to it to make it stable. Also from the site, "The site’s hydric soils and high water table, which prevents the ground from absorbing stormwater, means that if the land is developed, large volumes of polluted runoff containing fertilizers, pesticides, and other pollutants from roads, lawns, and the golf course could flow into Little Blackwater River, only hundreds of feet away, and then into Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, and, ultimately, the Bay."


In any case this is an example of development that is not smart. Please sign the petition to stop this development.

I just learned today via the Sierra Club Insider that President Bush's proposed budget is proposing to sell off 800,000 acres of National Forest and Bureau of Land Management lands to raise money for the federal treasury. I think this is a bad idea.

My firm belief is that if the federal government sells that land then the land is gone forever. I think it's the government's duty to do whatever it can to hold on to and protect lands like these. Even if they aren't necessary now the government would never be able to get them back when they do become necessary. I think if we sold the land now we would wish we didn't 100 years from now (If even that long). Selling it also creates bad precident that selling land owned by the National Forest Service is ok and it's not.

One might come up with reasons in your head why this might be a good idea but this page does a good job of explaining why this is important. For example, you might think that these lands aren't important or ecologically significant but you can see that's not the case from the Sierra Club page as it lists example of land that would be up for sale:

• 160-acre parcel in the Big Creek drainage south of Emigrant, MT. A popular recreation area, which abuts the upscale guest ranch, Mountain Sky Ranch, it includes three recreational homesite leases and a fishing access site.
• Nearly 730 acres of the Columbia River Gorge National Scenic Area in Oregon and Washington
• 1300 acres in Washington along Sultan's Canyon, a remote and rugged river gorge with rare low elevation old growth forest. (Old growth forest has been proven by ecologists to be extremely environmentally significant)

Obviously the #1 issue today is global warming and renewable energy (almost the same issue). Selling these lands opens the door to development and will hurt the envornment in ways unimaginable. Probably in ways we won't know until we've done it. Just as how global warming affects the environment in ways unimaginable (Carbon emissions in the air are absorbed by the ocean causing them to be more acidic for example. Did you know that?! :o Many ocean creatures can't survive in more acidic water.).

Anyway, sign the Sierra Club's petition and help them lobby to remove this part of the budget.

I've decided that I want to get more involved in Ecology at a local level. I'm facinated by using the internet to organize people at a local level. Websites like Meetup.com, while I don't like how and how much they charge for the service, do well for organizing people with similar interests. Today I'm reading about Ecology and looking at a number of ways of helping out within the local area. The Sierra club has a local Virginia Chapter which looks interesting.


I think I'd like to start by really seriously changing my lifestyle to incorporate as much reuse/recycling/conservation as possible. This means making organizing recycled materials and making regular trips to the nearby waste drop off point for stuff they don't pick up on the curb. It also means recycling every piece of recyclable material. I think by doing this I'll learn a lot more about how to make it easier for people to do this. I think it would go a long way towards helping the environment if recycling was easier to do. Maybe I can help somehow in this regard.


Another issue I'd like to learn more about are using locally grown (reduces transportation waste/pollution) and organic food. While I am able to buy organic food easily in Fairfax, it's quite expensive and inconvenient. I think I'd like to figure out better ways for me to store food, and how to make food using ingredients that keep for a long time so that I make less trips to the supermarket.


I really believe that if people were more inclined to reduce/reuse/recycle, due to social pressure, and it was easier to do so, that people would do it and society would be a much more sustainable place for it. I suppose that improving conservation would be the most difficult change to enact since it requires social change that doesn't benefit people in terms of time/money. I suppose the only way to get people to conserve more would be to make it harder for them to buy things (by driving up the prices through stiffer government regulation perhaps). I don't know. I suppose if these were easy questions to answer or solve then they may have been solved already.

I recently read this article at the BBC about pollution levels in Tehran. From the article, "More than 1,600 people have been taken to hospitals in Tehran as pollution in the Iranian capital reaches critical levels, health officials have said."

I don't know how much more obvious it can get that pollution is a problem when your citizens are dying. I just found the statistics startling. "It is estimated that up to 5,000 people die every year from air pollution in the city." What!?!?! While I know that there aren't a lot of economically viable solutions to tackling pollution and emissions, I don't know if there is any way that some sort of economic impact can be avoided. Jeez, people. Wake up!

Though this is Tehran we are talking about and not any U.S. city, I think it can serve as a stark reminder that this is what the future holds for U.S. cities if more sustainable practices are not put in place. It seems that the U.S. citizens and city and state leaders care more about the environment that the Bush adminisitration (course it might be because of high gas prices, another fault of Bush, or that they can drive in the HOV lanes without a 2nd passenger). Though these are good steps, I think we'll require nationwide restrictions on emissions or at least a plan or timeline on reducing emissions before emission reduction will be effective.

So the European Commission recently passed the "Computer Implemented Inventions Directive" which basically means that software patents in the EU are back on their feet. According to MPlayer's website, in order to stop this initiative " The European parliament will now be taking the last stand against software patents in a voting for which an absolute majority is needed. Such a majority is hard to come by in a parliament with a low attendance level."

As many bloggers and folks quoted in news articles have said, this looks like a breakdown of democracy. Zdnet's article states "The Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII) accused the EU Council of ignoring the views of both the national parliaments that spoke out against the directive and the European Parliament, which demanded that the directive be restarted." So both parliments of elected people were circumvented with this directive.

I'm not going to go much into why software patents are bad but Free Software, Free Society by Richard Stallman and Free Culture by Laurence Lessig are recommended reading to get started.

Five posts! I'm on a roll.

Software patents in Europe hit a big snag. The law that would allow software to be patented in Europe has a long way to go now to become law. Thank goodness that some European lawmakers saw the harm in software patents.

BTW, I made some chicken the other night. It was good.

I read today that Bush has shut out international readers from his website. I found it pretty interesting that Bush's campaign wanted to save money and bandwidth in the week before the election by shutting out non-American IPs from his campaign website.

I suppose their argument would be something along the lines of this: "International people won't be voting in the U.S. and the U.S. citizens living internationally are statistically insignificant". Whether that's the true argument or not, shutting out international readers is a pretty bold statement from a bold president. Basically this says, "not all voters are important to me (Bush)".

I honestly think that if just enough people voted for him to get enough electoral college votes, he would just ignore the wants or needs of the rest of the population. Blacks want civil rights? "I don't care because I have enough votes". Women want equality? "I don't care because I have enough votes". Red cross wants to know the state of prisoners of the U.S. taken from Iraq. "I don't care because I have enough votes". Environmental problems will cause major climate change in the next 50 years. "I don't care because I have enough votes".

Bush has demonstrated to me over and over that he doesn't understand what it means to be president. He treats it like it was a free lunch. He just wants power and to be written into the history books as a president who left a big footprint. Basically power/prestige. He doesn't realize that the bigger footprint you leave the more things you crush underneath your foot.

I recently read this article at BCC news. This brings my attention to another of our so called president's failings. The environment.

People have been saying for years that global warming is a problem and have on numerous instances have shown that since humans have entered the industrial age around 1900, the average temperature of the atmosphere has gone up dramatically. It's just too much of a conincidence, for me at least, that the global temperature started rising almost exactly in tandem with industrialization.

However as this article, and many like it recently, show Republicans/Conservatives and Democrats/Liberals alike have gravely underestimated the problem (though liberals to a lesser extent perhaps). It's one thing to be given circumstantial evidence of man's affects on the environment 20 years ago. But it's another thing to ignore the evidence that has been building for the case of human induced global warming and is in our collective posession now. While I think that Democrats probably don't do enough for the environment, they still are WORLDS better at creating ecologically friendly policies than the conservative counterparts and their leader, George W Bush.

All signs point to disaster. If you think about just the obvious impacts of greenhouse gasses you can miss all the other problems that unnatural amounts of greenhouse gasses pose. And this is not even speaking to all of the other problems humans cause that are mentioned in the article.

It doesn't take a genius to see that we need to change our ways. Even if (big IF) the theories and evidence are wrong and it's natural, there is still a considerable amount more risk associated with doing nothing than with doing something (and some people are spending time promoting space tourism, but that's another rant I don't have time for, try this one).

I recently had the pleasure of watching the U.S. Presidential Debates yesterday. I must say I was quite impressed. It was really the first presidential debate of my voting adult life and it is by far my favorite way to learn about the presidential candidates. Speeches are one way and generally vague but debates, at least on some level, have a dialogue. It's that dialogue that challenges ideas and thus helps sift good ideas from the bad ones.

Some people dismiss or criticize the debates saying that they are scripted events. I mostly reject that argument. Whether scripted to some degree or not the debates have served, at least for me, as a useful tool in learning about the candidates. Candidates are posed with questions. They may have canned responses but if they answer the questions adequately then I miss what harm it causes. I believe there is a word for practicing the sort of things you want to say in a debate and how to say them. It's called preparation. When a question is posed of the candidate, just like in any debate, it's up to us, the listeners, the audience, to decide whether the question was answered and who answered it more convincingly.

While I would consider myself quite liberal and this produces in me some level of bias, I felt that John Kerry appeared more articulate, calm, and convincing than our incumbant president. I have read in several places that people felt that Kerry went on the offensive during the debate and had President Bush on his heels. I would agree. Bush it seemed did more defending of his policy in Iraq than I expected.

In fact Kerry exceeded my expectations by a lot. I thought that, when faced with debates over Iraq, he would.... well... waffle. As much as I would hate to admit it, it HAS been somewhat unclear what Kerry thought about the war and what he planned on doing about it. Now it's definitely not unclear where he stands on the issue of "Should we have invaded Iraq?". I have some questions about what he plans on doing but I have a much better idea now than before the debates. Bush's plan? I think Kerry put it best. "More of the same".

Though I think Kerry did better overall, President Bush did have some very good points. Kerry did forget to mention or make note of the countries and soldiers that are already participating in Iraq and Bush capitalized on that. Though Kerry did well to counter it by noting the vast differences in money and manpower between the U.S. and the other coalition members, arguing that it isn't a true coalition.

Kerry probobly wouldn't be my first choice for a Democratic candidate, and I haven't heard anything spectacular from John Edwards (who besides "There are two Americas" hasn't said anything worthwhile), but just being more liberal than Bush wins him my vote.

Spent much of the day getting finances up to date and cleaning but I had a cruise over to Lawrence Lessig's website. I recognized the name when his new book popped up as a recommendation for me on amazon.com. He's a lawyer that is active in copyright law and computers an is very influential in the free software community... so I added his books to the long wishlist (hint, hint) I have.

I heard on NPR this morning that Rep. Mark Souder (R-Indiana) introduced a bill to replace FDR's likeness on the dime with that of Ronald Reagan.

I am going to start by resounding a loud and definitive condemnation of this bill. Reagan represented the American Christian Right which has long been trying to impose Christian morals (e.g. restricting/abolishing abortion) on the American public as a whole. Never before have I heard of a more womanizing, discriminatory man in all my life.

"FDR believed the federal government should spend your dimes. Ronald Reagan believed the people should spend their own dimes. I think it's clear that the dimes in your pocket should bear Ronald Reagan's image"
Rep. Elton Gallegly of Thousand Oaks

To say that Reagan is more deserving of having his face on the dime than the founder of the March of Dimes is preposterous. FDR worked hard to bring the United States out of the Great Depression by establishing the Tenessee Valley Authority and other New Deal items establishing the current welfare state. Some such as Jacob G. Hornberger would argue that this it's immoral but they have no basis in truth. In fact Jacob's argument fails to link the American Government's immoral behavior with FDR's reforms at all. He chooses instead to use a post hoc fallacy to argue that FDR's reforms caused later American immorality simply because it happened after FDR became president.

To top it all off this is an angry response to a CBS TV movie about the former president! While the CBS special didn't portray Reagan in a very good light I hardly think his image should be on the dime.

To sum up, if this bill passes my already sceptical view of the United States will be changed forever. I really, really, hope this doesn't happen.