Electronic Writer

There are going to be a couple of changes to how I update Electronic Writer:

1. New Reactions to news and events. There is a new category called Reactions.  Shorter works that are responding primarily to news and events will be categorized as a Reaction.  My reactions to news and events will come more frequently, and will be directing readers to other pieces of information.
2. Longer Opinion/Editorial articles. I will also be publishing longer pieces that attempt to editorialize some of the events of the world.  These will be longer, contain more analysis, and will be researched.  some of the longer pieces might appear in other printed or online publications.

I look forward to your feedback and participation.

Thank you.

One of my favorite things to do is to catch Fox News lying or directly corrupting the truth for their own purposes, and this one SINGS.

The media sting happened first at Media Matters.  In the Media Matters article, “Fox News airs altered photos of NY Times reporters,” Wednesday, July 2 2008, you can read the transcript, watch the video clip, and see the photos.

Co-hosts Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmeade of the Fox News Show, Fox & Friends, should be noted for their lack of journalistic integrity and their willingness (implicitly or explicitly) for purporting lies on behalf of themselves and/or the Fox News Network.

Editor and Publisher has another review of the incident here.

I tried and tried to give it up, but I cannot.  I simply cannot ignore the state of affairs in the current Geo-political landscape of the United States.

What is more, I am compelled to write about it . . . .

That being said, I’M BACK!!!

I have been watching this ad display for this site called Human Events.  The text said, Barack Exposed–playing off of some infamous document traveling around, and the Swift-Boater-Creating-Lies mentality that Barack Obama has some secret life that NO ONE on the planet knows.

On a side note: The postulate that there is a Secret Life of Barack Obama is REALLY hilarious.  Right now, the FBI and CIA are reading every email and listening to every phone call on the planet LEGALLY because our Congress passed the Patriot Act a second time.

In addition to this, common sense of the believers of this theory has simply washed completely out of their heads.  Do you think you can be in Congress and participate in the decision making process of the United States of America without a BACKGROUND CHECK?

Apparently, a group of Americans are spreading hate-based lies about Barack Obama because they believe they have some information that the government has overlooked.  Sounds a lot like a zombie-like character defamation orchestrated by Karl Rove and implemented by Rush Limbaugh by his ditto-heads.

Okay, digression over.

So, I finally went for a visit to this Human Events website, and discovered that they are a collection of ultra-conservative articles.  So, their advertising sucks, but maybe something valuable lives on that website.

This is truly sad.

Yesterday, I read an article that described the violence that President Robert Mugabe used to intimidate opposition party leaders, members, and their families.  It was horrific.

The details, as clinically presented as they were, were BEYOND my worst imagination of what human beings can do to other humans.  My personal response moved immediately past rage and disgust.  I am actually shocked that people can live with themselves–that the attackers and mindless followers of Mugabe would commit such atrocities to preserve the “power” of the leader that rules them with fear, as well.

I suppose smaller versions of that happen in places that are closer than we might think.

The article in the NY Times today describes the opposition party’s leader, Morgan Tsvangirai, announcement that he was withdrawing from the election.  He had won by all accounts in the last election (including Mugabe’s), but Mugabe chose not to recognize it and his thugs set about to do their work–kill more than 86 high-level opposition party officials, main and brutally, violently beat more than 10,000 members of the opposition party, burn more than 20,000 residences and displace nearly 200,000 from their homes.

At a rally today, with only 5 days remaining until the vote, Tsvangirai decided that the price was too high.  He was unwilling to ask the party’s supporters to go to the polls on Friday “when that vote will cost them their lives.” (NY Times)

My ruminations turn to our own country.  For two elections in a row, there have been dubious results.  One was descided by the judicial branch, and the second was decided by a few Americans who were already loyal to the winner under a shroud of secrecy and armed guards.

Prior to the 2004 election, our own FBI went to the homes of dissenters to “question” Americans from demonstrating at the Republican National Convention (NY Times Article, CommonDreams.org Article, ACLU Article).  Although some of those FBI agents articulated that the request for them to do so was unconstitutional, but they did so anyways.

How much further is the political landscape in Zimbabwe from the political landscape from the United States  today?

I am truly glad that there are still some freedoms here, and that those enforcing it are thinking (and love our country).  If you love your freedom, in November of 2008, please VOTE.

• NY Times Article: Zimbabwe Opposition Leader Pulls Out of Runoff
• NY Times Article: Assassins in Zimbabwe Aim at the Grass Roots (WARNING: This is a clinically presented, but extremely GRAPHIC article.  The details are horrific.)

Wow–this is a bit disturbing. This is an Oceanic Preservation Society video/commercial about ending coastal whaling.

There is real footage of what happens inside the Japanese whaling/killing camps.

WARNING: This is difficult to watch. There is actual footage of whales and dolphins being killed.

Lt. Cmdr. William C. Kuebler is a military lawyer for a detainee at Guantanamo Bay.

In the NY Times article, “An Unlikely Antagonist in the Detainees’ Corner,” by written by William Glaberson (published June 19, 2008), Kuebler articulates, from an insider’s perspective, my worst fears about the Military Tribunal system created by the Bush Administration.

The Bush administration’s war crimes system “is designed to get criminal convictions” with “no real evidence,” Commander Kuebler says. Or he lets fly that military prosecutors “launder evidence derived from torture.”

Ugh.

When I first read about the creation of the war crimes system (military tribunal) by the Bush Administration, I understood the goal immediatly–to create more legal grey area. If you take foreigners (or even American Citizens) and remove them from their country, and put them on soil governed by America but not in America, you have problematized some legal foundations. Some laws clearly do not apply.

In a foreign country, you would be subject to the laws of that country. On American soil, your actions would be subject to American Civil Law. However, Guantanamo Bay is NOT on American soil, and what happens there is NOT subject to the laws of Cuba. It is, legally problematic on many levels

• Justices Reject Gitmo Tribunals (USA Today)
• Bush’s Military Tribunals Violate the Law
• Tribunal System, Newly Righted, Stumbles Again (NY Times)

On a side note: Foreign laws apply to you in a foreign country UNLESS you are an American private contractor working in Iraq. They signed statements binding them to NOT be held accountable to laws of Iraq, and they are not on American soil, so they cannot be held accountable to American laws. Basically, the American private contactors in Iraq are living above and beyond the laws of ANY country. See HERE, and HERE and HERE and HERE for the consequences of such a policy–or, at least examples of some people who discovered ways to manipulate that gray area.

Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler has acknowledged the fundamental flaws of this system and rather than simply defending his client, he has attacked the flawed system.

Lt. Cmdr. Kuebler, thank you for making America a better place. You are a constitutional hero (and already in the Wikipedia).

You can read the entire NY Times article here.

Researchers at University of Minnesota in a recent survey have discovered that social network services actually provide some benefits.

Rather than time-wasting forms of procrastination, Social Network Services (MySpace, Friendster, etc.) actually encourage the usage of technology that will be required later in life.   Furthermore, it found that social networks are reducing the “digital divide” because they have encouraged minorities to use the internet.

Read the whole article . . . .

Not sure how I missed this one, but here is another funny from the Bush Administration and Karl Rove. In this instance, Karl Rove is caught trying to revise history (documented by the Huffington Post) to be more convenient for his self-exoneration from his contributions to the Bush Administration’s illegal Iraq War.

In this specific video clip commemorated on the Huffington Post, Karl Rove has a nice list of mis-quotes from Tom Daschle (D-SD) that supposedly supports his claim. His lies are rebutted point for point, until Chris Van Hollen quoted the Bush Administration’s own Ari Fleischer as saying, “It was definitely the Bush administration that set it in motion and determined the timing, not the Congress. I think Karl in this instance just has his facts wrong.”

Thanks to the Huffington Post for catching this one.

Watch the video.

The American Library Association is an entire collection of Constitutional Heroes–pun intended.

The ALA was truthfully an unexpected segment of resistance to the denigration of the Constitution.

In my opinion, their most celebrated act was the first line of defense against the Patriot Act.  The Librarians in the American Library Association worked tirelessly to keep censorship out of our libraries and information and research materials available to the public.

These heroes have worked with Congress to fight portions of the Patriot Act that have violated our Constitutional Rights.  Specifically, they worked to thwart the components of the Patriot Act (Title II) that required a librarian to surrender library usage information about any individual requested by the FBI and forbade them to even speak of the materials being requested for 5 years afterwards.

Their response to such an obvious circumvention of the Constitution and Rule of Law was to destroy that information daily.  At the end of the day, and in a consolidated act, Librarians shredded paper trails and deleted electronic records to preserve our freedoms.

You are HEROES!  Thank you, Librarians and ALA, for working to preserve our freedoms.