short notes:<br> will brady's ruminations: 2004/05/02

short notes:
will brady's ruminations

2004-05-08

MISSISSIPPI TERRORISTS || HOME LIFE || WATER CONSERVATION || RACIST CENSORS || IRAQ QUAGMIRE || ECONOMIC TREASON

pix credit: Emmett Till, Lynching Victim | Media Rights --v

without sanctuary | A visual and written history of Lynchings throghout the the history of the United States | Currently at the Jackson State University in Mississippi | The photos in the exhibition include home made souvenier postcards, so as to have attendants at a lynching send them to friends and family (quite possibly also to futher intended victims)
Placed in context of what has been happening in Iraq with the iraqui prisoners, the end result may seem more catostrophic | But on the other hand, exhibits such as this show clearly that the incidence of violence against others ~often for no good reason~ shows that -as far as American History goes, such behavior is nothing new | Moreover, it is isn't just steroeotypical trailer trash who takes part in it | It could not occur without sanction and support from the powerful classes in our country |
from the opening page of the site:

"Without Santuary is a photo document of proof, an unearthing of crimes, of collective mass murder, of mass memory graves excavated froim the American conscience. Part post cards, common as dirt, souveniers skin thin and fresh tattooed proud, the trade cards of those assisting at ritual racial killings and other acts of a mad citizenry. The community’s best citizens lurking just outside the frame. Destined to decay …these few survivors turn to living pillars of salt

James Allen

¶ 16:18

2004-05-04

250,000! | FWIW, by tomorrow the website clicker wil have passed the 250,000 hits mark! That's 50,000 site visits a year, not that I have any idea who stops by |

¶ 23:56 0 comments

domestic tranquility | The pix on the right was done a few years back when we did happen to be going through a drought period (see the entry below about cisterns) | We'd just bought a washer/dryer combination not long after being hooked up to a new municipal sewer line in the village | We'd had a big party, maybe 50 guests (in our 1600 sq ft house) and were doing dishes and the water went dry | As the tale says beneath the picture, the new appliances became an expensive shelving unit for the microwave | The tale, incidentially, can also be found in the 1000 journals entries, under journal # 746 |
We're homebodies, really | Well, I spend lots of time at town meetings and at work on different projects | What I'm getting at is that we are not gadabouts but worker bees | Being active in community affairs seems a reasonable and logical thing to do | Helps with terminal boredom, too, especially when you live in a sparsely populated area [it's getting less so, but that's another story] Unlike my old boss (and long distance friend) Renee, I don't have to turn on the heat when it's 70 ° F out [20 ° C] but the temps here are still cool enough to keep the woodstove going [9 ° C/42 ° F] | And were often to bed before too late (my blog posting times notwithstanding) |
Anyway, that's my world | I welcome hearing about yours |

¶ 23:01 0 comments

v-- pix credit: firewise's constructed watersources

rainwater resources | Although it doesn't seem as though the region where I live shall be hit with drought this year, the past couple of years have had drought periods | Besides, there's an old cistern on the property that might be possible to re-line and put back into use | Difficult? Not really | Some basic plumbing efforts, putting in a good water filtration system, determining how to best harvest rainwater from the roof of the house and a shed we plan on building next year | I wouldn't want to mess with greywater (the runnoff from kitchen sinks and laundry) ...more work than it's worth; besides, it doesn't get that dry where I live | Incidentally, you don't have to live in a remote location to capture rainwater for practical use | The Ersson family in Portland oregon capture rainwater from their roof also saving themselves heaps of money in saving city water bills | Their website has a lot of sustainable ecology tips for urban homesteaders in addition to saving rainwater | Have a look |

joe ryan's diary | nothing like a braggart | While dittoheads listen to KSTP in Minneapolis, they can no longer access Joe Ryan's damning accounts of his partying and interrogating work in Iraq | Why? KSTP Talk radio has taken down Ryan's diary page | Not to worry - Google cached it |

¶ 08:18 0 comments

2004-05-03

racist censors strike | It is troubling to know that a single white supremacist group will work so aggressively to censor they disagree with | Even to try shutting down another person's site that had on it a lone inactive link to a webpage that may have been critical of the bigot group |
     That they'd lie about the whole process in order to self-aggrandize themselves to their flock is troubling as well, but would typically be none of my affair | Until the site they tried to censor is none other than my own, a relatively obscure site with a handful of readers, but it gets a lot of visits (almost 250,000 since 1999) mostly from people I don't know |
     What, supposedly, did I do? They claimed ~without even a slip of evidence~ that my site displayed logos and other identifying information in such a way as make people think my site was their | That's the claim | Then they brag on another page that they got me censored [uh, sorry, shut down] and further claim that my site was set up to deceive and lure unsuspecting racists to become homosexuals | There may be sites that do such a thing, mine isn't ~and never has been~ one of them |
     Not taking this sitting down, I contacted the ACLU, who finds the sitution of interest | They said it was disturbing but no surprise |
     Just as disappointing is the lawyer in Chicago who -without so much as a hint of investigating a complaint, took these liars at their allegation and apparently demanded to shut down my website | So much for an attorney's understanding of procedural due process, eh?
     Since I find the site this racist group runs personally reprehensible because of its blatent bigotry I've never even written about them much less publicized their cause |
     Incidentally, what they found offensive enough to demand a total shut down of my website was a single link that you could not get to from any of the rest of my pages | It was on a list of bookmarks I had put on my server so I could acess all sorts of stuff while traveling | I could only do this by hand typing in the page name |
     That this group of cowardly scoundrels hide behind the relative anonymity of censorship of sites that take then to task for their own disgusting actions is also not surprising | If this is what they consider bravery, all the more troubling that they want to govern the country |
     No, I won't identify them | Think they'll now complain I am censoring their point of view?

¶ 09:34 0 comments

2004-05-02

continuing difficulties at rondak | Well. the images are transferring fine now, but I'm unable to upload any page changes or updates | So its off to talk with tech support again tomorrow |

¶ 22:22 0 comments

WARNING Graphic Link! Nudity | Torture |
Torture of Iraqi prisoners | Okay folks, here's some of the photos from the New Yorker article that was published online this week | The article that goes with it TORTURE AT ABU GHRAIB by Semour Hirsch | Propaganda nightmare | Doubtless | Already the seats of power are decrying the incident that has been publicized, but the question remains, how far up is it that the stink rises? |
Rhetorical question? Maybe | You decide |
Mind you, we Yanks are not alone in this | London's Daily Mirror saw fit to provide its readers a lurid cover photo of a British soldier urinating on a prisoner |

     Sinclair Broadcast Censorship | Here's the corporate decision makers who choose to hide behind a wall of pseudo-patriotic psychobabble rather than present some reasoned statement as to why they pulled Ted Koppel's Nightline last week | Is the public dissemination of identifying the American dead in Iraq "anti-war"? In some minds, certainly | And I can understand the reluctance of some families who don't wish to be reminded of the loss of loved ones in hearing their names uttered on a broadcast that may be heard internationally |
     But wars are phenomena that engender discomfort, anguish, suffering and loss | That is true regardless of one's perspective, pro or anti war | Such events affect each and every one of us | Excising what we find unseemly because it is just that, is yet another step toward censoring the truth | My sympathies go out to those who lost family | But their loss impacts more than they, themselves | There are also very likely friends these souls had who do not, as yet, know they have lost someone also | They need to know who died as well |
     All the more important for a company that has holdings in outfits that make surveliiance equipment for government agencies, develops high tech radar equipment (actively soliciting government business) and also maintains a keen interest in internet, information technologies and the like that they be forthright about their reasons for restricting otherwise public information |
     It's also noteworthy that Sinclair has holdings in a privately held firm known as VisionAIR, which does business with correctional facilities | Hope the correctional facility in Virginia where Staff Sargeant Chip Frederick worked isn't one of them | (giving the benefit of the doubt, SSGT Frederick kept journals that began in January 2004, and published by the Guardian and Indynews which report his dismay about what was happening under his watch and speculating that "...sh*t rolls downhill" once people are caught doing wrong.)

¶ 21:32 0 comments

ECONOMIC TREASON
WILL BRADY'S GALLERY

economic treason | And act concerning the breach of public trust by managers of monies and resources who have taken, used and spent so as to personally profit from those resources at the expense of the true owners of the same -namely, the citizenry and/or shareholders

v The premise is simple. When certain individuals or parties conduct themselves in such a way as to jeopardize the economic and social well being of the community and have done so while personally benefitting simultaneous to the detriment of those who entrusted them with the proper management of certain resources, they have "endangered the life of the polity" and, as a result, may have committed Economic Treason

v Include that they be held accounatble for their actions, and be required to repay society for effects of those actions accordingly

v When decision-makers, representatives of the polity, if you will, engage to assist those who violate the sacred trust, they too, must be held accountable. But here we must also address what the legal definitions of their involvement might be

v There are precedents in history, however unsavory, for the punishment of such crimes to be meted out against the transgressors

v We don't have to follow these methods if they don't seem fit. Perhaps the penalty of death is not sufficient deterrent. for some, forced remediation and reimbursenet for their crimes -coupled with mandatory privation and public humiliation- for the rest of their life, would be a far more brutal punishment, but not less fitting

v Even, possibly, letting the perpetrators appear to go free, but to be barred from any professional titles, polistions, liscensces or certification or authority; being required to maintain a very publicly known place of residence with not protections nor interventions. Letting forces take their course they shall have to deal with their victims unprotected.

¶ 18:20