Category Archives: Text

Terrorizing Gay Iraqi’s

My good friend John of Americablog has been in Paris for the last few weeks and sent me a message today. The message contained excerpts from this article in the Guardian which tells about religious extremists in Iraq who troll gay websites and chat rooms seeking to identify gay Iraqi’s, track them down, and then torture or murder them.  They do this in the name of religion, citing the usual claims related to god and religious rules as justification for butchering men and women in ways that words cannot describe.

In his message John asked me if, among my many friends in the hacker community across the world, I might know some who could help expose these murderers who use computer skills to find their prey.  Although I do know many skilled individuals, I didn’t have a good answer for him. Is it possible that in a world where such a barberic group of killers exist, there might also be a group dedicated to human rights and the belief that none of us should ever be hunted for who we are, who could combat their activities?  Part of me thinks it is too TV, too Hollywood, that in the real world of post-Saddam Iraq, it is not possible to stop such horror.

Yet outside of the idea of stopping a group seeking to identify gay Iraqi’s, couldn’t those of us concerned with this issue help in other ways? The most basic – making sure there is information, readily available and being passed around any place where gay Iraqi’s could find it, on how to keep their identities safe.  On how to be vigilant for someone who is pretending to be something they are not. Although it might seem like common sense to some of us, it still seems to me one step we can take towards stopping fundamentalist monsters from committing atrocities.

Arming the Planet

A new congressional report reveals that in 2008 the United States further increased its already leading position as the world’s biggest arms dealer.  From fighter jets to machine guns and far beyond, no nation in the world comes close to the number of weapons produced by American companies and sold in every corner of the globe.

$37.8 billion is total amount of income made on weapons deals by US manufacturers last year.  A number that represents 2/3 of all deals made in the entire world. Let me repeat that, two-thirds off all weapons deals on this planet involve American manufacturers.

This statistic from the same year that so many people lost their jobs and their homes, with record numbers of Americans without health insurance, and a new president being elected on a platform to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (though mostly it was about Iraq).

Most media reports and analysis will focus on this huge share of the worlds weapons made by US companies, but what about those other companies?  Nations such as Italy, Russia, and France as all major players in the remaining 1/3 of the world’s arms exporters.  Both Italy and France being interesting examples of nations from within the EU where supposedly we are more anti-war and sensitive when it comes to where our money/weapons go.

Set against the backdrop of an economic crisis, a climate crisis, and violent conflicts raging on multiple continents, the news that weapons manufacturers had their best year ever, is something beyond shameful.

4th Anniversary of the Federal Flood

It was this week 4 years ago that hundreds of thousands of human beings in the American city of New Orleans were left stranded as the flood waters of Hurricane Katrina rose all around them.  It was this week, 4 years ago, that the truth about the lack of plan and the blatant incompetence of a government became clear. And having been born in a country, as well as a world, that has such a narrow and limited understanding of history, it is this week, 4 years later, that I reflect on a great crime committed against hundreds of thousands of people, many who died, and still more who have never really recovered from what took place in New Orleans.

In 2006, one year after the Federal Flood, I wrote the following post on this blog.

In 2007, thanks to a bit of help from a supporter of this program, I went down to the Gulf Coast and visited with relief workers in New Orleans. Among the things I reported on, how people’s houses were being stolen from them.

In the coming days Ill be looking back at the podcasts I recorded during my journey, following the path of destruction and broken promises. After that, it is also important to get back to the present, as the situation has not been resolved, and the Federal Flood continues to make its victims suffer.

Inuit Sovereignity

“Do you fear an arms race over the arctic?” the host of The Current Podcast asked an Inuit representative during a recent episode. The gentlemen spoke at length about the problems of the Inuit population in the high arctic and his concerns about the Canadian federal government doing military exercises in the arctic as opposed to giving much needed attention to public services and infrastructure.

Among the many things I learned while listening to this program, was the story of the Inuit High Arctic Relocation. I had never heard about the actions of the Canadian government during the cold war, relocating 87 Inuit people from northern Quebec. The government claimed, and still claims, that this was in order to alleviate problems Inuit had in northern Quebec by giving them a new and not over-populated region to practice their traditional living. However, as is illustrated in this program and other historical record, Canada was seeking to make settlements in the high arctic to prove that they own it and have people living there.

Many decades later, they’re still trying to prove it is theirs, and the Inuits still have problems stemming from government neglect.

Listen to the program to hear interesting details from a  compelling source.

To Save Itself

Australia’s ABC Radio National (Background Briefing) recently featured one of those speeches that I consider a huge must-listen no matter who you are.  The topic: The US’s place in the world, empire, the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, education and the interconnectedness of all these concepts.  The speaker, retired US army Colonel Andrew Bacevich, considers himself a conservative and argues against the idea that Afghanistan’s future is so vitally important to the future of the United States.  The same goes, in his opinion, for Iraq which he gets into in order to dispel the idea that the invasion of Iraq can now, in any way, be considered a victory.

Among his great quotes that I think need to be repeated and revisited:
“If the United States today has a saving mission, it is to save itself. Speaking in the midst of another unnecessary war back in 1967, Martin Luther King got it exactly right when he said, ‘Come home, America.’ The prophet of that era who urged his countrymen to take on what he called ‘the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism’ he remains the prophet today that we ignore at our peril. That Barack Obama should fail to realise this qualifies as not only ironic but also inexplicable.”

“Now for those who despite this, still hanker to have a go at nation-building, why stop with Afghanistan? When not first fix, say, Mexico? In terms of its importance to the United States, our southern neighbour, a major supplier of oil, and drugs among other commodities deemed vital to the American way of life, certainly Mexico outranks Afghanistan by several orders of magnitude. And for those who purport to believe that moral considerations rather than self-interest should inform foreign policy, thereto Mexico qualifies for priority attention. Consider the theft of California. Or consider more recently how the American appetite for illicit drugs and our liberal gun laws, have corroded Mexican institutions and produced an epidemic of violence affecting ordinary Mexicans. We owe these people, big time. Yet any politician or pundit suggesting that the United States ought to commit 60,000 or so US troops backed by a generously funded, multi year effort with expectations of eliminating Mexican drug traffic and political corruption, would be laughed out of Washington. And rightly so.”

Those are only two of many statements that over the last few years it seems much of the public has stopped thinking about. Somewhere along the way the war in Afghanistan became “the good war” that even Obama himself, the king of change, doesn’t want to turn back from.  Also towards the end of the speech he talks about education and how little influence the readings and teaching is school that children receive seems to have on them when compared with the influence of all other sources in the course of their daily lives. The conclusion, like the rest of the speech, is highly recommended reading or listening.

Hacker Camp 2009 Impressions

In many ways it is as if we never left. 2 years ago I sat at a picnic table under a tarp on the Polish-German border on the site of a former East German military base with a couple of thousand hackers and general purpose nerds.  2 years later here I sit, this time somewhere in the Netherlands, in the infamous Metalab tent filled with Vienna’s creative and hilarious geek crew.  To my left and right, tiny laptops connected to several layers of wires. In front of me, beyond a few more piles of wires and what looks like a virtual reality unit from the 80’s, several pale and half-asleep campers are tending to the Austrian breakfast.  It’s 12:36pm. 2007, 2009, its as if we just unpaused after the last camp.

It is always difficult to properly describe the scale and degree of amazing these gatherings are. I’ve only been a member of the community since 2005, but in these few years I’ve fallen in love with the attitude, atmosphere, and insanity of hacker camp and hacker gatherings in general. Yet when it comes up in conversation with those who have never experienced it, my words are met with giggles and eyes rolling, again- how to explain what happens here?

Last night as I stopped by the Italian embassy tent, I was greeted, as per tradition, by Italian hackers with grappa and cookies. Earlier they were surely cooking pasta in huge vats right next to their own huge pile of wires and laptops.  As I attempted to drink the powerful drink, cheering from the Austrian village caught my attention. Overhead, some kind of balloon creation consisting of mass quantities of glow sticks and a well designed frame powerful by 3 oversized helium balloons.  2 members of the lab climb atop the circa 1980’s Austria Telecom phonebooth to get a better vantage point for holding the rope the balloons are tethered to. In the semi-dark, hordes of hackers stop to cheer on the flying contraption, some calling on the rope holders to “set it free!”  Eventually nature takes control and the cord snaps, the flying spaghetti monster fights its way through a line of trees and floats up into the night sky like some kind of rainbow creature heading towards the moon. More cheers, campers move on to the next big tent and whatever project those people are working on.

Blinking lights, house music, machines copying themselves, French hackers making crepes, and the last remaining imaginary soviet republic with its own tent embassy, the list of creative or uncreative ideas is neverending here.  I spent much of my second day walking from tent to tent asking different groups about their healthcare system.  I ran into enthusiastic Scandinavians, a Brazilian sitting between tents on his laptop, a Slovak on his way to the bar, and a friendly Romanian gentleman who has found the perfect shade trees under which to position his tents.  As he and I discuss the healthcare system in Romania, hacker children splash around in the small lake around which the camp is set up.  Just behind us is the rather un-camp-like American house, where a group of American hackers are housed, I can hear their loud conversations about some technical topics I don’t understand.  I’m told the American hacker house makes good breakfasts, something to keep in mind for my last few days here.

It is now 1pm. The sun is blazing and even more people are filing into this tent. They’re coming to watch the replicator machine replicate itself. It is behind me and the constant buzz buzz sound of plastic being cut or drilled or whatever that thing does, it provides great writing music.  Time to load up on water, grab my mobile internet device and camera, and head out to see how camp looks after yet another night of beautiful madness.