Response to Anonymous

Anonomous Wrote:

Are you serious or just trying to be provocative?

It's a serious question, but I'm not completely sure of the answer that I've come up with. There are some parts that I'm sure about, and some parts that I'm not.

One HUMONGUOUS distinction is: our forefathers were fighting against another organized army who attacked them in their own land while terrorists use innocent people in an attempt to advance their cause.

In their own land? The land belonged to the British, and we were British citizens. We revolted against our king and the "legal" rulers of our land. Also, a large number of colonists were in favor of British rule. Obviously there were also a large number of people in favor of the revolution or we could never have found the soldiers to fight for the revolution. I don't know what the percentage was, that number was never mentioned in the history books we read as kids, but I think it's safe to say that the people in favor of revolution forced their ideas on those who were in favor of British rule. I'm not trying to say that our forefathers were in the wrong, only that things were not as clear cut as people think. As for them attacking us, I don't know who fired the first shot, but I do know that we had committed such acts as the Boston Tea Party and had formed our Declaration of Independence. We also formed an alliance with France, an enemy of the British Empire. Had we lost the war, our forefathers would have been branded as traitors to the British Crown and would be vilified today.

Have you heard of the beheadings of simple worker-bees by the terrorists in Iraq? Did you hear the stories about the combat in Fallujah where 5 "human shields" were executed at the last minute while the terrorists scrambled to their own safety? Have you heard of the terrorists using ambulances as their vehicles of choice from which to shoot the enemy, knowing that we generally abide a different set of standards of ethics and decency during combat? Have you heard of the terrorists using white flags to indicate they were surrendering only to begin shooting while "the enemy" was approaching to take them into custody ( and give them food, medical attention, bedding, clothes, etc )? Have you heard of the terrorists using their own compadres' dead bodies to set off IED explosives when "the enemy" approaches to bury the dead?

Let me start by saying that I don't condone terrorism, but the main reason I don't condone it is because I think it's ineffective. The powers that you're trying to influence through terrorism can't succumb to it because that would only encourage more people to use terrorism as a means of influence. Having said that, however, I would also say that the acts mentioned above are just the types of techniques that you would have to use when battling an overwhelmingly superior enemy. Do we really have a different set of ethics? We torture the people we capture and justify it by saying that that the information we extract can be used to save American lives. How is that different than using a white flag to get close to the enemy, and then justifying it by saying that it's a good way to kill a large number of the enemy.

Our forefathers would put individual soldiers in trees along the side of a road to wait for the British to come marching down the road. Then the soldier would take one shot, kill one British soldier, then remain perfectly silent while the British looked for him. With just one shot, it was hard for the British to tell which direction it came from, so most often they could never find the guy. The British probably thought that we were cowards for not confronting them in a real battle, but we thought we were being really clever and taking advantage in a weakness in the way the British did things.

I'm not trying to say that the things that terrorists do are okay, only that they are not fundamentally worse than what we do, or than what happens in a conventional war. In fact, I think it's arguable that by making a big hoopla about every person they kill, e.g. by video taping the execution, etc., they are actually using each death a lot more effectively than we are when we kill a lot of people and then trying to play it down.

Why are you so quick to vilify America and yet constantly defend Hitler, Hussein, terrorists, etc?

I am only interested in the truth. I'm not claiming to be any better at discerning the truth than anyone else, only that it's the truth that I seek. Having said that, I believe that our history books contain a version of history that is biased toward a particular view point. Therefore, if you're interested in the truth, you have to point your compass a little to the anti-American side of what our history books say, and say that the real truth is probably somewhere over there. Another thing I try to do is to look at the actual events, ignoring any opinions that I may have heard from other people, and try to guess what could motivate someone to do what they supposedly did.

BTW, what is it you think the terrorists are fighting FOR? What is it that you say are "the problems that the terrorists are trying to solve [that] are real"?

Good question, and one for which I don't have a good answer. I don't think there is any question that we're the most powerful nation in the world, and I think we use that power to influence other nations to our benefit. When we give aid to developing nations, it is with strings attached, either to open doors for trade, or to get favorable trading terms, or to influence governments to crack down on drug trafficers, etc.. Is this bad, or is this simply fair competition? I don't know. Our companies engage internationally in practices that are illegal in this country, but not illegal in the countries in which they operate. They hire children to work 16 hour days sewing soccer balls, for example, and pay them only pennies a day. However, that's pennies a day more than they would be making otherwise. The children may have been lured away from their families with promises of a better life, and the managers of the shops may intimidate the children to get them to stay. People may blame our companies for these crimes, but the people committing these crimes are not U.S. citizens and are just doing things the way things are done in their country. To give one, somewhat horrific example, there was that U.S. chemical company in India a few years back that let a bunch of toxic gases out that killed hundreds of people, but they were following the safety guidelines of India at that time, and India has had a lot of cases train crashes or earthquakes that kill a lot of people. I work with a lot of people from India, and one girl I work with told me about hearing about a train crash in India that killed a lot of people. She called up her father in India to express her concern and ask for the latest news about it. He said that he had heard about the crash, but didn't know too much else. He really wasn't too interested in it because it happened in another part of the country and didn't involve anyone he knew.

In all honesty, When I said that what the terrorists are fighting for is real, that was based on a vague idea that the media that we're exposed to is generally pro-American, and that the real truth is going to be on the anti-American side of what we are hearing. There is the U.S. support of Israel, but then again, we're probably justified in support countries that are friendly toward us, and not supporting countries that publicly malign us and call us evil. However, after all of this wishy-washiness, I will state that I do believe that when a terrorist group starts up, there are generally valid causes that they are fighting for. Those causes may be different for each group, they may be just or they may not be, but they are there.

I'm going to skip some stuff here, and now:

Based on everything I've read on this blog so far, I'm assuming you did NOT vote for Bush. Having said that, and because Bush won the recent election, do you claim that you are NOT innocent and that if you are killed by a terrorist that you deserved it?

I will not go as far as saying that I will have deserved it, but I will claim that I am not innocent. I work and live in this country. I take advantage of its benefits, and the result of my labor supports its policies. I would say that I am less guilty than Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, or a lot of other people high up in the administration, and I am less guilty than the heads of corprations, like Halliburton, that make a lot of money off of this war. I may even marginally less guilty than someone who voted for Bush, except that a lot of people who voted for him did so because they thought he was the best person to get of out of this mess, not because they are happy we got into this mess. However, I am not less guilty than most of the soldiers in Iraq. They joined the military with the honest desire to be there to defend the U.S. if she is attacked, not to go on the offensive against another country. However, like any group of people, there are both good and bad people in our military. I do consider myself to be less guilty than those that committed the crimes in Abu Ghraib, or those that killed Healing Iraq's cousin.

response to anonomous

Anonomous,

I want to thank you for your comment earlier about "Evil Terrorists". I do want to respond to that, but I haven't had time. I'm going to try to get to it this weekend. I just didn't want you to think I was ignoring you. It was a good comment, and I do want to respond to it.

Thanks,
LeRoy

Honorable Republicans

One of the things I've always admired about Republicans is their dogged respect for the "Rule of Law". Why, they'd rather change the law than break it.

San Diego Union article

Actually, I'm just being facetious. They have a very good reason for changing this law (okay, it's really just a rule, not a law), as it leaves them open to unfounded legal attacks by the Democrats, and nobody knows the effectiveness of this type of attack better than the Republicans, who used just this technique in their attack on Clinton back in '98/'99.

Donna Frye Update 2

The good news is that a judge through out the lawsuits against Donna's candidacy. There is an article in the S.D. Union today about it. Unfortunately, they haven't published it yet on their web page, so I can't provide a link to it.

The bad news, however, is that I think she is going to lose the election. The count isn't over yet, but the numbers don't look good. So far, the Registrar of Voters is only publishing four numbers. These are:

Total number of write-ins
Number of write-ins confirmed for Donna Frye
Number of votes for Dick Murphy
Number of votes for Ron Roberts

What they aren't saying is how many votes have left to be counted. These votes come in three categories:

First, there are the regular votes that were tabulated electronically. These gave quick results for votes for Ron, Dick and "write-in", but the write-ins had to be counted individually to see how many were for Donna.

Second are the provisional ballots. As I understand it, these from people who went to the voting places but weren't listed as being registered to vote in that location. They were allowed to vote, but there vote only counts if it can be confirmed that they are in fact registered to vote in the city of San Diego, and that they didn't vote in more than one location. These votes have to be verified and counted by hand.

Third are the absentee ballots. This method of voting was devised to allow people to vote even if they aren't in town during the vote, but it is often used by people who just don't like going down to the voting place. These votes also have to be counted by hand.

For a while, the total number of write-ins was way more than the number confirmed for Donna Frye because a lot of the write-ins hadn't been verified yet. However, lately, those numbers have been stabilizing. Here are some examples of those numbers:

11-07-04:

Write-In 127,641
Verified: D. Frye 24,473
Dick Murphy 123,822
Ron Roberts 112,314

11-14-04

Write-In 149,979
Verified: D. Frye 146,291
Dick Murphy 147,585

11-16-04:

Write-In 151,759
Verified: D. Frye 146,737
Dick Murphy 149,928
Ron Roberts 135,486

As you can see, the numbers over the last few days have been increasing by about the same amount for all of the candidates. (The first two sets of numbers came from my previous blogs. Unfortunately, on 11-14 I didn't include Ron Roberts numbers.) I think this means that all of the write-ins on the normal ballots have been verified, and all that remains is to count the provisional and absentee ballots. The difference between the "Write-In" numbers and the "Verified: D. Frye" numbers indicates the number of write-ins that were not for Donna.

This means that there are no more non-verified write-ins, and that the rest of the numbers show the true results minus the provisional and absentee ballots that have not yet been counted. Since these ballots are as likely to vote for Dick or Ron as for Donna, all of their numbers should continue to go up at roughly the same rate.

Also, I notice that Dick's numbers are going up slightly faster than Donna's. I think this is due to the absentee ballots, since people who are not in San Diego write now are less likely to have been aware that Donna was running, and would not have written her name in. Also, many absentee ballots are turned in early, and thus would have been turned in before Donna's campaign got fully under way.

Anyway, that's my prediction. I haven't seen any of these ideas raised anywhere else, so there could be a flaw in my reasoning, but it seems valid to me.

Donna Frye update

The count is still going on to determine our new Mayor, but the number of write-ins verified as for Donna Frye is 146,291, so it's really getting down to the wire. Dick Murphy has 147,585, and the total number of write-ins is 149,979. What they're not telling us is how many write-ins there are left to count, so we know she's pretty close, but we don't know how close.

The real issue these days, though, is that there are two law suits that have been filed to try to invalidate Donna's candidacy. I don't know the details of the law suits. One has something to do with one of our laws saying that write-ins are allowed, but another saying that they're not allowed. They're saying that the law that says that they're not allowed supersede's the law that says that they're allowed.

The second lawsuit says something to the effect that Donna, as the sole democrat against two republicans, split the republican vote, and that her election, therefore, doesn't represent the true wishes of the people.

I can't speak to the justification of the first law suit, but I don't think the second one is valid. Yes, there is a problem when you have two people who represents roughly the same set of ideas running against someone with a different set. A lot of people say that this is why Gore lost in 2000. Although there wasn't another democrat to split the vote, there was another popular liberal, Ralph Nader, who supposedly took votes away from Al Gore. Had Nader not been in the race, there is a good chance Gore would have one.

I'm not saying that this isn't a problem, but, just as in 2000, any reform to the voting process should apply to the next election, not the one we just had.

As for the first law suit. I'm not sure how people are selected for the ballot, but I don't like the idea that the government can tell us who we can vote for. Even in this election, Donna had to get an okay to be considered as a write in. It seems to me that we should be able to elect anyone we damn please.

The only good argument I've heard for invalidating Donna's candidacy is that she joined the race only 5 weeks before the election, and that didn't really give people a chance to find out who she was. However, she's been a city councilwomen for four years now, so we do know something about her, and I don't think she could have won (assuming she did) without that reputation, so I don't really think that's a valid argument either.

Basically, I think there are people who want to own the government, and they know they can't own Donna Frye. If they had thought she had a chance, they probably would have tried to dig up some dirt on her, but that can backfire on you and, since they didn't think she would win anyway, they didn't want to chance it. Now that she did win (assuming that she did), they want to go against the will of the people and get someone in the office that they have a better chance of buying off.

Having said that, I don't want to suggest the Dick Murphy can be bought off. I think he has a lot of personal integrity, which is why he's not too disappointed that Donna seems to be winning. However, I do think that Dick Murphy is more susceptible to flattery and coercion than Donna is, and I think he knows it, and that's why I think he's personally looking forward to see what happens under Donna.

Evil Terrorists

Can someone answer me this one question? What is the difference between terrorists and our own forefathers who founded this country?

This is a major stumbling block for me. Since this country was founded on a revolt against a reigning authority, it is kind of built into our ethos that such a revolt is justifiable, at least under certain circumstances. I would say that those circumstances is when that authority has power over you, but you don't have any representation with that authority, and when that authority represents the interests of others over yours.

Now, do these criteria apply to the U.S.? Certainly, the U.S. and its corporations have a lot of influence over other parts of the world, and other parts of the world do not have representation in our government, and certainly we often act in our own best interests, or those of our corporations, so I would say that the conditions are there to justify some kind of revolt.

This is starting to sound like I think terrorism is okay, but really I'm just trying to say that the problems that the terrorists are trying to solve are real, and that if we don't work to resolve those problems peacefully, then we leave the terrorists no other options. I've said before that I think peaceful protest is a better way to solve these types of problems, but we shouldn't have to wait for that before we try to solve the problems.

I do think that terrorism is justified when peaceful protest is prohibited. For example, in Iraq under Saddam, where peaceful protesters would have been have been imprisoned, tortured and killed, terrorism would have been justifiable.

One difference that has been pointed out between terrorists and the kind of revolutions we've had in the past is the targeting of innocent people. Granted, in any kind of a war, innocent people are going to get caught in the crossfire, but deliberatly targeting innocent people can never be justified. However, in a lot of countries, for example the U.S. and Israel where our leaders are voted into power, the general population can't be considered innocent. We voted our leaders into power, and if we didn't support their policies, the we would vote them out of power. If we don't vote them out of power, then we're not innocent.

Bush vs. Human Rights

Here's another article on Bush trying to weasle out of having to obey those pesky little human rights laws:

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/09/politics/09gitmo.html?hp&ex=1100062800&en=ef8ed60281cb7cb4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The article is about how a federal judge has ruled that the war crimes tribunals in Guantanamo Bay violate, or at least are not sufficient to conform to, the Geneva Convention.

At one point, the article states:

The government is in the midst of conducting a separate set of tribunals here at Guantánamo, similar to those required by the Geneva Conventions, to determine whether detainees were properly deemed unlawful enemy combatants. Those proceedings, called combatant status review tribunals, were quickly put into place by the Bush administration after the Supreme Court's ruling in June that the Guantánamo prisoners were entitled to challenge their detentions in federal court.

I think this confirms my earlier claim that the Bush administration had first tried to simply incarcerate these people without any legal proceedings at all.

The article later states:

The judge also said that in asserting that the Guantánamo prisoners are unlawful combatants and outside the reach of the Geneva Conventions, "the government has asserted a position starkly different from the positions and behavior of the United States in previous conflicts...

This confirms my statement that the Bush administration is trying to classify prisoners in such a way that it can avoid as much legal proceedings as possible.

Later, the article states:

The lawsuits consist of habeas corpus petitions, in which people may demand that
the government provide some explanation as to why they are imprisoned.

This implies that at one time, presumeably before the Supreme Court's order in June, the Bush administration was imprisoning these people without even telling them why they were imprisoned.

Two other key statements in the article:

...no American court could approve of any proceeding that had such a glaring lack of the right to confront one's accusers and the evidence.

and:

...it was inevitable that a federal judge somewhere would find fault with the administration's approach "that you can keep people locked up for two and three years and you still don't really know who they are and why we're keeping them."

Speaking one's mind

What do you do when you have a thought that seems to be right, but that you think most people will strongly disagree with? If you are right, then shouldn't you try to convince others to see the light? And if you're wrong, wouldn't it be better to speak it out and have others try to convince you to see the light, rather than to hold it inside and continue to believe that you're right?

I believe that you should be able to put an idea out there. If you're right, people will agree with you. If not, then they won't. It's that simple.

I've said that I think Bush and Hitler are similar. So far, everyone I've mentioned it to disagrees with me, although I have heard the comparison made in a couple of other places, such as opinion articles in the news paper. However, it's clear that, even though the idea has been put out there, most people disagree with it. I still thing they're wrong, but at this point, I have made my argument, and I am content to let people think what they want.

More on Donna Frye

A while ago I wrote a post about Donna Frye running as a write-in candidate for Mayor here in San Diego. When I wrote the post, I honestly believed she had a good chance of winning, then later I began to get some doubts. Well, the election was November 2nd, but we still don't know who the winner is. The votes were counted electronically, with "write-in" getting the most votes, but until they read all of the write-in votes to see whose name was written in, we really won't know. Often, people will write in Mickey Mouse, or some other nonsensical name, or they will write in themselves.

For those who haven't been following the local news, here are the current counts blatantly copied from the San Diego Union's web site:

Write-In 127,641
Verified: D. Frye 24,473
Dick Murphy 123,822
Ron Roberts 112,314

What they don't say is how many write-in votes have been counted so far. If only 24,473 write in votes have been counted so far, and they're all for Donna, then she's well on her way to becoming our next mayor. However, if 28,000 and some odd write-in votes have been counted, and only 24,473 are for Donna, then she's probably not going to make it :(

Here's an article that was in today's paper about her:

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/metro/20041107-9999-1m7frye.html

Bush vs. Hitler

Okay, how about this then: Bush isn't as intelligent as Hitler. He's not as imaginative in his solution to problems, and he's probably not as good a speaker as Hilter was supposed to have been, but he is similar to Hitler in terms of his lack of respect for the lives and rights of people whom he perceives as being "the enemy", and this can include a vast number of people. Can I get away with that? I really think there is nothing he wouldn't try to do in order to win whatever battle he is trying to fight. I think the only restraint he's shown so far is because of the contraints put on him by our society.

On a Lighter Note: The Smell of Poop

Several years ago I was walking behind this elderly oriental couple at the supermarket when I suddenly detected this rich aroma of soy sauce. It was a delicious smell that I assumed emanated from the pores of this couple because of all of the Chinese food that they ate. I felt blessed that I could experience a different culture is such a sensory fashion. It was only sometime later that I realized that one of them had probably farted, and the soy sauce aroma had probably come from that.

Anyway, time passed, and this lesson from life bounced around in the back of my head and never quite settled permanently. Did I really, secretly, like the smell of poop? Is there something intrinsically unpleasant about the smell of poop, or is this unpleasantness something that we learn?

Today, as I was walking between buildings today at work, I detected a particularly strong, yet definitely pleasant, odor that reminded me of pancakes with maple syrup, and that started me thinking again. Suddenly it occurred to me that, of all the smells that we can smell, the smell of poop is one of the strongest. I'd never thought of it that way before. The strength of that smell can only have come about one way. Somehow, we must have evolved to become particularly sensitive to that smell. Somehow, being able to readily detect the smell of poop increased our chance for survival.

This takes us back to our original question, is our dislike of the smell of poop inherited, or learned? This is important because if it is inherited, then it probably evolved as a warning to keep us away from poop. This could be because poop can carry disease, as incentive to keep poop out of our living areas, or because the smell of unexpected poop might be a signal that pottentially dangerous strangers could be about.

On the other hand, if our distate for the smell of poop is learned, then it's quite possible that our ancestors actually liked the smell of poop. Dogs really like the smell of poop, especially that of potential prey animals. My dog used to go crazy when she smelled some particularly intoxicating pile of something, and she used to love to roll in it. I think I heard it explained once that dogs did this to disguise their smell to their prey.

I don't have the answer to this one, but I can't escape the memory of that oriental couple's smell, and when I really think about it honestly, it's not really the smell that bothers me so much as what I know it means.