Category: Politics

Spain’s Blurred Cultural Divides (or how Newt Gingrich can’t even get xenophobia right)

The Alhambra, from Mirador San Nicolás
The Alhambra of Granada: Muslim Nasrid Fortress; Holy Roman Emperor Charles V's palace; Catholic churches and ex-mosques in view. Photo taken outside the Saint Nicholas church in the Albayzin "Muslim quarter" of the city.

Newt Gingrich states,

“The proposed “Cordoba House” overlooking the World Trade Center site – where a group of jihadists killed over 3000 Americans and destroyed one of our most famous landmarks – is a test of the timidity, passivity and historic ignorance of American elites.  For example, most of them don’t understand that “Cordoba House” is a deliberately insulting term.  It refers to Cordoba, Spain – the capital of Muslim conquerors who symbolized their victory over the Christian Spaniards by transforming a church there into the world’s third-largest mosque complex.” [Emphasis mine.]

I’ll overlook Gingrich’s gross overstatement of the historical facts (this excellent post by a medieval historian refutes his statements in detail) and get to the more glaring irony in his statement. Say hello to the “world’s third-largest mosque complex,” that symbolic victory over Christian Spain (which before the conquest was neither unified in religion nor statehood):

Yep, that just makes ya tremble in fear of Islamist conquerors, doesn’t it? Newt Gingrich uses Córdoba as an example of the Muslim destruction of Western or Christian culture, yet the very building in question stands today not as a mosque, but a cathedral. (Ironically, the world’s third-largest Christian complex lies a couple of hours’ drive away in Seville – a mosque converted into a cathedral after the Catholics conquered the Muslim-ruled Al-Andalus.) Continue reading Spain’s Blurred Cultural Divides (or how Newt Gingrich can’t even get xenophobia right)

Proprietary Vendors Want Open Source Sanctions

The Guardian reports that  International Intellectual Property Alliance requested that the U.S. Trade Representative to put countries using open source in government on a “Special 301 watchlist” – a list of intellectual property-violating nations, or “state sponsors of piracy.” The recommendation states:

The Indonesian government’s policy… simply weakens the software industry and undermines its long-term competitiveness by creating an artificial preference for companies offering open source software and related services, even as it denies many legitimate companies access to the government market.

Rather than fostering a system that will allow users to benefit from the best solution available in the market, irrespective of the development model, it encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations.

As such, it fails to build respect for intellectual property rights and also limits the ability of government or public-sector customers (e.g., State-owned enterprise) to choose the best solutions.

In general, this is just another example of an established, successful industry trying to maintain power by coercing governments to make emerging business models illegal, rather than bothering to innovate and create sustainability in the free market. I rant about this all the time, so I won’t continue to do so here.

But since this was filed by the “International Intellectual Property Alliance” – an interest group which conveniently separates this action’s publicity from the companies it represents – I thought I’d just call out just a few of the member companies which are behind this anticompetitive action: (this list goes through member organizations of the IIPA, including the BSA, ESA and AAP)

  • Adobe
  • American Association for the Advancement of Science
  • Apple
  • Bloomberg Press
  • The Cato Institute (Free market libertarian economics think tanks for government regulations?!)
  • Cisco Systems
  • Dell
  • Electronic Arts
  • Harcourt, Inc.
  • Houghton Mifflin Co.
  • HP
  • IBM
  • Intel
  • McGraw-Hill
  • Microsoft
  • Motion Picture Association of America
  • Nintendo
  • Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA)
  • SAP
  • Sony
  • Symantec
  • Xerox
  • Countless University presses (MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Princeton, Oxford, Universities of California, Chicago, New York, North Carolina and more)

While there isn’t evidence that these companies directly instigated the effort to stifle competition from open source, they are the financial backers of this anticompetitive organization, and thus have a responsibility to be accountable for its actions.

Google Grows a Pair

I’ve long disapproved of American companies’ willingness to go along with oppressive regimes’ human rights abuses. Some companies have given information on dissidents to governments and helped in the apprehension of political prisoners. This has attracted significant attention over the years, both in the media and in Congressional inquiries.

For years, Google has censored search results on their Chinese domain, Google.cn, in an effort to keep their site from being blocked by the “Great Firewall of China,” which blocks access to countless sites on an unpublished Government blacklist.

Today, Google made public their findings of targeted malicious break-ins to Google accounts of various activists for Chinese human rights, both within China, and in the U.S. and Europe. The attacks weren’t exclusive to Google, but widespread across other major companies.

Amazingly, after finding this, Google has made the decision to fight back and stop participating in China’s self-censorship mandates:

These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

I applaud this policy decision by Google. It’s a shame that American companies benefit so often from doing their business in ways that support corrupt governments, and our own country should do more to prevent it from happening to others.

China is growing and has the potential to improve the quality of life for people worldwide, but it has some very disturbing issues that it needs to address as it matures

U.S. Intel failed on Underpants Bomber due to Misspelling, Software

Well, this isn’t good. According to an official White House review, the intelligence community failed to notice red flags about the underpants bomber. Why? The software that would have correlated intel and raised alarms was rendered ineffective by a one-letter misspelling of the would-be bomber’s name.

From the White House’s review of the government’s failures in the Flight 253 debacle:

Mr. Abdulmutallab possessed a U.S. visa, but this fact was not correlated with the concerns of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s father about Mr. Abdulmutallab’s potential radicalization. A misspelling of Mr. Abdulmutallab’s name initially resulted in the State Department believing he did not have a valid U.S. visa. A determination to revoke his visa however would have only occurred if there had been a successful integration of intelligence by the CT [counterterrorism] community, resulting in his being watchlisted.

According to Talking Points Memo, Abdulmutallab’s name was misspelled by just one letter.

Via TPM

On Yesterday’s “Terrorist” Incident

Airport security yet again failed to catch a person’s improvised weapon aboard a plane yesterday. Passengers yet again proved that they aren’t going to let shit happen on a plane in the first place. The cabin of a plane is no longer a viable place from which to carry out a terrorist act.

The American government responded by adding more “security” measures.

I’d feel a lot safer if my government focused on making less enemies in the world instead of treating us all as if we are the enemy ourselves. That isn’t the kind of self-fulfilling prophecy I like.

Just a Reminder (on Torture)

This is old news, but unfortunately is still relevant:

“There should be little doubt from American history that we consider [waterboarding] as torture, otherwise we wouldn’t have tried and convicted Japanese for doing that same thing to Americans. I would also hope that he would not want to be associated with a technique which was invented in the Spanish Inquisition, was used by Pol Pot in one of the great eras of genocide in history and is being used on Burmese monks as we speak. America is a better nation than that.” -Senator John McCain

Even older is McCain’s Newsweek editorial from 2005, which is truly worth the few minutes it takes to read. He very accurately puts the whole issue in a nutshell:

I don’t mourn the loss of any terrorist’s life. Nor do I care if in the course of serving their ignoble cause they suffer great harm. They have pledged their lives to the intentional destruction of innocent lives, and they have earned their terrible punishment in this life and the next. What I do mourn is what we lose when by official policy or official neglect we allow, confuse or encourage our soldiers to forget that best sense of ourselves, that which is our greatest strength–that we are different and better than our enemies, that we fight for an idea, not a tribe, not a land, not a king, not a twisted interpretation of an ancient religion, but for an idea that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights.

Now, in this war, our liberal notions are put to the test. Americans of good will, all patriots, argue about what is appropriate and necessary to combat this unconventional enemy. Those of us who feel that in this war, as in past wars, Americans should not compromise our values must answer those Americans who believe that a less rigorous application of those values is regrettably necessary to prevail over a uniquely abhorrent and dangerous enemy.

It’s just too bad that these words have now gone unheeded for years. Time is running out – statutes of limitations will go into effect next year for some of the crimes committed – we must act soon to assert that which sets us apart from our enemies.

Obama continues and defends Bush’s illegal rendition programs

Very soon after taking office, Obama signed an executive order mandating the close of the Guantánamo Bay facility within the next year. His administration has been working hard to ensure our security by administering justice and by not provoking our enemies by torturing our prisoners. As far as Guantánamo is concerned, I am more than happy with the progress being made.

That said, the Obama administration has chosen to continue the United States’ illegal extraordinary rendition program. This CIA program transports detainees, most of whom have not been charged with any crime and are not afforded simple protections of due process or habeas corpus, to "black sites" in foreign countries where they are subjected to extra-constitutional interrogations and torture.

After the Guantánamo executive orders, it became clear that rendition was going to stay in one form or another. Obama’s CIA Director nominee, Leon Panetta, testified that he would end the rendition program, only to later retract his statements – I’m guessing after the administration set him straight. On the lack of reform regarding rendition, The Los Angeles Times reports:

"Obviously you need to preserve some tools — you still have to go after the bad guys," said an Obama administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity when discussing the legal reasoning. "The legal advisors working on this looked at rendition. It is controversial in some circles and kicked up a big storm in Europe. But if done within certain parameters, it is an acceptable practice."

But the biggest outrage came on Monday, when new Obama administration lawyers chose to keep the Bush administration’s stance in a federal lawsuit brought against a Boeing subsidiary by five detainees who were transported by the CIA to foreign countries, where they were tortured during interrogations. Bush’s lawyers insisted that the case be dismissed as a matter of national security, and now Obama’s lawyers have chosen to do the same.

Extraordinary rendition is never an acceptable practice. It is performed for the explicit reason that interrogations can be conducted without the protections of U.S. law, which forbids torture. Justice must be carried out to ensure our nation’s safety. But this includes the need to humanely treat our prisoners and detainees, instead of spitting in our enemies’ faces and inviting even more violence to our doorstep. The ACLU’s statement best summarizes the situation:

"Eric Holder’s Justice Department stood up in court today and said that it would continue the Bush policy of invoking state secrets to hide the reprehensible history of torture, rendition and the most grievous human rights violations committed by the American government. This is not change. This is definitely more of the same. Candidate Obama ran on a platform that would reform the abuse of state secrets, but President Obama’s Justice Department has disappointingly reneged on that important civil liberties issue. If this is a harbinger of things to come, it will be a long and arduous road to give us back an America we can be proud of again."

Photos from the first week in Granada

We’re getting pretty well settled here in Granada… Much easier to blend in a bit and feel more like a local. I’m learning the streets more and have a better sense of direction…

Today we went for a tour of the Albayzin – the historic Muslim quarter of town on a huge hill next to the Alhambra. It’s a beautiful, quieter part of town that has less roads and more footpaths. Very hilly, too. We saw a lot of great stuff and I got my first good look at the Alhambra, too.

Getting home from the tour was a bit difficult… There was a huge Gaza protest going on in the street. We wanted to  check it out, but at the same time I knew that abroad, Americans can be seen as “OMG Israel can totally do whatever the hell they want.” So we tried to lie low walking through the enormous crowd, not wanting to look very American. Hopefully with the new presidency our foreign policy might come out of the sewers so we aren’t seen as supporters of genocide.

OK, I digress. The photos:

Granada, semana primera

Barack in Fort Collins

Today 50,000 people packed the Oval at CSU to see Barack Obama speak. The line was two and a half miles long, and the rally got an early start, so the Secret Service stopped screening people in order to get everyone in as quickly as possible.

My friends and I got a spot about two thirds back on the length of the oval. Because the crowd was so long, it was pretty hard to see, so we ended up taking turns pushing up on each others’ shoulders to get a quick glimpse. My camera has a swiveling screen, so I could get it above some heads and see a bit, periscope-style. But most of all, it was great just to be there.

Obama  mostly went through his current stump speech, emphasizing his plans to make taxes lower than they were under Ronald Reagan, reform healthcare, restore the economy, and improve access to education.

Because of our location farther back on the oval, I couldn’t get the greatest photos, but I managed to take a few decent ones… Check them out on my Picasa album. I also took a quick video of Obama speaking on the economy, as well as one of the crowd of 50,000.