Older blog entries for fejj (starting at number 162)

In reading the anti-Bush Administration propoganda that spammed the Slashdot forum under the article about the USGS censor, I was shocked to find such woefully inaccurate libel. Allow me to respond to this piecemeal (for the purpose of clarity, I will quote the slashdot poster with bold italics and any other article with only italics).

You are woefully uninformed (despite your absolutely ridiculous "informative" moderation), not to mention completely wrong. I say this because:

> Iraq was not attcked illegally

Bush and crew lied about the reasons for attacking Iraq. [cnn.com] Iraq had no WMD.

Whoa there cowboy... lets take a step back and take a look at this in perspective. Was this truly a Bush Administration fabricated lie? To answer this question, it is interesting to note that even the Clinton Administration claimed that Iraq had WMDs (a fact that the Left would like you to forget as it would ruin their anti- Bush propoganda and their supposed moral highground).

A Google search provides us with the following link: TRANSCRIPT: CLINTON ON PREEMPTIVE AIRSTRIKES AGAINST IRAQ dated December 16th, 1999. Quoted from the article:

Washington -- President Clinton ordered America's Armed Forces to strike military and security targets in Iraq December 16 to "attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological programs, and its military capacity to threaten its neighbors."

If you read the full transcript, you see the following statements:

Their mission is to attack Iraq's nuclear, chemical, and biological programs

[...]

For example, Iraq obstructed UNSCOM's effort to photograph bombs related to its chemical weapons program.

If that's not enough to convince you that the Clinton Administration felt certain that Iraq had possession of WMDs, let us examine a speech he gave in February of 1998:

In the next century, the community of nations may see more and more the very kind of threat Iraq poses now: a rogue state with weapons of mass destruction ready to use them or provide them to terrorists

This seems to counter the uninformed Leftist views that WMDs were an imagination of the Bush Administration. Not only did the Clinton Administration believe that Iraq had (or would soon have, depending on your interpretation of Clinton's statements) possession of WMDs, but it had even launched an attack based on their belief at the time (President Clinton launched missiles at a target in Sudan suspected of being a chemical weapons plant back in the summer of 1998).

If we take a look at the article that the Slashdot poster referenced, we find an amusing admission by that article's author:

Readers may not recall exactly what President Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that he had, indeed, been as explicit and declarative as I had recalled.

We find here that this journalist did research on the subject of Iraq and the claims by the United States that they (Iraq) had Weapons of Mass Destruction, yet he conveniently omits quotes by past presidents claiming the same assertions. A little further investigation brings to light that John W. Dean has a political agenda to push, which is evident by the number of books he has written with anti-conservative sentiments along with the content of his interview with Democracy Now where he pushes that Bush should be impeached.

Folks, I can't stress enough the importance of evaluating the objectivity of the articles you read in newspapers and what you see in the news on television. For starters, you need to realise that a vast majority of the news media are staunch supporters of the Democratic Party and thus have a tendency to provide a slanted view of the facts tipped against the Right (usually, I believe, this is done on a subconscious level but it is there none-the-less; no one can be 100% objective, especially on matters of politics).

in order to generate popular support for his attack on Iraq, Bush and his crew lied to the public.

I think "lied" is a bit extreme here, especially considering that it was the common belief among all officials in the United States that Iraq did in fact have WMDs (note that I say "belief" which is the key word here because in order to lie, one must know for a fact that what he is saying is fictitious in nature - and it has yet to be proven that Iraq never had WMDs, it is only a suspicion that we (the USA) was wrong in our original assumption that they had them).

In fact, subsequent to the first gulf war, Iraq was not threatening anyone or their interests.

While they may not have directly threatened anyone, they were closely collaborating with terrorists which, I believe, many would define as threatening to the safety of our and other nations. Even Clinton, the hero if the Left, has stated that Iraq was a threat to both this nation and the neighbors of Iraq (see above).

The administration repeatedly and specifically claimed that Iraq's administration had direct and unequivocal ties to Al-Quida. And has that been found to be so? No.

As before, it is again interesting to note that the Bush Administration was not the first to make the connection between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda as pointed out by an article in The Washington Times, which states:

The Clinton administration talked about firm evidence linking Saddam Hussein's regime to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network years before President Bush made the same statements.

There are even more interesting tidbits in the article, so I urge anyone interested to read further.

As far as whether the Iraq-Al Qaeda connection has been proven to be true or not seems to be a side-issue to the Slashdot poster who only seems interested in trying to argue that the connection was a Bush-concocted lie to the American public. That said, however, let us investigate further.

As Andrew C. McCarthy observes in this article discussing the 9/11 Committee staff's Statement No. 15,

Is the commission staff saying that the CIA director has provided faulty information to Congress? That doesn't appear to be what it is saying at all. This is clear — if anything in this regard can be said to be "clear" — from the staff's murky but carefully phrased summation sentence, which is worth parsing since it is already being gleefully misreported: "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States." (emphasis mine.) That is, the staff is not saying al Qaeda and Iraq did not cooperate — far from it. The staff seems to be saying: "they appear to have cooperated but we do not have sufficient evidence to conclude that they worked in tandem on a specific terrorist attack, such as 9/11, the U.S.S. Cole bombing, or the embassy bombings."

As mentioned in the above article, George Tenet, Director of the CIA, wrote to Congress:

• Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda going back a decade.
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and Al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal nonaggression. Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of Al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
• We have credible reporting that Al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire W.M.D. capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to Al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
• Iraq's increasing support to extremist Palestinians coupled with growing indications of relationship with Al Qaeda suggest that Baghdad's links to terrorists will increase, even absent U.S. military action.

It seems to be the CIA's consistant assertion that there is, in fact, a connection between Iraq and Al-Qaeda.

I suppose the original Slashdot poster would make the accusation that the CIA is wrong, but can the original Slashdot poster post evidence to the contrary? I somehow doubt it.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld specifically claimed they knew where the WMD were. And were they there? No.

For the sake of argument, pretend that you are a drug dealer and the police have given you a written notice stating that they will be searching your home for the possession of drugs on a particular date and that they know where in your household these drugs are "hidden" (and provide, in detail, where those drugs they know of are located). Do you:

• a) leave the drugs where they are so that they might be discovered and proven to exist
• b) move the drugs to another location and/or get rid of them altogether

I think any intelligent person would get rid of the drugs or at the very least, hide them in a new location. I'll hold the ludacracy of the Slashdot poster's assertions to be self-evident (especially considering the extensive amount of time between the disclosure of the location of said WMDs and the actual invasion of Iraq to "find" said WMDs).

It does not, unfortunately, address the hundreds of billions of dollars spent in pursuit of this illegitimate war; nor the loss of Iraqi lives; nor the loss of US soldier's lives, and the lives of those soldiers from other countries who ill-advisedly entered into combat with the US in this criminal action.

I find it amusing that the Slashdot poster purports to be so interested in the lives of Iraqis. Does he know how Iraqis are treated under the Saddam Hussein dictatorship? Does he not realise that anyone who displeased Saddam in any way would be executed without a trial? Does he not know of the Human Rights under Saddam Hussein's Iraq? I think, if he did, he would change his mind on this issue.

This website documents further the attrocities committed in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. How can anyone who claims to be concerned about the well being of Iraqis be so against the United States getting involved in Iraq to liberate the people? A good question indeed.

It is unfortunate that US soldiers had to die, but it is a sad reality of war. People die. Was it worth the lives of the men and women who faught so bravely in this conflict? Only time will tell, but it is at this time far too early to tell and will likely never be clear (it's impossible to compare and contrast the outcome of different choices). The only measure we can truly evaluate is the feeling from the soldiers as to what their beliefs are - do they believe that their efforts were in vein? Or do they feel their lives were worth the effort?

I leave it as an exercise to the reader to read the numerous articles where US soldiers involved in the Iraq conflict commented on their feelings of whether it was worth risking their lives. I think you'll find that most feel their efforts were worth it.

The last assertion made by the Slashdot poster claims that other countries blindly followed the US into Iraq. This is naive. No government blindly follows another into war - they all had their own Intelligence and risk analysis, anyone who believes otherwise is a fool.

Since my December 1st blog entry expressing my distaste for political crusades in the Free Software community and therefor deciding I wanted nothing to do with the community, I have come to the conclusion that my decision was in haste.

I'd like to retract my desire to avoid the community. Yes, I still harbor feelings of distate for those who would try to tear the Free Software community apart for their own political gain, but my refusal to participate in the Free Software community only hurts the Free Software community for which I care so deeply about.

I urge the community as a whole to stay away from political crusades as it will only cause harm. Try and see the good things that groups/companies do for the community and not focus on the few negatives. No one is perfect, and therefor it is wise to not throw stones. As a community, we would much prefer software companies involved in F/OSS to be our friends rather than our enemies.

The other day there was an article about how the White House is censoring the USGS (as posted on Slashdot).

As a matter of course, Slashdot posters used this as another reason to fling mud at the Bush Administration, using arguments such as:

From the article: "This is not about stifling or suppressing our science, or politicizing our science in any way,'' Barbara Wainman, the agency's director of communications, said Wednesday. "I don't have approval authority. What it was designed to do is to improve our product flow.''

They aren't even trying to justify their actions anymore. They're just filtering science from public view, and insisting that it is improvement.

Ryan Fenton

This is pretty typical Left Wing anti-Republican propoganda. Remember: anyone who wants to see a conspiracy will see a conspiracy. Lets read the article carefully, here.

From the article:

The Bush administration, as well as the Clinton administration before it, has been criticized over scientific integrity issues. In 2002, the USGS was forced to reverse course after warning that oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would harm the Porcupine caribou herd. One week later a new report followed, this time saying the caribou would not be affected.

This points out that in the past, there were data integrity issues coming from the USGS's reports (in this case from the Fish and Wildlife Department of the USGS). Is there any doubt in anyone's mind that this is a good reason for reform?

I'd like to ask: what was the Fish and Wildlife Department doing claiming that oil and gas drilling would harm wildlife in the area at all? That's not what the USGS's reports are for. The USGS is for reporting the facts, not sensationalist propoganda. What was reported was not objective, it was opinion.

A little searching provides us with the following link to the USGS's Guidelines for Ensuring Quality of Information. Section III states:

The USGS provides unbiased, objective scientific information upon which other entities may base judgments.

So again, I ask, backed by the above criteria, why was the Fish and Wildlife Department making judgements about what could potentially happen? This is not the job of the USGS, as stated clearly above, it is the job of third parties who acquire data provided by the USGS.

The purpose of this policy change is to prevent the pushing of political agendas within USGS reports which has no business in scientific reports in the first place.

Update: The USGS responds to the sensationalism surrounding their new policy changes.

whiprush is totally right. It's time for the Free/Open Software community to tell Perens he's not wanted. He's ruining it for all of us. I, too, am pushed away by his hypocritical crusade.

mchirico: I believe the answer might be 312211

reasoning:

start with 1

1

each following sequence describes the pattern before it:

1 1 = 11

2 1's = 21

1 2 and 1 1 = 1211

1 1, 1 2, and 2 1's = 111221

3 1's, 2 2's, and 1 1 = 312211 (answer)

following that, we'd have:

1 3, 1 1, 2 2's, and 2 1's = 13112221

etc

Current events such as the community responses to the Microsoft/Novell deal, "Open Source Leaders" playing on people's emotions to convince them of their points of view, and other such childish behaviour on behalf of people who speak for the Open/Free Software Community over the past 6 years has prompted me to reconsider even being a part of said community.

It just makes me so sad that the community sees fit to divide and conquer itself by burning developers and companies at the stake. How many times have great developers with real vision such as Miguel de Icaza and Nat Friedman been the subject of immature political negativity? I've lost count. Am I living in Salem? Is this the 1800's?

Do people not learn from history? I thought the Free Software Community was a community of intelligent people who practiced reason? Apparently I was wrong. Apparently many of the Free Software Community are just immature spoiled brats on a mission to stroke their e-peens and anyone not in agreement with their extremist views is a witch who must be drowned, burned at the stake, crucified, or murdered politically. Guilty until proven innocent.

You all should be ashamed of yourselves. If "Microsoft Wins" (good lord, it's not a fight of good vs evil), it will be because the community strangled itself. Microsoft need not even try. You guys are doing a pretty damn good job of it all by yourselves.

Evil will always triumph because Good is dumb. -- quote from Spaceballs

What happened to all the Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect that so many of the free software developers blog about? Is this all just a bunch of hypocrisy? Is this just a convenient guise? Take a good look at yourselves. Notice any similarities between you and the people you despise (lawyers, politicians)?

Wake up, FOSS. Wake up.

Moved into my new apt this past weekend. The place is absolutely beautiful. Yes, it's a bit on the expensive side ($1695/mo) and I can barely afford it (after rent + bills for cable, internet, electricity, etc), but I think it'll be worth it.

Just ordered a new sofa:

Considered getting the chair/ottoman as well, but I think my living room may look too crowded if I did that (I split half my living room into an "office" area with my huge computer desk). Hopefully this will be arriving next week sometime...

As far as cocktail tables go, I had a hard time deciding between:

and a simple elliptical glass table (which is what I ended up going with).

they call me thomas, last name crown. recognize game. I'mma lay mine's down.

In the process of applying to a new appartment, my current leasors informed my new leasors that I was poor at paying rent on time. Following this up showed that my current leasors to have made a number of mistakes in their records. Thankfully I was able to correct these issues and my new leasors are now happy to know I've got a perfect (as they described it) credit history.

(Secretly, I work for the CIA and my background was fabricated - this "niggle" was all part of an elaborate ruse - okay, maybe not, but after reading countless Tom Clancy and Robert Ludlum books, you might be at least somewhat suspicious of someone with a perfect credit history... like mine)

Lots of good fixes for gnome-cups-manager today (well, to be fair a lot of the work I committed today was done months ago but didn't realise I had forgotten to commit until today when I went to fix importing driver files).

I also finally updated my GMime docs on the web finally ;-)

Speaking of GMime, I've been considering rewriting it in c# or c++ (currently in c using GObject) as an exercise to learn those languages (or, in the case of c++, refresh my memory a bit since I haven't touched c++ in years and years).

played around with Microsoft's Visual Studio Express package (downloaded the C++ version but I think I may grab the C# version instead - sadly Microsoft only allows you to have 1 version on your system at a time)