People who are viewed as
People who are viewed as intellectually enlightened and informed are increasingly adopting the fanatical view that this conflict needs to become (or is already) a religious war. The sane moderates maintain in a tragically diminishing voice that this is a political conflict masquerading as a spiritual imperative. Not to diminish the extremity of the horrors which have occured, but unfortunately, framing this conflict as a merely political one offers only mundane, pedestrian benefits to the powerful elite compared to what they can gain through exploiting the frenzied hysteria of a patriotic American fatwa.
Posted at 12:36 AM
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I do not support the
I do not support the so-called Patriot Act. Since it is now enacted, I do support strict adherance to its 'sunset' provision limiting the life of this draconian act.
Posted at 03:56 PM
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I lit candles, watched the
I lit candles, watched the clock, shutdown everything electrical and precious (read: computer and monitor), snuggled into bed and began to read by flashlight. At 1:30 AM the electrical shut-down in my neighborhood, scheduled for midnight, had still not ocurred. When I woke, the microwave clock and the caller-id box indicated that there had been no shut-down.
Posted at 03:24 PM
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A sobering excerpt from a
A sobering excerpt from a speech you should read.
Bill Moyers, October 16, 2001
Posted at 10:57 AM
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I used to write essays
I used to write essays for my journal, things that took time and tears to produce. It was not a 'blog' kind of writing, not given to the staccato pace of a good weblog. My journal entries were introspective, reflective and, too often, preachy. I wanted my writing to have a better perspective, a view not limited to the world of me, I wanted to create these words with a view toward the broader world. A blog -- a thing perhaps best described as a narrative of websurfing, thick with links to and pithy comments about other fascinating websites -- seemed a structure that might promote extroversion in my writing (and maybe even in my thinking), a format that might help me get out of myself.
Posted at 11:18 PM
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word Wallowing in the
word
Posted at 09:28 PM
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My nausea at the fans
My nausea at the fans of World War III is threatening to progress to projectile vomitting. As if that is not bad enough, this from some idiot: "...it is now a commonplace notion that a conservative is a liberal who has been mugged.".
Posted at 03:31 AM
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The Times',CAPTION,'thetimes.co.uk', HEIGHT, 15, LEFT,
This will not help dissuade aggrieved Muslims from accusing the West of bias. Posted at 01:11 AM
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Is there a real life?
Is there a real life? I know others have lived one. I do not know how they found it, though. Was it a chance opportunity which presented a new trajectory for life, an illness that unveiled another door, a blockage which redirected the flow? Or was there an irrepressible urging, unknown even to the one being urged, a force that in most lives never finds its freedom, which in one life did? Sometimes real life seems to happen as the result of a choice, and sometimes it seems to never happen, no matter how much you try to choose it. The longing to produce great inspirations didn’t produce anything but more longing. -Sophie Kerr
Posted at 02:01 PM
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On the other hand, fedworld.gov
On the other hand, fedworld.gov is still posting these images, which thoroughly invalidates the premise of my previous post.
Posted at 02:44 PM
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University of Wisconsin-Madison has stopped
University of Wisconsin-Madison has stopped serving my favorite desktop wallpaper, which were weather satellite images of the US (one of the east coast and another of the west coast).
I suppose if enemies of America want to know what the weather was (or more specifically, the cloud patterns, not the actual weather) on May 11, 2001, this photo will help. If they want to know what the weather is today thay can still go here. News flash to the government: Just because it's a satellite image doesn't mean it qualifies as intelligence. And just because we do it out of fear does not mean it is intelligent. I am wide open for attack here; what possible benefit is there in having an image of my planet on my desktop, from a satellite in geostationary orbit, updated every 30 minutes? None, of course. There is no value to the comfort of seeing us as a single earth from an impossible altitude, no advantage to observing -- as if removed from it all -- the peaceful countenance of our strife- and hate-riddled world, and of course no gain in preserving (as much as possible) the way we lived our lives before September 11 -- including such frivolities as a desktop with panache. If they are looking for Florida or Texas, they know where to find them without this image. Concealing information that might be useful to terrorists is not the purpose of removing these images from the Internet. This image has a resolution of about a mile -- objects smaller than that do not appear as discreet objects, rather they are melded into their surroundings. Furthermore these images remained available up until October 18, 2001, a full five weeks after the WTC attack. Even as uncharitable as is my opinion of governmental competence, I think if these images mattered, they'd have been gone sooner. There could be a lot of reasons that this view has been blocked, the misconception that it has a strategic value not least among them. Forgive my cynicism, but five weeks after the fact is about when I would expect the newly assembled iron fist of Homeland Security to start tightening, and the place where oppression -- however well intentioned it may be -- first occurs is at educational institutions where free thought and dissent are nurtured and cultivated. Shame on the University of Wisconsin for not protesting. It may be politically impossible to sustain such a protest in this case, since public access to satellite images is pretty much doomed these days, no matter how useless they might be to our enemies. But the truth of the matter, both technically and morally, is that government should keep its hands off when compelling and legitimate government interests are not at stake. The thing I fear is that the government today does have interests which are threatened by academic autonomy, as such those interests are illegitimate. Where did the free world go? Posted at 11:39 AM
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loss It represents only
loss
It represents only 1 ping every ten minutes, and in the space of ten minutes this DSL connection goes up and down more often than me on a good night. In the time it takes me to write a sentence this link dumps me twice; that's means either that I write very slowly, or that this connection is infinitely frustrating. Yeah, I know, it's a free connection. All that green on the graph represents free bandwidth -- how can I possibly complain, you might ask. Well, for one thing, I am not sure it is free. Somebody could show up tomorrow and hand me a bill for $2000. Besides, I would have already found an ISP to adopt me if everything was not in flux -- i.e.: I am going to move this week, next week, next month, or the month after next, and apart from that, ISPs are dropping like flies, declaring bankruptcy and vanishing into the bit-o-sphere as fast as I can look up their phone numbers. The problem is not the spotty connection, though. Used to be that green part of the graph was like a dense hedgerow; in it I hid. Now there's lots of splits and gaping breaches and there's not a lot of bandwidth anymore to distract me from looking at myself. You see, I don't have a TV -- right now, I don't even have a phone. I do everything here, at this screen, on this keyboard. I watch the world, I learn, I relax, I run away. But it doesn't work so good anymore. I'm feeling kinda naked, and not in a happy sort of way. Posted at 10:57 PM
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Bedtime. Thanks HMS. I know
Bedtime.
Posted at 04:39 AM
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This is a URL from
This is a URL from my website's referrer log. I wish it was from a former boyfriend trying to send me a subtle (or not-so-subtle) message.
I wonder how many other lonely men -- who have little better to do than pore over their server logs -- were similarly reminded of a Daniel from their own pasts? And I wonder how many of them wished him back again? cache - ntc - ab01 . proxy . aol . com - - [16/Oct/2001:04:08:24 -0400] "GET /blog.js HTTP/1.0" 200 7040 "http://www.google.com / search?q=cache : Hu_VtCzWyBc : burgwinkel.com / blog.htm + boyfriend + gone + beg + cock + deep + inside + me & hl=en" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; AOL 6.0; Windows 98)" Posted at 03:22 AM
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seized Woke today in
seized
Posted at 12:59 AM
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BlogBack is now in use.
BlogBack is now in use. Can't say why I switched from reblogger, I just liked it. : Posted at 09:29 PM
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Reblogger is back and reinstalled
Reblogger is back and reinstalled here. Click on the '&' below and add your thoughts. [Update: changed it on Monday already.] Posted at 03:19 PM
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where to draw the
where to draw the line?
Despite my cynical skepticism concerning motivations governmental, this story might well be true, that a shift in US policy toward Palestine was already planned before September 11, to be announced on Sept. 13. Attacking the WTC after the US took such a pro-Arab stance would make bin Laden's efforts to paint America as an enemy of Islam dubious at best. Though the proximity in time of these two events may be coincidental, still it raises the disquieting proposition that the terrorists' intelligence regarding the intentions of the US government was (and maybe still is) highly accurate and timely. The timing of the atrocity on the day it happened was obviously precise, but the choice of that day in particular was, I thought, a random one, based on opportunism more than on intelligence from within the White House. I have always stood in awe of the story of the state of Isreal, while naively overlooking the human toll of the violence there, as well as overlooking the reasons which have given rise to that violence. Human deaths -- whether Arab or Jew -- cannot be overlooked, and there have been many on both sides. Likewise, the beliefs and free will of individuals must not be overlooked either. But where to draw the line? Surely, some things must be banned; murder, torture, terrorism, and abuse of power to name a few. And some things must be preserved; life, the freedom and respect to live it with dignity, peace. The difficulty arises between the extremes -- when the way I want to live my life imposes restrictions on the way you want to live yours. (I know this is a vast oversimplification, but I don't have much time.). As much as I dislike the way Bush came to be president, he is. And as much as I am loath to admit it, I think he is right to seek to preserve (or create) a balance between Isreal and Palestine. And while New York mayor Guliani may be right in principle, egos such as his will make these balancing efforts more difficult. Posted at 01:31 PM
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What could the point of
What could the point of this possibly be? Are they promoting Bert along with fanaticsm? Is Bert a terrorist? Have they even infiltrated Sesame Street?
Posted at 01:16 AM
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The Most Rev Michael J
The Most Rev Michael J Sheehan, archbishop of Santa Fe, said Ms Lopez had turned the Holy Virgin into a "tart".
Posted at 12:18 PM
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Sleep, sweet boy, sleep and
Sleep, sweet boy, sleep and dream fretless dreams of desires quenched, and of hopes fulfilled; let the trembling of today's troubled world disturb not the restfulness of your dreaming, nor the clarity of your meetings in the day.
Posted at 02:06 AM
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I want Tony Blair for
I want Tony Blair for president.
Posted at 12:11 AM
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Mercury is in retrograde. Thus,
Mercury is in retrograde. Thus, push-button publishing, and specifically blogger are faultering. Not a good time to start a high tech project. Or a war. Posted at 09:01 PM
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SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT:
We interrupt our normal program to bring you this urgent, liberal, pointless, moralistic rant. We will resume normal programming immediately after this special announcement.
Freedoms Curtailed In Defense Of Liberty
This administration is promoting -- too vigorously, I think -- the idea that this fight against terrorism is going to last years. How do they know? And why are they so interested in fighting terrorism now -- terrorism is not a new thing. Why didn't they start America's New War back when the WTC was first bombed in 1993? The threat then was no less lethal, nor less likely, than now. We have become a battle state, a nation of heartless and mindless goons drunk with rage and blood-lust. Don't say you are not part of it -- even though you may not be a goon. Because that is OUR president, and OUR Secretary of Defense and, lamentably now, OUR Director of Homeland Security. We may not like them, we may even have opposed their ascendancy to high office, but we are the source of the authority they weild; we are responsible for the actions they execute in our names. Whether we like it or not, the buck stops here. We can continue to look the other way, which we do very well in America. But there are masses of humanity across the seas who hate me and you for being part of this country, and for participating in the most wasteful and self-indulgent society this earth has ever known. Our government did not start America's New War in 1993 because it could not have gotten away with it then, at least not with as much popular support as today. If the administration then was conservative, it might have tried to start a war and curb free speech and advance the militarization of American society, but that would have been much more difficult then. In 1993, our government might have prevented the events of September 11. But in that case they'd not have gotten all the extra goodies they are getting today, like this homeland security bullshit -- a better title might be the Office of Domestic Espionage. I bet Bush and his buds are glad they couldn't shoot their wad in '93; it comes out so much better if you wait. Posted at 06:09 PM
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what is mine home
what is mine home become?
I know I've been offline for a while, but Office of Homeland Security for crissakes? An American blogger in Sweden, somewhat more alert than I, astutely asked, "why ever did they pick such an Orwellian name?". Why indeed. George Orwell's 1984 was fiction, but Rumsfeld and his boys are as non-fiction as good ol' American beef on the hoof -- and as morally dumb. Problem is, they've taken over the abbatoir, and they've been running it for quite a few years now. I certainly do not want to sound un-American (the Committee on Un-American Activities may be revived any moment), nor un-patriotic; and I certainly do not want to allow any passion -- no matter how righteous it may feel to me -- to dissuade me from the only motivation I will ever want -- love. Therefore, it is love for that man (whose image appears on the right) that makes me bring up a tacky topic like assassination at the awkward moment of a nation's self-vindication. He was my hero. I was five when he was assassinated. I don't like this topic; it gives me a headache. It makes me cry. I tell myself John F. Kennedy was probably just as crooked as the people who killed him; I mean there was the Illinois votes scandal, and there was his rum-running father -- or so the story goes. And I use cliches like, 'you live by the sword, you die by it,' or 'you play with fire you get burned.' Ugh. Eventually, I do admit that I'm just trying to minimize the loss, to impose on the Fates some balance which makes them less unfair. It is a touching effort but fruitless, and I cry. Or maybe the fruit of rehashing these emotions is the tears. They uncover me; it is how I know who I really am. Yes, even after 38 years, there are waves of saddness yet to spend themselves in sobs and blurred vision... He was ours, he belonged to us here in New England and, more specifically, here in Massachusetts. He talked like us; they made fun of him for it. And he was Catholic like me and my family. He came from that heritage of veils and genuflections, of candles, rosary beads, and sad-faced statues, and he came from an era of Friday afternoon confessions that was emblematic of being Catholic in the Sixties. Yet he lived playfully. He lived on the beach, on Cape Cod, a place I have loved since before I was five -- it may be that I love the Cape simply because the Kennedys lived there. In the world I knew, President Kennedy was my remarkable incongruity, a saving grace. My world was one in which everybody like me was defined by saddness and unfair suffering; by the age of five I had already spent two years in hell, but that is another story. He was like me, except he was happy, always having fun, laughing, and never suffering. Even when I was five, I knew, because of Jack Kennedy, that life didn't have to be the way I had known it, he was my proof that life really was better than I knew. His assassination, the way it happened, and the lies surrounding it all, created in me that cynical little man you see in all these words. The death of my President re-crushed my hope. The black operations conducted to assassinate John F. Kennedy were not the beginning of such activity inside the US government, but they certainly were the most ambitious up to that time. That activity is continuing, which brings me back to the topic at hand; the trust of government. The plain logic, obvious to anyone who has ears is that Osama bin Laden is the best thing to ever happen to American domestic intelligence -- it frankly terrifies me. The terrorist Osama, the homeless rabble-rousing waif, cannot terrorize me one tenth as much as the American government can, in its crimes and its espionage against its own citizens, set now to begin a new era of expansion, and folks like Rumsfeld will, despicably, use the September 11 atrocities to justify their excesses. They can't let pass unexploited such a profitible opportunity to gain unreasonable power and centralize authority. Their eagerness is nauseating. Instead of dashing to the fore to take their places in a new lineup of power-grubbing haters of civil liberties, it would be more appropriate to the realities of the day for them to at least appear reluctant as they advance, jack-booted, over the Constitution. Come now, it is not as though our very existence as a nation were threatened, and forgive me if I think that a threat to our existence is the only justification for trashing the US Constitution. So I would have thought these image conscious power-mongers would be more concerned about their appearance. But why should they? None of us are paying much attention anyway. As long as they keep the gas flowing to our SUV's, and as long as they preserve 'our American way of life', whatever that is besides irrelevant, then we don't much care what they do, do we. We just don't want to know. Have you ever seen Three Days of the Condor? Quite dated, but relevant today, perhaps even moreso than when it was released. Posted at 08:39 PM
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...keep the home fires burning
...keep the home fires burning
I go to the British very much in these last several weeks -- to those who survived Blitzkrieg, who emerged victorious from the Battle of Britain; to that nation of whom the world might one day say (using the words of Churchill), never have so few given so much for so many; to the historical parent of my own nation -- for reassurance and comfort in a time of impossible and gravely consequential choices. And I go to them for nothing so much as the simple knowledge that I am not alone. That is the cure for terror. Whether we are right or wrong -- and I think we are both -- I thank you Britain; I daresay I love you. Here is Tony Blair's announcement of British support and participation in US-led attacks on Afghanistan. In case that doesn't work, try this. Posted at 01:01 AM
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the tenth... Read this,
the tenth...
Posted at 02:29 AM
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It has made me too
It has made me too jittery to think straight. This dropping-DSL, which has been down for days on end, coming up for 30 minutes or an hour a day, has made me link-light crazy, watching the router nervously for the fatal wink-out of the WAN link indicator. I'm getting an ulcer.
Current connection condition as follows (as obtained from DSL reports)
I don't know what is up with the San Jose test results -- the upload is faster than the download. But if it is connected at all lately, all I can say is 'tsawright. The DSL offerings out there are pretty awful. WorldCom, despite their website propaganda, can't do anything for a Rhythms customer 'cept sell'em a new line. No assumption of 'customer care' going on there. Or maybe it is just an unscrupulous sales staff trying to maximize commissions -- the American way. They want to discard the present connection, hardware and all, and have Covad install everything new. Such an encouragingly inefficient business practice for lean times -- maximize cash flow without regard for the rest. I'm in a bad mood. They want $150 per month for a 128kbps line (Synchronous DSL -- 128k both ways). This price means nothing to me since I have not spent a cent on my present line. But the service I signed up for was ADSL (Asynchronous) which for most of its life has provided me with 1.5Mbps downstream and 300+ kbps upstream. The price for that was $49.95 a month. Hmmm. I think there is some shopping to be done here -- or maybe some strong words to be shared with WorldCom, like... well, I don't know exactly what they are yet. But I'll let you know. Posted at 12:36 AM
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No blog entries because DSL
No blog entries because DSL has been down. Going down again any second, I am sure. Just wanted to say hi. Posted at 02:14 AM
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Doesn't it just figure; I
Doesn't it just figure; I finally got a decent connection soze I can blog, and I gotta go to bed. Fuckin' thing will be down in the morning, I just know it.
Posted at 05:12 AM
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This explains part of
This explains part of the story about my phantom DSL provider. The line was (again) down most of the day, coming up for about a half hour every three hours, finally coming back up and staying at about 2:30 this AM.
Posted at 03:50 AM
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You know, when you really
You know, when you really look at a person, you see them. I said somewhere once this guy was 'way cute,' and he is. But he's a whole hell of a lot more; he's a whole human being for one thing -- including of course all the appropriate appendages (not that I know personally -- just surmizing). But he's also got a voice, and he's got a brain, and the scariest thing of all for me is that Mays has got a heart. Not that I know personally -- just surmizing...
Posted at 02:59 AM
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