meta-roj

with the inauguration out of the way, i thought i’d take a little time to ponder one of the writings of one john perry barlow. yes. governor schwarzenegger. i said it.

It’s time for the experientialists – those of us who don’t get our reality from television, who actually read about what what we can’t experience directly – to emerge from our psychic sanctuaries and become seriously involved in the ugly business of politics.

this is a call to arms – intellectual arms. there are less than 12 months left until the united states gets to test broken voting machines in an effort to determine our own fate. demand functional machines.

we’ve seen the bush vision of the world, and it’s time to decide if it’s what we want. if not, we need an alternative. a bold, american, visionary alternative. it’s time to consider the issues that are bigger than ourselves.

i’ve decided that this is not my america. you need to make up your mind. soon.

i’ve done some (in my own ironic way), and i rant occasionally.

i need to do more. you need to do more.

update: joi is doing more

it’s disturbing that it’s now late 2003, and we’ve gone two years without these things, but a rash of new motion in the judicial system is making some progress toward restoring a balance of power between the branches of american government.

this ap story [included below when the link breaks] is more important to more americans than most americans realize.
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as usual, the courts in america have to go where the popular vote and leading politicians fear to tread….

in a ruling today, the massachusetts high court determined (4-3) that homosexuals are allowed to wed under the state constitution. the ruling gives the state legislature 180 days to figure out the how to do the paperwork.

this issue is an “equal protection” issue – i don’t tread into the business of religion or religious officials. i’m only interested in the civil functions of marriage – the rights, responsibilities and legal status. any two people who affirm the status of their relationship, on the record, declaring that each person is loved and trusted to act in the [selfish] best interest of the other person, should be allowed (and even encouraged?) to do so.

that’s the point, to me.

at the very beginning, i ranted a bit about the hecklebot and it’s potential as a weapon of mass accoutability (yeah, that’s a sweet phrase).

well, before there was a hecklebot, there was just a regular heckle, and quite honestly, the hecklebot (and it’s distributed model) isn’t quite ready for primetime. there’s a lot of work to do on the hecklebot, and i think you should all be doing some of it. in the meantime, there’s the power of the heckle. whether it’s true or not, with or without spin, i think we have just seen the power of the good old-fashioned heckle checking the “most powerful man on earth.”

in october, president bush went to visit our dear allies and old friends down in australia, only to find himself, accidentally, in a free speech zone. bush thought he was just going to address parliament, but he wound up in a place where some people speak up. shock and horror! the president delivers probably his best off-the-cuff comment in a public speaking engagement ever – while the outrageous hecklers are escorted from the room. whew. close call.

well, today, bush will be arriving in london, on invitation of the queen, for an official, serious, bigtime tour of america’s greatest and most adamant ally in the new war in iraq. bush has decided not to address that parliament.

my read is that a little heckle downunder was enough for bush, and he’s just not going to risk another. i don’t think bush gets british humor, and anyone who’s seen the prime ministers question period in british parliament knows that bush is way out of his league in this environment.

blair came to america back in july and spoke before a joint session of congress, and great britain has been very supportive, to the point of sending several of her native sons to their deaths in iraq. bush should be bending over backwards to make prime minister blair’s life easy at this point, so, of course, it’s unfortunate that this visit will likely do more harm than good.

but at least there won’t be any heckling….

this reuters report describes a bit of trouble that the bush administration and blair government are having with the concept of free speech in democratic nations.

the bbc is soliciting comments on the visit.

this is the example we set for the world….

this story from reuters [full text below, when the link breaks] is the first hint i’ve had that the third branch of our american government will actually participate in the political evolution of our new endless war.

two years of justice delayed is justice denied. it’s about time.

will we stop compromising our principles in an ill-advised frenzy to make ourselves secure? if we don’t, what have we secured?
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this chicago sun-times headline from sunday might serve as some sort of call to arms…. and the article quotes al gore:

al gore

They have taken us much farther down the road toward an intrusive, ‘big brother’-style government — toward the dangers prophesied by George Orwell in his book 1984 — than anyone ever thought would be possible in the United States of America

but al… i wasn’t using my civil rights anyway!

using the amazing powers of cut-and-paste is apparently one way that the good folks at the memory hole may have unmasked a doj attorney workforce diversity study. with $2m in taxpayer funding (roughly the price of sending spam in california), the kpmg produced a 186-page document, about half of which was censored before its [delayed] public release.

where this becomes news (for the washington times, the register, the new york times and newsday at least), is that now we know what bothers the department of justice in this report. what they think we shouldn’t know.

and the secret is out, and no doubt being downloaded and archived by thousands of interested citizens.

sure, it may have been a technical glitch (and cut-and-paste is now at least as powerful as a shift key). you can blame microsoft, or you can blame the doj and kpmg people that censored this document without really understanding how the electronic format works, or you can blame adobe… but how it happened isn’t as interesting to me as the implications of what we’ve learned from this little screwup.

we know that the thing this government fears most is criticism, and now we have some 90 pages of “censored” evidence.

now we have to ask the harder questions. if this government is willing to censor reports that document its shortcomings on issues as broad as the diversity of its own staff, what other shortcomings have been hidden from the pubic?

my president got a little heckling down under while addressing the australian parliament..

cnn

“I love free speech, ” Bush said as the senators were ordered out of the chamber.

as an american, i need some clarification… is the aussie parliament a “designated free speech zone” or does being escorted out mean it’s not? it’s so hard to tell these days.

update: perhaps they were escorted to the free speech zone.

al gore (reported in infoworld)

If we lose our freedom in the process of protecting ourselves, we are less secure, not more secure

an underreported perspective on security.