milanst's Open Salon Blog

A win in the battle for LGBT civil rights

Wed, 4 Aug 2010 22:08:05 -0400

Today a preliminary battle in the rights of gays and lesbians to marry and be seen as equal to heterosexuals has been won. A California judge ruled against proposition 8 calling it devisive and descriminatory. I'm thrilled that someone recognizes this fight against bigotry and hate that has been funded by the Catholic and Mormon churches [tens of millions of dollars donated by these two religions alone in California and Massachussets].

The Constitution serves to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority and I'm happy to see it work in this case. Let us hope the appeal goes the same way.

Is the draft coming back?

Wed, 28 Jul 2010 22:07:50 -0400

The short answer is, possibly. H.R. 5741, a recently introduced house bill, institutes public service as needed to fulfill military needs (http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-5741). There are those that would argue we'd never have gone into Iraq had there been a draft. Of course, at this time Afghanistan is the problem that won't seem to go away and I'm not so sure that the draft would have kept us out. Personally, I doubt it'll be passed once the word is out that it is at the table.

Slideshow of the Birds of Sanibel

Sun, 9 May 2010 18:05:54 -0400

I was recently on Sanibel Island in the Gulf of Mexico. While there, I engaged in one of my favorite hobbies - wildlife photography. Here is a sampling of the birds of Sanibel as they were this year.

http://www.sodiumchannelsvsthesoul.com/display/ShowGallery?moduleId=6732200&galleryId=376759&SSScrollPosition=4909

A book review of "The Big Short" by Michael Lewis

Sat, 24 Apr 2010 14:04:37 -0400

I recently finished The Big Short by Michael Lewis, a book that I'd suggest that everyone interested in the recent financial request read. The book follows several unique players that noticed that the housing boom was going to collapse and take the market with it. They noticed that the number of sub-prime loans being packaged as highly rated bonds were going to decimate the value of the asset bonds and the "synthetic" bonds that were based upon these mortgage loans.

The book both titillated and disgusted me. The titillation came at the realization of the amount of money that could be earned by short selling rather than long buying. I still find the idea of the short sell distasteful because of the nature of hoping that a company will fail. It seems so nihilistic.

The disgust came from the mixture of fraud and stupidity that led to the collapse. I knew as early as 2004-2005, while my wife and I looked at moving into a new house, that the market could not bear the radical increases in prices and the nature of ARM loans. It seemed self evident to me that we were in the top 10% of earners in the nation but found even the middle third of houses ridiculously expensive for what you got. We were unable to rationalize spending so much money that it'd impact our savings and ability to vacation. The thought that people that earned a third of what we did buying these houses was frightening as we realized that the mortgage and insurance would have to consume almost all of their monthly earnings.

The most amazing realization was that there was such a thing as "synthetic bonds," a concept that still astounds me. A synthetic bond is essentially a bond based upon assets already in a bond. This kind of double dipping seems like it should be as illegal as it is unwise.

The lack of awareness of the large banks and wall street firms as they traded the bonds that would soon be worthless because they were based on huge loans taken out by people with no capital seemed to hit new levels of incompetence. It seems like the basic calculations were ignored until too late.

Like I said earlier, if you have any interest in the collapse of the financial industry in 2008, pick up this book.

"Collateral Murder": One Veteran's Opinion

Thu, 8 Apr 2010 21:04:07 -0400

^{*A version with pictures from the videos can be found at www.sodiumchannelsvsthesoul.com}

I think that it's fair to say that most people are aware of the "collateral murder" released recently that showed several helicopter pilots shooting and killing multiple unarmed men, including two reporters and two children, as well as several armed men.If you watch the video, what you find is alarming disregard for civilians and the wounded.

First off, I'm not unfamiliar with military ethics, although it has been awhile. In 1994, I took a military ethics course while completing my undergraduate degree. The course was part of the ROTC program at the college. I was also first introduced to military ethics in 1991
when in basic training but those classes were so truncated as to be worthless. Of course, there have been many changes over the last 17 years and the current wars are complicated and dirty because we are not fighting clearly defined enemies that wear uniforms and are easily
identifiable as combatants but we are fighting persons that actually try to blend with civilian populations. That said...

Several important themes of military ethics were treatment of civilians, the treatment of the wounded and the treatment of those that care for the wounded. These themes demonstrate what was so troubling about this video.

At first, the video shows several men walking down the street. Some of these men appear to be armed, some unarmed and some definitely armed.The two photographers vaguely look like they are carrying weapons because all you can see clearly is that they are carrying an object
with a shoulder strap. This confusion falls away because it is obvious that this is a camera with a telephoto lens. The cameras are first visible while walking but only vaguely so and would be easily missed during the heat of the moment.

Also, watching the video, it is obvious that what they are calling an RPG is actually Namir crouched by the corner of the building with his camera and telephoto lens. If it were an RPG it would not be at the
level of his nipples pointing horizontal to the angle of his forearms but would be on his shoulder and pointing at a sharper downward angle.

The fact that it was Namir with his camera becomes even more clear as the helicopter circles and Namir is clearly visible holding the camera right in front of him. There is no doubt that it is a camera and none of the men around him appear to be armed. Within seconds the group is killed in a barrage of gunfire with no warning. Up until this point, it could be considered a case of mistaken identity but what comes next is not.

Saeed Chmagh was injured in a barrage of fire and was slowly trying to drag himself to safety. He managed to drag himself several yards from the street to the sidewalk. A man comes running up from a van. He is
joined by others that pick Saeed from the ground and the begin to carry him to the van, with two faces peering through the passenger window, where they place him through a side door. At the same time the helicopter gunman is saying that these men have weapons and are
trying to take "bodies." Less than a minute before the same gunman referred to Saaed as wounded. Why the change from wounded to body and add the claim that they are armed?

Maybe it is because firing upon the wounded and unarmed assistants would be a violation of the Geneva Convention Article 3 and 15.

Art. 3. In the case of armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties, each Party to the conflict shall be bound to apply, as a minimum, the following â€¨provisions: â€¨â€¨

(1) Persons taking no active part
in the hostilities, including members of armed forces who have laid down their arms and those placed hors de combat by sickness, wounds, detention, or any other cause, shall in all circumstances be treated humanely, without any adverse distinction founded on race, colour,
religion or faith, sex, birth or wealth, or any other similar criteria.â€¨â€¨To this end the following acts are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:â€¨

(a) violence to life and person, in
particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

â€¨(b) taking of hostages;

â€¨(c) outrages upon personal dignity,
in particular humiliating and degrading treatment;â€¨(d) the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable be civilized peoples.â€¨â€¨

(2) The wounded and sick shall be collected and cared for...

Part II. General Protection of Populations Against Certain Consequences of War

Art. 15. Any Party to the conflict may, either direct or through a neutral State or some humanitarian organization, propose to the adverse Party to establish, in the regions where fighting is taking place, neutralized zones intended to shelter from the effects of war the following persons, without â€¨distinction: â€¨â€¨

(a) wounded and sick combatants or non-combatants;

â€¨(b) civilian persons who take no part in
hostilities, and who, while they reside in the zones, perform no work of a military character.

What happens next really demonstrates the destructive power of the copter's chain guns. The guns fire on the van and men, throwing and twisting the van 90 degrees and several feet from its parked position. The result is more dead men and two mortally wounded children.
The initial firing upon of the group of men could have easily been an example of misidentification but the second incident is not so easily excused. The synopsis is that the crew changed their language from injured to body when requesting permission to fire and they also
claimed the men from the van were armed when they had nothing in their hands other than the wounded man. Add to this the imploring of a crew member to an injured Saaed that he pull a weapon so that he could kill him and ignoring the initial attack on the journalists, it seems
obvious that a serious crime has been committed and that the helicopter crews did, indeed, violate the Geneva convention by knowingly attacking unarmed civilians that were assisting an injured person.

It is true that there are caveats and that there had been skirmishes all morning and that the general area was overrun by fighters. The soldiers were also probably frustrated, angry and overrun by adrenaline but
these have never been an excuse for the firing and killing the wounded and civilians trying to help the wounded.