Monthly Archive for June, 2005

Coalition for Darfur: Conflicting priorities

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/29/2005
in Blogging and Darfur
. 0 Comments

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For more than two years, the international community has done little to stop the violence in Darfur or provide security to the millions of displaced victims. And the closer one follows the world’s response to this crisis, the clearer the conflicting priorities of the major actors (the US, the AU, the ICC and the UN) become.

Though former Secretary of State Colin Powell declared the situation “genocide” in September 2004, the United States has more or less ignored the Genocide Convention’s legal requirement that parties to the convention “undertake to prevent and to punish” it. This can be partly explained by the fact that the administration played a key role in ending the decades long war in the South and does not want to risk upsetting it by directly confronting Khartoum over Darfur. It can also be partly explained by the fact that the CIA has developed significant ties to the regime in Khartoum, which has become “an indispensable part of CIA’s counterterrorism strategy.”

The International Criminal Court has just recently become involved in the conflict in Darfur, taking up an investigation and warning that Khartoum must cooperate with its investigation. The ICC is a relatively new body that has yet to try a case and is still working to establish itself as a viable international body. As such, the ICC is proceeding slowly and cautiously, attempting to stay within the bounds set by the ICC statute and avoid an embarrassing and potentially damaging showdown with Khartoum should the genocidal regime refuse to cooperate.

The AU faces many of the same problems. As a relatively new organization, the AU hopes to become the key to providing “African solutions to African problems.” Over the last six months, the AU has only been able to supply 2/3rd the number of troops it initially mandated and will, in all likelihood, be equally unable to fill the size of its expanded mandate. As a fledgling organization, the AU does not possess the clout or support necessary to demand an expanded mandate to protect civilians in Darfur and has been reluctant to seek outside logistical or financial assistance for its mission, perhaps out of fear that doing so will highlight its inadequacies and undermine its credibility further.

While the US, ICC and AU all have a genuine interest in stopping the violence, it is clear that they also have internal concerns that are restricting their effectiveness in Darfur.

At the same time, the United Nations faces internal concerns of its own. The presence of Russia and China on the Security Council has stymied attempts to force Khartoum to reign in the Janjaweed militias and prevented the imposition of sanctions. Nonetheless, no amount of internal concerns can excuse this recent statement by Jan Pronk, Kofi Annan’s Special Representative to Sudan.

While Annan was telling Khartoum that the violence “must stop,” Pronk was praising Khartoum for setting up meaningless show trials designed solely to slow the ICC investigation:

The government says its national trials will be credible and will be a substitute for the ICC, which announced last week the formal launch of its investigation in Darfur.

Pronk said those concerned about the credibility of the national court, which begins proceedings on June 15, should give the government the benefit of the doubt.

“If the government takes a decision to do something which it had been asked to do late, you only have to criticise that they are late, you should not criticise that they are doing it,” he said. “So give the government the benefit of the doubt.”

For two years, Khartoum has waged a genocidal campaign against the people of Darfur, taking the lives of an estimated 400,000 people. Under no circumstances does this government deserve “the benefit of the doubt.”

Solving the crisis in Darfur is undoubtedly a priority for many in the international community. Unfortunately, it is not a main priority. And because of that, it is likely that tens of thousands Africans will continue to die over the coming months.

From The Coalition for Darfur.

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Google Earth

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/28/2005
in Maps
. 1 Comment

Google Earth

Wow! Wow!! WOW!!!

Take Google Maps, add a slick user interface and a lot of functionality, and you’ll get Google Earth.

Warning: You will spend a lot of time with this program. I’ve already located all the places I’ve ever lived, my friends’ and family’s houses, places I’ve worked, and our most recent vacation spots. Oh, and “flown” between them all.

Did I say “wow”??

Hat tip: coldforged.org (who has a better write-up with more example pictures; I was spending too much time playing to write more…).

Instant Polaroids

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/23/2005
in Photographs
. 1 Comment

Fake Polaroid

Want to make pictures look like they were taken with a Polaroid camera? Now you can. You can tilt the picture and add a text message. The cropping and shadow are done automatically. Compare my sample picture with the Father’s Day original.

The Polaroidonizer is available as a WordPress plugin and a web service.

Update: Unfortunately, all these links are now dead (even the link the Favelet mentioned in the comments calls). Too bad…

Hat tip: Blogging Pro.

Shut up and let me drive

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/22/2005
in Rants
. 2 Comments

A new study shows that brains aren’t good at multitasking — If you’re listening, you can’t watch as well. Or, in scientist-speak:

When attention is deployed to one modality — say, in this case, talking on a cell phone — it necessarily extracts a cost on another modality — in this case, the visual task of driving.

Why the attack on cell phones?! The study showed that listening, not “talking on cell phones,” impaired visual processing.

In the interest of safety, let’s not ban just talking on cell phones while driving. Why not ban listening to music or talk radio? In fact, let’s outlaw radios or CD players in cars. In the meantime, some enterprising lawyer can file a class action products liability lawsuit against automobile manufacturers for making available audio equipment in their vehicles — obviously a defective design that contributes to the unfettered distraction of responsible drivers and the consequential injurious accidents caused thereby.

Better yet, let’s make it illegal to drive under the influence of sound. “Kids, stop your fighting and be quiet back there. It’s the law!” “Sorry, dear. I’d love to talk about your book club but I can’t; it’s illegal.”

Shut up and let me drive.

___
hat tip: TechNudge.

I am a statistic

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/22/2005
in Blogging
. 0 Comments
 
I am a statistic

You can be, too. If you have a blog, go take the survey.

Hat tip: Dougal at geek ramblings.

blogan’s 1/2 birthday

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/21/2005
in Blogging
. 0 Comments

Blog stats — Six months ago, I published my first blog post. Since then, I’ve published 189 more posts and blogan has more than 225 comments. blogan’s daily traffic has increased from just me to somewhere between 20-30 visitors. Even so, I’m (at best) a D-List blogger.

D-List blogger? — What makes one an A-List blogger? Adam Weinroth analyzed three blogging rock stars, showing that they are primarily linkers, not commentators.

To see how blogan stacks up, I analyzed my 190 posts, using Adam’s categories. Like Adam, I allowed a post to be classified in more than one category if it seemed appropriate.

blogan's posts by category

Clearly, I don’t have the mojo to be an A-list blogger. I spend too much time on issue analysis or commentary, though not as much as I’d like. (I still owe one semiregular reader an answer on Social Security reform, though I’ve clearly lost interest interest in the topic or the will to fight or both…)

How do you find me? — Judging by my access logs, blogan is discovered mainly by people searching for:

  • Free teleprompter software
  • Mirror image fonts
  • Free TNIV
  • Random header images
  • How to make a memory map
  • Microinequities

However, those searches find posts outside the mainstream of blogan articles. I’m sure it results in many one-hit visitors.

Still blogging… — So far, I’m not here, yet.

I have nothing to say...

If I were, I suspect you’d know it before I did.

Oregon smokers avoid paying taxes

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/20/2005
in Rants
. 2 Comments

Oregonians are buying cigarettes off the internet to save money. Unfortunately, these well-meaning, thrifty citizens aren’t paying Oregon’s exorbitant $1.18 per pack cigarette tax.

The Department of Revenue’s solution? If you thought advocating lowering cigarette taxes, think again. No, the Oregon Department of Revenue launched a print and radio advertising campaign and a stupidly named oregonsmokes.com web site in an attempt to convince smokers that paying cigarette taxes is their civic duty.

Compared to paying income taxes, paying the tax is relatively painless. Just fill out Form 154. Multiply the number of untaxed cigarettes by the per-cigarette tax rate. Then write the check. If you’re especially honest, as I’m sure anyone who fills out this form would be, you can also calculate the penalties and interest due for failing to pay your cigarette taxes on time. To avoid the penalties and interest, you’d have to file up to twelve form 154 documents per year.

So why pay the taxes? Obviously, it’s the law. You could get caught. After all, “[u]nder the Jenkins Act, Internet retailers report the names and addresses of each person buying cigarettes from that retailer.” If your name is on the report and you haven’t filed Form 154, they’d know.

But a quick internet search found a cigarette retailer advertising:

All orders are processed and shipped from out of the US. Therefore We don’t report tax or customer information to any government agency or other entity.

Also, according to oregonsmokes.com, it’s legal to import up to 199 cigarettes from neighboring jurisdictions without paying Oregon cigarette taxes. It’s also legal to purchase cigarettes from the internet.

So the obvious question: as long as smokers don’t carry more than 9 packs of cigarettes at a time, how does the Oregon Department of Revenue expect to enforce cigarette taxes?

One bit of good news: the Oregon Department of Revenue doesn’t have to worry about low-tech, Portland-based cigarette smugglers sneaking across the Columbia to buy cigarettes in Vancouver; Washingtonians pay even higher cigarette taxes: $1.425 per pack!

Hat tip: AdJab | Dan Sherman.

Happy Fathers’ Day!

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/19/2005
in Family, Food and Photographs
. 2 Comments

My dad and his bride

That’s my dad and mom many years ago, before I was even a thought in their mind. In honor of my dad, I’m posting one of his recipes.

Snaz’s Salad Dressing

  • Good Seasons Italian or Zesty Italian salad dressing mix
  • ~3 tablespoons wine vinegar
  • ~1/2 cup lemon juice
  • 3 tablespoons water
  • 1/2 cup oil
  • 8 ounces tomato sauce

Get a 2 cup liquid measuring cup. Pour in about 3 tablesppons of vinegar. Without pouring out the vinegar, fill up to the 1/2 cup mark with lemon juice. Add the remaining ingredients, mix, and enjoy.

Essentially, it’s the standard recipe, but replacing the vinegar with twice as much lemon juice and adding tomato sauce. Seems like a small change, but it’s much better. It’s a favorite in my house. We like it on salads and cooked vegetables.

The map room

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/17/2005
in Maps
. 3 Comments

Oh, wow! A blog about maps. The Map Room is now on my list of links and RSS reader.

Maps

Update: For my faithful readers (you know who you are), here are a few links gleaned from The Map Room:

 

Hat tip: Robert Scoble.

Coalition for Darfur: The future of Darfur

Published
by
Brent Logan
on 6/15/2005
in Darfur
. 1 Comment

Donate to Save the Children

There can be no doubt that, relatively speaking, the crisis in Darfur has generated a fair amount of attention. Journalists, human rights experts and bloggers have poured a lot of energy into raising awareness of the genocide and the 400,000 lives it has taken. Unfortunately, this focus on Darfur only highlights the lack of attention being paid to other, arguably even more horrific, crises in Africa.

For instance - Uganda:

Eight people are shot, hacked and beaten to death and their bloodied corpses dragged to the middle of a dirt road for aid workers to find.

Six other fatally wounded victims are left lying nearby, screaming in agony. They die hours later.

After nearly two decades of bloodshed, Ugandans are asking why atrocities such as this May 27 attack by Lord’s Resistance Army rebels still plague the traumatized people of the north — and why they seem to have been forgotten by the world.

And the Democratic Republic of Congo:

Militiamen grilled bodies on a spit and boiled two girls alive as their mother watched, U.N. peacekeepers charged Wednesday, adding cannibalism to a list of atrocities allegedly carried out by one of the tribal groups fighting in northeast Congo.

The report came as a key U.N. official said the ongoing violence in Congo, claiming thousands of lives every month, has made it the site of the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.

[edit]

“Several witnesses reported cases of mutilation followed by death or decapitation,” the report said. The U.N. report included an account from Zainabo Alfani in which she said she was forced to watch rebels kill and eat two of her children in June 2003.

The report said, “In one corner, there was already cooked flesh from bodies and two bodies being grilled on a barbecue and, at the same time, they prepared her two little girls, putting them alive in two big pots filled with boiling water and oil.”

Her youngest child was saved, apparently because at six months old it didn’t have much flesh. Alfani said she was gang-raped by the rebels and mutilated. She survived to tell her horror story, but died in the hospital on Sunday of AIDS contracted during her torture two years earlier, the U.N. report said.

In Uganda, the Lord’s Resistance Army has abducted some 20,000 children and forced them to become either soldiers or slaves. The attacks have displaced nearly 2 million people and every night, tens of thousands of children trek to the cities to sleep, in hopes of avoiding the rampant kidnapping. For years, the LRA had been supported by the government in Khatroum, the same government now responsible for the genocide in Darfur.

In the Congo, an estimated 3.5 million people have died of disease, starvation and violence since 1998. The situation in the Congo can be directly traced to the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, which itself took nearly 1 million lives. There are currently 19,000 UN peacekeepers in the Congo with a mandate to disarm the militias, but so far they only attention this peacekeeping force has received has come from allegations that soldiers are sexually abusing the residents of the DRC.

Darfur is an anomaly only to the extent that it has managed to generate a significant amount of coverage and global attention. But if the world does not act soon to address this genocide in Sudan, is it all but inevitable that it too will eventually evolve into years-long, seemingly intractable conflict such as those found in Uganda and Congo.

And as we’ve seen with Congo and Uganda, once that happens, the world will stop paying attention entirely.

From The Coalition for Darfur.