short notes: will brady's ruminations

A blog adjunct to rondak.org [click on the globe] | Perspectives on: human rights; environmental concerns; life as a visual artist; 21st century feudalism; progressive politics; aboriginal culture; new urbanism; permaculture; sustainable technology; non-traditional families; achievable utopias

2004-06-12

SITE INFO: GENERAL

About Short Notes | The title comes from a column I wrote while working at a small chain on weekly papers in the Adirondack mountains, some 20 plus years ago | As the title suggests, my intent is to try to keep to the gist of a subject, reserving more detailed entries to linked pages, either things created by others, or on my own | The latter such work can be found on my rondak.org website |
     Subject matter can and will vary, and may occasionally be all over the place | Much interests me | Similarly, I'm likely to share that which I find of interest, as well as other things I come across | More than likely, since I'm a serious kind of guy, you can expect the tone to be serious | What I'm getting at is that you aren't likely to find tabloid gossip fodder here [though I do have a link in the righthand column that may sate one's needs in that area] | I'm not without a sense of humor, so don't expect the tenor of the site to be completely gawd awful dull | I do want to keep you interested in content |
     Other Blogs I read | They're all over the place poltically and philosphically | While one might assume, based on my personal perspectives and points of view, that I stick to the left, I read many from the right as well as others off the charts | Evidence of thinking is my main criteria, not that the occasional addlebrain doesn't get added | Diversity is good |
     Other Links | These are a sampling of those I have saved | probably thousands saved, just not all done here | They reflect the subjects I have an interest in or knowledge about, and which I wish to share | Presently, the other links are in losely identified catergories, identified on the side by the rules between them | The sub-sections of the categories are more clearly defined |
     Finally, I have started a second blog Stuff About Art that shall shamelessly display my own works, as well as allow me to spout off my aesthetic opinions without them getting lost in the shuffle | As that blogsite matures, the links related to the visual arts shall be found on that blog |

Posted by: Will Brady / 23:40

CELEBRITIES
a most unique tribute to ronald reagan | B3ta says goodbye to Reagan

Posted by: Will Brady / 12:20

WEB SURFING RESULTS

Up close and personal | from Liron's gallery, the image on the left is found | Liron is a pretty good phototographer, and the rest of thre website warrants review | nicely put together | eesh.net also apparently hosts another site Bob the Angry Flower has succeeded in make me fritter away a lot of time I'd spend outdoors on this pleasant weathered day | Entertaining to say the least | Check out the archives for a fresh comic book visual style perspective on world news events as well |

Posted by: Will Brady / 11:50

ECONOMIC TREASON || CORPORATE CONTROL

Did Cheney cozy up cash to Nigerian resource officials? | I am shocked, shocked! that our eminent vice president would be a part of any such nefarious doings | [yeah, right!]
While almost everybody in the media is asleep on their watch during the Reagan Funeral Extravaganza, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer is ~thankfully~ still on the job
here's a recent entry:

Friday, June 11, 2004 · Last updated 8:25 a.m. PT
SEC probes Nigeria bribery accusations
By KRISTEN HAYS AP BUSINESS WRITER
     HOUSTON -- The Securities and Exchange Commission is formally investigating allegations that a Halliburton Co. subsidiary was involved in paying $180 million in bribes to get a natural gas project contract in Nigeria. Vice President Dick Cheney was head of the oil services conglomerate at the time.
     Halliburton on Friday announced that the SEC has started a formal probe. The SEC's informal investigation of the contract was disclosed in February.
     The SEC isn't alone in examining the contract, in which Halliburton subsidiary KBR, formerly known as Kellogg, Brown & Root, is a 25 percent owner. Nigeria in February ordered an investigation, and a French magistrate has been probing the payments for months. The Justice Department is reviewing documents voluntarily provided by Halliburton.
     The company also has been under fire for allegedly overcharging the government on contracts related to the U.S. invasion of Iraq. Halliburton says the company is a political target and denies wrongdoing.

there's more...

Posted by: Will Brady / 11:28

2004-06-11

POP CULTURE
Sergeant's Cabins, George's Mills, [Lake Sunapee], NH

Things you can't see on the television | I've never seen an episode of the Sopranos, eschew the so-called "reality" shows, trivia game fests that people mistake for knowledge displays | Never, for that matter, watched more than half an episode of the Brady Bunch (perhaps for obvious reasons) | Spending time outdoors, under open skies (or, as the pix to the right suggests, under the canopy of trees) has a far greater appeal
This said, in general, it can be expected that there won't be much about the boob tube on this site's entries |

music choices | My tastes vary | Right now I'm listening to a Brit musician Tim Hutton from a CD album entitled "Everything" | I found it in a manner typical of my search style ~ go into a store, not necessarily known for selling music, find the CD and tapes remainers rack and buy on hunch |
Back to the current pick, full of minor chords, slightly discopncerting use of instrumentation, and thoughtful lyrics | Works for me |
NOTE: My method of music selection has almost never failed | The exception: Once I got an album called "This Shit is Bad", music performed by somebody whom I guess had to be an AR producer's coke dealer and threathened to expose his habit if he didn't cut the record (was an LP) | You'd think I'd have taken heed from the title, it WAS bad, awful in fact |

Posted by: Will Brady / 10:17

CELEBRITIES || 21st CENTURY FEUDALISM
Ronald Reagan | Alright, I can't ignore this man's passing altogether, so here's some things to think about while awash in the accolades and airport terminal namings we can expect more of | 1- Top Ten Lessons for Counter-Revolutionaries What Ronald Reagan taught Dubya [from the American Prospect] || 2- Greg Palast's recollection of the fun Nicaraguan peasants had while entertaining Ronnie and Ollie North's drug running contras | Really folks, paying due respects is one thing, calling things for what they are is quite another | If you insist on the syrup, go to the Gipper's posthumous election site | ...oh, I'm sorry, this take's you to Dubya's house |
UPDATE: The Radical Right has this wonderful way of self-censoring less than charitable accounts of their actions | as a result the Professional Woman's Sand Diego website displaying Mary Walker's interview was taken down | You can still find the interview Google cached here and posted at iPriority , a site that outs itself as a place for "developing from the inside out" |

Posted by: Will Brady / 02:10

SOCIAL JUSTICE || MH/DOC INTERFACE
A case of the too-disinterested public servant | I don't work with angels | Many of the people who I interact with every day are incarcerated for commission of serious crimes | Nevertheless, over time, people can and do change, are able to reflect upon their past actions, and are also theoretically able to move on with their lives | That they are incarcerated by both criminal justice and mental health sanctioned orders does, however, mean they most likely have to call upon the disinterested advocacy of professional defense counsel | When they are also without adequate funds, this then pretty much limits them to using those in public defender services |
Recently, one of the inmates where I work succeeded in getting a state's public defender disciplined for his lack of interest in assisting a second client | The lawyer, sarcastically, defended his own inactions as warranted since his client was incurably mentally ill |

     Well, you know what, that's not the point | One's attorney, even one assigned by the Public Defender's Office, has an obligation to assist his client in obtaining the most appropriate services, the least restrictive setting befitting his client's clinical status, and, finally, has a moral imperative to regard his or her client with at the very least a modicum of respect |
     Actually, the State of Connecticut's website for the Public Defender's Office is explicit in its charge to the clients | Namely, that "...the mission of the Division of Public Defender Services is to provide legal representation in accordance with both the United States and Connecticut constitutions to any person charged with the commission of a crime in Connecticut who does not have the financial ability to hire an attorney."
     In this situation, an attorney from the New London J.D. Office defended his inaction and inattention, [in writing no less] stating that his client "...suffers from a mental illness..." and, as a result, "...there is precioous little I can do..." | Perhaps tellingly, the same attorney neglected to mention that his client had not been violent for over a decade, that he had not reviewed his client's clinical records (though he had the authority so to do), had not questioned or analyzed the opinions stated by the client's treaters, nor had he made any attempt to even contact the client to ascertain for himself personally, how his client may be doing |
     Not content to only disparage his client, he also attempted to invalidate his now former client's chosen counsel, a legal layman who, nonetheless, has done a quick, through study of the laws affecting incarcerated persons | The attorney derided his newly found advocate by [again, in writing] calling him merely "a jailhouse lawyer" |
     But the jailhouse lawyer won a written reprimand of the putative public defender, as it should be | For this attorney was remiss in his duties and evidently acted (or didn't act) based upon preconceptions and social assumtions about people with psychiatric disabilities |
     Another document, published by the Connecicut Legal Rights Project and CT Civil Liberties Union and( I believe) legal staff at Quinnipiac University, states assertively of a public sector attorney's role: "The role of an attorney is not to impose personal prejudice or udgement upon his client who suffers from psychiatric disability, but rather to advocate zealously his client's legal position with the same vigor, compentence and throughness as would be done for most wealthy or prestigious clients."
     Perhaps he shall for the next such client he is assigned |
NOTE: the quotes and information cited in this section comes entirely from documents that have been filed in courts, and is publically available information |

Posted by: Will Brady / 00:13

2004-06-10

WILL BRADY'S GALLERY || SOCIAL COMMENT
Are You Fringe?

Posted by: Will Brady / 23:51

SUSTAINABLE TECHNOLOGY

Living Green | In keeping with my objectives of speaking to real options instead of merly ranking on the folks presently ruining ..er, running the planet here's a picth on a group that does something about more ecologically sensible options | The Northeast Sustainable Energy Association [NESEA] maintains an easy to maneuver website providing more than adequate starter info about making a transition between dependence on the power grid, polluting petrochemicals, or nukes and renewable energy resources for everyday energy production |
     The site maintainers help keep current on recent developments, links to sustainable and ongoing practical energy production, and by provding stories on ordinary people who make use of the technology that NESEA publicizes |
     A good starting point in anyone's efforts at going independednt from the oil cartels -be they foreign or domestic |
     solar electric can be practical | Lest you suffer from the illusion that converting to solar electrical home power is not affordable in northern climes, it may be helpful to note that as far back as the mid-1970s research conducted at then Clarkson College [now Clarkson University found that solar heating was cost comparable with an all electric house [then the most costly heating option]. That research assumed a 60% cloud cover during the year |
     more sustainable energy sources | Sustainable Building Handbook From Texas comes this incredibly valuable sourcebook on sustainable energy and building construction techniques | The purpose of the Sourcebook is to offer the practical information needed to implement the building practices promoted by the Green Building Program. The Sourcebook addresses a wide range of options available to architects, builders, and homeowners in seeking to create sustainable buildings | I would like to see more on how to convince local building and zoning inspectors that these practices do, indeed, meet proper building code specifications, and there is some of that, I just would have liked more |
     The Center for Resourceful Building Technology is dedicated to promoting environmentally responsible construction practices. It works as both catalyst and facilitator to encourage building technologies which realize an efficient and sustainable use of resources |

...and get your kids in on the action | You can start by buying some mini-solar generation kits | Spend a couple of dollars on one of these inexpensive solar generators, [designed to power a CD player or an MP3 player] from Silicon Solar and you may find that little rasta boy or gangsta girl that moved into your kid's bedroom some months ago has found a reason for seeing that science is def! [Okay, I have about used up my rap argot vocablulary, but I hope you get the point] Get the kids involved in this too | It is, after all their future that these technologies are going to help sustain |
portions of this section first published 09 may 2002 and subsequently undated

Posted by: Will Brady / 23:02

DEMOCRACY || CORPORATE CONTROL

Florida Voting Protections | ...as if there were such a thing | The Tampa Tribune reports [7 June 2004] that the Jeb Bush machine, like the rest of the family, is still agressively prohibiting otherwise legal citizens from participating in the democratic process | Some talking points:

Today, as the 2004 election nears:

* More than 43,000 Floridians are on the waiting list to have their rights restored, some of whom first learned in 2000, after voting for years, that they weren't legally entitled to vote. The restoration process can take years, and the list is growing, not shrinking.
* Hundreds of people wrongly removed from voter rolls in 2000, who never committed felonies or whose rights had been restored, may not yet have been put back on the rolls.
* A lawsuit charges that Florida's felon disenfranchisement is unconstitutional and affects up to 600,000 people.
* Despite all this, state officials have just sent elections supervisors in Florida's 67 counties another list of 47,000 names of individuals who may have committed felonies in the past, telling the supervisors to purge their rolls again.
* Some supervisors say they don't have the staff, expertise or money to do the purge without the same kind of errors as in 2000.
* Legally purged voters, meanwhile, won't find out about it until they get a letter from an election supervisor this summer - too late to have their rights restored for this election - or are turned away on Election Day.
* The vast majority of them are black and would be likely to vote Democratic.
* In Miami-Dade County, for example, blacks are 20 percent of the population but make up 65 percent of those on the 2000 felon purge lists.

there's more...

Might we say: "T-R-E-A-S-O-N" ?

Posted by: Will Brady / 09:56

Other Voices | on evaluating the performance of a president

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile,
but is morally treasonable to the American public."

-- Theodore Roosevelt, 26th President of the United States (1901-1909), speaking in 1918

Update on Joe Ryan's Abu Ghraib diaries | Thanks to a tip from billmon.org a link to "lost" diary pages of Joe Ryan, a so-called conservative talk show host and guest Iraq prisoner interrogator, who extensively documents the good times the questioners had in their job | Indymedia UK has pt up on their site pages from March 2004 | They also saved them as PDF files

Posted by: Will Brady / 01:15

2004-06-09

CORPORATE CONTROL
Ralph Nader on Corporate Interests | from the American Conservative interview with Pat Buchanan, 21 June 2004

"...what representative government is for, to counteract the excesses of the monied interests, as Thomas Jefferson said. Because big business realizes that the main countervailing force against their excesses and abuses is government, their goal has been to take over the government, and they do this with money and politics. They do it by putting their top officials at the Pentagon, Treasury, and Federal Reserve, and they do it by providing job opportunities to retiring members of Congress. They have law firms that draft legislation and think-tanks that provide ready-made speeches. They also do it by threatening to leave the country. The quickest way to bring a member of Congress to his or her knees is by shifting industries abroad.

Concentrated corporate power violates many principles of capitalism. For example, under capitalism, owners control their property. Under multinational corporations, the shareholders don’t control their corporation. Under capitalism, if you can’t make the market respond, you sink. Under big business, you don’t go bankrupt; you go to Washington for a bailout. Under capitalism, there is supposed to be freedom of contract. When was the last time you negotiated a contract with banks or auto dealers? They are all fine-print contracts. The law of contracts has been wiped out for 99 percent of contracts that ordinary consumers sign on to. Capitalism is supposed to be based on law and order. Corporations get away with corporate crime, fraud, and abuse. And finally, capitalism is premised on a level playing field; the most meritorious is supposed to win. Tell that to a small inventor or a small business up against McDonald’s or a software programmer up against Microsoft.

Giant multinational corporations have no allegiance to any country or community other than to control them or abandon them. So what we have now is the merger of big business and big government to further subsidize costs or eliminate risks or guarantee profits by our government."

Never thought I'd be doing anything that would pay heed to multi-millionaire faux-populist Buchanan, but these are indeed strange times | Besides, he's giving the lone contender against corporate apologist candidates a chance to be heard | More than we can expect from FOX, Time Warner, Capitol Cities, and the rest of the sorry bunch controlling the information streams we casually call "the news" |

Posted by: Will Brady / 09:09

ECONOMIC TREASON
Is ENRON still the smoking gun in treason trials? | Jason Leopold's article on Counterpunch raises cautious optimism in me that the evidence is certainly there to indict the bastids who have been commiting treason against the USA populace for well nigh two decades | The article reports on info now public about Kenneth Lay, Jeffry Skilling, Dick Cheney and others worked, apparently in concert, to manipulate and inflate the costs of energy to California and other energy markets |
Further providing an arguement that power should, indeed, belong to the people, since the rich and powerful are, obviously, not up to the task of managing that resource honestly | Of course, we still have years to go to correct this complex set of problems, but stuff such as this coming to light is a push in the right direction |

Posted by: Will Brady / 00:00

2004-06-08

IRAQ QUAGMIRE
Bush's Select Cadre | Mary Walker is a curious kind of Christian | Intensely driven, she played a role in the Dubya's White House efforts to absolve themselves from personal responsibility for being on watch when torture became standard as a management tool | Bet she sleeps well at night, so certain of her rightness in thought | But it's a real stretch believeing that her thoughts, writings and actions are in any way Christ-like |
UPDATE 11 jun 04: The Radical Right has this wonderful way of self-censoring less than charitable accounts of their actions | as a result the Professional Weman's Fellowship / San Diego website displaying Mary Walker's interview was taken down | You can still find the interview Google cached here and posted at iPriority , a site that outs itself as a place for "developing from the inside out" |

Posted by: Will Brady / 09:11

2004-06-07

TRAVEL
ADIRONDACKS

Lake George retreat | So here's the first of the Adirondak campground pictures | Took way too many of the site itself and not enough of other things, though filled two digital chips and had someone burn a disk to get me more room |
It was a "car campground" | You know, electrictiy, running water on-site, laundry and showers down the road | And under capacity, in between Memorial Day weekened and Americade, Lake George's annual biker fest | I took one spot in the midst of several and no one else pitched tent nearby, which was fine by me | Got some painting in as well as some of my own road trips |

second photo by Steuben, from an Adirondaks trip in 2003

Also got to take two trips up to 13th Lake, a wilderness camping site where you haul in your gear and pitch your camp in designated spots | Got to use the "slow camera" and did a panoramic watercolor (in two parts) | The black flies were not that bad, especially when away from the lake itself | But both campsites that I'd have wanted were already taken when I arrived | Luckily, I hadn't taken down the other site so all was well in that department |

Posted by: Will Brady / 08:18

since 12 june 1999