..but he's still an idjit

Even though I may agree with him on occasion, I still think that, taken as a whole, Justince Scalia is an idiot. The Tribune reports that Scalia took the unusual step of summarizing his dissent in the 10 commandments case from the bench:

Scalia's dissent was personal in tone. He recounted that on Sept. 11, 2001, he was in Rome for an international conference when terrorists attacked the U.S. Upon hearing President Bush end his address to the nation with "God bless America," a European judge said such religious expressions would be forbidden in his country.

In Europe, "religion is to be strictly excluded from the public forum," Scalia wrote. "This is not, and never was, the model adopted by America."

I have two problems with this. One is that conservatives always attack court decisions that protect civil liberties with the pseudo-argument that judges are ruling based on the permissive cultural preferences of the "Elite" rather than on the law. But here, Scalia is making a decision based on his personal reaction to the September 11 terrorist attacks and the way they make him feel about religion. If the cultural sensitivities of the "Elite" are inadmissable in court, what makes the cultural sensitivities of the Idiot Mob any more relevant?

My second problem with Scalia's little story is that it is completely untrue. Here in the real world, European countries do not enforce a separation of church and state. In fact, most of them have an official state church - Catholic in France and Italy, Anglican in England, etc. The establishment of religion in Europe is directly related to the decline of religious faith on that continent, as the entanglement of church and state led Europeans to regard both as mouthpieces for the corrupt powers that be.

In America, by contrast, church and state have been separate. The result has been the flourishing of religious thought and practice, since religion was something people did for themselves, not something dictated to them by authority. If there's something that has made the American experience different, that something is precisely the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

The past fifty years or so, however, in which religious groups, especially evangelical protestants, have been organizing for political power, have not coincidentally seen a precipitous falloff in church attendance. And look at the effect on religion itself. The evangelical movement, for all its stunning anti-intellectualism, was once also known for its radical egalitarianism. It was embraced by, and embraced abolitionists, anarchists, and trade unionists. These days the movement has become chief apologist for the rapacious corporate elite. How? By getting caught in the web of the quest for political power.

Look at Iran. Officially a religious dictatorship, the majority of its population was born after the 1979 revolution. And today's young Iranian men are far more likely to be interested in heroin and girls than in Shi'ite Islam. If they wanted to raise a religious generation, they would outlaw Islam - then all the cool kids would be doing it. People are like that.

I agree with Scalia?

A wave of Supreme Court decisions over the past few days. No resignations thank god, but after reading about these decisions, how could it get much worse?

Fort Trumbull Massacre

I blogged about the Battle of Fort Trumbull here, and I'm not about to do it again, so follow the link, you lazy bums. But the Supreme Court has spoken, and the decision, 5-4, states that local governments have the legal right to use eminent domain to seize people's homes and businesses against their will for private development.

The constitution explicitly grants governments the right to seize land for "public purposes," and no one is contesting the constitutionality of appropriating land to build a hospital, road, or park. At issue was whether homes can be seized and domolished to build a Wal-Mart or an office park. Is such activity a "public purpose?"

The court has ruled that it is. "The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including — but by no means limited to — new jobs and increased tax revenue," wrote Justice Stevens, a guy I often find myself agreeing with. He was joined by Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, and Breyer. You know, the "good guys." Defining the public interest as "economic development" and "increased tax revenue."

In other words, it's in the public interest to remove lower income people from within city limits and replace them with people and businesses which will pay more in taxes. Since the poor are a drain on public finances, obviously it is in the public interest to drive them out of town! Following this logic, since our economy really has no further need for unskilled manual labor, it would be in the public interest to take the deindustrialized underclass out in a field somewhere, tie their hands behind their backs, and shoot them in the head. Think about the gains in efficiency and economic growth! Thankfully the Supreme Court was not quite so sweeping in its reasoning. This term.

Defending our rights and basic human dignity were a group of dissenting justices - namely O'Connor, Renquist, Thomas, and, yes, Scalia. How come these guys can so clearly see that granting the government power to run people out of town with bulldozers is wrong, but don't have a problem with sodomy laws? I just don't get it. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's dissent said that the majority handed "disproportionate influence and power" to the well-heeled in America. No shit. We'll return to that theme in a moment.

Well what the f**k is it good for then?

In another fun case, the Court, in a 7-2 decision, ruled that Jessica Gonzales did not have a constitutional right to police enforcement of the court order against her husband, who subsequently kidnapped and murdered her children.

Justice Antonin Scalia, (back on Team Evil where he belongs) wrote, "The creation of a personal entitlement to something as vague and novel as enforcement of restraining orders cannot 'simply go without saying.' We conclude that Colorado has not created such an entitlement."

In a dissent, Justice John Paul Stevens, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, said that the woman's "description of the police behavior in this case and the department's callous policy of failing to respond properly to reports of restraining order violations clearly alleges a due process violation."

"The restraining orders are not worth anything unless police officers are willing to enforce them. They are just paper," said Brian Reichel, the attorney for Gonzales. "If nothing else this case has shined the spotlight on a very important issue."

It sure has! Abusive thugs everywhere are celebrating and stocking up on ammo now that it's been established the people with orders of protection don't actually have a rigtht to, er, protection.

End of the digital revolution?

In another fine example of Supreme judgement, the court ruled - unanimously! - that the music and movie industries can sue technology companies like Grokster to stem losses from music and movie piracy. These corporations have been blaming file sharing for their failure to achieve the profits the feel the so richly deserve.

The court may be right about the letter of the law, but I have two big problems with this decision. First of all, Congress keeps extending copyright protections out to the horizon, so that it looks like nothing is ever going to be public domain again - and now those copyrights will be rigidly enforced, not just against sale by a rival company, but against you, doing things traditionally regarded as "fair use."

The second problem here is that piracy isn't really causing the big media companies to lose that much money, any more than cassette tapes or VCRs did. Example: Wells burned me an illegal copy of a "Tindersticks" album, which I occasionally listen to. Did the company or the band lose any money here? No, because I never, ever would have bought it myself. Basic supply and demand for you: quantity demanded at a price of $0 is much higher than quantity demanded at a price of $17. I learned that in Econ 101. If they had to pay for all these songs and movies, consumers would pony up for maybe 10% of what they grab for free. Which means corporate losses are less then they are claiming by a factor of 10. The real reason they are losing money is that the product in recent years has been bland, boring, market tested, genre-specific, derivitive, unimaginative crap. Look who supported the decision: Don Henley, Cheryl Crow and the Dixie Chicks. Mass marketed pablum. Look who opposed it - Chuck D, Brian Eno, Heart, and a bunch of musicians having trouble getting their product out passed the corporate filter to their audience.

What's really at stake here is control over the distribution of content. Take the example of that Fiona Apple album, finished but locked up somewhere. The record company owns it and won't release it. Do you really want big media corporations deciding what you can listen to? Again, the rights of the rich and powerful trump your rights.

In a related case, the Court in its infinite wisdom decided that cable companies cannot be forced to allow competing Internet Service Providers from using their broadband networks, establishing a virtual broadband monopoly in many areas. This will slow the public's uptake of broadband technology, of course, but it has other implications as well. We are at the point technologically where we could eliminate fixed TV programming schedules for good. Under a more competitive model, if you wanted to watch the latest episode of "Battlestar Galactica," you'd just go to the Sci-Fi Channel website and download in whenever you felt like it. But now that companies have asserted total control over the content of their infrastructure, your only option is to set the VCR or TiVo for its obnoxious Friday night timeslot (I'm assuming you have a life). That is, until next term, when the Supremes will probably reverse their 1983 Betamax ruling and decide that taping shows is copyright infringement, too, as is hitting MUTE during those stupid car commercials.

Conservative Movement whackos like to complain that when the Court acts to protect the rights of women, homosexuals, and minorities, it is answering to the social preferences of elites rather than the law. While the argument is ridiculous, it is sort of a funhouse mirror image of the truth; time and again, the Court seems to bow to the economic interests of the corporate elite, no matter what else is at stake. I heard a man on the radio bemoaning the New London case - he's being thrown out of the house he's lived in his whole life, as has his elderly mother. "My great grandfather built this house - I garden the same ground as my great grandfather." This time next year, that garden will probably be paved over as part of the parking lot of one of those horrible suburban office parks. Ah, progress.

At least they can't do any more harm until October 3. Let's hear it for those long Federal vacations!

Point-Counterpoint

Hey, it's time for a new feature here at WCB. Today we bring you two voices from the community to rationally debate the issues of the day. From today's Tribune:

Special-ed quota criticized
State says Chicago schools' testing restrictions violate federal law

By Tracy Dell'Angela and Bonnie Miller Rubin, Tribune staff reporters
Published June 22, 2005

Chicago Public Schools has violated federal law by restricting how many students could be referred for special education services at specific schools, state education officials allege.

Teachers, specialists and advocates have long complained of an illegal quota system. They say the city school system tightly controls access to services, denying struggling children extra help because of money constraints.

With us today are Tracy Triplicate form the Chicago Board of Education, and LaToya Watson-Mohammad, representing the Chicago Teachers' Union*.

Tracy?

TT:First of all, there's no quota. But, look - for a long time we have had teachers just dumping kids in Special Ed so they don't have to deal with them. Have you heard of the famous study in which it was demonstrated that teachers were classifying Latino kids as mentally retarded because they didn't speak English? Rather than helping them learn the language, they were put in Special Ed classes in which they weren't taught anything at all. The same thing has happened here. If a child has a disability, then by all means put the child in a special program. But lots of kids don't do well because they have behavioral issues, or have trouble at home, or are in fear for their lives from gangs, or have other emotional issues that keep them from learning. Ths solution is not to stick them in Special Ed. The solution is to help them and teach them.

LWM: There is a quota system. And in some of our neighborhoods, there are a lot of disabled children. We have kids who can't read, who don't learn, who aren't retaining anything and it's disruptive to keep them in class. It hurts the other children. We already have 30 kids in a class some places, and we can't afford to deal with kids who aren't going to learn. What would you do with a sixth grader who can't read?

TT: Have you tried teaching them how? That is in your job description, you know.

LWM: Let me check - hey! Low blow! That's not the point, and you know it. You just don't want to pay to educate these kids! You get a fixed special ed grant from the Feds no matter how many kids are in the program! You're just gaming the system.

TT: No, you're gaming the system. You know these special ed kids don't count against you test scores, so you want to exempt everyone it would be difficult to teach.

LWM: You created these incentives! You want to shut our school down over some stupid test.

TT: You're a lazy ,incompetant blockhead. I wish it was easier to fire you.

LWM: Well, you're a bloodless fascist troll.

TT: At least my kid goes to a real school!

LBM: Think you're too good for us, you pasty-faced bitch!

TT: Fuck you.

LBM: Fuck you!

Well, I guess that clears that up! Join us next time on Point-Counterpoint, when we discuss the East Village Landmark District!

*note - not their real names. nobody you know. composite characters. don't sue me, I don't have any money.

What Rough Beast . . .

He caved. I guess he's not in line for the next edition of Profiles in Courage after all.

I can't really express my disappointment, but Yeats can:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

He has nothing to apologize for. The Right uses American troops like hostages; they hide behind them, claiming that criticizing the war policies of the administration is beyond the pale because it might hurt the soldiers' feelings to hear that we don't support their actions. But I don't really care how it makes them feel. I'm not the one who put them in harm's way in Iraq, after all. I always said it was a bad idea. Iraq is a political problem, not a military problem. That's why efforts to "crush the insurgency" don't work. These are ultimately attempts to crush the Sunni Arab population, and nothing short of genocide will accomplish that.

Which is why it's perfectly fair to compare the Bush administration's tactics to Pol Pot or Stalin. The neocons believe they are engaged in a struggle of democracy against fascism. They aren't - they've wandered into ongoing conflicts between ethnic and religious groups, and they don't know which side to take - Shiites in Iraq, Sunnis in Lebanon, do we have any friends in Syria at all?

To "win" such conflicts takes tactics worthy of Stalin, or at least Saddam. No, Bush isn't really Pol Pot, and doesn't have it in him to really destroy another people. Or I sincerely hope not. But if that's the case, we need a different kind of solution if we want to bring democracy and peace to the Middle East. Because the type of military force we are bringing to bear just isn't going to cut it.

THe problem is, gaining and keeping power in the middle east is a life and death proposition, because of the "winner take all" political culture. Being out of power or in the minority doesn't just mean you don't like the laws that are past, it means that you are subjected to the underside of a repressive regime. That's right, detention without charge, assassination, torture, "waterboarding," you know, all that good stuff the Bushies think is necessary to protect you.

The solution is not a military victory over the forces of evil, but a political solution that enshrines minority rights in law, allowing people to be safe and free even when their tribe doesn't control the state. It's things like the rule of law, the separation of church and state, exactly the things the Conservative movement is threatening to destroy in our own country, that can make social peace possible. The victory of one group over another isn't even desireable. What's needed is a system that allows people to work out their differences peacefully, or agree to disagree.

You know, a system like we used to have here.

Speaking of which, hey, has anybody seen Jose Padilla lately? He looks sorta like this:

Another quote, from the people over at Charge Jose Padilla, one you probably haven't heard in oh, about four or five years now:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

5th Amendment to U.S. Constitution

It's like this. Either Padilla's a terrorist, in which case charge him under that anti-terrorism law that got passed after Oklahoma City, or else he's not, in which case release him. The same goes for Guantanamo. Either those guys are illegal combatants, in which case charge them with crimes, or they were legitimate Afghan soldiers, in which case they are POWs and need to be treated according to the Geneva Conventions. There may be some grey areas there, but there are no legal black holes through which several hundred people can fall and land on lawless islands where they have no rights and can be held and tortured at the President's whim. These are the first stages of tyranny. If they can hold Jose Padilla for four and a half years without meeting any standard of proof or being accountable to any judge, they can hold you too. What good will being innocent do you without due process?

"Trust us" they say? This country wasn't built on trust, it was built on checks and balances and the rule of law. This attitude is spreading and has infected the local level. Consider this new policy here in my hometown:

The city has begun posting the names and photographs of alleged "johns" on the Police Department's Web site for all to see, including spouses, children, employers, friends and neighbors, Mayor Richard Daley announced Tuesday.

Now I've got no problem with posting the names and photos of convicted johns on the Web. But alleged johns is a different ball of wax altogether. What, do you think the police never arrest the wrong man? Or, um, sentence him to Death Row, or leave him to rot in prison for 24 years? Miscarriages of justice turn out to be pretty common, but at least with a convicted criminal you have a judge or jury backing up your claims. But just an arrest - again, with no standard of proof, they can arrest anyone they want, post their name on the Web, and then drop the charges.

And now it looks like Congress is going to pass an amendment to allow it to ban flag burning. I listened to the arguments on the radio this afternoon. One congressman said the amendment was necessary because the flag is "a sacred symbol of our country that is being desecrated." But last time I checked, desecrating sacred symbols was none of the government's business, since it was protected behavior under the freedom of religion. But now I guess Congress will assert its right to define political and religious "crimes."

Is this the kind of country you want to live in?

Torture

The headline in yesterday's Tribune, in big bold letters:

DNA clears dad in girl's slaying

The article by Deborah Horan, Jo Napolitano and John Biemer describes the release of Kevin Fox, a suburban Will County man who spent eight months in jail charged with the rape and murder of his 3 year old daughter. DNA test results from the crime scene resulted in an "absolute exclusion of Kevin Fox as a donor," State's Atty. James Glasgow told the judge.

So why was he in jail, and why did it take so long to perform the test? Simple. Kevin Fox confessed. To a crime it's now clear he couldn't have committed. Why would someone do something like that?

Fox turned aside questions about the videotaped confession at the heart of the case, saying "it was a nightmare and I don't want to relive it right now."

But later, in an interview with the Tribune, he said he was "fed lies and threats the entire time." His wife, who stood by him through his arrest and time in jail, said that when she was questioned "they messed with my mind so much in what little time they had so I couldn't even imagine what they did" with him.
. . .
Fox, according to [attorney Kathleen] Zellner, confessed only after he was questioned for 14 hours and was exhausted, and because authorities allegedly promised him that he would face lesser charges and quickly be released if he said his daughter's death was an accident.

"They get people who are emotionally traumatized and obtain a bogus confession," said Zellner, who has helped to free several wrongly convicted inmates but, in an unusual move, took on the defense of Fox before trial.

Let's put this in context. Although there are many fine and honest officers serving and protecting our fair state, the Illinois law enforcement community has the reputation of not being above delivering a good ass kicking in much the same way the ocean is not above the sky. Several of the 13 subsequently cleared Death Row inmates who made our state's system of capital punishment so well known around the world complained that their false confessions had been "coerced" by police.

Yes, I'm talking about torture. Or "aggressive interrogation tactics" or whatever the FBI is calling it these days. Here in the Windy City, there is a history of obtaining confessions from suspects, especially suspects who are racial minorities, but applying a great deal of what apologists call "pressure" and normal people refer to as "force" or perhaps "violence or the threat of violence." There's even one local technique rumored to involve a car battery, cables, and genitalia.

Leaving the Constitution out of it for just a moment, the problem with these techniques as an information gathering tool is that they result in an unacceptable number of false positives - all you have to do is show me the car battery and I'm probably going to confess to anything they want me to. I have no special knowledge of the Fox case, but I have my suspicians as to the kind of thing police might do or say to get a man to confess to raping and killing his three year old daughter, when he did no such thing.

Which brings us to the Guantanamo Bay, and the rest of our gulag archipeligo. I'm really tired of hearing our elected officials defend these "aggressive interrogation techniques" as necessary to gain "actionable intelligence" in the Global War On Terror. But torture doesn't produce actionable intelligence. Absolutely it produces confessions. Subjecting people to pain and exhaustion quite naturally makes them want to tell you whatever they think will make you stop doing that to them, which is not necessarily the same thing as telling you the truth.

I'm sure there are al Quaeda terrorists at Guantanamo who have given the US useful intelligence. But I am also certain that a number of ignorant herdsmen and poppy farmers were rounded up, mostly by neighbors who wanted the reward money for turning in terrorists and Taliban during the invasion. Either group will be eager to confirm whatever story their torturers want confirmed after a few days of waterboarding. This has always been true. Going back to the Inquisition, we see countless cases of people confessing to congress with the Devil, even though there's no such person as the devil, and of practicing dark magic and witchcraft, even though there's no such thing as magic. Some people confessed they had the power to fly, or do other impossible things. As would you, if you were being tortured on the rack.

So the usefulness of torture for intelligence gathering is extremely limited. Forming alliances with prisoners and stroking their egos is a much more reliable method of intelligence gathering, as of course is the age old method of exchanging money for information. But torture, in the Inquisition and the GWOT, has the advantage of confirming for the torturer that he was right about everything all along. No wonder they haen't been able to find bin Laden.

Dick Durbin, our Senior Senator, drew a lot of fire for the following comment:

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings.

Faced with a withering assault from the right, he has "clarified" his remarks somewhat:

<''My statement in the Senate was critical of the policies of this administration, which add to the risk our soldiers face," he said in a statement released yesterday afternoon. I have learned from my statement that historical parallels can be misused and misunderstood. I sincerely regret if what I said caused anyone to misunderstand my true feelings: Our soldiers around the world and their families at home deserve our respect, admiration, and total support.

Which is bullshit. If they're engaging in torture, they don't deserve our total support. They deserve to be charged, tried and imprisoned as criminals, for engaging in behavior that is intolerable in any civilized society, whether it takes place at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, or Cook County Jail. Torture is not effective, it does not keep you safe, it does not help promote freedom around the world, and it sullies and compromises the principles on which this country was founded.

Please write to Senator Durbin to thank him for his remarks and ask him to never, ever apologize for speaking truth to power. It's important.

Minority Report II

From the comments:

And--advertisers are whining because they can't target their CTA ads to specific neighborhoods?? Hello, this is a transit ad. Thus, "in transit". I can only imagine what kind of ads the Western bus would have to carry, to appeal to every ethnic and S-E group on the route.

Actually, that’s a great idea. The computer calls stops based on GPS satellite positioning these days, so why not the ads? Heading south from Touhy past Devon, all ads would be in Urdu and would make no sense to people unfamiliar with Bollywood films (“what’s the deal with the water buffalo?”). South through Ravenswood it would all be home improvement products, Home Depot probably, featuring the guy from This Old House working on a Queen Anne. Maybe a spot for a Korean grocery around Lawrence, followed by commercials for travel agents, in English, as the bus passes through Lincoln Square. Lakeview would be your standard TV fare, Target/Nike/iPod stuff.

South of the river, commercials for travel agents, in Spanish, would alternate with dada ads pitching $200 pairs of jeans by showing you hot chicks. These would continue on through Wicker Park, in the Village the iPod ads would start up again. South of Lake street there’s not much to pitch, ads would probably push DeVry, and also Hennessy. There would be something inane featuring a pro basketball player talking to a puppet.

The Illinois Medical District? Probably malpractice insurance. Local businesses advertising in Spanish would pick up south of Ogden and run through the canal. These ads would feature minor Spanish soap opera stars smiling way too wide. Tortillas and Tecate. And possibly Erik Estrada. A Polish beer commercial would run between 33rd and Archer, followed by a string of car dealerships and White Sox promotions, in both English and Spanish, through 55th Street. A couple spots in Arabic for immigration lawyers would probably find an audience here, too.

West Englewood could be done in style, with funky Jheri Curl ads and BET spots, but I suspect that it would really be annoying, with megachurches alternating with malt liquor and cigarette ads, just like the billboards. Also movie ads, which could be cool depending on the movie.

South of 71st, cars and sitcoms, as well as more home-improvement ads, this time featuring black actors. Definitely a spot for the Target at 86th and Cottage Grove.

From 87th Street through the end of the line at 103rd, ads would feature Guinness, Aer Lingus, and fundraisers for the Irish Republican Army.

Unless you’re running express, there’s time for a captive audience to take in maybe two hours of ads on this line! The CTA should definitely look into this. At least until they come out with those cool holographic ads that access all of your personal information from your retina scan and use it to market to you personally, like in that creepy Tom Cruise movie. It's closer than you realize (thanks for the link, Trope).

"Progress" stinks

Apparently not everyone shares my horror of advertising invading every public space in the world. Some people are writing that the CTA doesn't have enough advertising up, and that blank surfaces are wasted space that could be used to tastefully pitch lingerie, movies or gas guzzling SUVs. Alison Neumer of RedEye writes that "Obstacles discourage progress" including "City Hall red tape" that "make[s] it difficult to introduce new types of ads." Well, let's hear if for red tape, because "progress" stinks. What would a progressive advertising utopia be like?

It's time the CTA considered all of its property--the sidewalks, the stairwells, the Web site--potential advertising real estate. Billboards, bus posters and train placards are CTA's obvious choices, but people screen out traditional media ads after a while. That's why advertisers continue to go the guerrilla marketing route, always hunting for unrealized space such as an elevator, the back of ticket stubs or someone's forehead.

The subway tunnel commercial like the one on the Blue Line is a good first step; let's see more stuff like it. Riders might be irritated: Do we really need more ads? No, but I can deal with a deodorant or cell phone pitch if it means my train shows up.

Or maybe we could keep the trains running by taxing environment destroying, national security compromising SUVs, rather than using the subway to promote them? And leave my forehead out of this, you bastards.

One thing I've been meaning to mention but don't think I'm going to have time to really right about is Revealing Chicago. On the way home from the Blues Festival last week I came across this exhibition of aerial photograpy by Terry Evans, focusing on all my urban issues: density, suburban sprawl, etc. They're beautiful pictures, trying to show the relationships between different patterns of settlement. But I don't think they make the case for traditional neighborhood design over sprawl, because the exhibit inclueds not one single picture of a healthy traditional neighborhod like mine. Also, she shows a block of ranch houses and calls them bungalows, which bugs me. Bungalow is a very specific term around here. Still, it's a cool place to start. It could have been a lot stronger with a couple more pictures, though.

I've also been venting about war and stuff. I just don't want to do it here. So it's back at ye olde blogge.