One Year Later, Everybody Sues Everybody Else

On Tuesday 20 April 2010, BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded, leaking some 200 million gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, and doing nearly irreparable harm to ecology there. This, you probably heard about.

However, on Wednesday 20 April 2011, BP’s legal department exploded, leaking some 200 million lawsuits into the (already filthy) American legal system, and significantly intensifying the vast circlejerk that comprises it. That, you may not have heard about.

Okay, so maybe I exaggerate. The fact is, under a point of American law, Wednesday was the last day any of the companies involved in the incident had in which to file lawsuits against each other. And file they did. BP has sued Cameron International (who sold them the blowout valve that failed) for all of the costs they incurred as a result of the distaster. That’s right, all of them. Only in America, folks.

Meanwhile, Cameron has counter-sued BP, and the rig owner Transocean has sued BP and Haliburton (the contractor that did all the concrete work for the rig) for profits they lost when the rig sank, as well as other ‘contractual obligations’. Naturally, both BP and Haliburton have counter-sued Transocean for being such pricks.

Claims, cross-claims, counter-claims, indemnity claims, counter indemnity claims. See what I mean when I call it a circlejerk?

I guess that it is the natural response when a company is under stress due to an event like this – sue the pants off everyone else, and hopefully get some of the money back. But I nonetheless find it kind of sickening, in a way. The damage is done, so now the game is all about assigning the blame. And I’ll be damned if that doesn’t leave a bitter taste in my mouth.

When Will The Madness End?

Earlier this week, 21 year old Evan Emory was arrested and charged with manufactuing child sexual abusive material. This is a serious charge, and entails a 20 year prison sentence, and (unless I am mistaken) permanent placement in the sex offenders registry. Before you get up in arms though, hear what he actually did.

The man is a musician and small-time comedian. He took a video of him singing a G-rated song to a classroom of primary school children (who by all accounts giggled the entire way though) and mixed it together with an audio track of him singing something sexually explicit for comedic effect. He then posted it on youtube. He was then arrested.

This isn’t new. Not even close. A great many professional comedians have done the exact same thing, with nary a flicker of the eye from law enforcement. And in fact, charging him for this may well be a constitutional violation, as it pertains to his free speech. But I’m not going to get into that – no, what I want to talk about is the trend that let to this absurdity.

I have a piece of advice for every male (especially those of us who are white) – do not go near children. At all. Just don’t do it. Don’t talk to them. Don’t knowledge their existence at all. Do not look at them. Don’t even go near them. And for gods sake don’t take a photo of them. Better yet, don’t own a camera at all. It doesn’t matter if you don’t do anything illegal, or even immoral anymore. Some idiot will mis-interpret your actions (or your intent), possibly even on purpose, scream “THINK OF THE CHILDREN” and report you to law enforcement. Remember, you did something wrong unless you can prove otherwise. (And people wonder why there are so few male teachers nowadays.)

Okay, so maybe I am blowing this out of proportion a little, but I think you see my point. This is a very real trend in the western world as a whole – it is not limited to America in the slightest. If you are a man, and you are interacting with a child, a significant minority of people will assume foul play.

I don’t really blame individuals for this. There has been a massive counter-push on all sexual abuse, especially child abuse, in western culture recently. This is a very good thing, and Iwholly approve. However, the frenzy has gotten to critical mass, and some people are getting the wrong message from it. We are told to be watchful, not hyper-vigilant. If a situation looks innocuous, it probably is. But enough people have forgotten this that it has become problematic.

This case is a perfect example. Here, we have something that isn’t illegal (or if it is, probably shouldn’t be). There is no victim. It’s trivial. It is not only a waste of court time (and anyone who has ever had to deal with a court case knows they have enough on their plate already), but it trivializes the crime. Producing child porn is a VERY serious charge. People who do it are scum, detestable to the core. By applying the same law to this instance, the prosecutor is weakening the charge, reducing it to a triviality. If even one person associates a child porn charge with harmless comedy, then this case has done harm. Not to mention Mr Emory – even if he is exonerated, if anyone hears that he was charged with this (ie an employer) he is FUCKED.

It’s madness. Modern children are wrapped in bubblewrap and protected from the world. It does more harm than good. But that is a rant for another time. I’ll end here, with an echo of the rhetorical title;

When will the madness end?

New Information On Chinese Internet Espionage Emerges

Firstly; Well done Egypt, well done.
Secondly; For the sake of being more easily understood, I am going to use the word ‘hacking’ as the media does. Don’t get mad.

Apparently not content with hacking Google, the US govt and the Dalai Lama, it seems Chinese hackers have also been targeting major oil companies as well.

Since November 2009, hackers have been targeting company computers as well as the personal computers of executives and others who hold sensitive information, the hacking group have been breaking in and copying files predominately related to active oil and gas fields and bids to open new ones. It goes without saying the value that information holds, I think.

What piqued my interest however was the reasons that McAfee (the security company and well-known antivirus provider who wrote the original report) are sure that the attacks have actually come from China. As a general rule, any hacker worth his salt does his best to hide his actual physical location. However, these hackers don’t seem to have taken such measures – they believe they have identified one individual IP address located in Bejing that is directing the attacks (though it seems like there are numerous attackers involved). Of course, knowing that, they still have nothing – without the co-operation of the Chinese ISP, it is impossible to identify the individual, and China wouldn’t extradite a citizen to the west for prosecution anyway.

Even more telling, all the attacks have the signature of a particular hacking tool kit that has been dubbed ‘Night Dragon’, which is particularly common in the chinese underground. I find this downright fascinating – they studied the pattern of the attacks, the order of operations and resultant traffic to make the identification. This kind of thing is why I am studying IT security.

But perhaps most telling of all – every single attack seems to have occurred within the hours of 9am to 5pm Beijing local time. This isn’t some script kiddie or freelance hacking profiteer – this is being done by salarymen. It’s clear cut corporate espionage.

The question is, what can be done about it?

Charlie Sheen Is A Bit Of An Ass….

…but sometimes, he says things that are right up my alley. The actor from Two And A Half Men made an ambiguous statement about ‘getting help’ before the next season, and in his public denunciation of all the rumormongering and speculation that it caused was the following quote (directed at the media);

“BTW, two wars are in an endless state of sorrow. Egypt about burned to the ground, and all you people care about is my bullshitt … pathetic … Shame shame shame.”

You know the world is coming to end when Charlie Sheen is the voice of reason.

You’d Have To Be Mad To Be A Relief Teacher

A lot of people have been telling me to write about Egypt. Why should I write about Egypt? Not only is it all over the mainstream news, it is almost (but not quite) getting too much damn airtime as it is. It is nearly the kind of story that prompted me to start writing about news in the first place. So no, I will not be writing about Egypt.

In November last year, a schizophrenic by the name of Lewis Alexander Mawhinney escaped a psychiatric facility. He then entered France (the article did not say where from, by I presume it was somewhere in Germany), got hired at a school district (with two secondary schools in it) and taught German for a month before his past caught up to him. It seems he had a tendency to ramble incoherently, which tipped off his coworkers that not all was right.

This was actually rather dangerous. He was locked up in the first place because he attacked a coworker with a knife. This is obviously quite insane, as anyone who works at all call center is far more likely to want to kill the customers, not his coworkers. One could certainly argue that the mistake of hiring him brought a rather serious potential danger to the children he taught. And perhaps that is the case. Needless to say, the school came under some heavy criticism for hiring a lunatic. But I don’t think the school district was wrong to hire him.

The man showed up for an interview, provided good credentials and qualifications (which I assume were legitimate) and made a good impression. They asked for a police report, but they are slow to arrive – it turned up a week after he was dismissed. The kicker? His report come back clean, so even if it had been quick it would have made no difference. Why should the school not have hired him? Relief teachers are generally hard enough to find as it is, because most teachers want more reliable work. The school followed all of its proceedures, and he slipped through the cracks.

This is the kind of event that usually triggers a tightening of hiring practices, or a new law, or something like that. I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen in this case. The school did nothing wrong (though I’m not so sure about the skill of the French authorities – as an escaped mental patient, how do you not only cross the border into France, but also come back clean on a police background check?).

Hell, none of his students complained – everyone likes a teacher who is a little bit different. Didn’t you?

HIV+ Swinger Jailed; Baby Murdering != Abortion; Republicans Waste Their Time

Pike River is still in the news. Christ. I had hoped that the floods in Australia might finally oust it.

Sergeant David Gutierrez of the US military was sentenced to 8 years in a military prison and a dishonorable discharge this week. The guy was a swinger – which in itself is no problem, at least in my books. To each, their own. The problem was, he was HIV-positive. His commanding officer was aware of his affliction, and ordered him to inform any potential sexual partners of his condition. He didn’t. One charge of disobeying orders and seven aggravated assault charges (and some adultery charges for good measure, though I personally don’t agree with those) later, he is going to jail.

This genuinely pleases me. HIV is expensive to treat (around 30k USD per year), and can turn into AIDS. It’s serious business. If you play it fast and loose with an affliction like that, you deserve to be punished. But the most delicious irony is this – because of his dishonorable discharge, Gutierrez will not get his military medical benefits. He will personally have to bear the brunt of his treatment. Now that, to me, is the real justice here.

In another part of America, an ‘Abortion’ doctor named Kermit Gosnell has spent the past 30 years performing as many late term abortions as he can. Now, late term abortions are universally illegal, and for a very good reason – by that stage, they are viable children. And killing babies is murder, you know. This doctor induced labor, delivered the baby, then cut into its neck with scissors to sever the spinal column. Quick, efficient, and so, so wrong. He (and many of his untrained, unlicensed assistants) are charged with as many counts of murder as the prosecutors can make stick. In addition, he is being sued to oblivion.

At this point, the guy is nearly 70 years old. Jailtime is good, but a lot less meaningful. Personally, I approve of the flurry of lawsuits more than the criminal charges in this case. The guy did it for the money, so take it all away.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives today passed a bill that would repeal Obama’s new healthcare legislation. Meanwhile, the Senate (still controlled by the Democrats) is laughing at them, and Obama has said he will veto any bill which attempts to repeal the new healthcare law. It is, in essence, a big waste of time on the part of the House.

But all is not lost. You see, most of those Republicans got voted in on the platform that they would repeal ‘Obamacare’. And here they are, actually trying to do it. Politicians, genuinely attempting to fulfill their major campaign promises. I never thought I’d see the day. The effort may be token, and ultimately futile, but I feel it should be commended nonetheless.

Todays post was America heavy, but hey, it’s a big place. Lots of things happen there. Get over it.

With any luck, something worth writing a full post about will happen soon.

The Blame Game

So recently, a prominent politician and a 6 year old girl were gunned down at a political rally. I’m sure you have heard about it. If not, go look it up, because thats not what this post is about.

In the weeks prior to the attack, Sarah Palin and her political team released a map of the USA, denoting the home cities of their opposition politicians in crosshairs with the solgan ‘Don’t Retreat. Instead – RELOAD!’. Naturally, every pundit and his dog saw the correlation there and went after Palin like a rabid dog who hadn’t eaten for a week. While this was moronic, thats not what this post is about either.

What this post is about is Sarah Palin and her supporters feeling that being blamed for the actions of an extremist (as described by Hillary Clinton). I find this truly mind blowing. This is the same woman who revealed the depths of her recism when she called on ‘peaceful Muslims’ to stop a mosque being pup up near Ground Zero in New York. Keep in mind that she believed that statement to be utterly politically correct.

I’m sorry Palin & co, the Tea Party, and any one else on the right wing taking heat for this. You don’t get propose cracking down hard on all Muslims as a result of terrorism, and then turn around and expect not to be cracked down on when an extremist of your kind does something you don’t agree with. It doesn’t matter whether or not you support the actions of the extremist, overtly or covertly – there will be no double standard.

I think the morons attacking you over this are you, but you are even more wrong in feeling like it isn’t just.

Tunisian Govt Wages Cyberwar On Dissidents

In case you hadn’t heard (I hadn’t), there have been some protests in Tunisia recently, thousands of people campaigning to get a bit of economic and social change. Tunisia is a repressed sort of place. While technically a democracy, it is widely seen as authoritarian, and for good reason. They aren’t so keen on free speech – dissenting speech specifically, but that isn’t all they censor. The Tunisian Govt performs internet filtering on par with China’s Great Firewall, but more aggressive – all video sharing sites are blocked, for one. In 2008, Facebook was blocked entirely, though that was later revoked. They are also very quick to censor dissenting opinions on blogs and individual Facebook pages, with some things blocked within hours of their creation. It’s a sad state of affairs, but its hardly remarkable.

One thing that they do that actively piques my interest is this – not content to merely filter, the Govt phishes, scams and cracks its way into the online accounts of dissident bloggers to remove content at the source. Typical strategy seems to be that they break into a dissident’s email account and use that as a launchpad to break into blogs, Facebook accounts and other places to eradicate dissenting opinions. Keep in mind that the people targeted by these attacks are legal Tunisian citizens, the very people this Govt is charged with serving.

Another effect of these attacks is that it occasionally reveals the real name and location of these online dissidents. After the most recent wave of attacks, two well-known online dissidents were arrested. They do not appear to have been heard from since.

Needless to say I am rather appalled. The internet is wonderful because it is a haven of free speech – most anyone can access it, speak their mind, and remain anonymous. In many ways, the internet has changed the way people protest. But that is being destroyed in Tunisia. People should not fear their government, yet that is certainly what they seem to be aiming to achieve.

There are not many causes that can convince me to get up off my ass, but this is one of them. But the problem is, what can be done? I don’t see a way to help this situation in the slightest, being half a world away and poor. Heck, maybe nothing short of a full scale revolution will fix this. It is a sorry state of affairs.

And don’t even get me started on Anonymous. They did make an appearance, get angry and DDoS some government sites, but they don’t change anything. Anonymous aren’t news.

I guess it all comes down to this. Censorship is bad in almost every single context, but in the modern world it is….common. We no longer get excited about it. We no longer boycott over it. We just don’t care.

But in my mind, it is one thing to censor, and another thing entirely to crack.

Trucker Whines And Complains About Unattended Bruises

At this point, I’m sure most of you will have heard about the massive car accident down in Hawkes Bay. It is pretty big news. Three cars, one truck, one tangled mess. And for once, it wasn’t even the fault of the truck, though arguably its inclusion in the crash made the matter much worse. But that is all over the news, so thats not what this story is about.

This story is about Les Bennett, the truck driver. In the crash, he suffered ‘shock, whiplash and bruising’. This is compared to people in critical condition – bad enough that a bystander making the emergency call described them as already dead. By the time St Johns ambulance staff arrived, Les was up and walking around, albeit with a limp. As the paramedics rushed to the aid of the critically wounded, Mr Bennett felt slighted by the fact nobody asked him if he needed any help. Keep in mind that twelve people wound up in hospital in this crash. More than half of them are still in there. There was a lot of work for those ambulance staff to do.

Nonetheless, St Johns staff looked around to see if there was anyone else that needed attention – twice. Les Bennett wasn’t spoken to. He is now lodging a formal complaint against St John. He has said “I felt I could’ve been lying in a ditch and they wouldn’t have noticed me.”

I call shenanigans, Mr Bennett. If you can been incapacitated in any way, I have no doubt that ambulance staff would have attended to you. Particularly if you were lying in a ditch. But you weren’t. You were up, walking, and they had more important things to attend to. If you had needed help, you could have approached the St Johns staff at any time and asked for it – but you did not.

Kindly stop your juvenile whining, remember that you are a grown man and count your blessings. You were the least injured party in the entire crash, fine enough that ambulance staff assumed you would be able to attend to yourself. Rather than blasting our fine ambulance service and pandering to the media, I suggest you take a few days off and take stock of just how lucky you are.

After all, your trailer sheared off the front of someones car. I dare say if it had taken off five more centimeters, your vehicle might just have been the instrument of someone’s demise.

The Danger From Within

When I imagine joining the military, I can’t help but think of the danger. To me, the two concepts are quite inseparable. Once you strip all patriotism from the decision, you are paid to shoot, and be shot at. But I guess thats the job – if you sign up for it, you expect it, and are trained for it. In fact, as a proud soldier, you might reasonably expect that, while dangerous, all the danger in your job would come from outside – other militarized forces, mostly. Today, I was rather startled to find out that this isn’t necessarily the case.

As I said in an earlier post, I care about statistics. They make me bleed just as much as any narrative, sensationalized tragedy. So when I found out today that within the US military in 2009, there were 3,230 reported instances of sexual assault, including rape, perpetrated on servicemen and servicewomen by other members of the military, I was absolutely floored. Flabbergasted. And angry.

Let me put that in perspective. The US military has roughly 1.5 million people in active service. But you will have to excuse me for thinking that three thousand is a sadly large number to be linked to this kind of abhorrence, regardless of sample size. And the problem is only growing worse, as each successive year sees sharply increased numbers of these reports.

Among civilians, sex crimes result in an arrest in 40% of cases. Among the military, only 8% of investigations lead to prosecution. And among those prosecutions, 80% of perpetrators still receive an honorable discharge. I ask you, what honor?

In the military, victims are shamed into silence. As if that wasn’t bad enough, it seem common practice for someone who does speak up to be penalized, with military investigators writing false or misleading reports, leading to the case being dismissed. Then, the victim is persecuted by their superiors for making a false report. In these circumstances, why would anyone ever stand up and report being abused? It makes me wonder the true depth of the problem – just how far under the tip revealed by these statistics does this iceberg run?

In this situation, the victim truly has no recourse. Servicemembers of the military cannot sue the military – nobody can, as a matter of fact. It is a matter of law. Once the internal investigation has run its farce through to the end, that is the end of it. There is no further action to be taken, no matter how mishandled the investigation may have been.

Civilian victims of rape get to speak to lawyers, doctors, and advocates. Military victims only get to speak to a chaplain.

And look at the timing. It became official a little while ago – Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell was repealed, and proof has been seen that the military intends to change it’s policy now that it is no longer forced to maintain it by law. But lets think about demographics for a moment. 80% of the US military is male. It is safe to assume that at least a portion, possibly even a large portion of the victims of these assaults were male. I would also consider it safe to assume that a large portion of that portion are straight, therefore the perpetrator cannot possibly justify their action in their own mind under the reasoning of ‘They will enjoy it’ (as is so often seen in heterosexual rape cases).

So let me pose to you a hypothetical situation – you are a gay male in the US military, and some time in the near future you will be able to announce that you are gay without fear of being fired. Given this information, would you still want to?