Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

Status and Plans

The likelihood of my presence at RenFest today has been downgraded from Probable to Possible. anniemal and syntonic_comma are not going after all. I may still do so despite not feeling well. I'll decide in the next hour or so. In the meantime ...

Technological Whine of the Day

I had been pretty sure the purpose of the Hotsync operation was to make sure files on the PDA were backed up to the PC[1], not to randomly delete files from the PDA. But its seems I was mistaken. :-(

(Documents To Go would be a marvelous tool were it not for the magnitude of its hotsyncing glitchitude.[2])

Total damage: one file renamed but apparently intact; one file lost that can be recreated from another -- basically a lot of tweak-for-PDA formatting needs to be re-done; one file completely gone and not really recoverable, but fortunately not something important; and one that can be recreated from original data sources but will take an annoying amount of time to do so. Feh.

Until this morning the problem I'd had with Documents To Go was that I had to make about four tries to get a hotsync to complete, and it was almost always during the DTG portion of the sync that things died. Deleting files (they show up in the list on the PC side, with a status of "missing") is new.

It's Wrong When The Democrats Do It Too

A week and a half ago I wrote that Bush supporters' attempts to disenfranchise legitimate voters by means of fraud, intimidation, violence, or administrative fiat were the next thing to treason because doing so is counter to the very core of democracy. And I said it'd be wrong if Kerry supporters did it too. In a comment, selki mentioned union folks attacking Republicans attempting to register, and at the time I couldn't find any info about that.

Well there's this list of incidents of theft, vandalism, and violence perpetrated by supporters of Kerry, and I have to say that these things are wrong. I haven't heard of any attempts to disenfranchise Republican voters directly (though some of the acts listed may be construed as attempts at intimidation, which would put them on the Deserving Very Special Rage list), but even "mere" vandalism and theft needs to be discouraged. I want Kerry to win fairly, not because Republicans' computers got trashed or stolen or because "our" side managed to "block the vote". I do not, at least so far, think that the Democrats are anywhere near as evil as the Republicans in this area, but "not as evil as the other guys" is not a sufficient excuse for evil.

Look, the time for violence is the insurrection in response to having had your vote taken away and the election stolen, not beforehand because you're afraid you might lose fairly ... or still have a chance to win despite the opposition's cheating. And stealing computers? If Kerry does win, handing him something that looks like another Watergate is not in the "helping him" category, okay?

Nonetheless, the Administration Manges to Horrify Me Again

This last item isn't here to balance the one before it -- more the other way 'round (I'd been meaning to get around to writing the previous section, and figured I'd better take care of that before posting this one). I've seen folks argue that certain historical comparisons weren't valid because one of the Big Warning Signs -- government or government-sponsored violence against dissenters -- was missing. Well here's that sign (more): not just telling protesters that the ironically-named "free-speech zones" are way over there where nobody will see them, nor "merely" wrapping people in plastic fences and then imprisoning them for a couple of days; now we have the Secret Service and local police initiating violence against anti-Bush demonstrators (while permitting pro-Bush demonstrators to proceed unimpeded). "Only" plastic bullets (filled with capsaicin) and batons, not lead slugs, but it's still violent suppression of free speech by the government even if nobody has been killed (yet).

People were shot in the back with pepper-bullets at point blank range while attempting to help people who had fallen back to their feet. It's not like they were "asking for it".[3]

We must not allow this here. This is not American. This is not just. This is f'ing scary.

DEMOCRACY RESTS UPON FREE SPEECH. The Bush adminstration has demonstrated that it Violently Opposes Free Speech. How can anyone who believes in America vote to support those who use such tactics? Can anyone still doubt that whatever differences fortunately remain, there are enough similarities to Big Bad Historical Patterns to be concerned?

Note well: this was not some random group of counter-protesters that got out of hand. This was the Secret Service and local SWAT team firing projectiles at a non-violent crowd. This was armed, violent suppression, by the government, of free speech.

Wasn't it Jay Leno who wisecracked, "Why don't we give the Iraqis our Constitution? We're not using it."[4]

[1] And to install new files onto the PDA, of course, but that part of it doesn't connect to the irony of the result I got.

[2] Apparently other people using different configurations have not noticed any hotsync problems with Documents To Go, so the flaw is probably in my version or in my environment, not inherent to DTG. It's still annoying until I figure out how to fix it.

[3] And still more detail, from Portland Indymedia: "Recent local press coverage has changed the story to say that police pushed demonstrators and then some demonstrators 'put their hands on police.' I spoke with one woman who was pushed by Secret Service onto the street, only to be pushed back onto the sidewalk by police. When a uniformed officer shoved her by pushing the child in her arms, she put her arms out to defend her child and touched the officer's arms." Whose order do you obey, the SS or the PD? Whoever shoves hardest, I suppose. From the same account: "During the police attacks, I was across a narrow side street from the area being suddenly cleared. Police trapped me on that stretch of sidewalk in the throng of Bush supporters. I was on the leading edge of that group in the first row of people facing riot cops, at the intersection being cleared, . We were not pushed back. I was safe from police abuse because I was among Bush supporters. Only protesters were pushed back from the intersection through which the motorcade passed. This was not a security move by the Secret Service. If they were trying to ensure the President's safety, they would have pushed people back on both sides of the street."

[4] I correctly remembered where I'd heard it but munged the phrasing. Fortunately, I had used it as a QotD and thus had it in an easily found spoot: "The United States is putting together a Constitution now for Iraq. Why don't we just give them ours? It's served us well for 200 years, and we don't appear to be using it anymore, so what the hell?"