All posts by rbowen

All quiet in Port Au Prince

For those that wondered why I care about what’s going on in Haiti, my Sister and her family live there, in Port Au Prince. I spoke (IM) with her this morning, and she says that things are moderately calm. There was a picture on CNN this morning of burning tires in the streets, and people calmly walking by, going about their business. This, she says, seems to sum up how things are. People seem moderately unconcerned, and it’s mostly business as usual. An American who had been in Haiti for many years offered the best advice a few weeks ago. If you know where the riots are, or if you see burning tires, don’t go there. Seems like sage advice to me.

She also mentioned that Sunday is the birthday of Guy Philippe, the leader of the rebels. He’ll be 36, and wants to celebrate his birthday by capturing the capital city.

To clarify something that someone asked me about earlier – no, Haiti does not have an army. They were disbanded after the US military action in 1994, and have not been reestablished since then. So there’s pretty much the police, and Aristide’s bands of hired thugs, who are resisting the remnants of the old army, along with some reinforcements from Dominican Republic. So, it would seem, from an uninformed external view point, that there’s really very little chance of resisting them.

Yes, apparently different cities

After reading Andrew’s post a number of times, and reading various comments on it, I gotta say, yes, it appears that we are experiencing two different cities. It’s amazing to me how people can experience the same things, and come away from them with such different impressions.

Now, I’ll be the first to admit that I may be misunderstanding what Andrew is saying. I have a hard time differentiating between when he is saying something sarcastically, and thus it’s the opposite of what he thinks, and when he’s saying what he really thinks, and it only seems sarcastic because … um … well, I’m not sure.

For example, when Andrew proposed, and set up, the Apache wiki, nobody claimed, for example, that it would destroy the community, that the sky would fall, or that we would get sued out of existence. There was concern that things would be put there that would be embarassing and unsavory. I don’t recal anyone saying we’d get sued for this. I could, of course, be wrong, but it seemed that most of the vitriol in the discussion came from hyperbole on Andrew’s part, rather than from actual remarks made.

But, as I progress through the article, I find myself wondering if we are indeed talking about the same ASF. It’s sad that his experience has been so different from mine.

But when I got to the bit about Lion Kimbro, I found myself frustrated and baffled. Who is this guy? The links go nowhere. Does he want to participate in the HTTPd documentation project? What do these cryptic remarks about wikis have to do with anything at all? And did Andrew really send this guy such a snide, counterproductive remark, engineered to scare him off? Why would he have done that?

I gotta say, Andrew, if you feel ostracised, it has nothing to do with the fact that you are associated with JBoss, and everything to do with the fact that you always feel the need to be so amazingly beligerent in your attacks of things, and come across as so intent to frame yourself as the trodden-down underdog.

I found almost every one of your complaints to be either grossly overstated, or so completely off target as to be laughable. Your complaints about the incubator are aimed at a previous incarnation of it, and not what it has evolved into. Your claims about private mailing lists are simply false. And chasing off a potential contributor to the HTTPd documentation project is really not appreciated.

I have tried, repeatedly, to understand where you are coming from, to sympathize with your complaints, and to find the constructive criticism lurking far, far beneath the surface of your vitriolic ranting. I’m starting to think that I may have wasted my time.

US Foreign policy

A little earlier today I posted a quote by John Donne. It is frequently misquoted as “Ask not for whom the bell tolls”. And the phrase “For whom the bell tolls” is, of course, the title of a book that you should read if you have not done so already.

I posted this quote because recent events (like, in the last 10 years or so) have repeatedly brought up the question of what the US role should be in foreign conflict that doesn’t directly concern us. And, more recently, (like, in the last 2 weeks) in Haiti, we’re asking that question again.

There are the easy answers, which are things like “it’s not our concern” and “it would make a great base for terrorist operations, and so we have to restore stability” but the larger question still remains.

During the period between WWI and WWII, we stuck to a policy of isolationism. This is, in at least some part, responsible for the extent with which Hitler was able to get away with the stuff that he did. After all, it wasn’t our concern. In much the same way, the activities of Saddam Hussein, Robert Mugabe, and the rebels in Haiti and Uganda, just to pick a few places, are not our concern. So why should we get involved?

Traditionally, there have been at least three possible answers to this question, none of them strictly true, and certainly none of them comprehensive. One is that we have some financial interest in doing so. Another is that we have citizens who live there, who we need to protect. Another is that it is the Right Thing To Do, and that we need to Make The World Safe For Democracy, and other such high-sounding and humanitarian phrases.

In the last 3 years, this last reason has mutated, to some extent, into the all-purpose excuse that we need to intervene in certain conflicts because a failure to do so will strengthen the position of terrorist organizations. This excuse has been used very selectively, as have they all, in order to pick the conflicts that we think that we can win, and the conflicts that generate the best political results.

After all, there’s no political advantage in intervening in Zimbabwe. Perhaps 15% of americans have heard of Zimbabwe. We’d be fighting Robert Mugabe, who, although he’s a slimy tyrant, also was one of the key players in wresting control of the colony away from England (ok, so that’s slightly revisionist history, but it’s the one that we’d see in the news in the event of a hypothetical intervention). So there’s two political counts against it. I expect that Jesse Jackson and/or Louis Farrakhan would say something in support of Mugabe (if he hasn’t done so already). And the president that sent troops there would be painted as a racist, trying to restore land to the Rhodesian pigs. And, so, the fact that Mr Mugabe is a tyrannical despot, at least as evil as Ian Smith, who he replaced, doesn’t really matter in the “Right Thing To Do” sense, because there’s no political profit in doing it.

Similarly, Haiti is a sticky situation. Here’s an impovrished island 50 miles off the coast of Florida, whose political situation is entirely our doing. Should we intervene to help them? I honestly don’t know what I think is the Right Thing To Do in this situation.

I don’t like the fact that the USA wants to be the world’s policemen. But, at the same time, I look at the gross injustice in the world, and thing that maybe we could leverage our disproportionate wealth to address some of that injustice. Yet, it seems, that each time we do so, it is too little, or too late, or in the wrong places.

Our “intervention” in Liberia, for example, was laughable. We sent troops to sit on a boat off shore and do nothing for several weeks. Then, when we finally did send men onshore, it was an insultingly small number, and they didn’t actually do anything.

And so many of our interventions of late seem to be cleanups from botched interventions in the past. Panama (Noriega was our man), Afghanistan (our funding and training made the situation possible), Haiti (we sent in troops to put an unpopular man back in office, and then supported a clearly fraudulent election), Iraq (we opted not to finish what we started 13 years ago, and so we have to finish it now) and the list goes on. I suppose I could put North Korea on that list, but I have to admit that I’m woefully ignorant about the war in Korea.

This is not a simple question. When Moose asked “What is in it for us” in response to my earlier posting about Haiti, it struck me as a hugely complicated question. We can’t tell what the next 20 years will bring to Haiti, although it’s not likely to look much different from the last 20 years. However, politically unstable countries within missile range of our coast has been considered a fairly serious threat in the past. And, now that it is within jetliner range too, it might be considered an even more serious threat, if one chooses to believe that Al Quaeda is still planning 9-11 style attacks against major US cities. Port Au Prince is just a few minutes away from Miami.

So, what’s in it for us? Well, there’s the simple security question. It is in our national interests to keep bordering (and otherwise neighboring) countries under stable governments. There’s the matter or protection of citizens. There’s the matter of protecting our significant financial interests in Haiti – large numbers of factories employing Haitians at salaries that are so far below US poverty levels as to be considered slave labor by some activits, but a living wage there.

But I keep returning to the words of John Donne. Every man’s death diminishes me. As a citizen of the world, I should be concerned about conflicts in other parts of the world. But that’s overwhelming. There are dozens of wars going on in the world right now. The person most aware of current events is likely to be unaware of a handful of them. That that’s not even counting inter-personal warfare resulting in injuries and deaths, every minute. Just logistically speaking, how can I care about that? And, pragmatically, how can any nation assume the role of peacekeeper for even a small percentage of those conflicts? Obviously, it’s not possible. And multinational organizations like the UN have failed at this too.

I think I could probably write another 10 pages on this, so I’ll quit. But perhaps this gives at least a glimpse at why these things bother me, and why I’m so torn about our (USA) role in international affairs, as compared to our stated role, as compared to our historical role. It’s not quite as easy as some folks want it to be.

No man is an island …

John Donne (1572-1631), from Devotions Upon Emergent Occasions, Meditation XVII.

“All mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated…As therefore the bell that rings to a sermon, calls not upon the preacher only, but upon the congregation to come: so this bell calls us all: but how much more me, who am brought so near the door by this sickness….No man is an island, entire of itself…any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

More about the ASL2.0

Slashdot has yet another article about the Apache License 2.0 and whether it is GPL compatible. Alarmingly, however, the article that this one links to is actually … *gasp* … informative! And authoritative! Can this really be the Slashdot we all know and … um … well, know, anyways.

In all seriousness, the article in question is clear and understandable. I find software licensing to be confusing enough without people muddying the waters. This kind of clear exposition of the issues is enormously helpful. And having a place that I can direct people to is also enormously helpful. Many thanks to the folks that put this up there.

50 marines going to Haiti

The US is sending 50 Marines down to Port Au Prince to protect the embassy in the event that the rebels capture the capital city. Don’t expect folks to forget that it was the USA that put Aristide back in power in 1994 after these same folks (or at least many of the same people) threw him out.

I hope that the incoming government, whatever that looks like, has more to their 5-year plan than just ousting Aristide.

Spam sucks

This morning, between fighting spam on a mailing list I manage, managing my own personal spam, and trying to get rid of all the blog-comment-spam, I burned more than 2 hours on spam. To the folks that claim that a few seconds deleting spam each day adds up, and represents the cost of spam, well, yeah, that’s true, but the hundreds of hours a month spent by admins on spam management dwarfs that in comparison. I’m *really* steamed, but, there’s really nothing at all that I can do about it. Which makes it worse.

The legislation that supposedly was going to reduce spam, which was passed earlier this year, has made absolutely no impact on the time that I spend dealing with spam. Spam volumes have been in the 90% range so far this year, and that’s just what my mail server catches. The quantity that’s getting through the filters continues to grow as spammers use better techniques to get around the filters. The kind of sick evil twisted mind that thinks that it’s OK to alter message contents *specifically* to get it to people that are trying to block it, continues to boggle my mind. I mean, if I am specifically trying not to receive a certain kind of mail, doesn’t that indicate to these morons that I’m not a reasonable target audience?

Must. Calm. Down.

1995 Tessera Old Vines Zinfandel

Yesterday I got a crockpot. I’ve been wanting one for a while, and finally got around to getting it. I made standard no-frills spaghetti sauce in it, and had spaghetti for dinner, with a 1995 Tessera Old Vines Zinfandel. I came into possession of this wine through a strange set of circunstances. I expect that a 1995 is somewhat hard to come by, but I don’t really know for sure what’s available for this label.

When I first opened it, it was not so great. Tasted vaguely musty. But as it opened up a little, and with the food, it had classic Zin flavors – pepper and chocolate and tobacco. It was very muted. I don’t expect that it was intended to be held that long. But it was good anyways.

400 days

This evening, just by chance:

[rbowen@eris rbowen]$ uptime
6:40pm up 400 days, 0 min

What are the chances of that?

I remember that night, too. A drive failed in the RAID array, and Sarah and I sat on the cold floor in the QX.net coloc room while the server beeped incessantly and restored the data from the other drives.

Wow. That was No Fun.

Apparently it got done at 6:40pm.

Trying to revive it

I’m going to make a concerted effort to revive this journal. I tend to have tasting notes that I want to put somewhere, and after forgetting to do so for a few days, I forget what I wanted to say. So, this is mostly a feeler to see if I actually have any readers. I expect not, but it’s worth asking.