Lemmings With Suicide Vests

Lemmings with suicide vests.  They have to be more than just a lemming. Because jumping to your death is not enough.

-- Representative Devin Nunes (R-CA) on House Republicans who are willing to see the government shut down over their opposition to Obamacare, quoted on the Washington Post's "Post Politics" blog, 30 September 2013

Thinking

As I grow older, I regret to say that a detestable habit of thinking seems to be getting a hold of me.

-- H. Rider Haggard (1856-1925), English writer of adventure novels, King Solomon's Mines (1885)

He Knows Already

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the most slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already, without a shadow of doubt, what is laid before him.

-- Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910), Russian writer, The Kingdom of God is Within You (1894), Chapter III

Dangerous Gift

To be apt in quotation is a splendid and dangerous gift.  Splendid, because it ornaments a man's speech with other men's jewels; dangerous, for the same reason.

-- Robertson Davies (1913-1995), Canadian novelist, Dangerous Jewels (1960)

Silence Is The Element

Silence is the element in which great things fashion themselves together; that at length they may emerge, full-formed and majestic, into the daylight of Life, which they are thenceforth to rule.

-- Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), Scottish essayist, satirist, and historian, Sartor Resartus, Book III, chapter 3 (1833-1834)

The Eagle

As the eagle was killed by the arrow winged with his own feather, so the hand of the world is wounded by its own skill.

-- Helen Adams Keller (1880-1968), American writer and social activist

Truth Burns Up Error

Truth burns up error.

-- Sojourner Truth (1797-1883), aka Isabella Bomefree, former slave, author, and social activist, in The Narrative of Sojourner Truth

Potential

It's too early to tell whether this offer will succeed, and any agreement must verify that the Assad regime keeps its commitments.  But this initiative has the potential to remove the threat of chemical weapons without the use of force.

-- President Obama, on a proposal for international monitors to take over and destroy Syria's chemical weapons, 10 September 2013

Defence Wanted

In International
    Consequences
        the players must reckon
            to reap what they've sown.

We have a defence
    against other defences,
        but what's to defend us
            against our own?

-- Piet Hein (1905-1996), Danish poet and scientist, "Defence Wanted"

Those Days

I haven't gone horseback riding in four years.  I haven't ruled that out entirely.  But water skiing, those days are over.

-- Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 80, on concessions she has made to aging, though she remains healthy, New York Times, 25 August 2013

War Powers

But having made my decision as Commander-in-Chief based on what I am convinced is our national security interests, I'm also mindful that I'm the President of the world's oldest constitutional democracy.  I've long believed that our power is rooted not just in our military might, but in our example as a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.  And that's why I've made a second decision: I will seek authorization for the use of force from the American people's representatives in Congress.

-- President Obama speaking about Syria, 31 August 2013

Props To Diana Nyad

I have three messages: One is, we should never, ever give up.  Two is, you are never too old to chase your dream.  And three is, it looks like a solitary sport but it takes a team.

-- Diana Nyad (22 August 1949-), 64-year-old American endurance swimmer, author, and motivational speaker, after she became the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage or swim fins, swimming from Havana to Key West, 2 September 2013

Always Has Been

I have written my life in small sketches, a little today, a little yesterday, as I have thought of it, as I remember all the things from childhood on through the years, good ones, and unpleasant ones, that is how they come out and that is how we have to take them.

I look back on my life like a good day's work, it was done and I am satisfied with it.  I was happy and contented, I knew nothing better and made the best out of what life offered.  And life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.

-- Anna Mary Robertson "Grandma" Moses (1860-1961), American folk artist, Grandma Moses : My Life's History (1951)

The Same Boat Now

... We did go to jail, but we got the Civil Rights Act.  We got the Voting Rights Act.  We got the Fair Housing Act.  But we must continue to push. We must continue to work, as the late A. Philip Randolph said to organizers for the march in 1963.

And the dean of the civil rights movement once said, we may have come here on different ships, but we all are in the same boat now.  So it doesn't matter whether they're black or white, Latino, Asian-American or Native American, whether we are gay or straight -- we are one people, we are one family, we are all living in the same house -- not just the American house, but the the world house.

And when we finally accept these truths, then we will be able to fulfill Dr. King's dream to build a beloved community, a nation and a world at peace with itself.

-- Representative John Lewis (D-GA), speaker at the 1963 March on Washington, at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary, 28 August 2013, at the Lincoln Memorial

Civilization Requires Slaves

The fact is, that civilization requires slaves.  The Greeks were quite right there.  Unless there are slaves to do the ugly, horrible, uninteresting work, culture and contemplation become almost impossible. Human slavery is wrong, insecure, and demoralizing.  On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends.

-- Oscar Wilde (1853-1900), Irish essayist, novelist, playwright, and poet, The Soul of Man Under Socialism (1895)

Forced Exposure

The owner of Lavabit tells us that he's stopped using email and if we knew what he knew, we'd stop too.  There is no way to do Groklaw without email. Therein lies the conundrum.  What to do?

What to do? I've spent the last couple of weeks trying to figure it out. And the conclusion I've reached is that there is no way to continue doing Groklaw, not long term, which is incredibly sad.  But it's good to be realistic.  And the simple truth is, no matter how good the motives might be for collecting and screening everything we say to one another, and no matter how "clean" we all are ourselves from the standpoint of the screeners, I don't know how to function in such an atmosphere.  I don't know how to do Groklaw like this. ...

My personal decision is to get off of the Internet to the degree it's possible.  I'm just an ordinary person.  But I really know, after all my research and some serious thinking things through, that I can't stay online personally without losing my humanness, now that I know that ensuring privacy online is impossible.  I find myself unable to write.  I've always been a private person.  That's why I never wanted to be a celebrity and why I fought hard to maintain both my privacy and yours.

Oddly, if everyone did that, leap off the Internet, the world's economy would collapse, I suppose.  I can't really hope for that.  But for me, the Internet is over.

So this is the last Groklaw article.  I won't turn on comments.  Thank you for all you've done.  I will never forget you and our work together.  I hope you'll remember me too.  I'm sorry I can't overcome these feelings, but I yam what I yam, and I tried, but I can't.

-- pj of Groklaw in a blog post announcing the closing of the site, "Forced Exposure" 20 August 2013

Lose It

As soon as the generals and the politicos can predict the motions of your mind, lose it.  Leave it as a sign to mark the false trail, the way you didn't go.  Be like the fox who makes more tracks than necessary, some in the wrong direction.  Practice resurrection.

-- Wendell Berry (5 August 1934-), American philosopher, author, farmer, and social activist, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front" in Farming: A Hand Book (1970)

What Can I Do Through Government

The free man will ask neither what his country can do for him nor what he can do for his country.  He will ask rather "What can I and my compatriots do through government" to help us discharge our individual responsibilities, to achieve our several goals and purposes, and above all, to protect our freedom? And he will accompany this question with another: How can we keep the government we create from becoming a Frankenstein that will destroy the very freedom we establish it to protect?  Freedom is a rare and delicate plant.  Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power.  Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is an instrument through which we can exercise our freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom.  Even though the men who wield this power initially be of good will and even though they be not corrupted by the power they exercise, the power will both attract and form men of a different stamp.

-- Milton Friedman (1912-2006), American Nobel laureate in Economics, in Capitalism And Freedom, Introduction (1962)

Sleep Is God

Sleep is God.  Go worship.

-- Jim Butcher (26 October 1971-), American author, Death Masks: Book Five of The Dresden Files (2003)

Privacy Seppuku - Do You Trust Them Now?

The Privacy Seppuku pledge is simple: if a company is served with a secret order to become a real-time participant in ongoing, blanket, secret surveillance of its customers... it will say no.  Just say no.  And it will shut down its operations, rather than have them infiltrated by spies and used surreptitiously to spread the NSA's global spook malware further.  You can't force a company to do something if there's no company there to do it.

... That one that went thru with the seppuku?  She'll likely have a new service up and running in a few days or weeks.  The customers who got dinged by the shutdown?  They'll all get up and running on her new service. This is all 1s and 0s, remember?  You don't have to demolish a car manufacturing plant, after all - you're just wiping some VMs and reincorporating elsewhere.  Lease new machines.  Call it "lavabutt" on the new corporate docs, in Andorra.  Sign on to the Privacy Seppuku pledge, as lavabutt, again.  Off you go.  Do you think it'll be hard to get customers - old ones migrated over, and new ones alike?  Think on that: a privacy company that shut down rather than be #snitchware... do you trust them, now?

http://seppuku.cryptocloud.ca/