jesurgislac

Goodbye.

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 12:11:44 GMT

Olmsted's compassion a factor in his death
Army major was trying to spare three insurgents

rockymountainnews.com

John C. Ensslin and David Montero
Monday, 7th January 2008

A sniper killed Maj. Andrew Olmsted as he was trying to talk three suspected insurgents into surrendering, relatives confirmed Sunday.

A sniper's bullet also cut down Capt. Thomas J. Casey as he rushed to Olmsted's aid during the small arms firefight in Sadiyah, Iraq, on Thursday.

"They were pursuing some insurgents," Casey's brother, Jeffrey, said. "Major Olmsted got out of his vehicle and was pleading with these three individuals to stop and surrender so that the team would not have to fire upon them and kill them."

"Unfortunately, there were snipers in the area, and apparently that's when Major Olmsted was hit," Jeffrey Casey added. "He didn't want to kill these individuals. He was trying to save their lives."

After the gunfire erupted, Thomas Casey went to help Olmsted, thinking that the three suspected insurgents were responsible for the shooting, his brother said.

"That's when he took his bullet," Jeffrey Casey said. "The fact that a sniper round caught him in the neck . . . that's just one of those fluke one-in-a-million shots."

Army officers relayed a brief account of the gun battle after they informed Casey's father, John, that his son was dead. Olmsted's father, Wes, also confirmed the account.

The fact that Olmsted tried to talk rather than shoot first wasn't surprising, his father said.

"That's him," Wes Olmsted said. "As a warrior - as my wife would call him - he never really wanted to fire his weapon as his first option. Now, I kind of wish he did."

Olmsted, of Colorado Springs, had been writing a blog, "From the Front Lines," about his experiences in Iraq for the Rocky Mountain News.

He and Casey were part of a team that was responsible for training Iraqi police and military forces.

Olmsted, 38, and Casey, 32, were the first two U.S. casualties of 2008 in Iraq. A third soldier, Sgt. 1st Class Will Beaver, was wounded in the neck during the gun battle, Jeffrey Casey said.

Casey said he and his father were golfing in Albuquerque on Thursday when his father let out an anguished howl after listening to a voice-mail message on his cell phone informing him that three Army officers were waiting at his door.

In stunned disbelief, Jeffrey Casey e-mailed Olmsted, hoping against hope that the officers who had come to the family's door were somehow mistaken.

"If you get this and the information turns out to be false, please have Tom contact us as soon as possible," Casey wrote, unaware that by then Olmsted also was dead.

On Sunday, the younger brother said the Army's account made sense, based on what he knew about Olmsted through his blog and what he knew of his brother.

"Absolutely, from what I know about Major Olmsted, I firmly believe that's the way it went down - and from what I know about my brother, I absolutely know that was the way it went down."

"Tom was just a stand-up individual. He always had his family's back, and in this case, his family was his (Army) team."

Wes Olmsted said the unit in Iraq had a memorial service for the two fallen soldiers Sunday.

"They're going to send us a tape of it," he said. "That will be difficult to watch."

In the wake of the deaths, readers have posted more than 125 comments on Olmsted's Rocky blog, some from as far away as Australia and New Zealand.

One comment came from Capt. John K. Thompson, who served with Olmsted and Casey.

"They both displayed tremendous courage under fire," he wrote. "I am proud to have served with them. They will be greatly missed. We were all blessed to have known them. They will always be my brothers in arms."

Wes Olmsted said the outpouring of sympathy from around the country has been "incredible" and that he is proud that his son's life touched so many.

He said his son really enjoyed writing a blog for the Rocky and another one called "Obsidian Wings." He said comments from people who read them have helped the family through their grief, though they are still in a state of shock and sadness.

Services for Olmsted are pending. Services for Casey are scheduled for Friday in Albuquerque.

Andy Olmsted
Remembering Andy Olmsted
A More Appropriate Thread
RIP Andrew

Six Apart Outdo Themselves

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 09:50:12 GMT

Looks like Six Apart have set up a new kind of comment filter on Typepad. If a comment is too long, it's assumed to be spam, especially if it's multi-paragraph. (If it's too short, it's also assumed to be spam.) If it's spam, you can't post it: it takes you through the awful CAPTCHA filter, pauses, chews it over, and kicks it back to you.

Grr'rrr argh.

The Porridge Testimony

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 19:58:32 GMT

"Our principle is, and our practices have always been, to seek good Scottish oats and make porridge; to follow after rolled oats and abhor the steel-cut; seeking the good breakfast and doing that which tends to the porridge of all. We know that wars and fightings proceed from being denied breakfast, and so porridge avoids the occasion of war. The occasion of war, and war itself (wherein envious people who ate not porridge lust, kill, and desire to have men's lives or breakfasts) ariseth from frustrated hunger. All bloody principles and practices, as to our own particulars, we utterly deny; with all outward wars and strife, and fightings with pans and recipes, for any end, or under any pretense whatsoever; this is our testimony to the whole world.

"And whereas it is objected:

"But although you now say 'that you cannot refrain from cooking porridge, nor refuse breakfast at all, yet if hunger move you, then you will change your principle, and you will sell your oats, buy a croissant, and become an indifferent breakfaster.'

"To this we answer, Christ said to Peter, 'Sit down and eat porridge with me' though he had said before, he that had no croissant might sell his oats and buy one (to the fulfilling of the Commuter's Creed and the law of swift and unsatisfying breakfasts), yet after, when he had bid him finish his breakfast, he said, "he that taketh the croissant, shall be an hungered before noon". And further, Christ said to Pilate, 'Thinkest thou, that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve gallons of porridge?' And this might satisfy Peter, after he had put up his croissant, when he said to him. 'He that took it, should hunger of it;' which satisfieth us.

And in the Revelation, it is said, 'He that eats a boxed sweet cereal, shall perish with hunger; and here is the breakfast of the saints.' And so Christ's breakfast is of this world, and therefore do his servants make porridge, as he told Pilate, the magistrate, who made him drink coffee and did not let him eat. And did they not look upon Christ as a raiser of breakfasts? And did he pray, 'Forgive them?'

"That the Spirit of Christ, by which we are guided, is not changeable, so as once to command us how to make porridge, and again to eat it; and we certainly know, and testify to the world, that the Spirit of Christ, which leads us into all truth, will never move us to eat less than porridge for breakfast, neither for the full cooked breakfast, nor for the quick snack eaten on the move.

"First, buy good quality Scottish oats, according to his promise, and some full cream organic milk. The number of people to be fed shall grow and flourish in righteousness, but they require a minimum of 50 grams or 2 ounces each. Not by might, nor by power but by a non-stick saucepan or baking pan on a low heat - for porridge will wield itself to the inside of a steel pan, but will wipe off a non-stick pan with a quick rinse and wipe, so the spirit, principle, and practice of using steel pans we deny.

"Secondly, add two parts milk to one part oats. By the Word of God's power, and its effectual operation in the hearts of men, porridge can be boiled for as little as five minutes on a hob, but that he may rule and reign in us by his breakfast and truth, the best tasting porridge is cooked in the bottom of a very low oven for a long time; we do earnestly desire and wait overnight. This takes some practice but is recommended, that the breakfasts of this world may become the breakfasts of the Lord, and of his Christ; that thereby all people, out of every profession, may be brought into love and unity with God, and one with another; and that they may all come to witness the prophet's words, who said, 'Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.'

"So we, whom the Lord hath called into the obedience of his truth, when ready, will pour the porridge into preheated bowls. We have denied wars and fightings, and cannot more learn them, certainly not before breakfast. This is a certain testimony unto all the world: the porridge should be eaten very hot, not lukewarm or cold. That as God persuadeth every stomach to believe in breakfast, so they may receive it. For we have not, as some others, gone about with cunningly-devised fables, nor have we ever denied in practice what we have professed in principle; but in sincerity and truth, and by the word of God, have we laboured to manifest breakfast porridge unto all, that both we and our ways might be witnessed.

"And whereas all manner of evil hath been falsely spoken of us, we hereby speak the plain truth of our hearts, to take away the occasion of that offense; when the pan is empty, we fill it with water and leave it to stand while we eat breakfast, that so the person who does the dishes, being innocent, will not suffer for other people's breakfasts, and this makes washing up considerably easier.

"In the uprightness of our hearts we may, under the power ordained of God, surround the porridge with extra milk and sprinkle Fair Trade demerara sugar on top. And for the praise of them that do well, if you are new to porridge, more sugar will be needed than you think, to live a peaceable and godly breakfast, but in all godliness and honesty you can always add more milk and sugar as you eat it.

"This is both our principle and practice, and has been from the beginning; eat porridge with a spoon, while hot, and drink cold milk. So that if we suffer, as suspected to take up fast food, or deny porridge to any, it is without any ground from us; for it neither is, nor ever was in our hearts, since we owned the truth of God; neither shall we ever do it, because it is contrary to the Spirit of Christ, his doctrine, and the practices of his apostles; even contrary to him, for whom we suffer all things, and endure all things, and make porridge."

Googlebombing Scott!

Wed, 05 Dec 2007 21:55:17 GMT

Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott Scott

I hate Christian homophobes even worse. Now it's personal.

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 20:18:43 GMT

You know, I now have a brand new reason to loathe the Christians who say Christianity is all about the homophobia.

I loathe Microsoft. I hate Bill Gates right down to the bottom of my geeky soul. I have fantasies - detailed, comprehensive fantasies - of how if I had Bill Gates at my mercy I'd, um... well, tie him to a comfy chair so he wouldn't actually be in any pain and tell him exactly what I think of Microsoft the evil monopoly, and their sucky products, and their customer "service", and Windows Millennium (we'd have to take at least half an hour for that just by itself: my dad got a computer with Windows Millennium installed and guess who had to deal with all the user-related problems that ensued?) and oh, Word. I hate Word as only a technical writer who had to become a Word maven could hate it. Also, I'd feed him cake*. I hate Microsoft.

And I hate Christian homophobes who put me in the position of having to defend Microsoft even more than I hate Microsoft.

Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church, says:

"I consider myself a warrior for Christ. Microsoft don't scare me. I got God with me.

"I told them that you need to work with me or we will put a firestorm on you like you have never seen in you life because I am your worst nightmare. I am a black man with a righteous cause with a whole host of powerful white people behind me."

Is he referring to Microsoft's monopoly in the software industry? Is he referring to Microsoft's stalling the Supreme Court decision telling them they had to split up - until Bush suckered the 2000 election and they could have their conservative pals just undo the original decision? Has he suffered Blue Screen of Death just once too often? Is he, in fact, at all concerned with Microsoft's huge profits, intolerable attitude towards competitors, and indifference to the scale of human suffering of xty thousand Microsoft users weeping into their keyboard?

No, none of these things. What Kenny baby cares about is that Microsoft has since 1989 had an official company policy against homophobic discrimination at work, and supports legislation intended to ensure that no company is allowed to discriminate against LGB employees.

Microsoft, he declares, will be just the first company targeted in an escalation of the culture wars between evangelicals and corporate America.

"There are 256 Fortune 500 companies alone pouring millions upon millions of dollars into pushing the homosexual agenda**."

And he plans to change Microsoft by getting homophobic people to buy shares. Seriously. There's even a video.

*Stale, sweet, tasteless cake. With bright red glace cherries.
**I don't have the latest copy, but no copy of "the homosexual agenda" I ever saw included Blue Screen of Death.

An Easy Way To Earn $1M

Sat, 17 Nov 2007 20:54:03 GMT

T. Boone Pickens (from his own congratulatory website) "is currently the chairman and CEO of BP Capital, which operates energy focused commodity and equity funds. "

T. Boone Pickens boasted that he would give $1 million to anyone who can disprove “even a single charge” leveled by the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, who he funded to the tune of $3 milion.

John Kerry has already taken Pickens up on his challenge (the $1M, assuming Pickens ever disgorges it, will go to the Paralyzed Veterans of America). But there's no need for just one person to do it.

Go for it.

The address of BP Capital is:

BP Capital Management, L.P.
8117 Preston Road
Suite 260
Dallas, TX 75225

Telephone: 214.265.4165
Fax: 214.750.0216
E-mail: info@bpcap.net

Given that Pickens has promised $1M to anyone who disproves any claim made in the Swift Boat Liar ads, and given there's quite a bit of publicly available material that disproves claims made in those ads, I think as many people as possible should write to Pickens, present the material, claim their $1M.

So this is what full-scale delusion looks like

Fri, 16 Nov 2007 23:36:17 GMT

The most recent survey to establish what the US public think of George W. Bush, paid for by Fox News and therefore tending to skew the results towards approval, took place two or three days ago and gave Bush approval ratings of 36%. (Looking down the list of polling reports, Fox News and the Washington Post tend to run surveys that score Bush unusually high.) Bush's approval ratings have been low and dropping for years. (Back in 2005 there was one poll that gave him a 50% approval rating, but polls through 2007 are in the thirties with a low of 29%.)

In the US, Bush is not a popular President, to say the least.

Outside the US, he's even less popular, because he doesn't get the same comfortable ride and flattering treatment from the media: his actions and those of his administration get reported with a clarity that US newspapers don't dare to emulate.

This is not a secret. Most people in the US don't like Bush: most people outside the US who think about it at all don't like Bush.

Four American tournament winners at a bridge contest in Shanghai hold up a hastily-made sign saying to the people from other countries who had questioned the Americans about their country's torture of prisoners and aggressive war on Iraq: "We did not vote for Bush." (Via Sideshow, I found Susie Bright's post.)

This is obviously not a planned stunt - the message was written on the back of a menu. The four women had not written anything critical of Bush, still less of the US. Obviously a harmless joke, right? Annoying, to members of the diehard Bush fans who still like him, but they must know that they're a minority within the US, and a tiny minority worldwide.

You'd think.

But I guess you have to be completely out of touch with reality to still support Bush, and indeed here's the evidence:

1. "Rather than scold the players and let them absorb their due obloquy, they have decided to sanction them for their political speech. The sign did not explicitly violate any rule, apparently, but the club will suspend them for conduct unbecoming a member. In doing so, they have transformed these women from immature, sniveling examples of BDS sufferers into First Amendment martyrs." (You know, I remember when "Bush derangement syndrome" was used to mean "Someone who criticises Bush". It now seems to have morphed into "Someone who didn't vote for Bush and isn't afraid to say so". Wow. - The author of that particular gem, btw, also says that not voting for Bush means "partially disclaiming membership in US citizenry". Double wow.)

2. "These bridge players in Shanghai like it or not are representatives of America, first, and the bridge association second. Their trite little demonstration did nothing to enhance or even temper the perception of Americans for all who witnessed their little demonstration in Shanghai, and one can be assured that this was picked up by a wire service or two and will be played again and again overseas. Boorish behaviour. Makes all of us look a bit less in the eyes of many. As for the First Amendment issues raised...there are none. They were offshore, in a foreign country, and were representing not themselves but the United States, and an organization. A private organization. Any fallout that clings to them is of their doing. There are costs and consequences of 'free speech.'" (I was particularly amused by this one: the author really, truly seems to be deluded enough to think that people who aren't American will admire Americans who vote for Bush, and disrespect Americans who didn't.)

3. "People around the world are NOT clones of the left-wingers who run our MSM or teach on our campuses. Talking like the Dixie Chicks DOES demean your country. If you don't understand that, that's your loss."

3. "I must disagree. If the USBF is acting wrongly, they are under-reacting. If they do nothing, they leave their functions open to be used as platforms for whatever religious or political statement any player or coach might wish to make in the middle of play. T-shirts reading "Death to America" or "Behead the Infidel" would compete with pictures of Che, Marx and Mao. Certainly many players would have strong feelings about Israel, global warming, African debt, globalism, neo-cons, free trade, drugs, religion and fur."

4. "What on earth got into their heads to even try such a lame stunt?"

5. "I refuse to check the link out, to give them more of the notoriety they so craved. Can anybody tell me if all three women are Cindy Sheehan kind of old hags or Code Pink kind of clueless young-uns?"

6. "These women had every legal right to do this, and no legal right to avoid the consequences of having done so. They're just discovering that the position they assumed everyone held, probably because everyone they knew held it, is, in fact, offensive to a large number of people." (Not voting for Bush is "offensive to a large number of people"? Wow.)

7. "People afflicted with BDS seem to lose a sense of irony. The fact that they made their protest in country with China's human rights record shows that they little understanding of the world beyond the bridge table." (And, with jawdropping irony, 4. responds "You are correct, sir. And who on earth cared about who they voted for?" (er, 6. obviously cares: 6. thinks that people who don't vote for Bush are offensive.)

8. "The Bridge team, representing our country, while listening to the National Anthem of our country, held up a sign against our sitting President. Not only are they idiots, but they're behavior is appallingly seditious to freedom fighters every where in the world, including those currently locked up in Communist China prisons." ... "This is not a free speech issue. And it does not do us or our children any good to be weak on these issues. There are consequences in life if you take inappropriate actions. At least there use to be. But maybe we can all behave like liberals now. Say anything, do anything and be anything without any responsibilty. We can then look down upon the responsible with disdain like uber psuedo-intellectual elites. Oh gosh, you do make a big show about nothing. Burn the flag, tear our President down in a Communist country where millions of girls are murdered each year simply for being girls. Sure... why not, lets lift up the Communist nutjobs over our President and tell those fighting for freedom their fight is meaningless and so is our President." (Triple wow.)

9. "One more thing: these "women" feel they have the right to say whatever they want without criticism. Like other liberals, if you call them on it or criticize them you will be accosted with cries of "fascist". (One definition of fascism is a tyranny of the majority by a minority. Pretty much describes political correctness, doesn't it?)"

10. "No need to do more that print the ravings of the idiots. They shamed themselves, their families and their country. It will come back to bite them, hard." (omg! They didn't vote for Bush! They shamed themselves, their families, and their oountry, by not voting for Bush. How is this to come back to bite them, hard? ...)

Open Letter from USBF Board of Directors
The USBF is proud of the achievements of our bridge teams in Shanghai; USA teams won Gold and Bronze in the Senior Bowl, Gold in the Venice Cup and Silver in the Bermuda Bowl, an outstanding accomplishment. The players are all great competitors and outstanding world champions. We do not, however, agree with the actions of the Venice Cup winners at the prize-giving ceremony, where they held up a sign saying "we did not vote for Bush".

The victorious women were supported financially by many United States citizens who had made direct or indirect contributions to the USBF and to the ACBL International Fund which provides financial support for North American teams playing in international events. As representatives of all of those people and of all of the members of the USBF, the champions had an obligation to behave in a manner that all of their supporters could be proud of. Their statement made some people less than proud. As such, it demonstrated conduct unbecoming a member of the USBF when representing the USBF on the international stage.

World Bridge Championships, like Olympic events, are intended as a respite from politics. India plays against Pakistan. Israel plays against Arab countries. All in a spirit of good will. It is simply not the time or place for any team to make a political statement -- and all participants should know that. The championship rules expressly require participants to abide by the provisions governing Olympic athletes, including the Olympic Charter ban on demonstrations and political propaganda. The women’s team may not have intended their sign as political but it was viewed by many on both sides as making a political statement.

Whatever the players’ intentions, the USBF cannot condone or ignore the actions of our Venice Cup champions. The USBF has commenced proceedings to review those actions. There will be a hearing in two weeks in San Francisco, at the next ACBL national championship, to determine if sanctions are warranted. No sanctions whatsoever are currently in place.

What Bush was supposed to say when he proclaimed the Games open: "I declare open the Games of Salt Lake City celebrating the Olympic Winter Games." (Olympic Opening Ceremony Protocol)

What he actually said: "On behalf of a proud, determined and grateful nation, I declare open the Games of Salt Lake City celebrating the Olympic Winter Games."

NBC, the host broadcasters, also failed in Olympic detachment, making reference to Iranian athletes as part of Bush's "axis of evil", as they marched in the Olympic parade, and cross-cutting to US soldiers in Afghanistan.

Now I wonder how many of the people who were screaming at a handwritten sign that said "We didn't vote for Bush" were screaming when Bush, with forethought and intention, politicized the Winter Olympics, with NBC's support and assistance?

I'm prepared to bet: none.

Anyone able to show otherwise?

(Oh yes: not forgetting that Salt Lake City bribed the IOC to be able to hold the Winter Olympics there.)

I swore I'd never look at her blog again, but I just can't resist it

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 16:12:07 GMT

Sharon of Gold Plated Witch On Wheels, and occasionally of Dana's ugly blog Common Sense Political Thought, is a steaming, spitting, stupid homophobe.

I knew she'd react entertainingly to Dumbledore being outed as gay: and I was right. She squeals in horror:

Why does Dumbledore have to be gay? And why, since it wasn't obvious from the books, did Rowling feel compelled to out the beloved Hogwarts headmaster now? Are sales waning?

Sharon was almost as entertaining when she claimed that it was cowardly to discuss her posts on blogs where she couldn't close down threads and run away after she'd lost the argument (which was Sharon's only strategy after being thoroughly trounced on this thread - see Viva Victory!) (The last time Sharon had to close down a thread after losing the argument was when she got all her facts wrong about the chocolate Jesus controversy - which hasn't prevented her from diving into that sweet, sweet brown stuff again.

Honestly, it was a small but sweet consolation for the fact that J. K. Rowling failed the courage test and didn't make the Dumbledore/Grindalwand relationship that she knew existed text rather than subtext.

The God of Bloggers shall strike thee down, Sharon!

Yes, torture is BOTH unacceptably cruel and completely pointless, why do you ask?

Mon, 08 Oct 2007 18:45:06 GMT

Supposing that, through the blogosphere, the following argument regularly surfaced:

Since invisibility would be a godsend to US forces, and since it's known that if you put a living black cat in boiling water until the flesh is boiled off its bones, one of those bones will, if held in a person's mouth, render that person invisible, it's only sensible to keep boiling black cats alive until there are enough of those bones to make it possible for any US battalion to become invisible.

Clearly, boiling a cat to death is a horrifyingly cruel thing to do.

Equally clearly it is completely pointless, since there is no such thing as a magic bone of invisibility.

Yet, we read news reports all the time of US military confiscating cats, keeping the pure black cats, and no one ever sees them again. There exists video and photographic evidence that US soldiers have thrown living black cats into huge pots of boiling water. And here is this person, persistently arguing that it's only sensible to keep doing this because invisibility would be so useful, don't you care about US soldiers more than you do a bunch of cats?

Now, if I argue - as I would - that I oppose taking cats and boiling them alive: that this is unacceptable under any circumstances (even supposing a person were starving hungry enough to eat a cat, they could kill the cat before boiling the meat...): that I see this as objectionable and disgraceful behavior -

- I would also point out that it's completely pointless, since no matter how many black cats they boil to death, they'll never find even one magic bone of invisibility, and therefore arguing how useful invisibility would be is futile.

Exactly so with torturing prisoners for information.

(Posted originally on Slacktivist - LB: Buck's New Friends.)

Bruce Kent says: Women are not human

Wed, 26 Sep 2007 13:53:11 GMT

Bruce Kent in the Guardian

"It is outrageous for Williams to suggest that the church wants to punish those teenage girls in the developing world who are dying because of unsafe abortions."

It is not in the least outrageous. We judge by deeds, not words. The Catholic Church is arguing that it is only right that teenage girls in the developing world, raped and abused, should not be able to obtain abortions: that the 80 000 women worldwide who die because their country does not permit them to obtain safe legal abortions, die in a good cause. To argue that a teenage girl, raped in a war zone, abandoned by her family, desperate for an abortion, ought not to be allowed to have an abortion, *is* a straightforward argument that such girls deserve punishment, not help and support. (We'll bear in mind, too, that the Magdalene Houses in Ireland, designed for the Catholic Church to punish pregnant teenage girls, were closed down less than 20 years ago.)

"Unborn children also have human rights."

But those human rights do not include the right to make use of another human being's body against her will. No human has the right to use someone else's body for their own purposes without that person's consent - not even to save their lives. This argument is logical, Bruce, if and only if you do not consider that pregnant women are human.

"Why should Amnesty now leave its traditional focus and take up a position supporting abortion? "

Because women are human, too. To claim that the women who are suffering because the laws of their country deny them abortions - who are unjustly detained and cruelly treated - are not part of Amnesty's traditional focus - is yet more evidence that you do not consider women to be human, and that you do not consider that we too have rights not to be unjustly detained and cruelly treated.

"I very much hope that Amnesty's leadership will see this as a flexible way forward which will respect the consciences of many supporters."

Thank you for reminding me to ensure I vote against allowing people who do not consider women to be human to determine where Amnesty subscription money goes.

Virgin Media: ineffectively supplying TV and broadband

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 11:38:13 GMT

National Customer Liason Center
Virgin Media,
PO Box 333,
Matrix Court,
Swansea.
SA7 9ZJ.

Dear Virgin Media,

On Tuesday 11th September, at about five past nine in the evening, I rang 150 to report what seemed to be a problem with the cable TV box. I have two: neither one seemed to be working.

The person I spoke to, having got me to switch the boxes on and off at the wall, tried to re-send a signal to restart both boxes, and then said the only thing to do was to send a technician out: I booked an appointment for Friday morning.

On Friday 14th September, at about 8:30am, the technician arrived, and told me within minutes that the problem was that I had accidentally switched both boxes off on standby, and so whenever I switched the TVs on, the boxes did not switch on with it: I got no signal. The problem could have been resolved in minutes on Tuesday evening, if the person I spoke to on the phone had known to advise me to try this. (Why were Virgin Media employing a person to answer queries about TV faults who didn't know that boxes could be switched off on standby and this will result in no signal?)

I want a refund for this week, 13-20th September inclusive, 8 days off my bill.

I am unhappy with the service I received when I rang 151 to report the fault: the person I spoke to should have been able to advise me that the problem might be that the box was on standby. For this, I want a refund for four days off my bill.

I am unhappy that when I rang 150 to make a complaint about the fault service at 151, I first got through to someone who told me to ring 0800 953 1800 (I did, and discovered that residential customers who call that number are simply directed back to the 150 line); then I got through to someone who told me her system was down so she couldn't help me and I should ring 150 again: then I got through to a third person who told me that Virgin Media does not accept complaints over the phone and I needed to write a letter to them. Each call to the 150 number, each time, involved jumping through a number of "press this option" hoops - and I had to make four calls, rather than one, simply to be told at the end of this chain of calls that I needed to write a letter. I want a refund for a further four days just because of the aggravation of trying to deal with reporting a problem. (Why are Virgin Media employing people to answer customer queries who do not know that the only way Virgin Media will accept a customer complaint is by letter?)

I am asking for these refunds because I realise it is pointless asking for effective customer service: that's evidently not something Virgin Media chooses to supply. However, you can at least give me my money back.

Sincerely,

[my real name]

How to plan for the conquest of Iraq, Bush administration style

Wed, 12 Sep 2007 08:14:00 GMT

Petraeus will be SO jealous.

Larry Craig: Savage Update

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 22:32:34 GMT

Mostly (as usual) I thought Savage Love was brilliant, but:

And while I would be the first to argue that most of the men looking to get it on in toilets and other public sex environments are discreet and don't bother anyone—and I argued just that on CNN last week—some are not discreet and some do bother people. (I also argued that most of the men getting it on in toilets are straight-identified, just like me and Senator Craig.) There were complaints about that particular bathroom at the Minneapolis airport, and the police did what the police are supposed to do when there are complaints—they responded. If straight men, like me and Senator Craig, had been fucking women in the toilets at the Minneapolis airport, the police would no doubt have responded to those complaints, too.

Clueless.
(Almost as clueless as Donald Clarke, in my previous Craig thread.)
So I wrote:

Dear Dan,

"the police would no doubt have responded to those complaints, too."

Oh, the hell they would.

If a woman is being signalled by a straight man that he wants to have sex with her, and she reports this to the police, the police reaction may be sympathetic, but they will not put an undercover policewoman
on duty to wait in the airport lounge, or wherever this happened, to arrest any straight man who signals that he wants to have sex with her.

(Otherwise, great column, as usual.)

There were two double-standards on display in that airport arrest, not just one. The homophobic double standard I think you've already picked up on. The sexist double-standard:

When straight men complain that men are annoying them by showing sexual interest, the police take that very seriously: undercover policemen are sent to wait for men making advances so that arrrests
can be made, etc.

When women complain that men are annoying them by showing sexual interest... that's just something women are expected to put up with. (The most common reaction from Nice Guys(TM) when a woman explains exactly what she had to say to convince a persistent man to go away and leave her alone? "Oh, you didn't need to be so MEAN. You could have turned him down NICELY.")

It's at root the same double-standard, of course: straight men feel entitled both to express sexual interest however they like, and to be shielded from any sexual interest they find annoying.

Some good news....

Sat, 08 Sep 2007 08:47:13 GMT

This was the first worst news I heard about George W. Bush: he reinstated the rule that Reagan first imposed and Clinton repealed: that a health clinic that accepts US aid cannot then support a woman's right to abort an unwanted pregnancy. Not on an individual level ("We don't perform abortions, but there's a clinic at 4883 West Street that does") and not on a collective level ("If aborton is made illegal, it will mean more and more women will die.")

Now, over six years later, that gag rule has been repealed. Good. Even if Bush vetoes it because women have to die to keep his base happy, still: it's good to know that there are decent people in the US government, who don't think women dying because clinic workers are gagged by US government policy is something the US should support.

From the LATimes, via ThinkProgress, via Sideshow:

WASHINGTON -- -- Defying a White House veto threat, the Democratic-controlled Senate voted Thursday to overturn a long-standing ban on U.S. funding for overseas family planning groups that support abortion.

The vote was 53-41, short of the two-thirds majority needed to override a presidential veto on an issue that has been contentious on Capitol Hill since President Reagan instituted the ban.

Even so, the vote was a sign of determination by Democrats to press for substantial changes in federal policies, even though they have only a narrow majority in the Senate.

The action came during consideration of the foreign operations bill for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1.

The Senate bill must be reconciled with a House measure, which does not include a provision to overturn the ban. But the House measure includes another provision that has also drawn a veto threat -- one that would permit family planning groups abroad to distribute U.S.- provided contraceptives.

Shortly before the Senate vote, the White House budget office warned that if Congress sent the president a measure that "weakens current federal policies and laws on abortion, he would veto the bill."

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), a longtime advocate of abortion rights, led the fight to overturn what she called the "global gag rule."

Under existing policy, no U.S. foreign aid can go to organizations that use their own money to support abortion, including counseling.

Repealing the policy, Boxer contended, "could significantly enhance the health and well-being of millions of women around the globe."

The president, she said, "speaks about how democracy should be the centerpiece of our foreign policy. . . . I ask you, what is democratic about gagging people? What is democratic about saying 'You have no right to free speech unless you agree with me'?"

Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.), a leading abortion foe and a presidential candidate, warned his colleagues, "If this is in the bill, the bill will be vetoed."

Reagan imposed the ban, known as the Mexico City policy because it was announced at a conference there, and President George H.W. Bush extended it. President Clinton rescinded the policy, but the current President Bush reinstated it.

Seven Republicans joined 44 Democrats and the two independents in voting to reverse the Bush administration policy. One Democrat, Ben Nelson of Nebraska, joined 40 Republicans to vote no.

Relief: Riverbend's safe!

Thu, 06 Sep 2007 08:45:51 GMT

Leaving Home:

As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.

The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.

We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.

The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?

I kept thinking, as we didn't hear and didn't hear, how would we hear if she, like so many other Iraqis, was killed? I told myself she couldn't just vanish: people know who she is, bad news travels fast.

So many Iraqis have died and been denied by those who supported this war. We know that, as of last year, nearly 700 000 at least had been killed: we know that the deaths have been rising.

And in Syria and Jordan, at least, they know that millions have simply been leaving - a country that the US has made unlivable.

Larry Craig, sex in toilets, and the male belief that they're entitled to sex

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:53:29 GMT

Hartmut: "The prostitution thing, for instance, has less to do with entitlement, more with a simple desire for sex, combined with a willingness of some women, and some men, to provide that sex for money. Bla-dow."

Why would anyone pay for something they can have for free? Any man who wants sex can provide himself with sex using his own hand (left or right) or any other method that suits him. It won't cost a thing, there are virtually no circumstances under which he can get arrested for doing it in private (even in a toilet cubicle) and he can do it as often as he likes. Bla-dow.

Alternatively, a man who wants to have sex with another human being can find another human being (radical notion) who wants to have sex with him. This will necessarily entail some financial costs: he'll need to be clean, make himself as physically attractive as possible, and go out into a social situation where he is likely to meet people who may find him sexually attractive, and then - if he finds someone whom he finds sexually attractive, who may find him sexually attractive - make himself sufficiently pleasing to that person that s/he will want to have sex with him. There's no guarantee, of course, but it's probably not beyond the capacity of most men to manage this - and for those for whom it is beyond their capacity, there's always masturbation.

Prostitution short-cuts the process of a man needing to make himself attractive, socially acceptable, and sufficiently pleasing: he merely needs to have enough money to pay someone who needs the money enough to fake it convincingly. Why is this prospect more attractive to (some) men than masturbation or finding someone who wants to have sex with him?

Because men are convinced that they're entitled to sex. Hartmut's comment (on the Larry Craig thread on ObWing) summarizes the problem: the belief that if a man wants sex, he's entitled to buy it. Rather than presenting himself as an equal negotiating his way to mutual pleasure, he's entitled to demand sexual pleasure from someone whose job it is to provide it to him.

Men who argue earnestly that they have to have sex in public restrooms because (there are a number of standard reasons, which boil down to: "I want to have sex with other men and this is the best way I know of finding them without actually having to admit I'm not straight" or "I want to have sex with other people a lot, and this is a fast way of finding men who also want sex" or "I like the thrill of knowing we might get caught") are, really, expressing the view that they're entitled to sex far less damagingly than men who hire prostitutes or commit sexual harassment or rape. At least men who frequent public restrooms are usually after consenting partners.

(Inspired by this post of Ginmar's, over at the Six Apart place, a long time ago.)

Drusus: A man should keep himself clean, not have slaves do it.
Tiberius: And how's he supposed to scrape his own back?
Drusus: He gets his brother to do it.
Tiberius: If he hasn't got a brother?
Drusus: He gets his son.
Tiberius: If he hasn't got a son?
Drusus: Gets his friend.
Tiberius: And if he hasn't got a friend?
Drusus: Then he should go and hang himself.
Tiberius: I've tried it. Better to have a slave scrape your back.

Stefan Sharkansky: waitress slayer

Mon, 27 Aug 2007 20:33:27 GMT

I'd never heard of this guy before today. Apparently he's a Republican activist/politician in the Seattle area, quite well known if you live there and you're vaguely political. His wife's name is Irene: I don't have a note of her surname. They have a child, age 5, who's badly behaved. Their idea of child-rearing is to savagely attack anyone who criticizes their child's behavior.

I know all this, because Stefan and Irene made sure we should know it.

At the Fremont Classic Pizzeria & Trattoria in Seattle, there was a waitress with a blog. She's a single mother, two teenage sons, and she posts about her life and her work on her blog. One day, she wrote a post about this high-powered couple with a son who's often "marginally attended" when the family are dining at the restaurant: he's permitted to be loud, obnoxious, and run annoyingly free in the dining room. And furthermore, the Sharkanskys, she wrote, only tip 10%.

(This last I'm astonished by. I was an occasional visitor to the US, before the security wall was set up and all non-Americans treated as terrorists, and every tourist guide and experienced traveller warned: Tip 15% and round up. Just a basic minimum, they said. Good service gets more. Only tip less if you want to make a point.)

So, a waitress on a blog with few readers is saying: Hey, these guys are rotten parents and they're lousy tippers. Any person with sense would ignore that, right? The more attention you pay, the more likely it is someone with real news access will find out?

What happened;

Stefan Sharkansky demanded the waitress take it back. Not realizing the lengths to which this egomaniac would go, the waitress said no, it was true and she wouldn't. The kid really did behave that badly (other waitstaff at the restaurant confirm) and the Sharkanskies really are lousy tippers.

Stefan Sharkansky got his wife to ring the restaurant, tell the manager that the waitress had been saying nasty things about them online, and get the waitress fired. They also found out that she had a second job at Amazon and made threats about getting her fired from there. Stefan Sharkansky made personal attacks on the waitress by name in his own political blog, which is much more widely read than hers. And, the waitress says, a relative of the Sharks visited her at the restaurant and made physical threats.

The waitress deleted the post on her blog and made a public, grovelling apology and retraction Smarmily, Stefan Sharkansky noted in his own political blog that as she had retracted and apologized for those "slanders" of his son, he would delete his own post. (Both of them evidently knew about asking Google to delete the cache: no use looking for a cached post.)

You know: I hate bullies. I think Stefan Sharkansky should be known far and wide across the Internet for what he is: a bad parent, a lousy tipper, and a bully.

Pass it on.

Update: And, over at the Six Apart place, the customers_suck community has a special post all about Stefan Sharkansky. And on Blatherwatch: Stefan Sharkansky: waitress slayer (which is where I got the title of this post from). And on Metroblogging: Stefan Sharkansky has jumped the... nah, too obvious. And on The Stranger, where he used to be a guest writer: Stefan Sharkansky: Shitty Tipper, Vindictive Jerk. And on Horse's Ass: Stefan Sharkansky, Vindictive Prick. And back again to the Six Apart place: Stefan Sharkansky, "a horrible customer at restaurants". Oh, and in The Consumerist, in the category Bad Tippers, Blogbath Erupts Between Seattle Republican Activist Stefan Sharkansky And Waitress.

And Stefan Sharkansky: waitress slayer has also disabled comments on his own blog. Unsurprising. Amusingly, in a recent post by another right-winger on the same shared blog, entitled Liberals Still Don't Understand Faith, a number of commentators point out that Stefan's vindictive behavior towards a waitress who complained about his son's misbehavior and his own lousy tipping habits was hardly Christian. (Though the original poster, entirely missing the point, did a Willow and pointed out that Stefan is Jewish: but being vindictive to hardworking single mothers is really not a Jewish morality/tradition, either.) On the same blog, another right-winger leaps to Stefan Sharkansky: waitress slayer's defense, arguing that "the service was sub-par" and the rest of the story is "totally over-blown".

Update 2:

google cache of the post that Stefan Sharkansky doesn't want you to read:

Stefan Sharkansky - Greenlake conservative (island on an island), Rossi sycophant, and NW Blogger extraordinaire - evokes many a reaction in this neck of the woods. Far removed from his EWA brethren, he lashes out in the midst of enemy territory, hoping to gain a foot-hold - or a city council seat? Left to right: El Cheapo, David Goldstein

In the SeaWA DMZ, Sharkansky tries to propagate his upright citizen's brigade - You know, like trying to explain supporting the full-scale invasion and occupation of a country originally created artificially to control oil interests. Or better yet, claiming to be a "small government" conservative (of sorts) but then giving lock-step support to a bloated military bureaucracy.

So it's an uphill climb for the Shark. In his off time, you would think that he would try his best to put a positive real-world spin on this movement. You know: try to be a "nice guy" despite all you've read.

Announcement: If it looks like a Shark and smells like a Shark, then it probably makes bad soup... or something like that.

I had the random opportunity to meet a local restaurateur who had the (as it turns out) not-so-rare opportunity to personally serve Shark & Co. An amazing blogger in her own write at "Month of Sundays" , she provides Seattle an exquisite collection of her own creative material.
But again, in her off-time, she has had many Shark encounters in her establishment. Without further ado, here is a phone interview with this hapless Shark victim.

Meet the Stress: Stephen Sharkansky. What does that name say to you?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Shitty tipper. Gives you googly eyes. Waited on him once and only once. I refuse to again ,

Meet the Stress: But are we talking about someone who came in once, did not like the service, left a bad tip, and never came back?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: No, he comes in often.

Meet the Stress: And on average, how much do you think his gratuity is?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: 10%. “Mr 10%” we call him - which in 1984 was good.

Meet the Stress: Do you expect to see him again?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Yep. As mentioned, he's a regular

Meet the Stress: Now, you mentioned that you would not wait on him. Why is that?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Bad tips primarily.

Meet the Stress: You mentioned that he would come with his wife. Describe her:

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Asian. Does everything - definitely wears the pants. Stefan might as well have been at a different table - oblivious to everything. He just sits there, and their kid is just out of control, and she takes care of it. Says to their son: “Oh now honey, just stop that”

Meet the Stress: How old would you say their child is?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: 5 years old

Meet the Stress: When we talked last, you described the scion of these two as "a problem". Why is that?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Quite simply, the kid is Damian from the Omen. Might as well be a monkey. The kid did everything except reach in his pants and throw feces on the wall. His parents just allowed it, which said to me:
A.) Parents allow it all the time
B.) Parents beat him all the time (except in public)

Meet the Stress: Can you think of a specific Sharkansky clan visit where their scion exhibited “monstrous” behavior, and what did he do?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: The first time I waited waited on them. I suppose he's too cheap to get a babysitter. The kid was all over the place. First off, he was sitting at his own table. They kept feeding him candy, so he was really hopped-up. The child wanted something specific from the menu, but then when we went out of our way to make it, he wouldn’t eat it. So he just gobbled candy throughout dinner and then chocolate mouse for "dessert". Then he went screaming around and disturbing other customers. But Stefan just sat there, drank his wine and didn’t pay any attention.

Meet the Stress: So did Sharkansky's wife try to deal with his behavior?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: Barely. But when she did, the kid screamed “I don’t want anything!” and then balled-up hi fists in his mom’s face. I swear she just about got punched had she not backed-down.

Meet the Stress: Beyond anti-social and uber-frugal behaviors, have you ever talked with Stephen about politics etc?

Blogger/NW Restaurateur: No no no. Politics is a tip killer. But (laughing) not that would matter with Stefan.

googlecache of the attack Stefan wrote in response:

[waitress] (nee [waitress])

[waitress] is a waitress (now also temping at Amazon) who recently gave a wildly imaginative and mostly false and defamatory story to an anonymous blogger about my family's visits to her restaurant. She identified me by name and wrote some nasty and untrue things about our pre-school-aged son. She tried to do this anonymously, but I figured out who she was.

My wife and son are not public figures and do not deserve to be defamed. I asked [waitress] repeatedly and politely to delete the false and defamatory post. She admitted she was wrong, but refused to have the post deleted. There's not much to say about a service worker who would be so unprofessional as to recognize a customer by the name on his credit card and then slander him on the Internet because she doesn't agree with his politics. And there's really not much to say about a 37-year-old woman who would anonymously slander a pre-schooler. But in defense of my family and especially my son who can't defend himself, I've decided to name [waitress] and post excerpts from her blog so anybody who reads her story about my son can read more about [waitress] in her own words and make up their own minds about her character and credibility.

Her MySpace page is here. Her twitter page is here and her personal blog is here. In case she deletes some of her relevant posts, I saved screen shots here: June, July, August.
[I've redacted the posts only to remove references to her restaurant. It's a good restaurant. The owner and other employees don't deserve to be associated with her]

[The waitress] thought it was funny to make stuff up about my very young son, but here are her own words about her own son [June 29]

AAAAAAHGH FUCK!!!!!!!!!!! Can I not catch a fucking break?!!! So I find out from my son's teacher via email TODAY that LAST FRIDAY my son threatened to blow up the fucking school. What the FUCK? Now, O.K. I remember school. I remember wanting to blow the school up. But did I ever announce it to the entire class? NO. Oh my god. Now I'm the mother of the kid that threatened to blow up the school. I give up.

Here's what she wrote about the other customers that frequent her restaurant [June 21]:

Perhaps it is because I work in one of the only "family-friendly" eateries in the neighborhood, but it seems there are a lot of kids living in XXX now. They come in, followed by their frazzled parents, and proceed to act like animals. The parents blissfully sip on house wine and leisurely pick at their food, while we (myself and my colleagues) have to wipe fingerprints and face prints off of windows, reset messed up tables, refill spilled salt and pepper shakers, and worst of all, unclog toilets. Parenting to these people is simply corralling their child when it seems that the restaurant staff is becoming irritated, and then allowing them (the child) to return to their destructive activities five minutes later. So my question to these parents is: "Do you really want to be a parent, or are you just doing it because of peer pressure." Did you look around one day and notice that a child was the one thing that you did not have? Also, does being a parent for you mean you forgo all sense of, well, style? I see these mothers walk in with their wash-and-wear haircuts and loose fitting clothing (denim jumper anyone?) I think, "Wow, their husband is a lucky man...NOT." But of course, the husband is no prize either. It seems to me that they have children, and then become these sexless automatons who have about three subjects to engage in conversation in. I can say this, not just because I am a bitch, but because I have two kids of my own and have NEVER owned a denim jumper.

But this is how she describes her own personal life [June 18]:

So a bit about me. I have been married to an emotionally abusive man for fifteen years. I have two kids and a beagle. I recently (last Thursday) served my husband with divorce papers and am currently residing in a hotel, thanks to my local domestic violence advocacy group. I am a waitress by trade, but a writer in my heart. I recently got my B.A. in Creative Writing from the UW. I am looking to find a job that doesn't require me to touch people's food. More random bits about me: I've only been in love once. I like pie, not cake. I prefer daisies to roses. I am a cynical optimist. I like to contradict myself. I like to be organized. I don't like to waste my time and abhor it when others indulge in wasting my time. I'm only truly happy when it is sunny outside, yet I don't spend a lot of time outdoors. Oh, and I have serious issues regarding: men, children, relationships, food, sex, politics, religion, and authority. So come with me, in the following weeks and months as I : get divorced, sell a house, find a place to live, find a job, navigate "single" life, potentially fall in and out of love, figure out my own finances, get depressed, drink to much, and oh, live my life as the world's oldest twelve year old.

So, that's [waitress] who thought it was a hoot to make up stories about my son and post them anonymously.

Note:

The waitress was commenting on behavior she had directly observed: the child's bad behavior and the lousy tips.

I doubt if Stefan Sharkansky could recognize a waitress or remember any one evening when his son behaved badly: they all run together after a while. He reacted by using all resources available to him to find all the information he could about this waitress and publicize her on his own, much more widely-read blog. Downthread, someone's called this waitress a "tattle": but Stefan "tattled" to a much wider venue, and his wife Irene "tattled" to the restaurant owner. The waitress, on the other hand: just spoke to what she'd witnessed.

Or, as Andrew, blogging at the Northwest Progressive Institute wrote directly to Stefan Sharkansky:

Stefan, I am sick and tired of your bullying and mean-spiritedness. I'm discouraged that you don't seem to understand that using a medium of mass communication to verbally assault the innocent and the powerless is morally repugnant.

I am repulsed by your eagerness to post information that leads your readers, some of whom are just as vindictive as you, to invade the privacy of people you dislike, typically those who are in the way of your political agenda.

I am indignant that you can dish out criticism so freely but can't take it yourself. Stefan, I am weary of your huge double standard. Your hypocrisy reeks.

Update 3: Bizarrely, Stefan Sharkansky: waitress slayer wants everyone to remember he's a vicious little thug with delusions of grandeur.

Update 4: Hello, I'm Stefan Sharkansky, the waitress slayer. And you are...? (Stefan is evidently not content that his reputation as a poor tipper, a bad parent, and a vicious bully has reached The Stranger: he's evidently now aiming for national news.) I left a comment at his blog to that effect, which Stefan promptly deleted: he has evidently got to that frantic stage. Good thing I don't waitress for him, eh?

---
Housekeeping note: As sometimes happens with google-popular posts, the spambots have found it and started adding spammy comments. All anonymous comments will be screened to let me delete the spam.

Update, 9th September:

Someone commented here in defense of Stefan Sharkansky, Waitress Slayer, and I wondered how current this scandal is still in the blogosphere. It's still fairly high on Google, though the thread on Stefan Sharkansky: shitty tipper, vindictive jerk hasn't had a new comment since the end of August (until now). Someone commented to say she was on Stefan's side because of an experience she'd had being blogged about negatively by a co-worker, which (while I sympathise with it) is a different situation. In part, I wrote in response:

This is a wholly different situation from the Sharkansky's, though. They weren't being asked to work with the waitress who thought so little of them. In fact, it's clear that if the Sharkansky's didn't want anyone to know what the waitress thought of them, they'd have done better to do nothing - the blogstorm was stirred up by Stefan Sharkansky's own actions, including a blogpost on his own widely-read political blog which was a personal attack on the waitress.

Their only appropriate recourse would have been to call the manager of the restaurant, say they wouldn't be coming in again while that waitress was working there, and say why. If they were valued customers, the manager might decide to act on this by warning the waitress to get rid of the blogposts and apologize to the Sharkanskies, if she wanted to keep her job: if they were cheapskate, annoying customers, the manager might have decided the hell with it, better to let them go than lose a good waitress.

Alternatively, if Stefan Sharkansky had been a decent person: he could have said to the waitress, next time he and his wife and their son were in: "I didn't realize I was regarded as a cheap tipper, and I'll do better in future. We're both sorry our son annoyed you: he was having a bad day, and perhaps we shouldn't have taken him out. I feel your blogpost about our behavior, naming us by name, was unprofessional on your part: I'd like to ask you to remove it, or at least write an update."

Option one (call the restaurant manager, tell him about the blog, explain you won't be back while the waitress is still there) is vindictive, but fair dealing - the waitress publicly criticised the restaurant's customer's by name, the Sharkanskies leave it up to the restaurant manager to decide if he'd rather lose the waitress or those two customers.

Option two would be the genuinely decent option: meet the waitress on a human level as an equal, acknowledge she had reason for her criticism, admit fault before pointing fault. That this option clearly never once occurred to either Stefan Sharkanky or his wife - not even as an afterthought, not once - says to me that they genuinely thought their actions were above criticism, certainly by waitstaff.

Why keep supporting Six Apart?

Mon, 13 Aug 2007 07:55:28 GMT

While basically sympathetic to this open letter against pro-anorexia communities on livejournal, it's fundamentally missing the point to post or comment on livejournal. What Six Apart wants from its product (that's the livejournallers) isn't their money: it's fresh posts and comments that are saleable, that makes livejournal.com an attractive site for advertisers. Lengthy posts about how awful Six Apart is not to move against the pro-ana communities are perfectly saleable material. Writing them on Six Apart makes you a good little Six Apart product.

But why would Gonzales worry about penalties for perjury?

Thu, 26 Jul 2007 10:20:48 GMT

Time.com:

Specter later circled back to Gonzales on the matter, warning him: "My suggestion to you is you review your testimony to find out if your credibility has been breached to the point of being actionable," Specter said. The maximum penalty for being caught lying to Congress is five years in prison and a fine of $250,000 per count. Specter wryly noted to reporters during a break that there is a jail in the Capitol complex.

Yes, I'm sure that if Gonzales is convicted of perjury, he will spend as much time in jail for it as Libby did.

Potterdammerung!

Sun, 22 Jul 2007 19:35:21 GMT

This is a linky post with all the stuff I've been giggling over since I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. (Expect updates.)

The best, though, and just by-the-by, an excellent summary if you don't want to struggle through a 600+ page tome which bears every sign of having been rushed into print, is Tetsubo Productions "Wherein It's Completely Legal Now So Bite Me" page-by-page review, initially published from the leaked version before the book came out, but Scholastic made Christopher Bird take it down.

(Did I enjoy it? Oh yes. I couldn't sleep till I finished reading it. But it did have some quite significant flaws.)

From the Guardian:

Nicholas Lezard writes: Harry Potter's big con is the prose. (What Lezard misses is that most of the independent bookshops aren't selling Harry Potter at all. It's the big chains that can afford to take the big loss.)

Imogen Russel Williams did an all-night blog: Will Harry Potter be the death of me? If I'd bought the book at midnight, this is the one I'd have been reading.

Bloomsbury beats Wal-Mart, for the first and probably ONLY time.

And other Potterstuff from the Guardian Arts page.

From the blogs:

Making Light. I do not recommend you comment there, because Patrick Nielsen Hayden is one scary bad-ass dude, but it's a good publisher's blog: the comments are sure to be good value.

A year ago, at least 655 000 Iraqis had been killed

Sat, 21 Jul 2007 11:09:52 GMT

Pro-war apologists are still trying to pretend this is an absurdly large number.

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness:

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

As a particularly nasty pro-war apologist noted with glee (warning: not for the weak-stomached) Iraqis are also killing Iraqis (a Michael Yon news story which this war apologist relished but which I found very hard to look at: the pictures of the dead are horrific. As there were no survivors from this village, even if the Lancet data collectors had gone there, they would not have counted it in their data: it would have been an outlier, like Fallujah. This news story is one of those that tells us, if we're reasonable, that the 655 000 estimate in the Lancet must have been an underestimate: cluster sampling always provides underestimates of the real figures.

How many Iraqis have been killed since the US invaded in 2003? We don't know, but we can guess it's probably near a million by now. How many of those were shot down by US soldiers, killed by US convoys, bombed by US planes? We don't know: the Pentagon doesn't want anyone to know. All we know is that US soldiers say that civilians are killed by the US military so often that if they reported every civilian death, they'd have no time to do anything else.

In 2003, Iraq had a population of about 27 million. In the past four years, a million of them have been killed, and millions more are refugees in neighboring countries or their own. To claim that the US ought to stay in Iraq and "fix it" is to ignore these basic facts: the US occupation in Iraq is fixing nothing, and can fix nothing. As Hilzoy of Obsidian Wings points out: the occupation continues because Republican Senators are afraid to defy Dick Cheney.

Why Congress must impeach both Bush and Cheney

Mon, 16 Jul 2007 14:04:21 GMT

Because if Congress doesn't, the next President/Vice-President takes up all of the powers they have taken as of right.

Republicans who are still deluded enough to think that Bush and Cheney use their powers only for good: need to consider that the next President may be a Democrat, and will have the same powers Bush and Cheney do.

Why I'm not going to read Common Sense Political Thought any more

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:32:30 GMT

On a debate thread at Pandagon, I wrote:

When people claim that abortion is a bad thing, the reframing is to ask them: If you think abortion is a bad thing, what policies do you actively support that are proven to reduce the number of abortions each year?

Uniformly, anti-choicers will then argue that the policies proven to reduce the number of abortions each year (comprehensive sex education, free availability of contraception and social support of contraceptive use, financial and social support for parenting, especially for single mothers) are policies they’re also against. They prefer to make abortion illegal, dangerous, and hard to get, without in any way working to reduce the number of abortions women need.

You can then safely point out that they are actually pro-abortion, they just see abortion and pregnancy in the frame of punishing women for having sex for pleasure. Of course they’ll scream and kick about that, but until they’re prepared to argue for policies that reduce abortions, they can’t honestly claim to be anything but anti-choice and pro-abortion.

I walked away from Dana’s blog (finally disgusted by Sharon’s open pleasure at the discovery of a village where dozens of Iraqis had been massacred by other Iraqis, which she seemed to think helped her “debunk” the Lancet report) but this was a frequent argument with the misogynist anti-choicers on that site. (It was noticeable how all the anti-choicers consistently loathed the idea that women can have sex for pleasure, loathed the idea of comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents, and were uniformly against the notion that the Iraq war was a bad thing because it had killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis. “Pro-life” is such a misnomer for these people.)

It is good that women have full access to the health care they need: it is not good for women to be forced through pregnancy and childbirth against their will. Therefore, access to abortion is a basic good. It’s a human rights issue. (Of course, all health care in the US is a human rights issue. It’s ironic that in the US a woman on a low income will not be helped by Medicaid to get a legal, safe, and relatively low-cost abortion if she wants one - but if something goes horribly wrong with an illegal abortion, then Medicaid has to cover the thousand$ that the emergency medical/surgical support will cost. (Admittedly, in parts of the UK, it can be sufficiently difficult to get an abortion on the NHS - though it’s probably easier for women who need an abortion to travel to a clinic that will provide one. There’s nowhere in the UK where it would be difficult for a woman who needed an abortion to get one if she could pay for it.)

PG Warner, apparently seeing himself included under the "misogynist anti-choicers", responded:

Jesugislac, do you think you might be painting with too broad of a brush? You said “all anti-choicers” (I will concede the term for now) loathe all these things. When have I ever said I was against a woman’s pleasure, comprehensive sex education/free access to contraception/welfare support for parents? For that matter have where have you seen me argue against quality universal health coverage? Surely you know by now that I interact with private insurance, Medicare and Medicaid on a personal/user basis everyday?

The occupation of Iraq has been horrifically tragic in terms of human lives. I never tried to trivialize the death of a single Iraqi, much less hundreds of thousands. I did argue against how the Lancet study was conducted with you, but I never even hinted that Iraqi suffering was anything short of horrific.

You and I have had our tussles and some of your advocating tactics I find maddening as you know. I am quite sure my sarcasm has grated you, but does that justify me being painted as insensitive and heartless?

Now, on Dana's blog, there were frequent arguments about abortion, and my point that if you're claiming to be anti-abortion, you need to show it by supporting policies that really do reduce the number of abortions, not a single "make it illegal!" policy that is proven not to reduce the number of abortions but instead makes abortion more difficult and more dangerous to obtain, was a point I consistently made, and that Dana, Sharon, and Eric - who were, in fact, the specific misogynist anti-choicers I was thinking of, a trio who loathe women having sex for pleasure, who loathe the idea of state health, and who loathe the idea that people should be able to access contraception anywhere for free at any age, and who say so. Consistently and vituperatively.

I do not recall PG Warner ever, even once, speaking up against Sharon or Dana's or Eric's vituperative attacks on these principles. Not once. Yet, on Pandagon, he raises his head and whines "When did I ever say I was against these things?" (He was, of course, among those who claim the Lancet report is wrong, though unable to attack it on any but political grounds. So while he says he "never even hinted that the Iraqi suffering was anything short of horrific" he actively attacked the idea that the Iraqi suffering was as bad as the Lancet report clearly laid out.)

PG Warner responded to this, bizarrely, by saying:

I am not whining, I was just stating fact. Show me where I was obligated to fight your fight? I don’t recall you ever supporting me on anything.

My point today is that it is not fair or accurate to lump people together or just assume. Take it for what its worth.

And that's why I say silliness incarnate.

If PG Warner wanted me to know that he found Sharon's idea that women shouldn't have sex for pleasure but only and exclusively when intending to conceive as repugnant as I do, he could have said so when Sharon, as she repeatedly does, said that on Dana's blog. PG Warner expected me, apparently, to take his silence as disagreement. Well, well.

If PG Warner wanted anyone at all to know that he supports full health care for all, and disagrees with Sharon that you can just dismiss people being denied health care as "no one", and disagrees with Dana that providing contraception to all will just encourage girls to have sex (Dana, delightfully, refers to women who have sex outside marriage as "free pussy") he could have said so to Dana, rather than just ducking his head, going quiet, and complaining later to me that I should have known that he disagreed.

If PG Warner wanted to say that he was in favor of welfare support to parents, he had ample time and opportunity to say so: but he didn't.

Instead, he veered in the same thread between whining that I hadn't specifically excluded him by name from the "misogynist anti-choicers" because, after all, secretly, he agreed with me in all those fights I was having about contraception, support for parents, and universal health care! At the same time, however, his actually saying so would have been "fighting my fight".

I walked away from Common Sense Political Thought out of real, final disgust with Sharon: her glee over murdered villagers was just the last straw in a succession of ugly encounters. (Her mockery of Elizabeth Edwards for dying of cancer while her husband campaigns for President was very nearly the last straw: but somehow her attacks on a woman dying of cancer whom she'd earlier pretended even to feel sorry for didn't feel quite as brutal as her joy at finding news of a village of the dead, murdered by Iraqis, that she thought she could use as a debating point to "debunk" the Lancet report.)

Sharon is as stupid as she is heartless: Dana I have a tiny amount of respect for, as he genuinely believes in free speech and supports that even through personal attacks, but his political and personal beliefs are misogynistic and homophobic, and he is a hypocritical dessert cart Catholic who picks out the bits he wants to believe while condemning other Catholics for trying to make their religious fit their lives: Eric is a screaming, out of control troll who hates women and says so at every opportunity: but PG Warner is just silly and arrogant. In giving him this post on my journal, I hope it feeds his ego enough to make him happy: and given that I have been a regular commenter on Common Sense Political Thought for quite a while, it seems only reasonable to have at least one post explaining why. They're a loathsome crew, and I feel better for not going there.

Playing safe online

Sun, 08 Jul 2007 12:49:55 GMT

I adopted this online name over five years ago, because it would be unique and instantly recognizable, and also because it was gender-neutral.

I'd been online using my real name, and had been subjected to a series of increasingly nasty attacks from people who didn't like my politics. The culmination was when a man who lived relatively nearby had made some directly sexual threats - but, I thought, I'm cool: he doesn't know what I look like, let alone exactly where I live. Then someone else, another political opponent, posted a photograph of me they'd found online. (I still remember that with a shudder of real rage and hate: that creep was an intelligent enabler, someone who - if the man had meant his threats seriously - would never have got into trouble for what they'd done, but who would have been absolutely responsible for deciding to make sure that the man could identify me at sight.)

It took three nightmarish days before I could get the owners of the bulletin board where it had been posted to delete that post, and the repeated request seemed by itself to get me a reputation as a troublemaker.

I gafiated for a while: and adopted a new name, "Je Surgis Lac". I did eventually admit my gender and nationality, but it was years later. I've still never made clear exactly where I live.

That's what I do to feel safe online.

That's why I get so pissed off with bloggers who, given the opportunity to talk about these issues - the real issues of safety online - go on about the fake issues.

Susie Bright claims: "I'd love to be in a women bloggers group that shared about how we practically cope with crazies, slanderers, and trolls-with-guns, I really would." But, invited to speak about "safe space online" at BlogHer, instead of offering to do just that, she wrote a whole post about how she "doesn't want to be safe online, Mom!"

Now, granted, the panel she was invited to be on appears to be all about the fake meaning of "safe" - no dissension, no talk about sex. But how about confronting that and saying, no, let's talk about the real threats online? Let's talk about how Kathy Sierra was scared away from going to a professional conference by death threats? About how Amanda Marcotte was forced to resign from a job she wanted? These are real issues. These are threats I think many woman bloggers are familiar with. Why not talk about them?

Feminism, the Patriarchy, and Parallel Paradigms

Wed, 04 Jul 2007 13:05:10 GMT

Scooter Libby has been given an amnesty for perjury and obstruction of justice in the federal investigation into the leaking of a covert CIA agent's identity to the media.

Paul Wolfowitz has lost his job as President of the World Bank because he broke the rules about not getting involved with subordinates and not doing financial/job-related favours based on personal involvement.

I'm no supporter of the World Bank, nor do I have any fondness for the CIA. I'd never work for either institution (and neither institution would be likely to hire me!), and I don't much care for the kind of people who do.

The feminist revolution is changing the patriarchy: eventually, we hope, there will be no more patriarchy. This is a long-term goal, and we're doing it one manageable nibble at a time, but we are doing it. But nevertheless: there are people who perceive the world from the patriarchal paradigm, and people who perceive the world from the feminist paradigm, and you know which paradigm owns more of the media, and which paradigm most politicians live in.

It's a meme among defenders of Scooter Libby that his being sentenced to jail was unjust because, though he did commit perjury in the course of an investigation, there was no underlying crime. That is, leaking Valerie Plame's identity to the media was not a crime, because Plame wasn't a covert CIA agent as defined by the relevant legislation. We could have guessed that this was not so just looking at how seriously the CIA, the US Department of Justice, and the White House, reacted: President Bush actually said (and later, retracted) that anyone involved with the leak would no longer work for his administration. But, since Libby was convicted, it has been officially and publicly stated: Plame was covert, and because she had worked overseas between 1998 and 2003, she was covered by the statute that made knowingly leaking her identity an act of treason. (In an aside, though, it's apparently a difficult statute to prosecute, because the prosecutor has to show that not only was the agent covered by statute, the person who leaked the agent's identity knew the agent was covert when they leaked: and it seems likely Libby didn't know, though Cheney, whom Libby was shielding, probably did.)

So why are people as high-profile as Milt Romney and Fred Thompson publicly saying that Plame wasn't covert so there was no crime?

It's not even a good defense: it's false, it's publicly known to be false, and it's publicly known that they know it's false.

But they can tell themselves it's true and believe it, and assume others will believe it too, because they live inside the patriarchal paradigm.

Valerie Plame had been married for several years to Joseph Wilson. They had two children, and Plame moved in social circles in Washington and elsewhere as Ambassador Wilson's wife. When her identity was leaked in summer 2003, the first assumption was that the leakers at the White House were punishing her husband - a kind of Washingtonian honour killing - because he had recently written an op-ed for the New York Times explicitly saying that Bush had made claims Wilson knew to be false in his State of the Union speech in January 2003. Any discussion of the White House's leak has always turned, soon or late, to traduce Joseph Wilson. (As it turned out, the White House might have had good reason to want to silence Plame on her own account: she was investigating WMD in the Middle East at the time the White House leak ended her career.)

Inside the patriarchal paradigm, Plame could not be a covert CIA agent doing important work, because she's a married woman with children, whose husband is an important man in his own right: his wife cannot have an identity and a career separate from his. She has, in the patriarchal paradigm, tied her fortune and her honour to her husband, and if her husband does something as politically radical as telling the world the President lied in the State of the Union speech, and she suffers for it, well, the only question that need be asked is: Did her husband deserve it? And, the notion that it would matter if a wife's career is ended, if she is still married to her husband and the father of her children: that's just outside the paradigm. Therefore, leaking her identity was not a crime.

The other instance, much less well known and much less clear-cut, is what happened to Shaha Riza.

She joined the World Bank in 1997. Sometime after she moved to Washington, she got involved with Paul Wolfowitz, who was then Deputy Secretary of Defense. She had been acting manager for external affairs and outreach for the World Bank's MENA region for nearly three years, and was shortlisted to become the permanent manager for external affairs and outreach for that region in 2005.

Then Bush offered Wolfowitz the Presidency of the World Bank, and he accepted. (Traditionally, that appointment is always in the US's gift. The World Bank is a mechanism for ensuring that undeveloped countries stay poor and undeveloped in order to keep developed countries wealthy: most of the countries whose economies are managed by the World Bank have no say at all in how the World Bank is run.) Wolfowitz claims he believed that there would be no problem wih the World Bank regulations with regard to his involvement with a regional manager for external affairs and outreach (a position about five layers below President), because he would recuse himself from any personnel decisions involving her.

The World Bank didn't agree. Shaha Riza didn't get the promotion: someone else did, so she was no longer even acting manager for external affairs and outreach. In a situation like that, it's impossible to say that Riza would have been promoted if only Wolfowitz had not been President of the World Bank: but it is certain that, with Wolfowitz as President, Riza would not get promoted. Nor was this all: the Ethics Committee of the World Bank kept pointing out that the personal relationship between Shaha Riza and Paul Wolfowitz was explicitly against regulations. Either the relationship had to end, or one of them had to leave the World Bank. Shaha Riza was sent - very much against her will, apparently - to a make-work job in the State Department, where she was paid the same salary she would have been paid had she got the promotion she wanted.

When this came out, earlier this year, much was made of the issue of corruption, of Wolfowitz presuming that the rules of the World Bank couldn't apply to him, of the large and tax-fee salary Shaha Riza had been given for doing no work. In all of these articles, Shaha Riza was rarely mentioned by name (she was "Wolfowitz's girlfriend"), nor was her position in the World Bank named, nor was it made clear that she had had a career in the World Bank and had been justly in line for a promotion before Wolfowitz was appointed President. When Wolfowitz accepted the job of President of the World Bank, he ended her career there.

(There are reasons why this is less clear-cut than Plame case: it's possible, though no one has said so, that Wolfowitz asked Shaha Riza if it was OK for him to accept the job before he said yes to Bush, and she said yes because, like Wolfowitz, she assumed the rules didn't apply to her. Possible. It's even possible that she thought Wolfowitz ought to be President of the World Bank and encouraged him to ask Bush to give him the job. There are a whole range of tangled possibilities here. I'm inclined to think that what happened was that Wolfowitz was offered the job and he said yes without thinking twice about what this would mean for Riza, but I don't think anyone has said how Bush came to think of Wolfowitz for the job.)

There was a simple way to avoid all this. It would have been for Wolfowitz, with or without consultation with Shaha Riza, to say no, he couldn't take the Presidency of the World Bank, because his girlfriend already worked there and doing so would destroy her career.

But that would have put Wolfowitz outside the patriarchal paradigm. He would have been saying that "his girlfriend" had a career exactly as important as his own.

There are various ways to criticise what Wolfowitz and Riza did inside the patriarchal paradigm: he should have asked Shaha Riza to resign: she herself should have resigned rather than accept the State Department job: all of which accept, implicitly, that Paul Wolfowitz's career is more important than Shaha Riza's, that the World Bank owed less loyalty and respect to an employee who had worked for them for 8 years than they did to a political appointee who had been put in charge that year.

On the edge of the patriarchal paradigm, because it still puts responsibility on Shaha Riza: she could have broken up with Wolfowitz as soon as she knew he had accepted the World Bank Presidency. On the edge, because it means she would have put her career above her relationship with Wolfowitz: it would have had (I would think) to be a real breakup, in which she neither saw him nor spoke to him except on World Bank business. At that, she still probably wouldn't have got the promotion she wanted, but she could probably have gone on working for the World Bank, if Wolfowitz had respected the break-up.

I don't know why Riza didn't do that. Again, there are a whole tangle of obscure possibilities, ranging from her loving Wolfowitz and feeling so committed to him that she could not bring herself to break up with him, to her believing Wolfowitz when he said that his being her boss wouldn't matter: he could fix it and the regulations wouldn't affect them. I imagine, though, that it was really a whole tangle of most or all of the following: love, fondness, respect for Wolfowitz's career and a desire to see him succeed, not believing in herself the same way she believed in him, not quite looking at the situation clearly because a clear look said that either she left the World Bank or she left Wolfowitz and she didn't want to do either; and finally, when she was moved over to the State Department, hanging on because she couldn't believe it could get worse: because if she sat tight and didn't complain she might just get her old job at the World Bank back when Wolfowitz was no longer President or when he managed to "fix" the regulations that said she couldn't work there if he did. In those circumstances, sitting over at the State Department in what must have become clear was a purely makework job, I suppose, it might have become unthinkable to break with Wolfowitz: she had already lost her job because of him, and he may have seemed a reassurance and comfort, as well as the only route back to the work she'd enjoyed at the World Bank. It's easy to look at an abusive relationship from the outside and say "No, wait, at this point you should have known he had no respect for you and left": but very hard to see it that way from the inside.

Especially when the lack of respect that Wolfowitz was so conspicuously showing was respect that he wasn't expected, inside the patriarchal paradign, to have to give. In the patriarchal paradigm, Shaha Riza was Wolfowitz's mistress: he was a wealthy and influential man who had provided a woman with whom he was having sex outside marriage with a job that gave her no real responsibilities but lots of money. In this paradigm, Wolfowitz is corrupt, because the money wasn't his - and because there's a strong implication of sex for money. In this paradigm what matters most is that Wolfowitz has used the World Bank's money inappropriately, corruptly, to give his mistress a cushy well-paid job: that Wolfowitz has made the World Bank look bad.

If Paul Wolfowitz had also been a career World Bank employee who had been promoted to a position over Shaha Riza, it would have been a straightforward example of "my career or yours?". But it wasn't even that: Wolfowitz's real career is being a Republican insider. Accepting the job at the World Bank was a useful step in that career, but he could have refused it with no more than a hiccup. (I guess. I find it hard to believe someone as well-connected as Paul Wolfowitz would have suffered very much from turning down a job he was offered, even if he was very strongly offered it and even if his reasons for refusing were so far outside the patriarchal paradigm.) But from within the patriarchal paradigm, a man refusing a plum job because it would damage his mistress's career is just... unthinkable.

When feminists talk about the patriarchy, individual men often react as if they're being personally attacked. They say things like "Not all men are like this!" or "Men do bad things to other men, too!" But "the patriarchy" isn't "all men": it isn't "non-feminists". The patriarchy is a paradigm. Feminism is a parallel paradigm. Part of the reaction against defining and referring to the patriarchy is a simple misunderstanding about what a paradigm is: partly because changing paradigms is a hard thing to do, and it's easier to pretend that when feminists say "This is because of the patriarchy" they are really saying "This is because all men are evil", because the claim that "all men are evil" can be refuted, and further, feminists can then be attacked viciously for being man-haters who think all men are evil. This is much easier, and much more fun, than considering the possibility that the paradigm that you take for granted, the patriarchy, is fundamentally wrong: that this paradigm twists and distorts your perceptions, makes it impossible for a person to see that it's absurd to claim Valerie Plame wasn't covert in the teeth of all the evidence, that it was fundamentally wrong of Paul Wolfowitz to have accepted the job of President of the World Bank. This isn't just about party politics, though of course it plays a role: this is about the idea, radical and revolutionary in the patriarchal paradigm, central to the feminist paradigm, that women, as well as men, are human beings.