Jazz and Blues At The Know

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Originally uploaded by cspowers

Last night I had the opportunity to go to The Know Book Store and Cultural Center for their Friday night Open Jam session. They have a diner/music venue in 1/2 of the store and every Friday night a random assortment of local musicians shows up to play jazz standards and blues.

The Know Book Store is, as they say, a radical activist bookstore. Headlines on the freebie papers scream about the coming Marxist revolutions around the world and all that. But despite the fervor of the reading material, the assembled crowd was very good natured and relaxed. It's nice to be able sit at tables and chat with friends and strangers while listening to the music.

I put my pictures from that night on a Flickr set and I managed to capture a short video clip of one song with my camera. Unfortunately my memory card filled up before the song was done, but you can get a good idea of the vibe of the place. I've been having trouble uploading it, but will create a new post when I get it uploaded to YouTube.

Thanks to my friend C.G. for putting me on to the place! I have no doubt I'll be going back.

Obscurity Is Not Security

Howdy,

For Data Privacy Day, I just published "Obscurity is not Security" to my Visible IT blog.

Glimpse into Obama's Approach to the GWOT

This morning's Washington Post has an article titled "2 U.S. Airstrikes Offer a Concrete Sign of Obama's Pakistan Policy" reporting the latest engagements in the War On Terror. According to the article: 

"The separate strikes on two compounds, coming three hours apart and involving five missiles fired from Afghanistan-based Predator drone aircraft, were the first high-profile hostile military actions taken under Obama's four-day-old presidency. A Pakistani security official said in Islamabad that the strikes appeared to have killed at least 10 insurgents, including five foreign nationals and possibly even "a high-value target" such as a senior al-Qaeda or Taliban official."

The Post provides some deniability cover for Obama stating that it was unclear whether he personally authorized the attacks, given he's just 4 days into his Presidency. But I distinctly remember after the election that news services reported that immediately after the elections, the President-elect starts getting daily national security briefings to help with the transition. So I can't help but conclude that Obama could have stopped these attacks if he wanted to. 

But he didn't. 

If there was any concern about the legal status of the people that were bombed, whether they were "enemy combatants" under international law or some other legal classification, it doesn't seemed to have stopped Obama from continuing this skirmish in the Global War on Terror. If there was any hand-wringing over the writ of habeus corpus for the people being bombed, it doesn't appear to have been enough for Obama to say, "Hey, wait a minute....." 

I wonder how this bodes for the Gitmo detainees?  On January 23rd, there was an AP news story (I saw it here on Yahoo), that reported: 

A Saudi man released from Guantanamo after spending nearly six years inside the U.S. prison camp is now the No. 2 of Yemen's al-Qaida branch, according to a purported Internet statement from the terror network.

Maybe that's the overall strategy. Close Gitmo and avoid the legal wrangling and hand-wringing, let the detainees resume their duties in al-Qaeda and/or the Taliban and then re-engage them on the field of battle, attacking them with missles fired from drone airplanes so that there's no chance of them being detained again. 

testing testing - pls ignore

I am testing googles "backlink" capability. I am referring to this set list post on my taproot radio sie in this post from my stuck in traffic site. In theory, eventually, the post on the tapoot radio site should show a reference to this post at the end of it. Not sure how long it will take.