« August 2007 | Main | October 2007 »

September 28, 2007

There but for the grace of God go I

>In light of this morning's tragic events in Oroville, it is time for me to thank a couple people who helped me put this weblog together. With the trust and assitance of Ryan Olson, the web content and David Little, editors for the Chico Enterprise-Record, I'm able to write about what bugs me, and for that I am most appreciative.

This morning I talked to one of the mothers whose child was apparently held hostage at Las Plumas High School. While worried about her daughter and making arrangements to get her home, she made the point that she felt the boy that allegedly instigated these events should get help to deal with what made him do this, but that likely he will simply be thrown in jail and left to rot.

This is what I fear as well. What will apparently happen is that Greg Wright will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and will be involved with the criminal justice system for the rest of his life. The problem here is that he did not just wake up this morning and say, “I think I will go to school and fire a few shots and take a few people hostage just for drill”.

As one who can honestly say “There but for the grace of God go I”, I've dealt with this frustration. Having written a few sonnets about these types of shootings, I will post a couple here later. We can thank my parents, who kept me locked up in my room for the first 22 years of my life. I was raised with canines as brothers and sisters, by guardians who were both addicts, and made my youth uncertain and isolated from society, but because of that I am here today.

My mother was a practicing alcoholic, addicted to diet, pain, and sleeping pills, and smoked three packs of cigarettes a day. My father was a hard-working carpenter who drank beer regularly. As they would drive from one bar to another in Alameda County on the weekend, I would ride under the window line in the back seat. Between them, I learned nearly every English curse word before I was five years old, and most of them were directed at me.

School, libraries, books, and my imagination saved my bacon at home. With the aid of those institutions, I got fledgling armor which helped me to survive as a solo man. In school I was emotionally constipated though, and was often the brunt of youthful cruelty. It was hard to make friends, so I went without. I did the best job I could to survive, for the most part unscathed.

Alcohol equals pain, and so I chose from the jump to abstain from this poison. I have never taken illegal drugs either, because control is important. The lesson my family taught was that use of this crap leads to a loss of control and more pain than I needed to deal with then or now. But my solution was unique.

I am sure that Greg Wright did not want to be photographed in the back of a sheriff's car this morning. Since that shot is now on the Internet, he will be branded with it for the rest of his life. But I suspect that the people who drove him into that situation are happy, and will see none of the bad life this boy will be in for. What the mother and I agreed on this morning is that they should get some of the same punishment.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 04:11 PM | | Comments (0)

September 22, 2007

I always feel like somebody's watching me, Part three

Earlier this summer, I did a piece about how our electronic money is watching us. The problem is that silicon has a trace on and controls so much of the citizen's money that if there is a problem like Wells Fargo had in August, where their network crashed, we will be unable to get any money out of the bank.

There will not be a run on the banks in that event because without computers, they will be able to do nothing. The money in the bank is safe, but citizens are screwed, to quote Thom Hartmann.

Please bear with me as I revisit my August article;

In yesterday's news, Wells Fargo had its national monetary operations hindered by a glitch in its nationwide computer network. Individual customers could not access their money at the branch level or at many automatic teller machines. According to Datawire at computerwire.com, it is ranked sixth among the top 15 national banks with almost $482 billion in assets.

Of the first five banks, three are well known in Butte County. Citicorp is number one with $1.8 trillion in assets. Bank of America is number two, with almost $1.5 trillion, while Wachovia is fourth with $700 billion in assets. What these figures indicate is just how much American money is fixed in national monetary networks.

There are two distressing problems with these figures. If another electronic glitch struck the major banks, they have control of so much money that the customers could have major difficulties. More of a problem though is how much money is under the direct supervision of silicon.

Almost every dollar we earn and spend in this country has a silicon trail. Every financial transaction is etched in a computer network under the Terrorist Financial Tracking System. President George Bush has issued executive orders that allow the government to shut down the checking and saving accounts of individuals, thus rendering them as non-persons according to Marjorie Cohn, current president of the National Lawyer's Guild.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 10:43 PM | | Comments (0)

Butte County commuters will have a problem with new transit center, Part three

Just read the latest piece about the downtown Chico Transit Center in last week's Chico News and Review. The intransigence of Capital Project Services and the city of Chico is frustrating. After reading Monica Unhold's characterization of this problem in which she said “That's not good enough for Brune. "I just don't want to get rained on come winter," he said”, I can see that the voice of the individual is generally useless.

When I first saw the illustration on Second Street, I feared that what I looked at was a problem for this Winter. As I exchanged silicon with the bureaucrats responsible for this mess, what I thought I saw manifested itself during construction.

As I tried to get this straightened out it became apparent that this was going to be a sword fight with one side using a cotton candy rapier up against an opponent with a dried pasta broadsword. We know what needs to be done, but because the plans are etched in stone, the only thing I can hope for is natural erosion from a colossal series of storms which will render this costume jewelry into the dust of history.

Just like most of the students at Chico State, the city fathers are acting like spoiled brats. There may be an Ewokian chance for us to change this. Butte County Area Governments (BCAG) has announced its series of Unmet Transit Needs meetings for the year. There will be two meetings at Chico City Hall, first at October 2 from 4 to 6 pm, and then on October 25 at 9 am.

There will also be an Oroville meeting on October 3 from 4 to 6 pm at the Oroville Council Chambers. I will attend the Paradise meeting on October 12, also from 4 to 6 pm, at the Paradise Senior Center. The people at BCAG seem at least willing to listen, and if we can get enough bus riders to these meetings, maybe like the Ewoks against the Empire, we can get these city fathers to see the error of their ways.

It is true. I do not want to get rained on at the Transit Center this winter.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 10:09 PM | | Comments (0)

September 21, 2007

I always feel like somebody's watching me, part two

With today's technology the government can monitor our e-mail and eventually all computerized documents without ever needing a search warrant. All individual e-mails can be screened and neither the sender nor receiver will know. This all could be done legally.

The other day, when I set up a client's Internet browser to receive AT&T/Yahoo e-mail, my client worried about losing recent e-mails. When I accessed my client's page, there was a mirror image of all the recent messages that person received over the last several months, fully accessible on Yahoo's home servers.

I first noticed this practice when setting up a Google Gmail account. Creating the account was much easier than I expected, and in the process, I found that Google saves all e-mails on its servers, which the account holder can read by signing in. Unlike older services, such as Juno, which downloads one's e-mails to his or her own computer, Google advertises this service as being accessible from any location.

n addition to Gmail, Google offers a series of free applications to do word processing, spreadsheets and CAD-like drawings. All that has to be done is access the Web-based programs on Google's servers. Some of its new applications are in Beta right now, which means that when the suite is fully functional, I expect there will be a full-court advertising blitz promoting the advantages of Web-based programs. To compete with established suites in general circulation today, these programs will have to be just as good as the programs with which millions of Americans are familiar.

With all that free server space available, which increases by the minute, why should you ever have to worry about losing your e-mail? You won't, but individual account holders will not be the only people with access to their mail, documents, pictures and spreadsheets saved on these servers.

All Google, Yahoo or any Internet-based service has to do under present technology is make one mirror copy of their servers and send it to the appropriate federal agency. The mirror could then be analyzed by supercomputers, and anything deemed questionable would be looked into further.

All of this could be done without a warrant ever needing to be issued to an individual account holder. As computers become easier to use and more powerful, and fast broad-band connections become available to most people, Web-based programs will become too attractive to overlook. Overseers will be able to inspect whatever the account holder saves to the Web and determine its efficacy. In the name of public safety, nary a constitutional challenge will exist.

The pieces for this are already in place. The silicon server will be tomorrow's security video camera. Just as speeders are photographed at intersections today, speed typists will be captured in a silicon tomorrow. And there will be no escape.

This op-ed was web posted in the Juneau Empire on July 23, 2007

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 01:52 PM | | Comments (0)

September 20, 2007

I always feel like somebody's watching me

Yesterday a disturbing e-mail crossed my silicon from the Washington Post concerning China Security and Surveillance Technology, a corporation in China that will soon become part of the New York Stock Exchange. Today is my birthday in China, so I ran the firm's name in the index of China Daily, and came up with four pages of articles.

The notion of electronic surveillance and surveillance on the Internet has been launched as a formal campaign of the Chinese government. Referred to as the Beiging Internet Police, a cartoon pair of police in a stylized car will have the mission to be on the watch for websites that incite secession, promote superstition, gambling and fraud.

'"It is our duty to wipe out information that does public harm and disrupts social order," Zhao Hongzhi, deputy chief of the bureau's Internet surveillance center, said.”

There is a report that there are at least 265,000 surveillance cameras in Beiging alone. China Daily reports that “from recent reports, many cities in China have established extensive surveillance systems with the help of the latest technology including the Internet and satellite.”

Great Britain has asked China to develop technology; “hidden in lapels and hats, miniature cameras would allow spotters in the crowd to beam live pictures from inside the stadium back to a control room where the images could be scanned in real-time for troublemakers and hooligans.”

In addition, Israel investors will have the opportunity to buy into a Chinese firm “Mate Intelligent Video, a company that develops and sells video surveillance, content analysis and transmission, as well as management products for security, safety and retail applications,” China Daily reported in its business section.

It sure appears that electronic surveillance is big business in China, and soon Americans will be able to make a buck in this racket with the apparent blessings of our government, according to Harold Meyerson, an op-ed columnist for the Washington Post in his piece China's Hot Stock: Orwell Inc. That just scares the living frijoles out of me.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 06:06 PM | | Comments (0)

September 17, 2007

What do we see with immigration, part two

Over two years ago I published the notion that if all the 12 million illegal immigrants were rich, we wouldn't have any problem here. But since we deal with the poor, we would rather that they be sent home to die rather than live in this country.

I watched an episode of Hotel Babylon on BBC America where they dealt with illegal immigrants as predators would deal with a herd. The immigration officers act as the predator, touring the hotel looking for unlucky individuals that couldn't be hid by the hotel staff. Once they found one, they pounced quickly, taking their prize away to satiate for a moment the souls of those they served.

The 12 million people we are being focused on in this country of course are the poor of other countries. We are being shown them as invaders, as individuals that threaten the group. We send out our ICE predators who locate them, scoop them up and take them away. After the individuals are relocated across our border, we have no concern for their welfare. If they get dead after we leave them, we don't care.

Our government, though, is using their existence to beat the drum for fear. After all if poor people could sneak into our country, so could some terrorist. We need better identification for all citizens, with dossiers available to any law enforcement agent that needs it for whatever reason.

These 12 million people are for us what the Jewish and Eastern European people were to Nazi Germany. It is a lot easier to focus on people who have no power or constitutional rights because they are illegal aliens rather than focus seriously on the disintegrating middle class of the United States. Maybe we can deal with the aliens before we can fix our atrocious economy.

In a conversation with a bus driver, I discovered the depth of hatred for the poor. He said we have enough poor people of our own rather than deal with the poor of another country. But just like our government used welfare reform to flood the market with unskilled people, thus driving and keeping down the cost of labor, so are these illegal immigrants.

Cheap labor means more profit for those in control. As long as we see the alien caricatures, we don't see our economy vanishing. If we do see the dollars disappear, we can blame them for the theft. Our law enforcement officials get and deport a few of them, and our souls are sated.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 03:39 PM | | Comments (0)

September 16, 2007

What do we see with immigration, part one

One of the e-mail subjects I get regularly concerns immigration, and the divisiveness of these arguments rattles the nails that hold me together. The basic question I have here is why in a country with a population of 300 million people why is so much of our attention focused on 12 million people?

For example, what do we call them. One side wants them labeled as illegal aliens, while the other wants them called illegal immigrants. This focus on the term is more important than it would first appear because what the backstory is behind the term determines what people see when they focus on these individuals.

There is more to this debate than what we here from Lou Dobbs and Thom Hartmann. While coming into this country without proper papers is illegal, what is the underlying reason that this debate is so vicious? And while the answer here seems obvious – money -- there is more to this than the obvious.

That is what I will focus on over the next few days.
.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 10:46 AM | | Comments (2)

September 14, 2007

Is Benjamin Franklin relevant to today

With all the controversy that besets our republic today, it might be good to have a look at the words of one of our founding fathers, a man whose image is on our currency even though he never was a president of the United States. An imaginative, intense, and intellectual man, he is one of the best known and loved American icons.

Back in the day, when I was a student at Hayward High School, I read The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin as one of the many books I checked out of the school library, a modern variation of one of his conceptions, the public library. I sucked down his words as a mental vacuum cleaner and his notions became a subconscious template for how I lived through my adulthood.

Looking at the book today, I can look at it from a baby boomer's eyes and experience. Franklin etched his feather pen to parchment. and wrote a treatise which is an excellent study in human nature.

Franklin was imaginative. intense, and intellectual, a combination that I've discovered threatens many people. Having begun his book before the American Revolution, he had no idea that he would become a historical icon. He thus wrote this tome in order to put his thoughts down on the record, and control how other people saw him.

The people he chose to illustrate were tragic foils who saw Franklin as someone to use. He didn't seem to have great people skills, so he tried to buy friends when he was younger because as a bookworm he sucked down the writings of others and his contemporaries found him unapproachable. Today Franklin would be described as a nerd.

What his book does not show is the abuse his foils heaped on Franklin. The pain he lived through is evident in the illustrations he chose to highlight, and without bragging, he penned a picture of a man that overcame the evil he encountered in society.

We as readers in the 21st century have a man who faced down that evil and accomplished what he needed to do. His is an inspirational tale, a basic human study that people today can use.


Posted by Gary D. Brune at 10:59 AM | | Comments (0)

September 12, 2007

China Daily; report on lead paint summit

In checking this morning's China Daily, there is a story about a US-China summit on consumer product safety. "China promises lead-free toy export to US Updated: 2007-09-12 10:44" One of their primary agenda items concerns lead paint in toys. The official news agencies report;

'The absence of such an understanding allowed paint suppliers to provide lead paint to companies making toys sold by Mattel Inc and other companies, said Wei Chuanzhong, vice minister of China's General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). Lead paint has been banned on toys made in the US since 1978.

'"That's why we decided we should intensify the exchanges between importers and exporters in the field of standards," Wei said.

“Nancy Nord, acting chairman of the US Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), said two days of talks with her Chinese counterpart indicated China was serious about helping keep unsafe products off the market.”

Nord said "We are working very hard to assure that the marketplace is safe."

All this is happening while the United States Senate is holding hearings in Washington DC on toy safety. Everybody here is concerned because of the recalls Mattel was recently forced to make on their products.

The attention all this has garnered has focused consumer attention on products made in China. I purchased media related toys made in China at several fast food restaurants. They are mostly made of plastic, and have many small parts. There has been no concern about these products.

One of the comments posted with the China Daily story shows how Chinese people look at this. The commenter, going by the name of Painter, writes;

“Each barbie doll uses about three table-spoon of paint to finish two coats. How much money is saved using lead-based paint as opposed to lead-free paint? I guess only a few cents if any. All the efforts, design and labour gone into making this $15 (USD) toy is ruined by greed and incompetence AT THE FACTORY.

"Don't blame on lack of understanding. The entrepreneurs who operate these factories know more than you think.”

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 09:18 AM | | Comments (0)

September 07, 2007

Social pressure to conform, Conclusion

Conformity is the tyranny of the majority.

Towards that end, when I have watched herd animals on the nature channels, any member of the herd that could not keep up was left to fend for themselves. Since there is security in the herd, when they leave individuals out, those beings usually end up being prey for predators.

Even though it is likely that 4,000 soldiers will have died in Iraq by the end of the year, on a campus with a student body of over 15,000 young people, that does not matter. There are obviously homeless people using Butte County streets to sleep, but in a county of over 100,000 people, their plight is of no concern to the majority. Even though the American Diabetic Society estimates that there are 20 million diabetics, in a nation of 300 million, they do not matter.

One of the things that being part of the herd insulates it members from is the need for mercy. It is a lot easier to leave those who stand out to be targeted by society's predators. After all, their victimization means that the herd is safe, and its members will live another day.

As I walk about on the Chico State quad, and hundreds of young people zip by me, it feels that there is more import for me to stay out of their way than for them to notice me. This college is a highly conformist society, as I have observed both in the English and Journalism department. It is much easier for the professors to cull me out of the herd and leave me to fend for myself than deal with the concerns of a re-entry student.

This makes me a stronger person, but that is not what I want. There are times when I become tired of being a solo man, that I would like to be part of the herd. All I can do is the best I can, but that doesn't matter to the herd. It is more important that their members be safe.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 02:20 AM | | Comments (0)

September 05, 2007

Veteran American flag hand salute stalled in House of Representatives

There is a bill in the works in Congress that veterans will be very interested in. Senate Bill 1877, introduced by Oklahoma Senator James Inholfe on July 25, will prescribe that veterans in or out of uniform will present a hand salute to the American Flag during its hoisting, lowering, or passing.

At the present time, Title 4 of the United States Code reads that most citizens shall remove their hats and place their hand over their heart at the flag passes by, is hoisted or lowered.

According to the Library of Congress website this bill passed in the Senate on the same day Senator Inholfe introduced it. As of August 10, it was referred to the House Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties, which is part of the House Judiciary Committee.

Since no further action on this bill has been scheduled up to this date, a letter or dispatch to Representative Wally Herger might be useful. His web page is www.house.gov/herger, and I have just sent out a dispatch encouraging him to support the bill. Obviously I can use your help with this campaign.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 03:35 PM | | Comments (4)

Social pressure to conform, Part four

There is one thing I like about living in Butte County, particularly its microcosm here in Chico State. This is the first community where wearing a coat and tie would make me look different.

As I walk through the quad, the uniform of the day in this hot weather is a tee shirt and shorts, for men. A dress outfit is a polo shirt and long blue jeans. I've note a handful of men who wear a collared button-down shirt.

The fashions for women reflect what my mother told me many times, in that a woman is entitled to change her mind. That reminds me of the advertising slogan “A mind is a terrible thing to waste”. That leads me to Mr. Spock's question in Star Trek IV. When Captain Kirk mentions that he might change his mind, Spock asks “Is there something wrong with the one I have?”

Part of this uniform I see is what it seems to say about the wearer -- “I don't care about how I look. Back in the day when I was a wee one, we wouldn't be allowed to go out in public with these clothes, including trousers ripped or in tatters. In high school, my mother went off on me when I came home with a hole in the knee of my pants because I tripped over a curb.

This current uniform reflects a lack of pride, an emotion that may have purge out of the younger generation as they spent so much time in front of soulless silicon that they have lost what it means to be a human being. The computer focuses their mind much more on the task at hand. Focusing on the doing has the effect of denying attention to the being

More about this tomorrow as I conclude this series.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 02:38 PM | | Comments (0)

Butte bus riders will have problem with new transit center, Part two

In this morning's dispatches was one from Chico Capital Projects, which is supervising construction of the new transit center on Second Street between Salem and Normal. According to Jeff Jukkola, the professional engineer who overlooks the project, the county buses that park on these side streets will be afforded no protection for their passengers.

Jukkola pointed out that this project has been in the works for eight years, well before Chico Area Transit Service was unified with Butte County Transit. At that time the county buses parked by the park on First Street. It was only after all the bus services were unified by Butte County Area Governments that the county buses that go to Oroville and Paradise were moved to their present parking slots on Salem and Normal.

As of last Wednesday, plans were changed so that benches would be set up for county passengers. To do more will require a major commitment of money and resources from the city of Chico. Jukkola estimates that the two satellite buildings would require absorbing seven more parking spaces, and an estimated cost of $135,000. The satellite structures would take another month to build.

Not only have the plans been changed for benches, but in the original blueprints there was a ticket office where passengers could paper tickets. That became obsolete on August 27 when B-Line put electronic fare boxes in all their buses. The current structure will have solar panels on the roof which will provide electricity for the lights of the center and the parking lot.

As of now there is no indication from the city of how they feel about this oversight. There will be more posted here when they respond.

Posted by Gary D. Brune at 01:54 PM | | Comments (0)