“Extrajudicial Killings

Open Thread December 1 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 5:58 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Dec 012025

Yesterday, I saw Virgil. Snow had been predicted for the day, but the prediction changed the day before to just cloudy all day with a high expected of 29°F (I think that’s about -2°C but I did the math in my head, so feel free to correct me if it’s wrong.) The sun was visible in Pueblo, but frankly it wasn’t much warmer if at all, and prison visiting rooms in CO are always beyond chilly. Not that that stopped us from having fun with cribbage. Virgil had the best hand of the day – a triple run of 3 (15 points), and one of the other two card made 15 with the card there were 3 of, so that was 6 more points for a total of 21. It’s tough to beat that, though of course it is possible (just not today.) The drive was pretty easy both ways – a good thing since I had only about 3 hours of sleep Saturday night. Don’t expect me to reply to comments early today. Upon return, my inbox was full of mail, but mostly cyber Monday stuff. Move On is starting to plan for a third No Kings event next year, but it’s in the planning stage – no date has been announced. I did find one article and one video which struck me as noteworthy.

I was going to start this take with “Speaking as a veteran” – but I realized that I’m really not sure whether I’m speaking as a veteran, or just as a decent human being who has priorities. Either way, I want to point out that most people (including all decent people) grasp that active duty military and veterans deserve our respect because they are willing to risk their lives for their country (which is also our country.) And if that is so, how much respect do we owe to Afghans who have not just been willing to, but actually risked their lives – for their country in the long run, but by aiding our country in the short run? I have read letters and articles written by American military who were the recipients of aid from Afghans. These letters/articles are always passionate; they are filled with examples of things these Afghans have done to help or save the writers, and they have usually been written at times when the US government have been (at best) slow walking giving them aid, giving them admission here, or some other thing which they have, in fact if maybe not on paper, earned. These letters and articles have made me passionate too. To accept assistance from someone who is putting their life on the line to keep our troops from being massacred, because they believe in us – then throwing them under the bus- is something a decent person would not do to an animal, let alone another human being. No, Afghans who have helped us are not all perfect – they are human – and humans are not perfect – but punishing all of them for the bad actions of one is disgraceful. It is inhuman. And it is un-American.

This is the video. It’s under a half hour. Joyce’s experience is mostly in DOJ (when we had one) while Ryan knows more about war crimes and international law. Both are IMO easy to listen to.

Open Thread November 6 2025

Posted by Joanne Dixon at 6:04 am Open Thread, Personal, Politics

Nov 062025

Yesterday, Andy Borowitz had Adam Kinzinger on his show (not for the first time. The full show is only for paid subscribers, but Andy did reveal that Adam has been working on a documentary (with Meidas Touch) called “The Last Republican”, and it’s available now to stream on Apple TV, Amazon, Googleplay and YouTube, and others. I foresee more knitting in my future. Also yesterday, my inbox was very full, and so many of the emaiis were on the giddy side, that I had a bit of difficulty finding takes that were distinct. But that’s OK. We need and deserve a little giddy time.

This is about a half hour video with Joyce Vance and Steve Vladek concerning the murders being carried out by our military in the Caribbean and the Pacific (so far.) Both feel that this is a situation we should be hearing more about, and specifically more pushback from Congress on, even just for legal reasons without analyzing the moral issues. And yes, I realize that when people in their district are starving, that should be Congressfolks first priority. On the other hand, when the only Congressional voice pushing back belongs to Rand Paul, maybe not other Congressfolks’ only priority.

If you can’t spare a half an hour for Joyce Vance, you can read this instead. It’s an analysis of the case of the fellow who threw a sandwich at a Border Control agent (who are separate from ICE.) This is so unimportant that the fact of it going to trial at all is disproportionately important, which sounds like an oxymoron, but isn’t.

Huff Post discusses a concept which explains a lot about how Republicans can live with their cruelty. And I truly do think it can ensnare anyone. I have never told anyone before about this, and I won’t provide details, but I caught myself doing this once when I was about 11 or 12 – and it shamed me so tha I vowed never to do it again. But of course narcissists and Republicans have no shame – and no introspective ability -so it’s not surprising they can and do keep using it. It’s called “violent innocence.” I don’t know how or even if knowing about it can help to combat it in others, although it’s probably useful to combat the tendency in oneself, although at our ages we have probably already done that.

PHP is a programming language used to build websites. We have it at all through our hosting partner, BlueHost. In order to update it, we have to go through Bluehost. During his life, TomCat was the only one who had access to our account there. I (JD) am now the only one. I have been to BlueHost and investigated updating our PHP to 8.3 or even to 8.1. I found instructions to do so - in fact, I found two conflicting sets of instructions. I went through one set of the steps and got the message that Our site could not handle 8.3, but that it had successfully updated to 8.1. I then went back here to see what it looked like. But I couldn't get in - either as an administrator or as a reader. It was just gone. I had to reach BlueHost by phone. It was determined that Politics Plus is in fact not compatible with any version of PHP newer than the one we have. BlueHost therefore uninstalled it for me, and the site came back to normal. Of course, like everyone else, I care about security. But I also am aware that TomCat elected to use different providers for several of the services that BlueHost provides, for instance backups. We are backed up daily - but not by BlueHost. However, out PHP is through Bluehost. I feel that if they are not worried about the older version, I am not going to worry about it. I believe that our security here is all or mostly through WordFence, whom I trust.