President Bush was “moved” by the photos of flag-draped coffins today. Yeah, right. That means that either this is the first time he was made aware that fallen American soldiers were being brought home, or he was lying so that he would look good politically. The latter, of course, is the correct answer–just as fake and dishonest as the administration’s claim that their policy of not releasing photos of the flag-draped coffins is to protect the privacy of the families. What a pathetic lie. Look at the photos. Can you identify any soldier, any family? Of course not. In refusing to attend the funeral of one American soldier, and in trying to hide the fact that these men and women of honor are returning home having made the ultimate sacrifice for their country, Bush is doing them the greatest dishonor. And he has the unmitigated gall to try to claim it’s all for the families’ sake.

Here’s how much he honors the soldiers: though he has not attended the funeral of one American soldier, he did attend the funeral of an Australian soldier, a Sergeant Andrew Russell, last October–but the widow of the soldier, Kylie Russell, was not invited to the funeral. Can you even imagine that? Not inviting the widow??

That’s how much he is moved for the families of the fallen soldiers. Many families of the soldiers are protesting Bush and his policy of cover-up, not the people responsible for leaking the photos.

Well, the Bush administration kept up its policy of total retribution against anyone who dares to do something they don’t approve of. The woman who released the photos, Tami Silicio, who works for a military contractor, was immediately sacked. That might be seen as simply taking action against someone who broke the rules. But they didn’t stop there. They made sure that her husband was fired as well, despite the fact that he had nothing to do with it. That’s right–if you screw with the Bush administration, they don’t just go after you, they after your whole family. Ambassador Joseph Wilson can attest to that–they outed his wife as a CIA operative, if you’ll recall, because Wilson had the temerity to point out that Bush lied to the American people.

The bag men for Bush this time was the Maytag Aircraft Corporation, part of the Mercury Air Group. I could find no direct information on Maytag, but here is a page to contact Mercury (or you can call them at 1-310-827-2737–ask to talk to William Silva), and here is contact information for your Congressperson. Send them a note and let them know what you think of all this.

I am currently experimenting with various methods of getting spammed. In the computer class I teach, I try to give advice about how to avoid getting spam at your email address. The advice I give includes seven basic rules:

1. Never respond to a spam email
2. Do not publish your email address on any web page, BBS/Forums or chat
3. Do not use your main email address to sign up for anything; use a throwaway account
4. Whenever you give your email address, even to family and friends,
   stress that they must never sign you up for anything, or distribute
   your email address to anyone without your permission, especially to any
   commercial enterprise
5. When choosing a hotmail or yahoo address, don’t choose a short name (to avoid dictionary spam)
6. Do not use the “opt-out” link in any email you receive
7. Turn off HTML graphics in your email (they will notify the spammer that you’re viewing their email)

In order to get an idea how dangerous each of these spam-catching methods are, I decided to create some throwaway accounts and try to see how much spam I could receive. I would use each throwaway email address in a unique situation, so it would be clear which method had garnered the junk mail.

#1 I will try after establishing a junk mail stream at one of the new accounts.

#2 I decided to try by putting another throwaway email address–made invisible by matching the font color with the background color–onto the main page of my blog site. Within a few days I started getting junk mail at that address.

#3 I have not gotten around to, but #4 I suffered from already when a cousin in Spain, without my permission or knowledge, signed me up for an ancestry site, clearly highly commercial. Within weeks my spam multiplied incredibly. I also have two or three throwaway addresses I use to sign up for stuff, and they get their share of spam nowadays.

#5 I had already suffered from–I had chosen a 6-letter Yahoo email ID, and immediately received about 60 emails per day right from the beginning.

And then there’s #6, the opt-out. About four or five years ago–some months after my cousin signed me up for that spam-rich ‘service’–I made the mistake of trying to opt out from the spam–and noted a few weeks later that my spam multiplied again.

Of course, the opt-out is most likely a trick. Spammers usually do not know if the email addresses they have are genuine; the majority are usually dead or non-existent accounts. So to get you to tell them that (a) your account is active, and even better, (b) you read your junk mail, they use tactics like the opt-out to make you expose those facts. Just like with the HTML graphics (#7), the opt-out will sound alarms that they have a live one, and more spam will likely be forthcoming, not less.

My current attempt to make them show their colors is not generating any spam yet, but it has only been a week. I searched my spam, and found various opt-out links. One of the first things I noticed was the URL that the link varied from email to email. Many of them were generic URLs that led to an opt-out page everyone would share. However, some of the opt-out links in the email I looked at had URLs that included codes–for example:

http://bilkytrpnpyh@yw21ut6.com/byebye.html

I have changed some of the specific letters and numbers in there to avoid the spammer recognizing it, but you can see the concept. See the letters preceding the @ sign? That’s a code which identifies you. If you click on that link, they will know which email account the spam was sent to, no matter which address you type on their opt-out page. Not wanting to trigger even more spam at my actual email address, I decided only to use opt-outs that were generic. I’ve signed on to 26 different opt-put programs so far, and no spam has come back from them yet–though it has only been a week so far.

Another thing I noticed from skimming through the spam was the creativity in telling you that you can opt out. Most spam uses a unique message to tell you how to get off their lists. This is part of their attempt to evade your email’s spam filter. If everyone used “To opt out, click here,” for example, then the spam filters could zap every spam that comes along. So they want to avoid using recognizable text strings. Here’s a list of many of the messages in the spam I got:

c1ick here – T0 0PT 0UT
click here if you would not like to receive future mailings.
cross my name off
Discon
D-I-S-C-O-N-T-I-N-U-E
Don’t want anymore
Don’t you like it?
Future reference options:
GetOffTheList
I don’t like emails.
I don’t need this
I don’t think so
I want to say adios
If you do not w.ish to recei.ve these offers in the futu.re, rm You.rself
If you do not want to receive further mailings from —-, unsubscribe by sending an email
If you do not want to receive, please use this link
If you do not wish to receive e-mails from us in the future, Click here to unsubscribe.
no chance
NO MAILZ
No moore
No more ads
no more email’z
No More Please
No Thanks
No Thanks, Opt Me Out
Not interested? Please surf here
Please don’t ask me again
press to stop receiving
pwzleduasese remove y{ouxrsel&f, if yo4iu would li(ke to disc”ontinue further mailing
rem ve
Remove here:
remove me
rmv
Subtract yourself here please
T o b e rem ov ed cl ic k he re
Take off
This isn’t for me
To be nullified from our promotion efforts, based upon, this list please proceed forward to the following HTML based removal applicaiton for email.
to be removed click here
To be removed from further emails send email to
To modify your future contact options, please reference here
To stop future advertisement click here
ToRemoveClickHere
Unsub
We will immediatly discontinue offers… just see address below and you will not see us ever again.
You may take yourself off the l.ist he.re

Also note that some of these contain words that are broken up by spaces, hyphens, or junk characters, or replace letters with simi1@r-100king numbers or symbols.

Many have even taken the image route–not including any text at all, but instead just an image with their message on it. Most use the HTML graphics route, which has the dual advantage of getting around some spam filters as well as identifying who is reading their junk mail.

Spam really is an involved business, and I have only scratched the surface here.

I have often wondered in amazement as to how Bush, in the light of several months of scandal, lies, lawbreaking and bad news in general, has been able to hold steady in the polls over time. Part of it, of course, is his base constituency, but I also think a great deal of it has to do with the old saying, “you can fool some of the people some of the time”–although, more accurately in this case, that should read, “you can fool some of the people all of the time.”

How so? Remember when the poll was taken saying that 69% of the American people believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks? Well, even after Bush came out and denied that publicly, he and others in his administration have persisted in tying pre-war Iraq with terrorism, and the lies have worked. Despite there being absolutely no evidence whatsoever to support the concept, fully 57% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein gave “substantial support” to al Qaeda. While not the exact same position as the previous poll, it is very close, so much so as to be virtually the same. Bush’s campaign of lying to make people see a tie between Hussein and 9/11 has been so effective that Bush can come out and say there was no tie, and yet he can still make more than half of the American people believe it.

Further numbers from the survey: 45% think that there is “clear evidence” Hussein worked with al Qaeda, and 60% believed that Hussein either had WMD or had a “major program for developing them.” All of these beliefs fly directly in the face of known fact.

And so Bush remains steady at 50% in the polls. Even if Bush’s base is as low as 30%, I guess this is evidence that he can so completely fool at least another 20% into believing things that are so obviously false. The only question remains, what is the reason these 20% of the people believe such clear falsehoods? Fear? Blind patriotism? Stupidity? Possibly a combination of those three, and some others to boot. That people would choose to accept such an openly corrupt president for these reasons is reason for dismay, to say the least.

Heads-up credit to Mark at VuDeja on the fact that Michael Moore’s new film, Fahrenheit 911 (“The Temperature at which Freedom Burns”) will be premiering at the Cannes Film Festival in May this year. I had already heard that the film would be ready to show sometime soon from Moore’s recent article on Bush’s press conference. In that article dated April 14th, he mentioned that he had to finish the film in four weeks–it is possible that he knew that Cannes was possible a week in advance. The IMDB lists Moore’s film as having its general release in September, which jibes with Moore’s earlier statements that the film would be released a few months before the election.

About the honor of being featured again at Cannes–a rare privilege for documentary films–Moore remarks, “I am deeply honored by this announcement, considering it comes from our mortal enemy, the French.” Moore had been pretty quiet in the past several months because he has been working solidly on the new film.

The Cannes site lists the film’s running time: 1 hour and 50 minutes. Moore is reportedly preparing his next film, Sicko, a film about the American Health Care system.

Well, the Winter semester has ended where I teach, and that means another new year at the school. Our attendance has been down a bit since 9/11–our school prepares Japanese youngsters of college age to go to institutions of higher education in the U.S. and elsewhere (though many take our own Associate of the Arts degree program here in Japan before moving on), and since the terrorism scare, and then the build-up to the Iraq war, more people have been a bit more nervous about studying abroad. However, that appears to be turning around, as our numbers are growing again–as you can see a bit in the photo above, about 600 new students entering this Spring.

So we had our annual entrance ceremony, which is always fun–meeting the new students and their parents, getting to know some of the people we’ll be spending a lot of time with in the next year and two. Also, we hold these events at nice hotels (this year at the ANA Hotel, last year at the Century Hyatt), where the halls are nice and the food excellent–see the chef carving the roast beef at right, and one small example of the pastries below.

There was also entertainment; some from the outside, like a marching band, a professional bagpipe player, a magician, and a string quartet–and from students, including a violin duet (two young ladies who styled themselves “The Violin Vixens”), a choir singing an original composition, and a pair of dancers. That along with the requisite speeches and presentations of awards to last year’s students.

All in all, quite a big and impressive bash. If you’d like to see more photographs, you can visit a small gallery of photos from the event.

An elderly woman made an impromptu dance for the Violin Vixens

Yum…

This time it’s in the form of air time. Yes, Bush enjoys the advantages of incumbency, which also means that he gets to make important announcements, have White House press conferences and the like. But according to the Washington Post, it is becoming clear that even minor Bush administration events and interviews are being given far more air time than major Kerry events.

“When President Bush delivered a routine stump speech to a group of New Mexico homeowners on March 26, CNN and Fox News each carried his appearance for 35 minutes, and MSNBC for 33 minutes.

When John Kerry gave what was billed as a major address on national security at George Washington University on March 17, he was knocked off the screen by a large explosion in Baghdad. CNN and Fox each dropped Kerry (who had been reduced to small box) after three minutes, and MSNBC never picked him up. But as the Iraq coverage continued, all three networks carried Vice President Cheney in California attacking Kerry as weak on national security — Fox for 28 minutes, MSNBC for 23 and CNN for 13.”

The networks claim that it’s because the president has a greater effect on world politics, that he speaks for the country, Kerry isn’t out there saying very much, yadda yadda yadda–read the article. But the example above makes it clear: the vice president delivering a political attack on Kerry warranted more air time than Kerry making an address on national security. No excuse can explain that away.

An alert listener to the Randi Rhodes show caught George Tenet in a lie. During his testimony, Tenet claimed that Bush could not have gotten the information about Moussaoui, arrested by the FBI on August 16th, because he did not see Bush in time. Previously, there was the claim that the Moussaoui information had not been distributed at high levels, but when the CIA report entitled “Islamic Extremist Learns to Fly” came to the attention of the 9/11 commission and the public, it was a wee bit hard to deny. Still, Tenet tried to cover for Bush:

ROEMER: “And do you have the information at that point on Moussaoui?”

TENET: “Yes, I was briefed on Moussaoui in late August. . . . I believe it’s the 23rd or the 24th.”

. . . . .
ROEMER: “Would it have made any difference if you had mentioned — did you ever mention it, for instance, to the president?”

TENET: “I didn’t see the president. I was not in briefings with him during this time.”

ROEMER: “You didn’t see the president between August 6, 2001, and September 10th?”

TENET: “Well, no. Before — saw him after Labor Day, to be sure.”

ROEMER: “So you saw him September 4th — at the principals’ meeting?”

TENET: “It was not at the principals’ meeting.”

ROEMER: “OK I’m just confused. You see him on August 6th with the (President’s Daily Brief).”

TENET: “No, I do not, sir. I’m not there.”

ROEMER: “OK. You’re not — when do you see him in August?”

TENET: “I don’t believe I do.”

ROEMER: “You don’t see the president of the United States once in the month of August?”

TENET: “He’s in Texas, and I’m either here or on leave.”

ROEMER: “But you never get on the phone or in any kind of conference with him to talk at this level of high chatter and huge warnings during the spring and summer to talk to him through the whole month of August?”

TENET: “We talked to him directly throughout the spring and early summer almost every day.”

ROEMER: “But not in August?”

TENET: “In this time period, I’m not talking to him, no.”

Well, later it turns out that this was not entirely true–Tenet did meet Bush in August, but the CIA spokesman said it was OK, because “Tenet had, in fact, briefed Bush in Texas on August 17, but not about Moussaoui.” So Tenet did see Bush in Crawford, but a week before he found out about Moussaoui. Right?

Erm, well, not really. The alert Rhodes listener pointed to this page on the White House web site, an interview with Bush at Crawford on August 25th, in which Bush said:

Actually, you know, what we call the governor’s house, the place where you all came out during the — that’s where we went. Condi and Karen Hughes stayed there. And right across the street from that is a — it’s a nice looking government doublewide. (Laughter.) And that’s where the mil aide, the nurse, the WHCA head, the doc, they stay.

The CIA briefings, I have on our porch, the end of our porch looking out over the lake. When Tenet came up, that’s where we visited, out there.

You know, everybody wants to see the ranch, which I’m proud to show it off. So George Tenet and I — yesterday, we piled in the new nominees for the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the Vice Chairman and their wives and went right up the canyon. [emphasis mine]

Oops.

So, Hastert was screaming for Richard Clarke to be tried for perjury. How about Tenet?

Air America Radio (AAR) has been ordered back on the air in Chicago. AAR discovered that MultiCultural Radio Broadcasting, which owns the L.A. and Chicago stations, had been double-dipping–charging AAR for the lease on the station while simultaneously leasing it to someone else–and so stopped payment on its fees for the L.A. station until the matter could be cleared. MultiCultural, in retaliation, yanked AAR from the airwaves not just in L.A. but in Chicago as well, where AAR had continued payments. MultiCultural then released a press release claiming AAR’s check had bounced, which was untrue.

So a Chicago judge ordered them back on the air in Chicago, where they are now–but L.A. remains dark while the disagreement is ironed out; it should be back on the air soon, however.

This is a minor stumble in AAR’s first month of broadcasting. Right-wing critics, however, are already writing the network’s obituary, claiming that is is “hypocritical and desperate“–with no evidence to support either charge, naturally–and that its ratings stink–before the ratings are even out. They try to gloss over the fact that AAR, with practically no paid PR campaign before its opening, no big rollout except that they simply went on the air, is now one of the most-visited (top 50) web sites on the Internet, and has sent out 2 million audio streams over their RealNetworks connection in just one week. On opening day, they had as many as 50,000 connections going at one time. That made it the biggest ever news stream, save for special breaking news events. And that’s despite all the technical difficulties that they’ve been suffering in getting this going.

Soon they will be opening new radio broadcasts in San Francisco, Sacramento, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Santa Fe NM, Portland ME, and two new satellite networks. Those are just the latest additions, after Minneapolis, West Palm Beach, Riverside CA, Key West, and Plattsburgh/Burlington (NY/VT) were added in AAR’s first week.

This is really the only way liberal talk radio could come out in the U.S., so dominated the airwaves by conservative owners. For example, one of AAR’s top broadcasters is Randi Rhodes, the acerbic left-wing talk show host and Air Force veteran from southern Florida. Despite the fact that her show regularly got higher ratings than Rush Limbaugh in his home market, Clear Channel–the right-wing national network that broadcasts Rush Limbaugh and has been cutting Howard Stern off at the knees since he went liberal–refused to ever syndicate Rhodes despite her fantastic ratings in Florida.

When the first ratings come out, we’ll see how well the network is doing in its first infant steps. But the lies spread by right-wingers about AAR’s cash-flow problems are outright false–AAR has enough capital to operate for two years at least.

And remember, this station is still in its infancy. If you’ll recall, the Fox network as laughed off as a joke for a few years when it first started, for many of the same reasons AAR is being knocked for now. So the show is far from over–it’s just getting warmed up.

The first three Japanese hostages are back, but two more (a journalist and a “civic group activist,” whatever that is) have been taken, so I guess it’s back to work for the government. Meanwhile, opinions in Japan remain varied but low-key on the long-term impact of the SDF presence and Japanese hostages in Japan. One young woman commented, “Those three people were doing what they wanted, even though the Japanese government repeatedly warned that Iraq was too dangerous a place to go to. However, Koizumi was the one who sent the SDF in violation of the Constitution. I wonder what he would have done if those three had died. Their release is good news and a lucky break for Koizumi, even though he did not recall the SDF.”

Well, Koizumi is none too happy that two of the three released hostages want to go back to Iraq and continue their work. While the government got fairly good marks for how it handled the crisis, it remains vulnerable on the issue. Not too surprising, since most Japanese people–86%–will blame him for any deaths, whether they’re SDF or civilians. He commented on an advisory by Japan warning Japanese civilians to avoid travel to Iraq, reminding the former hostages how much work they put the government through to get them back. “It doesn’t matter how good their intentions are,” Koizumi complained. “After this ordeal and having had so many officials working without sleep or food to help them, they still talk that way. They should be aware of their actions.” One senior official, apparently on the condition of anonymity, remarked, “If they really hate to return to Japan, I want them to defect to Iraq. Since we’ve paid so much from the state coffers, I feel they should compensate us for it.” Which makes one wonder if indeed there was a payoff. It should be noted that mostly the anger towards these dedicated people comes from the government, which has the most to lose politically.

Meanwhile, Japan is slowly opening the gates for U.S. beef to be imported into Japan. The previous reopening of the market consisted of allowing U.S. beef to enter Japan only if each carcass is tested for Mad Cow disease–pretty fair, considering that all Japanese beef must undergo the same requirement. Even so, this has not mollified the U.S. government completely, as it recently prevented one cattle producer that wanted to test their cattle for export from carrying out those tests.

Yesterday, Japanese government announced that it is loosening the standards a little, allowing cows younger than 20 months to be imported without any testing. Considering that only one case of mad cow disease has been found in America, and that cow was raised in Canada, there is the possibility that Japan is being a bit strict. However, there remains the question why the U.S. government is so strong against testing. If they are taking that stance out of principle, then OK, but if they are trying to hide more possible cases of the disease, then there may be reason to worry.

So, you’re an American living in Japan, it’s past April 15th, and your taxes are still not ready? Well, don’t worry about it quite yet. You get an automatic 2-month extension from the IRS, until June 15th, to file your income taxes. And if you want to, you can file for another extension after that, and usually you get it–but June 15th is enough, and filing for an extension would actually be more trouble than it’s worth unless you have some unfortunate and bizarre situation going on there.

Since we all get the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion (FEIE), now at $80,000 per year, most of us unlucky enough not to earn more than that end up not paying anything in taxes to the U.S.–which is fair, because we have to pay full taxes here in Japan. But we have to file with the IRS anyway.

“But I don’t owe anything, and I paid taxes to Japan, so I don’t need to file.” Well, we all wish it were so. But alas, you have to file no matter what. In fact, you have to file to get the Foreign Earned Income Exclusion–if you don’t file, then technically you will have to pay complete U.S. taxes! So make sure you do file…

In order to file, you need Form 1040, Form 2555, a 2003 “gensen chusho” form (a small slip that documents your income and tax fess for the year) from your work, and the 2003 Annual Average Rate for the yen and dollar.

By the way, here’s a news flash: As of June this year, the IRS office at the Tokyo embassy will be shutting down permanently, which sucks big-time. The person at the office said the shut-down is to save money (money that Bush has spent on Halliburton or tax breaks for billionaires). They have always been there to answer phone calls, not to mention being there to help you in person if you have problems that can’t be handled by phone. So now if you need help, you have to pay international dialing rates and wait on hold for an hour and a half to talk to someone in Philadelphia who knows nothing about paying your taxes from Japan. Ah, Bush’s America.

But if you want help in the next two months, then call (03) 3224-5466; press “8” as soon as you hear talking in order to avoid the mind-numbing voice mail handling, and instead get switched directly to an “assistor.” If they’re busy or out to lunch, then you can leave a message and they’ll get back to you.

Anyway, I decided that this year I was going to explain how to get those forms done, because there is a bit of a confusing process to go through for this (it wouldn’t be taxes if it weren’t at least a little confusing), and I tend to forget how to do this from year to year. This explanation should help all you regular Americans living in Japan do your tax returns, although:

DISCLAIMER: I am not a professional tax preparer. I do not guarantee that any of the information or advice on this page is correct. If there are any errors which lead you to make errors, that is your responsibility.

In other words, I want to try to help you, not get sued by you. So follow my advice at your own risk. that said, here we go:

(see continuation)
Read more…

Bush Continues Unilateral Diplomacy. He seems to have a new strategy for creating peace in the Middle East: screw the Palestinians. After all, negotiations go so much more smoothly when only one side is there to deal with, don’t you think?

Bush has given his full approval to a new plan of Sharon’s that, while not exactly giving the hard-line Israelis everything they want, is far from satisfying for the Palestinians. It’s as if Bush realizes that he is so far from capable of delivering real peace to the Middle East that he has just given up trying and has gone full-force into backing Israel without even the pretense of placating the Palestinians.

And then there’s the the fact that Bush would like nothing more than to sway just enough Jewish voters to swing states like Florida his way. Can’t forget about that.

Kerry Debates Like Bush Never Would. Can you imagine a GOP event where the crowd is anything but 100% gung-ho in conforming and mindlessly cheering Bush? Which is not so thoroughly controlled that only the most faithful of the faithful are allowed in the door? Democrats filter out the opposition protesters, too–but not the internal protesters like the GOP does.

Take it one step further: Imagine a Republican who disagrees with Bush stating his point loudly very close to Bush–and Bush decides to engage the person one-to-one in debate.

Okay, have you stopped giggling at such a ludicrous image yet?

Bush is not like that. He prefers scripted events, and we all know that on his own, unprepared, he would not be able to argue his way out of a paper sack. Kerry, on the other hand, is capable of such things.

I think it speaks volumes to the integrity within the party and to the honesty of the man himself when Kerry takes the concerns of a single individual seriously enough to debate him publicly, impromptu. The protester accused Kerry of supporting an imperialist war in Iraq despite Kerry having been an anti-war activist decades ago.

Kerry made his point by explaining that we can’t just abandon Iraq; now that Bush has gotten us into this, we have to engage ourselves to make sure things run right. Like a father who finds that his kid has thrown paintballs at passing cars, we can’t just leave–we have to help clean up the mess, and then take junior home and spank him (my analogy, not Kerry’s).

However, simply the fact that the guy could get in, and that Kerry met him in debate, is remarkable–I guarantee that you will never see anything so unscripted on the Bush campaign trail.

Yet Another Case of Republicans Using Secrets as Weapons. Just like Bush and Cheney’s people decided to expose Valerie Plame’s undercover status as vindictive retribution against her husband Ambassador Joseph Wilson for daring to show up Bush as a liar, or the GOP’s intent to declassify selective documents in an attempt to smear Richard Clarke for doing the same thing…

Now John Ashcroft has unilaterally decided to declassify secret FBI memo written by Gorelick in 1995, and the GOP, clearly prepared for this in advance, is howling for Gorelick to resign from the committee (leaving a Republican majority in addition to Republican chairmanship). Of course, there’s no need for her to resign–at worst, she would recuse herself from the relevant issues. But you know that won’t satisfy the bloodthirsty trolls.

Most disturbing here is the extreme willingness of right-wingers today to declassify anything that could help them smear an opponent, while at the same time screaming bloody murder even at the hint of declassifying anything that won’t help them politically, no matter how harmless the information may be. They currently have control over what gets declassified and what does not, and they have demonstrated an unswerving desire to use that politically.

This is patriotic? Please. This is–at the risk of sounding Coulterish–treason.

Air America Radio Off the Air in Chicago and L.A. This comes, not from a bounced check as Matt Drudge is claiming, but from a dispute between the L.A. station’s owner, Arthur Liu, and AAR about Liu’s alleged double-dipping for profit while AAR was paying for use of the station.

According to AAR’s general counsel, David Goodfriend, AAR was paying Liu for the L.A. station from early February, even though AAR did not start broadcasting from the end of March. (Has it only been a few weeks since AAR went on the air? Amazing…) During that time, while AAR was paying the bills, Liu sold time on the frequency to someone else at the same time–that’s the double-dipping charge.

In protest, AAR withheld a $1 million payment (no check bounced, sorry Matt) until Liu coughed up the money he made while AAR was paying for full use of the station. Liu decided to try to cut AAR off at the knees, and turned off their programming not only in Los Angeles, but in Chicago as well.

The matter will undoubtedly reach a court soon, and at least a provisional settlement made shortly.

Apple Computer Wins. Tripling of Profits with the iPod Well, I’ve got one. Why don’t you? It really is the best of what’s out there, IMHO.

I also think that Apple should take a much closer look at branching out farther in this direction, making other consumer-electronics items. Perhaps a home media-control center which can be used to control audio, video and whatever other media you have, as well as transfer data between them? Move the video off your computer and on to your TV, or the music between your iPod, computer, and stereo system. Or perhaps an Apple cell phone, which they’ve shied away from, but one built to work incredibly well with an Apple computer.

By the way, if you are interested in helping a switcher make the move to an Apple, come and help give information to Sako, who’s now looking at a new eMac.

How much ludicrous lying on the part of Bush & Co. is needed before people start getting tired of being taken for fools?

Remember how the Bush people insisted that they did not get notice that bin Laden was a big threat–and then we find out that Berger and Clarke warned them in the strongest possible terms? And then they claimed that they had no intel about how bin Laden might be using airplanes, and then we hear about the August 6th PDB that not only shows how Bush and Rice knew bin Laden was a huge threat, but that planes were mentioned as well?

Well, they’re still lying. In recent days, they’ve been downplaying how much of a threat bin Laden seemed to be, how he wasn’t really worthy of too much notice. Certainly Rice didn’t think he was a menace as she wasn’t going to include him in a major security address at John Hopkins on 9/11–and during her testimony, she played down the 8/6 PDB as a “historical document” (she must have been crazy to think we weren’t going to see that).

Guess what? New information has come out about the titles of other PDBs in April and May of that year. they include:

“Bin Laden planning multiple operations”
“Bin Laden network’s plans advancing”
“Bin Laden threats are real”

And that’s not including the oldie but goodie, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” For crying out loud, what else will we find out next? A September 1st memo entitled, “bin Laden planning to use jet liners to crash into WTC and Pentagon”? In complete honesty, it would not really surprise me much at this point.

I mean, come on. They knew far more than they needed to. They screwed up!

When asked by White House correspondent John King about the dismally small number of foreign troops and how calling them an “international coalition” is more fiction and window dressing than truth, Bush took a page out of the book using dead soldiers’ honor to protect himself: “I don’t think people ought to demean the contributions of our friends into Iraq.” Same thing he sometimes says when people claim his war in Iraq is not justified, how dare you suggest that those soldiers died in vain–something I first heard from Reagan about the marines in Lebanon and his blunder in sending them there.

Bush actually did take this line with the soldiers in Iraq as well, saying “One of the things that’s very important … is to never allow our youngsters to die in vain. And I made that pledge to their parents. Withdrawing from the battlefield of Iraq would be just that, and it’s not going to happen under my watch.” In saying so, tying the soldiers’ sacrifice to his own political agenda. As I’ve written before, this cowardly, slimy and opportunistic perversion of using the honor of those who have served and given their lives, just to protect a politician’s hide and further his agenda–it makes me physically ill.

Bush also likened what is happening in Iraq to what happened in Japan after WWII–he wondered what things would have been like if we had “blown the peace” with them, and not brought Japan back in line as a responsible world citizen. Of course, three problems there: first, Iraq now is not Japan then, the two are worlds apart and the on-the-ground situations in both places are hardly comparable; second, Japan was far more necessary to attack, far more a threat to world peace, than Iraq ever was; and third, Bush is currently helping Japanese right-wingers deconstruct the post-WWII nation that we built, tearing down one of the single most important postwar imperatives, that Japan’s military be oriented toward self-defense only.

Reporters tried to ask questions without Bush calling on them first; Bush smirked and said, “I’ve got some must-calls, I’m sorry.” It did not appear that Bush had any spontaneous calls during the press conference–as it was a year ago, he likely called only from his list this time again.

When asked about whether he waited too long to confront terrorism and went too quickly into Iraq, Bush again retreated to the “we weren’t on a war footing” excuse, that there was nothing we could do about al Qaeda before 9/11 changed the world–but on preemptively striking Iraq, Bush brought up Libya, which stands out as a phenomenal crock. He acted, as most conservatives do, as if Libya were intransigent and aggressive until Bush invaded Iraq, then their knees turned to jelly and they shot up the white flag in fear that Bush might catch them, too. What a pile of manure that is. Libya wanted to stop U.N. sanctions and get back into the international community, and he started with Clinton, long before Iraq was invaded. Libya offering up its paltry WMD program was simply them taking advantage of the Iraq war to make it look like they were taking giant strides to atone for past behavior and so win points that would help them out. But give up WMD because they feared Bush? That’s a joke, and a bad one. Libya knows just like everyone else that America is now over-extended and cannot just go romping into Northern Africa–and we weren’t even much on their case in terms of WMD. Bush’s claim is a lie and a scam, pure and simple.

Then he had the gall to bring up A. Q. Khan’s leaking of nuclear secrets to Iran and other countries as if that were a great example of us winning the war on terror. Beg pardon? We caught Pakistan doing this–far too late, unfortunately–and let them blame it all on one guy, and then we let them pardon the one guy. that’s a victory in the war on terror? No, it’s not–it’s another bad joke.

This is where Bush was asked about his greatest mistake, and Bush wormed around, trying to have it both ways–both admitting to having made mistakes, but not telling what any of them were. “I hope – I don’t want to sound like I have made no mistakes. I’m confident I have. I just haven’t – you just put me under the spot here, and maybe I’m not as quick on my feet as I should be in coming up with one.” Yeah. Sure. Amidst a list of things he went on about that he felt were not mistakes, Bush alluded to the WMD–and again justified his claims in any way he could, again bringing forth this Charlie Duelfer guy as if he were the final word in WMD, and the tired claims that somehow WMD were in there and the Iraqi people are still so terrified of Saddam Hussein that they just can’t bring themselves to tell us where they are. By the end of the question, Bush had turned his answer into one for a question about how evil Hussein was and how there really are WMD just waiting for us to find them.

In his answer to Ann Compton of ABC News about intelligence reform, Bush turned and pivoted until he was saying this:

I also have this belief, strong belief, that freedom is not this country’s gift to the world. Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in this world.

And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom. We have an obligation to help feed the hungry. I think the American people find it interesting that we’re providing food for the North Korea people who starve.

We have an obligation to lead the fight on AIDS, on Africa. And we have an obligation to work toward a more free world. That’s our obligation. That is what we have been called to do, as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, first, with this thing about God talking to him again, it may work with some but it’s starting to get a lot of people worried, those at least who heard the relatively suppressed news report that Bush once stated that God told him to invade Afghanistan and Iraq.

Then there’s the idea that Bush was responsible for feeding people in North Korea–that was a program started under Clinton that Republicans have attacked him for, as being too friendly and appeasing; Bush has let the North Korean situation degrade so far that a few days ago, North Korea publicly announced that Bush is “driving the military situation on the Korean peninsula to the brink of a nuclear war.” And AIDS in Africa is something that Bush promised but has not followed through on. How duplicitous can this guy be and still get away with it like he does?

Finally, he called on Don Gonyea of NPR, who asked Bush if he failed as a communicator, failed to make his case. To which, Bush said we’d have to wait to see what voters say in November–and then went straight into what was obviously a well-rehearsed ending statement to wrap things up. “I hope today you’ve got a sense of my conviction … the course this administration is taking will make America more secure and the world more free … It’s a conviction that’s deep in my soul.”

He even managed to take a swipe at Kerry, implying that a vote for him was one for leadership, and a vote for Kerry was one to shirk responsibility. Cute.

Two points I’d like to make. First: reporters are spineless. I remember a day when reporters used to respond to a president’s statement with the words, “But Mr. President,” and then take on the president about a misstatement or obvious obfuscation he’d made. Bush told a long string of whoppers here, and the reporters just let them slide by.

Second, the media analysis after the press conference. I had to ask myself if these people had really watched the same press conference I had. Everyone was glowing about how Bush handled himself so well, made his case so well on Iraq and national defense. My father put it in a more understandable light, pointing out that the bar has been set so low (Bush did call himself the master of lowered expectations), and Bush’s more outrageous lies were on things that won’t necessarily come back to bite him–for example, he could lie about North Korea, AIDS in Africa, the claims about details in WMD, or what exactly the 9/11 warnings were in terms of hijackings or using planes–that most of the public is not well enough versed to catch on to stuff like that. I agree to a point, but frankly, that’s supposed to be the job of the press–to inform people on such things–and it is clear that the mainstream press is just as content to stay at the same removed, uneducated level of analysis and criticism that most Americans seem to have nowadays.

That needs to change, and I would be just as happy if that changed at the start of a new Kerry administration–so long as it continues into the next Republican administration as well. But I’m not holding my breath.

Okay, Bush clearly was looking at and calling reporters from a list, right up until the end. However, the reporters he called on did not seem like the usual right-wing bevy, at least. And there were some tough questions.

One theme, found in many questions, was to see if Bush would take up the tone of Richard Clarke and apologize, take some responsibility for what happened, and admit to mistakes. Bush steadfastly refused to do so. He didn’t come right out and say “I’m not sorry for anything,” but he came close. When directly questioned on whether he’d made any mistakes, he said he was sure he’d made some, but none came to mind–“I’m sure that something will pop into my head,” he told correspondent John F. Robertson, in the pressure of the press conference.

It was amazingly clear how Bush wandered into and out of his scripted, practiced lines–he would be speaking eloquently one moment, but then seem flustered, lost and fumbling for words the next. It made those scripted parts sound as artificial as they really were.

He started off with some softballs, clearly lined up–question about comparing Iraq with Vietnam (“I think the analogy is false”), and for more troops to be sent (he put all the onus and responsibility on the shoulders of General Abizaid; “if that’s what he wants, that’s what he gets … If he wants to keep troops there to help, I’m more than willing to say, yes, General Abizaid”).

Terry Moran of ABC then asked about how Bush reconciles what we know today with his claims that “U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators with sweets and flowers; that Iraqi oil revenue would pay for most of the reconstruction; and that Iraq not only had weapons of mass destruction.” Bush’s first response–“He was a threat because he had used weapons of mass destruction on his own people. He was a threat because he coddled terrorists. He was a threat because he funded suiciders. He was a threat to the region. He was a threat to the United States”–was essentially a boiled-down list, the dry sediment of the many, many accusations that Bush has made before, but limited to the few precipitated accusations that can still even distantly be called true, knowing what we know today. Of course, they’re full of deception–we gave him the chemical weapons to use on his own people and Reagan did nothing about it at the time, as Hussein was our friend; the terrorists he “coddled” were few, and it is unclear if any of them were a real threat to us; and I have never heard any report that Hussein actually paid his promised bounty to the families of suicide bombers in Palestine. Saddam was not much of a threat to anybody at the time, much less the U.S.

Bush then went on about how Saddam refused to disarm–well, disarm what? This seems to be an extension or variation of Bush’s past claim that we wanted inspectors, but Saddam wouldn’t let them in–a Bush claim that was complete fiction. The best Bush could provide in the way of evidence was a guy named Charlie Duelfer, and how this guy found the Iraqis to have been deceptive in some vague way. Bush said that Duelfer “confirmed that Saddam had the ability to produce biological and chemical weapons.” A lie, of course–how did he confirm that? Even in front of a mass of reporters, Bush has the gall to make up fiction like that. We never confirmed that Hussein could do that, except in the broad sense that anyone with access to the Internet could whip up primitive chemical weapons like mustard gas in his garage.

The next question, from Elizabeth Bumiller of the New York Times, really put Bush into a tailspin. She asked, “do you feel any sense of personal responsibility for September 11th?”

Now, to understand how badly Bush fell apart at this time, you really have to see it for yourself. I’ll see if I can capture this part and put it up for view. Bush’s transcript goes like this:

Let me put that — quote to Woodward in context, because he had asked me if I was — something about killing bin Laden. That’s what the question was.

And I said, you know, compared to how I felt at the time, after the attack, I didn’t have that — and I also went on to say, my blood wasn’t boiling, I think is what the quote said.

I didn’t see — I mean, I didn’t have that great sense of outrage that I felt on September the 11th. I was, huh — on that day, I was angry and sad. Angry that — al-Qaida — I thought at the time al-Qaida, found out shortly thereafter it was al-Qaida — had unleashed this attack. Sad for those who lost their life.

Umm… Your question, do I feel — yes?

Bush then fell into an easier, though disengaged and choppy scripted mode, and wandered from topic to topic, of course never admitting to any responsibility, or to any error. But his overall response to this question was uncoordinated and flustered, to be generous. (Betcha they don’t play that back very often on TV.) He stuck in bits and pieces of stuff he’d obviously been primed to spit out at some point: the Patriot Act is an important change, we weren’t on a war footing, we were kind of stovepiped, there were gathering threats, we must do everything in our power to find these killers and bring them to justice before they hurt us again. Nothing in real response to the question, just hitting the highlights of his political agenda. The “war footing” idea he pounded home, 3 or 4 times in his speaking tonight, as an excuse as to why they didn’t successfully prevent 9/11.

His fumbling continued when David Gregory followed up on the previous questions, noting that Bush never admits a mistake. Bush hemmed and hawed, brought up “war footing” again, and, of course, did not admit to any mistakes. “But there was nobody in our government,” he pointed out, “that could envision flying airplanes into buildings on such a massive scale.” Well, no one there must have ever read Tom Clancy. It also avoids the point that Edwin Chen of the L.A. Times brought up next, that the reports did talk about hijacking–so why didn’t Bush or others do anything about airplane security? Bush first dissembled that the air threat mentioned was referring to the Genoa G8 Conference (where there were anti-aircraft batteries and Bush slept on an aircraft carrier to avoid airplane terrorism). This is wrong, because it refers to FBI information about hijackings in the U.S.

He also tried to slough off blame to the CIA, saying that Tenet was his information source, blaming the FBI, saying that their report made it seem like they were doing their job–after which, a Fox News reporter lobbed the softball that the FBI misreported the number of field investigations, to which Bush glommed on: “of course I expect to get valid information. I can’t make good decisions unless I get valid information.” In the previous question, Bush also parroted Rice’s “move heaven and earth” quote, if only they had been told exactly when, where and how the attack was going to take place. I’ve commented on that red herring before.

Bush then again sidestepped a question from John Roberts of CBS about whether he’d apologize, expressing sympathy, but claiming the responsibility was Osama bin Laden’s, and not the least bit his own. My own take on this is that bin Laden is like a mad dog–he’ll hurt you, of course, but the dogcatcher is responsible for getting him off the streets before he bites your children. If the dogcatcher is asleep on the job, he can’t go whining about how the dog was responsible for everything.

To be continued…

The conference is about to begin. One concern that has come up in my mind is how the press will or will not be played by the administration this time. If you will recall, in his last East Room press conference in March last year, the press was both controlled and beaten down–reporters were hand-picked, Bush Communications director Dan Bartlett knowing who would ask what and choosing only those that Bush wanted and expected; reporters that might ask hardballs were shuffled to the back of the room or left out altogether; no follow-up questions unless Bush granted them specifically… Here Bush comes, we’ll find out.

Bush starts off with a Bushism: “This has been tough weeks in that country.” Not a strong start, he already sounds like he’s having a tough time pronouncing words, and not just the foreign names.

One of his first points is to run down and besmirch al Sadr, the Muslim cleric who is our biggest (or at least most noted) thorn in Iraq at present. He talks about personally presenting purple hearts to wounded soldiers, and about the dead. “We will finish the work of the fallen.” Using the deaths of honorable soldiers to legitimize his cause again, I see.

He then directly attacks the need for more troops, and says he will send them–but quickly pirouettes back to the handover of power to the Iraqis, saying he will stick to his schedule, and continues on about how Iraq must be “independent, free, and secure.” This is a common tactic in his speech–when he addresses a difficult point, he spits it out quickly, then immediately pivots to another, more comfortable area where he can sound bold and patriotic.

He speaks of getting Fallujah back to order, wanting to put it back into the hands of Iraqi forces (because they will not go in until the fighting stops). But he also mentions the demand for the Iraqis to hand over those who mutilated the bodies of the four mercenaries; this might be a sticking point.

In talking about the handover of power, he actually invokes the U.N. presence, not to mention NATO–despite their incredibly limited role so far. He talks about bringing NATO into Iraq in stronger form, but how that will be accomplished is as yet unclear.

Ah. Here we go. This is where he drops the other shoe, letting people know that after the handover of power, we will continue to be there militarily–as I mentioned about his tactics, he steps away from that statement right quick–but he got it in there. I have long held that Bush would be in trouble trying to make people think that we’re leaving Iraq, while we will actually have a great many troops there for many, many years to come.

And now he is reaching his trembling-voice, solemn invocation of atrocities committed by our enemies. His “they’re such horrible, violent, unforgivable thugs we have no choice but to do this.” He talks about the hostages, the roadside bombs–going through a laundry list of crimes, including killing women, murdering Jews, even threatening freedoms of Americans in America. And now, a few minutes into that streak, the people fighting us in Iraq have morphed into terrorists, specifically al Qaeda.

He is finishing off that tirade with another laundry list of how the world would end if we follow any other path but that which he lays down, followed by the inevitable teary-eyed “we’re fighting for freedom” and “it’ll get harder before it gets easier.”

Okay, I have my notes on the questions, and will post the analysis so far, coming back as soon as I can with the questions and an analysis of Bush’s answers.

It’s been about a year since the last one held in the East Room of the White House, where he lied through his teeth about what Iraq was up to (“He has trained and financed … al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations … He has weapons of mass destruction … I will not leave the American people at the mercy of the Iraqi dictator and his weapons”). The conference tonight is supposed to be on “where we are in Iraq right now and where we are headed.”

After three and a half years, Bush will have given only 12 solo press conferences, the fewest of any president in modern history. At this point in their presidencies, Bush Sr. had had 75 such conferences, Carter 55, Clinton 40, Nixon 25 and even the stick-to-the-script Reagan had 22. This will be Bush’s 3rd prime-time conference ever.

This conference will begin with an unusually-long (18 minutes) opening statement focusing only on Iraq–with the escalating violence (80 Americans killed so far this month), the hand-off of power (well, the illusion of it anyway) coming soon, and while he promised to bring troops home, he’s probably going to be making 20,000 troops stay longer in Iraq.

I’ll be watching this one and taking notes, posting soon thereafter.

Now, where’s my blood pressure medication?

Okay, so I was wrong. And glad to be so.

When I dropped my Canon PowerShot 30 on the concrete floor at Costco last night, I figured that was it for old Bessy. I’d already dropped it once before (leaving the lens cover slightly off kilter), but this time I thought it was done for. Or, at least, that it would cost almost as much as the camera, or more than a few hundred dollars at least, and a week or so to repair it.

Just to make sure, I called up Canon today, and they put me in touch with their shop in Shinjuku (where I happened to be going today anyway), and it happens I know the place–their Zero-One shop on the 1st floor of the Mitsui Building. I used to go there all the time when I was working at a language school on the 46th floor of the Shinjuku Center Building across the street.

So I went in there and asked, and the guy said, “Looks like it’s the optical unit. Hmm. Yeah, we can fix it.” I asked him how much, and that’s where the day started getting better. 12,000 yen, he said (about $115). How long will it take, I asked. “Let’s see… can you come back at…” (he looked at a schedule) “… about 5:15 pm?” About two hours later. Cool.

So I went to work to drop off the grades for my three courses, just completed, and now we get a one-month vacation–and my box of Amazon.com DVDs came, with the Jurassic Park boxed set, Friends 6th season and Futurama 3rd season, among a few others. Even better. Then to the dentist–wouldn’t you know, no cavities. Then back to the camera shop, pick up a working camera, and home.

The weather was lousy today–55 degrees F and overcast, while it was about 80 degrees and sunny yesterday. But things worked out a lot better today than yesterday, so I guess it evens out for me.

The photo at top right, by the way, is of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building (Shintaro Ishihara is in there somewhere), taken just outside the Canon shop entrance, to test the repaired camera.

… then I’d hate to see what “out of control” looks like. In the first twelve days of April, 73 Americans (the number increased as I wrote this) and 2 other coalition soldiers were killed in fighting. That makes this month the deadliest for Americans, even more so than when the fighting was at its worst in the initial invasion. 65 Americans died in 12 days of fighting when the invasion started in March 2003.

Think about it: we’ve been in Iraq for a year now. And yet American soldiers are dying more today than they were when Saddam Hussein was in control, and we were invading from the outside. How can it be that we have Iraq “under control” now?

The Iraqi people, even those who welcomed Americans at first, are now feeling humiliated, threatened and angry. They see more and more Iraqis, all too often innocent “collateral damage” victims, all too often children. They are an occupied country, and despite the machinations of the Bush press offices in Washington D.C. and Baghdad, things for them are not better than they were under Saddam. They see a foreign force installing a puppet government and establishing more than a dozen permanent military bases, and do not much wonder where the oil profits are going to. The religious factions of Sunni and Shiite are actually united, but not to form Bush’s desired government, rather to fight the coalition. Al Sadr has become a new national hero. No wonder more and more Iraqis are deciding to fight.

Then there are the points about our sources. Already tired, demoralized, and upset about being in a place they never thought they would have to go to for a far longer time than they thought they would ever be required to be, the hot, dry summer is coming and fewer and fewer trained soldiers will be replacing them–non-active, lesser-trained reserves will be the bulk of the replacements. Then there are the lost jobs, lost marriages, and suicides, the Veterans’ benefits weakened by the GOP, and the prospect of being called back as our men and women will be there in numbers at 14 permanent bases for at least 10 years. And then there’s the explosion of violence and conflict. Rumsfeld said last week that if the American generals in Iraq want more troops, all they have to do is ask. Well, they’re asking. Rumsfeld is still silent.

And now there is the Iraqi army, which was supposed to pick up some of the slack from the coalition forces, telling the American command en masse that they will not be going into Fallujah, thank you very much, because they did not sign up to roll in and kill other Iraqis.

I was interrupted for about an hour and a half and came back to this. In that time, another soldier was reported killed. 74 for 12 days in April, perhaps more by the end of day.

This is “under control”?

Damn.

Not about the photos, no. The photos came out really well, as they usually do with the camera. See?

No, the thing I’m upset about is my own stupidity. I was careless with the camera when I stopped at Costco on the way back. I picked my jacket up out of the cart as I unloaded it at the checkout counter, and I heard a loud, sharp CRACK! on the rock-hard cement floor. The camera had slipped out and fallen onto the concrete.

I paid for my things and set the cart aside, and when I turned the camera on there was hope–the display on the back showed the pictures I’d taken earlier just fine.

But when I turned to photo mode, the screen was black. Obviously either the CCD receptors are broken, or something connecting them to the camera is. And this is not a clumsy trinket to be casually disassembled–nor is it under warranty any more. I had it just under two years. Took thousands of photos with it, it served me incredibly well–but it should have lasted five or ten years, not less than two.

The ironic thing is, just the other night I looked at C/Net reviews to see what the current top-rated mid-range digital camera is. And guess what. It’s still the exact same model that I have, the Canon PowerShot S30. If I want to replace it with the best camera of its type, I have to get the same camera–can’t even get a new camera with better features. That speaks volumes for the value of the camera–and doesn’t make me feel too hot about having broken this one.

I suppose I could get it repaired, of course I’ll check it out–but such repairs often exceed the price of a brand-new camera, and then you have to worry about it breaking again.

Don’t you hate it when stuff like this happens? Still, there is no denying it: if that’s my worst problem in life, then I guess I am in excellent shape. Ah well.

One of the benefits of spending a sleepless night because of a bad cold–you get to see the sunrise.