Gun insurance

Guns are not toys. They are lethal weapons. Just as in order to drive my car it must be registered and insured and I need a valid license, a similar approach to guns should remind people that owning a lethal weapon is a serious responsibility. Instead of banning guns by type and magazine capacity, let’s require liability insurance and registration along with licenses to carry. The insurance industry could readily attach a rider to your home owner’s or renter’s policy. If stopped by the police a gun owner would have to produce proof of insurance and license, just as I must do if I am stopped in a traffic stop.  If I don’t have those, my car may be towed; for a gun owner, the gun could be impounded until the owner produces proof of insurance.

When I taught English to the Swedish police in Stockholm, you could own a gun but until you had a gold marksmanship medal you could not remove it from the shooting club. One of my students had to carry a weapon on the job, but could not have a gun at home himself as he was not qualified.

Protect your privacy on the web

Tor, a barrier to internet snoops

a column by

Harley L. Sachs

What with surveillance cameras everywhere,your grocery chain central computers knowing everything you buy and your gps capable of knowing when you’ve broken the speed limit or skipped a stop sign, or even your TV set capable of watching you instead of the other way around, it’s a wonder there’s any privacy left. If you’re worried about someone knowing what web sites you visit, fear no more. The US Navy, the Swedish government and other groups finance the Tor Project and it’s free!.

The original purpose was to aid governments and police agencies in keeping their investigations away from prying eyes, the free software also serves people with nefarious interests. Isn’t that typical? It’s like the old Mad Magazine Spy versus Spy cartoons. Just when a new technology is developed for good purposes, someone turns it to something nasty. When the internet was invented (by Al Gore or someone else) nobody anticipated that 40% of its use would be for international pornography.

It’s not enough to download and install the Tor program. You must use its browser and follow the instructions or your attempts at privacy will be circumvented. There is ample documentation available on the Internet. The idea is to conceal your IP address, so you can’t use flash player and other programs which can trace back to you. So no addons or plugins. Tor encrypts the web sites you visit.

The secret to how the system works is the routing. Your surfing is routed through other computers, and the more there are of them the better. In spy tradecraft this could be described as using cutouts, such as using a dead drop to pass your message onto a courier you never meet who passes it on to another she has never met. It’s like putting your message under a rock in the park to be picked up by someone else who puts it in a hollow tree, etc. In the case of Tor, the chain of communication is through other people’s computers, which may include yours when someone else is using Tor..

The risk there is that your hard drive may inadvertently, unknown to you, be a temporary parking place for some kiddie porn. That happened to a student in Graz, Austria. He volunteered his computer as a link in the Tor network, but when the police found the porn, he was accused of being a child pornographer and has charges pending. It’s a bit like arresting the mail carrier for having incriminating post in his bag.

The Internet overview of the Tor Project and its uses states, “Individuals use Tor to keep websites from tracking them and their family members, or to connect to news sites, instant messaging services, or the like when these are blocked by their local Internet providers. Tor's hidden services let users publish web sites and other services without needing to reveal the location of the site. Individuals also use Tor for socially sensitive communication: chat rooms and web forums for rape and abuse survivors, or people with illnesses.

“Journalists use Tor to communicate more safely with whistleblowers and dissidents. Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) use Tor to allow their workers to connect to their home website while they're in a foreign country, without notifying everybody nearby that they're working with that organization.”

General Allen should have used some sort of secure cutout for his love letters. Of course, his method was to post draft letters to a phony gmail account his girl friend also had access to. The messages were never actually sent. They were opened, read, and never went beyond the draft stage.  A better option would have been to encrypt the messages using  free pgp encryption, but that demands your writing the message, encrypting it, destroying the original, and then sending it. This is tedious and of course if someone can see your’ve got encrypted messages they might be curious.

There’s much more to the Tor Project than can be covered in a single newspaper column. Study it carefully and follow the instructions meticulously or you may inadvertently give away your IP address.  Then all your efforts at internet privacy will be for naught.

More about "The Misadventures of Cpl Sachs"

Well, it's not only completed, but the little 116 page book is now set up at lulu.com for sale as a paperback for $9.95 and on the ebook readers--Kindle, Nook, and at Lulu for only $4.00. It's amazing that I could piece together so much about the mere 21 months I spent in the US Army back in the 1950's at the end of the Korean War. I wasn't much of a student at Indiana University and certainly no soldier though the army provided me with an assortment of uniforms. I realized as I completed this memoir that the army was the only time I ever had a "real" 9-5 style job. As I report in it, I had zero sex life before the army but was "normalized" by the time I was discharged. My last official duty was as a  guard on a train taking prisoners to Bremerhaven for transport to Leavenworth federal prison. The worst offender was being sent to the slammer for fornication, or maybe it was adultery. He'd seduced or been seduced by a number of officers' wives while working as a porter at a dependent hotel. I thought fornication was SOP,. standard operating practice in the army, but the Universal Code of Military Justice does in fact have adultery among its list of actionable offenses. General Petraeus please note. My own sexual exploits,such as they might have been, are not in the memoir, for, as I remind readers, Mother said it was never proper to kiss and tell. However, the love story is obliquely depicted in my MA thesis, "The Golden Grape," which is in the Indiana University library. "Queer Company" is the novel I wrote about the experimental training unit I was assigned to at Camp Breckinridge.A copy of that is in the US Army historical archives, but it's available as an ebook and paperback. I can't remember if I sent a copy of "The Golden Grape" to the archive or not. My own archive is in the warehouse in Louisville, Kentucky.The book was revised as "A Woman for Sam." It's still in manuscript form.
I suppose "The Misadventures" is my own equivalent of "Beloxi Blues" which was Neil Simon's military novel. My memoir is not a novel, of course. It's a remembrance of my own "Grand tour" of Europe in 1 1/2 day weekends. It's written for my daughters, but anyone who might find it interesting can obtain it. At times it is humorous.The identities of my pals in uniform have been kept confidential. They know who they are.

Completed memoir "The Misadvenures of Cpl. Sachs"

At the request of Belinda and Cynthia who loved my anecdotes about my military service in Heidelberg, I have completed a 100 page memoir of those adventures. Will set it up soon at lulu.com.

Time for a new GOP

The defeat of Mitt Romney was a triumph for American democracy. Imagine, changing the regime without bloodshed, riots, abductions, or disappearing candidates. It also revealed something the GOP had not come to grips with: the USA is no longer a majority white country. White people are now less than 50% of the population. The country is also 50% women. To fail to serve the non-white majority or the women is a fatal error. Until now, and for some time to come, Congress is dominated by white, male, millionaires. In spite of pumping over a billion dollars into the campaign, supporters of the white millionaire candidate failed. The Republicans voted unanimously against equal pay for women, and the women responded by electing twenty women to the Senate, the largest number ever. The Republican candidates who made ignorant remarks about rape and its consequences (e.g. "legitimate rape" and a baby conceived by a rape was ordained by God) were both defeated. The world, she is a changing.
The Democrats, after years of floundering, have finally organized nationwide. Their computer system knows everyone who votes Democratic and might be swayed to vote for Democrat candidates. The system includes addresses, phone numbers, and your voting record. In Ohio the Democrat party had over 140 offices versus forty for the Republicans. It paid off.
We are still a long way from a government that truly reflects the population of the United States. The only minority represented beyond its percentage of the population are the Jews, and they are not even included when minorities are tallied. There is only one known lesbian, a couple of gay members, one or two Moslems. We await the day when 50% of the congress is female.
The days of government b y white male millionaires are not yet over, but if they are smart, they will read the demographics and act accordingly.

Changing Face of War

Yom Kippur remembered

Yom Kipppur is the holiest day of the Jewish Year and is one of several fast holidays. (It's not true that every Jewish holiday is celebrated with food!). At Temple Jacob in Hancock, Michigan the congregation is small and there is no regular rabbi, but one is always hired for the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah, the New Year, and Yom Kippur, the Day or Atonement. Unlike Christian sects which are preoccupied with sin and salvation from it, for Jews Yom Kippur is the only time of the year that Jews talk about sin. It is a day-long service with a mid-afternoon break, and concludes with Yitzkor, a prayer service in remembrance of the dead, and, finally, Neilah which ends at sunset with the final blowing of the shofar ram's horn.
At Temple Jacob there is a stained glass window on the western wall, and the setting sun shines through it, casting a square of bright light on the wall above the bimah where the torah scrolls are kept. As the concluding prayers are recited, the congregation all standing for what, after a day of fasting, is a very long time, that square of sunlight against the wall gradually rises as the sun is setting, and finally fades out as the sun is down, marking the conclusion of the service. It is a very spiritual period, for the light of the setting sun as it fades is a vivid sign of the day of repentance. It was a moment I always appreciated, for it is a reminder of our own mortality and limited length of days.
May all my readers be inscribed, as we say, in the Book of Life, for a year of good health, prosperity, and peace. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He shine His countenance upon you and grant us all peace. Amen.