Lock that digital back door

Posted on October 9, 2014 at 8:16 am by John Flannery |

It’s time to lock that digital back door to your private information to defend against the government’s unrestricted intrusion on what was once presumed to be the safe and easy bit and byte beltway that we call the Internet.

You may not think to lock the doors to your country home until there’s a burglary or home invasion in your neighborhood.

We enjoyed that open country door freedom on the Internet until the sobering disclosures more than a year ago by former CIA computer specialist, Edward Snowden.

Snowden has since made it crystal clear that, if you’re not encrypting what your communicating, your information is likely flowing by the petabyte into NSA’s multi-million dollar data-devouring Super Cray Computer, once called “the Black Widow.”

Since the disclosures, the President, the NSA, and the Congress have lacked the resolve to discourage the government’s uninhibited surveillance of us, its citizens. Continue reading →

Is intolerance a disability?

Posted on October 1, 2014 at 11:47 am by John Flannery |

Diana Flannery on stage with “A Place To Be.”

“I know I have a learning disability,” said Diana Flannery, my daughter.

“I have to organize my thoughts before I speak,” said Diana, “So I stutter. Sometimes I don’t.”

“I think fine but I hear some people say, and I can hear them say it, that I’m stupid. I don’t know what to think of people like that.”

“I know I’m in good company, others deal with disabilities, and many help.”

The Good Book says to remove the obstruction from your own eye before judging another. After all, who among us is perfect, physically or otherwise? Yet intolerance abounds.

Is intolerance a moral disability? Continue reading →

Teaching Johnny to think

Posted on September 25, 2014 at 9:29 am by John Flannery |

Virginia has its own standards of learning so it’s really hard to compare how we match up with everyone else in the United States and around the world.

But even by Virginia’s standards of learning (the SOLs), reading scores are down. Every fourth child reportedly failed to pass the grade-level reading test, and the statistical results were worse among elementary and middle school students. About 3 out of 10 students didn’t pass the state math exam either. If you lack reading skills, and are challenged by math, how are you able to think very well?

Some may say it’s an improvement that we have state-wide standards. But it’s not acceptable that we have a balkanized set of conflicting and variable nationwide standards.

We compete in an ever shrinking world. Our internet preeminence is up against stiff competition from Chinese tech companies Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, and Alibaba’s US IPO was described recently as “a wake-up call for U.S. tech.” It should also be a “wake-up call” for educators, parents and students.

Our standard of living depends on our ability to export goods and services, and really to out-think our competitors.

We need a standard by which we can agree what Johnny knows about “the three Rs,” to be able to compare him with everyone else, and to devise an educational strategy to redress whatever lack of proficiency Johnny may suffer in Reading or Math. Continue reading →

America – a fortress of intolerance?

Posted on September 18, 2014 at 5:10 am by John Flannery |

No one is originally from the United States – except for the endangered population of Native Americans that have survived this nation’s repeated efforts to wipe them out.

Everyone who is here today came from someplace else, fleeing hostile governments, uninhabitable lands, or drawn here because of a belief in the promise of America.

When I was a kid, one of my heroes was Igor Sikorsky, an engineering genius who made flying machines and, because he was inspired by DaVinci’s hand-drawing of a machine lifted by a rotating disk, set upon the task of creating the helicopter. Igor came to America from Russia because he had to flee the Bolsheviks.

Albert Einstein had to flee Europe because he was Jewish and met some resistance to becoming an American Citizen. We remember this brilliant physicist, ensconced at Princeton, partly concealed beneath an unruly mane of whitening hair. But there were those who weren’t sure he should be a citizen.

The Flannerys came from County Mayo to New York for reasons since obscured by the passing generations. My maternal grandmother left Ireland for the United States at 6 years of age. These immigrants from the sod met with some resistance because they were both Irish and Roman Catholic. Continue reading →

Family Values

Posted on September 9, 2014 at 5:06 am by John Flannery |

Paul Huber – joking around

We don’t always appreciate the filaments of family and friends that favor us in life. We may not assess the significance of our connectedness, what we truly mean to each other, even when we finally lose one of our family to death. There are so many insignificant distractions from what really matters in life. But no one missed what mattered about Paul Huber.

Paul was born on October 4, 1951 and a few minutes later, his Mom, Carolyn, gave birth to his twin brother, David.

Paul and David were not identical twins, nor were they rivals, nor was Paul or David into being known as “a twin.” “I’m my own person,” Paul said. David said, “He was the cool guy. I was the nerd.”

Dad, Robert Huber, was a serious journalist and a copy editor for the Washington Post and an editor for the Philadelphia Enquirer.

Roberta, the middle child, said, Paul learned to play “his first electric guitar” as a kid when Dad took the family to Tokyo for work, in the 60s, living there for three years, while Dad was an editor for the Stars and Stripes.

The family moved to the country, to Loudoun County, when Dad said, “I want some fresh air and peace and quiet.” Continue reading →

The enlargement of liberty – our progress

Posted on September 4, 2014 at 6:37 am by John Flannery |

Thomas Jefferson: “All men are created equal”

When Thomas Jefferson penned the words in our Declaration of Independence in 1776 that “all Men are created equal,” he stated what the Continental Congress believed to be the proper condition of men in the colonies in relation to the offenses suffered under Great Britain.

Unfortunately, all men were not treated as “equals” within the several colonies either.

Even after our federal constitution with its Bill of Rights, slaves and women enjoyed no rights, unalienable or otherwise. They were property.

The Declaration was an unfulfilled promise of equality.

A former U.S. Senator said: “The enlargement of liberty for individual human beings must be the supreme goal and the abiding practice of any western society.” Continue reading →

On the beheading

Posted on August 26, 2014 at 5:22 am by John Flannery |

An American Journalist, James Foley, was beheaded by a Jihadi terrorist.

Beforehand, the masked executioner wrote:

“… You and your citizens will pay the price of your bombings! The first of which being the blood of the American citizen, James Foley! He will be executed as a DIRECT result of your transgressions toward us!”

As gruesome an act as this was against an innocent non-combatant journalist, killing innocents in other ways has become a modern war stratagem.

Warring nation states kill innocents from opposing nation-states to break the public’s will, to force the policy question, “Is military action really worth it?”

The “great” civilization of Rome beheaded Cicero at Mark Antony’s direction for what Cicero wrote against Antony.

Now, we have Jihadi cutting off a journalists head for all to see – inviting citizens of the offended nation to be a voyeur at another man’s brutal death.

This public execution contrasts with the killing of thousands of anonymous innocent men, women and children, who are blown to bits by bombs or shot to death.

How much of our anger at this execution therefore is about having been forced to acknowledge that even our nation is engaged in this psycho drama, killing innocents, to build body counts, that become win loss body tallies, so we may win the war of religions, get to seize oil reserves, or gain market dominion, hegemony or territory, all the time, quite unconcerned about whether we’re also killing innocents or uniformed combatants? Continue reading →

Let’s re-examine the police function post 9/11

Posted on August 20, 2014 at 5:37 am by John Flannery |

Militarized Police in Ferguson, MO confront an unarmed citizen

Ever since 9-11, the federal government has dehumanized its citizens by compromising individual and collective liberties.

The federal government has fostered indiscriminate surveillance, encouraged citizens to inform on their neighbors, relied on questionable snitches, profiled racial and religious types, increased security screenings at public buildings and events, conducted harassing investigations, but the worst of it may be — how the federal government has re-shaped our local law enforcement offices.

Our Congress and federal government have channeled supplies of battle-tested military weapons from Afghanistan and Iraq and Southeast Asia to local police forces across the nation, provided flash-bang grenades, machine guns, ammunition magazines, camouflage, night vision equipment, silencers, armored cars, mine-resistant ambush protected vehicles (MRAPs), even aircraft, bullet proof vests, and this has changed the rules of engagement for our local police from the traditional domestic police function that used to serve civilian neighborhoods to a military force you’d expect to find on a battlefield.

This militarization of our local police forces is most shamefully on display in Ferguson, Missouri. Continue reading →

Iraq attack

Posted on August 12, 2014 at 5:42 am by John Flannery |

Yazidi refugees

Once again, Barack Obama, our peace president, has authorized acts of war.

It would seem that no one who occupies the office of president is able to resist the call to war.

We just can’t leave this open sore we call Iraq alone.

The President has explained that his current foreign policy stance is based on the theory of “No victor, no vanquished.”

Some might fairly ask, is that what the US is really doing in Iraq?

President Obama ordered drones into the skies, and jet planes to commence fire, to drop quarter ton bombs in Northern Iraq, because the Yazidi, an ethnic and religious minority, were stuck on a mountaintop named Sinjar, starving and under attack from the Islamic State that insisted the Yazidi renounce their religion and convert, or die.

President Obama ordered military intervention to thwart the Islamic State.

When we favor one side over another in a military exercise, we have to admit we really are choosing a preferred “victor.”

We are also up to a lot more than just saving the Yazidi off a mountain top.

The President announced, “This is going to be a long-term project.”

Then he said a few days later, that we would stand with Iraq if Baghdad could form a unified and inclusive government to counter the Sunni militants.

This is mission leap — not mission creep. Continue reading →

Yes, Virginia, Marriage is a Fundamental Right

Posted on August 4, 2014 at 7:49 am by Epluribusunum |

Special op-ed by David Weintraub published in the Purcellville Gazette, August 2 2014.

On November 7, 2006, Virginia voters were presented with the choice to add an amendment to our state constitution. This amendment would not only prohibit civil marriage between two people of the same sex – which had already been banned legislatively several times over – but would also ban any other “union, partnership, or other legal status to which is assigned the rights, benefits, obligations, qualities, or effects of marriage,” or which “intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effects of marriage.” This expansive language gave Virginia the dubious honor of having adopted the most extreme so-called “marriage amendment” in the nation.

In a decision announced Monday, The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that prohibition unconstitutional, joining an unbroken series of rulings affirming marriage as a fundamental right that cannot be denied because of gender.

At the time of the amendment’s passage (it was approved by 57 percent of voters), I was told jubilantly by a local supporter that it would “protect” his model of marriage in Virginia “for at least a decade.” This prediction has turned out to be remarkably accurate. In the past decade, we have witnessed a shift in opinion like no other toward support of the right for loving gay and lesbian couples to marry. At the same time, courts have come to the long overdue conclusion that the U.S. Constitution really does mean what it says about the rights guaranteed to ALL Americans.

Continue reading →