Yesterday, we called around a bit looking for a replacement powersupply for revo -- no dice. Last night, I tried to replace the fan in the powersupply. I got it all taken apart and went to Radio Shack. I found a fan that was similar, but when I tried to put the the power supply back in, I found that the fan stuck out a quarter of an inch too far. Bones! So I went to the eMachines website and ordered a replacement powersupply today: $50 plus $12 shipping. It will be nice not to have to worry about it, but I have to admit that it has been fun to take things apart and try replacing stuff.
Tonight I got to see Daniel Elsberg speak at Amherst College. I told several people today who I was going to see and none of them knew who he was. He is currently promoting his book Secrets and he joked that they had made the title of his talk in Northampton Secrets and Lies and title tonight was What Lies Ahead, which he said was very accurate given the current administration. Though all administrations lie, he claimed. He worked for the Pentagon and State Department during the Vietnam War and found repeatedly that the administration made flat-out and boldfaced lies regarding the evidence and circumstances that led to war and the facts on the ground during the war. He recounted several anecdotes where a high official would ask him shrewd questions and draw conclusions regarding the true state of affairs and then go before the cameras and state the exact opposite.
He harshly condemned the current administration on every level. Not only for lying about the evidence to go to war, but for their pigheaded unwillingness to give the UN control in order to save the mission, because it would require sharing the spoils that Bush's friends are reaping now. He was especially critical of the Valerie Plame affair. He expressed the hope that Karl Rove would be under indictment, or even in prison, and that Cheney should be impeached. He said that some agents, like those who had overturned legitimate democratically elected goverments, like in Chile, should be outed, but that agents like Valerie Plame, who were involved in monitoring the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction were needed and it show the depths of vindictiveness the Bush administration was willing to plumb in order to deal retribution to someone who had crossed them.
His fundamental message was that we, all of us, have to be ready to stand up to say the unpleasant truths -- the truths that will have our friends call us traitors -- if we want to see the truth spoken plainly to us. He remarked that the three women who Time Magazine called "whistleblowers" in Enron, Worldcomm, and the FBI were not actually whistleblowers at all. They just told their bosses the truth. They didn't tell the rest of us. They didn't save a dollar of anyone's pension money. Why didn't the nuns and priests who knew about the child abuse in the Catholic church come forward?
The scariest message was that, if we think the last election was stolen, we ain't seen nothin' yet. If the current administration begins to feel threatened, he believes they will go to extraordinary lengths to remain in power. But he said you have to have hope. He was willing to support any of the Democratic candidates (with the possible exception of Lieberman, who he did not have a kind word for).