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January 7, 2006
Open Weekend Thread
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::quote::
“Bad” ..
The internet does indeed have its good side. But its bad side can be very bad.
The accessibility of information is making us lazy – as we can find out whatever we want at the touch of a button we are relying on our memories less and less. It has never been so easy for children to cheat at school, and it has never been so difficult for their teachers to check.
And who is to say that the information is correct anyway? No one is held accountable for what is posted on the net, so can you ever really be sure that what you are reading isn’t just a load of rubbish?
Granted the internet means we can communicate more often, but how many times have you texted or emailed someone to avoid talking to someone? And why is communicating more often such a good thing anyway? Is it so good when the office can get in touch with you at the weekend, in the evening or when you are on holiday? What is so wrong with being alone for a while?
And now for the really dark side of the internet.
The internet has brought together people who would never have normally met – paedophiles, racists, terrorists. Being able to turn a deaf ear to the world around them and immerse themselves in a community which shares their belief inevitably helps them to normalize abnormal behaviour.
That’s why there is more and more child abuse, obscene and violent pornography, and racial hatred in the world today. And because of the anonymity and flexibility of the net, it is difficult to track down the culprits, and indeed their victims, which means that these abuses of the law are left to grow unchecked.
There are many good things about the net, but the gravity of the bad things far outweighs the positives.
Join the discussion
titles in the discussion section: aol
::end quote::
see also:
Infowars
Posted by: Noisette | Jan 7 2006 20:43 utc | 2
Remember the revolution that came about with the printing press.
Ordinary people were able to read the Bible themselves and form their own opinions about religion, prompting centuries of sectarian strife in Europe.
Political dissent was able to spread as fast as a courier’s horse could carry it, causing unrest and revolution.
It’s not the technical change itself, it’s what we make of it. My children will laugh when I tell them about the days when the telephone, television, music player and computer were all separate devices that could only intercommunicate by means of bulky analog technology.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 7 2006 21:12 utc | 3
Noisette
And then there are the fruitcakes at Little Green Footballs.
But they rabbit on between themselves, you have to subscribe to post comments, better they jerk off at their lonely existences behind the keyboard?
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 7 2006 21:13 utc | 4
Noisette – I don´t agree with that piece at all.
The Internet is the best information collection ever and accessible. It makes me to remember much more as I have access to much more than I had before.
If there are abusers like the -always cited child abuser- there is much better chance and much higher probability to catch them on the net then anywhere else and indeed the proven case have gone up, but not because the net has increased the numbers of cases happening.
Terrorists don´t meet on the internet. There is not one case I am aware of. They may use it for communication but in a technical, not human environment, the chances to get caught are high. Email can be read and traced from PC to PC. A human courier who memorized his maessage is more difficult to find.
Living on the web since 1993 and on the net when it started I see it as a real big step for mankind. Like the Gutenberg press (which was a much earlier chinese invention) the widespred netuse changes the rules of government control. That’s what commenting on blogs is about in my view.
Noisette, (I think you’ve hit on a topic in need of discussion at this bar.)
Every new technology conveys it’s possibilities for personal enchantments and dangers. I can now chop my wood to keep warm but my owley neighbor can now also split my head.
Contemporary technological communication has extended the reach of our individual nervous systems. We are now able to enter new neurological niches almost at will. But every new niche has it’s new dangers.
Are we as a species up to the evolutionary challenge of keeping ourselves and our species successfully adapting to this new niche? Or will we succumb to our more primitive and obsolete adaptations and self destruct? When a critical mass of humanity opts for the former it will happen.
Posted by: Juannie | Jan 7 2006 22:43 utc | 6
I’ve been thinking about the impact of technology on thought recently as well, though in my case, I’m wondering about how it works with democracy. We have a political system based around the dreams of wealthy, bourgeois landowners attempting to consolidate their power. In the last century, mass media has changed the way that information is conveyed – from national newspapers to radio to television to the internet – it seems clear to me that our system of democracy is…hmmm…wobbly. Not in terms of strength of government, but in terms of representation of the people. Maybe it never was, but it seems more obvious now.
At any rate, I’m curious to know what the barflies think a model democracy might look like, as opposed to the technologically outdated forms that we have today. Or maybe the forms we have aren’t outdated. Just thoughts kicking around in my head.
Posted by: Rowan | Jan 8 2006 1:01 utc | 7
@Noisette
Chuang Tsu has thus demonstrated that the strength of the wiki format is also its greatest weakness. Coming out of a generation of people who had to do all their research the hard, paper way, I do not disagree with the thesis that instantaneous electronic gratification has led to intellectual laziness and has the potential to reduce us to a factoid mentality… but so does reliance on television journalism. God knows that the internet has made it impossible for malcontents like myself to fly under the radar of the NSA (and that’s not just my tinfoil fedora talking there). There’s more than one edge to this sword, and it’s an important topic for discussion. Thanks for bringing it up.
Posted by: Monolycus | Jan 8 2006 1:47 utc | 8
In keeping w/the expressed theme
of technology I thought some but not all may be interested in David Brin’s work: The Transparent Society: Will Technology Force us to Choose Between Privacy and Freedom?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2006 1:47 utc | 9
Also see:
Treasonous Devices: Weapons of Mass Surveillance
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 8 2006 1:59 utc | 10
We have to be very careful about blaming the internet for abberations like child pornography. Partially because there is absolutely no evidence to suggest Rock Spiders* have increased in number because of the net. They may be passing more material between each other but that is pretty difficult to determine since many of the older methods like mail, fax machines etc were not only untraceble there was no way of going back in time once an M.O. had been established then rounding up all the malefactors who had conformed to that M.O. over the last 5 years or whatever.
However the net has enabled these creeps to be detected long after they have done their foul deed and there have been a couple of examples of ‘mass roundups’ of rock spiders who had accessed a particular web site.
Consequently the figures we see now can only seem high solely because they are coming off a base of zero.
But the chief reason we should oppose this accusation of the net being responsible for a lowering of moral standards is that any attempt to ‘fix’ the problem won’t change any rock spider’s delusion that children ‘like’ what he/she is doing but it will be used as a motive for censorship of all sorts.
It has already happened with the anonymous mail servers who have been pushed right to the margin by child molesters abusing them and sensationalist politicians and prosecutors harrassing them.
The net result of that is that the molesters developed other methods and the rest of us find it much more difficult to avoid the sort of invasion of privacy BushCo have been caught committing.
*Rock Spider is an example of Australian prison slang. Normally oz prison slang is a mixture of English rhyming slang and US pig latin. The derivation of ‘rock spider’ comes from the rigid hierachical environment most prisons have. Pedophiles are considered to be at the bottom of the heap, the lowest of the low and it is reasonably common for the guards and prisoners to conspire to punish a child molester, frequently fatally.
Their low status prompts comparison like “You’d be so low you could crawl under a rock. You’re as low as a rock spider.”
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 8 2006 3:06 utc | 11
“I keep myself in good spirits by reminding myself that the worst is yet to come”……..Joe Hill on Death Row…………..R.L.
Posted by: R.L. | Jan 8 2006 6:31 utc | 13
The internet has brought together people who would never have normally met – paedophiles, racists, terrorists. Being able to turn a deaf ear to the world around them and immerse themselves in a community which shares their belief inevitably helps them to normalize abnormal behaviour.
You mean technology sometimes has a downside? This is hardly news, in fact no less a crackpot than the Unibomber wrote a rather eloquent essay on this very topic, which you can read here.
The real question is, how do we measure upside vs. downside, and at what point do we decide the candle isn’t worth the wax? When you think about it, how many technological advances would we really seriously considering “unlearning”, if that were possible? Maybe atomic weapons, but even then you have to consider that to do so would mean freezing our knowledge of theoretical physics at the point attained about 1942 in perpetuity. Is that really a good tradeoff? You might say, “big deal, what has theoretical physics done for me lately?” but who knows what boon could come out of further progress in this field in a year, a decade or a century? How can you make an informed decision about the nature of that tradeoff when you have no way of knowing what you might be giving up?
More to the point though pedophiles, racists and terrorists have always existed, they aren’t creations of the Internet. The real problem with the thesis is right here:
That’s why there is more and more child abuse, obscene and violent pornography, and racial hatred in the world today. And because of the anonymity and flexibility of the net, it is difficult to track down the culprits, and indeed their victims, which means that these abuses of the law are left to grow unchecked.
I see no evidence that there is in fact more of any of these things in the world today, and the onus is certainly on those making this claim to provide some substantiation for it. I think it would be hard under any circumstances to make the case that there is more racism today than in the past, and while the Internet may have made child abuse and “obscene” (!) pornography more visible, it is not apparent to me that it is actually more prevalent.
It might be true that the Internet has to some extent made it easier for these people to find fellow travellers and collaborate, but as I’ve already said this factoid is meaningless in the absence of some way of weighing costs and benefits. After all if we got rid of automobiles no one would ever die again in a car crash, yet how many people are advocating the elimination of automobiles?
Finally, I think the value laden language used here is significant. “Terrorism” for example is a label which implies an inherent value judgement. Similarly, equating pornography with obscenity points to socially conservative values. Is this really an argument against the Internet, or has the person making this argument instead simply made the Internet a scapegoat for a world which in their eyes is changing in undesireable and troubling ways?
Posted by: Lexington | Jan 8 2006 6:36 utc | 14
I am reminded of the parents who have no rapport with their children for years, raise them in a an oppressive environment and then blame their dysfunctional behavior on heavy metal music.
The Internet is forcing us to rethink our attitude about paedophiles and extremists. We tried banishing them to the periphery of society in the hope that it would keep them out of sight and mind and minimize the damage, but now they have found a means of rearing their heads in our presence again.
It means we have to engage with them and do what we can to look on them as fellow humans, imperfect (as we all are) and in need of assistance (as we all are at some point or another).
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 8 2006 7:30 utc | 15
@noisette-
A very worthy topic for discussion, but again, I find myself disagreeing with you rather adamantly.
The accessibility of information is making us lazy – as we can find out whatever we want at the touch of a button we are relying on our memories less and less.
Many of us have memories that we can ill rely on. Indeed, I believe that is why writing was invented–another new-fangled technology which has only served to make mankind lazy. “Lazy”, when not used as a perjorative, is a luxury many of us aspire to. The internet is a great resource, but I cannot just find whatever I want at the touch of a button. Rather, much of the research I look for, not valued by industrial capitalism, has never been conducted. There are many problems yet to solve.
It has never been so easy for children to cheat at school, and it has never been so difficult for their teachers to check.
And who is to say that the information is correct anyway? No one is held accountable for what is posted on the net, so can you ever really be sure that what you are reading isn’t just a load of rubbish?
When I was young (2-4th grade) we all copied our reports verbatim from World Book or Encyclopedia Brittanica. After that, many just went to the library, found a book, and copied from there. Teachers couldn’t search through every book in the Library. As far as the information being correct, may I refer you to Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your High School History Textbook Got Wrong. Certainly I was taught a load of propaganda concerning how the world worked, which took me many years of assiduous study to unlearn. As far as reading rubbish, is the Internet really worse than the esteemed publishers who brought us “Protocols of the Elders of Zion”?
In any event, learning the skills of critical thinking is far more important than learning facts. Studies show that most of us forget 90% or more of the crap we had to memorize in High School (tip of the hat to Paul Simon).
Granted the internet means we can communicate more often, but how many times have you texted or emailed someone to avoid talking to someone? And why is communicating more often such a good thing anyway? Is it so good when the office can get in touch with you at the weekend, in the evening or when you are on holiday? What is so wrong with being alone for a while?
I agree with you here. However, when one does need to communicate, the internet is far more environmentally sustainable than car or jet travel.
And now for the really dark side of the internet.
The internet has brought together people who would never have normally met – paedophiles, racists, terrorists. Being able to turn a deaf ear to the world around them and immerse themselves in a community which shares their belief inevitably helps them to normalize abnormal behaviour.
That’s why there is more and more child abuse, obscene and violent pornography, and racial hatred in the world today. And because of the anonymity and flexibility of the net, it is difficult to track down the culprits, and indeed their victims, which means that these abuses of the law are left to grow unchecked.
There are many good things about the net, but the gravity of the bad things far outweighs the positives.
More racial hatred today? Than the Crusades, or the Spanish Inquisition, or the Holocaust? You seem to be employing a very reactionary definition of “terrorist”, without supplying any evidence beyond assertion, that the internet has increased terrorism. As far as paedophilia, let me point you to the online bookAmish Deception, which details rape, incest and murder, as normalized behavior, among a peaceful community of Luddites. I worry far more about the normalizing of violence throughout our society: the Bushites don’t need the internet to spread hatred. TV spreads far more than the internet. Listen to Pat Robertson on the 700 club pne day. I would worry far less about “violent pornography”, which in any event I consider more a symptom of the deep alienation of our society, than the actual trafficing in sex slaves, which continues unabated, and aided and abetted by government power, in Europe, Russia, the US and Mexico. Large portions of the economy of Southeast Asia are based upon the sex trade. US troops continue to be the sex-slave racket’s best customers, according to the US “Army Times.” And neo-liberal economic policies, uprooting peasants from their land, is perhaps the prime contributor to the labor pool. The NYT estimated thare are almost 1M sex slaves in the US at any given time! With all the real injustices in the world today, let’s not get carried away with a few bugaboos.
I would worry more about the censoring of the internet, than its content. The current case where Microsoft censored the word “Democracy”, among others, in China is far more foreboding about the confluence of government and industrial power, generally termed fascism, than a little pornography.
NYT: Europe Comes to Terms With Need for Russian Gas
“Pipelines are like kids in a marriage,” said Jérôme Guillet, a French banker and an expert in natural gas. “The seller cannot sell his gas elsewhere; the buyer cannot buy gas elsewhere. The two sides are welded together.”
Such marriages work best, the realists argue, when both partners have no illusions about changing the other.
UOh – remember cambodia?
Attack Kills 8 in Pakistan; U.S. Missile Is Blamed
PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Jan. 7 – An attack on a residential compound in Pakistan’s northern tribal region early Saturday killed eight people and wounded nine, the Pakistani military said Saturday. Local residents said an American helicopter had fired a missile at the compound, but the American military said it had no knowledge of the incident.
Local officials said the attack, an hour or so after midnight, was on the residence of Maulvi Noor Muhammad, a religious leader in Saidgi, near the border with Afghanistan in the North Waziristan tribal area.
Residents including a local elder, Momin Khan, said that they had seen two American helicopters hovering over the compound and that one had fired a missile that destroyed the residence. Witnesses said that two women and a child were among the dead and that nine people had been wounded. A doctor at a hospital in Miramshah said that the survivors were treated there for multiple shrapnel wounds.
Oh that will play so well with the Pakistanis.
Some in the U.S. hoped to get servile German chancellor. Turns out Merkel knows here constituency.
Merkel Critical of U.S. Prison
In an interview published Saturday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Washington should close its Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison camp and find other ways of dealing with terrorism suspects.
“An institution like Guantanamo can and should not exist in the longer term,” Merkel told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, days before her first visit to the United States. “Different ways and means must be found for dealing with these prisoners.”
…
She also commented on relations with Russia and the European Union. Merkel described relations with the United States as a “friendship,” but said the term “strategic partnership” would be more fitting to describe Germany’s ties with Moscow.
“I don’t think we share as many of the same values yet with Russia as we do with the United States,” she said. “But we have a huge interest in seeing Russia develop in a sensible way.”
Briefly, I agree w/Malooga that censorship of web poses a Grave risk. However, there’s a problem area that has just come to my attention, that poses a Huge risk to people’s welfare. I found out about it after it almost wrecked a marriage of a friends’ child. She’s married to an otherwise wonderful guy, recent father of two, who has only one major problemo. He lost his own father when he became a compulsive gambler, and his mother had to divorce him to save her young children. So, he becomes a young father, living in Nowheresville where the pay was good to save money to buy a home. W/fatherhood his buried wounds emerge, and before he knows it, he’s $35k in credit card debt from online poker.
As wages go down & prices up, people will be forced to do drastic things to get money to save themselves. They’re spending endless amounts of time in elite colleges playing poker – since they know they have no future in Fascist-Wall Street-America. ie. This is a Looming Threat of increasing proportions – available in everyone’s living room. If you don’t yet know anyone who’s affected, give it time.
Supposing we outlaw use of credit cards by online gambling operations no matter their country of origin??
Posted by: jj | Jan 8 2006 9:56 utc | 20
I stopped by to alert everyone to Theocrats organizing in their “churches” tomorrow in support of Sammie the Fascist Scalito. – called “justice Sunday”…Very Scary Week coming up. I think that Pacifica Radio is carrrying the hearings live next week – for those w/strong stomachs… Even a few minutes promises to providing a bracing Sulfuric Acid Eyewash for the uninitiated. I caught less than an hour of johnnie rotten fascist faggot roberts to discover that he considers it perfectly acceptable for the state to execute completely innocent citizens on death row. (Pls. excuse me for using term “faggot” in a derogatory context. I usually reserve the term homosexual for precisely that reason. However the guy who ran that great website on the sex lives of judges posted a photo of him – and he clearly is a raging faggot. [Opus Dei just intervened to arrange a marriage & a few turkey baster babies, to clean him up for a court appointment.] So, I’m kinda stuck on language here…)
Posted by: jj | Jan 8 2006 10:07 utc | 21
for the technically savvy and newbies alike, here is an interesting analysis of the monitoring of email by our US government.
Treasonous Devices: Weapons of Mass Surveillance
Posted by: dan of steele | Jan 8 2006 13:14 utc | 22
b,
I wonder what prompted German Chancellor Angela Merkel to make comments even more annoying to America than her predecessor with his anti-Iraq war stance. Has she already written Bush off as a political partner? Maybe she knows something we don’t know!
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 8 2006 16:17 utc | 23
But we do know, Ralphie, that Bush is dead meat. No way he can recover. Add to that the fact that Merkel’s constituents are much more aware of American goopers’ crimes than are the Americans, and the inevitable fallout of them.
She should know very well that cozying up to Bush is suicide.
Glad to seeya back jj. FYI I have pursued the earth energy concept mentioned awhile back and have found a lot of good info and sources. I have actually designed a system for myself and (with some help) could have it installed within a year. Thx to Malooga for the first helpful link.
Posted by: rapt | Jan 8 2006 18:30 utc | 24
Supposing we outlaw use of credit cards by online gambling operations no matter their country of origin??
this will never happen, the whole abmoroff farce surrounds this issue. control of gamblings direction , off shore, online, money laundering. exploiting tribes from the get go. i don’t understand the ins and outs but i know its huge.
Posted by: annie | Jan 8 2006 18:31 utc | 25
Thanks for the link, Dan. That the administration is likely to be mining all Interet data, domestic or foreign…. Well, that doesn’t give me warm fuzzies.
Posted by: lambert strether | Jan 8 2006 18:32 utc | 26
whoops, make that abramoff!
i also think the grip on the new NO has a lot to do w/the creation of a new gambling disneyland. there no way the development of gambling is going to be confined to the tribes. thats why this latest legistration is so important.
Posted by: annie | Jan 8 2006 18:38 utc | 27
@jj any sort of regulation of online gambling is plainly impossible since the privatisation/corporatisation of currency in the last 25 years.
Perhaps it’s just me who refuses to have a credit card or borrow money that notices that without access to corporate currency, many transactions are no longer possible.
That means the corporations are receiving 3.5 to 7 % on most transactions. This is a service that used to be provided by treasury or central banks out of our taxes. We don’t get the service but most of us haven’t had any let up in our tax levy.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 8 2006 19:15 utc | 28
Gambling is quite easy to regulate/kill.
Make any payment to gambling “voluntary”. Just declare it unethical and the looser in a game does not need to pay. It immediately takes away the incentivefor this business.
Neither the Sunni nor the Shia will like this:
Link
U.S. troops, some in helicopters, launched a pre-dawn raid on Sunday on the headquarters of the influential Sunni Arab Muslim Clerics’ Association and detained six people in what they said was an anti-terrorist operation.
An association spokesman slammed the raid as a “crime” to punish his group for its stand towards the U.S.-led occupation.
…
Reuters Television footage showed spent shotgun shells and special explosive charges used to blow out door locks lying on the ground. Many office doors showed signs of forced entry.
In one room, cupboards used to store the shoes of those attending prayers had what appeared to be Christian crosses scrawled on them. Other footage showed papers strewn on office floors and windows smashed.
The Arab TV stations will broadcast that tape for years…
now for something completely different Haiti.
The head of the ‘UN’ forces in Haiti topped himself the other night. In true officer fashion he did it with his sidearm.
Gen Urano Teixeira Da Matta Bacella was from Brazil as were the blue caps in his command. The BBC is currently running a series on Medecine Sans Frontiers narrated by Annie Lennox. Haiti was the MSF operation featured on Saturday night. A bit of an eye opener would be hardly the word.
The MSF team has come to regard the Brazilian Forces like the Haitian Police as just another street gang.
Most of the pro-Aristide areas ie most of Port au Prince have become no-go areas for the police and the UN forces. That means that they go in on sorties shooting and killing just to scare the shit out of the citizens.
MSF tries to pick up the pieces. They treat all the wounded no matter what.
This is made difficult by the anti-Aristade forces ie police and UN go into the MSF hospital and drag wounded out mid operation and stuff.
Unless they can get a lawyer real fast to witness the arrest the detainee is likely to have a fatal accident between the hospital and the police station. If he doesn’t die of his wounds.
The BBC couldn’t get anyone at the UN to comment on the actions of it’s blue caps in Haiti.
You have to ask yourself this. If the US government is so committed to democracy and freedom, why is it that the only thing I am aware it has given Haiti, the festering sore of the Caribbean are a few coups against the elected government and HIV/AIDS?
Whatever problem arose from the Aristide government’s alleged corruption were minor compared to what is happening now.
Of course the old colonial powers who kidnapped these people’s forbears from Africa should also be made to come to the party to make Haiti a viable nation. In fact the nations responsible for this mess should be putting their hands in their pockets until this is sorted.
Spain/France/Portugal are going to blame the Monroe doctrine and say the US won’t let them interfere and the US is going to do the famous “You talking to me” act it always does when confronted with the outcomes of it’s meddling.
The time for fingerpointing is over and alla these freedom loving nations need fix yet another post imperial fuck-up.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 8 2006 19:48 utc | 31
What is the insurance business except a legalized form of gambling, as in: “I’ll bet you $500 a month that you won’t get sick” or “I’ll bet you $300 a year that your house does not burn down/flood out/get hit by a meteroite”?
And the futures market: “I’ll bet $5 million that the price of pork bellies falls by October”? C’mon, betting on cards or roulette wheels is peanuts compared to this volume of trade.
Posted by: ralphieboy | Jan 8 2006 19:56 utc | 32
The Bankers Can Rest Easy
Evo Morales: All Growl, No Claws? James Petras documents the neo-liberal sellout expectd in Bolivia.
Um, didn’t the EU just pass legislation legalizing eavesdropping on telecommunications and mandating that telcom companies keep records on all communications evryone makes as well as all websites anyone visits, and providing them to various security forces on demand?
This seems like more of a civilizational problem than a U.S. one. What good arguments can be made for privacy? Are old arguments losing their force, or this just one more neo-lib triumph to file under “all social concerns are contemptible”?
As I see it, the major argument is that high tech info snooping will always tend to be used coercively and corruptly by those with access to the ‘tapes’. That this is a shortcut to tyranny. Or to be more blunt, it is like putting one’s balls in the hands of government officials and their largest donors. Okay, our eyeballs.
Still, seems we might expect some squeezing once this is all in place world wide.
Posted by: citizen | Jan 9 2006 4:47 utc | 34
I wonder, in light of this story:
Extra Armor Could Have Saved Many Lives, Study Shows
From the NY Times:
A secret Pentagon study has found that at least 80 percent of the marines who have been killed in Iraq from wounds to their upper body could have survived if they had extra body armor. That armor has been available since 2003 but until recently the Pentagon has largely declined to supply it to troops despite calls from the field for additional protection, according to military officials.
…For the first time, the study by the military’s medical examiner shows the cost in lost lives from inadequate armor, even as the Pentagon continues to publicly defend its protection of the troops. Officials have said they are shipping the best armor to Iraq as quickly as possible. At the same time, they have maintained that it is impossible to shield forces from the increasingly powerful improvised explosive devices used by insurgents. Yet the Pentagon’s own study reveals the equally lethal threat of bullets.
The vulnerability of the military’s body armor has been known since the start of the war, and is part of a series of problems that have surrounded the protection of American troops. Still, the Marine Corps did not begin buying additional plates to cover the sides of their troops until this September, when it ordered 28,800 sets, Marine Corps officials acknowledge.
how much could be answered by the following: (if any)
January 9, 2006 — Air Force Office of Special Investigations (OSI) and other Air Force intelligence agents rifle through and tamper with files of retiring veteran Pentagon budget analyst and whistleblower.
Veteran Pentagon budget analyst Ernie Fitzgerald, who has battled every administration from Lyndon Johnson’s to George W. Bush’s for cost-overruns and other illegal and questionable spending and contracting practices, is set to retire next month.
However, that impending event has spurred the Air Force to seal Fitzgerald’s classified files and attempt to purge his unclassified files of embarrassing revelations about wasteful weapons systems ranging from the Boeing C-17 Air Force cargo plane to the Boeing air refueling tanker deal. The Air Force tanker deal resulted in principal deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition and management Darleen Druyun being convicted and jailed for nine months after pleading guilty to an illegal conflict of interest after she joined Boeing upon retirement from the Air Force. Druyun helped Boeing win the tanker contract while she was still an Air Force official. Druyun was considered the “Godmother of the C-17.”
Fitzgerald’s actual title is management systems deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Financial Management and Comptroller. In 1973, President Richard Nixon fired Fitzgerald for his revelations that Lockheed’s C-5A cargo plane was a waste of money. Fitzgerald successfully sued to get his old job back along with a major financial settlement, part of which helped start the Fund for Constitutional Government, a fund that has financed many investigative journalists, including this editor. Most people primarily remember Fitzgerald for calling the Pentagon out for its ludicrous cost overruns, including $500 toilet seats for Air Force cargo planes. Fitzgerald is the author of The High Priests of Waste and The Pentagonists. Revelations by Fitzgerald about Pentagon boondoggles helped prompt the late Senator William Proxmire (Dem-Wisconsin) to issue his annual “Golden Fleece” awards for government rip-offs of the American taxpayers.
There are a lot of defense contractors who would clearly like to see Fitzgerald’s voluminous, revealing, and embarrassing records deep-sixed. During the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day, a team of U.S. Air Force OSI and Air Force intelligence officers, led by Col. Linda Smith, descended upon Fitzgerald’s office to go through the decades worth of procurement and contract documents and files. more.
or am I reaching for straws i.e. nothing…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2006 6:03 utc | 35
What was this guy working on? Risen, who wrote the NSA spyoing story for the New York Times also works in the Washington Bureau.
N.Y. Times Editor-Reporter Dies After Attack in NW
David E. Rosenbaum, a longtime editor and reporter in the Washington bureau of the New York Times, died yesterday after being beaten and robbed Friday night near his home in upper Northwest Washington.
…
Little was known about the circumstances of the assault and robbery.
Police said earlier that two men had been seen getting into an automobile and leaving the area about the time of the attack.
Police said Rosenbaum’s wallet was taken, and his brother, Marcus, said the family received a call Saturday indicating that an effort had been made to use a credit card belonging to Rosenbaum.
…
The area where the attack occurred is one of the safest in the city. Street robberies have been reported there occasionally, but homicides and other violent incidents are all but unknown.
…
It was a neighborhood, Mitchell Strickler said, where people often did not feel the need to lock their houses. “There was no fear of things,” he said.
…
Among the stories he covered were the Senate Watergate hearings, the Iran-contra affair and budget and tax debates between the White House and Congress.
Excellent juxtaposition, b. I also wondered when reading that. Perhaps Wayne Madsen will get some follow up.
Look who else is gone. The head of ground forces of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has been killed in a plane crash in northwest Iran, Iranian news agencies reported on Monday.
“Ahmad Kazemi was killed with 12 of his deputies and accompanying officers,” Ahmad Panahi, head of Iran’s Emergency Centre was quoted as saying by the Fars news agency.
…
Iran has a history of aircraft accidents involving a heavy loss of life. The government has blamed the U.S. trade embargo which makes it impossible for Iran to buy parts for its old U.S.-built aircraft.
link They could, of course, replace them.
Is this the same as the Iranian Army?
Posted by: jj | Jan 9 2006 8:08 utc | 38
b, also see:
US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2006 8:17 utc | 39
Everyone, Uncle, Malooga, etc. etc…I think I found a blog worth checking out. He’s a Canadian who actually discusses the world as we know it, rather than the pathetic drivel of xAm. blogs who like to call themselves “liberal” “progressive” “lefty” blah blah.
Here’s a 12/05 post: link
War & the Market State
The creation of the new market states is the result of NAFTA, the EU, and other new evolving models of contractual corporate and state cooperation. They are the WTO, APEC , etcagreements and meetings that are occuring that have set in motion the evolution of the market state that Bobbitt speaks of below.
The War in the Balkans followed by the war in Afghanistan followed by the war in Iraq is not just the war of Empire and Imperialism but of private armies and private contractors, becoming in effect a state, since they provide privatized functions of the state as I have blogged about. (He links to an earlier post of his here.)
The attack on the Balkans was an attempt to end the last vestiges of State Capitalism and pound the Serbians into submissive acceptance of the privatization of the State through strategic bombing of industries.
It is the same with Iraq. It too was the last state capitalist country in the Middle East that had to be privatized. The other countries were less vulnerable since they are hierarchical societies that had opened their markets to capitalism, while remaining fuedalistic social constructs.
An interesting analysis of this concept of the War of the Market State can be found at Global Guerrillas which reviews this book [Phillip Bobbit’s – the Shield of Achilles – which Elites were reading ~911 I think]
………
Thus the War on Terror is a war on two fronts. One to smash and transform the last outposts of state capitalism in Europe and the Middle East, and a war on the unregulated market.
Global Guerrillas says; The similarity between these commercial networks and those of modern terrorism (my global guerrillas) is not incidental.
Nor is it incidental that the American Empire is sowing the seeds of its own self destruction, not only in expensive military operations that rack up thousands of corpses and trillions in deficits, but in the fact that like the British Empire before it in order to finance these wars, it too relies on the black market. The British Empire set itself up for decline as it persued its Opium Wars against China. The US set itself up in the 1980’s providing stinger missles to the Mujahadin in Afghanistan who paid for them in opium money. Who transported them through smuggling routes, still with us today used by Bin Laden Inc.
Capitalism has outgrown the Nation State. It reguired it for its period of ascendency. Now that it is the real domination of everything , of all social relations it needs a new state, a market state. One that can continually destroy its overproductive capacities. As capitalism evolves better technonological production, increases productivity and reduces the need for real labour, it amasses capital, which becomes unproductive. It is here that the new market state can use this capital to create permanent war, small scale localized war, that does not threaten its global expansion, but allows it areas for wide scale destruction of productive capabilities to offset its cancerous growth.
If war is privatized and all state functions are privatized, then the individual is no longer identified as a citizen, or as a wage labourer, but as ‘free’ individual, a contractor in a market state. Capitalism will have evolved to its logical conlusion; that we remain wage slaves but no longer to a particular boss or business but to the market. Our alienation will be complete. And it will be a society of barbarism, of all against all.
Posted by: jj | Jan 9 2006 9:00 utc | 40
In Retrospect, when introducing that new blog, I should have given you the Author’s Title for it. Le Revue Gauche: Libertarian Communist Analysis & Comment.
(I do hope R’Giap stops by to check it out 🙂
Posted by: jj | Jan 9 2006 9:04 utc | 41
excellent jj, here’s also one that may be worth checking out:
Ecrasez l’Infame! though his comment posting policies, give me pause for reservations…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jan 9 2006 9:50 utc | 42
Oh well it was too much to hope that karma would catch up with two such complete assholes in one week.
I wonder what Cheney’s shortness of breath was really caused by?
Perhaps the other asshole’s stroke has got him rattled and the bullshit western fundie indoctrination has finally caught up with him.
All these years he’s been perverting the teachings he was raised on. Perverted them for selfish reasons and now the war criminal’s stroke has reminded him of his own mortality, the floodgates have opened and he is overwhelmed by all of the accumulated guilt.
The shortness of breath which he is trying to ‘blame’ on his treatment for roue’s disease, gout, is in fact a simple panic attacck.
Mr Big has woken in the middle of the night and had to confront the reality of himself. Not great leader of the western word, just a mean little man who has always cheated to get his way.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 9 2006 12:19 utc | 43
SPIEGEL interview with German chancellor Merkel before her U.S. state visit: Merkel: Guantanamo Mustn’t Exist in Long Term
jj – you did ask for the Chomsky interview in the international edition of Newsweek because the online version says it is only an excerpt.
I just checked the international dead tree version and the interview seems to be the same than online, just a short page. So I didn´t bothered to spend 10 cent per page for that ad collection.
Oh, I didn’t agree with that piece condemning the internet, I should have said so clearly… Excuse…I wrote :: quote:: at the top – something to discuss…
I found it curious that AOL (a prime provider of internet services) would start such a scare mongering, down-on-the-internet, kind of discussion. They expect people all over the world to get in touch, use their services, and then to condemn the internet for its lubricious/terrorist/disinfo etc. enabler aspect.
The good citizens opining can have a field day. They don’t conspire (etc.), so are not concerned; they tip-tap away on their keyboards, they become self righteous and probably instantly subscribe to premium service or whatever is being touted as the latest super gadget.
The internet has come of age. The medium is not the message, it has become a natural: the message stands alone.
Plato wrote a well known screed about the nefarious effects of writing – it diminished memory capacities, thinking things out, etc. (Too lazy to look it up…) His words are available to us today because of the technology. He too used the communication channel as a self-evident, a natural, acceptable tool…
Yet, I saw this AOL piece as a move towards the acceptance of ‘selective’ censorship (as Malooga mentioned.) Bit too early though I reckon. And as for writing, it will be impossible to enforce. Too late; and the internet has become essential for big corps and money making ops of various kinds.
There is one big difference though: Writing was available to many, after some rudimentary learning. The technology can be constructed on a kitchen table – dissemination, more difficult. Not so the internet…
Posted by: Noisette | Jan 9 2006 19:35 utc | 46
Gambling remains: always a gamble. The technology used to implement it and draw in the sucker is always subject to close scrutiny and then manipulation where possible. Some of the manipulations work, and that is one of the reasons gambling endures. (The other is the presence of suckers who want to loose or need the thrill -therefore the glitzy glam, the champagne cocktails etc.)
Internet gambling has provided new opportunities. To quote just one example: to play poker, use two computers side by side with different IPs: you can see two hands and coordinate the bets. If you know how to play – that’s it baby. Keep your head, be ready to play long hours, winning is guaranteed (in the long run with steady conservative play facing reasonable players.) I permit myself to mention this as it is common knowledge. I wouldn’t recommend it myself…don’t pass it on.
The internet has changed gambling profoundly.
I no longer play cards at all. Except UNO with small children.
Posted by: Noisette | Jan 9 2006 19:57 utc | 47
Could’nt resist posting this from Cole’s site as a harbinger of things to come:
This comment from Baghdad came in and was posted, but I think it is worth moving up here and repeating:
“I am an American currently working in Baghdad for a news organization. I’ve been here numerous times over the past 15 years.
The current security situation here has gotten much worse since the elections. We had a security briefing yesterday right after a fellow journalist was abducted. Besides the usual reminders to keep a low profile and going over our own unique security measures and procedures as to what to do in any given scenario we were told that there’s a high probability of all out civil war.
Iraq has been in a low level civil war since the end of 2003 that has been increasing in intensity ever since, but now our security team is telling us that should all-out war break out most, if not all of us, may have to be evacuated to safety in a nearby country. Instead of the scores of Iraqis dying each day as do now, thousands a day could perish. Most Sunnis have given up hope of getting adequate representation in the new Iraqi government and radical elements in the Shiite parties want to exact revenge on the Sunni for supporting Saddam over the years. Shiite death squads roam the city at night (in police and army uniform no less) dragging all the male members of a Sunni family out into the street and executing them in front of their women folk. Sunni insurgents (not in uniform) do the same to Shiite families in areas claimed as theirs.
The Sunni insurgents, it seems, are now determined to bring the new government to its knees by cutting off fuel supplies to Baghdad. The city’s supply of gasoline nearly dried up last week and local authorities literally shut the city down by banning all privately owned vehicles from the streets. They claimed it was to help hunt down the kidnappers of the Interior Minister’s sister but the real reason seems to be to reduce the demand for gas until supplies could be replenished. Electricity in most Baghdad neighborhoods has now been further reduced to as low as 1 hour per day. The black market rate for fuel for generators has doubled again and in many areas even that has run out. At this rate the city will go dark by the end of the month. Iraqi troops are reluctant to escort fuel trucks into Baghdad and American troops have their hands full escorting their own convoys.
Most US casualties are a result of trying to protect US military supplies. You can forget about the US military escorting civilian fuel convoys. So it all comes down to the Iraq army’s ability to get fuel into Baghdad and I don’t have much confidence they will succeed.”
Posted by: anna missed | Jan 10 2006 11:01 utc | 49
Must Read Article
Its’ conclusion:
The global order is re-dividing into roughly two de facto blocs – one has the US at its core and the other has Russia-China at its core. Energy is the major dividing line between the two blocs, and as desperation for control of strategic energy resources increases rapidly, so will the sharpness of the dividing line between the two blocs. With energy thus serving as a primary catalyst, the resource-rich Eurasian bloc is attaining significantly more gravitational pull than the American bloc.
Astronomers say that at the center of a galaxy there exists an energetic black hole that fuels the entire structure and keeps order, and that sometimes, if the black hole at the center weakens, the structure can begin to come apart. If America is likened to the black hole at the center of the American “galaxy”, then Russia-China is the black hole at the center of a new Eurasian “galaxy”.
One galaxy has been coming apart as its center incrementally weakens, while the other is still forming and growing ever stronger as its center incrementally grows more powerful. Can you see which one is coming apart, and which one is growing? Can you see the implications of these developments in the near term, over the next two to three years? It is vital that you become able to do so.
Well Ukraine’s parliament has just sacked its’ cabinet
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Jan 10 2006 14:53 utc | 51
This series of articles from the Zurich Sonntagsblick has already
been cited by Madsen (and others here too, I believe) but a look at the full range of the exposé seems to me to be well worth while, even if it requires a bit of German. For those (like me) who need some help in translating the text this on-line German dictionary may be of some assistance. This series of articles and interviews gives a rather clear vision of just how “out of contact with each other’s reality” the two sides of the Atlantic pond are. It’s also fascinating (though fruitless) to wonder why the Swiss “just happened” to feel the need to release this bombshell now.
Posted by: Hannah K. O’Luthon | Jan 10 2006 15:34 utc | 52
@cloned poster
That story about the Ukrainian Cabinet getting the flick is pregnant with potential.
Were they sacked because they made a bad deal?
Or was it that the ‘action’ ‘slopping’ over the sides of the trough from such a large deal didn’t spill as far as the rest of Ukraine’s elected representatives?
Perhaps this was a case of politicians worried about public reaction to the result of the Ukraine’s attempt to move west and enjoy the material benefits of the corporate world.
Although this won’t be subdued it won’t be positive either.
The only real change that has occurred is the doubling of energy costs.
Whether it is all, any, or none of the above, the average Joe Ukranian must be ruing the day he/she felt that listening to the honeyed phrases of US trained politicians would put them into a good paddock.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2006 18:52 utc | 54
anna missed’s post of the on the ground reality of Baghdad, seen thru the eyes of a US journalist is borne out by theis article .
“IN ONE of the darkest days in Iraq in recent months, insurgents killed about 130 people in a series of deadly explosions targeting Shia pilgrims in the south, Sunni police recruits in the west and US soldiers.
The slaughter was the worst in Iraq since the December 15 elections, and came only a day after guerrillas killed more than 50 people, mostly Shia mourners blown up at the funeral of a bodyguard who was shot dead in an assassination attempt on a local politician.”
Anyone who has been watching these events unfold with the instructional but grim predictibility of a Greek tragedy will be long beyond “I told you so”, past anger, hopefully will have skirted around resignation, and be in a somewhat numbed state trying to discern if anything can be done to prevent any/some more death and destruction.
Although the unwashed will be told that the elusive Mr Zarquawi is behind the deaths of 70 Sunni police recruits, logic will inform the USuk command that the Shia dominated SCRI alliance is a more likely culprit.
So the USuk ‘role modelling’ or ‘real time transactional analysis gaming’ must inevitably lead them to the one man who successfully moulded these diverse groupings into a coherent and somewhat stable nation.
The only real question is; how in hell are they going to rehabilitate Saddam Hussein?
I am lead towards a ‘mass shower scene’ where the sheeple are told that they were all just dreaming and have woken whilst performing their morning ablutions.
It was just a nightmare. Now the US and more importantly the unfortunate people of Iraq can rely on the stern but avuncular Saddam Hussein to sort out the disaster created by these shia fundamentalists.
BushCo have been working towards this momemtous occasion since the year dot. Look here’s a photo of Donald Rumsfeld shaking hands with President Hussein way back in the 80’s when most believed the Iranian fundamentalist propaganda of Shia repression.
BushCo didn’t fall for it.
Just like Pappy before him who refused to assist the fundamentalists right after President Hussein had successfully prevented rogue elements of his army from assisting the Iranian takeover of Iraq, George W is not going to ride with the Islamo-facists.
Posted by: Debs is dead | Jan 10 2006 19:35 utc | 55