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June 23, 2006
Open Thread
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A huge NYT story:
Bank Data Sifted in Secret by U.S. to Block Terror
Under a secret Bush administration program initiated weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, counterterrorism officials have gained access to financial records from a vast international database and examined banking transactions involving thousands of Americans and others in the United States, according to government and industry officials.
The program is limited, government officials say, to tracing transactions of people suspected of having ties to Al Qaeda by reviewing records from the nerve center of the global banking industry, a Belgian cooperative that routes about $6 trillion daily between banks, brokerages, stock exchanges and other institutions. The records mostly involve wire transfers and other methods of moving money overseas and into and out of the United States. Most routine financial transactions confined to this country are not in the database.
…
Administration officials, however, asked The New York Times not to publish this article, saying that disclosure of the Swift program could jeopardize its effectiveness. They also enlisted several current and former officials, both Democrat and Republican, to vouch for its value.
…
Swift’s database provides a rich hunting ground for government investigators. Swift is a crucial gatekeeper, providing electronic instructions on how to transfer money among 7,800 financial institutions worldwide. The cooperative is owned by more than 2,200 organizations, and virtually every major commercial bank, as well as brokerage houses, fund managers and stock exchanges, uses its services. Swift routes more than 11 million transactions each day, most of them across borders.
Brokers give police private phone data
Federal and local police across the country — as well as some of the nation’s best-known companies — have been gathering Americans’ phone records from private data brokers without subpoenas or warrants.
These brokers, many of whom market aggressively across the Internet, have broken into customer accounts online, tricked phone companies into revealing information and sometimes acknowledged that their practices violate laws, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press.
…
Congressional investigators estimated the U.S. government spent $30 million last year buying personal data from private brokers. But that number likely understates the breadth of transactions, since brokers said they rarely charge law-enforcement agencies.
…
The records also list some of America’s most famous corporate names — from automakers to insurers to banks — as purchasing information on private citizens from data brokers, which often help companies track down delinquent customers.
For instance, a 2003 customer list for data broker Universal Communications Company listed Ford Motor Credit Co., the automaker’s lending arm, as the single largest purchaser of phone toll records, paying $17,435 to buy such data that year. In all, Ford’s lending arm spent more than $50,000 with that data broker that year. Ford also paid $9,000 to another such company, Global Information Group, in 2004, the records state.
Feeling safer now?
I for one dispise hypocrisy in any form, (even in myself) having said that, the following (see below), may be offensive to somebunal (yes, I take liberties with language too) however, hiding our to nature seems a bit of a mockery in and of itself. When things are banned, they tend to take on a bifercation and a cognitive dissonence that galls me to no end. For myself, my own personal ethics are when making judgments about the morality of others, I always first try to project myself into their circumstances, whether these circumstances be more desperate or less desperate than my own.
HISTORICAL PRESERVATION LIBRARY OF BANNED CARTOONS
“[MORALITY?] FAIRNESS? DECENCY? HOW CAN YOU EXPECT FAIRNESS OR DECENCY ON A PLANET OF SLEEPING PEOPLE?”
— G.I. Gurdjieff
This has been a PSA by your unca $…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 7:16 utc | 3
Bernhard’s second link about the data brokers has a quote which pretty neatly sums up the worldwide situation on this.
“There’s a good chance there are some laws being broken, but it’s not really clear precisely which laws, said Rep. Ed Whitfield, R-Ky., head of the House Energy and Commerce investigations subcommittee that plans to begin hearings Wednesday.”
Any law there is to protect against any of this stuff is so antiquated that it’s useless, yet the laws which permit much of it come from ‘model legislation’ rushed out to UN members after 9/11 and passed in many nations who didn’t want to question any of it lest they be considered terra-ist or even worse French.
The laws can only work if all countries have pretty much the same legislation and in cases where for whatever reason a country hadn’t passed the ‘model’ into actual law but may have signed the UN treaty agreeing to consider it, amerika spooks, narcs, and securities enforcers, along with corporations just assumed the legislation was in place.
I try and help people get through the minefield of money-lending and private enterprise controlled legal tender, a few hours a week at a ‘clinic’ a mate set up to assist already marginalised people deal with this shit.
Sometime in 2004 a young halal slaughterman approached me with a problem he had been wrestling with unsuccessfully for over a year.
(time for a brief aside)
Although the NZ Post Office is still meant to be a state owned enterprise, after the US controlled sock puppet fucked up so badly that NZ’s economy went down the gurgler, when the IMF, World Bank and other assorted munificent nasties bailed the place out they were quite adamant that most of the low overhead good margin sectors of State owned enterprises such as the Post Office be ‘privatised’. So after making the courier driver employees buy their vans if they wanted to keep the job, the document couriering was turned over to DHL. Similarly the money transfer business was given lock, stock, and barrel to Western Union.
The Post Office had a really quaint system of selling postal notes for about 50 cents more than the value of the total sum; (eg $1000 worth of postal notes may only cost $1000.50, if that’s an exaggeration, it’s a small one), then mailing them off to the recipient who could cash them in at any Post Office around the country as well as any Post Office in one of the many other countries which belonged to the scheme, the funds now had to be sent via western Union who charged a lot more (a % system I think) to a bank as close as possible to the recipient. Given that Western Union didn’t have much market penetration in those nations which still used the ‘postal note’ system, the bank could be a couple of hundred kilometres away. (There are plenty more iniquities but this is far too long an aside now)
Anyway this young fella had been sending money back to family in Pakistan and like many followers of Islam his name was the same as or similar to about ten zillion other followers of Islam.
Anyway he sent about NZD $3000 to his family to help with the cost of his young sister’s marriage.
The money was meant to go directly from NZ to Pakistan, but had somehow never arrived. Without going too deeply into this chap and his favorite sister’s business, those who understand how marriage is handled in rural undeveloped societies will understand what a disaster something like this can be.
This was the first alliance between the families so it was very important that things go correctly. Somehow after a long enough delay to humiliate this chap to everyone, not forgetting his family in the eyes of the other family, one of his brothers managed to bail the situation out. Even if the slaughterman had more money there was no other way to get it to Pakistan in time.
A couple of days ago I referred to the fact that the traditional middle eastern method of money payments and transfers which didn’t require any sort of trust account and therefore no borrowing had been outlawed post 9/11. The reason may have been as claimed to prevent terrorists from sending money to each other but banning it was sledgehammer to crack a peanut stuff. The outcome hasn’t only discomfited terra-ists it has forced middle eastern businesses to use western style banking systems including having to pay interest.
Whatever spin some may have been fed, many Islamic economies could survive quite well without usury. The system called Hawala had enabled large transactions across large distances to be completed without having to use moneylenders or any other interest charging third party.
Anyway as this IMF document reveals the concern that Hawala operated outside western supervision created a security risk.
Another long digression I know but important to get the point across that Western Union was the only alternative for the slaughterman. Not only had the money disappeared the Post office staff couldn’t tell him where it was.
They could only tell him that they had been told, the money’s whereabouts were a “matter of National security”.
This is what they said when I rang them too.
“what national security?” I said “We don’t have anything to feel insecure about, this is crazy. What’s the SIS doing with this blokes 3 grand?”
“I don’t know” the clerk huffily spat, “you’ll have to talk to Western Union. Here’s their complaints’ number” (he probably said ‘helpline’ but “complaints’ number” is considerably more apt)
“Not our national security” the western union human said after I had finally negotiated the synthetic receptionist/voicemail run around, “US national security”
“Hang on” I just about screamed feeling a ‘turn’ coming on “A kiwi sends a few bucks to Pakistan to give his youngest sister for her wedding, the money is meant to go directly to Islamabad, don’t pass Go, or collect $200 or any of that stuff, yet somehow it is a matter of US National Security? Why? What the fuck is going on?” (yeah I know swearing never helps, no! bugger it it does, the swearer generally feels better)
Anyway after much backwards and forwards it transpires that someone/something in western union amerika had stopped the transfer, western union NZ had no idea why or where the money might be other than all queries were knocked back with a terse “National Security”.
After wheedling a phone number outta NZ western union, which of course wasn’t a 0800 or whatever the freephone numbers in amerika are, I waited for a time when NZ and Colorado would both be awake and rang the dodgy swindling scumsuckers.
Well that wasn’t the feeling we went into this money hunt with but after a few days of being pissfarted around by ignorant uncaring incompetents that feeling began to dominate.
Kiwi politicians actually had to ring the state department before we were told our 23 year old ex-Pakistani now kiwi slaughterman, was in fact a fifty something Arabic terrorist. And to boot their names weren’t exactly the same apart from one part of the handle which a huge number of Islamic men have in their names.
Now just because we had worked out what had happened and demonstrated that they had the wrong fella, don’t imagine for one moment that was the end of it.
No According to the Western Union US, person ‘releasing the funds’ wasn’t up to them. That was handled by Homeland Security. “No worries” I said with a sinking feeling in the pit of my gut “Call homeland security and get them to release the money tomorrow and who knows maybe his family will have it by the end of the week”.
This was a major for the young bloke who felt that this whole affair had destroyed his credibility in the eyes of his family, some of whom had probably helped him get to NZ in the first place.
We’re talking about a really nice, straight as a arrow, good guy here, and he’s sick with worry this bullshit has shattered some of his most basic life anchors.
“Oh sorry sir you don’t understand” (this western union voice doesn’t understand that the rigid politeness of US culture can be misinterpreted by people from other places as the sure sign of deceit but that’s for another time)”Sir, homeland security is very busy keeping us safe and there is quite a delay getting these payments processed for approval”.
Aaaaaaah will the penny ever drop that this is what gets people in other parts of the planet really pissed off? That some joe lunch box in western union just can’t see that the amount of trouble, inconvenience and humiliation his employers have put this chap through, just because they decided this money that they were being paid to transfer, and which wasn’t going anywhere near amerika, could be held up for over year. In fact it is still OK to hold even longer, after there was no doubt that the transfer was any threat!
From a legal standpoint both western union and homeland security had, in a sense, casually violated the sovereignty of NZ and Pakistan. The ‘enabling’ legislation for this bullshit had never been passed in NZ’s legislature and possibly never would be, given that there is a process for enacting legislation; and getting it stuffed down yer throat by this weeks global bully isn’t deemed to be part of that process.
Incidentally during the course of writing this I went looking for sites which explained Hawila and came across this article from last Tuesday’s Khaleej Times Even years after the fact nothing has changed:
Indians whose belief is Islam face delays in ‘instant’ money transfers
DUBAI — Indian Muslims living in the UAE have voiced their concern over the alleged delay and blocking of remittances to their homes sent through Western Union’s Instant Money transfer service, following an anti-terror financing regulation imposed a few years ago by the Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), an unit of the US treasury department.
OFAC started to control and monitor money transactions across the world in a bid to stop the flow of money to terrorist organisations following the 9/11 attack. OFAC has published the names of suspected terror organisations and individuals banned from receiving money in any form.
According to Rahman, an Indian expatriate hailing from Kerala who tried to remit money to a friend in India from Alukkas Money Exchange in Bur Dubai, an agent of Western Union was informed that the delivery of money will be delayed if he sent it in the name of Muhammad. “I filled the remittance form and presented to the counter staff of the exchange. But, he asked me to change the name of the recipient, otherwise it would be delayed.”
“They told me that all recipient names such as Muhammad and Ahmed have been blocked by OFAC . I was forced to give another name to send the money. How can they block such common names among Muslims as Mohammed and Ahmed? he complained, stating, as a protest, “I refused to send money through Western Union and used another local exchange house to remit the money to India using the recipient’s name as Mohammed.”
My bloke got his money in the end but if even the mayor of kabul can see this trampling on others is going to cause enough antipathy to bring the shit down on amerikans heads, why do their bosses (sorry democratically elected representatives) completely miss this point?
Who can blame the islamic conspiracy theorists ( the mirror image of amerikan theorists) for deciding that this stuff is just a con to seize control of islamic economies?
thanks for that story notXtian.
I really look forward to your posts and appreciate the time and passion you put into them. NZ seems like a wonderful place from everything I hear. It is good to know that at least some of you are fighting to keep it that way.
btw, Debs is a much better alias than the one you are using now….imo
Posted by: dan of steele | Jun 23 2006 11:48 utc | 5
Continued lessons of entropy in the saga of American Enantiodromia right here…
This make me so angry I want to stomp on baby ducks!.
Post script, thanks for todays lesson did, er, uh notXtian; I hope you don’t mind that I have booked you post for viewing in other places of the unwashed serfs.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 13:25 utc | 8
A bit on Western Union:
Information from U.S. companies helped Israel locate terror cells
From the spring of 2003 until autumn 2004, the Shin Bet security service tracked down Palestinian terror cells in the West Bank thanks to information from the Western Union money transfer service, which was passed on by the FBI.
This fact was disclosed in a book published this week about America’s war on terror after September 11, 2001. In “The One Percent Doctrine,” author Ron Suskind connects the transfer of intelligence from the FBI to the Shin Bet with several targeted assassinations carried out by Israel during this period.
Education in madness…
A test missile fired from Hawaii was knocked down by a ship-based interceptor, using a Japanese ship for radar tracking. Officials say it’s been planned for months, just happens to be coincidence that the test takes place in the Pacific with Japan’s assistance, while North Korea threatens to test a new long-range missile, and some call for a strike against the missile…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 17:32 utc | 11
the peacock report: NATO Developing Master Database — Total Information Awareness Revisited?
..NATO is taking a shot at developing what appears to be a similar version of a multimedia “grand database,” as the Dept. of Defense formerly referred to the system. According to procurement documents that TPR has obtained, NATO already has developed a prototype electronic master-database designed to hold “large amounts of data” on people and “regions of interest” around the globe. The organization now wants to enhance that prototype system, and intends to bring aboard private contractors, trained in cognitive psychology and experienced in “human factors analysis,” to assess the system and make recommendations for its continued modernization.
The current prototype is designed to “assist with the identification of inter-relationships,” as well as to provide a limited software-based “visualization capability” for analysts working collaboratively in person and increasingly online. This “System of Systems” analysis capability, which is currently under development, envisions the creation of human-to-machine and human-to-human tools for use by NATO nations, whom eventually will work together to collect and analyze information “on a broad scale.”
Once this aspect of NATO’s transformation is complete, the organization will be better equipped to “provide information and analysis within and across the political, military, economic, social, infrastructure and information domains,” the statement of work (SOW) says. Consequently, NATO nations will be more adept at “identifying individuals and physical entities (including their capabilities, vulnerabilities, and inter-relationships) of adversary, non-aligned and friendly nations and groups,” according to the SOW.
Posted by: b real | Jun 23 2006 17:48 utc | 12
Venezuela and Panama Sign Energy Agreements
During a visit to Panama yesterday, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez agreed to support a variety of energy related projects, such as the amplification and modernization of a Panamanian oil pipeline, the possible construction of a gas pipeline, the supply of Venezuelan oil to Panama, and the construction of a refinery in Panama, among other things.
Chavez visited Panama in order to participate in the 180th anniversary celebration of the “Anfictionic Congress,” that Latin American independence hero Simon Bolivar had organized in Panama and that was supposed to push for Latin American integration.
With regard to the modernization of Panama’s pipeline, Chavez said that it, “is today being underutilized and in addition we can give it bi-directionality, amplify its capacity in order to bring Venezuelan oil and pump it from the Caribbean to the Pacific.”
Venezuela has repeatedly indicated a strong interest in modernizing the Panamanian pipeline, which can carry oil from the Caribbean to the Pacific Ocean. The purpose of such a pipeline for Venezuela would be to reduce transportation costs in bringing oil from Venezuela to China and India, which it intends to supply in greater volumes.
Other energy-related memoranda of understanding that the two countries signed included a joint project for the supply of Venezuelan natural gas to Panama and the construction of a refinery with the capacity to process 150,000 barrels of crude oil per day.
Also, Chavez offered Panama to join the Petrocaribe agreement, which provides Venezuelan oil at favorable financing rates and allows countries to pay for oil shipments with products instead of cash. Almost all nations of the Caribbean are already part of this agreement. It is, “a system of oil supply guarantees that keeps growing every day and that more governments, peoples, and communities are joining,” said Chavez about the offer.
Posted by: b real | Jun 23 2006 18:26 utc | 13
I’m reminded, constantly, of the two-year three and a half year old remark by the anonymous State Department official: “I just wake up in the morning and tell myself, ‘There’s been a military coup,’ and then it all makes sense.”
Doth this nightmare ever end?
There’s a dark lantern of the spirit,
Which none see by but those who bear it,
That makes them in the dark see visions
And hag themselves with apparitions,
Find racks for their own minds, and vaunt
Of their own misery and want.
~BUTLER *
[* A composite of: Hudibras Part I, Canto i, 505-06; Part III, canto iii, 19-20; and Satire upon the Weakness and Misery of Man, 71-72 and 229-31.]
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 20:18 utc | 14
okay. i’ve found some change to put in the jukebox. maybe these will wake you up. time for everyone to get off their butts & have some fun. and for the old-timers, the red cross has arrived.
Posted by: b real | Jun 23 2006 20:40 utc | 15
Even more management of acute mania…
Finally, Hollywood is getting on side in the War On Terror
They recently transformed an industrial block in downtown LA into a busy Baghdad square, filled with fruit stands, shoe repair shops and rug dealers. At least 60 extras dressed in hijabs, kaffiyehs and polyester-wool blend slacks were herded onto the set to simulate an average shopping day. . . . . Onlookers were later asked to stand back as the pyrotechnic crew blew up a poor old Yugo [Rmemember Poland*!] coupe and stunt men and women, padded under their Arab garb, were thrust into the air with ropes and pulleys to simulate the impact of a bomb exploding.
Trey Parker and Matt Stone are already filing suit for copyright infringement. (Derka, derka, burqa!)
*spoken w/a texass drawl
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 22:16 utc | 17
At approximately 8:00 PM, you will be treated to FOX Pay-Per-View’s new X-rated Reality Show, in the Hallmark Hall of Shame Series:
Dr. Tongue’s 3D House of Interrogation
Directed by Roman Polanski
Financed by DR. FU MANCHU
WAGERING ALLOWED:
Proceeds to go to your favorite charity.
Posted by: Cecil B. Demented | Jun 23 2006 22:32 utc | 18
dancin to d awilo
longomba wigglin
d hips d feet d finga
Posted by: peanut gallery | Jun 23 2006 22:41 utc | 19
about: NATO developing a master data-base, Total information awareness revisited.
*see above*
(I missed that, so thanks)
It is amusing, it really is. All these bulletins from the Ministry of Information, particularly those from the US, are pathetic. Not only because the information is controlled, only partial, or the reporters are clueless or purposely vague, that may be so; nevertheless one can read thru all that to the truth.
The truth is that they no longer really know how to do anything, organise anything, gather info in a rational way, and then collate, analyse it. Of course, pretending to be incompetent, or provoking others to tar them with that brush, plays into their game.
Ministries of Information or Truth are corrupt, confused, out of reality. Their info. is never real, always politically motivated, and constructed backwards (from spin to fact, from conclusion to data.) Once they begin this process and enter the realm of fakery, and their minions scurry around tweaking stats and licking bosses’ boots, currying favor, publishing garbage, they become incapable of real data gathering, of any pertinent understanding.
These days, some Gvmt. and other orgs seem to pride themselves on the huge amounts of data they store or gather. That sounds good. However, they haven’t a clue about how to organise it, in fact they don’t even now how to store it properly, and are lost when it comes to actually extracting intersting or relevant information. This is partly because all those involved understand that ‘reality’ doesn’t count – all that needs to be done is somehow provide some kind of data that shows that X Muslim organisation is receiving or gathering or giving ‘terrorist’ funds. As this is all invented in any case, there is no point in gathering data at all. So everyone pretends, and real data becomes an unpleasant mirage that must be ignored. So it gets lost, or transformed, or trashed, or warped so badly it makes no sense.
And the officials and busy worker bees stand about in proper suits or even white masks, making a show for the press, the bosses, and they hope, the impressionable public.
The organization now wants to enhance that prototype system, and intends to bring aboard private contractors, trained in cognitive psychology and experienced in “human factors analysis,” to assess the system and make recommendations for its continued modernization.
To do what? The managerial jargon and the appeal to outsiders is beyond pathetic.
Posted by: Noisette | Jun 23 2006 22:43 utc | 20
That was “FOXX” up there in post # 18.
No room for law suits in a comedy of manners.
Posted by: Cecil B. Demented | Jun 23 2006 23:24 utc | 21
Cecil B.,
I highly recommend the Scissor girls as a soundtrack and backdrop muzak for major In-terror-gation scenes or monologues for the 3D House of Interrogation..
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 23:28 utc | 22
P.s. It gets a widdle crazy at the bar after hours and many a few tall ones…
You know, Gyratin and dancin to d awilo
longomba wigglin d hips d feet d finga, and all.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 23 2006 23:35 utc | 23
In the 3D House of Interrogation, a team of skilled interrogators will attempt to “break” a member of the establishment, and turn “her” into a brainwashed, dom/sub dog-collar leash-wearing Kalashnikov-carrying memmber of the Red Brigades, ready to do anything for the “cause”.
Interrogators are allowed to use only music, political indoctrination, physical stimulation, and mild physical abuse(limited to a light riding crop), to “turn” the interogatee.
The interogatee who holds out the longest “wins”, and advances to the next round.
THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE!
And, really, no one would pay to watch the “turning” of Tom Delay. It’s just a simple rating thang.
Posted by: Cecil B. Demented | Jun 23 2006 23:54 utc | 24
Big Brother will soon be watching. Apple has applied for a patent for an LCD that sandwiches image-capture sensors between the image-displaying cells, effectively creating a screen that is also a camera. Kinda like telescreens, doncha think.
Posted by: gmac | Jun 23 2006 23:57 utc | 25
Interogatee #1 Hilary C.
Director of Indoctrination: Angela D.
Male Interrogator: Vin D.
Female Interrogator: Monica L.
Posted by: Cecil B. Demented | Jun 24 2006 0:06 utc | 26
Interrogatee #2: Jeannie P.
Director of Mental Interrogation: Patty H.
Male Interragator: Rocky B.
Female Interrogator: Mary C. or Debbie D.
Posted by: Cecil B. Demented | Jun 24 2006 0:18 utc | 28
Who wins, who loses?
What is the appropriate music?
What are the odds in Vegas?
Posted by: The Sporting News | Jun 24 2006 0:22 utc | 29
The Myth of Net Neutrality (Tom Halfhill – MaximumPC July ’06 issue)
…Opponents insist that all net traffic must be treated equally.
But nothing has ever worked that way, including the internet. Dialup service is available for less than $10 a month and is slow as hell. Regular DSL can deliver 1.5Mb/s and costs about $30 a month. High-speed DSL can deliver 3Mb/s for about $50. A dedicated T3 line gets you 45Mb/s and costs thousands of dollars a month. Everyone understands this basic concept.
Critics complain that without net neutrality small online businesses won’t be able to afford the same service as huge sites like Amazon and Google. That’s like the owners of your neighborhood thrift shop whining because they can’t afford a storefront on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. Actually, it’s worse, because the pricing for tiered service won’t be nearly as disparate as that. Companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are fighting against tiered service because they are the bandwidth hogs that will have to start paying their fair share for all the traffic they generate.
If Congress allows tiered service, nobody except the largest bandwidth users will notice a difference. The Internet backbone has tons of capacity and keeps growing. Backbone routing plays a lesser role in overall packet throughput than your local Internet connection and the performance of the web server. In my opinion, vital network traffic should be a higher priority than teenagers gossiping about K-Fed in AOL chat rooms.
Posted by: gmac | Jun 24 2006 0:53 utc | 31
b real
got me lookin for some OK Jazz — as close as it comes on the u tube — ahhh Franco !
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 24 2006 1:01 utc | 32
b real and anna missed – awesome! thanks for making sense of nyc’s steamy weather!
dancin to d awilo
longomba wigglin
d hips d feet d finga
Posted by: conchita | Jun 24 2006 1:35 utc | 33
No, no this is jazz..
Barkeep, round for the house please.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 24 2006 1:54 utc | 34
gmac
these are some bad & mad motherfuckers
their idea of god & godliness – something they stole from alfred hitchcock or a moment or two of the night of the hunter
Posted by: remembereringgiap | Jun 24 2006 1:56 utc | 35
cecil, i am hangin in the peanut gallery wigglin d hips d feet d finga and will not be available for interrogation purposes for at least another hour.
possibly i am not progressive enough for the scissor girls
reception @foxx is not coming in loud and clear from my portal
Posted by: angela d | Jun 24 2006 2:30 utc | 37
RE: music
Actually, for music, I was thinking of St. Joan’s Maria Dolores, or Deportee(if you change it to “interrogatee”):
ST. JOAN
Posted by: Edward ScissorHands | Jun 24 2006 2:34 utc | 38
gmac , much appreciate your #27 warning post. i will spread the word and prepare accordingly.. time is of the essence
Posted by: annie | Jun 24 2006 3:04 utc | 41
Man, I guess Amurra brought in a jukebox. My favorite band. My favorite song. My favorite venue.
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 24 2006 3:32 utc | 42
My own true love Xenia WP (AKA Lucy Lawless) and I have turned our Boyz real down low. We are just canoodling a little bit, and listening to Annie Lennox.
We have titles and are entitled to a little sleep.
But if that fag-ass ROLAND
cranks up his Thompson Gun, we’ll kick his ass six ways from Sunday before he’s Saturday bound.
Nighty Nite.
Posted by: Buffy VS | Jun 24 2006 3:34 utc | 43
besides internet telephony, like skype, the “net neutrality” issue implicates youtube. we’ll see how long it all lasts.
anyway, youtube is fun, because what someone declares as preferred art says everything about the “individual.”
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 24 2006 3:56 utc | 45
somewhere between mah damba and charles gayle.
we should have a thread attacking the legitimacy of the “subject.”
Posted by: slothrop | Jun 24 2006 4:09 utc | 47
anyway, youtube is fun, because what someone declares as preferred art says everything about the “individual.”
ya think
Posted by: bar fight | Jun 24 2006 4:24 utc | 49
Living The Vida Apocalypsa
http://insider.tv.yahoo.com/celeb/4244/
Woo! Taylor Hicks gets some custom
love advice from Kevin Spacey in “Leno”.
We’ll see amazing stunts including:
Two drivers, each with a cheese grater
attached to the front of the car, using
controlled, precision spins to grate a
wheel of USDA surplus cheese; then
fifteen paintball pros creating art as
the multi-colored paintballs explode
on an enormous canvas — until a
recognizable image appears; last
two naked X-treme unicyclists tackling a
dangerously difficult obstacle course
with never-before-seen freestyle tricks.
Posted by: Peristroika Shalom | Jun 24 2006 5:40 utc | 51
Palestinian State Television Scores Hit
With Game Show ‘Who Wants To Eat A Falafel’?
API – Gaza Strip
Friday, 24 November, 2006
The program has only been on the air for three weeks, but Palestinian citizens from Gaza to Haifa are already swept up in the thrill of the nation’s biggest runaway-hit game show, ‘Who Wants To Eat A Falafel?’
Enlarge Image http://www.mideastweb.org/palestine1944s1.jpg
Host Hareesa Hamdallah asks contestant Mukdah Muhammud Rami to name the author of the epic tome, ‘My Struggle’ in order to win a once-in-a-lifetime chance at a plate of chick pea and tahini falafels with sliced tomatoes and cucumber yoghurt.
Hosted by popular TV personality Hareesa Hamdallah, ‘Who Wants To Eat A Falafel?’ gives starving Gaza contestants the chance to answer general-knowledge questions to win food items.
Since its October 26 premiere, it has quickly become the nation’s most popular program, drawing even more viewers than the top-rated, ‘Let’s Stomp Ari’, in which stuffed mannikins resembling the comatose leader of Israel’s Likud Party are kicked about the stage to the theme from Fiddler on the Roof.
“I would love to eat a falafel,” said devoted Who Wants viewer An-Anajah Namura, an unemployed Hafai machinist now stranded in Gaza, who has submitted his name to the producers more than 600 times in hopes of becoming a contestant. “That is truly the Palestinian Dream, to be seen eating food on Israeli state-censored television.”
Palestine citizens are already well acquainted with the show’s format: Every night at eight, after prayer, cameras circle a sumptuous banquet table of rice pilaf, goat meat and falafels as announcer Nisba Aiteek asks the studio audience, “Who… wants… to eat … a falafel!!!l?” Bayonet-wielding members of the Israeli Army (costumed Palestinian actors) then move in to protect the table from rioting audience members, who often storm the set with crude handmade weapons in a desperate attempt to seize a thumb of rice or shred of meat.
Once order is restored, ten lucky Palestinians – who are brought to Haifa, courtesy of the show, by ox-cart – face off in a “fastest finger” round to determine who will sit in the “hot seat” in front of Aiteek to compete for the banquet.
The advancing contestant is asked a series of increasingly difficult questions, each carrying a larger food prize, from a scrap of rotting camel hump to the grand prize of a one-course dinner for one. Stumped contestants can use one of three “lifelines”–polling the audience, writing a letter to a friend for help, or ingesting a wafer of glucose sesame candy if they are losing consciousness due to hunger.
Though no contestant has yet won the top prize of a slice of roasted goat meat, a pile of rice pilaf, several falafels, tomato salad and cucumber yoghurt, viewers have thrilled to the awarding of lesser prizes to contestants finishing partway up the prize ladder.
Last Friday’s installment drew blockbuster ratings as Haseem Muhammad, a 33-year-old Whalid Kahlidi-area peasant, walked away with a single Kentucky Fried Chicken drumstick after correctly identifying Richard Cheney as the chief instigator of the Third Middle East Oil War.
The grand prize.
“Viewers are absolutely captivated by the show,” said executive producer Oleg Medvedev, a Russian born Jew who became a Muslim. “To watch villagers get up there and have a chance at eating, it’s a thrilling fantasy for these people.”
Still, some viewers complain that the questions are too easy.
Posted by: Periwinkle White | Jun 24 2006 6:08 utc | 52
last quarter for me—nine below zero—sheer genius.
Lots of incredible archival stuff coming into that place, whew!
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 24 2006 6:08 utc | 53
Okay, one more just for the weirdness of it all. The end of the world.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 24 2006 8:07 utc | 54
Gmac – on net neutrality in 31:
The author argues that nothing will change and misleads the readers.
Today a consumer pays per bandwidth and/or time.
– Modem line – slow + cheap
– DSL line – medium speed + ok-price
– Fast DSL – highspeed + high price
Nobody cares WHAT the consumer gets through his line.
Today the “big sites” also per for bandwidth. It is not free for google to push the data onto the internets. They pay for their lines at least up to the interconnection points and if the push more traffic than they draw, the will have to pay for that imbalances.
But nobody cares WHAT google sends through those lines.
What the telecoms are trying now is to get payed accrding to value of the CONTENT that gets pushed through the lines, not for the volume of that vontent. If the content is of high value, they want to charge extra from the consumer and the content provider even though they don´t own any bit of that content. They will press for this by making such content slow and only deliver it at natural speed when they get extra money.
Imagine the post office asking for the value of a one pound package and charging more to the sender and to the recipient depending on wether you send a pound of paperback or a pound antique bible.
It’s robbery at large.
Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.
~auerbach
Loving it all!
Posted by: Amurra | Jun 24 2006 9:33 utc | 57
Son of Tim, interestinglt enough, I drank with Jeff two nights before he drown in Memphis…One of those life events you never ever forget.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 24 2006 10:05 utc | 58
P.S. the only man to ever give me chills when he sang.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 24 2006 10:07 utc | 59
Bernhard, in response to your opening comment titled A huge NYT story:
I found a thread about SWIFT on Kevin Drum’s Political Animal:
KEVIN DRUM
And regardless of whether or not you like national security letters, it appears to be on fairly solid legal ground — much more solid than the NSA’s warrantless domestic spying program, at any rate.
COMMENTER
BS!
Allow me to quote from the NYT article: “After an initial debate, Treasury Department lawyers, consulting with the Justice Department, concluded that the privacy laws applied to banks, not to a banking cooperative like Swift. They also said the law [“Right to Financial Privacy Act”] protected individual customers and small companies, not the major institutions that route money through Swift on behalf of their customers.”
The post above makes a good point about privacy and motive. My later post in the same thread counters Kevin’s point that National Security letters seem a legal justification for the US HSD (Homeland Security Department?) to obtain personal and business records of wire transfers from and between citizens of the US and other countries.
Does he think any other country with member businesses should get US data in return, quid pro quo. Which ones? Or is this simply a successful application of the US Total Sprectrum (or whatever) Dominance policy applied to international finance.
It is a real privacy question and I’m sure there are strong opinions from many fronts. Should the US have exclusive access to the data of a non-US private organization?
Should other nations simply be allowed the same access?
Posted by: jonku | Jun 24 2006 10:44 utc | 60
ABC News: Snow: Financial Surveillance Program Vital to War on Terrorism
Treasury Secretary John Snow on Friday said a program tracking millions of financial transactions was not invasion of privacy of Americans but “government at its best” and vital to the war on terrorism.
“It’s entirely consistent with democratic values, with our best legal traditions,” Snow said.
You know, I tried I really tried to come up w/a cynical reply for this, but more and more, all I can do is just shake my head…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 24 2006 13:12 utc | 61
Wow. I missed all the fun. nice vibe.
bar fight…I LOVE it. surf dirge.
perfect. perfect. perfect. all those masks…
enough to inspire Los Straitjackets to do a little Go-Go Robics with the world famous Pontani Sisters.
vermeerista- it’s always tease, tease, tease
Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 24 2006 15:16 utc | 62
A great one died yesterday.
You all must have been channeling the vibrations of the plane taking off.
Two Obits:
AARON
SPELLING
I’m taking a few months off to mourn.
See you on Halloween.
Posted by: Elvira MOD | Jun 24 2006 15:28 utc | 63
Anna: Playing Nine Below Zero -and- End of the World at the same time, it’s awesome syncophancy with the deep rumble and whump, whump, whump on a otherwise quiet Saturday morning, of the local Army base doing heavy mortar practice, the combined sound of Sonny, Skeeter and Freedom Inc.(TM).
And speaking of down the tubes:
Mention of the word ‘America’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Four
Mention of the word ‘God’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Beautiful’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Grace’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Good’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Dreams’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Majesty’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
Mention of the word ‘Human’
Star Spangled Banner: Zero
America the Beautiful: Two
-vers-
Mention of the word ‘Proudly’
Star Spangled Banner: One
America the Beautiful: Zero
Mention of the word ‘Rockets’
Star Spangled Banner: One
America the Beautiful: Zero
Mention of the word ‘Bombs’
Star Spangled Banner: One
America the Beautiful: Zero
Mention of the word ‘Flag’
Star Spangled Banner: One
America the Beautiful: Zero
Mention of the word ‘Land’
Star Spangled Banner: One
America the Beautiful: Zero
http://www.videovat.com/videos/2123/bradford-city-fire-disaster.aspx
Posted by: tante aime | Jun 24 2006 15:38 utc | 64
@anna missed #54, she’s wearing my dress.
faux, glad i’m not alone in appreciation of the surf dirge ;-( )
Posted by: annie | Jun 24 2006 16:22 utc | 65
hold onto your pants i think at least one of these characters is not play acting
welcome to the serengetti ranch
Posted by: annie | Jun 24 2006 16:43 utc | 66
YouTube is Camp Bonanza, in a po-mo meets Sontag kinda way.
Posted by: fauxreal | Jun 24 2006 17:44 utc | 67
I wondered why Fakhravar wasn´t trotted out more by the neocons, but now the fraudulent prince of darkness himself is pushing him in a WaPo oped: Why Did Bush Blink on Iran? (Ask Condi)
The failure of successive U.S. administrations, including this one, to give moral and political support to the regime’s opponents is a tragedy. Iran is a country of young people, most of whom wish to live in freedom and admire the liberal democracies that Ahmadinejad loathes and fears. The brave men and women among them need, want and deserve our support. They reject the jaundiced view of tired bureaucrats who believe that their cause is hopeless or that U.S. support will worsen their situation.
In his second inaugural address, Bush said, “All who live in tyranny and hopelessness can know: The United States will not ignore your oppression, or excuse your oppressors. When you stand for liberty, we will stand with you.”
Iranians were heartened by those words, much as the dissidents of the Soviet Union were heartened by Reagan’s “evil empire” speech in 1983. A few days ago, I spoke with Amir Abbas Fakhravar, an Iranian dissident student leader who escaped first from Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, then, after months in hiding, from Iran.
Fakhravar heard this president’s words, and he took them to heart. But now, as he pleads for help for his fellow citizens, he is apprehensive. He wonders whether the administration’s new approach to the mullahs will silence the president’s voice, whether the proponents of accommodation with Tehran will regard the struggle for freedom in Iran as an obstacle to their new diplomacy.
Quite some whining by Perle. I thing he knwos he has lost it by now.
just wondering – is perle acting on his own or is he a mouthpiece for cheney or for aipac? or is it all part of another set up where they scam the american public into another war. i don’t trust them for a moment. great to see liberal media at work again.
Posted by: conchita | Jun 24 2006 21:52 utc | 69
Perle has a lot of nerve whinning about the course of events in Iran, since the policies he advocated for Iraq, have done so much to shape the political landscape in Iran. Its amazing that wapo would still publish such dribble. Is’nt he still under investigation/indictment by Fitz?
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 24 2006 23:05 utc | 70
I was looking up some of my favorite political songs to see if there were any good videos and came across this gem of a video:
Succexy
The song’s a great attack on the sexualization of war in the media. And catchy as hell. The video to go with it? Disturbing but effective.
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 25 2006 0:58 utc | 71
@Rowan, if you haven’t done so in recent yrs, I highly recommend rewatching Goldfinger, the film that eroticized the cold war. Don’t know if Fleming wrote the James Bond character that way, or it was a Hollywood “enhancement”. Did anyone read Fleming? (It was Ian Fleming who wrote James Bond series wasn’t it?)
Posted by: jj | Jun 25 2006 1:02 utc | 72
I liked From Russia with love, better, JJ.
More real, less erotic.
Of course Pussy Galore was a class act
But Bond was all about camp erotic from the git go. It did not eroticize the cold war, it satirized it from the start. There is no film i have watched, in my recent memory, that glorified war.
My take on it.
Posted by: Frank Rich | Jun 25 2006 1:47 utc | 73
Funny, I watched Sin City last night (my son brought it home), where Tarantino was a guest director, and like the kill bill thing it was a, glorification seems way to tepid, more like a non stop beginning to end, full tilt orgy of violence — where violence itself serves as pretty much the only index to anything meaningful, in the story of characters. I dont see much of this stuff, but if this is indicitive of where pop culture is going, then by comparison, the glorification of violence in war would seem to be very passe indeed.
Posted by: anna missed | Jun 25 2006 3:21 utc | 74
hope nobody sprained anything important during the friday nite dance party (and what’s a revolution w/o some dancing & lotsa music?)
r’giap- thank you for opening my ears (& eyes) to kirk. an amazing musician.
anna missed- franco yes! gotta love those soukous guitars.
what to make of this article?
US video game invasion of Venezuela riles Caracas
A video game which features mercenaries invading Venezuela to guarantee oil supplies for the United States has become the latest source of tension between the two nations.
The game, “Mercenaries 2: World in Flames” only comes out next year but Venezuela’s Vice President Jose Vicente Rangel has already expressed anger — at the US government.
“This shows the perversion of North American society, its government,” said Rangel on Wednesday, calling
President George W. Bush’s administration “a government of gangsters, drug traffickers and criminals”.
“Mercenaries 2” is being made by Pandemic Studios, a Los Angeles-based company whose games are developed in California and Brisbane, Australia.
Pandemic bills the new product as “an explosive open-world action game set in a massive, highly reactive, war-torn world.”
The invading mercenaries have the muscles, tattoos, blonde hair, square jaw and dark glasses of many a Hollywood action hero.
“A power-hungry tyrant messes with Venezuela’s oil supply, sparking an invasion that turns the country into a war zone,” says the maker on its website.
No names are mentioned. But is it a coincidence that Venezuela sells more than 1.5 million barrels of oil to the United States each day, about 14 percent of US needs, and that Washington frequently criticises the democratic credentials of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez?
Chavez in turn has accused the United States of making plans to invade his country.
Pandemic insists the aim of its game is purely commercial.
“Pandemic is in the business of entertainment. It has never been contacted by any US government agency concerning the development of Mercenaries 2,” a company spokesman told AFP on condition of anonymity.
In a statement sent to AFP, Pandemic added: “The decision to choose current interesting events and locations for any of its games is purely designed to make a fun and rich experience for the gamer.”
The fun in “Mercenaries 2” is certainly very life-like. The three dimensional scenes look frighteningly similar to Caracas and the country’s oil facilities.
The game graphically depicts several districts of Caracas being engulfed by flames from aerial bombardments and also depicts the logo of Venezuela’s national oil company in its scenes.
“purely designed to make a fun and rich experience for the gamer.” the use of the term “gamer”, in this case, should obviously not be confused w/ the consumer/player.
Posted by: b real | Jun 25 2006 4:01 utc | 75
@- thank you for opening my ears (& eyes) to kirk. an amazing musician.
Check out Kirk’s We Free Kings. One of the best albums of any kind of music ever made.
Posted by: mats | Jun 25 2006 4:16 utc | 76
Saudade
The Portuguese word “saudade”, loosely translated,denotes “longing”, “melancholy”, or “nostalgia.” In the context of Portuguese, however, the term connotes a meaning that is irrevocably lost in translation. In his book In Portugal of 1912, A.F.G Bell makes a few disquisitional remarks on the meaning of “saudade” given its intended context:
“The famous saudade of the Portuguese is a vague and constant desire for something that does not and probably cannot exist, for something other than the present, a turning towards the past or towards the future; not an active discontent or poignant sadness but an indolent dreaming wistfulness.”
Whereas a decontextualized reading of the “saudade” insinuates a rather dreary and destitute nostalgia for an impossible object, Bell’s recontextualization posits saudade’s meaning as a nostalgic yearning for an impossible object, only slightly tinged with the hues of melancholia.
Finally, Saudade is something you feel about somebody or a special place. Maybe it is some kind ill erotographomania I get on bourbon filled lonely nights, that pains me to watch as my ideals of this country becomes what I fear. It is sad when we lose our illusions. The bottom drops out and leaves us disenchanted. When German movie director Wim Wenders wrote of America, in that, “America” always means two things: a country, geographically, the USA, and an idea of that country which goes with it. [The] “American Dream”, then, is a dream of a country in a different country that is located where the dream takes place… “I want to be in America”, the Jets sing, in that famous song from West Side Story. They are in America already and yet still wanting to get there. (Wim Wenders 1989, quoted in Morley 96, p. 94)., it make me want to weep. The dark night of the soul or chapel perilous, as it’s sometimes know as, shouldn’t be something one gets stuck in. The great W.H. Auden said “The so-called traumatic experience is not an accident, but the opportunity for which we all have been patiently waiting – had it not occurred, it would have found another- in order that life come a serious matter.” “My American” now reads like a death certificate. It presents itself now as a cautionary tale, as a list of ingredients in a witches’ brew, it reads as a coroner’s report, or a message on a sandwich-board worn by a wild-eyed man who states, “The end of the world is at hand.” It is a hoarse voice in the dark that croaks, “Beware . . . beware . . . beware.”
There is nothing to say that he hasn’t already said. Thank you all. The William S. Burroghs Cut-Up Method is an art which I have grown quite fond of…
Dr. Miller says we are pessimistic because life seems like a very bad, very screwed-up film. If you ask “What the hell is wrong with the projector?” and go up to the control room, you find it’s empty. You are the projectionist, and you should have been up there all the time.
~Colin Wilson
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 5:05 utc | 77
So the Dems are “cut and run” Rove says. And now this trial baloon is (officially) leaked to the NYT.
U.S. General in Iraq Outlines Troop Cuts
The top American commander in Iraq has drafted a plan that projects sharp reductions in the United States military presence there by the end of 2007, with the first cuts coming this September, American officials say.
…
Under the plan, the first reductions would involve two combat brigades that would rotate out of Iraq in September without being replaced.
…
If executed, the plan could have considerable political significance. The first reductions would take place before this falls Congressional elections, while even bigger cuts might come before the 2008 presidential election.
According to accounts by American officials, General Casey’s briefing identifies four main threats in Iraq: Al Qaeda, criminal groups, Iranian support for violent Shiite organizations and ethnic and sectarian strife over the distribution of power.
Look at these four groups he sees.
– Al Qaeda in Iraq – a nuance at best
– criminal groups – lots of them, at top the gang in the Green Zone selling out the country
– Iranian support for Shiite organizations – those organizations are the police and Iraqi army allover the south
– ethnic and secterian strife – whatever
Casey is missing the central resistance power. The Baathists and their army that had vanished through the first phase of the war. Those make up the real decisive force. He will hear from them …
Better living thru Chemistry helps some, B Real.
As well as magic fingers. therapeutic sponges, belle lettres, and such.
Strange wild world we’re riding thru here.
I wouldn’t want to miss an instant of it.
Posted by: Sam McCloud | Jun 25 2006 5:54 utc | 79
Frank Rich`s column liberated: The Road From K Street to Yusufiya
Mr. Safavian, a former lobbyist, had a hand in federal spending, first as chief of staff of the General Services Administration and then as the White House’s chief procurement officer, overseeing a kitty of some $300 billion (plus $62 billion designated for Katrina relief). He arrived to help enforce a Bush management initiative called “competitive sourcing.” Simply put, this was a plan to outsource as much of government as possible by forcing federal agencies to compete with private contractors and their K Street lobbyists for huge and lucrative assignments. The initiative’s objective, as the C.E.O. administration officially put it, was to deliver “high-quality services to our citizens at the lowest cost.”
The result was low-quality services at high cost: the creation of a shadow government of private companies rife with both incompetence and corruption. Last week Representative Henry Waxman, the California Democrat who commissioned the first comprehensive study of Bush administration contracting, revealed that the federal procurement spending supervised for a time by Mr. Safavian had increased by $175 billion between 2000 and 2005. (Halliburton contracts alone, unsurprisingly, went up more than 600 percent.) Nearly 40 cents of every dollar in federal discretionary spending now goes to private companies.
…
But the most lethal impact of competitive sourcing, as measured in human cost, is playing out in Iraq. In the standard narrative of American failure in the war, the pivotal early error was Donald Rumsfeld’s decision to ignore the advice of Gen. Eric Shinseki and others, who warned that several hundred thousand troops would be needed to secure the country once we inherited it. But equally reckless, we can now see, was the administration’s lax privatization of the country’s reconstruction, often with pet companies and campaign contributors and without safeguards or accountability to guarantee results.
…
Parsons finished only 20 of 150 planned Iraq health clinics, somehow spending $60 million of the budgeted $186 million for its own management and administration. It failed to build walls around 7 of the 17 security forts it constructed to supposedly stop the flow of terrorists across the Iran border. Last week, reported James Glanz of The New York Times, the Army Corps of Engineers ordered Parsons to abandon construction on a hopeless $99.1 million prison that was two years behind schedule. By the calculation of Representative Waxman, some $30 billion in American taxpayers’ money has been squandered on these and other Iraq boondoggles botched by a government adhering to the principle of competitive sourcing.
…
[W]hat we’ve wrought .. is a variation on Arthur Miller’s post-World War II drama, “All My Sons.” Working from a true story, Miller told the tragedy of a shoddy contractor whose defectively manufactured aircraft parts led directly to the deaths of a score of Army pilots and implicitly to the death of his own son.
Back then such a scandal was a shocking anomaly. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, the very model of big government that the current administration vilifies, never would have trusted private contractors to run the show. Somehow that unwieldy, bloated government took less time to win World War II than George W. Bush’s privatized government is taking to blow this one.
b real,
The video game industry is an interesting beast. Most of the people in it are virulently anti-political, or so they claim – the technoliberatarianism that can make Neal Stephenson novels such a drag is alive, kicking, and screaming mostly at any attempt at regulation. This means that they will completely reject any assertion that politics plays any role in their thinking. So they’ll believe they’re just making a game for money, but of course, they make the games using the dominant news of the day.
However, the military has invested in games since their inception. Recently, the investment has been more overt – America’s Army as a recruiting tool, and Full Spectrum Warrior as a training tool – but they’ve always thought the technology could be beneficial for military applications. This leads to a situation where the military hires game makers, and also former soldiers are in high demand as consultants for realistic military games.
Combine the completely “normal” views of geopolitics with this great friendliness with the American military and this is what we get. The first Mercenaries, by the way, involved a war in North Korea involving the US, China, and Russia.
Posted by: Rowan | Jun 25 2006 6:04 utc | 81
@Rowan:
Hopefully “the Army of One” is not significantly attrited in
this coming campaign.
Elstwise, the Croakers will be quoting Blake:
Paper Tiger Burning Bright
Or other nonsensical rubbish.
Posted by: B.H. Lidell-Hart | Jun 25 2006 6:46 utc | 82
WaPo finally nails Tenet and his deputy McLaughlin for having pushed the “mobile WMD weapon labs” in Iraq despite having been briefed several times by their European bureau chief, that this information was based on a source that was explicetly said to be a fabricator.
Both claim no memory of the confirmed meetings.
Warnings on WMD ‘Fabricator’ Were Ignored, Ex-CIA Aide Says
But to get a medal ..
Head Chicken Gives Fox High Approval Rating
At the recent fox conclave, a series of measures to benefit chickens was discussed. They were as follows:
• Resolved: that the chickens are entitled to ergonomic coop doors.
• Resolved: that the chickens’ grain allotment be raised from 5 tablespoons per chicken per day to 6.
• Resolved: that the chickens are entitled to a representative on the egg board.
• Resolved: that no chicken will subjected to sexual harassment by any fox.
• Resolved: that the chickens will be eaten in a timely and compassionate fashion.
As you can see, 80% of the voting went in favor of the chickens, and the one apparently negative measure was softened enough to give room for negotiation. The head chicken, in recognition of this, gave the foxes who voted accordingly due credit. It’s a sad fact of life that many of the foxes who wished to vote against the final resolution had to vote for it, in order to ensure that the other measures passed, but politics isn’t pretty. It’s the art of compromise and, it must be said, in order to maintain the comity needed for future votes, regrettable choices must often be made. A scorecard like this is helpful guide to understanding and combatting negativity. I daresay no one seriously supports the low grain allotments or sexual harassment, right? Thoughtful adults take what they can get and are grateful. The wise old head chicken didn’t last this long without realizing that. Those younger chickens, who go on egg strikes, or perform ludricous pantomimes in the barnyard may never understand how to mazimize available benefits. They certainly won’t get to be free range chickens, who get a chance to compete for staff positions and maybe even the head chicken’s job. Their actions upset the good foxes, and make the job of protecting them much harder. The dummies would be well-advised to drop what can only be called their objectively-pro-being-eaten activities.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 7:12 utc | 84
@ b real
With regards to your #75 post, perhaps, this may interest you The Will to Technology and the Culture of Nihilism
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 7:52 utc | 85
p.s.
“Enframing means the gathering together of that setting-upon which sets upon man, i.e., challenges him forth, to reveal the real, in the mode of ordering, as standing-reserve. Enframing means that way of revealing which holds sway in the essence of modern technology and which is itself nothing technological.” Ibid., The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays, p. 20.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 7:56 utc | 86
WSJ Editorial on Chavez: A New Journalistic Low …
— and likely also signalling yet another effort by the US to interfere in Venezualan politics, perhaps even another coup attempt planned in Washington — as the WSJ bends over and moans, satisfying every fickle intent by the PTB Politburo to use its pages as a propaganda channel in order to promote the US’s ruinous, exploitive Foreign Policy on the WSJ’s more gullible, naive and chronically misinformed readership.
The gross distortions, exaggerations and outrageous lies in this editorial are a damn good measure of how hostile the Washington elites are to the threat of Venezuala’s good example, in which Chavez has demonstrated committment to genuine democratic principles and leadership dedicated to serving the public ahead of entrenched corporate and special interests — principles and ideals which past and present US Administrations have only come close to by way of lip service — and which any competantly-astute, reasonably-educated and politically-savvy American knows (and for whom the propaganda-value of the editorial hit-piece is evidently wasted — other than as a wake-up call and barometer to guage the state of neocon/Washington policy wonk outrage against Chavez — and esp. propsects of their ramping-up disinfo preparatory to doing something criminally reckless and politically/economically desperate.
I wonder how many regular WSJ readers fail to grasp that most if not all of the editorial’s damning criticism of Chavez actually describe the very worst aspects of the US and policies by President (sic) Bush? Or are they so dedicated to preserving the status quo they endorse the US’s anti-Chavez position regardless of the truth and issues of sovereignty and legitimate government OF, BY and FOR the people?
That such malicious untruths and what is essentially hatespeech can find a readymade audience in a major US newsmedia is, unfortunately, a clear sign of how prevelant and powerful corrupt criminal interests have become, in league with Fascism and tyranny, in bamboozling the public to suit narrow ends of wealth and power.
The Wall Street Journal’s Chavez Editorial:
Commentary by Stephen Lendman June 24, 2006
Snip:
You won’t find commentary and language any more hostile to Hugo Chavez than on the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal. Their June 23 piece by Mary Anastasia O’Grady in the Americas column is a clear, jaw-dropping example. It’s practically blood-curdling in its vitriol which calls Hugo
Chavez a threat to world peace. The sad part of it is Journal readers believe this stuff and are likely to support any US government efforts to remove the “threat.”
The O’Grady article is about the elections scheduled to take place in the fall for five non-permanent UN Security Council seats to be held in 2007. One of them will be for the Latin American seat now held by Argentina. The two countries vying to fill the opening are Guatemala and Venezuela,
and the other countries in the region will vote on which one will get it. You won’t have to think long to guess the one the US supports – its Guatemalan ally, of course. And why not. For over 50 years its succession of military and civilian governments have all followed the dictates of their dominant northern neighbor. In so doing, they all managed to achieve
one of the world’s worst human rights records that hasn’t abated even after the 1996 Peace Accords were signed ending a brutal 36 year conflict. Although the country today is nominally a democratic republic, it continues to abuse its people according to documented reports by Amnesty International.
Snip:
About the only final comment the Journal writer can make is to claim Guatamala has the “solid backing of the ‘more serious democracies’ in the region – such as Colombia and Mexico.” It’s likely what the writer means by “serious” is those countries’ elections are about as free and fair as ours – meaning, they only are for the power-elites controlling them who arrange the outcomes they want.
The June 23 Wall Street Journal editorial was a typical example of what this newspaper calls journalism and editorial commentary. This writer follows it to learn what the US empire likely is up to. In the case of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, it’s no doubt up to no good. The continued hostile rhetoric is clearly to signal another attempt to oust the
Venezuelan leader at whatever time and by whatever means the Bush administration has in mind. Stay tuned.
an interesting, informative article do check it out…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 9:30 utc | 87
jj, I truly enjoyed the James Bond novels written in the late 50s and early 60s. First mention I heard of martinis, the sports car, evening dress and cyanide.
Ian Fleming was an upper-class twit who ended up in some British Intelligence office during WWII, reading dispatches about the no-doubt heroic actions of those on Her Majesty’s Secrete Service. Or was it His Majesty? Whatever.
They were cornball action stories with a bit of Russia or evil Dr. Blofeld, or in this case the rich maniac Goldfinger thrown in. Goldfinger was a jew, somehow immensely rich, who had a masochist tendency towards women painted with gold, leading to their deaths.
Great stuff for a ten-year-old, romanticised by not Hollywood but an English studio that still controls the franchise. Wonderful stuff as movies, kind of empty pornography, but in a good way, as dime-store novels.
Loved them all, the scenes were well written — full of the silent approach at dawn in a wetsuit and rubber boat, climbing a cliff — a cliffhanger — only to be met by doberman pinschers. And so on. Bond was a greatly imagined character, a gentleman with a license to kill. An erotic god with power over women and power over men’s lives.
Worth following up on the Ian Fleming thing, try Google. Or your local library. I’m sure JB was an inspiration to many of our current (wrong) ideas regarding the spy business and many of its proponents and actors as well.
Posted by: jonku | Jun 25 2006 9:41 utc | 88
Loved the James Bond novels by Ian Fleming when I was a tot… although I have to admit that a great part of that love was feeling like one was on the inside of a grand joke when others took the series seriously. Fleming wrote them as a diversion bereft of any deep meaning… a parody of the black and white good guys and bad guys of the Cold War. It made the English feel a bit less effeminate to imagine their operatives as fearless sophisticates who always had a spare moment to bed a supermodel while performing acts of grand derring-do. That Fleming himself didn’t take any of it very seriously (while those in need of support for their hawkish worldviews did) is evidenced by the anecdotal story of how non-plussed the British author felt when then-President John Kennedy rang him up to “casually” inquire about how “James Bond would deal with someone like Castro” shortly before launching the Bay of Pigs invasion.
More wordplay in the news: I saw several headlines about how the “reasonable” US General George Casey is considering a reduction in forces in Iraq, indicating a withdrawal. In most cases, however, you have to get a few paragraphs into the articles to realise what a small reduction we are discussing. Now, given that those troops will simply be reassigned elsewhere, on which front is the DoD currently attempting to fortify? Afghanistan? Iran? North Korea? Venezuela? Forgive me for refusing to believe that troop reductions in Iraq reflect a stabilisation there or that the generals, out of the goodness of their hearts, are trying to alleviate the grueling tours they imposed with their stop-loss program. Let’s not be too hard on the generals, though. The US Senate made itself clear about how fine they believe a continued US presence in Iraq would be.
And the world is buzzing about 14 detainees being released from Gitmo. No, there are still no plans to close the camp.
So look how “reasonable” the US/neocons/Hawks are being! Releasing prisoners and drawing down troop levels this way… all of a sudden. I guess the Left has just been judging these guys too harshly. I can already hear the Freepers crowing! The US isn’t the evil totalitarian empire its been painted to be… it’s a nice totalitarian empire!
So, my question here is why this sudden rash of meaningless “concessions” in the headlines? I’m seeing a lot of public relations all of a sudden from people who said they refused to base their policies on the wishes of peacenik “focus groups”. Is something going down that I don’t know about?
Posted by: Monolycus | Jun 25 2006 10:53 utc | 89
b – on net neutrality in 55 on 31:
Thanks, I thought as much. Companies pay for how fat their pipe is AND for how much info they fill it with as I do personally for cable access. I pay a flat fee for a potential 6 Mb/s pipe (download) and others pay different fees for other methods of network access and different pipe widths.
In this the author is correct.
However, I have an up/download cap of 60GB/mth – a limit I have approached only a couple of times so I’m not sure what would happen. I’d have to look. I do know that one could pay $25Cdn for 0.5MB/mth to use a Blackberry. Exceed this by just one packet and pay $31 per MB you’re over. This plan is targeted at the “mobile business professional” and the cap is 120,000 times smaller than mine.
I infer from this that a similar penalty would apply to me and that perhaps repeated abuse of the cap would result in the suspension of service (for economic terrorism) or at least narrowing of the pipe to make downloading/sharing less convenient.
It follows then that this same type of model (x $/mth for y bandwidth and Z packets) applies right up the food chain to the hogs of bandwidth the author mentions. In his article, however, the author clearly indicates that this is not the case and that the new legislation will address this disparity and change nothing else (while neglecting to properly describe what it is that won’t change).
How would that model not apply to the hogs? If they owned their T3/OC3 pipes or were part of the backbone of the Internet? Then they’d be one of the telecoms and a hog.
As you say, the legislation really isn’t about how and how much you use the internet – which alrady has a viable fee structure, but the value of what you send across it.
I’m going to write them a nice letter and use your postal analogy, if I may. The author should stick to his norm – informative articles about CPU architecture.
Posted by: Anonymous | Jun 25 2006 13:30 utc | 90
@Scam up above:
Hard into that case of Petain ’39, bottled by Vichy Freres, I see.
You are so foxed right now you wouldn’t know a poulet if she sneaked up behind you and pecked you on the ass.
Posted by: Irma La Douce | Jun 25 2006 14:17 utc | 91
Those of us who have been horrified by American atrocities committed at locations such as Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay, and have wondered how the US became a notorious perpetrator of torture will want to read McCoy’s (2006) latest book, A Question of Torture. What McCoy provides is a scholarly and readable historical account of the CIA’s role as an innovator of modern torture techniques beginning in the late 1940s and continuing on to the present.
McCoy’s book highlights early efforts by the CIA to research mind control drugs in response to allegations that the Soviet Union was pioneering the use of these drugs as part of its own interrogation regimen. A number of years of research on a variety of psychoactive drugs, including LSD, failed to yield an effective mind control drug that could elicit information from suspected spies.
more at the link, a must read…
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 18:06 utc | 92
@Dr. Scam:
You really ought to read the book The Brothers Bulger–It is
an EYE-OPENER. Helps to tie a few loose ends of the “tin foil” up.
W. Bulger is still Public Enemy No.1 on the FBI’s most-wanted list. Bulger spent a 10-12 year tour in feddie, at Atlanta and Alcatraz, for several bank robberies in the 50s. Bulger told several of his associates, that while at Atlanta Federal Penitentiary, he received time off his sentence for participating in government experiments with LSD.
I’ve always felt that PCP would be a very interesting drug to use in inducing a disoriented state. Ever hear of the goverment using that one? Course if you were interrogating a mouse, you had better have 3-4 gorillas in the interrogation room with the strait jacket and leg shackles at the ready, in case the mouse became agitated.
Posted by: Irma La Douce | Jun 25 2006 20:23 utc | 93
Gagged Library Exec Speaks Out re: National Security Letters
Get this: out of 30,000 National Security letters sent out by the FBI each year on what are essentially legal end-run fishing-expeditions to circumvent the law requiring FISA court-authorized search-warrant approval based on probable cause, only in TWO cases are these Letters being challenged.
AND: The Government apparently maintained its gag order on this librarian and her asociates JUST to prevent them from contradicting official gov. statements to Congress that the Patriot Act has NOT been used to spy on Libraries.
Equally as reprehensible is that Individuals have been prosecuted and recieved harsh sentences for the very same acts that has been a common feature of US Foreign Policy, ie., providing assistance and material support for organizations engaged in terrorism and violence for political purposes.
(– And with quite open-ended agendas and interpretations over what constitutes ‘legitimate’ and appropriate use of force by US military and other covert agents, ie. spies, snipers, Special Forces working in secret and contrary to International Law and relevant treaty agreements.)
Yet one more detail in the story of criminal schemes, massive fraud and treason by the PTB.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 25 2006 20:55 utc | 94