Bush Skirts Queries on Iraq Nuclear Allegation. Washington Post Jul 9 2003 10:52PM ET
	Rumsfeld Doubles Estimate for Cost of Troops in Iraq. New York Times Jul 9 2003 9:50PM ET
	U.S. Foresees No Early Pullout of Its Large Force Inside Iraq. New York Times Jul 9 2003 8:44PM ET
	Iraq weapons 'unlikely to be found'. BBC Jul 9 2003 6:36PM ET
	Bush has 'no doubt' war was right step. IHT Jul 9 2003 5:40PM ET

By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff, 7/4/2003

nnoyed by the prospect of a massive new federal surveillance system, two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are celebrating the Fourth of July with a new Internet service that will let citizens create dossiers on government officials.

The system will start by offering standard background information on politicians, but then go one bold step further, by asking Internet users to submit their own intelligence reports on government officials -- reports that will be published with no effort to verify their accuracy.

''It's sort of a citizen's intelligence agency,'' said Chris Csikszentmihalyi, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab. ...

Knowledge Representation Timeline.

This is pretty impressive: A Timeline of knowledge-representation that starts at the dawn of the Universe and continues through the whole of human history right up to the present day.

[Simon Willison's Weblog]

Full of great little tidbits and things you didn't know you wanted to know. Nothing wasted on eye candy or user-friendly interfaces. Just lots and lots of data.

[McGee's Musings]

This is totally kick-ass! GIA showed me more in 30 seconds about my local representatives that I could have found myself in a couple of hours of web searching. I'd love to see some of our state judges put in here. We've got a few loonies on the bench that need airing. Sunshine has a way of chasing out the rats.

Government Prying, the Good Kind. The government has endless ways of keeping tabs on Americans and what they're up to. Now the Government Information Awareness site turns the tables, letting you keep an eye on your government officials. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]

[b.cognosco]

Short political orientation quiz.

Shorter political orientation quiz.

"...the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought. In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. ... The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect." - Syme, from Orwell's 1984

I saw a few things on the internet (see below) that made me think we are in an age of newdoublespeak. My next thought: Will humans ever exist in an age with newspeak or doublespeak.

• The strategically ambiguous George W. Bush (6/12/03) By Bryan Keefer @ Spinsanity.org

• DoubleSpeak by Julian Burnside

• 1984 and Modern Newspeak Dictionary by George {Good coverage.}

Guardian Unlimited Jun 7 2003 9:52PM ET [Moreover - Top stories]

As consumer advocates deplored changes to media ownership rules, investors bought shares of the biggest media companies. By David D. Kirkpatrick. [New York Times: NYT HomePage]

As soon as most people see the words “duopoly,” “cross-ownership rules,” or “FCC” in the headlines their eyes glaze over. But not my friend and many people’s hero, Bob McChesney. Bob eats memos about telecom regulations for breakfast. He has campaigned tirelessly, along with John Nichols, Mark Crispin Miller, Jeff Chester, and others, for reform of our nation’s media regulatory apparatus. But I just had a... [In These Times]

Gets Ready to Roll the Media Dice. Theories abound over what it will mean if the rules restricting media outlet ownership in the United States are relaxed. By Jonathan D. Glater. [New York Times: Politics]

I have seen a variety of information related to the FCC ceding more control to the large corporate media companys:

• Why the FCC is wrong on media ownership at AnchorDesk.com.
• Molly Ivins on the FCC vote.
• Ted Turner on the FCC vote. 
• Sign a petition at : Free Press Media Reform Network
• Contact your Representative about H.R. 2052 at the Consumer's Union website.
  Contact your Senator about S. 1046 at the Consumer's Union website.
• FCC cozy with industry (The Center for Public Integrity and the Well Connected Report at the same website).

"...WHY DOES this matter? Because, in a democracy, the media isn't just another business. Instead, it's what we turn to for the ideas and information that make it possible for us to perform our duties as citizens, such as voting and being involved in community issues. Furthermore, I don't think media control should be concentrated geographically--which is what happens when local owners are bought (or forced) out by media monoliths that aren't part of the communities their properties serve. " [Source: AnchorDesk at ZDnet.com]

Boston Globe May 20 2003 10:44AM ET [Moreover - Science news]

The Wilderness Society May 20 2003 8:42PM ET [Moreover - Environment news]

Found courtesy of Phil Wolff is this collection of remixed propaganda by former soldier Ian Micah Wright. You can buy yours now. [b.cognosco]

American Civil Liberties Union : Support the Freedom to Read! .

With the passage of the USA Patriot Act, the FBI gained the power to search your library and book-buying records without probable cause of any crime or intent to commit a crime. Furthermore, librarians and others who are required to turn over records are not allowed to say that the search has occurred or that records were given to the government. 

This means that average Americans could have their privacy violated wholesale without justification or proper judicial oversight.  Questions from Members of Congress to the Department of Justice about the use of this power have gone unanswered or have received a superficial response.  

  

In response to these un-American and dangerous powers, Rep. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) has proposed the "Freedom to Read Protection Act" (HR. 1157).  This act would restrict the key provision of the USA PATRIOT Act -- by exempting libraries and bookstores from the laws that allow the FBI to conduct these searches of personal records.

Take Action! Urge your Representatives to support the Freedom to Read Protection Act! [Privacy Digest]

Supporting the Freedom to Read Protection Act is a good idea but here's something else you might want to think about doing as well. Radically diversify your reading choices. Order something at the opposite end of the political spectrum from your usual fare.  Check out something at Loompanics or Paladin Press, or ChristianBook.com. Create patterns in your data that don't add up and can't be categorized.

There are two desirable features to this strategy. First, if enough of us do it, we can overwhelm these silly systems with white noise in the data. Second, if we actually start to read and think about viewpoints that radically differ from our own, we might actually start to get smarter as individuals and as a society. There isn't much point to protecting our freedom to read if we don't bother to exercise it in the first place.

[McGee's Musings]

Iraq: Top officials are worried by repeated failures to find the proof of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction - and US intelligence agencies are engaged in a struggle to avoid the blame. [Guardian Unlimited]

but why would the Iraqi's hide all their weapons that Bush and Co. said they would use against the U.S., when they could have been used against the U.S. as we invaded their country?

Bush Says It Will Take Time to Find Iraq's Banned Arms. President Bush's comments came after his senior aides had begun to back away from their prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had an arsenal that was loaded and ready to fire. By David E. Sanger. [New York Times: Politics]

Bush: WMDs will be found. CNN May 3 2003 8:07PM ET

Rumsfeld: WMD not likely at suspected sites. CNN May 4 2003 12:05PM ET

Sean blogs some links to cool third party Windows Media Player toys here [EraBlog.NET]

I've quoted this post in its entirety from Privacy Digest, but you really ought to go read the full article in the New York Times. According to the article, the Bush administration is now attempting to deploy the US Military and the CIA on American soil. The language authorizing this groundbreaking expansion of powers was attached, unannounced, to a broader intelligence bill now before Congress. The provision was apparently added by Senator Pat Roberts, R-Kansas and chairman of the intelligence committee, at the request of the Bush Administration. I never, ever thought I would look back on the Clinton Administration with longing...

New York Times - free registration required Broad Domestic Role Asked for C.I.A. and the Pentagon.

The Bush administration and leading Senate Republicans sought today to give the Central Intelligence Agency and the Pentagon far-reaching new powers to demand personal and financial records on people in the United States as part of foreign intelligence and terrorism operations, officials said.

The proposal, which was beaten back, would have given the C.I.A. and the military the authority to issue administrative subpoenas -- known as "national security letters" -- requiring Internet providers, credit card companies, libraries and a range of other organizations to produce materials like phone records, bank transactions and e-mail logs. That authority now rests largely with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the subpoenas do not require court approval.

The surprise proposal was tucked into a broader intelligence authorization bill now pending before Congress. It set off fierce debate today in a closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee, officials said. Democrats on the panel said they were stunned by the proposal because it appeared to expand significantly the role of the C.I.A. and the Pentagon in conducting domestic operations, despite a long history of tight restrictions, officials said.

After raising objections, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California and other Democrats succeeded in getting the provision pulled from the authorization bill, at least temporarily, Congressional officials said.

In a closed vote, the committee passed the bill unanimously without the proposal. But Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who is chairman of the intelligence committee, indicated to panel members that he wanted to hold further hearings on the idea, officials said.

There was some disagreement over exactly how the provision originated. Several Senate aides active in the debate said that Senator Roberts had included it in the authorization bill. But a senior Congressional official said the Bush administration had initiated the proposal and that Senator Roberts had not objected.

A C.I.A. official said the provision had come from the Bush administration, after the White House's Office of Management and Budget signed off on it.

The official said that Congressional leaders had asked the Bush administration whether there were any additional powers needed to help combat terrorism. The administration responded with the proposal to give the C.I.A. and military the power to use the national security letters, the official said. Another Congressional official said the move came at the urging of the C.I.A. The White House had no comment last night.

[ ... ]

They said that while the F.B.I. was subject to guidelines controlling what agents are allowed to do in the course of an investigation, the C.I.A. and the military appeared to have much freer reign. The F.B.I. also faces additional scrutiny if it tries to use such records in court, but officials said the proposal could give the C.I.A. and the military the power to gather such material without ever being subject to judicial oversight.

Timothy Edgar, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the proposal "dangerous and un-American."

Mr. Edgar said that "even in the most frigid periods of the Cold War, we never gave the C.I.A. such sweeping and secret policing powers over American citizens."

[ ... ]

New figures released today also showed that the Justice Department is relying with increasing frequency on secret warrants that allow the officials to go to a secret court to get approval for surveillance and bugging warrants in terrorism and espionage investigations without notifying the target.

[Privacy Digest]

[b.cognosco]

I was amazed about the protests related to the Dixie Chicks making a 15-word statement about being ashamed that Bush was from Texas.  I believe people should have a right to express their views against some one who is expressing their views against someone.  But I also heard some people threatened the members of the group, including saying they should be dropped over Iraq. Take a chill pill people!  Some other views...

What is Censorship?. When we discuss censorship in the context of American, or un-American, behavior we should keep the intent and scope of the First Amendment in mind -- that is, we are protected from government censorship. What Jim, J.D., and the Boss are talking about below may be intolerant, even rude, but it isn't censorship and it isn't un-American. The government has made no claim here and exacted no penalty. A citizen of the United States may speak freely, within certain bounds, and be free of government interference. But the Constitution does not guarantee an audience or provide protection from consequences. There are all kinds of restrictions on our speech in private areas, and all kinds of consequences for violating those restrictions. There is another basic premise of American freedom at play here, economic freedom. We are each free to use our economic power in the furtherance of our own interests. We are not compelled to further private interests with which we disagree. Such coercion would also be un-American. But here's where it gets a bit sticky. In our system corporations have much the same economic status as individuals, that is, they can buy or sell from whomever, whenever they please. It's the basis of our quasi-free market system. There are certain restrictions that (hopefully) stop them from doing harm to others, but there isn't any mandate to provide economic support for specific causes or actions. Such mandates would also be un-American. What we are left with here is a simple conflict of multiple independent parties exercising their rights, and turning to the market for a solution. That sounds pretty American to me. But there is a real problem in that corporations also wield very nearly the power of Governments. In this case, we have errantly divided up the frequency spectrum into private fiefdoms, and created huge private spaces where none should exist. A corporation doesn't, and shouldn't, be told who or what to broadcast. But a single corporation shouldn't "own" all the spectrum, either.

Springsteen on the Dixie Chicks..

Springsteen on the Dixie Chicks Here's a courageous statement from Bruce Springsteen on the plight of the Dixie Chucks, who are suffering boycotts of their work by the pro-war jingoists (including faux-patriotic corporate interests) throughout the land:

The Dixie Chicks have taken a big hit lately for exercising their basic right to express themselves. To me, they're terrific American artists expressing American values by using their American right to free speech. For them to be banished wholesale from radio stations, and even entire radio networks, for speaking out is un-American. [...]

Bruce Springsteen

[from JD Lassica's New Media Musings ]

Good to see that some people get the basic premise of free speech. If you don't like or agree with what they say, say something else in rebuttal. But don't engage in forms of attempted censorship. The whole point of free speech is to permit ideas that the majority don't agree with to be heard. [...] [McGee's Musings]

[b.cognosco]

The federal prosecution of an antiwar protester from South Carolina is being seen by some as part of a growing pattern of repression of civil dissent. By Leslie Eaton. [New York Times: Politics]

outre [Dictionary.com Word of the Day]

In Lies.com, John Calender has been looking at the war/anti-war nondiologue that's been happening in his town, which is just down the road from mine (I can see it from here), and worries about the intellectual junk food most citizens get from TV news and talk radio:

...what about that nearly 70% of US citizens that are getting their news from the cable news channels? It gets worse with the hard-core fans of right-wing talk radio; these people get a non-stop stream of fantasy entertainment, and a lot of them actually believe it, with scary consequences.

He quotes some plainly wrong letters to the editor in his local paper that have gone unanswered, and adds,

Those of us with access to better sources of information have an obligation to share that information. And not just with the other well-informed folk we interact with online, but with people in our own geographic community who don't have access to those sources.

Well put.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

As the 300th episode of The Simpsons is broadcast today read how it became the world's best TV programme. [Guardian Unlimited]

300! Man, where has time flown?  How can the writers of the show keep it going?

 

Here's Frank Paynter on something I said the other day:

A week or so ago Doc Searls responded to this question:

...do you really believe the best thing for the World would be for the US to pull out now and leave one of the cruelest dictorships in modern times at the helm in Iraq, with all the cruel and innocent deaths that would follow in the wake of such a move.

"No," Doc said, "I don't. Now that we're in there, I want us to finish with minimal loss of life on all sides. I hope we take out Saddam Hussein's regime and return the country to its oppressed people. Then I hope we go home."

And while Doc's and Tom's are the reasonable hopes of peaceful men, I think things have gone too far. These hopes are impossible. And to wish for the impossible is delusional. Yet to cast a gimlet eye on the world stage and to accept that our own country is being held hostage to the interests of a high caste of modern industrialists whose goals are being masked by a chase after shadow figures, evil men who frighten the American electorate in large part because of the images Rupert Murdoch and his cronies convey of them day after day -- to accept this is enormously difficult. Because with this acceptance comes the knowledge that right action is required. And the right action that is required seems so hopeless, so alienated, so out of touch. But Dennis Kucinich and Tammy Baldwin and Cynthia McKinney and Barbara Lee and the thirty or so others who can be counted on in Congress to speak truth as they see it are not sufficient to our cause. And the strongest voices for peace in the Senate, the Paul Wellstones, the Mel Carnahan's... well, they've met the same fate as the Kennedy scion in light plane "accidents."

I wonder what is the next great military challenge Rumsfeld and Bush and Cheney have in mind for us. I wonder if they even know.

Some strong yet subtle shit in there. Deep too. Especially in that last line.

I often wish I could match the certitudes of certidudes like Frank and Andrew and Michael and Charles. But I can't. Deep down I'm a pacifist, but just as deeply I'm a libertarian too. Go figure.

While I believe war is worse than wrong — that it is, as Mumford said (somewhere... I can't find it), nothing better than an institutionalized form of human sacrifice (and that all the intellectualizing about "just war" is nothing more than that, and therefore fulla shit, going all the way back to Aquinas and Augustine), I can't ignore the differences between this military campaign, and the respects it pays to the civilians it tries not to kill, and the campaigns that have come before, including the last Iraq war, when our forces incinerated a defenseless retreating army. This one is different. There are positive moral opportunities in what the Administration says it's up to here, even if Cheney still stands to get rich off of whatever Halliburton does for The New Iraq.

Hey, if Bush and his buddies say they're doing all this military stuff for the People of Iraq, I want the People of America, England and Spain (and hell, everybody else) to cheer them on and hold them accountable for their promises. Whether these guys suck or not (and I'm sure they're a mixed bag), they're trying to do some Good Things here. I hope they succeed.

And while I believe that George W. Bush was erected president by a series of events that would have caused a constitutional crisis if our country was half as committed to the Constitution as it thinks it is, I do believe the process, while deeply fucked, was still legitimate. In case anybody cares.

And while I believe it really sucks that Wellstone and Carnahan went down in plane crashes, I don't believe their political enemies were any more responsible for those accidents than they were for those that claimed Bill Graham and Stevie Ray Vaughan. Lots of celebrities and pols die in plane crashes. Comes with the territory.

But my point isn't about any of that. It's about partisanship and paranoia. To me all the certidudes are equally off base because they're convinced the Other Guys are part of some big-ass Conspiracy, or are what Craig Burton calls EWBU: Evil, Wrong, Bad and Ugly. That's how Michael Moore sees the Bush and the Administration. And that's how Andrew Sullivan sees Howell Raines and the Academic Left. Their rants make for great reading; but they're not fully engaged with Reality, which includes, let's admit, the possibility that the other side isn't always full of shit.

See, here's the real problem. (Brace yourselves. I'm leveraging Lakoff again.) Basically, all our politics proceed from two radically opposed notions that are nonetheless equally true. The one on the Right holds that the world is a dangerous place, that bad people are on the loose, and that we need to keep ourselves safe from those people. The one on the Left holds that the world is a good place, and that we should do everything we can to nurture whatever keeps it that way. As bases for default thinking both server to explain and dismiss much of what goes on in the world. Neither is correct in every case, and both are biassed. (A reader makes a good point: Basing ones thinking at one end or the other often leads to hatred and contempt — which we find in the language of blogging from both political extremes.) Only one of those, however, makes interesting news. Only one of those is good for stirring up the kind of righteous anger that carries us to war, and to "delivering justice," whatever we decide that is, and to justifying the deaths of the few for the good of the many (or of the wrong for the right, or whatever). Only one of those lends itself to handy all-simplifying sports and war metaphors. Only one of those justifies killing folks who have the misfortune of living in the wrong house, eating in the wrong restaurant or wearing the wrong clothes.

Until we discover the limits of the might-makes-Right's moralities, its obsessions with power and security, its willingness to trash the very liberties it seeks to protect, and its ability to carry out its military ambitions, theirs are the arguments that are not only going to carry the day, but be tested in the real world.

I say let 'em test away. I just hope that somewhere along the way some of the world's nonviolent goodness (you know, all that Life, Liberty and Pursuit of Happiness stuff) successfully argues for itself.

[Later...] Okay, here's some Mumford:

Human sacrifice , then, is the dark shadow, vague but ominous, that accompanied the myth of maternity and the superb technical and cultural feats of domestication. And as so often happens, this particular mutation, quantitatively restricted in the culture where it originated, dominated and debased the urban civilization that grew out of it, by taking another collective form: the collective sacrifice of war, the negative counterpart of the life-promoting rituals of domestication."

Also this, from Technics and Civilization, found on my own damn bookshelf:

For war is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society...

But war, for those actually engaged in combat, likewise brings a release from the sordid motives of profit-making and self-seeking that govern the prevailing forms of business enterprise, including sport: the action has the significance of high drama... the death or maiming of the body gives the drama the element of a tragic sacrifice, like that which underlies so many primitive religious rituals...

War sanctions the utmost exhibition of the primitive at the same time that it deifies the mechanical. In modern war the raw primitive and the clockwork mechanical are one.

Mumford goes on to visit the tensions between mechanized civilization and the higher purposes of life, which are nurturant and not destructive, generally speaking.

Makes me think that what Bush and his people are trying to prove is how war, and Weapons of Selective Destruction, can be Good Things in the Right Hands. (See? Only a few of you are dead and most of your buildings are still up. You have no government now, but we're here to help you start a new one. Have a nice country!)

I think they're wrong. But I'm no less afraid of how I might be proven right.

Bonus link: OpenPolitics' Word for the day: Patriobfuscate.

[Later again...] Tom Shugart and Frank Paynter respond to each other.

[The Doc Searls Weblog]

Steven Brill talks about his new book, "After," and America in the "September 12 era." [Salon.com]

Morons in the News: Zero-Tolerance: The 'Tolerance' Stands for 'Intelligence'. If there's one thing I love as much as I hate zero-tolerance policies, it's clever use of a system... [Morons Dot Org]

Oh. What a wonderful Catch-22. A 6 year old is facing expulsion for having a plastic butter spoon in his backback. A spoon he got in the cafeteria and wanted to take home. So if they press for expulsion, the parents will sue the school for provding a dabgerous weapon to their 6 year old. Zero-tolerance is for morons. I hope the parents get a ton of money. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]

Something to brighten your day

[McGee's Musings]

Tipped

"In the past week:

• Weblogs cover the war without mainstream restraints
• Reporting Reflects Anxiety
• Public's Appetite for Instant War News Fuels Spread of Web Logs
• On-the-spot blogs from war
• It's instant, but how much can we trust?
• A Medium Meets Its War
• Improved Tools Turn Journalists Into a Quick Strike Force
• War a Boon for News Sites, Blogs
• War reporting goes hi-tech
• Fascinating Web logs provide an unfiltered view of the war
• War coverage with personal touch emerges
• Blogs bring personal view of war
• Net news: live from the war zone
• War brings a surge of traffic on the Net
• Blah, blah, blogs
• US soldier "bloggers" report from war zone
• Straight or Slanted, 'Blogs' Add Spice to War Reports
• Web surfing for war junkies
• He's glad to admit he's a 'warblogger'
• Bloggers click on pulse of war news
• For war newshounds, nothing beats blogging

Etc.

Um...I think we're outta the closet." [weblogged News]

[The Shifted Librarian]

Politics: Robin Cook, in his first major interview since resigning, tells why he had to go. [Guardian Unlimited]

Prayers are being said for the coalition casualties in Iraq at bases and towns in the UK with links to them. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]

Paul Berman, one of the most provocative thinkers on the left, has a message for the antiwar movement: Stop marching and start fighting to spread liberal values in the Middle East. [Salon.com]

MSNBC Mar 22 2003 7:26PM ET [Moreover - XML and metadata news]

10.45pm: 'Saddam ally killed' in Najaf· Explosions in main cities· Four US soldiers killed· Journalist dies in car bomb· Gen Franks outlines US aims [Guardian Unlimited]

Critics of the war against Iraq are not reserving their anger exclusively for President Bush. Some also blame the news media. By Jim Rutenberg and Robin Toner. [New York Times: Politics]

Protests against war with Iraq are held in London and across the UK - the biggest since the invasion began. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]

Washington says it will go into Iraq to disarm it even if Saddam Hussein leaves the country. [BBC News | Front Page | UK Edition]

>>> Can't they make up their mind?  First, there was an ultimatum of 48 hours.  Now it doesn't matter if he leaves.