Sharp Tools - Rant

NYPD Security Theater

Nothing new here, but I ran into it personally. When I arrived at the 14th St. A/C/E/L subway station on the way home from work, I joined a sparse crowd of folks heading down into the station. As I reached the bottom of the stairs and moved towards the turnstiles, however, an NYPD officer approached me and said "Excuse me sir, random bag check." He gestured towards a card table set up with three other officers standing at it (all were in uniform).

I stopped and said "No. I'm going to walk to another station." (Because, you see, I have cleverly been following this whole debacle online).

The officer who stopped me looked at me in puzzlement and said "It's just a random bag search." (Note that 'check' has become 'search.' Oh the lies our subconscious weaves.)

I responded, "I don't like the idea of random bag searches. I'm leaving and going to another entrance." With that, I turned and walked back up the stairs to 14th St.

I then walked uptown two blocks and descended into the uptown end of the same station concourse, past a turnstile area with no bag check, down to the platforms and hence onto an uptown A train.

This is a point that others have made wonderfully well before I, but what precisely was the point of that? If the NYPD is allowing me to decline searches and then simply walk to the next station entrance where I can enter the subway unmolested, then how does this protect anyone against anything? If I had a dangerous device in my man-purse shoulder bag, well, it still got on the train.

I'm perfectly willing to believe that I was selected randomly (I've been past that station when the search table was up dozens of times, and this is the first time I've been fingered) but to what purpose? If they were performing behavioral profiling (good on them if so) then I'm even more confused. Either they should have stopped me from leaving, or (if their profiling is based on my response to the search announcement) there should be provision in the regulation that I can be prevented from leaving and then arrested or otherwise examined against my will.

There might be such a provision, I don't know, but these officers were quite happy to let me toodle off to the next uptown entrance (not even station).

All I can think of is that wonderful series of videos of a law professor and a cop explaining why you should never, ever talk to the police without your lawyer present (they both agree on this, by the way). Why? Because essentially the police have one job - and that's to find suspects, and then produce evidence for the DA to make a case that those suspects are guilty. The system is set up such that once it starts to examine you, any information it collects is usable against you (and they're supposed to warn you of that). But there's no corollary right for you to use any of that information in your defense. In fact, the very fact that it's been collected by the prosecution or their agents means you can't use it in your defense.

Don't believe me? Watch the video.

Anyway, the only thing I can think of that bag search being good for is to get unwary and otherwise complacent citizens to open their bags so that any illicit materials therein can be located and used as evidence. Why would they do this? Well, the bag check is carefully presented as a 'safety measure.' So if you know you're not a terrorist, and the police are 'looking for terrorists,' why wouldn't you open your bag?

Know what you just did? You just waived your Fifth Amendment rights. If there's anything in there incriminating, too bad; you voluntarily showed it to them and gave consent by not walking away. Know what else you just did? You just waived your right to privacy. They're going to paw over the contents of your bag, and whatever we 'agree' on in terms of policies, they're going to read the book titles. They're going to look at your emergency underwear. They're going to wonder about the little things, because they're human. While it might be possible to set up procedures and rules by which such intrusions do not legally incriminate, our human nature means that there's no way to set up procedures such that they do not violate our privacy. And you let them.

Well, now they know what you're reading. They know who you are. If you have any marijuana in your bag, you've just voluntarily shown it to them (by not walking out of the station, remember? You consented to the search). And guess what? If you think they're not going to use that information against you, you're wrong. Probably dead wrong.

In other words, the 'random bag check' has absolutely nothing to do with safety. It's like the state trooper who comes up to your car and asks 'do you know how fast you were going?' Warning: never answer 'yes.' Never give a number. As the cop in the videos notes, the usual response of the driver who knows that they were speeding but isn't a habitual speeder to to try to admit to a 'lesser speed,' still illegal so they don't think you were lying.

Guess what? You just confessed to speeding. End of story. No way out. Doesn't matter if you confessed to 57 in a 55 when you were going 68; you confessed to speeding. They'll happily give you a 57 in a 55 citation if you're willing to give them a confession. Their job is easier.

So yeah. Random bag check. For your safety.

Nothing is sacred anymore.

Fucking heresy. For Griffith's sake.

Welcome again to the nanny state.

Let me get this straight - you're going to suspend and strip of his student government office an honors student in the eighth grade for buying candy? All because some dipshit bureaucrat decided that there should be a 'wellness policy' that forbids candy sales on campuses?

So apparently eighth graders are completely incapable of looking after themselves, and this school district has decided that the complete idiocy of the 'drug war' is not bad enough - now we're going to go straight to harsh punishment for buying candy, which is (last I looked) perfectly legal to buy for anyone who can get their hungry little hands over the counter with the quarters.

What are you teaching these kids? That their governing authorities can at any time reach down into their lives and punish them for completely arbitrary crap which doesn't appear to be actually illegal, and that there's no recourse nor protection for them from these bureaucratic idiots.

Oh, that's good.

Fuckwits.

Of more concern are the parents who think this kind of school policy is okay for their children. What the hell are you doing to your kids in the name of nanny-state convenience? Grow a goddamn spine. Parenting isn't just punishing when things go badly, or ceding the development of a personal ethos to a state bureaucracy. It's your responsibility to see your kid schooled, yes; it's also your responsibility to monitor that process and intervene when the schooling goes awry.

Unless, of course, you all think that this is a perfectly peachy outcome, in which case I hope somebody helps your children, because you apparently won't or can't.

Useless fuckers.

I Swear To God

if one more white person comes up to me with the light of WALLOWING IN LIBERAL HAPPINESS AND GUILT in their eye and asks me excitedly "Oh, are you going to vote for Obama of course?!?" I swear to fucking God-in-whom-I-don't-believe that I'm going to go out, apply for a gun permit to get a gun I don't want just so I can go find them and shoot them in both fucking kneecaps.

This goes double for relatives and longtime friends, who should FUCKING KNOW BETTER. They lose elbows too.

The money's not trickling down, stupid

The New York Times, in a somewhat mealy-mouthed article on the fun topic 'is this a recession' produces the following:

For a variety of reasons that economists only partly understand — including technological change and global trade — many workers have received only modest raises in recent years, despite healthy economic growth.

Um, did you check corporate earnings and executive pay, maybe?

Chaz Pazienza says 'Fuck This' and means it

Chaz Pazienza is a name I'd honestly never heard until I read this evening of his experiences being fired from CNN for blogging - and not for blogging anything that had to do with his job. Mr. Pazienza, in a column for the Huffington Post which I linked above, muses that the problem with American television journalism was not that it wasn't dealing well, these past six years, with the party in power - but that it has come to fall entirely down on the job due to timidity, concerns over showing bias, and kowtowing to financial relationships.

I link to this article and urge folks who have been either disquieted by the American press, or outright furious (as I have in many cases) to go read his tale.

Oh, and in so doing: Fuck you, CNN. You need us more than we need you - be it as viewers, philosophical supporters, or even (in some of our cases) as writers with no reason to savage you.

Fuck you.

Don't go to Dubai.

This appears to be a country racing hard to stay ahead of the U.S. in 'pointless, stupid, shithole fascism.'

Don't give them your tourist dollars.

JPMorganChase can kiss my entire ass.

Opening a new bank account should a) not take 45 minutes of sitting in a branch. Really. It shouldn't. Especially not 45 minutes after the "customer service rep" actually acknowledges my existence. But okay. Things are slow around lunchtime I guess.

I deposit a decent chunk of money, via a check to me, into the account to open it. Several thousand dollars, which I need (fairly urgently) to cover current expenses, but expenses which really would like a local bank account. Again, fine. This is Tuesday.

Saturday I get a snailmail letter explaining that the deposit I've made is 'on hold' - but they will graciously allow me access to $100 of it. The reason? I quote:

the deposited check(s) is/are not consistent with the account's normal deposit activity

Um. So, how, precisely, could any check be consistent with this account's normal deposit activity when this is the OPENING DEPOSIT?

Upon phoning, Chase informs me helpfully that it doesn't matter anyway because any check from a bank outside of New York's tri-state area is automatically hit with a 5 business day hold time.

I'm not saying I really object to the latter. But the first one? Stupid. I mean, if they'd said "All first deposited checks to new accounts are subject to hold for verification..." I'd really be probably okay with it. Except...

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN NICE TO HAVE BEEN TOLD EITHER OF THESE WHILE OPENING THE FUCKING ACCOUNT.

Assholes.

Terminally Stupid Administration

UPDATE: Okay, mea culpa. The ban apparently applies only to "lithium metal" batteries, not the Lithium-Ion types used in laptops.

Via Slashdot comes the news that the TSA will be limiting the transportation of lithium batteries (like the ones in cell phones and laptops). It's a bit hard to understand why, unless they're concerned about the recent spate of exploding laptops. The problem is that if that is what they're concerned about (and, yes, incendiary laptops on planes are bad) then it beggars the imagination to understand why they're allowing any battery that's in use in a laptop, and only worrying about spares. All the cases (well, the really publicized ones, at least) of exploding laptops involved batteries in laptops and in use.

Now, it's possible that there has been a surge in detonating solo batteries, but it hasn't really made much news, if so. In any case, now we have to watch screeners scratching their heads and trying to figure out 'equivalent grams of lithium' ratings for various consumer devices while we're waiting in line to board.

So what's the point, then?

Original notice available here.

Ever wonder how you *create* coldly angry revolutionaries?

Like this.

Of course, some of 'em won't be revolutionaries. Some will just be people thinking it's about time to take a brick to law enforcement for spouting useless stupid crap, without any other political agenda.

And thus the Security State propagates itself. When it can't find credible threat, it co-opts dumbshit organizations and people to create the threat for it.

The U.S. Military and I

Inevitably, as I rant my way through my life bitching about things, I'll get on to the subject of the clusterfuck illegality known as the 'Global War on Terror.' Actually, I lie - usually I start there, when ranting. One of the consequences of this if I'm in a public place in this country is that sometimes some junkfucker waster of DNA will overhear me (although in 100% of these cases, said junkfucker was in no way the designated recipient of my conversation) and will proceed to loudly take me to task about my so-called lack of support for the U.S. Military.

This irks me.

I have an enormous amount of respect for the men and women who make up the U.S. Military in general. I have a deal of contempt for certain specific individuals in that organization, and when talking about them, name them. On the whole, though, I believe that the U.S. Military is composed of - well - just people, many of whom are aspiring to a sort of noble behavior by doing something active, in contrast to the many who aren't doing anything.

In fact, on many questions, the U.S. Military tends to be closer to the ideal of America that I want to subscribe to than said trashhumpers who so ardently want to defend them. Case in point: Four active-duty service JAGs, and now four retired colleagues of theirs, have come out in eloquent support of the position that waterboarding is a) torture and b) illegal.

These eight people are and were entrusted by the Military itself to ensure that the behavior of its members conformed to U.S. and International law. If any enforcer in the world can be argued by position to be slack on the members of the U.S. Armed Forces and their actions, it might be their own in-house watchdogs. I sure don't see that here. I see those watchdogs offering their interpretation of the tactics ordered and espoused by the Executive Branch of the U.S. Government, and their interpretation is that "they suck and are forbidden."

Now we have Mr. Mukasey, who as the nominee for AG is waffling like mad on the subject of these very techniques. The Administration will claim loudly that he must retain flexibility so as to protect our 'brave men and women in uniform' who are doing all they can to protect us.

But the JAGs have just shot a pointed rusty dildo through that theory. They have primary investigative and enforcement authority over the actions of U.S. military personnel, and they have said, with no waffling, that the practice of waterboarding is torture, therefore illegal, and Not To Be Done.

So who is Mukasey's flexibility intended to protect? Well, that's kind of obvious, isn't it? Those involved with the use of this practice who are not under the jurisdiction of the JAGs.

In other words, the civilian administration who instructed them.

Couple that with his refusal to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate the goings-on at Justice, and what you have is a shriveled-old-white-man wrapping tightly shrunk around a diamond-clear Get Out Of Jail Free plan by those in the U.S. Executive branch.

Fuck that, people. And if the Democratic Party in Congress (as well as the Republican party, but I've given up hope there) had any sense of being American enough to defend our core values, they'd give the nomination the finger. As John Dean (who has some experience with lying sack of shit presidents) has written:

Before the Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee completely cave-in to Bush, at minimum they should demand that Judge Mukasey appoint a special prosecutor to investigate if war crimes have been committed. If Mukasey refuses he should be rejected. This, indeed, should be a pre-condition to anyone filling the post of Attorney General under Bush.

If the Democrats in the Senate refuse to demand any such requirement, it will be act that should send chills down the spine of every thinking American.

Note: not the fucktard's word 'right-thinking.' Just plain 'thinking.' Which says something about the fucktards that I agree with.

The Emperor's Clothes are...well...ragged.

I have never heard so much mealy-mouthed, self-aggrandizing and rationalizing bullshit in one story in my life, Mr. President.

Mukasey previews the Bush Defense

Michael Mukasey, nominated to head the Justice Department in the wake of Alberto Gonzales' long overdue departure, has show what I consider to be troubling equivocation in his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. According to The New York Times, when asked if waterboarding was constitutional, his inital response was to state that he did not know what waterboarding was and therefore could not answer. When Senator Whitehouse (D-RI) offered a description of waterboarding and asked if that was constitutional, Mukasey's only answer was 'if it amounts to torture, it's not constitutional.'

In other words, he intends to strictly apply decisions handed to him in the full letter of the law - but explicitly waved off any responsibility (or ability) to make the decision as to what constituted torture. The problem is that if the Justice Department isn't going to make that decision, then (as we've seen and has been stated) the decision as to what is torture will simply be made by other agencies. If the Justice Department says "Torture is unconstitutional and we won't permit torture" but also says "We won't define what torture is" then all it is is a procedural rubber stamp. The real power to define our nation's behavior as constitutional or not, and hence to shape its actions, has been explicitly passed off to whoever is writing the definition of torture - a purely semantic exercise.

As we've seen, that person will be a Bush Administration functionary, likely writing in secret.

We've just been told by the nominee to head our Justice Department that he will be explicitly offering loopholes and definitional power to those not in the Justice Department - thereby ensuring its complete impotence in the struggle to police our nation and its actions.

Why would we approve this? Why? To all those in the Congress involved in this appointment: you must answer that question before voting. You must answer it to *our* satisfaction.

More Boston zOMGTERRORWTFBBQ bullshit.

Governor Deval Patrick, your stupid fucking bureaucracy is showing. Fix it now.

Oh, wait, you were a big supporter of this kind of idiocy last time, weren't you?

Jesus, I am so glad I'm moving myself and my income out of the Boston area so I won't have to hang my head and admit I live in the city that gives us policing like this.

Read this, now, if you're a U.S. Citizen.

I'm not going to opine on the veracity of this. The fact that it exists at all is troubling. If it's true, it's more than troubling, it's downright terrifying in demonstrating the loss of contact with reality that this Administration has achieved.

Someone needs to stop these people, if this is what they're trying to do.

If you're an American voter, that person is you. Do it now.

Update: Fascinating. The story seems to have vanished from DailyKos, despite there being a claimed 1395 comments on that Kos URL (which we can't see). It may have just moved somewhere I can't find it. It was someone telling us of a phone call from a friend who is an LSO on a carrier in the Gulf, telling them that we're basically 'going to attack Iran' based on what she saw in terms of aircraft and ship prep and organization activity, as well as some disturbing descriptions about Marines and Navy personnel wondering why the fuck we'd be doing this.

New Haven beats out Boston in the Race to the Pathetically Stupid

Jessica Mayorga, either you're unbelievably stupid or you're too much of a craven dip to get a better job. Seriously. If you think white powder with arrows and patterns on the ground of a parking lot could conceivably involve terrorism - firmly enough to justify throwing the first responders of U.S. cities on high alert and, worse, when the person who placed said powder there comes forward and explains that it's a pathmarking pattern made of flour firmly enought that you defend charging that person with a felony...then you need a reality check.

Especially if you think a New Haven IKEA is a serious terrorist target of mysterious white circles and arrows on the ground. zOMG they're going to confuse your sheep-like populace! That's the SECRET PLAN!

Seriously, lady. Hint. Get out now if this is the kind of 'spokespersoning' you're being made to do. It's not worth it.

First they came for the smokers...

...and I said a bit, but not much, for I was only a sometime smoker. Then they came for us fatties, not with the old saw about us raising other people's insurance risk but now - gasp - we're actually to blame for other people becoming fat.

I think I need to declare myself a handicapped gay fat smoker. Jew is almost redundant, it seems.

Hotel internet

What is it about hotels and bandwidth? I have had to stay in something like nine different business-class or resort hotels in the past few months. All have boasted 'high speed internet access!' Only one of them has actually had a working network solution in the room when I arrived.

This is not rocket science, people. I'm not complaining about the damn rape-me-for-a-day's charges authorization portals, either. Those are par for the course. I mean I show up, flip open the laptop and (if specified) jack it in to the indicated port with CAT-5 which I've learned to always have with me, or hunt for the specified SSID on 802.11 if not.

Never works.

At the hotel I'm currently at, a golf resort in northern VA near Dulles, there's a wartlike box that comes out the side of the TV cabinet and extends over the edge of the desk. It contains two power outlets and a data jack, and the room cordless phone rests on top. Okay. Plugging into the data jack produced no result. Calling the three different extensions at the hotel that kept referring me to the others produced no result - no link. Finally, in frustration, I opened the TV cabinet and traced cables. Sure enough, there's a standard DSL modem buried underneath the gear, and its output is wired via a built-in CAT-5 to the jack on the wart.

Yank the output and plug my own patch cable directly into the modem? Works.

Oh, until I left the room and came back. Then I didn't have internet service. Couldn't figure out why, I'd authorized the full day charges, until I checked the modem again. It was depowered. This was interesting, since its power adapter was completely hidden behind the TV cabinet, so I couldn't have kicked it or anything. The TV itself was still working.

After ten minutes of bitching, I turned on all the room lights. Yep. They plugged it into a fucking lamp circuit back there.

Other hotels claim wireless, but of course there's only one bar of signal on most of the floor. A couple memorable examples of national chain hotels turned out, on judicious examination of their network when I could get to the wireless net but no further, to have the entire wing of the hotel connected through a single fucking consumer router (a Netgear in one case, and a familiar Linksys in another). In one case, the router was crashed, and the front desk kept adamantly insisting that the network was fine because they could see the SSID. In the second, I managed to reboot the router, which brought service back - for about ten minutes. Then it went away again. Some examination showed that they were routing their damn conference facility through the same device, and it was promptly running out of either DHCP or NAT entries (it would run out of one or the other, depending on what was being run and how many users were online). I got used to logging into it, cycling it, and then nabbing a DHCP entry and opening up three SSH sessions and leaving the machine up so as to ensure there would be resources if I wanted to use them later.

Oh, yeah, in the latter case, they hadn't changed the default manufacturer password. They just were using a different IP range (on the same wireless net!) for 'management.'

Christ.

This makes me so glad I left.

I'm not a developer. I don't code. It could be argued, convincingly, that I in fact contributed nothing at all to the Ximian production of Linux software during my years working there (although I will state firmly and for the record that I'm not in sales, thanks).

I greeted the news of the Microsoft-Novell patent agreement with trepidation and annoyance. I refrained from blogging about it, because I didn't have enough information about either the agreement itself or the issues being bandied about and didn't consider my opinion should be put forth under a Novell/Ximian username.

I don't work there anymore.

I don't, and didn't, know specifically the business pressures under which Novell and its executives were operating when they negotiated that agreement. I do, however, consider the agreement itself to be a gross betrayal of statements made to the Linux community and those working within it by Novell spokespersons at prior times. The agreement legitimates (in my wholly uninformed opinion) Microsoft's position of Linux and F/OSS patent infringement on its software. Perhaps not in a legally liable manner - that, I'm sure, will be argued vociferously by many people in the years to come - but certainly in a cravenly wink-aside manner. Novell took a payoff, and sold out everyone else in The Prisoner's Dilemma in order to try to achieve some stock bumps for a new management team which had (at the time) ridden to power on promises to achieve some upwards mobility in the stock price.

They haven't really succeeded. Guess what's coming next? Layoffs, probably. I don't know, myself, not working there the past few months. But that's the typical pattern. Hovsepian had some great quote about the 'two levers' that one can use to achieve profitability when he took over. I think one involved raising profits, and the other cutting costs, and then he mumbled on about careful juggling of those two levers and then platitudes about perhaps finding a 'third lever.'

Well, that 'third lever' was revealed to be massive payouts from Microsoft for selling everybody else out. The 'second lever' - layoffs - is traditional. The 'first lever' is a joke, because the BIG SECRET is that it's not at all under his control. It waggles around at the behest of the market, and the market has been telling his company for years that its software sucks.

Why am I suddenly so bitter? Because, as many of us predicted quite accurately at the time - some loudly and publicly, some amongst ourselves into our beers, Novell defecting at the Prisoner's Dilemma has consequences for everyone else. Nasty ones. The pact they were so proud of has, in fact, turned out to be the wedge that seems to have given Ballmer, Smith and their legion of non-productive monopolists the self-confidence to ramp down the DEFCON level on their self-centered game of IP armageddon.

I don't agree with (or even like) many, many people on both sides of this so-called war. I hate extremists of all sorts, to the point of being one myself on the subject. I find extreme polarization to be dangerous, limiting, and frankly, fucking tedious. Most of the 'big names' involved in this little spat seem to fall squarely in that realm. Those that don't, some of whom are some of the smartest people I have read or listened to, are doomed to try to save what they can from the debacle when the buttons are pushed and the lawyers start billing in earnest.

All because of some true scumbags. Not because they're greedy; that's their job. No; because they're so convinced they and their methodology are right, and that the side effects are somebody else's problem, that they're willing to ride the situation down into flames and blame it on the other guys and claim they were just 'doing their jobs for their stockholders' while furtively cashing in options before it gets truly fucked.

Disclaimer: I own some Novell options. Not because I want to, but because Novell, before I planned to leave, suspended all conversion of its options and hasn't unblocked trading yet.

You've got to be kidding me.

Loyalty Day? We're in the middle of a storm of revelations about how dangerous loyalty can be, especially when it's shown, utilized, or co-opted by this President's administration. Loyalty is one of those words that sounds wonderfully unifying until you start asking hard questions - and Mr. President, I'm sorry, but this nation is more about asking hard questions than demonstrating the sort of 'loyalty' that you seem to hold dear. Incompetent and/or corrupt appointees remain in their posts, their very presence damaging the principles this nation's founding claimed to espouse, due to a triumph of 'loyalty' over 'sense.'

There's this place called the 'reality-based community.' You might try visiting.

Talk to me, Mr. Bush, about threats to Democracy.

Talk real fast and hard. Better yet, talk to the Special Counsel. Or to Congress. If you actually believe any of the platitudes you spout about our way of life and our country, start talking. Honestly and quickly.

Is it any surprise...

...that it's lawyers for Bush volunteers that would resort to the argument that the president can exclude people if he disagrees with them from taxpayer-funded events?

Didn't think so.

The phrase "first up against the fucking wall when the revolution comes" is gaining piquancy at remarkable speed.

Minority Rights and the GOP

If anyone ever starts mumbling about 'voter fraud' in your presence, make them go read this. If they start spluttering defensive talking points, start hunting for a large bat.

I really just don't know what to say.

Pat Tillman's death was tragic. It was also a story of chaos and error and perhaps, we may find out, darker overtones; but it is a story that is repeated over and over again when we send soldiers into combat. Creating the conditions in which the likelihood of events like this becomes almost a statistical certainty is part and parcel of what makes war. Managing that chaos and uncertainty, that confusion and danger which can make things like this happen better than your opponent is one (some would say the only) way to prevail in war. Turning loose the conditions themselves, though, is what war is.

The message that I take away from the recent investigation into the circumstances of his death, however, is a somewhat grimly mixed one. On the one hand, a soldier's death is investigated with an eye towards preventing other such incidents and discovering if error or malfeasance was present; I approve wholeheartedly. But the headlines telling us that multiple officers, including general officers will be held accountable for a tactical encounter in the field makes me wonder - where are the general officers and policy makers who directly soiled my country's military and my country's honor at Abu Ghraib? Where are their indictments?

I guess the message is clear. If a football player dies in the darkened field on your watch under suspicious circumstances, the hammer of God will descend. But torture Iraqis by direction under klieg lights all you want.

The Business Model is Litigation.

Viacom makes it quite clear that its business model no longer (if it ever did) includes selling its product to consumers who want to buy it. Realistically, to get past the 10-minute clip limit, this 'content' is mostly the famous 150,000 music video properties that they sent cease-and-desist letters for after identifying them through a sloppy-ass regexp. The problem I have with this is that the quality of those clips was really for ass, and all those clips did was stoke up my nostalgia to the point where I started actively hunting for ways to purchase the ones I liked on DVD. Note that these were videos I hadn't thought about in fifteen years or more.

Of course, my hunt was doomed to failure. There wasn't any way to buy the content in nearly all cases.

Viacom has the opportunity to extract money from me, money neither it nor anyone else would have gotten had those videos not been posted, by simply figuring out how to put a 'BUY IT FROM US NOW' link on the video pages on YouTube. But rather than do that, they've apparently decided it's easier to sue YouTube for a billion dollars or so - apparently while also negotiating to put their content on some other service. That other service, though, is one I've never fucking heard of and still can't remember the name of. Nor have any of the other fifteen friends I was excitedly reminiscing about those videos with over IM.

Which means, of course, that either they're going to have to spend an awful lot of advertising money to make us aware of that new service, or simply accept that the fifteen of us (moderately affluent, impulse-spending, digital-happy types) are just going to regretfully decide not to buy any music video content over the web.

Idiots.

Fairly imbalanced

Murdoch admits the fix was in. Where are the rest of the media? Cowering in fear of being called 'the liberal MSM' for covering this?

hat tip Agonist

Boston vs. the Mooninites, Round 3

Wait, wait, wait. I had thought it could not get any worse. That Boston could not look any stupider.

I was wrong.

So apparently there were simulated pipe bombs (as in, actual hoaxes - things designed to look like bombs) found that day. This might, in fact, go a long way towards explaining why law enforcement officials were on such edge during the actual event with the Mooninites.

Except for one important thing. The article, you'll note, indicates that the police have identified a man they believe planted the phony bombs. He, however, has not been charged.

I really, really, REALLY hope that's because they're just making sure they have an airtight case against the guy where, unlike the two gents who were HIRED TO PLACE LIGHT-BRITES, there was no CONTRACTUAL or, say, WEB PHOTOGRAPHIC evidence (or even - gasp - a confession!) that he'd placed the devices. Because if they end up charging those two, and not this guy that actually placed a hoax explosive, man, whatever faith I had in Boston governance goes right down the toilet.

By the way, if you're not planning on charging that guy yet, nice leaking, guys!

These guys are my new heroes too.

...and "THAT IS NOT A HAIR QUESTION!" is going to be my stock answer for the next few weeks.

Thanks to Luis for pointing that link out to me.

Thank you metafilter and t3h intarwub

Hey, Dick Cheney and Glenn Reynolds!

Theodore Roosevelt's calling you 'unpatriotic, servile and morally treasonable to the American public':

"The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else."

"Roosevelt in the Kansas City Star", 149
May 7, 1918

...and that was during a real war, fuckers.

There is this thing called the Constitution. Some people should read it.

Holy shit. I mean, seriously. Okay, let's look at this. Either the Attorney General doesn't understand the questioning of the Senate Judiciary Committe and the Constitution of the United States of America, or (and the prior was the generous interpretation) he explicitly believes what he just said in that video. Namely, he (and, presumably, those who appointed him and support him) believe that the Constitution of the United States, despite explicitly stating that the right to habeas corpus cannot be suspended except in specific instances, does not grant that right in all other cases.

That's so, so, SO not good. We need to remove this man now.

Every once in a while I feel optimistic

...and then I am forcibly brought back to earth. Read the comments on this story (after reading the story itself) and see how you feel.

I just don't even know what to say to people like this. Apparently they would rather bash a reporter, however insensitive, than accept the fact that our allies in the 'war on terror' (as well as our own government) are diverging farther and farther from what Americans who actually read history should consider safe and reassuring behavior.

The black helicopters exist. They've got neocon wingnuts flying the fucking things.

Good Holy Zarquon, it never stops

Doesn't anybody take physics or chemistry anymore? I'm not sure what kills me, the snide knowing/not-knowing tone of the article, or some of the comments.

Sometimes the Good Guys Win One

...and when they do, sometimes it's heartening to be reminded how many of them there are.

Contrary to what the 'Law and Order' addicts think...

...police systems work because those they are policing consent to be governed. Incidents like this make the populace less, not more, content with police governance; as a result, the effectiveness of police goes down, not up. This is how police forces lose their ability to police through direction rather than force, and this is how law and order give way to repression and violence.

Because if, for example, I was there, the only thing keeping me from beating one of those cops' fucking head in would be the threat of immediate force. It sure wouldn't be respect for the fucking law.

Is that what those cops want to face every time they look at one of the civilians they're supposed to 'serve and protect'?

Here's a hint. If someone asks you for your name and badge number, and the thought makes you angry/ashamed/frightened - maybe you shouldn't be doing what you're doing. If it just makes you resentful, that's one thing - but if you find yourself threatening them with force for doing so, you've crossed the line into not just part of the problem, but the fucking source.

He *is* a five-year-old.

Let me get this straight. The military is driven after six years to offer feedback to its lawful civilian superior that his subordinate is, in the military's expert opinion, doing a suboptimal job, and that civilian's response is to 'dig in' at this 'revolt against civilian control of the military'?

In my experience, this is the reaction of a five year old who has been told he can't have ice cream for dinner. But in this case, the damage done is incalculable, and is done directly to that same tradition of civilian control. Civilian control of the military works not only because a piece of paper says it will be true; it works because the members of the military establishment trust the civilian leadership (or at least the system) to helm the ship. Tantrums like this don't help.

Barefaced drivel.

From "The Democrats will surrender to terrorists and raise your taxes" to "The American people expect us to rise above partisan differences, and my administration will do its part."

Sure it will, Shrub. Sure it will. But only at the point of a legislative gun, apparently. And a promise extracted under duress...well.

Update: How, precisely, will his administration 'do its part'? Well, let's see...apparently by pushing to have Bolton confirmed before the Democrats take over and by pressing to have NSA surveillance officially approved. Because it's not like even some Republicans were against those. Remember, until January, we're in Bush Fantasyland.

All I Have To Say About Election Night

...is this: especially if the Democrats win control of either or both houses, those of us who have bitched/preached/called for change, accountability, and protection of civil liberties will not see a lessening of our responsibility to hold Congress' feet to the fire. On the contrary, we will have an even greater responsibility to keep a weather eye on the actions of our representatives, and to be as strident or more so when they stray; for our dedication should be to the Republic, not the Party, and we will no longer have the excuse of being marginalized.

This useless bastard hates me. I'm so glad.

They say you can judge someone by the character of their enemies.

I'm doing just fine.

Oh, *now* they start to get it...

Remember "if you're innocent you have nothing to fear?" Yeah. Right. Slowly, slowly, they're learning.

Who the hell raids a kiddie porn downloader in flak jackets with guns out? Law and Order jacked-up psychos, that's who. I mean, honestly, if you really want evidence for that kind of thing (i.e., on a computer) the last thing you want to do is get everyone all hotted up into siege mentality. Nope, you want to get into the house nice and quiet; get them to the door all unsuspecting, so they don't have time to erase things. Idiots.

Update: Ha, so it turns out this was supposed to be a publicity run, and Shaq was there. At least this gives the poor folks who got rousted some more (and more national exposure) publicity for their plight.

Olbermann in high form, again

Watch it, now, please.

Copyfighters vs. Narcissistic Hangers-on

The reactions to the recent news that Visa has cut off the Russian MP3 site AllOfMp3.com serve only to further deepen my ambivalence towards the entire debate over copyright and the uses of DRM technology. I have had a checkered history with the entire issue, having parked my ass on both sides of the debate over copyright due to my involvement with Eyes on the Prize.

Here's my problem. I have this large parge of me which remains convinced that a huge part of the 'outrage over DRM and copyright' is nothing more than laziness over personal inconvenience, and crap like the reactions to the AllOfMP3.com news do nothing but reinforce it. Let me explain.

I myself agree, and feel strongly, that the copyright system in the U.S.A. (I can't speak for the rest of the world) is broken and in need of overhauling. I also think that the legislative process has suffered excessive capture at the hands of the 'middleman' organizations such as the MPAA and RIAA - entities which do not themselves create, nor in fact ably serve to defend the rights of those who do. However, I also think that there is a line to be drawn between actions which show defiance of those entities and rules spawned to benefit them and actions which simply show the elevation of personal convenience over other considerations.

Take AllOfMP3.com. Everything I have seen indicates that while yes, they were selling un-DRM-ed MP3 music (which is a Good Thing in terms of how the information is presented), there was adequate evidence that they were not, in fact, compensating the owners of the copyrights to that music as the law required. Ah, many people have said, but whose law? Well, see, I would argue, that's not entirely relevant. The point is this - they weren't really compensating anybody - either the artists directly, or the organizations who were the designated rightsholders.

What they were (or rather, are) doing, is collecting money in return for the transmission of music over the internet.

In other words, they are taking your money and giving you a copy of music which they themselves did not create, and which (it seems quite, quite likely) they 'produced' by simply ripping it off a bought CD.

In other words, they are accepting money for someone else's work.

That's fairly disgusting, to me. I don't see how this makes them any different from the organizations that everyone in the 'copyfighter' movement claims to hate so much, like the MPAA and RIAA - except that the latter seem to have had the foresight to at least get their thievery written into the legal system.

Now, I may be very wrong about this. There may be artists out there who have received monies from AllOfMP3.com. If that's the case, if AllOfMP3's crime is, in fact, that they are bypassing the RIAA and paying the artists directly, well, then huzzah on them and I eat crow. But if they are, in fact, simply hiding behind the 'wrong legal system' argument to collect monies and not really pay out to anyone, then I fail to see why anyone who considers themselves a champion of the freedom of information and the freedom of artists should ever, ever defend them - they're not only thieves and users, but even more blatant about it than the RIAA are.

However, everywhere I look, I see people who describe themselves as 'concerned about the DRM issue' explaining how they like AllOfMP3.com because the site 'doesn't use DRM' and 'doesn't cripple music.'

Okay. But do they steal it?

And don't give me that crap about 'you can't steal music, it wants to be free.' If the artist who made the music in the first place has said publicly that their music should be freely available to all, then yes, you're quite right. But if the artist hasn't said that, then you have no right to make that choice for them. Pretending you do is nothing more than rationalization of theft.

Of course they're not 'neutral.'

Want to get even more angry? Read this. And remember, 'neutral' these days, when it comes to covering the actions of those in government, is code-word for 'enabling' - and given what the bastards are up to, that's not 'neutral' at all.

Battlefield 2142? Fuck you, EA, not this boy.

You know, I was really looking forward to Battlefield 2142. Despite the horrific patch issues, crappy QA and testing, horrendous customer service philosophy and other minor problems that the Battlefield series has been famous for - and that I am more than experienced with, having now paid cash money for Battlefield 1942, Battlefield Vietnam and Battlefield 2 - I WANTED LASER GUNS DAMN IT.

But, I'm sorry, I'm not buying it. Nope. I'm not even gonna pirate it. No way.

Because of this.

Fuck you, EA.

And the Beat Goes On.

Oh yeah, I feel protected. We moved ATF into Justice why, again?

Oh right. Republican administration, War on Terror, 'Homeland Security.'

Patrick Buchanan, Misdirection and Outright Bullshit.

So Mr. Buchanan has produced the latest limp-dick attempt to vilify the Democrats for the Foley situation. In an opinion piece posted on the website of the Miami Herald, he spends the column admitting that there are all manner of problems of credibility with the GOP's statements and actions. But - but! - he tells us, the Democrats are really hypocrites, because they after all lowered the age of consent in D.C. to 16! So even if Foley had sex with these pages, it would be perfectly legal due to Democratic actions! Also (Buchanan continues) the media outed the gay GOP staffers, and suddenly they were fired! He concludes:

But to have the party of gay rights, many of whose leaders have marched in gay-pride parades alongside the pedophiles of NAMBLA, acting ''shocked, shocked'' at GOP torpor in ousting its gay member is, to put it mildly, unconvincing.

Welcome to 'the big lie.' Or better, 'the big WHOA!' as in "well, yes, but - WHOA! Look over there!" Let's take this paragraph one step at a time and see how many bits of bullshit labeling and misdirection we can find, shall we?

• " The party of gay rights." Hm. Well, while some Democrats may stand for gay rights, many don't, and it's certainly not a central theme of the party. Of course, if you're trying to remind homophobes why not voting GOP means voting for gays, then of course it is.
• "many of whose leaders have marched in gay-pride parades alongside the pedophiles of NAMBLA..." Ahhh, we love this one. Names please? Pictures? Were these parades closed access and by invite-only? What were the circumstances? By 'alongside' do you mean 'holding hands' or mean 'in the same parade as' which, in (for example) the New York City Pride parade can take in an incredible amount of real estate and political spectrum? Here's the problem Democrats have: many of them have this notion that unless someone has been caught doing something illegal, you can't deprive them of rights. While it may be one thing to deplore NAMBLA's existence and mission, it's another thing to avoid a Pride event because they show up exercising a constitutional right to assembly.
• "...at GOP torpor in ousting its gay member..." BZZZZT. Nope, wrong. Not at GOP torpor in ousting its gay member. That's *your* fantasy, Mr. Buchanan, thank you for projecting. No, at GOP reluctance to act to shield young adults who were sent to Washington in good faith and placed under their protection from the grooming and predation of one of their own. Again, Mr. Buchanan fixates on the same thing that is killing Hastert and company - the status of the GOP involved and not the status of the kids. As he puts it, they're over the legal age of consent (which is the Dem's fault) so who cares?

Fucking disgusting.

Schools vs. Airplanes - What is the Disconnect?

Dana Milbank notes that President Bush managed to give an entire press conference about the recent spate of school shootings without using the word 'gun.' This feat of verbal gymnastics was performed, Milbank infers, so as to avoid bringing up the Elephant in the Room of gun control immediately before an election.

Let me take a moment to outline something that troubles me here. If you read the account of the conference, Bush and company seem eager to hear about 'faith-based' solutions to school violence such as 'churches adopting schools' and re-introducing prayer, without once mentioning the actual mechanism of said violence which is the access to schools with guns.

Why, then, are we living in a world where people are being told they can't get on airplanes carrying rocks - since they might be weapons? This when the person carrying said rock was a geologist for Pete's sake. At the same time, our President can have an entire press conference to discuss a series of horrific events involving the deaths of American children in schools, all of which involved access to guns and access to those schools by those with guns, and manage to muse (as Milbank notes) that perhaps schools are becoming 'too locked down' and not mention gun control once?

I get it. You can take away our right to have an MP3 player on an airplane, but God forbid (literally) you take away someone's right to have an assault weapon near a primary school. Oh, never mind, we've done away with the Federal Assault weapons ban, so you haven't!

Sure, this makes sense.

The Tree of Liberty

The Tree of Liberty, Thomas Jefferson told us, must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

I can't help wondering, though - as we feed it the blood of innocents, what poison fruit will we harvest from it?

I suppose we'll learn, if we're not doing so already - and if we have ears to hear or eyes to see.

End pompous thought for the day that I can't get out of my head.

The U.S. Military, Entropy, and Thermodynamics

The U.S. Military, Entropy, and Thermodynamics

I often find myself struggling to explain to friends and acquaintances who aren't familiar with the U.S. military or the study thereof what, precisely, I mean when I tell them that the U.S. military is no good at creating order. When I say something like "The U.S. military is not intended for, nor any good at, imposing peace or order," I tend to get a confused and/or disbelieving stare. This is not, I have found, due to any fundamental lack of understanding, just (from my experience) an inability on my part to explain what I'm saying clearly enough. I continually try to learn to express myself with more clarity. This is a tiny step in that process, nothing more.

The U.S. Military is, as an organization, extremely proficient at the projection and channeling of situational entropy. By this I mean that U.S. forces have, through historical pressure and tradition, become very good at disrupting opposing positively-controlled forces, plans and structures. That is, in fact, their raison d'être. For the purposes of this argument, I'll start with World War Two.

They weren't the best at it, there; the Wermacht was. However, the U.S. military did one thing very well, something that even the German General Staff was forced to admit: it learned. It became adept at taking admittedly inferior quality equipment but eventually superior numbers and utilizing them to disrupt German plans. Finally, it learned to grind away at German situational planning and operations until (coupled with the massive drain on Germany made possible by Soviet resistance and incursion) the German machine broke.

The entire prosecution of that war was an attempt to roll back - to break up - an opposing set of positive-control forces and plans, the German invasion of Europe and the Japanese expansion into the Pacific. The U.S. military sought not to impose a situation, but to disrupt another imposed situation.

The Korean war - same situation. The U.S. and U.N. forces were fighting to reverse a positive-controlled invasion of South Korea. Major reversals occured (for reasons political and military) when the U.S. led forces traversed north of the original start line and began to impose their own order over the original situation, triggering Chinese intervention.

Vietnam saw the U.S. forces mostly victorious when fighting to defeat an attempt to topple a sitting government through irregular forces, albeit not without major confusion and collateral damage. The Viet Cong were for the most part defeated before the large-scale intervention of the NVA (this is a gross oversimplification and is not meant to base academic arguments on). Once the south Vietnamese government collapsed, however, the U.S. found itself in a position of attempting to impose structure and order on chaos - trying not to defeat a postive-controlled incursion anymore, but rather to impose a preferred structure on what had devolved into an anarchic or hostile area. At that point, the fight became untenable. Although local operations of the NVA could be defeated and disrupted, there was little point if the ground that was being defended could not be called 'ours' in the first place.

During the first Gulf War, the U.S. and allied forces were seeking to reverse a military occupation of Kuwait - a very limited and defined goal - by disrupting and/or destroying a classically organized positive-control organization. The Iraqi Army, once smashed, retreated from Kuwait and the Kuwaiti regime was restored with little apparent local objection - the U.S. military was not called upon to impose structure once the invaders were ousted.

Hence, I tend to think of the U.S. Military as 'entropy channelers.' These forces are at their best when utilized to create and inject disorder and destruction into an opposition's favored orderly structure, be it a military command structure or a sequence of events or even a government or social order. Telling the U.S. military to smash a particular target is a high-probability-of-success mission.

The problems come when telling the U.S. Military to 'keep order.' That's not what they do. I think (and this is purely a guess) that the confusion may arise from the fact that the military is seen by those not experienced with it as a highly ordered organization, so of course it should be able to produce order. That is incorrect. The military is artificially highly ordered internally for a particular reason, namely, that its job is to operate in environments of extreme disorder that, in fact, it itself tends to be tasked with creating. It maintains these 'pools of order' not by creating order - to stretch a mangled metaphor, that would violate the laws of thermodynamics - but by migrating the disorder to the environment outside the military organization itself - usually to the region immediately in front of its guns. This is why militaries are such difficult neighbors even in peacetime - ask the Okinawans if you don't believe me. Disorder can't be magically destroyed. It can be suppressed for a time, perhaps - but only at the cost of having it manifest elsewhere or at another time, with a 'penalty' increase in intensity or duration.

I think of it like the problem of refrigeration. Refrigerators (or air conditioners, if you prefer) don't make cold. They simply pump heat to another place - and in so doing, they generate more heat. The reason this is okay is that there is usually a place where you don't mind if things heat up - such as outside your window.

In the case of the entropy a military generates, as George Bush is so fond of reminding us, that disorder makes us unsafe no matter where it is.

The 'entropy fallout' a military organization generates from keeping its own house in order is bad enough. That's the sort of thing that I mentioned with the Okinawa reference - increased incident levels near military bases as military personnel simply displace suppressed tendencies to a safer area of expression. Note, please: I'm in no way saying military personnel tend to be more violent or less safe than others. In fact, the reverse may well be true. All I'm saying is that given the rigidity with which behavior is controlled in the military en