In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the locus of the investigation quickly shifted to Europe and the network of radical Islamic jihadis who are part of "Eurabia," the continent's expanding Muslim communities. Since 9/11 America has been spared what authorities feared and expected: a second wave of attacks. Instead Europe, once a logistical base for Islamic radicals and a safe haven, has itself become the target.

You can download the entire contents online.

This program immediately makes a point that I've made several times here and which I thought was both obvious and broadly understood. The program argues that the American administration doesn't get this. I hope this criticism is foolhardy and they are confusing political retoric with actual reality...

Al'Q is not an organization, it is a scene. It works the way any another scene does. Dead Heads. Punk rock. Hackers. Gangs. Bikers. Scifi Conventioniers. Skaters. Ravers. Left wing anti-globalization groups. Right wing millitias. They all work the same way. They are obviously quite different in terms of interests and morals. But they are the same sort of thing. They are scenes. They exist to connect people who share an interest which is not mainstream. They are not controlled or organized. They are networks, not organizations.

Al'Q cells are not formally organized by central planners. Al'Q is not planned. It is a free market approach. Individual groups are entrepreneurial. Their connection to the network is more idealogical then operational. Often, as is the case in Iraq, an individual group may be operational for a long time before being accepted into the fold. Leaders provide guidance, not management. They point to targets. They explain techniques. They rally troops and provide rhetoric. But they don't know or care about specifics. If you cut them down it would hurt morale and remove skillsets, but it can also strengthen resolve and promote new leadership. It doesn't eliminate capability because the nodes do not depend on any particular leader.

Consider Deadheads. That scene predated that band. It jelled around them because they were the only ones who didn't die young or grow up and get real jobs. But when Jerry finally bit the dust, what occured? Did the scene die? No, it fractured into a multitude of smaller groups that continue to operate today. Phish, or Widespread Panic, or Bonaroo... Thats exactly what will happen to Al'Q when we finally nail BL. In some ways this will make the problem even worse, as we'll replace one problem with 5 or more. More variables. More interconnections. An even less coherent mess. And for us, potentially more dangerous...

An odd thought occurs to me as I contemplate this. How do you kill a scene? How do scenes actually die? Scenes die because they cease to be cool. Because they get coopted by the thing they exist to resist, so that participating in them no longer means what it once did. Because the Gap opens up on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. Because the gangster rappers have million dollar video budgets and all drive luxury cars. If there is anything that can take the cultural iconography of radical islam and shuck it of any possible meaning it is our consumer marketing system. Jihadi Cola, indeed.

This idea seems too trite to be reasonable. Its the sort of thing Gibson would use for irony. Maybe you can offer a better one...

frontline: al qaeda's new front | PBS

Thirteen Kutztown Area High School students are facing felony charges for tampering with district-issued laptop computers.

According to parent testimony and confirmed by an otherwise vaguely-worded letter from the Kutztown Police Department, students got hold of the system's secret administrative password and reconfigured their computers to achieve greater Internet and network access.

Berks-Mont Newspapers - Kutztown Area Patriot - 13 teens face felonies

Since we, as a society, have decided that the public sector is not the most efficient way to do many things we have relied on the emergence of the "public-private" partnership. This is the way that most new roads are being looked at and almost every redevelopment project is done...

...It seems to me that the folks that are screaming the most
are those that most deeply embrace the idea of a much smaller public
sector with a greatly expanded role of the private sector.

This is rebutable but its an interesting observation.

[IP] Libertarians and Kelo

In a nutshell, OpenID lets you take your identity with you, proving to other sites on the web that you own a particular URL. LiveJournal's OpenID support lets you use your LiveJournal identity (just your URL) on other websites which take OpenID, and also lets you take your non-LiveJournal identity and use it here.

DMV says:

Any chance Memestreams would climb onboard?

Yes. I've wanted to see something like this for quite some time. This sounds very similar to the sort of system I've envisioned. However, I need to read the spec in detail and see if this was implemented properly.

Questions:
1. How is the security of this? I need to read more and consider it.

2. FOAF sucks. How does the new site actually get meaningful bio information about me when I create my account using this system? This seems like a more important problem to solve. We've been thinking of making a bunch of extensions to foaf here, but we've got a lot of other work to do.

3. Email verification. Will LiveJournal validate that they have verified the users email address? Can I trust them?

news: OpenID support

Here's an hour-long MP3 of today's Grokster press-conference, held jointly by EFF, StreamCast/Morpheus, Grokster, Public Knowledge, Compter and Communications Industry Association, and the Consumer Electronics Association.

This went out about three minutes after I complained of it being unavailable. The EFF issued a short press release complaining that inducement lawsuits will create cost burdens for technology companies. Apparently this is not the bright line rule they were hoping to get.

Boing Boing: Grokster press-conference audio

he bond market is by far the largest securities market in the world,1providing investors with virtually limitless investment options. Many investors are familiar with aspects of the market, but as the number of new products grows, even a bond expert is challenged to keep pace. While we spend a great deal of time discussing economic forecasts and how those forecasts may affect unique sectors of the bond market, we have yet to answer the most basic question: What is a bond?

Really clean and detailed overview.

PIMCO Bonds - Everything You Need to Know About Bonds

k wrote:
Fuck!

[ That is EXACTLY the reaction Ryan had. I agreed then and will now do so again. -k]

I might suggest waiting for the EFF to announce their take on things. I haven't read the decision yet and the devil is in the details, but I don't think the EFF was expecting "total victory." Their pre-decision reading guide nearly predicts a result of this sort:

# No matter what, we've won. From the beginning of this lawsuit, the entertainment industries pushed the lower courts to adopt extreme, outlandish interpretations of copyright law. For example, they argued that the Sony Betamax decision doesn't apply at all to Internet technologies, and that simply knowing that somebody is using your technology to infringe triggers an obligation to redesign it. No matter what the Court may announce on Monday, it will not be adopting this extreme position. So remember what we've already won.

# Next Bout: Congress... A big victory for either side will be characterized as an "extreme" result, potentially strengthening the hand of the opposite side in Congress. An intermediate outcome, on the other hand, may lead Congress to "leave well enough alone."

They may have gotten what they wanted already.

RE: CNN.com - Court: File-sharing services can be liable for music theft - Jun 27, 2005

The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that cable companies may keep rival Internet providers from using their lines, a decision that will limit competition and consumers' choices.

Another important SCOTUS case handed down today. I'm obviously disappointed with the result of this case, but that doesn't mean that the reasoning is poor. I'm not sure if I'll bother reading it to find out, but I'd be interested in analysis if anyone on this board has looked at this more carefully.

Cable Companies Don't Need to Share Lines

A REMINDER THAT THIS IS A SURVEY OF 250 PEOPLE WHO AREN’T SMART ENOUGH TO LET THE ANSWERING MACHINE PICK-UP.

-Joan McCullough, East Shore Partners

The Big Picture: Quote of the Day: U of Mich (prelim)

Quick journey through changing cultural styles.

Telephone ads through the decades