This seems pretty cool.

As a musician and pioneering turnable player-improviser, Christian Marclay has recorded with such collaborators as the Kronos Quartet, Sonic Youth and John Zorn. He has built "unplayable" musical instruments — including a 25-foot-long accordion — and created such signature works as "Video Quartet" and "Crossfire," film clip remixes powering mind-bending interactions among images, soundscapes and music.

Marclay's new photography book, "Shuffle," packaged as an oversize deck of cards, is an invitation to play along with his view of aural and visual potentialities.

Literally.

A stacked deck

This is one of the most useful things I've read/seen on Iraq. Although the message is clearly driven by Republican commentators, here they aren't speaking to the choir, for once. This program explains what the surge is, what its history is, and what its strategy is, and why Bush wants to wait until September. Watch it.

FRONTLINE: endgame | PBS

XM Radio has me listening to C-SPAN in my car these days. The debate yesterday was challenging.

Fresh off a trip to Iraq, a visibly tired McCain lit into the "liberal left" for advocating retreat in Iraq and then went behind closed doors to brawl with a fellow GOP senator over the war.

In what one senator called "the most serious fight that I have seen in my time in the Senate," McCain clashed with Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, over the Arizona senator's assertion that the most dangerous threat facing U.S. troops in Iraq was Al Qaeda members.

Voinovich, who recently urged President Bush to change his war policy now, shot back that Al Qaeda "wouldn't be in Iraq" if American forces weren't there, according to people who witnessed the exchange.

Partially, thats correct. Al'Z wasn't really associated with Al'Queda until long after the insurgency was in full swing. If there had not been an insurgency, they would not be anyone in Iraq calling themselves Al'Queda. The problem is only partially with "Al'Queda in Iraq". They are a problem which seemed positioned to remove itself from the equation willingly over a year ago. The problem is with Shia militants. Shia militants are even less reasonably considered "Al'Queda" than Iraqi Sunnis. Conservatives seem to like to use the word "Al'Queda" to refer to any middle eastern militant group and its a transparent attempt to overstate the connection between 9/11 and our present problems.

It is doubtless that there will be extremely negative consequences associated with pulling out of Iraq. You cannot take years of arrogant mistakes and make them go away by withdrawing. It is certain that staying in Iraq also has negative consequences. There is no direction from here that is going to work out great. The question is whether the costs of staying in do or do not exceed the costs of pulling out.

The problem is that the voting public will never hear a straight answer on that question from anyone, just as they have not heard a straight answer from anyone about anything related to this war.

The conservative base is interested in a hard line because they like them some killn'. Their candidates are going to have to insist on taking a hard line regardless of how reasonable it is, and so the conservatives are going to insist that staying in Iraq is a good idea long after it is completely obvious that leaving would cost less, both because it speaks to their base, and because its a perspective that avoids admitting that they were wrong before. Some day the United States will pull out of Iraq, and for the rest of time there will always be some conservatives who think it was a bad idea regardless of what the circumstances are.

The liberal politicians believe that they were elected to get the US out of Iraq. This is only partially true. They were really elected because of the federal mismanagement of the immediate aftermath of Katrina. However, ... [ Read More (0.2k in body) ]

Iraq Debate Prompts Senate Cloakroom Clash, Presidential Hopeful Defends Bush As White House Lobbies GOP Senators - CBS News

This is a proposal from two distinguished lawyers to solve the Gitmo issue. Generally speaking I'm uncomfortable with it.

One of the reasons constantly given for the idea that terrorist suspects cannot be tried is that their defense lawyers may leak classified information and enable them to communicate with their free comrades. This is a reasonable objection, which has a reasonable solution:

The court would have a permanent staff of elite defense lawyers with special security clearances as part of its permanent staff.

Unfortunately, having easily solved the problem the administration claims to have, they delve into the real problem, which the administration hasn't admitted that they have; that they don't actually have any evidence against some of the people they are detaining:

Criminal prosecutions should still take place where they can. But they are not always feasible. Some alleged terrorists have not committed overt crimes and can be tried only on a conspiracy theory that comes close to criminalizing group membership.

A Congressionally sanctioned system of preventive detention, which would supplement the criminal process, is far from unprecedented.

These lawyers suggest that we simply embrace the idea of indefinitely detaining people against who we've no evidence, as long as we do it with a lot of formal process. Particularly disconcerting is the fact that they follow up with this bit of doublespeak:

And consistent with the values enshrined in the Constitution’s equal protection clause, Congress should insist that the same rules apply to citizen and non-citizen terrorist detainees.

Out of context, I agree. I can't stand the claim that reasonable due process is some sort of privilege of citizenship. Reasonable due process is the way your legal system has decided that it can make reasonable decisions. Without it, your decisions are by definition unreasonable.

However, in context, what this means is that citizens may be detained indefinitely without evidence of wrongdoing. How this is an improvement over indefinite detention without trial I'm not really sure.

The Terrorists’ Court - New York Times

Last weekend, Kent Couch settled down in his lawn chair with some snacks -- and a parachute. Attached to his lawn chair were 105 large helium balloons.

Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair - CNN.com

There is an input validation flaw in Internet Explorer that allows you to specify arbitrary arguments to the process responsible for handling URL protocols.

This is the simplest way to get RCE from a browser that has ever been disclosed.

Larholm.com - Me, myself and I ? Internet Explorer 0day Exploit

From the cryptography@metzdowd.com list:

A fascinating IEEE Spectrum article on the incident in which lawful
intercept facilities were hacked to permit the secret tapping of
the mobile phones of a large number of Greek government officials,
including the Prime Minister:

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/print/5280

Hat tip: Steve Bellovin.

Perry
--
Perry E. Metzger perry@piermont.com

This is worth reading. An operation leverages the "lawful intercept" features of telephone switches, combined with rootkit malware specifically designed for the switches, and a collection of corrupt employees for some very unlawful intercepts. One, possibly two deaths. One of the most sophisticated computer intrusions I have ever heard of. Most likely a state intelligence organization. Americans widely suspected.

How the Greek cellphone network was tapped

You liked this when you were 12. Shut up and like it now.

More Hasbro products begging for the Michael Bay movie treatment | The A.V. Club

By the end of this year, police officials say, more than 100 cameras will have begun monitoring cars moving through Lower Manhattan, the beginning phase of a London-style surveillance system that would be the first in the United States.

Now THATS what I call passing the costs on to the consumer!

Manhattan takes cue from London's 'Ring of Steel' - International Herald Tribune

Drugs are bad, m'kay?

YouTube - Fish Heads