"You will learn who your daddy is, that's for sure, but mostly, Ann, you will just shut the fuck up."
-Henry Rollins
Obsidian Wings: Why FISA Matters
Topic: Miscellaneous
1:15 am EDT, Aug 7, 2007
ooking ahead to the next round of FISA debates, Democrats and civil liberties advocates need to rethink their public relations strategy. In fact, this recommendation applies beyond FISA to the larger civil liberties debate. It’s not enough to say that "Administration Policy X" threatens civil rights, the public needs to understand in a very concrete way why those rights matter. My non-empirically informed sense is that much of the public just doesn’t feel in their gut that these protections benefit them.
The reason, though, that these rights do matter -- the reason we care about them -- is quite simple. The rights protect people from abuse of power. Accordingly, the FISA amendment is a bad idea because the executive branch will inevitably abuse these new sweepingly-broad surveillance powers. It’s a lesson as old as written history -- unchecked authority is eventually used for improper reasons. Indeed, it’s the theoretical rationale of our entire constitutional structure.
To be sure, not every abuse of authority is as extreme as, say, actions in Nazi Germany. And people throw around unhelpful terms sometimes. But the unlikely probability of the most extreme abuses shouldn’t distract from the very real -- and inevitable -- abuse that will come if this law stays on the books. To understand what I mean, just look at the origins of FISA.
Thai police officers who break rules will be forced to wear hot pink armbands featuring "Hello Kitty," the Japanese icon of cute, as a mark of shame, a senior officer said Monday.
Police officers caught littering, parking in a prohibited area, or arriving late — among other misdemeanors — will be forced to stay in the division office and wear the armband all day, said Police Col. Pongpat Chayaphan.
...
"Simple warnings no longer work. This new twist is expected to make them feel guilt and shame and prevent them from repeating the offense, no matter how minor ... (Hello) Kitty is a cute icon for young girls. It's not something macho police officers want covering their biceps," Pongpat said.
A Reporter at Large: The Black Sites: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
Topic: Miscellaneous
11:15 pm EDT, Aug 5, 2007
Mohammed’s interrogation was part of a secret C.I.A. program, initiated after September 11th, in which terrorist suspects such as Mohammed were detained in “black sites”—secret prisons outside the United States—and subjected to unusually harsh treatment. The program was effectively suspended last fall, when President Bush announced that he was emptying the C.I.A.’s prisons and transferring the detainees to military custody in Guantánamo. This move followed a Supreme Court ruling, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, which found that all detainees—including those held by the C.I.A.—had to be treated in a manner consistent with the Geneva Conventions. These treaties, adopted in 1949, bar cruel treatment, degradation, and torture. In late July, the White House issued an executive order promising that the C.I.A. would adjust its methods in order to meet the Geneva standards. At the same time, Bush’s order pointedly did not disavow the use of “enhanced interrogation techniques” that would likely be found illegal if used by officials inside the United States. The executive order means that the agency can once again hold foreign terror suspects indefinitely, and without charges, in black sites, without notifying their families or local authorities, or offering access to legal counsel.
This is a comprehensive and fascinating article on the torture scandal.
10 FAS: 9 - Troy Wolverton, Neil Cavuto, and the Apple Stock Scandal
Topic: Business
11:53 am EDT, Aug 4, 2007
What company is the most effective for stock manipulators to work over? The Street doesn't invent Microsoft products or set unrealistic expectations for Xbox uptake. The only reason for covering the Zune at all is to create fear, uncertainty, and doubt about Apple's iPod business. Nobody cares about Microsoft's stock price; the company can't even goose it itself. It's dead, and no amount of fake information will cause it to dance up and down in ways that short term speculators can exploit.
"Crazy" Jim Cramer's entire business is to create false information to invoke a calculated reaction, then profit from others' fear or credulity. It's not a closely held secret.
The floating news items picked up by rumor sites, reports based on scraps of papers found on trading floors, and all of those ghosts whispering news that pretends to be of great import for Apple's stock price are all lies generated by a few sources, intended to exploit the trust of investors and get them to sell off or buy up stock.
[More Absurd iPhone Myths: iSuppli, Subsidies, and Pricing]
Unprofitably Scandalous News. This explains why nobody reports on Microsoft's six billion dollars of losses in consumer electronics, or its inability to expand into new markets. That information can't be used to manipulate stock prices and subsequently make a profit on it, because Microsoft's stock is stuck in a rut.
It explains why Microsoft's president of its Entertainment and Devices division, Robbie Bach, could dump $6.2 million of stock just before announcing another billion dollar loss related to Xbox failures, but not face any media coverage regarding his insider trading. The news was only a minor curiosity because Microsoft's stock is as flat as a frozen lake.
NBC Reporter with hidden camera in purse hoping to catch conference attendees committing to crimes (according to Defcon staff) flees Defcon 15 after being outed.
OMG FUCKING LOOOOOOLLLLL!!!!
For more information on this awesome totally ethical NBC program, see this.
Amy R. Gershkoff - Saving Soldiers' Jobs - washingtonpost.com
Topic: Society
11:30 am EDT, Aug 4, 2007
For tens of thousands of members of the National Guard and reserves who are called up to serve in Iraq, returning home safely may be the beginning -- not the end -- of their worst nightmare. Reservists lucky enough to make it home often find their civilian jobs gone and face unsympathetic employers and a government that has restricted access to civilian job-loss reports rather than prosecuting offending employers.
The Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act (USERRA) protects members of the guard and reserves from job loss, demotion, loss of seniority and loss of benefits when they are called to active duty.
The act is supposed to protect reservists' civilian jobs for up to five years of military service. But the government has made it difficult for veterans to enforce their legal rights. Service members who return to find their civilian jobs gone also find that the burden is on them to prove that their jobs were taken away as a result of their military service and that there is no other reason that they could have been fired.
This onerous burden of proof discourages many from filing formal complaints.
What a travesty. This makes me even angrier than the war itself does.
Meanwhile, every time I go to the movies, the pre-film "entertainment" includes a lengthy National Guard ad, with all it's patriotic noise. No wonder they have to work to recruit, if the administration not only conducts unpopular wars, but doesn't even bother to do right by those who fight it.
The American public, with little faith in the credibility of the government’s claims, may deny even cleareyed leaders the resources they need to meet the complex demands of neutralizing modern threats.
[ Which I begin to think was the entire point. In 6 years our faith in Government, not just *this* government, but the whole institution, has been shaken to it's core. Before long, it might well be capable of being drowned in a bathtub, as a certain movement would have. It's frightening. -k]
Speculative Fiction Authors Considered As High School Students « Live Granades
Topic: Miscellaneous
10:29 pm EDT, Jul 25, 2007
Of course. I’d be happy to discuss the students’ groupings with you. Let’s start with the fellows in the camouflage. They’re very interested in military science fiction. It’s all guns and dropships and the like with them. The student who’s holding forth very loudly is John Ringo, and that’s David Weber next to him. The quieter fellow holding the Bob Heinlein mask is John Scalzi.
Read the whole thing... it's a good list, actually...
