by Anthony Ioven
Back in the 60s, one of the worst sins you could accuse someone of was "selling out." To Jim Morrison, to sell out was to "trade in your hours for a handful of dimes" — abandon your free lifestyle, retreat to a 9-to-5 job, and generally become a credit-card-carrying member of the "establishment."
We don't hear the term much anymore now that most everybody from that generation sold out long ago.
But these days, Americans are selling out on a grand scale. We're not just selling out personally. We're selling out the entire country.
Common Dreams has a great post today about multinational corporations buying more and more of America. It's not just a matter of pride. Profits that American businesses once put back into the American economy are now being outsourced to foreign countries, just like many of our jobs:
Foreign companies are buying up our water systems, our power generating systems, our mines, and our few remaining factories. All because "flat world" so-called "free trade" policies have turned us from a nation of wealthy producers into a nation of indebted consumers, leaving the world awash in dollars that are most easily used to buy off big chunks of America.
The post includes a long list of US government statistics showing the percentages of foreign ownership of American industries. Here are the industries where foreign ownership is 50% or more:
Sound recording industries - 97%
Commodity contracts dealing and brokerage - 79%
Motion picture and sound recording industries - 75%
Metal ore mining - 65%
Motion picture and video industries - 64%
Wineries and distilleries - 64%
Database, directory, and other publishers - 63%
Book publishers - 63%
Cement, concrete, lime, and gypsum product - 62%
Engine, turbine and power transmission equipment - 57%
Rubber product - 53%
Nonmetallic mineral product manufacturing - 53%
Plastics and rubber products manufacturing - 52%
Plastics product - 51%
Other insurance related activities - 51%
Boiler, tank, and shipping container - 50%
Is this just the logical extension of the free enterprise system on a global scale, beneficial to us all? Or is it the shameless selling of America, for the enrichment of a few?
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous
by Anthony Ioven
It was a nightmare. Howdy Doody as a charismatic evangelist, brainwashing a peanut gallery of 2,300 children:
Howdy Doody Ok,  boys and girls. If a teacher so much as mentions evolution, or the Big Bang, or an era when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, you put your hand up and you say, Excuse me, were you there? Can you remember that?
Peanut Gallery Yeeeesssss...
Howdy Doody Sometimes people will answer, No, but you weren't there either. Then you say, No, I wasn't, but I know someone who was, and I have his book about the history of the world. [Waving the Bible in the air] Who's the only one who's always been there?
Peanut Gallery God!
Howdy Doody Who's the only one who knows everything?
Peanut Gallery Goooooddd!
Howdy Doody "So who should you always trust, God or the scientists?"
Peanut Gallery Goooooddd!
But it wasn't a nightmare. It was creationism evangelist Ken Ham, a former biology teacher and current full-time nutjob, training children as young as five years old to challenge their teachers about evolution.
Ham is no ordinary nutjob. He's been at this kind of thing for 25 years. His worldwide ministry gives hundreds of talks a year and produces books, movies, and daily radio spots. No wonder roughly half of Americans believe the biblical story of creationism over evolution.
At the heart of this multi-million-dollar creationism extravaganza is a very simple message, stated below in his top-selling alphabet rhyme that begins like this:
A is for Adam, God made him from dust
He wasn't a monkey, he looked just like us.
Hard to argue with a mindset like that.
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous.
by Anthony Ioven
Are we being a little too squeamish about 21st-century surveillance?
Nobody objects to a cop or a security guard keeping an eye on things. But when you replace the human eye with a camera, civil libertarians howl.
Why?
Chicago has used surveillance cameras at government buildings, train stations, and intersections for a few years. Milwaukee wants to put surveillance cameras in some stores, and Baltimore County, Maryland, requires large malls to install cameras in parking lots. Said Baltimore County Councilman Kevin Kamenetz:
We require shopping centers to put railings on stairs and install sprinkler systems for public safety. This is a proper next step.
But is it just a benign and necessary step for keeping us safer and more secure, or is it the proverbial slippery slope?
In Houston, the police chief wants to take it a step further — requiring cameras not only in streets and shopping malls, but in apartment complexes and on the grounds of private homes. The chief gave the classic justification:
I know a lot of people are concerned about Big Brother, but my response to that is, if you are not doing anything wrong, why should you worry about it?
Ok, pointing a camera at my front door to watch my comings and goings is a little creepy. But what's wrong with putting cameras in more public places — anywhere you would expect to see a cop stationed?
And why stop with cameras? It's now possible to implant tiny, inexpensive transmitter chips into a person to identify him or track his whereabouts. Is that also creepy, or just good, 21st-century common sense?
Police use fingerprints and DNA to determine if a person was at a crime scene. No one objects. Why not go a step further? Instead of using part of a criminal's body as evidence against him, police would simply be using a piece of technology implanted into his body.
The idea of implanting chips into people to identify and track them is chilling. But after seeing the abuses that the Bush administration has gotten away with in the name of safety and security, I have no doubt that the practice will someday become acceptable and routine.
And besides, if you're not doing anything wrong, why worry about it?
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous.
by Anthony Ioven
Is it because he just lost his 25-year gig as a Utah judge? Nope — he still has his truck driving job.
It's because the former judge, Walter Steed, has three wives. Not two former wives and one current one. The man has . . . three . . . wives.
Oh yes, and 32 children. Fitting name, Steed.
And just to make things really interesting, all the women are sisters.
Bigamy is frowned upon in Utah, which is why the Utah Supreme Court transformed Judge Steed into the former judge Steed.
Steed also faces five years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines.
I think that's overkill. Clearly the man has suffered enough.
by Anthony Ioven
Who says there's no class war in America?
Oil companies posted record profits in the third quarter of last year: For example, ExxonMobil - 75%, Royal Dutch Shell - 68%, and ConocoPhillips - 89%. That's profit.
The oil companies' good fortune just happened to come about in the same quarter that two powerful hurricanes devastated the Gulf Coast. In America, one man's loss is another man's windfall.
Americans paying dearly at the pump raised cries of price gouging. Outraged Washington politicians demanded that oil company executives appear before a Senate hearing to explain themselves. The Senators placed the corporate bigwigs under oath and grilled them for three hours, until the remorseful moguls tearfully apologized for taking advantage of a national calamity.
Ok, I made the last part up. In fact, the Senate never even bothered to put the execs under oath. And at the end of the sham hearing, it was the Senators who limped away with their tail between their legs:
[T]he executives, whose companies and parent corporations earned $32.8 billion during the last quarter, provided little beyond what the industry has been saying for weeks: Their profits are huge because the industry is huge; the companies are ready to invest billions of dollars to get more oil; and if Congress tries to punish them by imposing a windfall profits tax, it will only lead to fewer such investments.
But not every Washington pol is afraid of the big, bad oil companies. Last week, the chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Republican Joe Barton, launched an investigation of a major oil company for possible antitrust violations:
You will be surprised to learn that Barton, one of the top recipients in Congress of campaign donations from the energy industry, is not probing whether ExxonMobil or Chevron or any of the other oil giants engaged in price gouging when gasoline and heating oil costs skyrocketed the past few years.
No, the good congressman has set his sights on the only oil company that actually dared to lower its prices last year - at least for the poorest Americans.
After Hurricane Katrina shined a spotlight on poverty in America, Hugo Chavez pledged that Venezuela-owned Citgo would provide huge heating-oil discounts — as much as 60% — to low-income Americans this winter.
The program is already in effect in a number of northern states, although it has received very little publicity. It has been so successful, says Democratic Rep. Jose Serrano of New York, that "about 60 members of Congress from all parts of the country...are asking me, 'Can I set up a meeting with Citgo?' to see if they can get this kind of program in their district."
Lowering prices when demand is high? How unAmerican is that? No wonder Pat Robertson wants Chavez killed.
Cross-posted today at Blognonymous.
by Anthony Ioven
It's hard to believe, but my favorite movie bar none — Network — is 30 years old this year.
Network is the only videotaped movie I ever bought. And when Warner Home Video releases the DVD version next Tuesday, I'll buy that, too.
The CNN announcement of the DVD's release is absolutely correct — Network is just as meaningful today as it was in 1976, when my wife and I took in a show on a quiet Boston Sunday afternoon, and were blown away. It's a little dated, sure. But it's still as "prescient as ever."
Here's a sample speech, as spoken by corporate mogul Arthur Jensen to the mad Howard Beale. Jensen speaks the words thunderingly, like an angry god in whose hands the worthless sinner, poor mad Howard, cowers before the blistering rebuke:
You have meddled with the primal forces of nature, Mr. Beale, and I won't have it. Is that clear? You think you've merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case. The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country, and now they must put it back. It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity. It is ecological balance. You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations; there are no peoples. There are no Russians. There are no Arabs. There are no third worlds. There is no West. There is only one holistic system of systems; one vast, interwoven, interacting, multivaried, multinational dominion of dollars.
It may have sounded a little far-fetched in 1976, but it surely rings true today.
Great movie...
by Anthony Ioven
I've long suspected that the Bush administration has an ingenious strategy for concealing its incompetence — to overwhelm us with so many blunders that no one blunder can stand out. After a while, they all blend together into a wispy gray haze. Poof. Gone.
Nonsense pronouncements from members of this administration have become part of our day-to-day routine. Hardly noticeable anymore. The plan is working so well that, any day now, I expect them to mount a huge sign over the White House — Dolts R Us.
 But it's all part of Rove's fiendishly clever Magnum Opus — project an aura of competency resembling Inspector Clouseau's, and suddenly all your screwups become yawners, just another day at the office, while the few things you do get right seem like major triumphs.
Admittedly, the end of that last sentence is still theory.
Yesterday, AlterNet began to list all of this administration's boners, but apparently the task was just too great:
I could go on for another 1,000 words listing the stunning incompetence of the Bush administration and its GOP sycophants in Congress. But what's the use? No seems to give a fig. The sun continues to shine in this fool's paradise.
Exactly. Take a bow, Mr. Rove.
The administration's decision to turn over the management of six major US ports to a company owned by the United Arab Emirates gives us yet another glimpse of Rove's evil genius.
Sit back, close your eyes, and try to imagine the reaction had the Clinton administration proposed such a thing. Or any competent administration, for that matter. But in the Bizarro World that is George Bush's America, the astonishing stupidity of turning over port operations to a country that is arguably soft on terrorism — well, it soon gets lost in the incompetency haze.
And if you think "astonishing stupidity" is an overstatement, read this.
by Anthony Ioven
The United States is demanding that the newly-elected Hamas government return $50 million in aid to the Palestinian Authority. Hamas has agreed.
The State Department made the demand because it does "not want the money going to a Hamas-led government that refused to recognise Israel." The same BBC report claims:
The US has already said that it is reviewing all aid to the Palestinians in light of Hamas' election victory.
 Much of that aid, by the way, goes to millions of displaced Palestinian refugees.
How can the Bush administration justify the devastation it has inflicted on the people of Iraq in the name of "spreading democracy," while at the same time withhold aid money from a duly-elected government because it disagrees with its policies?
Hamas' refusal to recognize the state of Israel is hardly a position that will ease tensions in the Middle East. Israel is here to stay, as provided by UN Resolution 181 in 1947. Hamas and the rest of the Middle East have to accept that fact.
But since 1948, the UN has also issued a number of resolutions in favor of the Palestinians, which Israel chooses to disregard as it sees fit — for example:
194 (1948), guaranteeing the right of return of displaced Palestinian refugees, and financial compensation for loss or damage to their property.
242 (1967), requiring the "Withdrawal of Israeli armed forces from territories occupied in the recent conflict," respect for the "sovereignty, territorial integrity and political independence of every State in the area," and "a just settlement of the refugee problem."
338 (1973), reaffirming the provisions of Resolution 242.
446 (1979), stating that "all measures taken by Israel to change the physical character, demographic composition, institutional structure or status of the Palestinian and other Arab territories occupied since 1967, including Jerusalem, or any part thereof, have no legal validity and that Israel's policy and practices of settling parts of its population and new immigrants in those territories constitute a flagrant violation of the Fourth Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War and also constitute a serious obstruction to achieving a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East."
452 (1979), asserting that "the policy of Israel in establishing settlements in the occupied Arab territories has no legal validity."
465 (1980), "deploring the refusal by Israel" to accept Resolution 446 and 452.
And on and on...
Aren't all these violations of UN Resolutions as harmful to the peace process as Hamas' hard-line against the state of Israel? So how, on the one hand, can we demand our $50 million back from the Palestinians, while continuing to give billions in financial aid to Israel? In fact, the billions in aid we give to Israel each year is more than we give to any other country in the world.
You know, I wonder if this is what the Arab street means when they accuse us of having a double standard in the Middle East?
by Anthony Ioven
When I read the headline, Only 25% of Americans Approve of Current Congress, my first reaction was — That many?
But my next reaction was that this is great news for Democrats, who will no doubt take advantage of this opportunity to win back majorities in both the House and the Senate this November.
Wait — I'm sorry, what was I thinking...
by Anthony Ioven
Do not miss Neil Shakespeare's 12-part (and counting) series Cheney's Got a Gun. Chapter One begins here, with a preamble here.
From Chapter 3: The Buzzard's Roost:
"HAHAHAHAHA!! Come and get me, coppers! You'll never find me here at 'The Buzzards Roost'! Nobody knows about this place...except for George...and Don...and Condi...and Wolfy...and Scalia...and...oh Jesus Christ...I forgot about that squealing pig Libby! Shit! What if that little squealing pig rats out the location of 'The Buzzard's Roost'?
"That's OK. I'll be OK. They got nothin' on me. It's been 24 hours. The alcohol's out of my system by now. Speakin' of which, I'm thirsty. Christ, where did Rummy bury that special bottle? It's gotta be around here somewhere. Hey, any of you buzzards seen my bottle?
If you don't laugh at this Keystone Kops administration, you'll just go nuts and then, you'll probably end up shooting someone's face off.
by Anthony Ioven
In a lecture last month on the War on Terror, Noam Chomsky asked a provocative question: "Why should the Treasury Department devote vastly more energy to strangling Cuba than to the 'war on terror'"? Says Chomsky:
The basic reasons were explained in internal documents of the Kennedy-Johnson years. State Department planners warned that the "very existence" of the Castro regime is "successful defiance" of US policies going back 150 years, to the Monroe Doctrine; not Russians, but intolerable defiance of the master of the hemisphere, much like Iran’s crime of successful defiance in 1979, or Syria’s rejection of Clinton’s demands.
Not arrogant enough for you? Read on:
Punishment of the population was regarded as fully legitimate, we learn from internal documents. "The Cuban people [are] responsible for the regime," the Eisenhower State Department decided, so that the US has the right to cause them to suffer by economic strangulation, later escalated to direct terror by Kennedy. Eisenhower and Kennedy agreed that the embargo would hasten Fidel Castro's departure as a result of the "rising discomfort among hungry Cubans."
Ancient history? Hardly:
When Cuba was in dire straits after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington intensified the punishment of the people of Cuba, at the initiative of liberal Democrats. The author of the 1992 measures to tighten the blockade proclaimed that "my objective is to wreak havoc in Cuba" (Representative Robert Torricelli). All of this continues until the present moment.
Although our four-decades-long hammering of the Cuban people may look a lot like terrorism, it clearly isn't. Can't be. To paraphrase President Nixon — when America does it, it isn't terrorism.
by Charles Darwin
I was born on this date, in England, back in 1809.
In some ways, the America of 1809, with its Deistic respect for reason and nature, presented a more accommodating environment for rational scientific thought than the America of 2006.
I fail to understand why Americans today feel threatened by the theory of evolution — in fact, by science itself.
When science appears to contradict your religious beliefs or even your political predispositions, you find the science suspect. For example, science warns you of the dangers of global warming. It is real and it is largely man-made, through fossil-fuel emissions. But your President Bush — who frankly seems to have been bypassed by the evolutionary process — claims that cutting back on the causes of global warming would harm the American economy. Therefore, he and others like him contend that global warming is nothing more than a possibility that needs more study. Meanwhile, blowhards and demagogues like Limbaugh, Hannity, and Coulter ridicule the concept of global warming and anyone who espouses it.
Today, in reading the blog Bring It On! (blogs are a milestone in the evolution of human communication, BTW), I came across a curious term — scientific relativism. The term itself is an oxymoron, but incredibly, more and more Americans are coming to believe in it. As a commenter on the post remarked, "Morals are absolute but science is relative. How f*** up is that?" Indeed.
What has happened to you, America?
In today's edition of the MSM publication The Boston Globe, columnist Jeff Jacoby proudly champions the idea of scientific relativism. He pokes fun at research studies that sometimes contradict each other, as with the study showing that reducing fat in your diet may not reduce your chances of contracting cancer, heart disease, and other health problems.
After citing a few other contradictory research studies, Jacoby leaps to this sweeping conclusion:
Scientific pronouncements should be subjected to the same level of healthy skepticism as the promises of politicians or the claims of advertisers — or the views of newspaper columnists. With the best of intentions (and otherwise), scientists sometimes peddle claptrap.
How can Jacoby, with a straight face, compare scientific study with the claims of advertisers? But he must. It's essential for a belief in scientific relativism. And it's required for his larger point:
From cardiac health to climate change, it's worth keeping in mind that what the experts say today they may not be saying tomorrow. As that noted scientist Emily Litella used to put it in the old "Saturday Night Live" skits: Never mind. [emphasis mine]
Jacoby's column had never mentioned climate studies, greenhouse gases, or anything else having to do with global warming. But clearly, he is using his column to sully science in general, not just the particular studies he cites. And shamelessly, he is attempting to discredit the science behind global warming simply by dropping it into the same column as some isolated cases of contradictory research.
And even though Jacoby never mentions the theory of evolution directly, I suspect he is taking a cheap shot at that as well, especially since his column happens to appear on my birthday.
by Anthony Ioven
American Prospect co-editor Robert Kuttner is a voice of reason in a sea of spin. His column in today's Boston Globe, which he writes for frequently, is a perfect example.
Kuttner breaks down the emotional and polarizing controversy over the Danish cartoons to its essential truth:
Did Europe's newspapers have the right to print cartoons ridiculing the Prophet Mohammed? Certainly. That's free speech. Was it a wise thing to do? Probably not.
Kuttner reminds us what many in the indignant West appear to have overlooked:
 After Hitler, the mainstream press was shamed into dropping anti-Semitic stereotypes. It took another generation, until the civil rights revolution, before Amos 'n' Andy, blackface, and crude racial jokes dissipated. Gays got ridiculed for yet another generation...
Let's face it — Muslims have not been admitted to the community of people whom it's not OK to ridicule.
And for those superior folks on the right who agree with the condescending assessment by New York Times columnist David Brooks — "Our mindset is progressive and rational. Your mindset is pre-Enlightenment and mythological." — Kuttner makes this uncomfortable comparison:
He could have been describing George W. Bush. With his pandering to Biblical literalists and his support for a war on science when science clashes with professed religious faith, Bush is the first pre-Enlightenment US president. Radical Islam may be more crude in its tactics, but one form of religious fundamentalism only foments another.
Maybe we're not so different from our Muslim brothers after all.
by Anthony Ioven
Another voice is being heard in the loudening chorus of evidence that the Bush administration "fixed the facts" in order to justify the invasion of Iraq. The most recent voice is that of Paul R. Pillar, who last year retired from the CIA after a 28-year career, and who was responsible for the collection and assessment of Middle East intelligence.
Writing in Foreign Affairs, Pillar bluntly charges the administration with "cherry-picking" intelligence data to make its case for war. Here are some excerpts:
The "politicization" of intelligence
In the wake of the Iraq war, it has become clear that official intelligence analysis was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made...
The Bush administration deviated...not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war. This meant selectively adducing data — "cherry-picking" — rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments...
Ignoring intelligence reports
What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in recent decades...
The Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction [between policymaking and intelligence-gathering]; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq...
Ignoring the CIA's assessment of the threat posed by Hussein
Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war. On the issue that mattered most, the intelligence community judged that Iraq probably was several years away from developing a nuclear weapon. The October 2002 NIE also judged that Saddam was unlikely to use WMD against the United States unless his regime was placed in mortal danger...
Ignoring the CIA's assessment of Hussein's link to al Qaeda
But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned...the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed...
Pillar's article is a damning condemnation of an administration totally without scruples and that considers itself accountable to no one.
Is the chorus finally singing loudly enough to convince even partisan members of Congress that the administration intentionally misled the public about the reasons for war? Please:
Yesterday, the Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a statement to counter what it described as "the continuing Iraq pre-war intelligence myths," including charges that Bush " 'misused' intelligence to justify the war." Writing that it was perfectly reasonable for the president to rely on the intelligence he was given, the paper concluded, "it is actually the critics who are misleading the American people." [emphasis mine]
Shame on you, Paul Pillar. And you, too Russ Feingold, John Murtha, John Conyers, Ted Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Joseph Wilson, Richard Clarke, Lawrence Wilkerson, Paul O'Neill, and on and on and on...
by Anthony Ioven
The Moroccan newspaper Le Matin recently published an op-ed piece that highlights the centuries-long clash of civilizations between Muslims and the West, an on-again/off-again conflict that is once again threatening to spin completely out of control.
But the article offers a way out of the "deadlock":
The West must entirely rethink its policies toward the Muslim world. In the political realm, the West must put all its weight into finding a just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. America and its allies must withdraw as rapidly as possible from Afghanistan and Iraq.
The Western media must respect the Muslim world, and in particular put a stop to all attacks on the Muslim faith and avoid equating Islam with terrorism.
As for the other side:
[T]he Muslim world must stop all acts of terrorism, for the victims are innocent and the results the opposite of those sought. It must promote democracy and economic modernization. However, priority must be given to education and economic development, this being the best means of halting the various extremist movements. The Muslim world must also open itself up to Western culture and science, which present a number of advantages.
Fair, reasonable solutions.
But as long as we continue to believe they hate us for our freedoms, and as long as they continue to believe we are godless infidels, there is no hope.
by Anthony Ioven
What do the responsible folks at the Department of Defense do when they design an information-gathering system that delves so deeply into the activities of ordinary Americans that it causes an uproar over privacy concerns?
Why, it promptly abandons the intrusive scheme, of course — and later reintroduces it under a different name.
In 2002, the DoD's Total Information Awareness (TIA) program broke into the headlines. Its goal was to compile a comprehensive profile of American citizens through a variety of high-tech data-gathering systems.
TIA smacked of Big Brotherism. It scared the hell out of people, as did the Orwellian logo of its parent organization, the Information Awareness Office.
The DoD knew it had a public relations nightmare on its hands, but it was reluctant to give up a chance to do some really sophisticated super-snooping. So it rendered the creepy logo into oblivion, and it changed the name of the program to Terrorism Information Awareness.
For a change, Congress wasn't fooled. It killed the entire program in 2003.
But now, it's baaaaaack, in the body of something the Department of Homeland Security fondly calls the Analysis, Dissemination, Visualization, Insight, and Semantic Enhancement (ADVISE) program.
Like TIA, ADVISE is a massive data-mining system:
It would collect a vast array of corporate and public online information — from financial records to CNN news stories — and cross-reference it against US intelligence and law-enforcement records. The system would then store it as "entities" — linked data about people, places, things, organizations, and events...
The key is not merely to identify terrorists, or sift for key words, but to identify critical patterns in data that illumine their motives and intentions.
What about the protecting the privacy of the 99.99% of snoopees who don't happen to be terrorists? Supposedly, privacy protections will be built into the system. However, according to Latanya Sweeney, a data-privacy researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, "At this point, ADVISE has no funding for privacy technology." And Sweeney adds this warning:
Even data that look anonymous aren't necessarily so. For example: With name and Social Security number stripped from their files, 87 percent of Americans can be identified simply by knowing their date of birth, gender, and five-digit Zip code.
Lee Tien, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, hints at how closely ADVISE will be watching us:
We don't realize that, as we live our lives and make little choices, like buying groceries, buying on Amazon, Googling, we're leaving traces everywhere. We have an attitude that no one will connect all those dots. But these programs are about connecting those dots — analyzing and aggregating them — in a way that we haven't thought about.
Feeling queasy yet?
by Anthony Ioven
All right, I admit it. It's not especially polite to take pot shots at the president during a memorial service.
Especially when the president happens to be sitting right behind you. And the president's wife, the usually unflappably sweet Laura Bush, is sitting next to him.
At today's memorial service honoring Coretta Scott King, the Reverend Joseph Lowery's tribute to King included this clever segue:
"She extended Martin's message against poverty, racism and war. She deplored the terror inflicted by our smart bombs on missions way afar. We know now that there were no weapons of mass destruction over there."
The mostly black crowd applauded, then rose to its feet and cheered in a two-minute-long standing ovation...
"But Coretta knew, and we know," Lowery continued, "That there are weapons of misdirection right down here," he said, nodding his head toward the row of presidents past and present. "For war, billions more, but no more for the poor!" The crowd again cheered wildly.
Laura's trademark sweet smile became a scowl that could stop a bus.
A little later, former President Jimmy Carter managed to slip into his tribute to King some thinly disguised criticism of the Bush administration, by condemning the FBI's "secret government wiretaps" of Martin Luther King, and by pointing out that Hurricane Katrina proved racial inequality still exists in America today.
No doubt the Limbaugh crowd will launch a withering counterattack against Lowery and Carter that will make them wish they had simply published some caricatures of the Prophet Mohammed in the New York Times. And some of the criticism will be justified. A memorial service isn't the place to be taking swipes at someone.
On the other hand, this president is kept so insulated and isolated that you have to take your swipes wherever and whenever you can.
by Anthony Ioven
Buzzflash has it exactly right: When the Republicans allowed Atty. General Gonzales to testify before the Judiciary Committee without being under oath, the Democrats on the committee should have walked out in protest.
It was at that point, once again, that the Democrats became merely bit players in a script once again written by the White House. For many years, and most recently in several editorials, BuzzFlash has lamented that the Dems don't understand that these hearings are soap operas — and that the Bush/Rovian propaganda staff writes very effective soap opera scripts.
Walking out in protest is just the kind of bold move that could capture the imaginations of voters who are sick of political shams. But instead, the Dems dutifully acted out their assigned parts. Another opportunity squandered.
by Farleigh B. Fox
No one's going to sell the idea of a single-payer health care system in this country by arguing that it would be good for the tens of millions of poor people, including the working poor, who have no health insurance.
That's their problem.
But lately there have been rumblings that a single-payer system would be good for American business as well. Well ok, now I'm listening.
The president of the United Auto Workers, who says the auto industry has lost 200,000 jobs in the last five years, makes a compelling point:
The United States spends $1.9 trillion on health care — yet 46 million people have no health insurance. Without comprehensive, universal, single-payer national health insurance, we will continue to shortchange our citizens.
Yadda-yadda-yadda. Let's cut to the good part:
And without the effective cost controls that accompany a truly universal system, we're imposing huge health care liabilities on U.S. businesses, impeding their ability to make job-creating new investments. Honda, Nissan, Toyota and BMW don't have this problem — because most of their employees and retirees are in countries where universal health insurance delivers high quality care at a much lower cost.
Bingo. That frames the argument in a way that I can understand. By overburdening American businesses, the health-care mess affects more than just a few million poor people — it affects me.
Maybe it's time to give this single-payer thing some thought.
by Anthony Ioven
The Senate Judiciary Committee is questioning Alberto Gonzales today about the NSA's warrantless wiretapping of US citizens, but they dispensed with the formality of placing the Attorney General under oath.
Ok, I admit it — at first glance, allowing Gonzales to testify without being under oath makes Arlen Specter's hearing look like something of a sham. But actually, the committee has the best interests of the American people in mind.
Let's face it. Forcing a politician to tell the truth leads to nothing but trouble. Think how much better off the country would have been if Clinton wasn't under oath for his deposition in the Paula Jones lawsuit. He could have lied to his heart's content and that would have been the end of the story. No wrenching impeachment controversy.
Gonzales is testifying that warrantless wiretapping is perfectly legal. Senators are getting the opportunity work up some good, heady righteous indignation. Everyone is happy.
For the rest of us, just watch what you say in your overseas communications and maybe you'll be ok.
by Anthony Ioven
Who says one man can't make a difference? Or one woman.
Betty Friedan was a housewife, mother, and sometimes freelance writer when, in 1963, she published The Feminine Mystique.
The bestseller changed our world:
The feminine mystique, she said, was a phony bill of goods society sold to women that left them unfulfilled, suffering from "the problem that has no name" and seeking a solution in tranquilizers and psychoanalysis.
"A woman has got to be able to say, and not feel guilty, 'Who am I, and what do I want out of life?' She mustn't feel selfish and neurotic if she wants goals of her own, outside of husband and children."
Friedan struck a nerve. Suddenly women realized that other women felt just like they did, that it was ok to want something more out of life than the stereotyped, 50s expectation of womanhood — or if not something more, then at least something else.
Suddenly, women realized there wasn't something wrong with them. There was something wrong with the society that repressed them.
But I have to wonder how successful the book would have been if today's ultra-conservative talk-radio and cable-TV opinion factories had existed back then, with Limbaugh hammering away daily at this "femminazi" and her radical little book, and Hannity, Coulter, O'Reilly and the rest of the reactionary crew spitting their venom into the stew.
Betty Friedan, co-founder of NOW, died yesterday on her 85th birthday. Let's hope there are more just like her on the way.
by Anthony Ioven
An interesting review of Crashing the Gate, by Jerome Armstrong (founder of MyDD) and Markos Moulitsas Zuniga (founder of Daily KOS), calls the book "at once awesomely inspiring and profoundly depressing." Sounds like the Democrats would agree with the depressing part.
The book analyzes the success of Republican political strategists and the failure of their Democratic counterparts. But what struck me about the review is the exposure of fracture lines in the Democratic party that run much deeper than mere strategic incompetence:
"In April 2005, about a hundred progressive leaders descended on Monterey, California, to extract lessons from the 2004 election debacle while finding ways for progressives to move forward," [Armstrong and Moulitsas] write. At the beginning of one session about collaboration, a participant complained, "This isn't speaking to my issue. When are we going to talk about my issue?" [they] write, "That set off an avalanche of copy cat complaints — 'What about my issue?' — from all corners of the room."
That is what's been wrong with the Democratic party for decades.
by Anthony Ioven
So you think you have bad neighbors?
How would you like to live next door to some of the most dangerous infectious diseases in the world, like ebola, the West Nile virus, and a smattering of influenza bugs capable of causing the next deadly pandemic?
If you live in the densely populated South End of Boston, get out the Welcome Wagon, because these killer bugs are moving in:
Boston University won final federal approval Thursday for a controversial plan to build a research laboratory in the city's South End that would handle some of the world's most dangerous and exotic germs.
Is it just me, or is it a little foolhardy to put this lab in a crowded urban neighborhood instead of someplace rural and sparsely populated?
This is just plain hubris. I can almost hear the bureaucrats at the National Institutes of Health crowing, Don't worry. We don't make mistakes. What could possibly go wrong?
Heckuva job, NIH.
by Faith Hope
So I'm talking to my neighbor at soccer practice and she says Guess what America and Iran have in common? and I figure ok I'm dumb I'll play along so I say What? and she says They are the two top countries seen as having a 'negative role in the world' and I say What? No way and she says Way, according to a world-wide survey of almost 40,000 people.
World, how can you put us in the same class as those religious whackjobs who are trying to build an atomic bomb so they can blow Israel off the map? Iran wants nothing more than to spread its religious nutcase extremism all over the world while we're just trying to spread liberty to everyone.
Y'know people everywhere want to be just like us, not like them. Hello, get with the program, people.
Oh well gotta run.
by Anthony Ioven
During the roaring 90s, I used to tell anyone who would listen that the booming economy had more to do with Bill Gates than Bill Clinton. I didn't intend it as a knock on Clinton (there were plenty of other reasons to knock him). I was simply giving credit where it was due — the mass marketing of new computer-related technologies and the explosion of Internet commerce.
Fast-forward 10 years: Today's UK Times Online makes a similar observation on the disconnect between America's perceived successes and the policies of the current administration — "one of the most doltishly ineffectual governments in history":
For the past five years, America has been led by a president who is clearly not up to the job — a man who is not just inarticulate, but lacking in judgment, intelligence, integrity, charisma or staying power. Yet America as a nation seems to be stronger, more prosperous and self-confident than ever.
To say that today, we're stronger and more self-confident than ever is so much hooey. Whether we are actually more prosperous today than ever would depend upon who you asked (and what set of data was selected to make the argument). But whatever state you think the economy is in, it could be better. Much better.
In the 90s, President Clinton knew enough to stay out of the economy's way and let it roar ahead on its own steam. Today, President Bush's meddling leadership on issues with economic impact (such as cutting taxes for the wealthy while the deficit grows) is hurting the economy. Wealth is becoming more and more concentrated in the hands of the few. Personal savings is at its lowest point since the depression. Working people are uncertain about their jobs, their futures. Confidence is eroding. The result: Economic growth is slower than it should be.
Bush and the Republican Congress' infatuation with trickle-down economics is an idea whose time has come and gone. It's a fairy-tale. It doesn't work to the advantage of the vast majority of Americans.
So why is it that grown-up Americans still believe in fairy tales?
by Anthony Ioven
If they were going to make a TV series based on the current Democratic party leadership, they might call it Four Simple Rules for Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory.
It would, of course, be a sitcom — actually, a farce.
In today's CommonDreams, writer Bob Burnett has already laid out the rules, which he calls the four rules of the weenie world:
Never, never reveal what the Democratic Party stands for.
Pick a wimpy slogan and say it over and over until everyone knows that it sucks.
Don't push back.
When in doubt, imitate the Republicans.
Come to think of it, the show wouldn't be a sitcom or a farce. It would be a tragedy.
by Anthony Ioven
Here's the lead-in to today's Economic Dispatch column in the UK Guardian:
US computer giants and Washington itself are selling their principles in the race for Chinese profits.
Selling their principles? Since when do corporations have principles?
US corporations believe in just two things — making money, and not getting caught. Everything else is besides the point.
by Anthony Ioven
Dave Zweifel in today's Madison Capital Times does a good job dismissing President Bush's "wrongheaded" call for health savings accounts.
More importantly, Zweifel expresses the frustration that so many of us feel because our "leaders" in Washington refuse to make the obvious fix to our terminally ill health care system:
What's so confounding is that our health system could be fixed so easily. All the United States needs to do is create a Medicare-modeled system for the entire country covering every man, woman and child. The money we employees and employers already spend on health care would easily cover a national single-payer health plan and make it fair for everyone.
So what's stopping us? First, the obvious:
[T]he economic clout of the national and international corporations who all have a huge stake in maintaining the status quo — the pharmaceuticals, the insurance industry and others who benefit from layers and layers of duplicate services that strangle the current jury-rigged system.
But Zweifel cites another reason that I believe plays an even more decisive role than corporate clout:
There are those in high places in the medical fraternity and the national government who firmly believe that a national health care plan is "socialist" and must be avoided even if it would work. Heaven forbid that a great capitalist nation like the United States would kowtow to anything as subversive as socialism government-run programs like Social Security and Medicare, for example.
And that's the irony and the shame of it. We've allowed a conditioned phobia of a mere word to scare us away from a simple, efficient single-payer system, even if it would work.
Get over it, America. Time to grow up.
|
UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
February's Posts
The Selling of America
Armed with 'Christian Patriot Missiles'
Rehabilitating Big Brother
Why Does This Man Look So Miserable?
Black Gold
Mad Prophet of the Airwaves
SNAFU, and Loving It
Spreadin' Liberty — with Conditions
Lead, Follow, or Get Out of the Way
Shaddup Or I'll Blow Your Face Off
Economic Terrorism
The Unscientific American
Where East Meets West
The CIA Ate My Homework
Perishing Together as Fools
Connecting Your Dots
Die, Reverend, Die
As the World Churns
A New Deal for American Business
No Oath? No Problem
'The Problem That Has No Name'
One-Issue Warriors
Oops...
A Legend in Our Own Minds
Are You a Believer?
Four Simple Rules...
Corporate Principles
The S-Word
|