by Anthony Ioven
 If you've ever wondered whether there are any standards of decency and integrity that advertisers wouldn't eagerly shatter just to sell you something, consider the Wizmark — the "Interactive Urinal Communicator":
As a one-of-a-kind, fully functional interactive device, Wizmark can talk, sing, or flash a string of lights around a promotional message when greeting a "visitor". The large anti-glare, water-proof viewing screen is strategically located just above the drain to ensure guaranteed viewing without interruptions. Using the elements of surprise and humor in a truly unique location will allow Wizmark, in combination with your ad, to make a lasting impression on every male that sees it.
But recently I read about an advertising tactic in The Boston Globe that out-sleazes the Wizmark — it's called seeding:
The goal of seeding is to "enlist, equip and harness the power of trusted, informed and credible messengers." [T]his can mean "hiring actors, or shills" — apparently ordinary people who reflect the target audience — in clandestine campaigns that "may consist of seeding chat rooms, blogs and forums with paid-for messages." Even real space isn't safe: such hired messengers might be seen... "hanging out in a Starbucks with the product conspicuously displayed, awaiting the unwitting passerby to start a dialogue."
This is out-and-out deceit and it's clearly unethical, yet seeding is considered a "common" practice among advertisers. With the Wizmark, you at least can plainly see it for what it is. And if you don't like it, you can pack up and take your business elsewhere (a toilet version of a Wizmark is too vulgar even for advertisers). But with seeding, you are tricked into believing you're dealing with a fellow coffee drinker, or chat-room companion, or blogger, when in fact, you're dealing with a paid shill.
I don't know about you, but I've encountered commenters on liberal blogs who could easily be political seedlings — people who habitually muddy the waters of a topic, who bog other commenters down with question after insinuating question, who demand cites for every opinion yet offer few of their own, and who, when all else fails, resort to intimidation through name-calling or through the sheer quantity of their words. I never thought of these commenters as well intentioned, but until I read that Globe story, I never considered that they might actually be undercover human Wizmarks.
by Anthony Ioven
Call me a cranky old curmudgeon, but I'm getting mighty tired of animated ads on commercial web sites. It's impossible for me to read a story with kaleidoscopes, bouncing balls, zooming cars, dancing figures and other distractions demanding my attention.
If I can't cover these in-your-face ads, or pull in the browser's frame enough to exclude them, I simply leave the site — which does the advertiser no good, not to mention the other advertisers and their more reasonable, less disrespectful ads. I hope you do the same.
by Anthony Ioven
 Tell me this isn't a sign of End Times:
Barry Goldwater...Hero of Democrats?
I didn't know Barry Goldwater, and Barry Goldwater certainly wasn't a friend of mine, but believe me, Goldwater was no liberal.
Still, today's Republicans are a completely different breed than those in Goldwater's time. Your party's been hijacked, Republicans. How about taking it back?
by Anthony Ioven
Speaking of Goldwater (above), is America ready to elect a Jew as president?
How about an avowed atheist?
Or a Muslim?
Just curious.
by Anthony Ioven
We spend billions of dollars a year to protect ourselves against terrorism. We invest in all the latest gadgets. We grope and gape at airline passengers shuffling along shoeless in security lines. And we seem all too anxious to give up our constitutional freedoms if it will buy us just a little more security.
So if we're so damned obsessed with security, how could something like this happen:
KeySpan guards failed to detect two intruders using wire cutters to break into the company's liquefied natural gas facility in Lynn last week, a security breach that went undetected for five days because company officials failed to review a surveillance tape that captured the incident.
If these intruders had been terrorists, the entire city of Lynn could have been blown into the Atlantic before the ever-vigilant security experts realized something might be wrong.
Of course, this kind of embarrassing negligence would never be committed by those entrusted with our nation's security, right?
Bin Laden determined to attack inside the US.
Never mind...
by Anthony Ioven
If your family has to hire a stripper to get people to come to your funeral, it's a pretty good bet you should have spent less time blogging and more time actually hanging out with people.
by Anthony Ioven
 Glenn Greenwald on why Judge Taylor is being savaged (emphasis added):
This has been the most bizarre part of the NSA scandal all along: the President got caught red-handed violating an extremely clear [FISA] law — he admitted to engaging in the very behavior which that law says is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison and a $10,000 fine — and yet official Washington (the political and pundit classes) simply decided to pretend that wasn't the case.
They agreed to acquiesce to the administration's fiction that there are some sort of complex and difficult legal questions with which one must grapple, and that only shrill partisans say that the President is violating the criminal law. And thus, a Washington ruling class which reveled in subpoenas and criminal investigations over such towering matters as Whitewater, Vince Foster and Monica Lewkinsky has collectively decided that talk of criminality on the part of the President for how he is spying on Americans is imprudent and unserious.
The Justice Department lawyers who approved this illegal program, the political officials who ordered it, and the journalists who defended it (and have enabled this presidency) are all part of the same circle, and the very suggestion that any of this is actually criminal — even though it is all being done in violation of the crystal clear criminal law — is just too unpleasant, too unruly, too disruptive to admit. As Turley puts it: "The question of the president's possible criminal acts has long been the pig in the parlor that polite people in Congress refused to acknowledge."
But Judge Taylor's ruling — with its very un-Beltway irreverence towards the President, and free of the fear of describing the President's lawbreaking as what it is — is forcing that question out into the open, which is what explains so much of the hostility towards Judge Taylor. This judge, unknown to the Important People in academia and the political power centers, sitting in her little Detroit courtroom, has broken the rules. She used language which is uncouth (she pointed out the obvious — that this President has pretenses to being a King) and refused to pay homage to the false orthodoxy that there are really difficult questions triggered by the President's refusal to abide by the criminal law. How irresponsible, unscholarly and unserious she is.
Among the unforgivable sins this judge has committed is to expose Congress for the partisans and cowards they are.
by Anthony Ioven
They hate us for our freedoms.
Well, there's that. And then, as I posted yesterday, there's this — one slightly more plausible reason why they hate Israel.
And so it follows that this, from yesterday's Boston Globe, may be a reason why they have a problem with us, too:
Complete US aid to Israel figures since 1949 are here — over $99 billion worth.
by Anthony Ioven
Atty. General Gonzales, defending the NSA's wiretapping program after the ruling by Federal Judge Anna Diggs Taylor that warrantless wiretaps are unconstitutional:
We have confidence in the lawfulness of this program.
Take away one letter and I agree completely.
by Anthony Ioven
President Bush recently took time away from those distracting little nuisances like the ongoing bloodbath in Iraq and the search for Osama bin Forgotten and took care of something really, really important — pardoning a convicted Georgia moonshiner.
And not just any moonshiner, but one who played a small part in the movie Deliverance.
Yes sir, those good ol' boys sure do stick together.
You know, instead of Hail to the Chief, wouldn't this be a much more appropriate fanfare for this president?
by Anthony Ioven
The Boston Globe headline spoke volumes:
Israelis return to broken houses and lives in limbo
The story told of the hardships of the Israeli refugees who fled their homes during the 5-week war with Hezbollah — the family who returned to their home to find a hole in the roof where a missile broke through, and glass and furniture shattered...the people wandering through their neighborhoods in a daze, among the blackened and damaged homes, and reuniting with neighbors they hadn't seen in weeks...homeowners being given hotel vouchers so they could have shelter while their homes were being repaired...complaints of government bureaucracy moving too slowly to help the suddenly homeless.
It's easy to imagine how we would feel if we were the ones forced to leave our home for weeks, and live like refugees. We would feel helpless. Abused. And pretty damn mad at whoever did this to us.
 So why is it so hard for us to sympathize with Palestinian refugees?
According to the UN, "Palestine refugees are persons whose normal place of residence was Palestine between June 1946 and May 1948, who lost both their homes and means of livelihood as a result of the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict...The number of registered Palestine refugees has subsequently grown from 914,000 in 1950 to more than four million in 2002..."
These Palestinians were driven out of their homes and have been living as refugees for over fifty years, and the world doesn't seem to have much of a problem with it. And still, after all this time, they want to come back — if not to their homes, and least to their homeland, even if it's now called Israel:
The refugees have a sincere tie to their land and homes. Many have kept the keys to their houses, houses that no longer exist. Many certainly were evicted unjustly, or left in innocence to protect their families from war and from subjection to unknown alien rule...Over 80% of the refugees polled in Lebanon, as well as those polled recently by IPCRI and other organizations in the West Bank and Gaza, insisted that they would want to return to Israel, even though the place where they lived no longer exists, and their fields may be home to a housing project or an office building.
But...
Returning the refugees to Israel would put an end to Jewish self-determination, as noted by Palestinian as well as Israeli sources. The large numbers of refugees, together with the much higher birth-rate of the Arab population as opposed to Jews, would soon create an Arab majority.
And that's why the Israelis have denied Palestinians the right to return to their homeland. Too many of them and too few of us.
Think that would make you angry?
by Anthony Ioven
Let's hear it for the long arm of the law:
At least one branch of government still has some balls — if just figuratively, in these cases.
by Osama bin Laden
Dear Recruiters for God:
Please go with all haste to Connecticut, USA. I have learned from a most trustworthy brother that there are many al-Qaida types there.
Good recruiting, and hit those numbers. You know what happens to slackers.
Oh, and don't forget to mention the 72 virgins.
by Anthony Ioven
This story is a few days old now, but it's still bugging me:
A Harris Poll released July 21 found that a full 50 percent of U.S. respondents — up from 36 percent last year — said they believe Iraq did have the forbidden arms when U.S. troops invaded in March 2003.
WTF?
Before the Dems get too cocky about the outcome of the mid-term elections, they ought to think about the caliber of the voters who'll be going to the polls this November.
by Anthony Ioven
Suicide bombers don't have to worry about being able to sleep at night after their unspeakable crimes against humanity, what with being so exhausted from pleasing those 72 virgins day and night.
But what about the leaders on both sides who give the orders that cause the slaughter of all those innocent children and other civilians? How in hell can they sleep at night?
by Anthony Ioven
 Sixty-one years ago today, America dropped a nuclear bomb over the city of Hiroshima. Three days later, another nuclear bomb obliterated Nagasaki.
Killing civilians wasn't a new experience to us on August 6, 1945. We had already conducted massive bombing campaigns against civilian population centers in dozens of Japanese cities, resulting in almost a million casualties.
Our "conventional" and nuclear bombings of Japan happened long before America's War on Terror. In those days, terrorism was an accepted US military strategy.
After the war, Gen. Curtis LeMay, who oversaw the bombing of Japan, said that if America had lost the war, he and others responsible for the savage bombing of Japanese civilians would have been prosecuted for war crimes.
In my opinion, they should have been prosecuted anyway — maybe today there would be greater reservations about killing other people's children.
On last year's 60th anniversary, I posted some background on the Japanese bombings here.
by Anthony Ioven
 From the mouths of babes — in this case, a few of the 300,000 Lebanese children who have fled their homes and their safe childhood worlds:
I don't want to die. I want to go to school...
We've had our picnic, and we want to go home now...
We are bored and afraid and we want to go home...
Why are the Israelis hitting us? Do they hate us?
Sorry, kids. Nothing personal. You just happen to be in the way.
Another child asked, "Mummy, what is a massacre?" Don't worry, little one. You'll become all too familiar with Middle East massacres in your lifetime. And so will your children, and their children.
by Anthony Ioven
Human Rights Watch is accusing Israel of war crimes in Lebanon.
Here are some snippets from an interview with HRW Emergencies Director Peter Bouckaert, who is in Beirut:
On the indiscriminate bombing of civilians
Time and time again, we have documented that civilians have been killed without any Hezbollah being in the neighborhood, without any Hezbollah being inside their homes, and without any Hezbollah weapons being stored, and also that civilians are being hit on the road time and time again, when they're traveling in cars which are clearly marked with white flags. On a daily, basis Israel is hitting ambulances, they're hitting humanitarian convoys, they're hitting UN bases multiple times a day. Sometimes 30 separate attacks on UN observer posts are being documented in a single day.
On cluster bombs
They create a virtual minefield, exploding minefield, when they drop. Now, what we find is that it's an indiscriminate weapon, which is extremely dangerous to use against a civilian-populated area...
But the problem also with cluster bombs, in addition to them being an indiscriminate weapon, is that many of them fail to explode...so, they leave behind a legacy of death and destruction and maiming after this conflict is over. And it's not just a theoretical legacy. In Kosovo and Iraq, we found that children pick these things up, because they're curious, and farmers step on them when they're out working their fields.
Israel absolutely should not be using cluster bombs in this conflict.
On phosphorous weapons
There have been reports that Israel has fired on vehicles and at homes with phosphorus weapons. We're still investigating those, and we do take them serious, because in Fallujah the U.S. Marines did use phosphorus as an offensive weapon, after first denying they did, and it was a very serious violation of the laws of war.
Israel rightly accuses militant leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas of criminal acts against civilians, and assassinates those leaders whenever possible. What is the penalty for Israeli authorities who commit criminal acts against civilians?
by Anthony Ioven
 The recent Israeli attack in Qana, Lebanon that killed 37 children and a score of other civilians is not the first time such a tragedy took place in Qana. In 1996, an Israeli attack on a UN compound in Qana killed over 100 civilians.
In the 1996 attack, Israel deliberately targeted the UN compound, but claimed it had no idea civilians were there.
The claim was a lie. Before and during the attack, an Israeli drone was flying over the compound and taking pictures:
At first [Israel] denied that there was a drone, until a UN videotape showed that there was a drone before the attacks and even during the attacks. The video showed the drone at the same time as the shelling was going on. It wasn't only that that showed that they knew that there were civilians inside. The UN actually called the IDF about one minute into the shelling and said, "You are shelling a UN compound." The shelling continued for 17 more minutes before it stopped. There were no stray shells. Every shell hit the UN compound, and actually, the shells hit the most densely populated areas the heaviest.
Strange how Israel keeps making tragic mistakes like Qana I and Qana II. Remember the USS Liberty?
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UpdateAmerica.com
604.UpdateAmerica.com
August's Posts
Piss Off, Shill
Grrr...
A Kinder, Gentler Goldwater
And May God Bless America
Are We Safe Yet?
Lucky Stiff
Judge Bashing
Follow the Money
Maybe He Just Misspoke
Kinda Guy You'd Like to Have a Beer With
The Wrong Kind
Goddamn Activist Judges
Don't Forget the Virgins
Faith-Based Folly
There's the Rub
An Unhappy Anniversary
'We've Had Our Picnic'
Some Lives Are Cheap
Past Is Prologue
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