Author: Matthew G. Saroff

This is Our Future Dystopia

Larry Magid, of Siliconvalley.com, had a dystopian vision a couple of weeks ago, September 26 to be specific.

Two things happened that day:

  • Verizon refused to allow the National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) to send out alerts to people who had requested them, because the content was deemed to be, “controversial or unsavory”. (They later reversed themselves)
  • Pudding Media demonstrated an ad supported VOIP system, where voice recognition is used to provide ads that are appropriate to the conversation’s context.

His vision, and one that I also fear, is one where the wireless carriers, using voice recognition, choose to allow only those communications that they choose over their networks.

When it comes to the two events of Sept. 26, I worry about the misuse of technology similar to what Pudding Media is using. Not only would it be easy to provide transcripts of our calls to authorities, but all calls could be parsed in real time. Say the wrong thing and your call could be interrupted or you could get an immediate visit from some guys with guns in a big sport-utility vehicle.

Such a scenario would not be in the interest of phone companies, and it certainly wouldn’t be tolerated by civil-liberties minded Americans. But based on what I’ve seen since 9/11, I have no doubt some in government and the private sector would love to see this happen.

The mere thought of it is creepy.

It’s more than creepy. It is very, very likely. It’s like some vision of George Orwell or William Gibson, and it’s closer than most of us would like to think.

Even more than its use to arrest dissenters, is its use by folks like Bush and His Evil Minions&trade to blackmail political opponents. It’s Karl Rove’s wet dream, and it’s Verizon’s wet dream too, because they can use the tech to become the advertising conduit for everything.

If property rights for private operators trump civil rights for people, we are already 90% of the way there.

I’d scream, but I have laryngitis (really…chest cold).

Larry Craig, the Gift That Keeps on Giving

Let’s see, first, we have Senator “Wide Stance” being inducted into the Idaho hall of fame, and then we have the male prostitute who outed Ted Haggard says that he met Larry Craig, and finally, Bob “The Traitor” Novak says that the Senate republicans knew about his behavior:

I have talked to several of my sources in the Senate, and this came as a surprise to me…They knew about it. They knew that he had this problem, and it was in the closet. And it was not just a homosexual relationship. It was this weird conduct. They didn’t do anything about it.

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Israeli FM Minimizes Threat of Iranian Nukes

It turns out that a few months agoForeign Minister Tzipi Livni said that Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel. The article also reports that former Mossad chief Ephraim Halevy has similar views.

This is no surprise. Given that any Iranian action would inevitably result in a devastating Israeli counterstrike, some of which would be submarine bases, and hence secure from a first strike, we would be at mutually assured destruction, which worked between the US and the USSR for years.

Additionally, considering the Iranians as Persian, rather than Arab, it would be unusual to expect them to take actions that would result in the destruction of their culture in order to benefit an what is largely an Arab agenda.

There is also an insight into Israeli politics, specifically how Kadima would look to hold onto power with Ariel Sharon:

Livni also criticized the exaggerated use that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.

I would be very surprised if Kadima were above 3rd place in votes next elections, and I would not be surprised if the losses were stunning. It really is Ariel Sharon’s vanity party, and he is now gone.

What Ezra Said

Ezra Klein answers the question of why liberal war hawks are lumped with the Neocons.

The answer is, simply enough, that they are indistinguishable from Neocons so long as they continue to enable Bush’s war.

I do not care what the internal machinations are of wankers like Richard Cohen’s mind. I care about the actions of wankers like Richard Cohen, and they are providing as least much aid and comfort to the supporters of Bush’s war as people like William Kristal.

Cohen may not, personally, think like Bill Kristol. But he certainly writes like him. “Neocon, for many, has become shorthand for neocon-Zionist conspiracy,” he says, naming no names, and instead offering a simple, generalized accusation of anti-semitism against all those who question the neoconservatives. “Baghdad is closer to Sarajevo than the left has allowed,” he writes, obliterating the difference between a bombing campaign undertaken to end an ongoing genocide and a ground invasion undertaken to unearth weapons that didn’t exist, overturn a regime we couldn’t replace, and forcibly impose a system of governance that lacked foundations. “MoveOn.org is the Petraeus-insulting face of never-set-foot-in-a-war-zone liberalism,” he scoffs, having never, himself, fought in a war, but nevertheless adopting the authority of those who have.

These are not arguments. They are smears. They are attacks aimed at degrading the credibility, rather than the beliefs, of the coalition that opposes the Iraq War. And in intent and effect, they are indistinguishable from Bill Kristol’s worst columns, save for the possibility that they are more effective, because they ostensibly come from within the Left, rather than outside of it.

The Greatest Generation Condemns the Torture Generation

Keep in mind that these are the guys who interrogated, and actually got useful information out of, captured senior Axis figures.

“We got more information out of a German general with a game of chess or Ping-Pong than they do today, with their torture,” said Henry Kolm, 90, an MIT physicist who had been assigned to play chess in Germany with Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess.

Blunt criticism of modern enemy interrogations was a common refrain at the ceremonies held beside the Potomac River near Alexandria. Across the river, President Bush defended his administration’s methods of detaining and questioning terrorism suspects during an Oval Office appearance.

They to a man condemned the tactics espoused by Bush and His Evil Minions

Dem Leadership Wimps Out on US Attorney Scandal

Bush and His Evil Minions are still stonewalling on the US Attorney scandal, but the house leadership is refusing to schedule a contempt vote.

I know that they think that they are playing safe, but this sort of investigation is precisely why Democrats were elected in 2006.

Cowardice is a losing proposition, particularly for Democrats, where the Republicans have used this as a club to beat them for years.

A Great Takedown of Ayn Rand

Contained in a book review of Alan Greenspan’s new book, of all things. It’s a wonderfully snarky review, in the tradition of Rex Reed.

It wasn’t a rhetorical question, apparently. This was in the late 1950s. By then, Rand had published her two thick, preposterous novels, The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, and stood poised on the brink of international stardom. Her creepy philosophy of Objectivism, placing the self at the center of the moral universe, was being enthusiastically embraced, as it still is, by tens of thousands of pimply teenage boys in the dreamy moments between fits of social insecurity and furious bouts of masturbation. As her cultish fame spread, Rand wanted to keep tabs on her most intimate acolytes. Of these Greenspan was the most promising and, by all appearances, the most normal. Which worried her.

He had, for example, a life; most of the members of the Collective–the name her dozen closest followers attached to themselves–did not, devoting themselves to her welfare exclusively. Greenspan was making good money, soon to be great money, as a savvy economics consultant. He lunched with bond traders, corporate leaders, even titans of industry, real-life versions of the planet-girding capitalists Rand fantasized about and invented for her books. On Saturday nights Greenspan, then in his early thirties, would gather with his fellow Collective members in Rand’s dim, shuttered apartment in midtown Manhattan (she kept the windows closed and the blinds drawn for many years, after one of her beloved cats tumbled tragically to its death). There in the grim presence of their idol they would sit on folding chairs and release expletives of thrilled admiration as her writings were read aloud. One memoir from the Collective, My Years with Ayn Rand by Nathaniel Branden, shows that even then Greenspan’s mode of communication was Greenspanian.

“Ayn,” Alan would say, overcome by some Randian insight, “upon reading this, one tends to feel exhilarated!”

heh. Spot on.

All emphasis mine.

Talking Points Memo | Bishop: No communion for Giuliani

Well, the right wing jerk who refused communion for Kerry is refusing it for Giuliani too, though it’s not likely that this will effect him much. The thrice married candidate for president of 911 isn’t much of a church goer, and this only covers the St. Louis area.

That beings said, I think that this sort of stuff does put the archdiocese 501(c)3 status at risk, or at least it should.

Baker is Right: IP is Protectionism

Dean Baker makes the excellent point that economists who rail against any restriction on trade are nowhere to be found when the trade barrier supports movie and record executives or pharma.

We need to recognize the fact that IP is a restriction on free trade, and to understand that IP protections need to be balanced against the virtues of free trade. Conversely, this also means that the virtues of free trade need to be balanced against negative societal impact more generally.

Help Stop the White Collar Crime Enabling Act

It looks like Congress is well on its way to crippling prosecution of white collar crime.

It will remove tools from the investigators’ arsenal that are crucial to getting information and finding hidden assets.

I would also add that while the targets of such probes find the tactics coercive, they are completely in line with what prosecutors do with other crimes, and I support them as long as they can be used against a burglar or a corner street dealer.

The law is not just for brown people.