I tried to shut down my system just now, only to receive this uncomfortable message:

Other people are logged onto this computer. Shutting down Windows might cause them to lose data.

I'm the only person who uses this machine, and no other computers in the home are even on right now.

Time, I suspect, for a complete clean re-install. Of everything. Paranoia is our friend. See you tomorrow. Permalink

A Confluence thread directs our attention to this bizarre story, which Dakinkat appropriately labels "malinformation": Obama Orders 1 Million US Troops to Prepare for Civil War.

Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

Although Renuart is indeed the head of the Northern Command -- which, since 2002, has held the job of combating insurrection -- I think that we may safely assume that this piece is a hoax.

I'm interested in the publication carrying this tale, the "European Union Times." I've never heard of this thing before, and Wikipedia is no help. Does anyone out there have any background info? Who is behind this enterprise?

One of their categories for reportage is "White extinction." And an EU Times article on internet anonymity carries this subhead: "In times of Internet spying, White Nationalists must become Anonymous!" These is the kind of lingo one would associate with an American neo-Nazi organization. It is a little alarming to see these sentiments ascribed to what is clearly meant to look, at first glance, like a quasi-official EU publication.

This rather fetid cyber-rag, displaying distinctly anti-American loyalties, appears to have close ties to the teabagger movement -- which, in turn, seems to be a gathering force within the Republican party. So I would suggest keeping an eye on these creeps. Permalink

Where is Osama Bin Laden? Defense Secretary Robert Gates doesn't know. He says that the U.S. has not had any good intelligence on Bin Laden for years.

Oddly, this statement implies that the U.S. cannot even pinpoint the country that Bin Laden calls home. Last June, Leon Panetta stumped for Pakistan: "The last information we had, that's still the case."

Yet the BBC has published a report stating that a Taliban detainee supplied information -- second-hand, admittedly -- that Bin Laden was in Afghanistan in February or January.

"The sheikh doesn't stay in any one place. That guy came from Ghazni, so I think that's where the sheikh was."

Ghazni, near the border with Pakistan, is usually considered out of bounds for American troops. This is the place where the Taliban destroyed an historic statue of Buddha.

The same informant offered some further details which have received insufficient attention:

The detainee, who cannot be named for legal reasons, said that militants were avoiding Pakistani territory because of the risk of US drone attacks.

"Pakistan at this time is not convenient for us to stay in because a lot of our senior people are being martyred in drone attacks," he said.

Pakistan's Prime Minister says that Bin Laden is not in his country.

And then there's this:

It is widely believed that Bin Laden returned to Afghanistan sometime in 2002 after his December 2001 escape from the Tora Bora mountains into Pakistan's tribal areas. Pakistani leaders have consistently claimed Bin Laden has never been in Pakistan and is more likely hiding out in Afghanistan or Iran.

This assertion, if true, conflicts with everything that we have been told for years. In 2005, CIA Director Porter Goss said that he had an "excellent idea" as to Bin Laden's location. His commentary indicated that politics, not a lack of information, impeded further pursuit -- at least, that's how I would interpret this gnomish pronouncement:

That is a question that goes far deeper than you know. In the chain that you need to successfully wrap up the war on terror, we have some weak links. And I find that until we strengthen all the links, we're probably not going to be able to bring Mr. bin Laden to justice. We are making very good progress on it. But when you go to the very difficult question of dealing with sanctuaries in sovereign states, you're dealing with a problem of our sense of international obligation, fair play.

Cryptic as these words may be, they seem to indicate that Bin Laden was -- to the certain knowledge of the U.S. intelligence community -- alive and residing in Pakistan (at least as of 2005), and that the difficulty in capturing him had to do with our relations with the Pakistani government.

So how do we square what Goss had to say with the recent suggestion that Bin Laden has been in Afghanistan since 2002? If the Afghan claim has been "widely believed" for years, then why was not the American public allowed to share in this wide belief?

I cannot help but note how convenient these stories are.

During the Bush era, the American public would not have tolerated being told that Osama was "widely believed" to be in Afghanistan -- a country where the niceties of international relations did not forbid us from operating. Now, President Obama wants to escalate the conflict in Afghanistan -- and I will not be surprised to see the administration announce that American troops have to go into the Taliban-controlled areas in order to capture Bin Laden.

Osama Bin Laden is wherever we want him to be.

In 2006, the CIA shut down the unit tasked with hunting Bin Laden. Intriguingly, this move occurred some months after Dr Clive Williams, director of terrorism studies at the Australian National University, claimed that he had received documents from a colleague in India providing evidence of Bin Laden's death in April of 2005. (Perhaps Porter Goss had an "excellent idea" that Osama was under the sod...?) I'm wondering why we've seen no further discussion of these documents -- after all, if a college professor can see them, so should we.

Also in 2006, semi-official sources in Pakistan spread the report that Bin Laden had died of Typhus.

Michael Ledeen, quoting "Iranians I trust," said that Bin Laden died that same year in Iran. Ledeen says that Bin Laden spent most of his time hanging out in that country since his expulsion from Afghanistan. Fat chance, say I. The kind of Iranians Ledeen might trust are not necessarily people I would trust -- and everyone knows that Ledeen and his associates have spent years trying to stir up a war against Iran.

Earlier this year, two UCLA professors came out with this interesting report (pdf) indicating that Bin Laden was probably hiding in or around Parachinar, Pakistan, in Kurram province, near the Afghan border. The overhead photos reproduced here represent their three best guesses as to his current (or recurrent?) locale.

The paper states that the largest of these photos depicts a complex which may be a prison, although it has unusually well-maintained grounds. The other buildings seem to be rather large private residences.

Last April, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said that his country has found no trace of Bin Laden. He further opined that Osama was probably dead. Last month, George W. Bush "guessed" that Bin Laden was still alive.

Final note: This is one of those topics that tends to bring out the hyper-macho asshole in many readers. I do not disrespect your opinion, but may I humbly ask you to refrain from offering your opinion as hard, proven, testable fact?

As if you know. Permalink

I learned of this story by way of a reader at the Confluence. A man named Walt Stanton has been convicted of littering because, as a humanitarian gesture, he left jugs of water in the desert for illegal immigrants. He was sentenced to 25 days in prison.

I don't favor illegal immigration. But to put a man in prison because he gave water to those who thirst...

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I have not commented on this trial so far, although I have followed it. The guilty verdict against Knox, delivered hours ago, was an atrocity.

Rudy Guede has already been convicted in the death of Meredith Kercher. Nothing links him to either Knox or Raffaele Sollecito. If he were part of a conspiracy, why would he not lessen his sentence by testifying against the others? To this day, he insists that Knox was not present. (Frankly, the evidence against Guede might not have held up in an American court.)

The case against Knox is laughable. No genuine physical evidence links her to the crime. None. Neither is there any eyewitness testimony against her.

I'll say it again: An American woman has been convicted of murder despite a complete lack of forensic evidence or eyewitness testimony. There is no evidence that more than one person committed the crime. Another person, unconnected to her, has already been convicted.

The entire case rests on the twisted imaginations of the investigators, who formed their bizarre theories early on, and who refused to rethink their presumptions even after Guede came to their attention.

Here is an example of what the Italians call "evidence":

Knox’s DNA was also found to be mixed with Miss Kercher’s in a bloodstained wash basin at the house, suggesting Knox had washed Miss Kercher’s blood off her hands in the sink.

No. This suggests only that Knox and Kercher were roommates, which they were.

At bottom, this case was driven by prejudices concerning both lifestyle and nationality. Italian magistrates actually pointed to "violent" Japanese comic books in Sollecito's possession. Knox was villified for treating investigators flippantly, and for her typically collegiate indulgences in sex, drink and horesplay. The prosecution zeroed in on vulgar internet postings which had no bearing on the case. Pretty much any young American visiting abroad could be convicted on that sort of non-evidence.

The prosecutor actually put these words into Knox's mouth as she allegedly assailed Kercher:

“You are always behaving like a little saint. Now we will show you. Now we will make you have sex.”

It is ludicrous to presume that any American would talk this way. This piece of dialogue was purely imaginary -- an example of bad screenwriting which should never have been allowed in any courtroom.

Judge Claudia Matteini suggested that Knox and Sollecito had been seeking to "experience extreme sensations, intense sexual relations which break up the monotony of everyday life..."

The judge is obviously a sexual fantasist. Prosecutor Giuliano Mignini (under indictment for misconduct in another case) is another sick fantasist with a history of seeing inane Satanic conspiracies everywhere. This deranged freak actually believes that Amanda Knox was involved in some form of devil worship, even though no evidence indicates that she ever took any interest in any form of occultism, and no evidence links occultism to this crime.

Italian public opinion coalesced against Knox based not on evidence but on bigoted European views of young American women. This personal memoir illustrates the role played by stereotyping and prejudice.

It’s bad enough that the dollar is at a record low and that President Bush is about as popular here as Chinese food. Not to mention, I’m always trying to explain that “The O.C.” isn’t real life and that’s not how most people in the United States live.

Now throw in the blue-eyed studentessa, a poster girl for college debauchery. To read the articles about Amanda Knox, you would think that all American students are hash-smoking party girls with little memory of their weekends.

This outrageous verdict was, in short, the product of bias and chauvinism. The jurors flaunted their anti-American bigotry by deliberately wearing the colors of the Italian flag while announcing Knox's fate. Those jurors cared more about flags than about facts.

I am serious in what I am about to say: If Italy does not release Amanda Knox now, the United States congress must take the strongest possible action against that country. Boycott? Hell, I'm thinking war. Permalink

America is still ruled by the ideology of the consummately evil Milton Friedman. Let us not be afraid to use the word "evil" to describe that man -- indeed, we must insist on its usage.

Friedmanism is the ruling ideology within both the mainstream and the populist underground. Thus, even in revolutionary circumstances (and we may soon be living in such circumstances), Friedmanism will triumph -- because the citizenry cannot imagine an alternative.

We need to create an alternative by addressing the dangers of unbridled capitalism. I would like to start that process, in my own humble way, with a series of articles. The subject is too large for one post.

Today's lesson: Slavery is the ultimate result of capitalism.

Without strict legal regulation, capitalism inevitably leads to slave labor. For many a capitalist, maximizing profit overpowers conscience. Most recent case in point: Mexico.

Mexican authorities have freed 107 indigenous people who officials say were being held as slave laborers in a Mexico City factory disguised as a drug rehabilitation center.

They made handbags and clothespins and were not paid. Their only daily meal consisted of chicken legs and rotten vegetables, Mancera said.

The men and women worked 8 a.m. to midnight and were given only a half-hour food break. They were not allowed to go to the bathroom, and many soiled themselves, officials said.

Of course, it never occurs to the slave-owners that, if all of society were so constituted, there would be no-one to sell those handbags to.

As neo-liberal ideology (i.e., Friedmanism) has taken hold throughout the world, slavery has increased. Millions of women in Eastern Europe fell into sex slavery after the formerly communist countries underwent a Friedmanite "shock treatment." Modern slavery is a profoundly feminist issue, although many debased and self-absorbed American feminists have neglected it.

(Sex slavery is the subject of the Frontline documentary embedded below.)

There are no slaves in advanced capitalist/socialist mixed economies, such as Sweden and Denmark. The imposition of strict Friedmanism always results in slavery, or in near-slavery conditions.

We have already talked about Dubai, where many extraordinary construction projects were built by what amounts to slave labor.

In their home country – Bangladesh or the Philippines or India – these workers are told they can earn a fortune in Dubai if they pay a large upfront fee. When they arrive, their passports are taken from them, and they are told their wages are a tenth of the rate they were promised.

They end up working in extremely dangerous conditions for years, just to pay back their initial debt.

Never underestimate the human capacity for rationalization. When ABC released an expose on slavery in Dubai (relying, in large measure, on information from Human Rights Watch), a UAE expatriate asked: "Does HRW know the meaning of capitalism?"

The U.A.E. may not offer laboures mansions to live in or the pay of a C.E.O. but thats capitalism for you. If the labourers did not see a benifit in working there, they would never leave their lives and families just to build our towers, who are we? Or maybe youd rather we adopt communism?

And there you have it. Friedmanites will always trot out that false dichotomy to justify peonage and slavery. They will always pretend that bolshevism is the only conceivable alternative to Friedmanism.

Can slavery happen again in America?

Well, there are people in America who want it to happen. As is often the case in this country, religion provides the justification for atrocity.

Dominionist theology (otherwise known as Christian Reconstruction) remains quite popular in this nation, especially within the "tea party" movement. An American revolution is far more likely to be Dominionist than socialist, which is why I find the very thought of revolution frightening and abhorrent. Dominionism both raises capitalism to the level of a theological imperative and demands a return to slavery. As in Dubai and elsewhere, slavery will adopt its usual disguise as the repayment of debt.

Punishments for non-capital crimes generally involve whipping, restitution in the form of indentured servitude, or slavery. Prisons would likely be only temporary holding tanks, prior to imposition of the actual sentence.

Many Dominionist leaders are not afraid to use the S word:

Slavery is openly defended by Dominionist writers such as David Chilton: "Heathen slaves ... were actually favored by [slavery], since it placed them in contact with believers. They received the relatively lenient treatment of the biblical slavery regulations, and they were also able to hear the liberating message of the gospel."

On the 700 Club, a black Dominionist preacher named Wellington Boone offered a view which I can only describe as bizarre:

Boone is a member of the Coalition on Revival, a Christian Reconstructionist organization that advocates replacing the US Constitution with biblical law. Throughout his career, he has distinguished himself from his black clerical colleagues with such remarks as "I believe that slavery, and the understanding of it when you see it God's way, was redemptive"...

Dominionism is primarily an ideology of the mentally diseased American south. Non-white Americans must never forget that virtually all white southern conservatives long for a return to antebellum society. The modern neo-seccessionist movement is, when all pretenses and self-deceptions are dropped, based on a desire to institute Dominionism -- that is to say, to create a society based on unregulated capitalism and slavery.

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So...I, uh...I have a question about the person depicted in this ad. Is that supposed to be the face of Barack Obama? Or is that supposed to be a representation of your typical American mom?

If the latter, I'm pretty sure I don't want to move to Alabama. Do all the women there look like Alan Moore?

You know what's really funny? The idea that anyone going to college these days will be able to pay back all those loans. You didn't really think a Pell grant would cover costs, did you? These days, a Pell grant covers lunch money.

By the way: Just when did Obama ask "moms" to return to school?

This ad may be for one of the for-profit schools discussed here.

What the public might also have missed in the collage of economic downturns and dire prognostications has been the incredible fraud in the federal student loan programs tied to for-profit colleges and universities. Also what is under-reported are the student pay-day loan practices of private banks (bailed-out with stimulus monies and flush with cash) that charge high interest rates and in most cases require co-signers for students to attend these same institutions. Most notoriously, however, what is missing is coverage of the unscrupulous practices of the proprietary colleges, or for-profit colleges, that financially mug students, largely from working and low income families, leaving them burdened and battered with life-long debt in an economy and society bereft of jobs and largely becoming increasingly more militarized.

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Christopher Soghoian has written what should be considered an instant internet classic. His subject is government access to your internet trail and your telecommunications records. A few samples:

Sprint Nextel provided law enforcement agencies with its customers' (GPS) location information over 8 million times between September 2008 and October 2009. This massive disclosure of sensitive customer information was made possible due to the roll-out by Sprint of a new, special web portal for law enforcement officers.

Seems to me that a competing cell phone service could clean up by promising greater privacy.

It is unclear if Federal law enforcement agencies' extensive collection of geolocation data should have been disclosed to Congress pursuant to a 1999 law that requires the publication of certain surveillance statistics -- since the Department of Justice simply ignores the law, and has not provided the legally mandated reports to Congress since 2004.

In other words, putting Democrats in the White House and in Congress has not made the situation better. In fact, it just keeps getting worse.

"[Service providers] have, last time I looked, no line entry in any government directory; they are not an agent of any law enforcement agency; they do not work for or report to the FBI; and yet, you would never know that by the way law enforcement orders them around and expects blind obedience."
-- Albert Gidari Jr., Keynote Address: Companies Caught in the Middle, 41 U.S.F. L. Rev. 535, Spring 2007.

Here are some numbers which may seem, at first, re-assuring:

The number of electronic intercept orders, which are required to intercept Internet traffic and other computer assisted communications is surprisingly low. There were just 10 electronic intercept orders requested in 2008, and only 4 of those were from the Federal government -- which was itself a massive increase over the one single order sought by the entire Department of Justice in both 2006 and 2007.

Don't breathe easy. There were 700 electronic intercept orders in 1998. Soghoian argues that these probably focused on fax machines. So why, in the post-9/11 world, is the number so low -- even though we know that ISPs and Google have been handing over information routinely?

The answer is obvious: The feds are getting what they want without procuring an electronic intercept order.

Turns out the feds don't need an electronic intercept order if they do not eavesdrop live.

However, communications or customer records that are in storage by third parties, such as email messages, photos or other files maintained in the cloud by services like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo Facebook and MySpace are routinely disclosed to law enforcement, and there is no legal requirement that statistics on these kinds of requests be compiled or published.

How often does this happen?

Only Facebook and AOL have publicly disclosed the approximate number of requests they receive from the government -- 10-20 requests per day and 1000 requests per month, respectively.

Are there any fishing expeditions in those requests? Almost certainly. And you have no way of double-checking.

Sprint has 35 employees handling subpoena compliance. The GPS locator is now automated and on the web -- cops and feds can log on and get location information about anyone they want for any reason they want. The following two quotes come from Paul Taylor of Sprint NexTel:

We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests.

We do have logs, we can go back to see the IP address that used MySpace. By the way - MySpace and Facebook, I don't know how many subpoenas those people get, or emergency requests but god bless, 95% of all IP requests, emergencies are because of MySpace or Facebook...

I keep telling people to avoid Facebook and MySpace. Eventually, folks will listen.

Of course, we all know how apologists will justify this intrusion: The governments needs to catch terrorists and child pornographers. Come off it. There aren't 8 million terrorists and child porn enthusiasts in this country. Welcome to Orwell country.

Or, to paraphrase something Natalie Portman once said: This is how democracy dies -- with shrugs and easy rationalizations.

(Thanks, once again, to lambert.)
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Questions:

If you are not related to Tiger Woods, then why do you consider any aspect of his personal life to be your business? And why did he issue a statement? Why shouldn't the guy simply say "screw you" to all who ask questions that they have no business asking?

With all that is happening in the world today, why is this crap news? Are people really so small?
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Carolyn Kay directs our attention to this interesting piece. Jesse Ventura -- former Governor, wrestler, and sorta-SEAL -- will host a television series on conspiracy theories. Although I don't expect the show to set the world on fire, Ventura did outline one possible conspiracy -- if that is the right word -- of which he was the target.

The interviewer asked about "Jesse Ventura's America," a series which ran very briefly in 2003:

It was awful. I was basically silenced. When I came out of office, I was the hottest commodity out there. There was a bidding war between CNN, Fox and MSNBC to get my services. MSNBC ultimately won. I was being groomed for a five day-a-week TV show by them. Then, all of a sudden, weird phone calls started happening: "Is it true Jesse doesn't support the war in Iraq?"

My contract said I couldn't do any other cable TV or any news shows, and they honored and paid it for the duration of it. So in essence I had my silence purchased. Why do you think you didn't hear from me for three years? I was under contract. They wouldn't even use me as a consultant!

When you live in Mexico, your houses all have names. I almost named my house Casa MSNBC because they bought it. I was paid like a professional athlete, and I got very wealthy. For doing nothing.

Wow.

Hey, I was against the Iraq war. And right now, I'm against the Afghan escalation. Where's my house in Mexico? I want one with a red clay tile roof. And white tiles in the kitchen. And one of those fountains. And Salma Hayek. Permalink

A little over a month ago, Dick Cheney said that Barack Obama's Afghanistan "surge" is an idea copied from recommendations made by the previous administration. Change we can believe in, indeed. Madamb advises Obama to seek a more creative solution -- blame Clinton!

It’s only a matter of time before Bill Clinton will be at fault for Obama’s inevitable, miserable, massive fail in Afghanistan. So why wait? I’m sure that while he was President, he did, or didn’t do something or other that led to the current clusterfuckiness. Woohoo, Obama’s off the hook again!

McChrystal had asked for 10,000 as a bare minimum. And yet this morning, a right-wing PR firm sent me an email offering an interview with an Afghanistan "expert" who assails Obama's 30,000 troop surge as insufficient. Apparently, the right still feels obligated to stump for a militarist solution -- which means that the Bush legacy remains part of the tea-baggers' baggage.

The previous link goes to an October poll which indicates that half the citizenry wants the troops home now. (I'm in that half.) A majority would have considered a 10,000 troop increase "acceptable" and a 40,000 troop increase "unacceptable." Obama's decision won't be popular. Permalink