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silveradeptUp top tonight, Cracked (of all places) presents six brainwashing techniques They use on you to make you stop thinking, all in good effect now. Such things as chanting slogans, making you believe the “other side”‘s news organizations are all a bunch of partisan hacks, making you believe there’s only black and white choices and a limited time to decide... and the whole dividing you up into an Us versus Them, where Them is not They, but other fellow Us. By putting everyone in tribes, They can then put the tribes against each other. Scary how it works, innit?
So, for a dose of this, and possibly to check off the list against, Michael Moore is giving away Slacker Uprising, his latest movie, for free in the United States and Canada... but i doubt somehow that it’s going to stay there for long. Ah, and also, The Internationale, anthem of the USSR from 1917-1943, in several languages, so that we can study multiple examples in the same session.
International news of the Weird begins with an account of a dead horse on the 12th flor of an apartment block, noticed mostly because the decomposing body stunk pretty bad, and the remains were apparently in a ventilation shaft. How weird.
More seriously, The United Nations doesn't know if Iran has a military nuke program, because they can't seem to get access to anything that would confirm or deny, vehicular attack in Israel, more problems with cartoons in Iraq, even as Iraq and Shell sign a natural gas deal
Domestically, gas shortages mean temporary closures for stations, based on the refineries around them closing. Another unintended consequence of our economy dying, or just that we’ve got so much demand and never built refinery capacity to match?
Calls from representatives to begin building weapons in space, not to fend off what might be an ET threat, but to turn back on other people living on Terra, because they assume that the other people are building weapons to be deployed in sapce to shoot them with, and they want to be first. You know, for as much as I hope for something like the Star Trek future, I keep wondering whether we’re going to end up with the B5 or the Firefly future. To furher the depressing mood, expect weapons that use lasers to temporarily blind people to appear at your next antiwar rally... well, maybe the one afterwards, after things filter down from the military to riot control. Unless the military is going to be used as riot control. And then, you might see them coordinating and firing in a totally silent manner, as they communicate with each other through brainwave-enabled helmets, using very high frequency communications to download and upload lots of data to each other.
And the TSA will now attempt to read you mind for malintent, using a system called MALINTENT, and see if you're planning a terror attack. It can supposedly distinguish between ordinary artificially-induced anxieties as to whether one will be capriciously and Unaccountably Randomly Searched and those with deliberate design or intent to cause grevious bodily harm. Good luck, then, with the irate businessman who just found out his stock options aren’t worth as much anymore, or the guy who found out on his vacation that he’s been fired and intends on making sure there’s a face-to-face afterward.
Search warrant served against a college student in connection with the Palin e-mail hack, because the anonymizer service he used cooperated with the government and gathered up what clues were left behind. I guess there realy is no such thing (yet) as truly anonymous browsing. Of course, the person who cracked the e-mail account should be prosecuted, but there should also be eyebrows raised about the Governor doing state business off her official e-mail account.
Dealing with opinions, Quite a fuss being made over the 2007 decision to retire Colonel Reb, a mascot of the University of Mississippi, of which The General has an idea or two on how to return Colonel Reb to prominence, perhaps by turning him into “Blind Jim”, a different part of the school’s history.
More finger-pointing in the matter of the financial crisis, including David Limbaugh's blaming the government for getting us into the mess, and the liberals for suggesting that more government is the solution to the mess, doing his level best to tiptoe gently around the knowledge that only eight of the last twenty-eight years of executive branch government have been under the supposedly fiscally conservative party, and both sides have been quite happy to raid Social Security and other accounts when they felt like it. Rich Lowry provides an apologetic for Phil Gramm, saying that what he did didn’t precipitate the crisis and his deregulation didn’t contribute to the problems we have now. Out of all of this, Paul Weyrich salutes the poor sucker who gets to inherit the worst of this financial storm.
Using the bailout vote as an easy way to reinvent the fiscally conservative maverick, should Senator McCain and the Republicans choose to, however, looks like at least some members of Congress (if this anonymous e-mail really is from one) are not feeling optimism about actual reforms, and if the negotiations on what's supposedly been agreed to are accurate, then they’ve already gone to the deck chairs phase and aren’t really sggesting much for real oversight or reform. Glenn Greenwald provides hope in that Republicans are suddenly rediscovering their small-government principles, although potentially in a cynical and manipulative manner, when faced with the potential prospect of a President that isn’t of their party, because over the last eight years, tehy certainly haven't been opposing the unchecked expansion of executive power and the idea that such expanded powers are unanswerable to either Congress or the courts.
It is still true, however, that the only proper response to someone asking for kingly powers and money to do things without oversight or accountabilty is "No.". Possibly even “No fucking way.” if one feels profane about it.
Brett Joshpe condemns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an evil man and dismisses any attempt to meet with him and do diplomacy as pointless and fruitless, as Frank J. Gafney, Jr. declares Senator Obama to be working against America's interests, with people dedicated to the destruction of America, according to his past associations and current willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad.
In candidates, Salena Zito thinks the union vote won't be a lock for Senator Obama, but blames it on his supposed inability to relate to working-class members, something that Senator McCain is apparently able to do. On the other side, Zito quotes several people saying that the problem some union members have with Obama is his race. I can safely say that neither candidate probably has a copmlete idea of what living in, say, Detroit on the UAW salary is. I’m not so sure that the race allegation is right, but I’m pretty sure that Senator McCain is not a person that favors unions, whether in their current form or conceptually. What this whole opinion really says is that people are unique and vote for the candidate that they want to, rather than in some sort of brainwashed lockstep based on what the union boss (or the church pastor) says.
What, precisely, is the McCain campaign up to by having two noted antigay people as the Pres and VP, but a chief of campaign that, while not out completey, shows many of the signs (with some support) that is gay? Are they stringing along the far right social conservatives? Does Pailn truly believe and not know yet? Has the chief of staff sold out? Or is he trying to sneak himself into such an administration to subvert any McCain-Palin attempts to force homosexuals to stay hidden or be arrested/beaten/killed? What’s going on here, anyway?
Plus, The 15 people the next President should listen to if he (or she, depending) wants to have a good presidency, including looking at water supplies now, keeping anthropologists in with the military units, making Washington more like the Web, and be ready for the new extremes in weather and climate.
In science and technology, doing research on why stories captivate us the way they do, and noting that those who like and enjoy stories often do better relating to other people, The Agnostic&Apos;s Prayer, a delightfully nondenominational wishing of benefits in whatever after-death experience one may have, a one-atom thick balloon, made of grapheme, interesting designs and claims in a new bed, a reconstruction of the face of the Neanderthal named Wilma, continuing to improve on solar cell design, common birds on the decline, due to habitat loss, the possibility of a more efficient oil shale extraction method, and Japan's bid to build a space elevator.
Last for tonight, the beauty of things that are designed to kill, or a picture of a bullet just exiting the last of four pieces of chalk in a row, and the killing of things that were designed to be beautiful (well, maybe), through Project Censored's Top 25 Censored stories of 2009, aiming to highlight the things that you haven’t heard on the news, from me, or anyone else, for that matter.
So, for a dose of this, and possibly to check off the list against, Michael Moore is giving away Slacker Uprising, his latest movie, for free in the United States and Canada... but i doubt somehow that it’s going to stay there for long. Ah, and also, The Internationale, anthem of the USSR from 1917-1943, in several languages, so that we can study multiple examples in the same session.
International news of the Weird begins with an account of a dead horse on the 12th flor of an apartment block, noticed mostly because the decomposing body stunk pretty bad, and the remains were apparently in a ventilation shaft. How weird.
More seriously, The United Nations doesn't know if Iran has a military nuke program, because they can't seem to get access to anything that would confirm or deny, vehicular attack in Israel, more problems with cartoons in Iraq, even as Iraq and Shell sign a natural gas deal
Domestically, gas shortages mean temporary closures for stations, based on the refineries around them closing. Another unintended consequence of our economy dying, or just that we’ve got so much demand and never built refinery capacity to match?
Calls from representatives to begin building weapons in space, not to fend off what might be an ET threat, but to turn back on other people living on Terra, because they assume that the other people are building weapons to be deployed in sapce to shoot them with, and they want to be first. You know, for as much as I hope for something like the Star Trek future, I keep wondering whether we’re going to end up with the B5 or the Firefly future. To furher the depressing mood, expect weapons that use lasers to temporarily blind people to appear at your next antiwar rally... well, maybe the one afterwards, after things filter down from the military to riot control. Unless the military is going to be used as riot control. And then, you might see them coordinating and firing in a totally silent manner, as they communicate with each other through brainwave-enabled helmets, using very high frequency communications to download and upload lots of data to each other.
And the TSA will now attempt to read you mind for malintent, using a system called MALINTENT, and see if you're planning a terror attack. It can supposedly distinguish between ordinary artificially-induced anxieties as to whether one will be capriciously and Unaccountably Randomly Searched and those with deliberate design or intent to cause grevious bodily harm. Good luck, then, with the irate businessman who just found out his stock options aren’t worth as much anymore, or the guy who found out on his vacation that he’s been fired and intends on making sure there’s a face-to-face afterward.
Search warrant served against a college student in connection with the Palin e-mail hack, because the anonymizer service he used cooperated with the government and gathered up what clues were left behind. I guess there realy is no such thing (yet) as truly anonymous browsing. Of course, the person who cracked the e-mail account should be prosecuted, but there should also be eyebrows raised about the Governor doing state business off her official e-mail account.
Dealing with opinions, Quite a fuss being made over the 2007 decision to retire Colonel Reb, a mascot of the University of Mississippi, of which The General has an idea or two on how to return Colonel Reb to prominence, perhaps by turning him into “Blind Jim”, a different part of the school’s history.
More finger-pointing in the matter of the financial crisis, including David Limbaugh's blaming the government for getting us into the mess, and the liberals for suggesting that more government is the solution to the mess, doing his level best to tiptoe gently around the knowledge that only eight of the last twenty-eight years of executive branch government have been under the supposedly fiscally conservative party, and both sides have been quite happy to raid Social Security and other accounts when they felt like it. Rich Lowry provides an apologetic for Phil Gramm, saying that what he did didn’t precipitate the crisis and his deregulation didn’t contribute to the problems we have now. Out of all of this, Paul Weyrich salutes the poor sucker who gets to inherit the worst of this financial storm.
Using the bailout vote as an easy way to reinvent the fiscally conservative maverick, should Senator McCain and the Republicans choose to, however, looks like at least some members of Congress (if this anonymous e-mail really is from one) are not feeling optimism about actual reforms, and if the negotiations on what's supposedly been agreed to are accurate, then they’ve already gone to the deck chairs phase and aren’t really sggesting much for real oversight or reform. Glenn Greenwald provides hope in that Republicans are suddenly rediscovering their small-government principles, although potentially in a cynical and manipulative manner, when faced with the potential prospect of a President that isn’t of their party, because over the last eight years, tehy certainly haven't been opposing the unchecked expansion of executive power and the idea that such expanded powers are unanswerable to either Congress or the courts.
It is still true, however, that the only proper response to someone asking for kingly powers and money to do things without oversight or accountabilty is "No.". Possibly even “No fucking way.” if one feels profane about it.
Brett Joshpe condemns Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as an evil man and dismisses any attempt to meet with him and do diplomacy as pointless and fruitless, as Frank J. Gafney, Jr. declares Senator Obama to be working against America's interests, with people dedicated to the destruction of America, according to his past associations and current willingness to sit down with Ahmadinejad.
In candidates, Salena Zito thinks the union vote won't be a lock for Senator Obama, but blames it on his supposed inability to relate to working-class members, something that Senator McCain is apparently able to do. On the other side, Zito quotes several people saying that the problem some union members have with Obama is his race. I can safely say that neither candidate probably has a copmlete idea of what living in, say, Detroit on the UAW salary is. I’m not so sure that the race allegation is right, but I’m pretty sure that Senator McCain is not a person that favors unions, whether in their current form or conceptually. What this whole opinion really says is that people are unique and vote for the candidate that they want to, rather than in some sort of brainwashed lockstep based on what the union boss (or the church pastor) says.
What, precisely, is the McCain campaign up to by having two noted antigay people as the Pres and VP, but a chief of campaign that, while not out completey, shows many of the signs (with some support) that is gay? Are they stringing along the far right social conservatives? Does Pailn truly believe and not know yet? Has the chief of staff sold out? Or is he trying to sneak himself into such an administration to subvert any McCain-Palin attempts to force homosexuals to stay hidden or be arrested/beaten/killed? What’s going on here, anyway?
Plus, The 15 people the next President should listen to if he (or she, depending) wants to have a good presidency, including looking at water supplies now, keeping anthropologists in with the military units, making Washington more like the Web, and be ready for the new extremes in weather and climate.
In science and technology, doing research on why stories captivate us the way they do, and noting that those who like and enjoy stories often do better relating to other people, The Agnostic&Apos;s Prayer, a delightfully nondenominational wishing of benefits in whatever after-death experience one may have, a one-atom thick balloon, made of grapheme, interesting designs and claims in a new bed, a reconstruction of the face of the Neanderthal named Wilma, continuing to improve on solar cell design, common birds on the decline, due to habitat loss, the possibility of a more efficient oil shale extraction method, and Japan's bid to build a space elevator.
Last for tonight, the beauty of things that are designed to kill, or a picture of a bullet just exiting the last of four pieces of chalk in a row, and the killing of things that were designed to be beautiful (well, maybe), through Project Censored's Top 25 Censored stories of 2009, aiming to highlight the things that you haven’t heard on the news, from me, or anyone else, for that matter.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 07:32 am (UTC)(preview button is your friend!)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 11:51 am (UTC)Actually, it just proves that the cracker was pretty incompetent (which, if anything, says even more about Palin, but I digress).
By using an anonymiser based in the US, he as basically inviting it. There are any number of anonymisers outside the US, many in countries not known for cooperating too well, and that's before any of the more advanced tricks available to the skilled blackhat come into play.
OTOH, I suspect and hope that Ctunnel.com is going to see a serious drop in the number of people using it, given how obsequious the owner is being...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-24 02:33 pm (UTC)I'm betting that Ctunnel suddenly finds itself with nobody, with the way the owner seems quite willing to hand over anything to the government. Yet running an anonymizer service generally implies that you're okay with people doing things the government shouldn't be able to track.
I guess this may or may not be a good question to ask in the United States, but in the hypothetical exercise that an actually skilled blackhat were going to go for it, what could we reasonably expect from them in terms of leaving evidence?