This week, in another stunning victory in The War on Terror™, the United States of America hunted down and brought to justice Javed Iqbal — a 42 year old, Staten Island, Satellite installer. Mr. Iqbal’s crime against America was that he programmed client’s satellite receivers to pick up al Manar - the Lebanese television station operated by Hezbollah.
In 2004, under executive order 13224, the Bush administration declared al Manar, the first ever, television terrorist entity. This meant that to give the station money is in effect supporting a terrorist organization. However, Mr. Iqbal did not sign up subscriptions for al Manar; he simply programed receivers to pick up the un-encrypted channel. To charge him with a crime is akin to charging your cable modem installer with supporting terrorism because you may download an al Qeeda webpage.
Thank God we are protecting our freedoms from those who want to destroy them.
BTW check your satellite receiver. If they have any of the following frequencies programed in, contact DHS immediately and report your installer — or you can wait, I’m sure they’ll be contacting you soon enough.
I am working on a number of open posts, but this annoyed me enough to open a quick window.
Harry Fuller, an editor at Cnet News, published an insipid editorial today regarding Stephen Colbert’s integration of television and online content. Originally I was not a fan of the Stephan Colbert Report, but the show has grown on me with its biting satire and it’s openness to sharing content online. This show may not be Fuller’s cup o tea, but his editorial is so ill informed about both Internet content and the television show it’s hard to believe he works for Cnet, which has been the source for Internet news for years.
Lat night Colbert challenged his Internet savvy audience to modify a green screen video of himself with a mock lightsabre. Fuller inexplicably criticizes Colbert:
But can you find that video on the Colbert’s site ? Of course not, you have to go to YouTube to see the videos fans produced. You can find segments from recent shows but not this under-generated video. Colbert thinks he can use the Web to force people to watch his TV show? Not too swift.
Well the first problem is that Fuller did not apparently look at Colbert’s website, but at Comedy Central’s site - for a guy who’s suppose to be an Internet news editor, that’s pretty dumb.
Secondly, this Internet expert fails to understand that the Internet is about distributed content - there is no reason why Colbert would need to hold all the content on his servers. The idea that content should be centralized is antithetical to every concept of new media distribution online. By utilizing services like You-Tube, Colbert is prototyping the future of media distribution. Fuller is hopelessly stuck in the television and radio models in which all content is controlled by a single source. For that reason alone he should cease to opine his mis-begotten notions on an Internet news site.
Net Neutrality
Two excellent essays out today:
Glen Greenwald examines the use of this week’s terrorist threat as a right-wing trop to justify this administration’s blatant violations of the FISA law. Greenwald is dead on in his analysis of the situation.
Bruce Schneier (of Applied Cryptography fame) published an excellent Op-Ed in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Schneier states what I’ve been saying for a very long time, but does so far more eloquently and briefly then I seem to be able to:
The goal of a terrorist is to cause terror. Last week’s arrests demonstrate how real security doesn’t focus on possible terrorist tactics, but on the terrorists themselves. It’s a victory for intelligence and investigation, and a dramatic demonstration of how investments in these areas pay off.
And if you want to know what you can do to help? Don’t be terrorized. They terrorize more of us if they kill some of us, but the dead are beside the point. If we give in to fear, the terrorists achieve their goal even if they were arrested. If we refuse to be terrorized, then they lose — even if their attacks succeed.
war on terror
I was going through and cleaning up some directories and e-mail this morning and ran across a smattering of things that have been annoying me. So here goes:
In general, it seems that if you are a large organization or have an ideology to push you need to have a mascot in order to explain yourselves to kids. Most of these are poorly rendered, pointless, or just plain silly. Yet, they are an obvious attempt to indoctrinate children into certain beliefs - no matter how complex the issues are.
First up:
Captain Copyright is the Canadian based protector of copyright holders and the nemesis of xerox machines everywhere. Captain © has his origins as a geeky teenage illustrator, whose work is stolen by the school bully. He somehow magically transforms into a muscular intellectual property vigilante. But like most vigilantes the minions of Captain Copyright seem to overstep the bounds of common sense on a regular basis.
A few weeks ago it was revealed that the RIAA was sending Cease and Desist letters to kids who posted videos of themselves dancing to YouTube. Yes, the kids were dancing to music that they hadn’t paid royalties for - so they had no right to record and post their activities. Those fiends. Thank god the RIAA can swoop in an save the rights of such unfortunates as Brittany Spears and others. If only the kids posting would have read Captain Copyright they would have learned that crime never pays.
BTW Captain Copyright, I am protected by your arch-villain Fair Use
Next:
Broadband, the morbidly obese, feline mascot of the FCC is both the most apt and pathetic of the government agency mascots. As I have been the owner of several corpulent cats, I can testify to their slothful and content nature. It is not a coincidence that this mascot should be named Broadband - as the FCC characterizes broadband connectivity as any data transmission speed exceeding 200 Kb/s. This is approximately 1/10th the speed considered acceptable in the rest of the industrialized world.
Meanwhile, it was recently announced that France Télécom is, in a pilot program, is laying fiber to homes in Paris to provide users with 2.5 Gb/s of connectivity, about 13,000 times the speed the FCC considers ‘high speed’. The French connectivity will include digital television and unlimited phone calls for about $88 per month. Meanwhile the US continues to fall behind in global connectivity rankings. Yet, nearly ten years ago we were promised higher speeds for reduced regulation, but we have only received higher bills and fewer choices. Perhaps if the FCC was more aggressive in fostering competition instead of consolidation we would not be all lining the pockets of the fat cats at the big telco and cable companies.
And:
The Crypto Kids are the NSA’s attempt to reach out to kids for acceptance and recruitment. Yes, the agency that was once so secret its very existence was denied is now represented by, among others, a fox named Rosetta Stone who is said to work as a language analyst, and a tortoise named T. Top, whose apparently suppose to signify the slacking hacker of the bunch.
In general I have great admiration for the people who work at the NSA. They perform some of the most demanding and complex work imaginable. However recent disclosures of certain NSA activities have led the administration to portray the organization as some type of shadowy security overlord. As an agency with so much power and technology that to question its activity in any way would irreparably harm national security, and label the questioner as unpatriotic. Yesterday the 11th district court handed down a ruling which could allow for the prosecution of reporters who disclose NSA activity.
I have been in recent discussions involving cryptography in which the majority of people have cited that all powerful NSA could break, or already had master keys, for any publicly available cryptographic systems (they don’t). This attitude coupled with the administration’s desire to make the NSA seem omnipresent, by limiting knowledge of its wiretapping activity, seem designed to create the perception of an ever present state security force. By focusing on particular NSA desired skills the CryptoKids suggests an organization of technocrats, simply follow orders regardless of law. No where, that I could find, does the site speak of the law, the Constitution, or the trust of the people given to the NSA. Though the characters are cute - the CyptoKids, to me, has a kind of big brother meets the Balilla overtone. One that’s a bit scarier then just odd.
Postscript:
There are a couple of other mascots I want to mention, just because I find them a little bizarre:
- Numerous people in the past have commented on Rex, the DHS preparedness mountain lion - I’ve never been able to figure out how a mountain lion equates with preparedness.
- There is something tragically sad about the DoE ARM’s (Atmospheric Radiation Measurement) Professor Polar Bear, who’s measuring the loss of Alaskan ice sheets
- And of course, there’s the DOE’s Dr.E, a monkey who espouses the benefits of alternative energy. For could take a monkey seriously?
Crypto,
humor,
mascots
I was listening to the BBC coverage of the foiled terrorist plot today at work, and I was struck by one American women’s reaction. The woman (whose name unfortunately I didn’t note) kept pushing her point that the problem was Muslims and their drive towards the “islamicization of the world”. I immediately began sensing that there is a rising tide of bigotry and hatred in America. A quick poking around some of the more right-wing websites revealed my observation to be more accurate then I first thought (note: I will not, for my own reasons, provide direct links):
There has never been anything in the history of the human race as vile as Islam. Nazism was not as vile as Islam. Islam is the most vile, and degenerate social construction ever devised by the human race. It is as close to Satanic evil, as it is possible to be. . . Islam is the manifestation of hatred of G-d, so it first seeks to destroy the human soul, G-d’s most noble creation. - LGF
Granted, the more time goes on and the more I see, the more I am convinced that “islamic fascism” is redundant, as I think the number of truly moderate muslims can usually be counted on one’s fingers (assuming muslims haven’t already chopped them off for some perceived offense). - HotAir
There are more, but I was feeling a bit ill.
Additionally, in a recent Gallop poll 51% believe that Muslims living in the America are not loyal. 41% believe Muslims should undergo greater security scrutiny, and 39% believe that Muslims should be required to carry special papers.
The demonisation of large groups in America is nothing new. Americans prefer their narratives simple and clean: blackhat/whitehat, redman/whiteman, terrorists/christians, us/them. Americans want be able to easily identify the enemy by accent, skin color, or facial characteristics. We love consistency, but enjoy the occasional plot twist (the clean cut double agent, the the bribed loyal assistant, etc). The world view, however, always tries to remain black and white. Of course, this simple dichotomy leaves us with about as much understanding and depth as your average Bruce Willis movie.
The real problem - outside of the immorality of it all - is that this view creates a condition of constant war with an endgame of genocide. For if an entire inhuman group is out to destroy you what other choices do you have? This overly simplified attitude means that we can never engage, in any meaningful way, the larger Islamic world. For how can you seriously conduct diplomacy with a group you have decided is sub-human? You can’t.
Terrorists, in today’s world, use religious extremism to fuel their ranks. Any religious extremism is dangerous and cannot be easily defeated. This is because, like bigotry, it cannot be reasoned with. For the believer it is an issue of faith. Extremist faith cannot be discerned by security screenings, sir names, or nose shape. All major religions have extremist adherents, but extremism is always a minority point of view - regardless of how loud they are, how much media coverage they get, or how much violence they perpetrate. If Americans continue down the path of the simple growing narrative of Islamic=bad then we will drive more moderate religious elements into the extreme. If you have any doubt look at how other religious groups call attention to their ‘persecution’ to bring forth new members - in some cases those groups are not even being bombed. This narrative has only on ending, a simple one, which requires us to start building camps and digging graves now.
Religious Bigotry,
war on terror
The BBC is reporting that MI5 and Scotland Yard have discovered a terrorist plot to blow up several transatlantic flights with liquid explosives. It’s always good to see government agency actually performing their jobs correctly.
It was the liquid explosives that caught my eye in the story. Wasn’t it liquid explosives that went missing from Al-Qaqaa? And didn’t the right-wing pundits and blogs eviscerate John Kerry for bringing this up?
This morning I received an unusual spam e-mail from the company I purchase my gardening supplies from. The e-mail was not urging me to seed my lawn, but to spread a type of fertilizer; to wit, it was requesting that I contact CBS to complain about its promotion of homosexuality. I immediately responded to the owner of outsidepride.com*, and informed him that I didn’t agree with his position and would not be doing anymore business with them.
So I wondered all day if I should post about this or not. The more I thought about it though, the more annoyed I became. Why was I annoyed though?
Was I upset that he had mixed his politics with his business? No. Our coffeehouse is makes no bones about its political leanings - we hold left wing meetings, show films, and our front window sports an “Impeach Bush” sign. Our business, unlike outsidepride, however, does not pretend to be neutral. Yet, their president was obviously driven to make his views known — though I would have suggested a blog, rather then the advertising list of his company, I cannot fault him for his desire to speak out.
Was it simply because Mr. Hake held a view diametrically opposed to my own? Yes, partially. I am well aware of my own desire to share opinions with people whom I agree with, then not. But that’s not the bulk of it.
The reason Mr Hake’s e-mail annoyed me was its tone and content. The fertilizer salesman issued an edict declaring that “homosexuality is morally wrong” and that we “can bring back the Christian heritage this country was founded on because it is, “In God We Trust.”" Aside from his poor knowledge of history (In God We Trust did not become the national motto until 1956 when it replaced E Pluribus Unum), Mr Hake’s makes use of the the same old, tired, bigoted, rhetoric: “There was Adam and then there was Eve, not Adam and Steve.” If this man is to be believed, he has tens of thousands of people subscribed to his mailing list — hard to believe, but possible — who he has called upon to spread intolerance and ignorance.
Mr Hake states he was prompted to call upon his cadre of lawn care commandos while watching television with his children when he was assaulted by two prime-time dramas featuring main characters who were homosexual. His children, of course, must be protected from the knowledge that gays and lesbians exist — lest they run off to become one or the other. Mr Hake states, “I am NOT trying to bash homosexuals and I am not a bigot”; he simply doesn’t want their existence acknowledged as anything other than as social deviants. When I here comments like this, I often believe that people like Mr Hake simply don’t like anyone unlike themselves being portrayed on television. And I wonder if this man would would have issued the same clarion call about an inter-racial couple 20 years ago. . . .
Nonetheless, I will no longer be doing business with Mr. Hake or his company.
\* This e-mail was sent to a bulk mailing list with a nulled return address. I find this very cowardly of the author. He made inflammatory statements which he refused to hear replies to. It was, however, easy enough to find his e-mail address (troyh@outsidepride.com) in order to send my response. But I doubt others went to the trouble. If you are a customer - please contact Mr. Hake and let him know how you feel — He expressed his feelings to you, you should return the favor
Update: Pam at Pandagon has also blogged on this, and a number of readers have commented on the Gay friendly name presented by outsidepride.com. BTW Pandagon is one of my frequent reads — always interesting stuff.
Religious Bigotry,
Wingnuts
