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Friday, July 26, 2002
Okay, I lied, part two Or, every time I try to get out, they pull me back in. A reader forwards this sign of the times: A Secret Service agent has admitted he scrawled anti-Muslim statements on a prayer calendar during the home search of a man charged with smuggling bogus checks into the United States, authorities said Thursday... Shishani's brother, Abdallah Shishani, said he and his wife found that "Islam is Evil" and "Christ is King" had been written on the prayer calendar attached to the refrigerator.
Okay, I lied One more. This is extraordinary: The saga began with a misguided fit of patriotism mere weeks after the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, when a corporate employee handed over the records—almost literally, the grocery lists—to federal investigators from three agencies that had never even requested them. In a flash, the most quotidian of exchanges became fodder for the Patriot Act... As John Ashcroft's Citizens Corps spy program prepares for its debut next month, it seems scores of American companies have already become willing snitches. A few months ago, the Privacy Council surveyed executives from 22 companies in the travel industry—not just airlines but hotels, car rental services, and travel agencies—and found that 64 percent of respondents had turned over information to investigators and 59 percent had lowered their resistance to such demands. In that sampling, conducted with The Boston Globe, half of the businesses said they hadn't decided if they'd inform customers of the change, and more than a third said outright that they wouldn't. Only three said they would go public about the level of their cooperation with law enforcement. The final destination of all that data scares Ponemon and other civil libertarians, defenders of the Fourth Amendment prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure. Ponemon, for one, suggests federal authorities are plugging the information into algorithms, using the complex formulas to create a picture of general-population trends that can be contrasted with the lifestyles of known terrorists. If your habits match, expect further scrutiny at the least. "I can't reveal my source, but a federal agency involved in espionage actually did a rating system of almost every citizen in this country," Ponemon claims. "It was based on all sorts of information—public sources, private sources. If people are not opted in"—meaning they haven't chosen to participate—"one can generally assume that information was gathered through an illegal system." After crunching those numbers through the algorithm, he says, its creators fed in the files of the 9-11 terrorists as a test. "The model showed 89.7 percent accuracy 'predicting' these people from rest of population," Ponemon reports. Oddly enough, "one of the factors was if you were a person who frequently ordered pizza and paid with a credit card," Ponemon says, describing the buying habits of a nation of college students. "Sometimes data leads to an empirical inference when you add it to other variables. Whether this one is relevant or completely spurious remains to be seen, but those kinds of weird things happen with data." It gets worse.
From one American to another! New in the Grab Bag--the Kool Aid Scouts of the Stars and Stripes window placard (front and back)--sent in by reader "Spiney," who thinks their nifty hats would work well for the Junior Homeland Security Patrol. I think that's it for me for now; I have other duties to attend to. Readers in search of late-breaking links and commentary are advised to try Tapped or Cursor. See you on Monday, or maybe Tuesday--until somebody starts sending me a paycheck for the time I put into this thing, I make no promises. -------------------- Thursday, July 25, 2002
And an update I see that Eric Alterman has backed off from his too-bad-about-the-dead-kids-this-is-war blog entry yesterday. But eighteen-year-old conservative columnist Ben Shapiro picks up the ball and runs with it: I am getting really sick of people who whine about "civilian casualties." Maybe I'm a hard-hearted guy, but when I see in the newspapers that civilians in Afghanistan or the West Bank were killed by American or Israeli troops, I don't really care. In fact, I would rather that the good guys use the Air Force to kill the bad guys, even if that means some civilians get killed along the way. One American soldier is worth far more than an Afghan civilian. Link via Tapped.
New frontiers in advertising There's an article on page B-8 of today's Wall Street Journal which describes a disturbing trend in California--ATM advertising. Willis Culver was visiting a Bank of America ATM...when he was interrupted by the voice of veteran newscaster Connie Chung booming out of his ATM machine, inviting him to tune in to see her new show on CNN. Bank of America already charges $1.50 per transaction if you want to see an actual human teller rather than use the ATM. Now, customers have the choice of paying the buck fifty or listening to an annoying five-to-seven second advertisement every time they need to make a bank transaction. Larry Goodman, the president of CNN ad sales enthuses, "We didn't have to be convinced...it was innovative and hadn't been done before, it was a place to have some exclusivity." Sure, Larry. And just think of all the good will BofA is going to build up among its customers. I used to have a BofA account, back when I lived in the land of milk and honey, and I'll tell you this: if I were still a California resident, I would avoid BofA like the damn plague if I had to listen to Connie Chung every time I needed some cash. (Californians reading this blog may want to consider acting in my stead.) The irony of this or any other "innovative"--i.e., invasive--advertising technique is that advertising doesn't work. That's the dirty little secret which those of us who earn our living from any commercial print or broadcast medium would probably be wise to leave unspoken, but think about it--it's really one of the major lessons of the dot-com bust, the one inarguable lesson of the past ten years. For the first time in history, advertisers were actually able to track the effectiveness of their ads, to count the exact number of people who were paying any attention whatsoever to their sales pitches--and it turned out that for the most part, no one was. No one's been able to make any money online using an advertising-supported model because tracking the response to a given ad is no longer a matter of guesswork and sales charts and demographic profiles and chicken entrails--it's a simple matter of looking at server logs. And--surprise, surprise--the vast majority of human beings will go out of their way to ignore advertising. We don't click on your damned popup ads, and we mute your commercials, and we skip over your magazine supplements. (Is this theft, as the ad industry argues? Well, given the hefty chunk I pay for cable tv and magazine and newspaper subscriptions each month, I sure don't feel like a thief.) And okay, sure, I'm overstating the case. Advertising has some degree of effectiveness. Coke and Pepsi have each spent untold billions to establish brand awareness, and at some point early in my life, I decided that I prefer the taste of Coke, and that's what I tend to buy when I'm in the mood for a refreshing can of carbonated sugar water. So Coke's investment paid off in some small way, and Pepsi's did not. But the ratio of return for dollar invested is, I would bet, far smaller than the advertising industry pretends, and this is what the failure of online advertising has made clear. So they look for new ways to grab our attention, blaring their pitches before you make an ATM withdrawal or a cell call or use a public bathroom, or whatever it may be. And it becomes part of the landscape, one more thing to tune out--a skill at which we are all becoming increasingly adept. It becomes an escalating cycle; the more they shove it down our throats, the more inured we become to it all. And as long as we all pretend that online advertising was just some sort of weird aberration, from which no larger lessons can possibly be drawn, then we can all keep rolling along, playing our respective roles. By the way, have you tried the great new taste of Vanilla Coke? Go on--reward your curiosity! And don't forget to watch Connie Chung on CNN.
The trouble with Greens From an article by my friend Micah Sifry, who is hardly an apologist for the Democratic party: The Dow crashes another 390 points, another one of the world's largest corporations files for bankruptcy, and half the country prepares to delay retirements or send the kids to community college. A new phrase, "corporate crime," replaces "white-collar crime" in the mainstream lexicon. And worried Democrats and Republicans hastily promise a switch to a pro-consumer cookbook, after having fed America a strict menu of deregulatory dishes at the behest of their big- money sponsors for the last 20 years. If this isn't the moment for a third-party challenge, I don't know what is. Enter the Greens. Or rather, wake them up first so they can stumble through the wide-open door. How else to explain the remarks of Peter Miguel Camejo, a savvy investor who is the Green Party candidate for governor of California? At the party's first midterm convention in Philadelphia, Camejo ratcheted up the rhetoric on behalf of solar energy and the World Court. Excuse me? Handed the juiciest hunk of red meat they've ever seen in their activist lives, Greens are showing that, despite their recent growth, they remain political vegans. Camejo of all people should know better. He is, after all, a successful independent money manager and a trustee of the Contra Costa County Employee Retirement Association. With California's pensioners hit hard by the market's decline, and new revelations that directors of the CALPERS pension plan own stock and have raised campaign contributions from the same companies the huge fund invests in, you'd think that Camejo would be raising the alarm, casting himself as defender of the little guy. But no. He leads his press conference with politically correct pablum. "The Democrats and Republicans are running 14 white men and no women for the seven statewide offices," he noted, whereas the Greens have a Latino and an African-American woman at the top of the ticket, and a much more diverse slate overall. "We are for a living wage, affordable housing, against racial profiling, for renewable energy, and want to save the last 4 percent of ancient forests," he continued. "We favor a World Court and the rule of international law. We're against the death penalty and for universal health care." It's a worthy progressive catechism, and may draw a handful of liberal voters disgusted by Governor Gray Davis' relentless moneygrubbing. But it's hardly the sort of message to reach millions of political independents nervously fingering their thinning wallets. Most Greens, it seems, are too anti-materialist to own mutual funds (or admit that they do), and their anti-corporate fervor is still mainly rooted in environmental concerns rather than more populist lunch-pail worries. * * * At least Camejo didn't begin like David Bacon, the Greens' gubernatorial candidate in New Mexico, who told the assembled press, "I drive a Volkswagen that runs on pure vegetable oil." Micah is right--if ever there was a moment for the Greens to make a mark, this is it. And last night on Donahue, it was extraordinary to see Ralph Nader, speaking on corporate abuses, receiving thunderous applause from an auditorium full of ex-Enron employees in Houston--most of whom, it can plausibly be assumed, probably voted for George W. Bush. (They say a conservative is a liberal who's been mugged. Maybe it will turn out that more than a few progressives are conservatives who got mugged by crony capitalism.) (Last night's show was live, but at the end, Donahue said they were going to extend it into a second hour--I would guess that it'll be on tonight.) But the Greens can also be their own worst enemies, and what they're doing in Minnesota makes me pretty uneasy. Okay, you can argue that Wellstone isn't as progressive as you'd like, and you've certainly got the right to mount a challenge because of it--but the guy they're running, Ed McGaa, doesn't exactly seem to be an unabashed champion of progressive values himself, as Ruth Conniff noted a couple of months ago: "We want to give people in Minnesota the opportunity to vote their conscience . If they're opposed to military actions in the Middle East, the Patriot Act, the sanctions on Iraq," says Brian. The funny thing is, though, the Green candidate for Senate doesn't seem to share his party's position on those issues. Ed McGaa takes exception to the part of the Green Party platform that opposes the war on terrorism. As a Korean War vet, he says he believes constructive military intervention is sometimes warranted. He remains proud of his 110 combat missions in Vietnam and is still a staunch anti-communist. Some response was needed to September 11, he adds. * * * At the end of the day, somehow the Minnesota Greens fielded a candidate in the most-watched Senate race in the nation whom they aren't sure supports their platform. There is talk of another Green candidate mounting a primary challenge against McGaa in September. "Then there are others of us who want to continue to work with Ed to kind of try to mold him into our kind of candidate," says Brian, adding, "It's been a rough week." * * * "I'm an American Indian. We're not as analytical as you folks are," McGaa says when pressed on the spoiler issue. "We observe and go forth with our life. I come from a different background. We are more sharing and generous. We're less materialistic. We're more culturally oriented. So I have different values to bring to the table." Complete article here. This could be the year in which the Greens' much-needed critique of corporate political influence actually has an impact on public discourse, actually reaches people who need to be reached, people who don't eat vegan diets and drive vegetable oil cars. Or it could be the year in which the Greens head further down the predictable path of insurgent third parties, disintegrating into utter irrelevancy. Personally, I'm not sure that running a staunch anti-communist, pro-war candidate who claims his people are "not as analytical as you folks are" is really the way to go. As many of you know, I supported Nader, and I believe the importance of his analysis of the bought-and-paid-for American political system grows more apparent by the hour--but that doesn't mean I support the Green party unthinkingly. If I lived in Minnesota, I'd think long and hard before giving them my vote this year. UPDATE: Some thoughts on the subject from a TomPaine.com contributor: I admire Green Party Presidential candidate Ralph Nader. I also admire Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone of Minnesota. That might mean I'm principled. It might just mean I'm confused. It does mean that I feel obligated to do my small part to Thus, my plea to the Minnesota Greens: take a breath, put aside your anger at the Democrats, and act in your own best interests, as well as the nation's-- please reconsider your challenge to Senator Wellstone. And my plea to the Democrats: stop -------------------- Wednesday, July 24, 2002
Two quick ones before I call it a day Robert Kuttner (of The American Prospect) asks the very sensible question: "Can liberals save capitalism (again)?" In a few short weeks, America's political economy has been stunningly transformed. The Bush administration, the Republican Party and three decades of conservative ideology are facing a potential rout. Yesterday's conservative clichés are today's political embarrassments. Americans are getting a vivid if painful education about the limits of the marketplace and the salutary role of government. It will be a very long time before anyone can say with a straight face that markets always work better than governments. But market fundamentalism has been so ascendant for so long -- politically, culturally, financially -- that this is only the very beginning of an ideological sea change. It remains to be seen whether liberals will manage to save capitalism from itself, for the second time in the past 70 years. * * * Shifting gears: a lot of the archive links aren't working right, I know. This site relies heavily on Salon's server for our own archive, and things are kind of a mess over there right now--the orange cones are out, the jackhammers are driving the neighborhood crazy, that sort of thing. The good news, according to my pal Scott Rosenberg, is that the construction will be over eventually, and in the meantime, archive links will work if you substitute "archive" for "www" in the URL, i.e.,"http://archive.salon.com/rest-of-URL-here..." It's a pain in the ass, I know. But it's not like you're paying for any of this, now is it?
As if we don't have enough to worry about already, part two An asteroid discovered just weeks ago has become the most threatening object yet detected in space. A preliminary orbit suggests that 2002 NT7 is on an impact course with Earth and could strike the planet on 1 February, 2019 - although the uncertainties are large. Astronomers have given the object a rating on the so-called Palermo technical scale of threat of 0.06, making NT7 the first object to be given a positive value. From its brightness, astronomers estimate it is about two kilometres wide, large enough to cause continent-wide devastation on Earth. Just in case you were having an unexpected moment of serenity. More here.
And one more
To say that this blatant disregard for innocent life was justifiable because of the blatant disregard for innocent life exhibited by suicide bombers--well, isn't that--what's the phrase I want--? Oh yes. Moral equivalence. UPDATE: Case in point.
As if we don't have enough to worry about already Congress is on the verge of giving the entertainment industry the right to hack into your computer. Sponsored by Reps. Howard Berman, D-Calif., and Howard Coble, R-N.C., the measure would permit copyright holders to perform nearly unchecked electronic hacking if they have a "reasonable basis" to believe that piracy is taking place. Berman and Coble plan to introduce the 10-page bill this week. The legislation would immunize groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America from all state and federal laws if they disable, block or otherwise impair a "publicly accessible peer-to-peer network." Anyone whose computer was damaged in the process must receive the permission of the U.S. attorney general before filing a lawsuit, and a suit could be filed only if the actual monetary loss was more than $250. Maybe Hollywood can team up with the TIPS program and help keep an eye on our hard drives, once they are free from the unseemly burden of "state and federal laws." After all--the innocent have nothing to hide! Jesus H. Christ on a crutch. (Via August.)
Never an editor around when you need one From Michiko Kakutani's NY Times review of Ready, Steady, Go!, a history of London in the sixties, noted here due to Kakutani's unfortunate decision to write the entire review in the voice of Austin Powers: Crikey, it's been a long time. Finally somebody besides Dr. Evil's invented a time machine to take us back to the 60's. Not the best transport, I have to say — bit gummed up in the works — but does the job all the same. Back to the old U.K. — my time! Back to London at its swingingest, most smashing, most shagadelic, when I made my bones! When England — not America — had the mojo, when every man wanted to be me, and every dolly bird wanted to be with me! This cat Shawn Levy — journalist by profession, cultural historian by ambition — has written this book called "Ready, Steady, Go!" Actually he's pinched the title from that old show on the telly — that one with the switched-on chick, who said "fab" and "smashing" nearly as much as yours truly. Anyway, this Mr. Levy, he's got a serious case of nostalgia for My Time, when love was free, skirts were short, and wars were cold. Mr. Levy calls the London of the 60's "the party of all parties; the time of all times; the granddaddy of all golden moments; the seed of everything we're about." My bag exactly! It goes on like that, for the entire review. And this, remember, is someone whose job it is to tell us whether other writers are worth reading or not. Crikey!
What real Americans believe As was discussed in this space a few weeks back, conservative elitist Ann Coulter recently bestowed these pearls of wisdom upon her reading public: No matter what defeatist tack liberals take, real Americans are behind our troops 100 percent, behind John Ashcroft 100 percent, behind locking up suspected terrorists 100 percent, behind surveillance of Arabs 100 percent. Liberals become indignant when you question their patriotism, but simultaneously work overtime to give terrorists a cushion for the next attack and laugh at dumb Americans who love their country and hate the enemy. Well, not so fast. Consider these excerpts from an article from this morning's New York Times: Many religious conservatives who were most instrumental in pressing President Bush to appoint John Ashcroft as attorney general now say they have become deeply troubled by his actions as the leading public figure in the law enforcement drive against terrorism. Their dismay comes as several Bush advisers have begun complaining that Mr. Ashcroft, with his lifelong politician's fondness for attention, has projected himself too often and too forcefully. More significantly, they say privately that he seems to be overstating the evidence of terrorist threats. Most striking, however, is how some conservatives who were Mr. Ashcroft's biggest promoters for his cabinet appointment after he lost his re-election to the Senate in 2000 have lost enthusiasm. They cite his anti-terrorist positions as enhancing the kind of government power that they instinctively oppose. "His religious base is now quite troubled by what he's done," said Grover Norquist, a conservative strategist and president of Americans for Tax Reform. * * * Mr. Weyrich, a strong supporter of Mr. Ashcroft's presidential bid in 2000, said that during the weekly luncheon of about 60 social conservative groups he holds, the majority expressed concern about Mr. Ashcroft. "Because of what he's done," Mr. Weyrich said, "the grassroots enthusiasm for him has been tamped down." Complete story here. (Login required, yadda yadda; I tried to set this up with an automatic login generator but it didn't really work, so you're on your own.) And if that's not enough to persuade you that the belle of New Canaan may not have as firm a grip on the pulse of "real" America as she contends--it is, after all, from that supposed bastion of ultra-liberalism, the New York Times--here are a few sample responses to Tom Ridge's trial balloon about repealing Posse Comitatus, from the far right Free Republic message board (via Bartcop): --This is probably the most dangerous period in American history. --This is frightening on an Orwellian scale. --We are being sold down the river by republicans, --That was an asinine thing to say "giving soldiers arrest powers". --America is dead .... the police state curtains are descending. --March along, single file, "citizen" and be prepared to 'show your papers' as required... --Bush hasn't a clue. I doubt he has even read the US Constitution --Dubya can be trusted with these powers, he's our king! --Beware, that is what Hitler promised his people as he guided their neck into the noose. --I'd say many Americans are making the French look bold as of late. It's embarrassing. (More here.) Doesn't sound like a full hundred percent support, does it? Of course, Coulter always plays to her audience, and if this strain of skepticism continues to develop, I'm sure she'll adjust her commentary accordingly...
Don't count TIPS out yet The Justice Department is forging ahead with establishing a network of domestic tipsters - despite being dealt what may be a deathly blow to the plan: House Majority Leader Dick Armey, R-Texas, inserted a ban on the program in the bill to form a new Homeland Security Department. "The administration is continuing to pursue Operation TIPS. We're continuing with that course of action," Barbara Comstock, spokeswoman for Attorney General John Ashcroft, said in an interview. That was the same day Armey's committee approved the bill. "We believe the program represents an important resource and that it's been misrepresented to date." The American Civil Liberties Union declared that the program could turn utility workers into "government-sanctioned peeping Toms." . . . The outcry prompted the U.S. Postal Service to issue a statement Wednesday to make it clear that its 300,000-plus letter carriers nationwide hadn't signed on. Yet the plan has plenty of takers already. Labor unions that represent the nation's truck drivers and port workers stepped up to volunteer their "eyes Complete story here (via Sam Smith). * * * And while I truly hate to blow my own horn, I do feel compelled to reiterate that I called this one last March. (Of course, if I wanted to be immodest, I could also point out that small investors would have received much better advice from this cartoon over the past five years than from most of the financial experts on cable business shows combined...but that would be unseemly of me, wouldn't it?) -------------------- Tuesday, July 23, 2002
It's a funny old world... ...when one of the few people asking the obvious, sensible questions about our forthcoming adventure in Iraq is, yes, Pat Buchanan. First among them is why. Why, when Iraq was not involved in 9-11 and has never attacked us nor used biological or gas weapons on U.S. troops, are we launching this war on Iraq? Has deterrence failed us? How so? And who is the aggressor here? Second, how many U.S. dead and wounded may we expect, and how many U.S. troops will be needed to occupy Iraq? Will we be welcomed as liberators, only to be reviled as occupiers? Will Iraq become America's West Bank? Will we need to re-institute the draft for soldiers to occupy Iraq, while sustaining all the other global commitments we have undertaken since the end of the Cold War? * * * In other news: I've been accused of being a "tease," for my offhand reference to my Very Stupid Friday. The thing is, the day wasn't stupid in a wacky-ha-ha-crazy-misadventure kind of way; it was stupid in a stuck-in-traffic-for-six-hours-until-you-finally-give-up-and-turn-around kind of way. We were supposed to visit some friends for the weekend, but we never made it more than forty miles out of the city--we were simply unable to escape the gravitational mass of the greater metropolitan area. Poor dog spent the whole time asleep in the back seat, and at the end, found himself right back where we'd started. And he hopped out of the car and wagged his tail and was perfectly happy to be home. What a trooper. As long as the pack's together, it doesn't really much matter to him what we're doing. -------------------- Monday, July 22, 2002
Taps for TIPS? Apparently so. And it looks like we have Dick Armey to thank. (This happened on Friday, when I was off having one of the stupidest days I've had in recent memory. I have not decided whether to write about it, or simply pretend it never happened.) * * * Probably going to be a skimpy blog for a day or two, so keep your expectations low. --------------------
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