August 2002 - cypherpunks-legacy

Ann Thrax attack at the new york times.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Ann "Thrax" Coulter's interview with the New York Observer's George Gurly, in which she voiced regret that journalists at the NY Times have not been murdered by terrorists. In that interview, Thrax defends her rhetoric this way: "I know when I'm baiting them, it's so easy to bait them and they always bite. That is my signature style, to start with the wild, bald, McCarthyite overstatements -- seemingly --and then back it up with methodical and laborious research." True to form as liberals, we and others have bitten, responding with outrage and nausea to Thrax's expression of support for the the murder of journalists. (Or what reader John Feer has affectionately called her "girlish homicidal dementia.") So now that the liberals are sufficiently baited, it's time to move on to Phase Two of Thrax's special game. And we're extremely curious as to what her "methodical and laborious research" will yield here, as well as how she might use it to "back up" the idea that it's regrettable those working for the New York Times have not been killed by terrorists. We can't wait to hear Thrax's follow-up. In the meantime, why not help Ann "Thrax" Coulter methodically and laboriously research her argument? Readers: Send us examples of those historical figures whom top conservative thinkers like Thrax would like terrorists to emulate - those who have used extreme violence against journalists as an effective means of eliminating their viewpoints. Perhaps Thrax can then rely on some of your research to "back up" her view that it's regrettable the same has not happened to those journalists who work for the New York Times. As we also noted earlier, Ann Coulter is recommended/linked by Slate.com's Mickey Kaus. Another prominent conservative Mickey promotes and provides a permanent link is Lucianne Goldberg. Today's "Quote of the Day" at Lucianne.com: Quote of the day: "My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times Building." -Ann Coulter in an interview with the New York Observer. Also from 'atticus.' MWO. "...Coulter, and the others on this list of pundits, would no doubt strenuously deny this argument, but replace the word 'liberals' or 'the left' in their writings with the word 'Jew or Jews,' and what kind of invective does this speech begin to resemble? Coulter et. al are quick to accuse their caricatured 'Left' of 'hate,' but I think what we now can see is that this clique of rightists have gone from creating the caricature to attack to believing the caricature to be real. In this sense, I think there is a real parallel to developments on the right in the US and disturbing tendencies in many countries prior to bouts of extreme violence and ethnic cleansing that is no longer rooted in politics. It is rooted, rather, in the irrational identification of a caricatured class of hated people with ones real fellow citizens. As we know, in the US, Germany, Italy, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Cambodia, all of Eastern Europe and the former USSR, in France, and even in England, the widespread belief in a caricatured evil doer (the 'Negro,' the 'Jew', the 'Communist', the 'Kulak') can quickly, and very unexpectedly, translate into widespread violence and socially sanctioned murder. It's a very bad fire to play with. I remember hearing two songs by Peter Gabriel in 1980 that really made me think. One, of course, was 'Biko,' the song Gabriel wrote to commemorate the murder of Steve Biko in Port Elizabeth, South Africa in 1977. The other was 'Games without Frontiers,' particularly the line: Adolph builds a bonfire and Enrico plays with it. I think the meaning is pretty clear, and that's the bonfire with which the pundits on your list are playing. They may like their monkey games now, but will they enjoy the fruits of the barbecue so well? Best regards as always, Atticus Finch MWO.

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DG on ruprechkt
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Murdoch's Grand Wishes for Net Control CNet: Media chief decries Net's moral fiber. The president of media giant News Corp. warns that the Internet has become a "moral-free zone," with the medium's future threatened by pornography, spam and rampant piracy. The word "hypocrite" is grossly insufficient to describe Peter Chernin and his corporate master, Rupert Murdoch, but it'll have to do for now. News Corp. has done more to bring down the level of journalism and entertainment than perhaps any other organization on the planet. These are the people responsible for much of the tabloidization of the press. These are the owners of the putrid Fox TV network. News Corp. is a member in good standing of the entertainment and information cartel that is trying to capture absolute control of all digital information. It is attacking the users -- the customers -- of technology and entertainment, in a profound and damaging way. If you believe the garbage you see on the Fox network, and in Rupert Murdoch's right-wing tabloids (which play up sex when it sells; note the bare-breasted women in its British newspapers), then you'll believe anything. If you have an ounce of independence of thought, you will find remarks like Chernin's some of the most dangerous rhetoric yet. ( Posted by Dan Gillmor, 08/21/2002 01:36 PM PDT

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Aguirre,the wrath of god.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Houston Police Arrest 278 People Outside Kmart (MLP) By thebabelfish Tue Aug 20th, 2002 at 10:02:32 PM EST On Sunday, "scores of Houston police officers swarmed onto the Kmart parking lot in the 8400 block of Westheimer about 12:30 a.m. Sunday and arrested about 425 people for criminal trespassing, a misdemeanor." In a follow-up, the number of people arrested is reported as 278, lower, but still quite a few. Apparently, the reason behind the raid was to arrest illegal drag racers. Upon getting there though and finding no drag race or racers, the captain in charge, Mark Aguirre, gave the "utterly, utterly senseless" (in the words of an officer at the scene) order to round up everyone... The arrests were indiscriminate; everyone in the parking lot at the time of the raid was arrested without question. When asked, police said that everybody was "receiving equal treatment from the Houston Police Department"; whatever people were doing at the time didn't matter, they were simply handcuffed and arrested. One 18-year old teen said: We went to use the restroom at Kmart and to buy a Scrunchi, and when we came back to our car, cops were coming in [the parking lot] and they tied our hands. Another who was arrested said all she "was doing was eating ice cream" from a restaurant that adjoined the parking lot. Even a 10-year old girl who was having dinner with her father was seperated from her father, arrested, and sent to a juvenile detention facility. Many parents whose children had been arrested didn't know about the arrests until Monday morning and were forced to spend the whole night worrying about their children who didn't come home that night. "I didn't sleep all night waiting for my son to come home" said a sobbing [Soneary] Sy, a Cambodian immigrant who moved to Houston 22 years ago. "He tried to go to Kmart and as soon as he got to Kmart he was arrested." Reading about this raid shocked me. The police came to arrest drag racers, but ended up arresting everyone at the scene. Of the 278 arrested, only 42 were cited as violating the Houston curfew of midnight-6:00 am, so why did Mark Aguirre feel the need to round up everyone there and charge them with criminal trespass? Officers involved in the arrests are also questioning Aguirre's decision: "I couldn't believe we were being told to arrest all those kids. It was just utterly, utterly senseless," said one officer involved, who violated department policy by discussing the arrests and spoke on condition of anonymity. "Captain Aguirre was put in charge, and it went to hell in a handbasket," said a police supervisor who was at the scene, also violating department policy and requesting anonymity. Apparently though, Aguirre has a history of making bad judgements in regard to department policy during his 20 years with the Houston Police Department. The most recent was "an allegation that Aguirre used foul and threatening language to his subordinates" This "garnered the captain a written reprimand from Bradford, which was overturned by an arbitrator." http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/8/20/17504/9831 Police like this make my job too easy.

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1/4 billion waste of time.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,778070,00.html War game was fixed to ensure American victory, claims general Julian Borger in Washington Wednesday August 21, 2002 The Guardian The biggest war game in US military history, staged this month at a cost of £165m with 13,000 troops, was rigged to ensure that the Americans beat their "Middle Eastern" adversaries, according to one of the main participants. General Paul Van Riper, a retired marine lieutenant-general, told the Army Times that the sprawling three-week millennium challenge exercises, were "almost entirely scripted to ensure a [US] win". He protested by quitting his role as commander of enemy forces, and warning that the Pentagon might wrongly conclude that its experimental tactics were working. When Gen Van Riper agreed to command the forces of an unnamed Middle Eastern state - which bore a strong re semblance to Iraq, but could have been Iran - he thought he would be given a free rein to probe US weaknesses. But when the game began, he was told to deploy his forces to make life easier for US forces. "We were directed... to move air defences so that the army and marine units could successfully land," he said. "We were simply directed to turn [air defence systems] off or move them... So it was scripted to be whatever the control group wanted it to be." The Army Times reported that, as commander of a low-tech, third-world army, Gen Van Riper appeared to have repeatedly outwitted US forces. He sent orders with motorcycle couriers to evade sophisticated electronic eavesdropping equipment. When the US fleet sailed into the Gulf, he instructed his small boats and planes to move around in apparently aimless circles before launching a surprise attack which sank a substantial part of the US navy. The war game had to be stopped and the American ships "refloated" so that the US forces stood a chance. "Instead of a free-play, two-sided game as the joint forces commander advertised it was going to be, it simply became a scripted exercise. They had a predetermined end, and they scripted the exercise to that end," Gen Van Riper said. He said he quit when he found out his orders were being over ruled by the military coordinators of the game. Vice-Admiral Marty Mayer, one of the coordinators, denied claims of fixing. "I want to disabuse anybody of any notion that somehow the books were cooked," he said. The games were designed to test experimental new tactics and doctrines advocated by the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and were referred to in Pentagon-speak as "military transformation". The transformation is aimed at making US forces more mobile and daring, but Gen Van Riper said that the "concepts" the game were supposed to test, with names such as "effects-based operations" and "rapid, decisive operations", were little more than "slogans", which had not been properly put to the test by the exercise. http://www.cdi.org/msc/clock.html

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Eliot Spitzer needs killing.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

ALBANY, N.Y. (August 21, 2002 2:50 p.m. EDT) - New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer said Wednesday that he has settled a case against PayPal to stop New Yorkers from using the Internet payment processor to gamble online. Under the settlement, PayPal will not process payments from New York residents to Internet casino sites beginning on Sept. 1 and will pay $200,000 to the state for its profits, the cost of investigation and penalties. "This agreement continues the work of my office to enforce the law prohibiting illegal gambling, online or off line," Spitzer said. "This case shows that we intend to stop any company who facilitates illegal gambling transactions." A PayPal spokesman didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. eBay, the Internet auction site, has said that if its planned acquisition of PayPal is successful, the service would no longer be associated with online gambling. PayPal lets buyers and sellers exchange money through e-mail. Buyers make payments online through credit cards and bank accounts, and PayPal relays the funds to sellers' accounts. The company's dealing with 260 online gambling merchants has increased as more credit card firms have blocked direct payments to Internet gambling Web sites, Spitzer said. In June, Spitzer settled a case with Citibank to block all online gambling transactions through credit cards.END Wonder if he'll end up @stiff.com?

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Roquefort files.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Investigators want more access to private information Canberra August 21 2002 Private investigators believe they can do many of the same jobs as police just as well and more cheaply, a new study has shown. The Australian Institute of Criminology report said investigators, who in NSW outnumber police by some 2,000, believed they should gain greater access to confidential government information to allow them to track down witnesses and debtors. The profile of the private investigation business, prepared by criminologist Dr Tim Prenzler and investigator Michael King, said investigators believed they could provide greater justice to crime victims if they were allowed greater access to government databases. The study said there were some 25,000 private investigators across the country, compared with 44,922 police. In NSW there are 13,614 police and 15,800 investigators. Forty investigators were interviewed for the study and all strongly favoured doing more work in the public sector justice system. "Many argued that they could do a range of tasks, such as searching for missing persons, conducting surveillance, executing search warrants, attending burglary scenes or investigating traffic accidents, just as well and more cheaply than police," the study said. Dr Prenzler and Mr King noted that the industry had changed dramatically over the last few decades, moving away from divorce work to concentrate on insurance. That was facilitated by a new willingness of the insurance to fight dodgy claims and widespread use of video cameras. But the 1992 inquiry by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption uncovered a thriving trade in illicit information. Private investigators acting for banks, insurers and finance companies paid substantial sums to public servants for unauthorised access to information from confidential computer databases. That prompted toughening of procedures for accessing such information and penalties for improper disclosure. But one third of the study respondents indicated non-compliance remained widespread. They called for formalised access. Dr Prenzler and Mr King said that was worth considering in both the interests of justice and to reduce demand for illicit information. "One possible argument is that at present the law is weighted in favour of people avoiding legitimate legal process," they said. The investigators conceded they had an image problem, even though the industry had lifted its game enormously over the last 20 years. "I think public perception is that 80 per cent of us are dodgy but in reality it's probably less than 0.5 per cent," one said. AAP

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DAGOS
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

Sorry- DIGOS.Antiterrorist police search homes of two journalists Reporters Without Borders today protested against the searches carried out yesterday by DIGOS antiterrorist police at the homes of two journalists, Fiorenza Sarzanini of the Corriere della Sera and Mario Menghetti of Il Messaggero. The searches came after both of these national dailies ran articles about the violence at the G8 summit in Genoa in the summer of 2001 that were apparently based on a leaked police report. "The frequency with which the authorities have violated the confidentiality of journalist sources in the past few months is disturbing", Reporters Without Borders secretary-general Robert Ménard said in a letter to Justice Minister XXXX. "These methods have been used at least five times against investigative journalists in 2002", Ménard said. "We must remind you that the principle of the protection of journalistic sources is one of the essential conditions of press freedom, and democratic states respect this right", the letter continued. "We must also remind you that the Council of Europe and the European Court of Human Rights monitor respect for this principle by member states and we ask you to ensure that the Italian judiciary does not violate it." The 19 August searches of the homes of Sarzanini and Menghetti by the Rome antiterrorist squad were carried out on the orders of the Genoa prosecutor's office. In their articles of 5 August, the two journalists are suspected of having cited a secret carabinieri report which focussed above on Carlo Giuliani, a young demonstrator who was killed by a member of the carabinieri. The antiterrorist squad was looking for documents that could help identify the source of this leak. On 3 May, Reporters Without Borders protested against the search carried out at the home of La Stampa reporter Guido Ruotolo who was suspected of having published information that violated the secrecy of a judicial investigation into an Islamic network. At the start of March, the homes of two other journalists, Claudia Fusani of La Repubblica and Fiorenza Sarzanini of the Corriere della Sera, were searched for the same reason. Reporters sans frontières défend les journalistes emprisonnés et la liberté de la presse dans le monde, c'est-à-dire le droit d'informer et d'être informé, conformément à l'article 19 de la Déclaration universelle des droits de l'homme. Reporters sans frontières compte neuf sections nationales (Allemagne, Autriche, Belgique, Espagne, France, Grande-Bretagne, Italie, Suède et Suisse), des représentations à Abidjan, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Montréal, Moscou, Nairobi, New York, Tokyo et Washington, et plus de cent correspondants dans le monde. http://www.rsf.fr/article.php3?id_article=3458

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Breathless in Borneo.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

While you pussies bicker over copyrights and patents...FIRES in Indonesia have begun to make their presence felt in neighbouring countries. In Malaysia, a thick haze has disrupted internal air services and forced flight cancellations in Malaysia's Sarawak state on Borneo island, an airport official said yesterday. http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/primenews/story/0,1870,138116,00.html 'The burning in Sumatra and other parts of Indonesia causes us to be hit by the haze.' In 1997 and 1998, choking haze caused by forest fires in Indonesia enveloped parts of South-east Asia for months. It caused serious health problems and traffic hazards, as well as disrupting airline schedules. The haze then caused an estimated US$9.3 billion (S$16.3 billion) in losses to regional economies. SEE ALSO (if your old and nearly dead anyway.) A vision of dystopia This is for real, not the sequel to a sci-fi thriller. The World Bank paints a picture of a catastrophic global future. Special report: world summit 2002 http://www.guardian.co.uk/0,6961,,00.html

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Git along little dawggie.FREE BEER FOR LIFE !!!
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

To: **** **** ***** *****> Subject: !!! FREE BEER FOR LIFE !!! Im Stranger Here, Myself Part VI of The True Story Of The InterNet Chapter 02C8: !!! FREE BEER FOR LIFE !!! As an added incentive for those who have been expectantly awaiting the release of Part VI of The True Story Of The InterNet manuscripts, and as an initial incentive for those who have no interest at all in it and resent this kind of garbage just showing up in their email unexpectedly, the Cult Of One #05987-196 is once again entering each and every Reader&OR&Deleter in the TTSotIN Free Beer For Life Contest Drawing. The beer is a 12 o.z. bottle of Samuel Adams, and the winner can keep it for life. There has been considerable resentment raised over the remarkable coincidence of my having won Free Beer For Life Contests I thru V, and some suggestions that I should disqualify myself from future contests, so I have decided not to enter myself in the contest this time. There will once again be a Quiz regarding the manuscripts, to make certain that the winner has read them. However, a perfect score will disqualify an individual for cheating. An excellent score will disqualify an individual because nobody likes a wise-guy, eh? An average score will disqualify an individual for being an AOL subscriber. A lousy score will disqualify an individual for obviously having been loaded while reading the manuscripts, thus they hardly need one lousy beer. In the event of all others being disqualified, I become the winner by default. In event of a tie, U.$. Treasury Agent Jeff Gordon will arrest one of the winners. Good Luck

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Herd shot around the world.
by Matthew X 22 Aug '02

22 Aug '02

The Detrimental Impact of Industrial Animal Agriculture (PDF) Report on the replacement of small-scale family farms by industrial animal farming in the developing world, and the manner in which this trend is increasing poverty and promoting the spread of disease ( CIWF ) See also this Guardian coverage LINKS http://www.hullocentral.demon.co.uk/site/anfin.htm "Would you like lies with that?"

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