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Re: Airport insanity
by Tyler Durden 24 Oct '04

24 Oct '04

WOW! Let's examine your little clip here. >Tyler Durden > > "Care to Avoid harming Muslims"? Your statement was that the US took special care in avoiding harm to Muslims. In this case we have Muslims tortured at Guantanamo and now angry as hell. And you expected...what? >http://washingtontimes.com/national/20041018-124854-2279r.htm >: : Despite gaining their freedom by signing pledges to >: : renounce violence, at least seven former prisoners >: : of the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, have >: : returned to terrorism, at times with deadly >: : consequences. Wow! Tortured prisoners signed statements and then went back on their promises? The nerve! Note the incredible linguistic bias. "Returned to terrorism?...That's a laughable statement for people who returned to their own country to fight an invader. And the word "Despite" it's arguable even more hilarious. And of course, your quote of this piece in this context points to your ever-present logic of "They're more evil than we are therefore it's OK if we fuck them over". >: : Additional former detainees have expressed a desire >: : to rejoin the fight, be it against U.N. peacekeepers >: : in Afghanistan, Americans in Iraq or Russian >: : soldiers in Chechnya. Hum. Muislims helping Muslims to push the US or Russians out of their occupied countries. I've seen worse uses for religion. But more importantly, are you seeing where this is headed? Let's forget differing ideologies and get really, really practical here. If you or I were grabbed in our own country and brought 7000 miles away, and then tortured for 2 years, wouldn't you most likely become convinced that the torturing nation was a great evil that had to be stopped? Even more, what if your life sucked in your own country and you didn't have a lot to live for anyway? The violence sown by Western powers will continue to result in further Septemeber 11ths. Simply increasing the scope or intensity (a la Iraq II) isn't going to make things better. -TD > > --digsig > James A. Donald > 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG > gZPWnxSpOCzn/7t/pyram/Z9ixbExE1haS5OzFBm > 4i6xvRLGqBtHJfp8bm6GLFqF6pwABThwj/PjOpaVx _________________________________________________________________ Is your PC infected? Get a FREE online computer virus scan from McAfee. Security. http://clinic.mcafee.com/clinic/ibuy/campaign.asp?cid=3963

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Re: Airport insanity
by Major Variola (ret) 23 Oct '04

23 Oct '04

At 01:03 PM 10/23/04 -0400, John Kelsey wrote: >Blowing up a building full of random people because a few of them are associated with >some action you really disagree with is just outside the realm of the sort of moral decision I >can figure out. Just like flying planes into buildings full of people with almost nothing to do >with what you're really getting at. >--John Kelsey Osama et al suffer from the belief that Americans chose their leaders and thus are responsible for their actions. They also observe that the only language americans understand is dead civilians inside the CONUS. Ergo WTC feedback. Tim McV may have somewhat analogously assumed that all Feds would take notice of his feedback. (In addition, the WTC demolishion got a disproportionate number of jews, just as Okla did get a few BATF goons. But the message was more generally intended.) Consider: If a crip whacks your homey, you needn't pop *that* crip to make your point. Any crip will do. Snipe a few tax collectors and all Caesar's centurions take note. Capiche?

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Re: US enacts tough new security measures on visitors, foreign student pilots
by Major Variola (ret) 23 Oct '04

23 Oct '04

At 10:42 PM 10/22/04 -0400, R.A. Hettinga wrote: > : > US enacts tough new security measures on visitors, foreign student pilots Also unmentioned: all foreign flight schools are now heavily bugged/surveilled and swarthy and/or moslem students have that fact added to their Permenant Record.

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Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity)
by Tyler Durden 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

Well, yes there are counterexamples I guess. The kind of retardation I'm talking about seems to happen when the influence in through covert, destabilising channels. Taiwan is a particularly odd example...it definitely has started forming a modern economy, but then again it had many decades of oppression. It also had swiped billions upon billions of dollars of gold and other substances that backed the Chinese monetary system prior to 1949, so arguably that money had to go somewhere. -TD >From: John Kelsey <kelsey.j(a)ix.netcom.com> >Reply-To: John Kelsey <kelsey.j(a)ix.netcom.com> >To: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com>, jamesd(a)echeque.com, >cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) >Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 14:59:26 -0400 (GMT-04:00) > > >From: Tyler Durden <camera_lumina(a)hotmail.com> > >Sent: Oct 19, 2004 10:23 AM > >To: jamesd(a)echeque.com, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net > >Subject: US Retardation of Free Markets (was Airport insanity) > >... > >In developing markets the US track record is terrible. The more we >interfere > >and set up puppet governments and petty dictators, the result has always > >been the near elimination of any kind of real modern economy. > > >More than that, some of the countries we've been kicked out or prevented > >from influencing have been modernizing rapidly, the most obvious example >is > >China and Vietnam. Bolivia is interesting to watch. > >So, Taiwan and South Korea seem like rather obvious counterexamples. > > >-TD > >--John >(Not a fan of interventionist foreign policy, FWIW) _________________________________________________________________ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/

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Re: Airport insanity
by John Kelsey 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

>From: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> >Sent: Oct 20, 2004 3:10 PM >To: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Re: Airport insanity >Lots of murderous terrorists have been released from Guatanamo, >and in the nearly all cases the most serious of their >complaints make it sound like a beach resort, except for the >fact that they could not leave. Maybe I missed that. All but one of the comments I read about involved a lot of complaints about mistreatment, albeit often with the admission that Gitmo was still better than being in an Afghan prison. As a nitpick, though, it's not at all clear that most of the people at Gitmo were really terrorists, or even murderers. None of them has had a trial, few have even had hearings, and many were released as not a threat to us. (They may still be a threat to everyone else around them.) >A few have more serious complaints. Either they are lying or, >those who say they were well treated apart from being held >captive are lying. Surely the other alternative is that only some prisoners are subjected to torture, e.g., the ones that look to have some serious intelligence value. > James A. Donald --John

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US enacts tough new security measures on visitors, foreign student pilots
by R.A. Hettinga 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

<http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/print/113045/1/.html> Channelnewsasia.com Title : US enacts tough new security measures on visitors, foreign student pilots By : Date : 23 October 2004 0853 hrs (SST) URL : http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/113045/1/.html WASHINGTON: The United States on Friday tightened security measures on foreign visitors and non-US citizens taking flying lessons. The Department of Homeland Security said foreign visitors seeking admission under the Visa Waiver Program would need machine-readable passports beginning Tuesday. Those not complying will get one free pass and a letter explaining the new rules, with the one-time exemption noted in the visitor's permanent computer record, said the DHS. A machine-readable passport carries an unalterable barcode containing a wealth of encrypted information about the bearer, which an immigration officer can read by scanning the document much like a supermarket checkout clerk scans food prices. The new US passport requirement had been scheduled to take effect a year ago but was extended to give VWP participating countries time to issue machine-readable passports and inform their citizens of the new rules. Also, the Transportation Security Agency has begun requiring non-US citizens seeking training at US flight schools to submit to fingerprinting and provide security data for training on any type or size of aircraft. Following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the Transportation Security Act mandated the Justice Department to do threat assessments on non-US citizens seeking training on aircraft weighing 12,500 pounts or more, including commercial aircraft. This month, new legislation transferred that responsibility to the Transportation Security Administration and gave enforcers new teeth. "September 11 taught us that terrorists exploited the use of US flight schools," said retired Admiral David Stone, Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for TSA. "Fortifying security by knowing who trains at these schools is an integral part of our mission to secure the homeland." The 19 September 11 hijackers who commandeered four commercial airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania trained at US flight schools. The tightened security program, the TSA said in a statement, "is designed to prevent terrorists from receiving pilot training from flight schools. "As a prerequisite to flight training, non-US citizens must provide to the TSA fingerprints, biographical information...and training specifics." The flight schools will have to provide the TSA with the student's photo "to ensure the student reporting for flight training is the same individual who successfully complete a security threat assessment," it said. - AFP -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: James A. Donald's insanity
by Tyler Durden 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

Sunder wrote... "Come on, come on, out with it, say it, say it... That's right! *Ding* you're reality challenged." Well, perhaps, but Mr Donaldson's brain has been turned into a host/vector for a very powerful set of memes. In a sense, one can't blame him: He has an answer for everything, and his answers emanate from a set of beliefs that feel quite consistent in his mind, or at least that can be derived from a fairly elementary set of principals. That's a hell of a lot more than I can say for most of the rest of us Cypherpunks, for whom the world is a lot more complex. Sometimes, I suspect it would be kind of comfy living in Mr Donald's world: Good and Evil are very distinct entities, and you know who they are. Unfortunately for me the world looks a hell of a lot more complex and shadowy, shades of gray. Ah well. Pass that crack pipe of absolute certainty over here Mr Donald... -TD >From: Sunder <sunder(a)sunder.net> >To: "James A. Donald" <jamesd(a)echeque.com> >CC: "cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net" <cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net> >Subject: Re: James A. Donald's insanity >Date: Fri, 22 Oct 2004 13:06:28 -0400 (edt) > >Where did I write to you that it's horrible thing to lock people up in >Gitmo, or that "we" (whomever that is) deserve to be attacked? Show me >the email, with headers that says such a thing. > >Oh, wait, you can't, because I never wrote such. > > >Let's see, so you've got lots of people questioning your version of >various events, and you've got claims that various people wrote things >that they did not, and lots of people challenging the accuracy and indeed, >truth of your statements. > >Hmmm... So what is the obvious conclusion there? The whole world must be >against you? Nah, you're not important enough to be paranoid. > >So, what is the obvious conclusion? No, no, 2+2 is not 5, even for >extremely large values of 2... > >Come on, come on, out with it, say it, say it... That's right! *Ding* >you're reality challenged. > > >Ah! There, doesn't that feel better? Now, please, go back and take your >meds before the nice men in the white coats come to take you to the funny >farm. > > > >----------------------Kaos-Keraunos-Kybernetos--------------------------- > + ^ + :"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. /|\ > \|/ :They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country /\|/\ ><--*-->:and our people, and neither do we." -G. W. Bush, 2004.08.05 \/|\/ > /|\ : \|/ > + v + : War is Peace, freedom is slavery, Bush is President. >------------------------------------------------------------------------- > >On Thu, 21 Oct 2004, James A. Donald wrote: > > > -- > > On 21 Oct 2004 at 13:41, Sunder wrote: > > > No you imbecile, I'm telling no one anything, other than you > > > to get a clue. Where did I tell people who are under attack > > > to suck it up? > > > > When you tell us it is horrible to lock up in Gautenamo people > > who show every sign of trying to kill us , and that we deserve > > their past efforts to kill us, efforts that some of them > > promptly resumed on release. We are under attack, and you are > > telling us to suck it up. _________________________________________________________________ Get ready for school! Find articles, homework help and more in the Back to School Guide! http://special.msn.com/network/04backtoschool.armx

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Patriot Act redux?
by R.A. Hettinga 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

<http://news.com.com/2102-1071_3-5414087.html?tag=st.util.print> Patriot Act redux? By Declan McCullagh http://news.com.com/Patriot+Act+redux/2010-1071_3-5414087.html Story last modified October 18, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT With Election Day fast approaching, it was only a matter of time before the usual congressional shenanigans that typically punctuate the political season. This time, politicians appear to have seized on what could be called the Patriot Act strategy, drafting antiterrorism legislation in secret and then ramming it through the Senate and House of Representatives with minimal debate. Then it's back to the home districts to boast how they protected voters from the bad guys. The vehicles chosen for this strategy are two bills described as being inspired by the 9/11 Commission's report, a politically potent text that's become a best-selling book. The Senate and House have approved their own versions of the legislation, and negotiators are now meeting privately to decide on the final draft. Early indications are not promising. While portions of the massive legislation are no doubt praiseworthy, other important sections--especially those envisioning stuffing more information into government databases--deserve special scrutiny from privacy hawks. Both the House and Senate bills coerce state governments into creating what critics are calling a national ID card. Because the House version is nearly three times as long, its authors had more room to promote private agendas. One section anticipates storing the "lifetime travel history of each foreign national or United States citizen" into a database for the convenience of government officials. It mentions passports, but there's nothing that would preclude recording the details of trips that Americans take inside the United States. President Bush would be required to create a "secure information sharing" network to exchange data among law enforcement, military and spy agencies. Aside from a bland assurance that "civil liberties" will be protected, there are zero details on what databases will be vacuumed in or what oversight will take place. A second network would be created by the first person to get the new job of national intelligence director. That network must "provide immediate access to information in databases of federal law enforcement agencies and the intelligence community that is necessary to identify terrorists." It hardly needs to be said that snaring terrorists is what our government should be doing. But it's not clear that the House bill is a step in the right direction. Jim Dempsey, executive director of the Center for Democracy and Technology, hopes that the aides negotiating the final bill end up adopting the Senate language instead. It also would create an information-sharing network--while requiring that Congress receive semiannual reports on how the network is being used. "There are dozens if not hundreds of government programs under way to do just that (already)," Dempsey warns. "They are fragmented; they are overlapping. They are occurring outside of any framework of oversight." Still, the Senate bill is no prize. A last-minute amendment added by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would require the Department of Homeland Security to create an "integrated screening system" inside the United States. McCain envisions erecting physical checkpoints, dubbed "screening points," near subways, airports, bus stations, train stations, federal buildings, telephone companies, Internet hubs and any other "critical infrastructure" facility deemed vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Secretary Tom Ridge would appear to be authorized to issue new federal IDs--with biometric identifiers--that Americans could be required to show at checkpoints. Both the House and Senate bills coerce state governments into creating what critics are calling a national ID card. Under the proposals, federal agencies will accept only licenses and state ID cards that comply with specific to-be-established standards--a requirement that would affect anyone who wants to get a U.S. passport, obtain Social Security benefits, or even wander into a federal courthouse. That's why Jim Harper, director of information policy studies at the Cato Institute, is no fan of either bill. "They say that if we just put appropriate rules and restrictions in place, everything will be fine," Harper said. "But of course those rules and restrictions will drop away over the years or if there are new terrorist attacks. They say, 'Of course lion-taming is safe. They're our friends.' But then one day the lion grabs you by the neck and drags you off the stage." A few other courageous Washingtonians have raised similar concerns. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, warned last week that the House bill "will not make America safer (but will definitely) make us less free." And 25 former senior officials from the FBI, CIA and military have sent a letter to Congress indicating that the 9/11 Commission's recommendations are flawed because the report whitewashed what went wrong on Sept. 11, 2001. Unfortunately, with only 15 days left before the election, politicians will be tempted to place expedience over sober analysis of what's permitted by the U.S. Constitution. That's what happened in October 2001 with the mad scramble to enact the Patriot Act, and history is about to repeat itself. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Poll: Antiterror tech plans are flawed
by R.A. Hettinga 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

<http://news.com.com/2102-1009_3-5401058.html?tag=st.util.print> CNET News Poll: Antiterror tech plans are flawed By Charles Cooper http://news.com.com/Poll+Antiterror+tech+plans+are+flawed/2100-1009_3-54010… Story last modified October 18, 2004, 4:00 AM PDT Americans don't believe the government is doing enough with technology to improve homeland security, according to a national survey conducted jointly by CNET News.com and Harris Interactive. Drawn from a poll of 1,133 people in late August, the results portray a nation eager to embrace technology to reduce security threats but unsure how best to proceed. Only 15 percent of those polled believe they are safer today than they were a year ago, and just 20 percent predict that they will be safer in the future. Despite widespread confidence in technology itself, only 45 percent agreed that the government's current technology initiatives are working, according to the survey. The results reflect concerns raised by taxpayer organizations and other government watchdog groups. Such groups have been critical of technology spending and related operations since the creation of the Department of Homeland Security. "From the beginning, we were concerned that this reorganization had gone the way of the Department of Energy--bigger bureaucracy and few results to show for it," said Pete Sepp, vice president of the nonprofit National Taxpayer Union. "The picture isn't complete, but the brush strokes we've seen so far are pretty ugly." The survey indicates that the issue could be a pivotal factor in the elections next month. About 92 percent of the poll's respondents said a presidential candidate's position on security would affect their vote, and 62 percent said they would support a tax increase to pay for new security measures. The support for security is so strong that the survey's respondents were apparently willing to back measures that have been sharply criticized by civil libertarians as too intrusive. About 53 percent of respondents expressed at least some willingness to repeal certain privacy laws, while 70 percent favored the legalization of more aggressive interrogation methods. More than 80 percent of respondents indicated a willingness to carry some type of national ID card, and about 70 percent said such a card would be a useful tool to improve security. The poll also revealed support for the greater use of cameras and advanced surveillance technologies in public places, including hand and eye scanners. Some technology experts attributed the response at least partly to a limited knowledge of technology and what it can accomplish. "People are putting too much faith in technology," said Bruce Schneier, founder of Counterpane Internet Security. "They don't understand how eye scanners work or how authentication fits into security. They don't understand what a national ID card means or haven't read any of the studies about the effectiveness of security cameras. They're giving opinions based on superstition, not real facts." Nevertheless, the poll's results seem to reflect a general erosion of public confidence in the federal government, a trend that began decades ago. For homeland security in particular, nearly 53 percent of respondents said the government could do more with the technology it already has. Zoe Baird, co-chair of the Markle Foundation's Task Force on National Security in the Information Age, said the lack of faith in the government's ability to use technology was understandable, until recently. But she said recent changes in Washington have made her more optimistic. "Over the last year, the government, at very senior levels, has finally come to terms with how technology can make us safer," Baird said. "I hope that over the course of the next year, the public's faith in government to use technology to make us safer will increase." Party affiliations of respondents to the CNET News.com-Harris Interactive Poll spanned the political spectrum. About 32 percent said they were Democrats, and roughly 35 percent identified themselves as Republicans. Another 11 percent were registered as independents, and the rest gave no party affiliation. Other findings in the poll: * 80 percent expressed varying degrees of support for a closed-border policy. * 69 percent believe that more security at home would improve the nation's diplomacy. * 55 percent say press reports exaggerate the threat of terrorism to their security. This survey was conducted online within the United States between Aug. 25 and Sept. 1 among a nationwide cross-section of 1,133 adults of voting age, all of whom have Internet access. The results carry a statistical sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Re: Seld-defeating US foreign policy
by Tyler Durden 22 Oct '04

22 Oct '04

Will Morton wrote... > In addition, the whole of Indochina was (and is) a clusterfuck of >rivalries and feuds going back centuries. The (relatively) sudden >appearance of a bunch of new regimes, all with revolutionary mindsets >through which to apply their old vendettas, probably made the bloodshed >inevitable - although US intervention undoubtedly made it worse. Basically the way I see it. I've felt for a long time that the US (even while pursuing it's questionable goals) should have jumped all over the chance to buddy-up with China after the Sino-Soviet split, and knowing Mao's practicality I'd bet he could have been pursuaded (hell, not long after it was Mao and Zhou who initated contact with the US). Relations with Vietnam and Cambodia could have proceeded very differently in that environment. Would the cultural revolution still have happened? Probably. Would the Khmers have gotten into power...possibly but I actually doubt it. But of course, we were still in the middle of McCarthy-ism, so way too ideologically blind to see the obvious. As a result we continued to mindlessly pursue ideology rather than practicality and so ended really making things worse in SE Asia, in a place where Marxism was really a useful but temporary veneer over local politics (again we were too blind to see that Marxism was a western transplant that wasn't going to do too well in Asia). And we're doing it again...(eg, we had some chances with Iran recently that we passed up...that was really stupid, and the Iranians seem to know it). -TD _________________________________________________________________ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/

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