Last night I watched The Boys from Brazil on TMC. It’s one of a few movies that truly scare me that I can watch over and over again. Gregory Peck puts in a fantasically maniacal, evil and paranoid performance as Josef Mengele, the Auzchwitz “doctor” who experimented upon children, poisoning them to test their immunity system, as well as attempting to find ways to alter their appearance, making them appear more “Aryan” by injecting blue dye into their eyes.
There is a haunting scene in the film; Mengele is examining a small Paraquayan boy, no more than 6 or 7 years old, and the boy- dark skinned and black haired- has bright blue, obviously altered, eyes. **shiver**
Anyway, this morning on my morning reading rounds, happened upon an interesting post at Scrutiny Hooligans entitled American Mengele. (via The Sideshow)
Michael Doyle reports “The Bush administration would allow some limited pesticide testing on children and pregnant women under controversial rules set to be made final as early as this week.
This stuff just makes my monkey tail twitch.
David Miller, who penned the article on the Pentagon’s plans for “Information dominance” linked to in an earlier post, sends a reminder in a post to Media-Squatters that there is “much else now on our website: www.spinwatch.org“
You’re a fan of The Beatles. You haven’t seen Let it Be the documentary in over twenty years. It hasn’t been generally available on VHS for that time, and what copies one can find are kept tight and safe by collectors, and it has yet to be either rereleased in theaters or on DVD. What is a music lover and documentary lover to do?
Journey on over to YouTube, where Let it Be is available in three parts.
A bit of advice using YouTube: Let the videos load before you click play. Longer videos take a bit to load. So, hit the link, let it load for about five minutes. Then, sit back and enjoy.
The BBC has a report on the “Information Operations Roadmap” which…
…calls for a far-reaching overhaul of the military’s ability to conduct information operations and electronic warfare. And, in some detail, it makes recommendations for how the US armed forces should think about this new, virtual warfare.
Here’s a PDF of it. Read it for yourself. This is part of the Rumsfeld plan to control information, as David Miller put it:
The concept of ‘information dominance’ is the key to understanding US and UK propaganda strategy and a central component of the US aim of ‘total spectrum dominance’. It redefines our notions of spin and propaganda and the role of the media in capitalist society. To say that it is about total propaganda control is to force the English language into contortions that the term propaganda simply cannot handle. Information dominance is not about the success of propaganda in the conventional sense with which we are all familiar. It is not about all those phrases ‘winning hearts and minds’, about truth being ‘the first casualty’ about ‘media manipulation’ about ‘opinion control’ or about ‘information war’. Or, to be more exact – it is about these things but none of them can quite stretch to accommodate the integrated conception of media and communication encapsulated in the phrase information dominance. [...]
Traditional conceptions of propaganda involve crafting the message and distributing it via government media or independent news media. Current conceptions of information war go much further and incorporate the gathering, processing and deployment of information including via computers, intelligence and military information (command and control) systems. The key preoccupation for the military is ‘interoperability’ where information systems talk to and work with each other. Interoperability is a result of the computer revolution which has led to the ‘Revolution in Military Affairs’. Now propaganda and psychological operations are simply part of a larger information armoury.
After nearly a year of silence, John Perry Barlow returns to the blog with an ever interesting offering entitled Here and Now in the Floating World.
It takes awhile for some realities to sink in. Case in point:
Majority in U.S. Say Bush Presidency Is a Failure, Poll Finds
Jan. 26 (Bloomberg) — A majority of Americans said the presidency of George W. Bush has been a failure and that they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who oppose him, according to a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll.
Fifty-two percent of adults said Bush’s administration since 2001 has been a failure, down from 55 percent in October. Fifty- eight percent described his second term as a failure. At the same point in former President Bill Clinton’s presidency, 70 percent of those surveyed by Gallup said they considered it a success and 20 percent a failure.
In a poll conducted in January of 2002, after Bush was president for one year, 83 percent of those surveyed said his presidency was a success.
In the new poll, conducted Jan. 20-22, fifty-one percent of those surveyed said they would be more likely to vote for congressional candidates who do not support Bush’s policies.
The percentage of Americans who called Bush “honest and trustworthy” fell 7 percentage points in the last year to 49 percent, the poll found.
The new poll also found that 62 percent of Americans said they are “dissatisfied” with “the way things are going” in the U.S., unchanged from a December survey. The percentage of “dissatisfied” Americans reached its peak in October of 2005 when 68 percent of those surveyed agreed.
The survey interviewed 1,006 U.S. adults and has a margin of error of 4.5 percentage points. For the questions about whether Bush’s presidency is a success, about 500 U.S. adults were surveyed and the margin for error is plus or minus 5 percentage points.
That’s gonna leave a mark. Ask yourself: What has President Bush actually achieved? What has he done? What legisltaion has he pushed through Congress? What great initiative has he lead? What are his greatest achievements? The Iraq War? What? The answer has me stumped.
The United States is headed for a serious Consititutional showdown over the NSA FISA wiretapping scandal. The White House is attempting to spin and twist it into all kinds of pretzel, from stating that only international calls were tapped (which has yet to be proved) to outright assertins that the President has the right to do what he wishes under the AUMF. (He does not.) But, in the end, it comes down to one question: Does the President have the authority to suspend 4th Amendment rights of American citizens? And, they know this.
It is an interesting issue to look at from both sides. I find that many on the left are working through the legal and technological information in order to know what really happened and understand whether the President has the power to suspend Consititional rights in a time of war.
Many on the right though are simply parroting the talking points and dutifully linking to video and text of the Presdients speeches or those by AG Gonzales. What else can they do? Attempting to actually engage this issue factually leads to one conclusion, one they don’t support.
As I said, the White House feels they do have the right. The law though, says another thing entirely. But, they are gearing up for that fight, and the fight for the public perception on this issue.
Via Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire the Wall Street Journal is reporting that President “Bush suggests war with Congress” over the isssue of AUMF, Presidential power versus Congressional and Judicial oversight as mandated in the Constitution.
Head on over to Powerline and watch Hindraker spin the spin. He literally avoids the meat of the issue, preferring to focus on those points which support his view. Hinkdraker fails to address a number of issues, most glaringly the issue of domestic surveillance.
The issues avoided by Hindraker are skillfully addressed by J.D. Hendersen at Intel Dump who has a good grasp of the situation:
I have now read the entire justice department document defending the NSA warrantless wiretaps.
It is a longer version of what the administration has been saying all along. It admits that the wiretaps were not authorized under FISA unless the AUMF is considered authorization to bypass FISA. That argument has already been hacked to death. It is an exceedingly weak argument. To re-address this argument briefly, the document states that the AUMF authorized the president to ignore FISA because of the “President’s… long-recognized power to engage in communications intelligence targeted at the enemy.” These warrantless wiretaps were of US citizens within the United States, not the “enemy.” Is there any due process or oversight involved before US citizens can be declared an enemy of the state? The president says no, the decision is his and his alone. That seems to jar with the Bill of Rights.
The document also states that FISA is a restriction “placed on national security operations during times of peace.” As mentioned in other posts, FISA is part of Title 50 of the US Code, which is entitled “War and National Security.” The president is claiming that laws specifically written for “War and National Security” are laws only relevant in times of peace.
The other argument is the “inherent authority” as commander-in-chief argument. That is even weaker. Commander in Chief is a military title, not a civilian one. It merely means that generals are subordinate to the president – not that Congress is, and most definitely not that civilians are subordinate. Generals can’t order civilians about and damn sure can’t ignore the law. Neither can a “commander in chief.” The president is “commander in chief” only for the military. He is not your commander in chief unless you are on active duty.
What is appalling is the length the administration goes to in order to make these exceedingly weak arguments. The entire document is basically a long justification for the president’s power to collect foreign intelligence. The problem with that argument is that it is not disputed, not by anybody. Yes, the president DOES have the authority to spy on our enemies. His powers over foreign policy and foreign intelligence collection are great. The problem is with DOMESTIC intelligence collection. The problem is not with wiretapping Al Queda, it is wiretapping IN THE UNITED STATES, ON US CITIZENS, WITHOUT A WARRANT. This is not about foreign intelligence, it is about our government’s actions with respect to US citizens. It is about US.
The document does not even address the FISA restrictions on wiretapping of “US Persons” and constantly repeats that the wiretaps were “international” and that only terrorists and those suspected of terrorism were targeted. Of course this ignores the 4th Amendment. For those who aren’t sure if this is a violation of the 4th Amendment, please recall that it was demanded by the People before they would agree to adopting the Constitution, and that our nation had just fought a war against a government that did exactly what the president is claiming he can do – spy on us without a warrant. If the Founding Fathers found the searches and seizures by British soldiers, in wartime, when our territory was a battlefield, so objectionable that they would demand their own government be prevented from doing the same things without a warrant, then why does the President think he can do so merely because we are at war?
The 4th Amendment was not written merely to control law enforcement officers. When it was written there were no organized police forces in existence. In addition, the Bill of Rights was not considered to apply to the states at the time, but only to limit the powers of the federal government. The federal government at the time didn’t have any police forces or even any law enforcement responsibilities. Those duties were considered to be the exclusive province of the states. No, the 4th Amendment was considered to apply to soldiers conducting searches of suspected enemies of the state – because who else would conduct those searches in 1789 or 1791? There was no FBI, there was no Justice Department, there was no police force anywhere at all. If the federal government wanted to conduct a search of anybody in 1791 it would order soldiers or sailors to do it. The president now claims that it does not apply to searches of US citizens inside the United States because we are at war and intelligence collection is part of the nature of military force. The document presents the 4th Amendment as only a law-enforcement restriction applying in the “criminal context.” That goes against the plain language of the 4th Amendment, its history, and common sense.
In an effort to increase traffic to this site, I’ve been reading a great deal of articles on how to do that and been getting good advice from a few fellow bloggers who’ve been successful at it.
One of the larger problems I have is that the links to this site are a mess. There are a bunch of sites that are no longer around that link here, as well as Jakeneck, which will probably cease to exist some time soon. (Yet again.)
I had no idea how any of this stuff worked, and someone was kind enough to explain it all to me. If you go to Technorati, you’ll see that the majority of the links to The SNAFU Priniple are from Jakeneck, which I’ve been told, (since it’s a dead site but still exists) isn’t a good thing. I need to increase the number of links to this site from other sites. Too many from just one site isn’t going to help move you up the ladder, and a lot of people use Technocrati and similar search engines for topics and tags. (Which I am still learning about.)
The plan is that new links will feed the site, rather than my own posts which link here anyway. And, I have no idea what is going to happen with the Neck, and all those posts.
So, the solution would solve both problems. First challenge was to archinve all of my Jakeneck posts and then get rid of those links. So, I’ve deleted and archived all of my Jakeneck posts and the comments as well. Hopefully, it will work. It won’t help the Google rank of the site name, but no one searches for this site by name anyway. The next step will be to increase unique links to this site, and that is about reciprocal posting of links, being more a member of the community out there. Which is the fun part of blogging in the first place!
I’ll post the archived Neck posts to this site at some point most likely. Not sure how to do that… maybe convert each post and comment section to one html page and create a single post with all of those titles in it.
Since the Necks days are obviously numbered (Yet again), I didn’t want to lose all those posts I’ve written since it’s reincarnation in June of 2005. I’ve already been thru that twice.
All the posts I made on the Neck from 2003 and 2004 are totally lost. From the first Jakeneck and from the Spectacle version. At least, that is the impression I get. Maybe Mobius has them archived, but I asked and got no answer. So, I’m operating under the (perhaps incorrect) assumption that they were lost. I’ve been able to recover some of the posts I made on Jakeneck from 2003 and 2004 via Google cache, but only a small portion of them. And, there was some good stuff in there. I’ve archived those I’ve found, and will try to put links to them here as well.
I really didn’t particularly want to lose any of tho more recent posts from Jakeneck. They are a journal of sorts. And, I go back to them and learn about myself, what I’ve learned, mistakes I’ve made, good points I’ve made, where I’ve been an idiot, where I’ve been smart… More of the former than the latter, but that’s okay.
It’s an intereting thing. I’ve kept a written journal over the years, and the farther I get from that time, the less important those entries become. I assimilate those thoughts, and reflect upon them, and eventually I don’t need them any more. And, I will get there at some point with my blogging posts I’m sure. Writing is a process and an internal one for me.
My reasons for blogging were always more about the journey than the points of the post I was trying to make at the time. And, at times it is cathartic, too much so sometimes, as I tend to write before I think. Working on that…
I read some of my old posts and comments and think “What the hell was I thinking?” and realize that some times I was just goofing, or pissed off, or not attentive, or just not communicating or just plain wrong… and, that is how life is after all is said and done. And, I learn from it. Change and learning and seeing yourself is painful and glorious all at the same time.
So, we’ll see where this place goes. Right now, there is a pretty good amount of traffic, thanks to Seeing the Forest and The Sideshow, My Left Wing, Daily Kos and a couple of other places, for which I’m glad. I don’t always have that much time for this place, and it can go dark for a number of days.
As Avedon notes, everyone is talking about Peter Daou’s post yesterday. An excerpt:
What’s the common thread running through the past half-decade of Bush’s presidency? What’s the nexus between the Swift-boating of Kerry, the Swift-boating of Murtha, and the guilt-by-association between Democrats and terrorists? Why has a seemingly endless string of administration scandals faded into oblivion? Why do Democrats keep losing elections? It’s this: the traditional media, the trusted media, the “neutral” media, have become the chief delivery mechanism of potent anti-Democratic and pro-Bush storylines. And the Democratic establishment appears to be either ignorant of this political quandary or unwilling to fight it.
There’s a critical distinction to be made here: individual reporters may lean left, isolated news stories may be slanted against the administration. What I’m describing is the wholesale peddling by the “neutral” press of deep-seated narratives, memes, and soundbites: simple, targeted talking points that paint a picture of reality for the American public that favors the right and tarnishes the left.
You’ve heard the narratives: Bush is likable, Bush is a regular guy, Bush is firm, Bush is a religious man, Bush relishes a fight, Democrats are muddled, Democrats have no message, national security is Bush’s strength, terror attacks and terror threats help Bush (even though he presided over the worst attack ever on American soil), Democrats are weak on security, Democrats need to learn how to talk about values, Republicans favor a “strict interpretation” of the Constitution, and on and on.
It is of great importance that those of us with this insight help to make others aware of this issue. Liberals are being shut out of the political process. For all the lip service given to “we must maintain a two party system”, the facts and actions speak louder.
Avedon puts it best:
And so we now find ourselves in a position where a president who has all but promised to incinerate the Constitution can do so with relative impunity, while the installation of a clearly partisan supporter – indeed, creator – of the “legal” theory that rationalizes that treason – is about to ascend to the Supreme Court with the acquiescence of the so-called opposition party. [...]
The question of whether the Democratic leadership actually has any desire to promote the views and the people they supposedly represent is asked more and more often these days, but they seem to be easy prey for the process I wrote about in How you became crazy – barraged with the Beltway-insider point of view, with little buffering from the sane point of view, they probably doubt themselves more than a little even when they do want to do the right thing.
This might have a great deal to do with why the only high-profile Democrat who has been willing to lead on important progressive issues is Al Gore, a guy who has not been so embedded lately in that sinkhole. Maybe it’s even why governors have made more popular nominees than Senators – because they spend a lot less time in Washington.
But if you doubt the need to write those letters, make those phone calls, send those faxes, think again. No matter how much the media mouthpieces complain about the nasty little lefties and their nasty little letters, the fact is that when many, many people are saying something, it makes a difference in what those media jerks think it is acceptable to say on television and in the pages of The Washington Post. Remember: The ultra-conservatives they listen to today are the same people they once regarded as the right-wing fringe nuts they really are. But the nuts made themselves heard. We have to do the same until it is no longer “crazy” or “partisan” to tell the truth.
I don’t need to be a global citizen because i’m blessed by nationality i’m member of a growing populace we enforce our popularity there are things that seem to pull us under and there are things that drag us down but there’s a power and a vital presence thats lurking all around we’ve got the american Jesus see him on the interstate we’ve got the american Jesus he helped build the president’s estate i feel sorry for the earth’s population ‘cuz so few live in the U.S.A. at least the foreigners can copy our morality they can visit but they cannot stay only precious few can garner the prosperity it makes us walk with renewed confidence we’ve got a place to go when we die and the architect resides right here we’ve got the american Jesus overwhelming millions every day (exercising his authority) he’s the farmers barren fields the force the army wields the expession in the faces of the starving children the power of the man he’s the fuel that drives the clan he’s the motive and conscience of the murderer he’s the preacher on t.v. the false sincerity the form letter that’s written by the big computers he’s the nuclear bombs and the kids with no moms and i’m fearful that he’s inside me
James Joyner at Outside the Beltway makes the fatal mistake of using Mark Tapscott as a factual source in order to get in a few anti-Hollywood points and call “Brokeback Mountain” a failure:
Mark Tapscott notes that, despite incredible publicity and critical acclaim, neither gay cowboy movie “Brokeback Mountain” nor George Clooney’s “”Blood for Oil” did well at the box office. Indeed, the lousy remake of the lousy 1970s flick “Fun with Dick and Jane” swamped them both.
His entire argument in the ensuing post hinges upon the above statement, which implies that movies such as “Brokeback” are failures and an example that Hollywood doesn’t know what people like.
Joyner drives this point home by again quoting Tapscott:
And how long before we see genuinely independent film makers who are much more in tune with the general public’s tastes going around the existing distribution system by showing their products only on pay-per-view Internet sites?
Just think how much cheaper tickets would be and how much more convenient “going to the movies” would become with Internet-only distribution. And most important, can you imagine how much artistic creativity would be unleashed among movie makers by their being freed of Hollywood’s conventions?
So, according to Tapscott and Joyner, since movies such as Brokeback Mountain are obvious failures at the box office, emerging venue technology will allow “genuinely independent film makers who are much more in tune with the general public’s tastes” (filmmakers who don’t make films like Brokeback Mountain) to be “unleashed” (freed from their Liberal task masters) from “Hollywood’s conventions” (bias).
Tapscott also writes:
Notice, too, that George Clooney’s “Blood for Oil” potboiler isn’t exactly a gusher at the box office, either. So when do we see the critics and Hollywood trades admit that these propaganda pieces masquerading as movies appeal to extremely narrow slices of the movie market?
Except there is one problem with Tapscott’s intial quote and the premise that Brokeback Mountain is a failure at the box office and thus an example of a movie that the American public doesn’t want to see.
It’s wrong.
Brokeback Mountain is a success by every measure that Producers and investors use to determine such matters, that is: box office versus initial inventment. (Syriana has not yet broken a profit, but it’s current numbers indicate that it will definitely break even, and most likely make an estimated profit of $10 – $30 million once it moves to overseas and DVD markets. Not too shabby.)
At first glance at the box office numbers, sure, Brokeback Mountain has only made $53 million (worldwide) to Fun with Dick and Jane’s $130 million worldwide. By Tapscott’s logic (and by citing him, apparently Joyner’s as well), Fun with Dick and Jane is clearly the more profitable film. But, looking at only box office returns to analyse a movies profitablility and its long term popularity is disingenous at best.
$130,000,000 returned on a $115,000,000 investment (est)
$15,000,000 profit (est)
Fun with Dick and Jane “swamped” Brokeback Mountain at the box office? Hardly.
One can move these numbers a bit, $10 million more or less, and it still comes out that Brokeback Mountain is as profitable a film as Fun with Dick and Jane.
And, as I noted in the comments section of Joyner’s blog, the long term prospects for both films support this as well. Brokeback Mountain has “legs”. It will be around for a long time. It will be nominated for Oscars. Fun with Dick and Jane will be on the DVD shelves in a months time. Looking at box office numbers solely is deceptive and only tells a small part of the story.
The Poor Man hits it on the head. Go read the entire thing, but the final graph nails it:
There is NO WAY for this to be constitutional. The 4th amendment, contra Gen. Hayden, clearly specifies “probable cause”, and there simply is no way to meet that standard with this kind of program. Which would mean any attempt to legitimize the program would face significant legal hurdles. Better (to them) to just go ahead and do it and justify themselves post-facto. Better to apologize than ask permission, right?
I know this kind of deconstruction can seem like techno-wanking, and a lot of smart people have made a pretty strong case that the technology is beside the point, but the fact that WPE and his designated flunky are trying so hard to obfuscate the technical issues seems, to me, like a pretty good clue that the technology is an important part of the story.
And, James at Outside the Beltway has some important points as well…
