A recent article on the Philadelphia Enquirer notes a full third of interviewed US citizens believes that weapons of mass destruction have already been found on Iraq - which is, of course, false - among other several misconceptions that are trounced daily on the news. Of course, this belief is stronger among those who favored the war.
It's a good example of belief in the face of overwhelming facts, and goes to show you that George Orwell was right.
This is most definetely a work in progress and will probably be changing in the near future.
You can find the old blog here, including all time favorites like US Plans Death Camp and The Mercados Family and Photography.
Yeah, archive links are kind of weird some times, which is why I'm moving to Movabletype. Omnia Mutantur, after all.
I wonder what he would say if he was alive today and reading CNN. Anyhow, happy birthday George.
Oh god, this is turning into a politics blog. But before anybody points out that the US politics aren't even relevant to a young developer living in a third-world country, think again: politics of a super power will inevitably overflow the country and spill over - whether they're good or bad, applicable or not - and the bigger the super power the more reaching effects these politics will have on the rest of the world.
With that in mind, you could certainly spend your time in a worst manner than checking out Agitproperties, who are going against the current standard of just nodding along to planned Government constitutional violations (or are they only modifications?) and pointing fingers against obviously biased journalists that insist on keeping a pretense of objectivity. Here's hoping that they can make a profit.
You'll have to be patient with the MySql errors, though. My guess is that their own success choked the pseudo-database (that's what you get for not using Postgresql).
If you're still up to some reading after that, visit the ACLU's site educating people on the dangers of Patriot Act II. Gotta love that Like most sequels, this one is even worst than the original slogan.
Near the beginning of June published a note linking to a itty bit of insignificant news about the U.S. planning a death camp in Guantanamo Bay. The news in question was on an Australian site, probably because two Australians are currently being held in Guantanamo.
The news article was moved from its former location, but I did find it referenced on several other sites, including the Independent Media Centre from Ottawa (along with their own comments). Some Googling around the News.com.au site yielded the article's new location, but I'm quoting it here on its entirety in case it dissapears again.
THE US has floated plans to turn Guantanamo Bay into a death camp, with its own death row and execution chamber.
Prisoners would be tried, convicted and executed without leaving its boundaries, without a jury and without right of appeal, The Mail on Sunday newspaper reported yesterday.
The plans were revealed by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, who is in charge of 680 suspects from 43 countries, including two Australians.
The suspects have been held at Camp Delta on Cuba without charge for 18 months.
General Miller said building a death row was one plan. Another was to have a permanent jail, with possibly an execution chamber.
The Mail on Sunday reported the move is seen as logical by the US, which has been attacked worldwide for breaching the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war since it established the camp at a naval base to hold alleged terrorists from Afghanistan.
But it has horrified human rights groups and lawyers representing detainees.
They see it as the clearest indication America has no intention of falling in line with internationally recognised justice.
The US has already said detainees would be tried by tribunals, without juries or appeals to a higher court. Detainees will be allowed only US lawyers.
British activist Stephen Jakobi, of Fair Trials Abroad, said: "The US is kicking and screaming against any pressure to conform with British or any other kind of international justice."
American law professor Jonathan Turley, who has led US civil rights group protests against the military tribunals planned to hear cases at Guantanamo Bay, said: "It is not surprising the authorities are building a death row because they have said they plan to try capital cases before these tribunals.
"This camp was created to execute people. The administration has no interest in long-term prison sentences for people it regards as hard-core terrorists."
Britain admitted it had been kept in the dark about the plans.
A Downing St spokesman said: "The US Government is well aware of the British Government's position on the death penalty."
Herald Sun
You can find the article at its News.com.au location.
I recently ran into Alex Jones' Infowar site, which provides an interesting perspective on current events from a guys obviously interested on personal freedom and not just a little bit wary of the notion of a police state.
Pros: the site has good articles on personal freedom, links to news bits that most people might not be aware of (since they're not at the forefront in Fox News or CNN), and historical references on what has happened on the past when governments started behaving like the current US administration.
Cons: Jones is overzealous. Combined with the fact that some of his reports (such as Invasion of America or Martial Law Is Here) basically expect you to believe that he is inded telling you the truth, and that the fuzzy photographs are indeed of what he tells you they are, might put some people off the confirmed information or personal articles.
All sources of information should always be taken with a grain of salt, and at least Jones is open enough to acknowledge his personal biases.
Guess what web site I got this from:
[...]
"There are some who feel that the conditions are such that they can attack us there," Bush said. Extending his right hand for emphasis, he added: "My answer is: Bring 'em on. We've got the force necessary to deal with the security situation."
The Onion?
No siree.
Rabid Michael Moore's site making a parody of a press release.?
Wrong again.
It actually came from a bit of news in The Washington Post.
Pity poor Ari Fleischer, who has to come out after the fact and try to disguise these comments as something else than the rantings of a lunatic.
Is Bush telling these Iraqi militia to attack the U.S.? No - he's just telling them to keep shooting at the poor bastards tasked with policing an already hostile country. As if they needed any more encouragement.
I can imagine it's rather easy feeling plenty tough when you're not the one being blown to bloody, quivering bits.
But the recent appearance of the dead body of David Kelly, a British Defense Ministry expert and weapons adviser that was believed to have informed the media about the government exagerating its claims on Iraq's power and arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, just seems a bit too convenient.
One would have thought that by this point they would be above just murdering witnesses - or at the very least public people with ties to the media - but it seems that the tactics used by common criminals are just right up their alley.
You didn't think you were safe from the politics articles, did you?
J. Orlin Grabbe's site is a repository of interesting, well-written articles; as well as a resource of links to discussions on libertarianism, politics and economy.
His series of articles on Privacy and Cryptology are a good place to start; as is the somewhat more recent Some Further News of Laissez Faire City, which goes into more detail into the irregularities and coincidences surrounding the 9/11 mess than it goes into actual Laissez Faire City affairs.
James Woods has a reputation for being one smart cookie, and on a recent Salon.com interview about his upcoming movie Northfork he insists that he doesn't want to talk politics before going on to great lengths precisely about them.
What's really interesting about the article is how he manages to reconcile his apparently liberal view of things with arguments about defending the invasion of Iraq because somebody had to be punished to make the public feel better, or how he blasts on Clinton about lying about his affair but somehow managed to avoid George W. Bush's lying about Iraq and their massive stockpiles of WMDs. In the process, he makes some pretty good comments about if Bush is an idiot or not (a dangerous assumption considering that, as Woods says, he's the President and we're not), and also about the positive effects that the policy has had. Perk: the interviewer gets chewed up about not getting her facts straight before going on an interview.
Hey, never say I just rant about one side of the issue.
Just a brief note to let you know about an interview with Hunter S. Thompson on High Times Buzz, about our current times and the political situation in the world. Not exactly eye-opening, it being mostly a rehash of recent events from Thompson's point of view, but entertaining nonetheless.
The Political Compass is an interesting test, designed to try and measure your political inclinations and classify them in Left vs. Right and Authoritarian vs. Libertarian.
Not surprisingly, it tagged me as a Libertarian. While close friends may be surprised I didn't end up being an Authoritarian, they should keep in mind that I'm only Authoritarian if I'm the one in charge.
If I'm not, whoever is in charge better leave me the hell alone.
Take the test, let me know where you guys came out. I'm curious of how in line it is with my personal assessment of people.
My first instinct when watching Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine, a film on what he calls the whole gun issue, was to sit down and dissect the various issues he points out - both were I agree with him and where I don't. I passed on the idea, but I'd still like to put in a comment or two about it.
Everything a human makes is biased, tinted by their own perception of the world. The very least you can do is present your biases up front and not try to hide behind a façade of mock impartiality. Moore repeatedly hides his, pointing out how he's a card-carrying member of the National Rifle Association, just before attempting to stealthily paintball the NRA as insensitive and partly at fault for the state of the U.S. society. Pretty much like if you had me calling myself a libertarian but demanding tighter immigration controls, the Government micromanaging our lives and less personal privacy for safety's sake.
But still, the film plods on. You've heard the joke about lies, damn lies and statistics. Moore pulls some of those last on his film, pointing out that the number of gun slayings in the United States is larger than the one in England or Japan, for instance. He conveniently leaves out the fact that in England about 7 out of 10 baseball bats that are purchased end up being used to beat up or kill somebody; or that in Japan kids don't come to school with guns - they climb on a bus with a kitchen knife and start stabbing people.
The saddest thing is that for a moment, he seems to be on the right track. Near the middle of the movie he stops all the "guns are bad, why keep guns loaded around the house" blah-blah and goes to Canada, a country where - unlike England or Japan - people are allowed to buy guns and keep them in their homes, and they do. Some of those interviewed have hand guns, rifles, shotguns, everything short of Howitzers at the house, and yet they don't one day come out one afternoon and shoot the block to Kingdom come. The same case could have been made for Israel or Switzerland, where people are armed to the teeth, but let's just say that Canada is culturally closer to the U.S.
Why is that difference? It is obvious that the problem is not gun availability, since that is not a factor on those countries. There's an inescapable fact that even Moore momentarily acknowledges: the problem must lie in society itself.
Merely a few minutes later he's saying that on the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, something was clear to him: "a society this scared shouldn't have that many guns lying around".
And off he goes again down the guns-are-the-actual-problem slide.
I've tried to figure out why that is, trying to giving him the benefit of the doubt. It's possible he doesn't understand his own material, what he pointed out on his own film. Maybe he doesn't realize that if you get the guns away of those kids, they'll come into school with knives or baseball bats or home-made Molotov cocktails or planks with a rusty nail through them and still harm other people. It's likely that chasing after the rich white guy Moore demonized earlier for promoting the very same point that Moore briefly hints at (it's not the availability of guns that gets people killed) makes for better copy, specially when you contrast Uncaring Rich White Guy with Poor Dead Black Girl, giving your viewers somebody they can hate, somebody they can point fingers at. Or possibly he just realizes that it's easier to go for the quickie fix and trying to remove guns than to do a serious analysis of why neighbors are murdering each other.
In the end, he ends up using the same tool he so berates the Bush administration for using: people's fear of some unspecified looming misfortune.
Go ahead, salute the naked fallacy parading through the streets claiming to wear documentary clothes. Just don't expect me to throw rose petals in its path.
I would really like to beat senseless anyone who referrs to a cache of child pornography found on a seminary as a childish prank - specially when it's the bishop in charge.
Just saw a flash animation from True Majority explaining U.S. budget issues with oreo cookies. I'm not entirely in agreement with the financial politics, their explanation of how obscene and nonsensical the Pentagon's budget actually is ends up being the clearest one I've seen yet.
...
Police officials also have been linked to Colombian cocaine smuggling, since Haiti in recent years has become a major transit point for drugs destined for the United States.
I can only imagine what the U.S. would do if some other country was breaking an embargo, giving guns to someone the U.S. disapproves of.
I remember seeing once a bumper sticker begging God, deliver me from your followers. I guess the same could be said about libertarian fiction writers.
A few of them, like Vernor Vinge, manage to subtly convey a feeling of what libertarianism is like and why it may be better, with superb novels and shows in which libertarian philosophy takes a back seat to good, enjoyable fiction.
Others... well, others are a lot more like L. Neil Smith.
A good friend of mine, who is also a libertarian, lent me Pallas - and even though I rarely leave a book unfinished, I wasn't able to get more than 10% into it. Descriptions were the literary equivalent of 3-day-old Papa John's and characters were nothing but sock puppets used to either regurgitate the author's view, pat on the head others that come to the same conclusions, or condemn the cardboard villain of the book. Apparently he doesn't understand that if you present the morally corrupt villain as someone that does everything from landgrabbing and mind control to raping underage girls, you just give ammo to the people opposing libertarianism - you open up the possibility of someone saying that socialist system failed because of a corrupt leader - you just have to put a good guy in charge. In the process, he forgets about Sol Steins' maxim that the purpose of fiction is to convey emotions.
Not propaganda.
I remember thinking that characters couldn't be flatter if they were drawn on a page, and guess what? On the latest version of The Probability Broach they actually are.
Lucky for me, I guess, since wading through it is a lot easier when you don't have to suffer through most of Smith's descriptions. How does thou bore me? Let me count the ways...
At which stage, even if a name like Landgraf von Richthofen (Red Baron or not) for someone that would expropriate other people's lands and rights doesn't make you wonder if this was written by George Lucas, and Evilus Maleficus is going to walk through the door any time now, I'd like to point out that by Goodwin's Law we've already lost.
As with Pallas, characters are nothing but propaganda conduits, channeling Smith's philosophy. As with Pallas, plot is nothing but a scarecrow, there only for show - and probably to stop the book from becoming My dinner with Lt. Bear. And as with Pallas, I'm left totally non-plussed by it.
Books like these only preach to the converted, creating an echo chamber where everyone who already agrees with you tell you what good points you make. If you turn the government into nothing but a poorly drawn charicature, others will be left thinking this could never happen here, my government's employees don't dress up like COBRA thugs.
Don't just give them the iron fist on a horribly scarred nastie. Show them the velvet glove worn over it by a homely-looking bird-flipping cowboy-and-everyman-impersonating millionaire, and they may begin to get it.
Peace War this ain't.
Wouldn't you know it? Right on the heels of the REAL ID act, Tony Blair has introduced a similar plan for the United Kingdom.
They all seem to forget that as Ron Paul points out, criminals don't obey the law. This will just affect law abiding citizens, who know will have even their biometric information in places more accessible to crooks.
But I doubt that the government really cares about identity theft - not when the upside is having even more control over its subjects.
Like it or not, a name is one of the first impression someone gets from you. As soon as they hear it, images spring into the mind's eye, even before they know who you are. As if that wasn't enough, every time your name is spoken that image is conjured again, reinforced in someone's mind.
Take the case of the Movimimiento Libertario.
That's not a regular party, not a mere political group organized to promote its candidates for public office. No sir. It's a movement, an organized effort by supporters of a common goal. What's the goal of this movement? Freedom, of course, as stated clearly by that all important libertario word.
It made you think - wow, these guys are different.
Not anymore, unfortunately. As of Saturday 25, 2005, the Movimiento went from a libertarian organization to a wholly-owned subsidiary of Otto Guevara, a political party with no other apparent purpose that getting it's various candidates into office, faster than you can push a scientist and a fly in to a telepod and press Blend.
What will they do there? Who knows. Each candidate, many of which are not even libertarians at all, will have his own agenda. My guess is that the purpose is to elect Otto at all costs, which will not happen against Arias in the 2006 election, so the idea is to get as many yes-men as possible into Congress so that they can be blandished as negotiating weapons.
In the process, each will be free to pillage, plunder and vote for new taxes (pretty much the same thing), now that they're free of the contract the Movimiento was supposed to bind them with.
Oh, right, I hadn't mentioned that. Libertarian-elected congress people can now do whatever the hell they want, regardless of the promises that got them elected. Business as usual.
Leaving aside all ideological considerations, they've just shot themselves in the foot. The single advantage the Movimiento Libertario had over the other parties was easy to sell.
They always had the high moral ground. People knew their word was good.
That's not true anymore. To me, they've demonstrated that they're more than willing to compromise their principles for an end. They've lost the high moral ground. They don't have the unions like PAC does, they don't have the history and rabid following of PLN and PUSC. On giving that up, they've just become the political equivalent of the Decaffeinated Diet Coke.
No sugar, no stimulants. All cancerogenics.
If you were a libertarian, the party just screwed you. If you believed in the Movimiento's No más de lo mismo! war cry, you better look somewhere else - they are now the same damn thing as anybody else. If you had been volunteering for them, joke's on you.
Three strikes. I'm out.
PS: If you're interested in more detail about what went on, instead of just my venom-spewing, you can read my friend Jorge's take here.
Lo bueno de cuando las cosas pasan públicamente, es que uno no tiene que confiar en la palabra de una sola persona. O dos. O dos y varios periódicos. O...
Aparte de mis comentarios, el exhaustivo análisis de Jorge Codina y las noticias en varios medios, se abrió un grupo de discusión recientemente para comentar la reciente Asamblea Nacional, y la subsecuente purga de personal libertario a nivel del partido.
Pueden encontrarlo aquí, incluyendo varias denuncias y la carta de renuncia del Doctor Álvaro Cordero, quien prefiere no ser diputado a que ir postulado por esa agrupación.