Rapid Fire

Various Items of Note

Stewart and the Oscars
Some of Jon Stewart's Oscar night jokes. For example:

"Normally when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty."

"Tonight we look beyond the dark days to focus on happier fare - this year's slate of Oscar-nominated psychopathic killer movies. Does this town need a hug? No Country For Old Men, Sweeney Todd,There Will Be Blood. All I can say is: thank God for teen pregnancy."

Source: The Times Online

Pesky Pakistan
So Pakistan ordered YouTube taken off the interwebs for 'blasphemy' or some such, and their ISP complied. Only they did it badly, and due to a flaw in the way the interweb works, the block propagated worldwide, resulting in Youtube getting taken offline.

On Sunday, YouTube became unreachable from most, if not all, of the Internet. No "sorry we're down" or cutesy kitten-with-screwdriver page, nothing. What happened was that packets sent to YouTube were flowing to Pakistan. Which was curious, because the Pakistan government had just instituted a ban on the popular video sharing site. What apparently happened is that Pakistan Telecom routed the address block that YouTube's servers are into a "black hole" as a simple measure to filter access to the service. However, this routing information escaped from Pakistan Telecom to its ISP PCCW in Hong Kong, which propagated the route to the rest of the world. So any packets for YouTube would end up in Pakistan Telecom's black hole instead.

Is there anything religion in government can't ruin?

Source: Ars Technica

Photos
So a guy makes his living as a photographer and posts watermarked samples online. A magazine steals his work, crops out the watermarks, and uses them as stock photos. When questioned about it, they make up a nonexistent person, forge a receipt, and claim that person sold them the photos. They can not produce the person, the original files, or any evidence of any kind.

They chose... poorly.

Source: CGStock.com

Snoops
So the energy utility in Madison has a bit of a probably with nosy jerks in their employ.

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A landlord snooped on tenants to find out information about their finances. A woman repeatedly accessed her ex-boyfriend's account after a difficult breakup. Another obtained her child's father's address so she could serve him court papers.

All worked for Wisconsin's largest utility, where employees routinely accessed confidential information about acquaintances, local celebrities and others from its massive customer database.

Documents obtained by The Associated Press in an employment case involving Milwaukee-based WE Energies shine a light on a common practice in the utilities, telecommunications and accounting industries, privacy experts say.

Vast computer databases give curious employees the ability to look up sensitive information on people with the click of a mouse. The WE Energies database includes credit and banking information, payment histories, Social Security numbers, addresses, phone numbers, and energy usage. In some cases, it even includes income and medical information.

Experts say some companies do little to stop such abuses even though they could lead to identity theft, stalking and other privacy invasions. And companies that uncover violations can keep them quiet because in many cases it is not illegal to snoop, only to use the data for crimes.

Honestly, don't they realize how bad this makes them look? Put a stop to it. Fire the people responsible. It's not that hard.

Unless you really WANT some brutally draconian privacy laws passed, in which case, fine, make your bed. See if I care when you have to lay in it.

Source: The Associated Press

Milkshake
A discussion of the pop culture phrase 'I Drink Your Milkshake!' and its proper usage.

Source: New York Magazine

ID Thieves
So apparently an ID thief stole the identify of a seven-year old kid. They've been using it for six years for employment purposes, to duck paying taxes.

The IRS actually told the kid, or more likely his parents, that he owes 60,000 in back taxes. Apparently they're not too bright at the Revenue Service, failing to realize that, under US law, it would have been illegal for a 1 year old to be drawing such a paycheck to start with.

Yeesh. What the hell kind of background checks do these employers/IRS types run?

Source: Raw Story

They Have to Be Kidding
So it seems that the Director of National Intelligence's underlings are so happy with their performance eliminating terror from the real world using color coded charts that they're ready to move into the world of videogames.

Well, ok, to be a bit more fair, they think that you could use a social game environment to organize real world activities.

Or, you know, a chat room. Or email. Or web pages. Or pigeons with little paper messages tied to their legs.

Of course, if you really want to leave a billing trail and have all of your activities potentially monitored by the company running the game, by all means.

Source: Wired

Jack Thompson
So good old anti-videogame crusader and general nuisance Jack Thompson is in big legal trouble in Florida. It seems that the Florida Supreme Court is sick and tired of his 'frivolous and inappropriate filings' and is going ahead with a plan to essentially ban him from practicing law without another laqyer to vouch for him; sort of a set of legal training wheels.

This guy is non-stop hilarity. He actually thinks this is a good thing for him too.

Source: Daily Tech

Good Night, Ulysses
So NASA and the ESA have been operating a probe mission to study the sun's magnetic field for the last seventeen years. The probe is appropriately named Ulysses, after the Greek explorer.

WASHINGTON - The joint NASA and European Space Agency Ulysses mission to study the sun and its influence on surrounding space is likely to cease operations in the next few months. The venerable spacecraft, which has lasted more than 17 years or almost four times its expected mission lifetime, is succumbing to the harsh environment of space.

Ulysses was the first mission to survey the space environment above and below the poles of the sun. The reams of data Ulysses returned have forever changed the way scientists view our star and its effects.

"I remember when we got those first pictures of Ulysses floating out of the space shuttle Discovery's payload bay back in October of 1990 and thinking we had a great five years ahead of us," said Ed Massey, Ulysses project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "I never dared think that we would be receiving invaluable science data on a near continuous basis for more than 17 years. Ulysses has set the bar on solar science data collection quite high."

Science findings and discoveries from the mission were numerous and unprecedented. Examples include taking the first direct measurements of interstellar dust particles and interstellar helium atoms in the solar system and the discovery that the magnetic field leaving the sun is balanced across latitudes.

...

Since its Jupiter flyby in 1992, Ulysses has been in a six-year orbit around the sun. Its long path through space carries it out to Jupiter's orbit and back. The farther it ventures from the sun, the colder the spacecraft becomes. If it drops to 2 degrees Celsius (36 degrees Fahrenheit), the spacecraft's hydrazine fuel will freeze. This has not been a problem in the past because Ulysses carries heaters to maintain a workable onboard temperature.

The spacecraft is powered by the decay of a radioactive isotope. Over its 17-plus years, the power has been steadily dropping. The spacecraft no longer can run all of its communications, heating and scientific equipment simultaneously. "We expect certain parts of the spacecraft to reach 2 degrees Celsius pretty soon," said Richard Marsden, ESA project scientist and mission manager. This temperature drop will block the fuel pipes, making the spacecraft impossible to maneuver.

We'll see you around, little probe. Thanks for the hard work.

Source: NASA

P.S. Normally I'd make some sort of diatribe here against the luddites who don't want to use any probes in space that run off of radioactive decay, which would limit our scientific exploration to the inner solar system and so forth. Those people are complete morons, and Ulysses shows why; but this is not the place to mock their slope-foreheaded ignorance.

I'll save that for the next time.

Big Ideas, Little Foresight
So it seems that Haiti's deforestation problem is growing even worse, and may be completely beyond the point of no return.

GRAND COLLINE, Haiti (AP) - Far from the spreading slums of the Haitian capital, past barren dirt mountains and hillsides stripped to a chalky white core, two woodcutters bring down a towering oak tree in one of the few forested valleys left in the Caribbean country.

Fanel Cantave, 36, says he has little choice but to make his living in a way that is causing environmental disaster in Haiti. And these days, he and his 15-year-old son, Phillipe, must travel ever farther from their village to find trees to cut.

"There is no other way to get money," the father said, pushing his saw through splintering wood that will earn him as much as $12.50, depending on how many planks it produces.

Such raw economics explain the disappearance of Haiti's forests, a process that has led to erosion that has reduced scarce farm land and left the island vulnerable to deadly flooding.

Ahh, but surely the United States could intervene with a half-baked plan to save the natives from themselves, right?

U.N. experts say just 2 to 4 percent of forest cover remains in Haiti, down from 7 to 9 percent in 1981. And despite millions invested in reforestation, such efforts have mostly failed because of economic pressures and political turmoil.

For example, the U.S. Agency for International Development embarked on an ambitious $22.8 million project in the 1980s to plant some 30 million trees that could provide income for peasants. But the project focused on trees that can be made into charcoal for cooking, and nearly all were eventually cut down.

Oops. The Quiet Americans strike again.

Meanwhile, smaller groups try to hold back the ocean with buckets, but that's not working either.

Compared to the USAID's failed plan, smaller programs have had more luck by focusing on fruit trees, which farmers are more likely to preserve to sell the fruit. And smaller organizations are able to work with individual farmers and tailor planting to the needs of specific areas.

"People aren't excited about, 'Hey let's go plant trees.' They're excited about, 'How can I feed my family? How can I make ends meet?'" said Scott Sabin, executive director of Floresta.

But many who are dedicated to restoring Haiti's forests have grown pessimistic. Despite small successes, prospects are grim for implementing such programs on a grand scale.

"Everything has been studied and all the solutions are already known," said Mousson Finnigan, the head of the Organization for the Rehabilitation of the Environment. "But when it comes to implementation, it becomes a place where everybody's fighting for the money. They're not fighting for results."

So in the end, the tragedy of the commons plays out on a grand scale.

"In Haiti we destroy instead of produce," acknowledges LeClaire Bocage, 38, who sells 110-pound sacks for $6.25. "They're going to tell the poor to stop cutting down trees. But what will we do to make a living?"

Never fear, though, Haiti! We have another plan for you to help us out, err, help yourselves.

It may be too late to restore Haiti's lost forests, said John Horton, an environmental specialist who has overseen Haiti projects for the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. He suggested planting crops that can stabilize the soil and be sold or used for bio-fuels. Others promote raising money through carbon credits from overseas firms emitting greenhouse gases elsewhere.

"They need cash crops, they need food, they need energy immediately," Horton said.

Yes, grow biofuels instead of food! Or plant trees to soak up our carbon (which other people will just burn down again).

Sigh. Man... I just... Yeah.

Source: My Way News

What to Do With Pesky Heathens
From the Skeptic's Annotated Bible:

2:8 Ask of me, and I shall give thee the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.
2:9 Thou shalt break them with a rod of iron; thou shalt dash them in pieces like a potter's vessel.

That'll teach those heathens! Slavery and death!

Err, wait a second. That's not good...

Source: The Skeptic's Annotated Bible

I Ran With the Devil, Left a Trail of Excuses News

Good day to all on 'A Small Band of Whackos In a Midwestern Hellhole of a State Decide Your Future' Day

Republican Round-Robin
This short article detailing the serial destruction of various Republican campaigns is hilarious.

It also reeks of the desperation the Republican elites feel at this point, trying to find ANYONE but Huckabee to win their nomination.

Source: Raw Story

Top US Senator? Only In His Fragile Little Mind
Biden takes the opportunity to remind the world he's still breathing by denouncing that the Bush administration approved the sale of a bunch of F-16s in late December amidst the madness of the Bhutto assassination.

Yeah. The Bush administration did something stupid. Big surprise. But the timing isn't really relevant, Senator "Bankruptcy Bill" Biden. It's actually never a good idea to sell high tech military hardware to small, highly unstable countries full of internal strife and religious fanatics, armed with nukes and run by an inept yet brutal dictator.

So, please... just go crawl in a hole somewhere and die already.

Source: Raw Story

Orwellian America
Much like 1984, it's both scary and ludicrous at the same time.

A report out blasts the US for slipping into the worst group of surveillance happy societies, and reminds me of a hilarious story I had forgotten, where the FBI had been using their access to your supermarket purchasing records (from those handy discount cards they give you) to try and track terrorists... by what they eat.

However, according to Jeff Stein in Congressional Quarterly, the FBI "sifted through" grocery store data around San Francisco in 2005 and 2006.

"The idea," Stein writes, "was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area."

I have several boxes of falafel mix in my kitchen cabinet, but the last time I checked I'm not an Iranian secret agent.

Though if, you know, Iran is hiring, they could send me an offer...

Source: Raw Story

Reasons Not to Bother With The Mainstream Press
A former reporter for NBC's Dateline is making the rounds attacking them for being grossly stupid and obsessed with fitting the news into their profit model.

Some of this stuff is hilariously tragic. Tragilarious, if you like.

In another instance, Hockenberry claimed a story he did about a Weather Underground member wouldn't appear on the Sunday edition of "Dateline" unless its lead-out, the 1960s family drama "American Dreams," did a show about "protesters or something."

See? News programs should only serve as advertising for our family drama crap!

Then of course there's this tidbit:

Another bombshell is Hockenberry's claims that General Electric, NBC's parent company, discouraged him from talking to the Bin Laden family about their estranged family member. Hockenberry asked GE, which does business with the Bin Laden family company, to help him get in contact with them. Instead, a PR executive called Hockenberry's hotel room in Saudi Arabia and read a statement about how GE didn't see its "valuable business relationship" with the Bin Laden Group as having anything to do with "Dateline."

Yes, god forbid someone ask the BIN LADEN FAMILY about, err, their ties to terrorism. Or an American corporation not, err, line their pockets.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeesh.

Source: Reuters

Bhutto's Secret File
Seems like Bhutto was about to accurse Musharraf of completely rigging the election immediately before her violent death. Wow, not the least bit suspicious.

According to CBS News, which has obtained a copy of the report, it "alleges widespread plans to stuff ballot boxes, rig voting lists, and intimidate, even kill, opposition voters."

CNN quotes the document more specifically as saying, "Where an opposing candidate is strong in an area, they have planned to create a conflict at the polling station, even killing people if necessary, to stop polls at least three to four hours."

...

CNN analyst Peter Bergen noted, "There's no reason to believe that she was killed because of this dossier, because the people behind her killing almost certainly are al Qaeda and the Taliban, and they've got nothing to do with this election." That is the official Pakistani position, based primarily on allegations of intercepted phone calls from a pro-Taliban warlord who has denied any involvement.

Honestly, CNN. Do you even try any more?

Modern Technology, Medieval Politics

Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut (In which case, try the Middle East)

Accusing Saudia Arabia of Abusing Liberty? You've Gone Too Far!
So the Saudis have arrested a blogger critical of their lousy, festering, tottering theocratic monarchy.

I'm so shocked I just might have to blink.

No, wait. It passed.

Source: The Washington Post

Highly Speculative Report Says Pakistani Military Offed Bhutto
That's not the part that really interests me about this article though. Anyone can speculate. But take a gander at this:

"It's worrying when half of your lower or mid-level Pak intelligence analysts have bin Laden screen savers on their computers," a former official of the CIA was reported to have commented.

Yeah, that IS troubling. Since when did Osama have a screensaver anyway?

Source: UPI


Man Wraps Car Around Pole, Blames Prehistoric Reptile
Seriously. He blames his car wreck on a giant winged reptile.

Wenatchee police cited the man with first-degree negligent driving. A breathalyzer test showed "a minimal amount of alcohol," said Wenatchee police Sgt. Cherie Smith.

A MINIMAL amount?
Dude, I think it's time you had that breathalyzer checked out. It seems to be reading a bit low.

Source: HeraldNet


Blackwater Kicked Out of Mercenary Club
There's apparently a trade organization for international killers for hire, aka mercenaries. This organization is booting Blackwater for being too savage.

Not making this up.
Source: OpenLeft

Vomit In Your Mouth
Finally, in a story to truly sicken anyone with a conscience or sense of decency of any kind, the last of the Haditha psychos has seen their murder charge dropped. No one will face murder charges for the slaughter of 24 innocent civilians in Iraq.

Not. One. Person.

They killed two dozen people, over several hours, in a rampage of sheer terror, and not one gets a trial for murder.

Not one.

Source: The BBC

Cui Bono

(For the illiterate pagans out there)

So everyone's heard about the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, former Prime Minister of Pakistan, recently returned from exile, survivor of another attempt on her life during her welcome home celebration about a month ago. Bhutto's family has been involved in Pakistani politics much the same way the Kennedys have been in the United States, the difference being, our dynastic clan offs themselves, hers gets murdered.

She's the fourth Bhutto since Pakistan's independence to die as a result of politics. Her father and two brothers preceded her.

So, obviously, there are two ways to look at this assassination. One: It's another internal Pakistani thing, or Two: The All-Powerful Terrorists are behind it.

Cynicism aside, apply the aforementioned principle from the title and ask yourself, "Who Benefits?"

Well, in this case, it's a little muddy. Everyone seems to benefit from her death. Musharraf's political party has just seen its chief opposition die in a hail of... something (more on that in a moment), and is now a shoe-in to win the upcoming parliamentary elections. Which are, hence, a joke. Al-Queda supposedly hates her, but I think it's more of a pragmatism thing with them; Bhutto would have to be more competent at controlling those cave dwelling loons than Musharraf, who turns a blind eye.

So, who killed her, and why?

Bhutto certainly had her suspicions. She sent CNN an email to be opened only in the event of her death a short time ago. In the email, she lays the blame squarely at the feet of Musharraf.

"I wld [sic] hold Musharaf [sic] responsible," Bhutto wrote to her US spokesman, Mark Siegel, in the October e-mail, which was reported Thursday afternoon by CNN's Wolf Blitzer. "I have been made to feel insecure by his minions, and there is no way what is happening in terms of stopping me from taking private cars or using tinted windows or giving jammers or four police mobiles to cover all sides cld [sic] happen without him."

Blitzer told viewers he received the e-mail soon after it was sent two months ago, but he agreed not to report on it unless Bhutto was assassinated. "It's a story I was asked to report to the world in -- if Bhutto were killed," he said.

Source: Raw Story

It's like something out of a TV drama, isn't it?

The official timeline for the death goes something like this. Bhutto was leaving a rally and got into her bulletproof car. She stuck her head out of the sunroof to wave to admirers, and it all went to hell.

Depending on your version of events, she was shot twice and then the shooter blew himself up; there were no shots, and she died from blunt force trauma, her head hitting part of the car when the attacker blew himself up; she was shot AND riddled with shrapnel when the guy blew himself up.

She was quickly flown home for burial without an autopsy, which complicates matters.

As Bhutto's letter indicates, the state provided security has proven to be utterly useless in keeping her alive, and never seemed to try that hard to begin with. Musharraf certainly had no interest in keeping his chief rival around and operaating, and he made that abundantly clear.

But something more sinister than, well, pretty fucking sinister activities may be going on here.

Police abandoned their security posts shortly before Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto's assassination Thursday, according to a journalist present at the time, and unanswerable questions remain about the cause of her death, because an autopsy was never performed.
...
"Police officers had frisked the 3,000 to 4,000 people attending Thursday's rally when they entered the park, but as the speakers from Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party droned on, the police abandoned many of their posts," wrote Saeed Shah in an essay published by McClatchy News Service. "As she drove out through the gate, her main protection appeared to be her own bodyguards, who wore their usual white T-shirts inscribed: 'Willing to die for Benazir.'"

The reason no autopsy was performed was, as it turns out, a governmental one as well.

Whatever the case, Bhutto's precise cause of death may never be known because of the failure to administer an autopsy. The procedure was not carried out because police and local authorities in Rawalpindi did not request one, according to IBNLive, but the government plans a formal investigation why this was the case.

This does conveniently leave no one in a secure position to challenge the government's Al-Queda sunroof head smack hypothesis, though.

Earlier in the day Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz told a Pakistani news channel, “The report says she had head injuries – an irregular patch – and the X-ray doesn’t show any bullet in the head. So it was probably the shrapnel or any other thing has struck her in her said. That damaged her brain, causing it to ooze and her death. The report categorically says there’s no wound other than that," according to IBNLive.

Source: Raw Story

So what precisely does this mean for Pakistan, the region, and our colossal continuing failure abroad? Hard to say.

Currently the country is being gripped by waves of violence and chaos; the upcoming elections are now a complete farce and will put Musharraf back in power just as he always intended; and whether Al-Queda actually killed Bhutto or not, it's clear that Musharraf wanted to give them every opportunity to do so. The letter from beyond the grave is just icing on the cake.

This is one seriously messed up situation, folks.

(For more details on the aftermath, see this handy Telegraph article)

News from the Other War

On the other side of the world, we're losing a second war simultaneously.

We've been at war in Afghanistan, or the direct cause of war in Afghanistan, since at least the 1980s, when we took to arming and training the Muhjahadeen fighters who would later form both the opposing sides in the ongoing civil war there today. Al-Queda is a direct result of our ill-considered plan to help push the Soviet army out of a worthless patch of dirt that they could never have held for any length of time either way. It was stupid, naive, and the consequences have been devastating for the entire world.

There is a Tom Hanks movie coming out on the subject called 'Charlie Wilson's War', about the otherwise do-nothing Congressman who singlehandedly was responsible for much of the push to train and arm these men, who now form the core of the Al-Queda terror network that we are supposedly fighting. From the trailers it looks to be a feel-good, 'rollicking' story of how one person can make a difference, even in politics.

It'd be worth noting what difference Wilson's plan ultimately made. But I don't expect Hollywood to put a downer ending on the movie. Me, I'd close it with a shot of the WTC going down in flames, and the screams of people running down the streets of New York in terror. *shrug*

All this leads to the situation today, where we continue to deal with the fallout from the Soviet war in Afghanistan. Taliban and Al-Queda forces wage a continuous low level war in Afghanistan, operating out of a semi-autonomous region across the border in our so-called ally, Pakistan. Pakistan is run by a corrupt military dictator by the name of Musharraf. Yes I know he supposedly stepped down as head of the army. If you believe that he's not in control, however, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'm eager to offload.

That brings us up to today, where we are throwing money, weapons and training at Pakistan in the hopes of cleaning up the mess where we threw money, weapons and training at Afghanistan twenty years ago...

Waste in the Wasteland
As you might suspect, writing blank checks to a military dictator is a rather inefficent way of fighting an enemy. Case in point: Pakistan.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — After the United States has spent more than $5 billion in a largely failed effort to bolster the Pakistani military effort against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, some American officials now acknowledge that there were too few controls over the money. The strategy to improve the Pakistani military, they said, needs to be completely revamped.

Five billion dollars seems like chump change compared to Iraq, but it's worth remembering that spending money badly can be worse than spending no money at all.

Civilian opponents of President Pervez Musharraf say he used the reimbursements to prop up his government. One European diplomat in Islamabad said the United States should have been more cautious with its aid.

“I wonder if the Americans have not been taken for a ride,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Case in point. The money we've spent has done wonders -- for President Musharraf. We've succeeded in propping up an incompetent dictator whose interests run counter to ours. Bravo.

After Six Years, a Plan

Early last week, six years after President Bush first began pouring billions of dollars into Pakistan’s military after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the Pentagon completed a review that produced a classified plan to help the Pakistani military build an effective counterinsurgency force.

Nice that we thought this one through in advance. By 'in advance', I actually mean, 'not at all', of course. Think of it as Newspeak for the Bush administration.

“I was astounded,” said the officer, who would not speak for attribution because he now holds another senior military post. “On one side of the border we were paying a billion to get very little done. On the other side of the border — the Afghan side — we were scrambling to find the funds to train an army that actually wanted to get something done.”

I could do this all day, but you should probably just read the article for the full details on our colossal pants-downer in Pakistan. It's a national disgrace, but with any luck for our esteemed defense contractors, we'll still be there, doling out cash and guns, in another 20 years.

Source: The New York Times

With Friends Like These
The Brits have been stabbing us, the Afghan people, and Democracy in general in the back with a dull knife, apparently conducting negotiations with the Taliban in secret.

Despite Gordon Brown denying this from the floor of Parliament.

Source: The Telegraph

Like Rats from a Sinking Ship
Meanwhile, it turns out, the UN and the EU have been up to much the same tricks, with their representatives also meeting with the Taliban despite the direct opposition of the governor of the region in which these meetings took place. They have since been thrown out of the country.

Source: BBC News

So, to recap. The United States is spending billion of dollars to prop up the Pakistani government, which has no intention of actually arming its own troops properly or fighting the radicals in its own territory, but would love to take our cash to keep itself in power and to build weapons to fight the Indian government.

The British have been directly undermining us by conducting secret negotiations with the people who directly supported the WTC attacks.

And now the Afghan government has had to expel representatives from the EU and the UN for conspiring to meet with Taliban officials.

This war is going SO WELL.