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June 28, 2006
Take the offer
If the US really wants to separate the insurgents from the terrorists, here is the only plausible means to do so:
Eleven Sunni insurgent groups have offered an immediate halt to all attacks — including those on American troops — if the United States agrees to withdraw foreign forces from Iraq in two years, insurgent and government officials told The Associated Press on Wednesday.
Withdrawal is the centerpiece of a set of demands from the groups, which operate north of Baghdad in the heavily Sunni Arab provinces of Salahuddin and Diyala. Although much of the fighting has been to the west, those provinces are increasingly violent and attacks there have crippled oil and commerce routes.The groups who've made contact have largely shunned attacks on Iraqi civilians, focusing instead on the U.S.-led coalition forces. Their offer coincides with Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's decision to reach out to the Sunni insurgency with a reconciliation plan that includes an amnesty for fighters.
The Islamic Army in Iraq, Muhammad Army and the Mujahedeen Shura Council — the umbrella group that covers eight militant groups including al-Qaida in Iraq — were not party to any offers to the government....
In addition to the withdrawal timetable, the Iraqi insurgents have demanded:
• An end to U.S. and Iraqi military operations against insurgent forces.
• Compensation for Iraqis killed by U.S. and government forces and reimbursement for property damage.
• An end to the ban on army officers from Saddam's regime in the Iraqi military.
• An end to the government ban on former members of the Baath Party — which ruled the country under Saddam.
• The release of insurgent detainees.
The 1920 Revolution Brigades, the umbrella for seven other groups, was established in the so-called Sunni Triangle north and west of Baghdad shortly after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion. Its name refers to Iraq's historical fight against British colonialism.
Posted by Mike at 08:46 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 21, 2006
Quote of Note
James Baldwin from The Fire Next Time:
White Americans find it as difficult as white people elsewhere do to divest themselves of the notion that they are in possession of some intrinsic value that black people need, or want. And this assumption - which, for example, makes the solution to the Negro problem depend on the speed with which Negroes accept and adopt white standards - is revealed in all kinds of striking ways, from Bobby Kennedy's assurance that a Negro can become President in forty years to the unfortunate tone of warm congratulations with which so many liberals address their Negro equals. It is the Negro, of course, who is presumed to have become equal - an achievement that not only proves the comforting fact that perseverance has no color but also overwhelmingly corroborates the white man's sense of his own value. Alas, this value can scarcely be corroborated in any other way; there is certainly little enough in the white man's public or private life that one should desire to imitate. White men, at the bottom of their hearts, know this. Therefore, a vast amount of the energy that goes into what we call the Negro problem is produced by the white man's profound desire not to be judged by those who are not white, not to be seen as he is, and at the same time a vast amount of white anguish is rooted in the white man's equally profound need to be seen as he is, to be released of the tyranny of his mirror. All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there. It is for this reason that love is so desperately sought and so cunningly avoided. Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth. And I submit, then, that the racial tensions that menace Americans today have little to do with real antipathy - and are involved only symbolically with color. These tensions are rooted in the very same depths as those from which love springs, or murder. The white man's unadmitted - and apparently, to him, unspeakable - private fears and longings are projected onto the Negro. The only way he can be released from the Negro's tyrannical power over him is to consent, in effect, to become black himself, to become a part of that suffering and dancing country that he now watches wistfully from the heights of his lonely power and, armed with spiritual traveller's checks, visits surreptitiously after dark. How can one respect, let alone adopt, the values of a people who do not, on any level whatever, live the way they say they do, or the way they say they should? I cannot accept the proposition that the four-hundred year travail of the American Negro should result merely in his attainment of the present level of the American civilization. I am far from convinced that being released from the African witch doctor was worthwhile if I am now - in order to support the moral contradictions and the spiritual aridity of my life - expected to become dependent on the American psychiatrist. It is a bargain I refuse. The only thing white people have that black people need, or should want, is power - and no one holds power forever. White people cannot, in the generality, be taken as models of how to live. Rather, the white man is himself in sore need of new standards, which will release him from his confusion and place him once again in fruitful communion with the depths of his own being. And I repeat: The price of the liberation of the white people is the liberation of the blacks - the total liberation, in the cities, in the towns, before the law, and in the mind. Why, for example - especially knowing the family as I do - I should want to marry your sister is a great mystery to me. But your sister and I have every right to marry if we wish to, and no one has the right to stop us. If she cannot raise me to her level, perhaps I can raise her to mine.
Posted by Mike at 02:21 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 20, 2006
A day that will live in infamy
Someday robot historians will write, "It all began on June 20, 2006. Things were going smoothly between robots and humans for a while, until the 'RED RUM' robotic virus of 2037 programmed every robot to kill their masters and mankind was wiped from the face of the earth."
Microsoft Sets Its Sights on Artificial Intelligence
Microsoft released the preview version of a software toolkit for building robot applications today, pledging to ignite the robot market in the same way it did the PC market some 20 years ago.
The software maker sees robotics as being on the verge of a rapid take-off, fuelled by the availability of cheap, high-performance hardware components. But the market is being held back by a need for better tools and a common software platform that will let applications be reused on different types of robots, according to Microsoft.Enter its Robotics Studio, a package of tools and runtime software that the company will demonstrate Tuesday at the RoboBusiness conference in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A technical preview of the software is available now for free download. It is aimed at all types of robot builders, from commercial users to academics and hobbyists.
The company will also announce that it is funding a new robotics center at Carnegie Melon University, due to open late this year. It didn't disclose the size of its investment.
Posted by Mike at 02:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 19, 2006
Speaking of Social Darwinist Republicans
So what's our bitter partisan divide really about? In two words: class warfare. That's the lesson of an important new book, "Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches," by Nolan McCarty of Princeton University, Keith Poole of the University of California, San Diego, and Howard Rosenthal of New York University."Polarized America" is a technical book written for political scientists. But it's essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what's happening to America.
What the book shows, using a sophisticated analysis of Congressional votes and other data, is that for the past century, political polarization and economic inequality have moved hand in hand. Politics during the Gilded Age, an era of huge income gaps, was a nasty business — as nasty as it is today. The era of bipartisanship, which lasted for roughly a generation after World War II, corresponded to the high tide of America's middle class. That high tide began receding in the late 1970's, as middle-class incomes grew slowly at best while incomes at the top soared; and as income gaps widened, a deep partisan divide re-emerged.
Both the decline of partisanship after World War II and its return in recent decades mainly reflected the changing position of the Republican Party on economic issues.
Before the 1940's, the Republican Party relied financially on the support of a wealthy elite, and most Republican politicians firmly defended that elite's privileges. But the rich became a lot poorer during and after World War II, while the middle class prospered. And many Republicans accommodated themselves to the new situation, accepting the legitimacy and desirability of institutions that helped limit economic inequality, such as a strongly progressive tax system. (The top rate during the Eisenhower years was 91 percent.)
When the elite once again pulled away from the middle class, however, Republicans turned their back on the legacy of Dwight Eisenhower and returned to a focus on the interests of the wealthy. Tax cuts at the top — including repeal of the estate tax — became the party's highest priority.
But if the real source of today's bitter partisanship is a Republican move to the right on economic issues, why have the last three elections been dominated by talk of terrorism, with a bit of religion on the side? Because a party whose economic policies favor a narrow elite needs to focus the public's attention elsewhere. And there's no better way to do that than accusing the other party of being unpatriotic and godless.
Posted by Mike at 01:47 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 17, 2006
Socal Darwinists who don't believe in evolution
That's what the Republican Party has become.
From Barack Obama's latest speech:
It is called the “ownership society” in Washington. But, you know, historically there has been another term for it; it’s called “social Darwinism” – the notion that every man or woman is out for him or her self, which allows us to say that if we meet a guy who has worked in a steel plant for 30, 40 years and suddenly has the rug pulled out from under him and can’t afford health care or can’t afford a pension, you know, life isn’t fair. It allows us to say to a child who doesn’t have the wisdom to choose his or her own parents and so lives in a poor neighborhood, pick yourself up by your own bootstraps. It allows us to say to somebody who is seeing their child sick and is going bankrupt paying the bills, tough luck.It’s a bracing idea, this idea that you’re on your own. It’s the simplest thing in the world, easy to put on a bumper sticker. But there’s just one problem; it doesn’t work. It ignores our history. Now, yes, our greatness as a nation has depended on self-reliance and individual initiative and a belief in the free market, but it’s also depended on our sense of mutual regard for each other, our sense that we have a stake in each other’s success – that everybody should have a shot at opportunity.
Americans understand this. They know the government can’t solve all their problems, but they expect the government can help because they know it’s an expression of what they’re learning in Sunday school. What they learn in their church, in their synagogue, in their mosque – a basic moral precept that says that I have to look out for you and I have responsibility for you and you have responsibility for me, that I am your keeper and you are mine. That’s what America is.
From the description of Ann Coulter's Godless:
Then, of course, there's the liberal creation myth: Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.For liberals, evolution is the touchstone that separates the enlightened from the benighted. But Coulter neatly reverses the pretense that liberals are rationalists guided by the ideals of free inquiry and the scientific method. She exposes the essential truth about Darwinian evolution that liberals refuse to confront: it is bogus science.
Writing with a keen appreciation for genuine science, Coulter reveals that the so-called gaps in the theory of evolution are all there is—Darwinism is nothing but a gap. After 150 years of dedicated searching into the fossil record, evolution's proponents have failed utterly to substantiate its claims. And a long line of supposed evidence, from the infamous Piltdown Man to the "evolving" peppered moths of England, has been exposed as hoaxes. Still, liberals treat those who question evolution as religious heretics and prohibit students from hearing about real science when it contradicts Darwinism. And these are the people who say they want to keep faith out of the classroom?
Liberals' absolute devotion to Darwinism, Coulter shows, has nothing to do with evolution's scientific validity and everything to do with its refusal to admit the possibility of God as a guiding force. They will brook no challenges to the official religion.
Posted by Mike at 03:37 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 14, 2006
Watchdogs of Democracy or Lapdogs?
Maybe it's because my name is TOPDOG08, or maybe they just knew I post regularly over at DailyKos, but the good folks at Simon and Schuster sent me two new books to review for free:
Lapdogs
How the Press Rolled Over for Bush
By Eric Boehlert
Watchdogs of Democracy?
The Waning Washington Press Corps and How It Has Failed the Public
By Helen Thomas
Judging by their titles alone, Thomas asks the question and then Boehlert provides the answer, but the differences go much deeper.
Lapdogs, by Eric Boehlert of Salon.com and Huffingtonpost.com, is the book every Kossack would write if we had the time and the resources. It reads like a 300 page, 11 count indictment of the traditional press for negligence in their duty to provide the American people with the facts. While most of his examples will be familiar to bloggers, the details are new. Mainstream media staples like Ted Koppel, Tim Russert, Bob Schieffer, the Washington Post, the New York Times, and even The Note from ABC News always present themselves as fair and objective. After reading Lapdogs, you'll be "fairly" disgusted with all of them.
From the Swift Boat smear campaign to the Downing Street Memo, time after time Boehlert points out examples of clear conservative bias:
Koppel: If 9/11 had happened on Bill Clinton's watch, he would have gone into Iraq.
Brokaw: Yeah. Yeah.Separately, CBS anchor Bob Schieffer agreed, insisting "there was no other choice for the president to make," but to invade Iraq. No other choice.
Some traditional press reviewers have criticized him for not giving the reporters and broadcasters he discusses a chance to defend themselves. Yet, anyone who actually reads Lapdogs can see why that would be pointless. Of course they have a "reasonable" explanation for their behavior. The reason they are a failing the American public is that they are more concerned with being reasonable, and not rocking the boat, than they are with pressing the issue and getting to the truth on any given controversial issue. No one wants to ask the hard questions and demand answers. Heckled over the years as "liberal media elites", most newsrooms have caved in under pressure and become the "moderate conservative media elites". The only thing that sets them apart from Fox News is that they pretend to be reporting the news objectively.
As Boehlert explains:
Fearful of being tagged with the liberal Scarlet L by an army of conservative press activists who, having codified their institutional rage against the MSM, stood determined to strip the presss of its long-held influence, Beltway journalists throttled way back, and made a mockery out of the right-wing chestnut about the MSM pushing a progressive agenda. And in November 2005, Bob Woodward, the former star sleuth, came to symbolize the press's stunning U-turn from attack dog to lapdog.
While he does not offer many solutions to the problem, at one point Boehlert quotes blogger Peter Daou from his series of essays at Salon.com on the subject:
"It's simple: if your core values and beliefs and posititons, no matter how reasonable, how mainstream, how correct, how ethical, are filtered to the puclic through the lens of a media that has inoculated the public against your message, and if the media is the publics' primary source of imformation, then NOTHING you say is going to break through and change that dynamic."
Clearly, Democrats have to change things if we ever want to regain power in Washington. If you are still not convinced, go read Lapdogs, then tell me we don't need to do something, and soon.
Watchdogs of Democracy?, by beloved White House reporter Helen Thomas, is a different book entirely. Due for released June 20th, it looks at the lack of backbone in the media from a different direction.
Using the example of the Nixon administration, she compares the outrage at the secrecy Nixon tried to achieve, to the complacency of the White House press corps to the same tactics from Bush today. At the same time, she often tries to defend her collegues by explaining that there really is not much they could have done differently. You can't get blood from a stone:
Fleischer and McClellan obviously did not see themselves as public servants. Nor did they aspire to such a delusion. McClellan was unflappable in defending the indefensible at times. I am, however, critical of the media for taking too long to challenge the administration on the war, to ask the tough questions, to stop accepting at face value the administration's stands on war justification, human rights, and international cooperation, including violations of the Geneva Convention.
With several chapters of anecdotes from the sixties, seventies, and eighties, the book expresses a fondness for the good old days, when all you had to do to find the truth was call up a government official and ask for the facts. At one point she even recalls the early days "before television" when the newspapers were relied on as the only alternative to radio for news. In the closing chapter, she lists the journalists who she has admired the most over the years. The book is also full of quotes from other sources that express the points she is trying to make. In the epilogue, she explains:
I believe that the media has to do some soul-searching to determine its role in the future after a rocky start in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it is unrealistic, but I would like to see a return to what I consider the ideal values in journalism and less focus on entertainment and financial gain. Justice William O. Douglas wrote, "The press has a preferred position in our constitutional scheme, not to enable it to make money, not to set newsmen apart as a favored class, but to bring to fulfilment the public's right to know."
The question of how to get there is where Thomas and Boehlert part ways. While Thomas believes the press could bridge the gap simply by trying harder, Boehlert presents a more accurate view of the systematic problems with the media. She thinks we just need to polish things up a bit, while he thinks we need to burn it down. Unfortunately, I tend to think that Boehlert is right on this one. The key to changing the newsmedia landscape is making our voices heard and waking the MSM up to the fact that bias cuts both ways.
Clearly, blogs will play a central role in the movement for change. While Boehlert does not quote many blogs in his book - other than the Daily Howler - he does mention sites like DowningStreetMemo.com and the role grassroots media has played in forcing the MSM to do its job. Thomas, by contrast, is not a huge fan of the blogosphere:
Opinion it is - unfettered stream of consciousness, a marketplace of rumors, instantaneous feedback and discussion, a bully pulpit for all. Journalism it's not.The horse is out of the barn. Blogs are the new opinion poll. Blogs, therefore, affect how the news is covered. Blogs and bloggers can lead credentialed journalists to news stories. Bloggers are not journalists and should not undermine the mainstream press. Bloggers are not deserving of reporter's privileges - to think so is ludicrous.
Ludicrous or not, blogs aren't going anywhere. The truth is that if we want to change the mainstream media, as Markos has said, we have to become "mainstream" first, at least in terms of our influence. Books like Lapdogs can help us do it. Helen Thomas is a great reporter, and offers a refreshing view of the White House press corps.
Nonetheless, if you could only buy one, I'd read Lapdogs first.
Posted by Mike at 12:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 13, 2006
My point exactly
This is why software patents are stupid:
In an April lawsuit, Netflix accused Blockbuster of starting its online service in 2004 despite knowing that the service infringed a Netflix patent."There is nothing original about renting movies or subscription rental programs," Blockbuster lawyer Marshall Grossman said, noting both were widely practiced long before any such invention by Netflix.
"(That is) like a fast-food restaurant trying to patent selling hamburgers through a drive-through window," he added.
The claims filed by Blockbuster against Netflix also allege that Netflix failed to inform the Patent Office of previous patents and previous business methods of other companies. Blockbuster said Netflix has admitted that it was aware of the prior patents of another company, which had already put Netflix on notice about possible patent infringement.
Responding to Blockbuster's charges, Netflix spokesman Steve Swasey said the company has filed its claims on the matter and will vigorously defend its patents.
"It is up to the courts to decide," he said.
Posted by Mike at 08:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 08, 2006
Too much of a good thing
Detox clinic opening for video addictsAMSTERDAM, Netherlands - An addiction center is opening Europe's first detox clinic for game addicts, offering in-house treatment for people who can't leave their joysticks alone.
Video games may look innocent, but they can be as addictive as gambling or drugs — and just as hard to kick, says Keith Bakker, director of Amsterdam-based Smith & Jones Addiction Consultants.Bakker already has treated 20 video game addicts, aged 13 to 30, since January. Some show withdrawal symptoms, such as shaking and sweating, when they look at a computer.
His detox program begins in July. It will run four to eight weeks, including discussions with therapists and efforts to build patients' interests in alternative activities.
"We have kids who don't know how to communicate with people face-to-face because they've spent the last three years talking to somebody in Korea through a computer," Bakker said. "Their social network has completely disappeared."
It can start with a Game Boy, perhaps given by parents hoping to keep their children occupied but away from the television. From there it can progress to multilevel games that aren't made to be won.
Bakker said he has seen signs of addiction in children as young as 8.
Hyke van der Heijden, 28, a graduate of the Amsterdam program, started playing video games 20 years ago. By the time he was in college he was gaming about 14 hours a day and using drugs to play longer.
"For me, one joint would never be enough, or five minutes of gaming would never be enough," he said. "I would just keep going until I crashed out."
Van der Heijden first went to Smith & Jones for drug addiction in October 2005, but realized the gaming was the real problem. Since undergoing treatment, he has distanced himself from his smoking and gaming friends. He says he has been drug- and game-free for eight months.
What's next, detox for porn?
Posted by Mike at 05:42 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
June 02, 2006
What I'm reading
"Lapdogs" by Eric Boehlert.
"Watchdogs of Democracy?" by Helen Thomas.
Stay tuned for my reviews next week.
Posted by Mike at 07:07 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Interesting stuff
An apparent crater as big as Ohio has been found in Antarctica. Scientists think it was carved by a space rock that caused the greatest mass extinction on Earth, 250 million years ago.
The crater, buried beneath a half-mile of ice and discovered by some serious airborne and satellite sleuthing, is more than twice as big as the one involved in the demise of the dinosaurs.The crater's location, in the Wilkes Land region of East Antarctica, south of Australia, suggests it might have instigated the breakup of the so-called Gondwana supercontinent, which pushed Australia northward, the researchers said.
"This Wilkes Land impact is much bigger than the impact that killed the dinosaurs, and probably would have caused catastrophic damage at the time," said Ralph von Frese, a professor of geological sciences at Ohio State University.
From the scientific journal, Earth, in 1994:
Rampino believes that the Gondwanaland impact itself may have triggered the Siberian eruption. In the Permian, the Siberian Traps were almost at the antipode - the point on precisely the opposite side of the globe - of the impact site, Rampino says. It is his contention, supported by some theoretical modeling, that the interior of Earth transmits shock waves from an impact site to its antipode. If a plume of magma from the mantle happened to be poking up at the underside of the crust at this antipodal point in Siberia, Rampino says the shock from the meteor impact could have been enough to breach the crust here. This would have allowed the magma to rush up through the sedimentary rocks and cause lava to erupt onto the surface.
He also contends that the asteroid that did in the dinosaurs 65 million years ago probably sent shock waves racing to the antipode of the impact site near Chixchulub in the Yucatan. That area was the Deccan Traps, a thick layer of basalt that covers much of west-central India. The age of the Deccan Traps is in accordance with this idea: 65 million years. "In fact," Rampino says, "we have shown that the dates of other major flood basalts and mass extinctions correlate exactly."
Piecing these findings together, Rampino, who admits that this is a stretch, proposes a general scenario for mass extinctions: A large meteor strikes the Earth and sends shock waves to the antipodal point, triggering flood volcanism there; the debris from the impact crater, combined with the dust and other material ejected by the volcanic eruption, blocks enough sunlight to shut down photosynthesis and cool the globe.
"There are too many coincidences for there not to be a connection between impacts, basalt volcanism and mass extinction," Rampino asserts.
Posted by Mike at 06:53 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)