This MSNBC.com headline certainly won’t help the feeling that many Americans have that the wealthy get taken care of and the rest are left to hang:

Amid shortage, big NYC firms get swine vaccine
Rules allow company docs to request vaccine, distribute to high-risk groups

NEW YORK – Some of New York City’s largest employers – including Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs and big universities – have started receiving doses of the much-in-demand swine flu vaccine for their at-risk employees.

The government-funded vaccine is being distributed to states, where health departments decide where to send the limited doses. In New York, health officials are allowing businesses with onsite medical staff to apply for the vaccine.

Doctors for large companies can ask for the vaccine along with other doctors but must agree to vaccinate only high-risk employees like pregnant women and those with chronic illnesses, said Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

While there is more to the story than the headline and sub-headline, you have to dig deep into the article to find the non-inflammatory content. While it is traditional that “if it bleeds, it leads” one must wonder if the headline needed to be quite this inflammatory.

—
Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice .
—

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In these days where the word Nazi is being used as a political tool to describe “offenses” that don’t even come close to approaching the crimes committed, and when idiot Americans are offering the “heil Hitler” salute to an elderly Jewish man who disagrees with their politics, we need to remember history.

World War II didn’t start with the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, but it was a turning point. The crimes against humanity executed by the Nazis of Germany, the Fascists of Italy, and the Imperialists of Japan started long before that date, and the effects resonate down to the present.

It was said at the time, “Never forget!” Unfortunately, as evidenced by recent behavior, we have forgotten. It is past time for all good citizens to denounce the behaviors of those childish enough to use the word “Nazi” and behave boorishly, shouting down those who do not agree with them.

—
Cross-posted between Random Fate and The Moderate Voice.
—

Obama confronts fear and defies it, in contrast to President George W. Bush, who appears to embrace fear.

Just a thought.

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Can you see the patterns in the white noise of so-called news? Do you understand the consequences of our decisions that we base upon what we are willing to read and see in this white noise?

BBC did not know of 9/11 film’s link to religious right

The BBC broadcast a controversial docu-drama, The Path to 9/11, this week without realising that it had been made by a member of the US religious right.

The three-hour programme, shown over two nights on BBC2 to commemorate the fifth anniversary of the attack on the twin towers, was purchased from ABC, a subsidiary of Disney. At the last minute the US television company was forced to re-edit sequences after claims of distortion from former president Bill Clinton and members of his administration.

A BBC spokesman said the organisation did not vet film-makers on their political or religious beliefs.

The film’s director, David Cunningham, is active in Youth With a Mission (Ywam), a fundamentalist evangelical organisation founded by his father, Loren Cunningham. According to its publications, the group believes in demonic possession, spiritual healing and conservative sexual morality.

Last month David Cunningham addressed a conference in England organised by the group at its UK headquarters in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, on the making of the film. His talk was entitled Christ-like Witness in the Film Industry.

Diebold Brushes Off Yet Another Damning Security Report

Just a day after Avi Rubin discussed many of the real world problems of some Diebold e-voting machines in action, Ed Felten has come out with his quite damning independent review of the machines — noting just how problematic the security is and how easy it was to upload malicious programs (including a virus that could spread dangerous software from machine to machine). This is hardly the first time we’ve seen such a report, but it seems like each report is progressively worse. By this point, you’d have to have lived in a hole to believe e-voting machines are secure. Diebold, in typical fashion, has responded not by admitting to any problems, but by attacking Felten’s report — claiming that his test (done on a machine acquired just a few months ago) was based on older software.

Tony Snow says Colin Powell is confused: So was every other reporter

Olbermann had a good round up on Countdown last night. Tony Snow seems to think that Colin Powell is just a little bit confused over Article 3. He might have been used in the run up to the war, but I think he understands this issue quite well. The rest of the gaggle was just as perplexed. Olbermann also talks about Bush’s new approach to Osama-Just “fuggetabouthim” and threw in a little IAEA to boot. Michael Stickings writes about the IAEA: Yes, it looks “like prewar Iraq all over again,” in the words of one former nuclear inspector.

A Defining Moment for America
The president goes to Capitol Hill to lobby for torture.

PRESIDENT BUSH rarely visits Congress. So it was a measure of his painfully skewed priorities that Mr. Bush made the unaccustomed trip yesterday to seek legislative permission for the CIA to make people disappear into secret prisons and have information extracted from them by means he dare not describe publicly.

At Last, the Issue is Publicly Joined . . . and When All the Smoke has Cleared, the Central Question is Quite Simple

And it is this: Should the CIA be legally authorized to breach the Geneva Conventions by engaging in the following forms of “cruel treatment” prohibited by “common” Article 3(1)(a) of those Conventions?:

– “Cold Cell,” or hypothermia, where a prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees, during which he is doused with cold water.

– “Long Time Standing,” in which a prisoner is forced to stand, handcuffed and with his feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours.

– Other forms of “stress positions” and prolonged sleep deprivation, perhaps akin to “Long Time Standing.”

– Threats of violence and death of a detainee and/or his family.

(These are the CIA techniques that have been widely reported, including in this ABC News Report and in Ron Suskind’s book. To the extent some of these techniques are not among those that the President is now euphemistically designating “alternative,” or to the extent the Administration is attempting to preserve other techniques currently prohibited by Common Article 3, the burden is on the Administration to clarify the record. They have resolutely refused to disclaim any of these reported techniques, and so I think it’s fair for Congress and the public to assume, absent contrary evidence, that these are among the techniques at issue in the current debate. If we’re going to authorize conduct currently prohibited by the Geneva Conventions, we ought to know just what we’re signing on for.

Bush Pushes for Terror Legislation

Warning that “time’s running out” for Congress to act, President Bush urged lawmakers today to pass legislation that would create special military tribunals to try terrorist suspects and allow the CIA to continue a program in which captured al-Qaeda leaders have been held and interrogated in clandestine prisons abroad.

NSA Bill Performs a Patriot Act

A bill radically redefining and expanding the government’s ability to eavesdrop and search the houses of U.S. citizens without court approval passed a key Senate committee Wednesday, and may be voted on by the full Senate as early as next week.

By a 10-8 vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved SB2453, the National Security Surveillance Act (.pdf), which was co-written by committee’s chairman Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pennsylvania) in concert with the White House.

The committee also passed two other surveillance measures, including one from Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), one of the few senators to be briefed on the National Security Agency program. Feinstein’s bill, which Specter co-sponsored before submitting another bill, rebuffs the administration’s legal arguments and all but declares the warrantless wiretapping illegal.

In contrast, Specter’s bill concedes the government’s right to wiretap Americans without warrants, and allows the U.S. Attorney General to authorize, on his own, dragnet surveillance of Americans so long as the stated purpose of the surveillance is to monitor suspected terrorists or spies.

Lisa Graves, senior legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, called the bill “stunning.”

Ultimately…

There Is No Tomorrow

One of the biggest changes in politics in my lifetime is that the delusional is no longer marginal. It has come in from the fringe, to sit in the seat of power in the Oval Office and in Congress.

For the first time in our history, ideology and theology hold a monopoly of power in Washington. Theology asserts propositions that cannot be proven true; ideologues hold stoutly to a worldview despite being contradicted by what is generally accepted as reality. The offspring of ideology and theology are not always bad but they are always blind. And that is the danger: voters and politicians alike, oblivious to the facts.

One-third of the American electorate, if a recent Gallup Poll is accurate, believes the Bible is literally true. This past November, several million good and decent citizens went to the polls believing in what is known as the “rapture index.”

These true believers subscribe to a fantastical theology concocted in the 19th century by a couple of immigrant preachers who took disparate passages from the Bible and wove them into a narrative that has captivated the imagination of millions of Americans. Its outline is rather simple, if bizarre: Once Israel has occupied the rest of its “bibli-cal lands,” legions of the Antichrist will attack it, triggering a final showdown in the valley of Armageddon. As the Jews who have not been converted are burned, the messiah will return for the rapture. True believers will be lifted out of their clothes and transported to heaven, where, seated next to the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents suffer plagues of boils, sores, locusts and frogs during the several years of tribulation that follow.

—

I read all this and then look at the pictures on my desk, next to the computer – pictures of my grandchildren: Henry, age 12; Thomas, age 10; Nancy, 7; Jassie, 3; Sara Jane, nine months. I see the future looking back at me from those photographs and I say, “Father, forgive us, for we know not what we do.” And then I am stopped short by the thought: “That’s not right. We do know what we are doing. We are stealing their future. Betraying their trust. Despoiling their world.”

And I ask myself: “Why? Is it because we don’t care? Because we are greedy? Because we have lost our capacity for outrage, our ability to sustain indignation at injustice?”

What has happened to our moral imagination?

The news is not good these days. I can tell you that as a journalist I know the news is never the end of the story. The news can be the truth that sets us free – free to fight for the future we want. And the will to fight is the antidote to despair, the cure for cynicism, and the answer to those faces looking back at me from those photographs on my desk.

What we need is what the ancient Israelites called “hocma” – the science of the heart, the capacity to see, to feel and then to act as if the future depended on you. Believe me, it does.

The future depends upon us and our decisions, as it always has upon the generation alive and in power at the moment.

Our future, and that of our children, depends upon us, and the decisions we make. ALL of them.

When I run across articles, posts, and other writings worth a longer read, I send an email to myself with the link. Unfortunately, life intervenes and by the time I make it back to my house, I have neither the time nor the energy to devote to a full discussion of the links and the concepts they convey.

So, in lieu of that discussion, I will instead merely list the links and ask that you form your own conclusions from them, which is indeed the main thrust of my posts here at Random Fate, a repetitive request that you form your own opinions rather than mindless mouthing of partisan talking points, a theme that should be obvious at least to those who are paying attention.

Dog Days

Chemical Hazard

Deadlock Over Stealth Project

Gutsy reporting

The National Catholic Reporter on a survey about the use of torture

IBM devises carbon nanotube chip

IBM touts milestone with single nanotube-based IC

Bush’s Credibility Gap: Historical And Current Roots

A NEW TYPE OF DISCRIMINATION
The Prohibition Era

Roberts Dissent Reveals Strain Beneath Court’s Placid Surface

Torture: A Centrist Position?

Do your own math to find any pattern therein that might exist.

UPDATE: The text to the link to The National Catholic Reporter article changed at the request of a reader to avoid confusion. The headline to the article, which was the original text, “Americans, especially Catholics, approve of torture” is misleading both for the thrust of the article and the supporting polling data.

Technorati Tags: patterns in the white noise

Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice has posted on the conviction in Austria of British “historian” (in quotes because I think he does not deserve that appellation) David Irving for the crime of denying the Holocaust occurred. The outcome of the court case caught my eye earlier today because of the implications of a person being jailed because of something he wrote.

Think about those implications for a moment.

Yes, denying that the Holocaust occurred is criminal, but should it be a crime in a society that treasures liberty and wishes to avoid the very mindset that permitted something as horrible as the Holocaust to occur?

Note that criminal is defined “having the nature of a crime” while crime is “a violation of the law”, a subtle but distinct difference.

In other words, where does the line between true political speech the freedom of which does indeed protect a democracy from descent into the tyranny of creeping expansion of government power versus the equivalent of “crying fire in a crowded theater” lie?

Millions died in the Holocaust, a systematic extermination of a people based upon their religion that was perpetrated in a society where dissent was punished by at the least exclusion from society and legal protection if not by the very same extermination.

Where does the line lie between the “internment” advocated by some versus the concentration camps that the Nazis created with such efficiency?

Ponder that for the time it deserves: Dissent was punished in Germany in the 1930s; in other words, the lack of freedom of political speech helped make the Holocaust possible.

Yet some democracies now make denying the Holocaust a crime. What is to prevent those same democracies from making other “undesirable” speech a crime, and more importantly, who chooses what is “undesirable” speech?

If we allow those in power to make the choice, what is to prevent them from choosing speech that is in opposition to their policies or even to their remaining in power?

Respect for the law? It appears that the law can be over-ridden by simple legal opinions written by lawyers in the pay of those in power if recent events in the United States are taken as a guide, or to put it simply, the interpretation of the law is rather too fungible to rely upon it to prevent the choices by those in power to preserve that power for the sake of keeping power rather than protecting freedoms.

I have recently been writing posts that reference the fundamentals that form the foundations of our Constitution, allusions that have been misinterpreted by some as calls to a “strict constructionist” interpretation of the Constitution. I do not follow the constructionist interpretation, I prefer to review the fundamental freedoms as laid out in the writings of the founders in the light of the understanding and culture of today.

What exactly are the fundamentals that apply to freedom of speech?

Do those fundamentals include the suppression of photos taken by American troops at the US-run prison at Abu Ghraib, where acts that were taken, regardless of whether they were sanctioned “officially” or not, have lost for the US the trust of the Arab Muslim world?

Do those fundamentals include cooperating with a repressive regime in finding dissenters when we condemn those who cooperated 70 years ago with a different repressive regime?

What exactly do we believe in now, and what do we believe is worth sacrificing to preserve?

More importantly, what sacrifices are we willing to make?

Technorati Tags: commentary, freedom of speech, opinion, patterns in the white noise

I don’t have the time tonight for a long essay, so I’ll have to limit things to links I’ve had in my browser for a few days.

Whatever happened to “small government” conservatives? aTypical Joe suggests an answer.

Where is the right-wing outrage over the taking of hostages? David at In Search of Utopia wonders whatever happened to the “good guys”.

At Fruits and Votes, Professor Matthew Shugart questions the usefulness of the state of the union address.

At NPR an audio-article points out how opinions are confused with facts because of a “design flaw” in the human brain. So, perhaps the intelligent designer wasn’t so intelligent?

Technorati Tags: patterns in the white noise

For every human problem, there is a neat, simple solution; and it is always wrong.
   -H. L. Mencken

From James Joyner at Outside the Beltway:

The problem with a pre-emptive war to avoid a possible war at the time of the enemy’s choosing is that you definitely get a war at the time of your own choosing. I’m not yet convinced that’s a worthwhile exchange.

From Thomas Holsinger at Winds Of Change.NET:

America has come to another turning point – whether our inaction will again engulf the world and us in a nightmare comparable to World War Two. This will entail loss of our freedom as the price of domestic security measures against terrorist weapons of mass destruction, though we might suffer nuclear attack before implementing those measures. The only effective alternative is American use of pre-emptive military force against an imminent threat – Iranian nuclear weapons, which requires that we invade Iran and overthrow its mullah regime as we did to Iraq’s Baathist regime.

All the reasons for invading Iraq apply doubly to Iran, and with far greater urgency. Iran right now poses the imminent threat to America which Iraq did not in 2003. Iran may already have some nuclear weapons, purchased from North Korea or made with materials acquired from North Korea, which would increase its threat to us from imminent to direct and immediate.

Now, note the reaction of the White House as voiced by spokesman Scott McClellan to the recent release of a taped message from Osama bin Laden, “We do not negotiate with terrorists, we put them out of business… The terrorists started this war and the president made it clear that we will end it at a time and place of our choosing.” I’m not advocating negotiation, but if we could end this at “at time an place of our own choosing” why the Hell haven’t we chosen to end it yet? Making arrogant posturing statements that are obviously beyond our capabilities, this is helping our cause?

So, after tying up our military strength against a “threat” that was ambiguous at best even before it became clear that there was no “there” there, we are presented with a real threat of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a state that is known to have direct links to multiple terrorist groups.

Now what do we do?

How about instead of reacting with typical partisan idiocies, we search for a solution?

What a concept…

That seems to be the modus operandi of the current administration.

Michael Reynolds, at The Mighty Middle, articulates in one post what I have been trying to state in several, condensing the current state of war down to the vital essentials, and as he does so the errors we are making are laid bare.

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, patterns in the white noise, recommended reading

TeaFizz at his eponymous weblog discusses why he is sad, very sad.

I feel the same way.

To summarize:

Once is happenstance.

Twice is coincidence.

Three occurrences and it is time to look closely and not simply accept things as presented.

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, patterns in the white noise, recommended reading

Amid all the sound and fury over the revelation of NSA monitoring of international communications of US citizens without warrants, something fundamental is being overlooked as the usual suspects give their usually suspect blatherings that are more predictible than the rising of the sun in the east every morning.

The situation is summarized best by Lt. Col Rick Francona, USAF (Retired) a military analyst for MSNBC in “NSA – Spying on Americans?” at Hardblogger on the MSNBC web site:

The governing document for this situation is United States Signals Intelligence Directive (USSID) 18. I worked in the U.S. SIGINT System for many years — this directive is taken seriously. From what I have observed, violation of USSID 18 is a career-ending event. NSA requires that its officers and military personnel assigned there to complete annual USSID 18 training.

The long-established mechanism to authorize the intercept of internal or U.S.-entity communications is via a federal warrant issued under the provisions of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), most often referred to as “a FISA warrant.” It is the FISA court that provides oversight to ensure that NSA’s actions are in fact necessary and in keeping with U.S. law. USSID 18 also permits collection of these U.S. communications when authorized by the Attorney General in exceptional circumstances (emergencies, imminent danger, threat to life, etc.).

—

My question: Was an Executive Order needed? Were the existing provisions of FISA not sufficient to authorize NSA collection of these communications? Since very few FISA requests are turned down, what special situations arose that were not covered by the FISA?

This is the key question that has been in my mind ever since the story first appeared.

This question needs to be answered, but until then it should be noted that this administration has not shown a tendency towards preserving the individual freedoms enshrined in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. To the contrary, the administration appears to be trying to circumvent the checks-and-balances system in order to allow the executive branch to operate without any restraints. Because of that history, I view this executive order with extreme suspicion.

To quote correctly (rather than mangle it as President George W. Bush once did): Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

Patterns are important, and reveal more than the actors creating the patterns realize.

Once is happenstance.

Twice is coincidence.

Three occurrances? Time to look more closely, boys and girls.

To the memory of the women and men of the resistance, French and foreign, victims of the German Nazis and of the Vichy Government, tortured by the Gestapo in these buildings.
—

A simple, small plaque on the side of a building in Grenoble, France.

No, I am not invoking Godwin’s Law in the discussion of torture. I am pointing out the historical context of torture, which regimes have used it, which regimes have rejected it.

During the Cold War, anyone who was not a fervently true believing communist had no doubt that the Soviet Union used torture routinely.

The Soviet Union posed a threat not only of the annihilation of dozens to hundreds of cities in the United States, but arguably could have destroyed civilization as we know it.

Yet, we felt no need to publicly “reserve the right to torture” our enemies.

I strongly suspect that despite the capitalist window-dressing that the People’s Republic of China has put on their regime, torture is also a part of their repertoire, and my suspicions are not without some foundation.

Is this the company we want to be aligned with?

During the 1991 Gulf War, Americans were outraged at the broadcast images of downed pilots who had obviously been severely beaten.

Did we say we needed to treat Iraqi prisoners in the same fashion in retaliation?

What is torture? The definition I use is any act perpetrated upon a person in our power that if performed upon one of our troops would create the outrage that is so often displayed when our troops are treated with anything less than respect.

I have read in more than one place that we, the United States, should not state that we will never use torture because it gives our enemies some kind of advantage, knowing that we will treat them well they have no incentive to give information when interrogated. To wit, we need to make them fear us so they will cooperate. Our enemies supposedly have no regard for life, so we should have no regard for them.

The number of different ways this is wrong is staggering, yet reasonable people are presenting this argument that not only should we not say that we will not torture, but that we should torture.

Torture is wrong.

Torture is immoral.

Regardless of the “status” of those in our custody, whether “enemy combatant” or legitimate prisoner of war. The label we apply does not change the fundamental immorality of abusing those in our power. Labels are merely used to dehumanize those we hate to provide some comfort for our consciences. Our enemies dehumanize us, which allows them and their fellow-travelers to perpetrate the inhuman and inhumane acts that comprise their signature.

Do we have to become them to defeat them, when the threat they pose to us and our civilization is far, far less than that from the former Soviet Union?

Every time we torture someone (and yes, “waterboarding” and other acts we have deliberately performed on persons in our control do fit my definition of torture), we lower ourselves another notch towards the level of our enemies.

To put it simply, we are in danger of displaying exactly the immorality and disregard for life that we say are the characteristics of those we label “the terrorists.”

They kill those they think of as their enemies without regard to any other considerations because they have chosen to dehumanize those they oppose. They behead those they regard as their enemies as they would an animal, because they choose not to see them as human.

Now, some are saying we should torture those we regard as our enemies to put fear into them.

I won’t spell out the conclusion for you, but I urge you to move outside your comfort-box of “we are the good-guys” because our nature is shown by our actions, just as we claim that the actions of our enemies shows their nature.

Do the math.

Technorati Tags: amber and cruelty, anti-torture amendment, opinion, terrorism, torture

Regular readers know that I have a lot of concerns with the USA PATRIOT Act. I share the suspicion of the power of government that the founding fathers had, a suspicion that many seem to completely lose when it comes to discussions of liberty versus security (this trade-off isn’t exactly what people think it is, more on that later when I have time).

Since I am short of time during my move from France to the US, I leave at 5:00AM on Monday, I will leave you with this to consider and to provide a foundation for the full discussion I plan to post later:

Report: FBI faked terror probe documents
Officials retaliated against agent who complained, N.Y. Times says

Reuters
Updated: 9:59 p.m. ET Dec. 3, 2005

NEW YORK – FBI officials mishandled a Florida terror investigation, falsified documents to try to cover mistakes and retaliated against an agent who complained about the problems, The New York Times reported in its Sunday edition.

Citing a draft report of an investigation by the Justice Department’s inspector general’s office, a copy of which was obtained by the newspaper, the Times said that in one instance correction fluid was used to alter dates on three FBI forms to conceal an apparent violation of federal wiretap law.

It was not known who altered the forms.

The case dates to 2002, the Times said, when the FBI’s Tampa office opened a terror investigation into whether laundered money, possibly connected to a drug outfit, might be used to finance terrorists overseas.

The FBI was considering initiating an undercover operation and asked an agent with expertise in the area to take part.

But the agent, Mike German, soon told FBI officials the Orlando agent handling the case had “so seriously mishandled” the investigation that a prime opportunity to expose a terrorist financing plot had been wasted.

The report however concluded that “there was no viable terrorism case.”

But the draft report, dated Nov. 15, said German, who left the bureau last year after he said his career was derailed after the Florida incident, was “retaliated against” by his boss, who stopped using him for prestigious assignments in training new undercover agents.

FBI spokesman Michael Kortan told the Times the bureau had not been briefed on the findings but said that once it did get the report, “if either misconduct or other wrongdoing is found we will take appropriate action.”

The report said the inspector general found the FBI had “mishandled and mismanaged” the investigation and said supervisors were aware of problems in the case but did not take prompt action to correct them.

Once German raised his concerns, an unidentified agent in Orlando “improperly added inaccurate dates to the investigative reports in order to make it appear as though the reports were prepared earlier,” the inspector general found, according to the Times.

Correction fluid was used to backdate forms that the main informant had signed as part of a bugging operation, in which he agreed that he had to be present for all undercover taping.

The alteration was significant, the report found, because the informant had taped a 2002 meeting with suspects but left the recorder unattended while he used the restroom, in violation of federal law.

The report also said that after German began making his complaints about the case, the head of the FBI undercover unit, Jorge Martinez, froze him out of teaching assignments in undercover training and told one agent that he would “never work another undercover case.”

For those who say “no real harm was done here,” remember, the gravest illnesses start with minor symptoms.

Technorati Tags: commentary, FBI, government, opinion, patterns in the white noise

More on this later, but for now, I’ll allow a single drawing to give my thousand words:

Think about it, and do your own math. There is more than first appears, as Shakespeare (using the voice of Hamlet) tried to warn Horatio.

Instead, we have this:

Technorati Tags: commentary, opinion, patterns in the white noise

I have a post in the works on the entire “Pajamas Media” story, but at the moment, this email I received today encapsulates the hypocrisy:

Subject: NY Launch Invite For New “Citizen Journalism” News Service – Pajamas Media

Hi Jack,

On November 16th, 2005 Pajamas Media will launch a new publishing medium that brings together some of the top online influencers and personalities, under one banner, to help evolve and expand journalism. In essence, this new media company will create a network hub for bloggers around the world in what will be one of the world’s first online forums for citizen journalism and commentary. Additionally, Judith Miller, will keynote the event and discuss the Shield Law debate that’s before Congress, broader issues facing bloggers and mainstream journalists, and what the future holds for both.

Please find below the official invitation. If you would like to attend, simply click on the RSVP link and we’ll add you to the list. Hope to see you there.

Thanks,

Ryan Lack

Excuse me, the appropriately named Ryan Lack, but the complete lack of communication for months before informing me there was a change in the business model and I was not one of the weblogs that “made the cut” does not exactly warm my heart towards your launch of the “New ‘Citizen Journalism’ News Service” given that you essentially shit on most of the citizen journalists (at least 230, given I received a congratulatory email for being weblog #300 to sign up and you only accepted 70…).

So, explain to me exactly how this new elite is different from the old elite?

As The Who so eloquently pointed out decades ago:

There’s nothing in the streets
Looks any different to me
And the slogans are replaced, by-the-bye
And the parting on the left
Are now parting on the right
And the beards have all grown longer overnight

I’ll tip my hat to the new constitution
Take a bow for the new revolution
Smile and grin at the change all around
Pick up my guitar and play
Just like yesterday
Then I’ll get on my knees and pray
We don’t get fooled again
Don’t get fooled again
No, no!

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!

Meet the new boss
Same as the old boss

Pretty damn sad when you replicate song lyrics of decades ago without even a remote recognition of the irony.

Technorati Tags: blogging, blogs, Calvinball, Calvinball Play of the Week, Pajamas Media, patterns in the white noise, weblogs

As you can see in my updates on the health status of my father, I have been a bit too distracted to post this weekend.

That is not the sole reason I have written very little. I was so disgusted by the reactions of both the right-wing and the left-wing to the indictments against Lewis Libby arising from the CIA agent leak investigation that I needed a break.

I wonder, what is the point? Why blog?

An article at Forbes.com entitled “Attack of the Blogs” encapsulates what I see entirely, even though the article is written from a business point of view, with the attacks of the title directed against products and companies rather than political parties and their supporters.

From the article:

“Bloggers are more of a threat than people realize, and they are only going to get more toxic. This is the new reality,” says Peter Blackshaw, chief marketing officer at Intelliseek, a Cincinnati firm that sifts through millions of blogs to provide watch-your-back service to 75 clients, including Procter & Gamble and Ford. “The potential for brand damage is really high,”says Frank Shaw, executive vice president at Microsoft’s main public relations firm, Waggener Edstrom. “There is bad information out there in the blog space, and you have only hours to get ahead of it and cut it off, especially if it’s juicy.”

Remove the word “brand” from the Blackshaw quote, and it covers the political side of blogging quite well, especially the remark about bad information that never gets corrected because there will always be some blogger out there that will repeat it, no matter how often it has been refuted.

Dave Taylor at his blog Intuitive Systems agrees with the thesis of the Forbes.com article and summarizes some reactions he has observed in blogworld that in a show of ironic non-self-awareness illustrate exactly the tendencies in the article that the quoted bloggers are reacting against. Taylor then summarizes the points from the article with his own take on them (again from a business perspective, but it is easy to substitute “politics” for “business” when reading it to see the trends are the same):

1. You Don’t Know Who Is Blogging and Why

This is a point that even bloggers admit is true when we talk about “fake blogs” or “character blogs” and criticize typically miserable attempts by corporations to plug into the blogosphere with the “Lincoln Fry Blog” (from McDonalds, since shut down) and Wrigley’s Juicy Fruit Gum Blog (a Flash-based site that has nothing to do with blogging other than the word appears on the site).

Sure, these are poorly executed and obviously fake, but there’s a somewhat naive assumption in the blogosphere that everyone is genuine, everything is built around “credibility” and that if anyone were to dare even fake their motivation for writing a weblog entry (get paid to blog), well, that’d be terrible.

Consider the fate of Marqui, who dared to offer cash to bloggers who would write about their clients. The bloggers could opt whether to admit they were sponsored or not, but Marqui was roundly vilified nonetheless.

I mean, for all you know, dear reader, Daniel Lyons is my pseudonym or my best pal from our business school days. He’s not, but do you trust me 100% given that you don’t know me?

2. Misinformation and Lies are Quickly Disseminated

You need merely to look at the breathless analysis of as-yet-unreleased services and products in the blogosphere to see just how much whispers and innuendo can affect business. Google’s right in the cross-hairs with that one, and people were busy disassembling their still unreleased Google Base product without any more information than a single screenshot that might have been faked.

Or ask Apple Computer, where they have had to change their method of disseminating information to the media due to incessant leaks and misinformation about new products. The Motorola ROKR phone suffered from this prejudged-by-bloggers fate, as did the Video iPod, which has had to “prove itself” in a way that previous products have never had to worry about.

3. Bloggers are not Subject to Libel Laws

While I really want to say that this is patently false, it is surprisingly difficult to find any legal cases that have been successfully prosecuted where the defendant was a blogger or was publishing their libelous material on a weblog. There are cases like Aaron Wall versus Traffic Power (see my writeup on the case for background), but the case isn’t about what Aaron wrote as much as what other people wrote as comments on his site.

The combination of being able to go back and edit weblog entries, the relative anonymity of most weblogs, and the lack of precedent suggests that Lyons does have a good point here, one that we should be thinking about quite seriously. It has profound implications for the legitimacy of blogging that every blogger seeks.

4. Bloggers are not Journalists

I’ve wrestled with this point myself, having been on panels about blogging sponsored by the Society for Professional Journalists and similar. It’s fashionable to be skeptical of journalists, especially after con men like Jayson Blair sully the reputation of even the most revered bastion of professional journalism, but it is nonetheless true that the vast majority of journalists check their facts and ensure they have at least two sources to corroborate information.

Bloggers, on the other hand, are happy to cite other bloggers as the source of information, a tortuous chain that often ends at a single person opining something controversial and interesting about a company or product. Bloggers also don’t respect moratoriums on publishing information from companies, arrogantly believing that the blogosphere is more important than any sort of announcement schedule by the organization. As a result, few companies pre-release information to even the most serious and professional of bloggers.

To be fair, there are bloggers who take the responsibilities of their bully pulpit more seriously and try to avoid gossip and innuendo in favor of facts and direct sources, but they really are in the minority.

And so, enough…

There are more points that I think can be culled from Daniel Lyons’ “Attack of the Blogs” article in Forbes, but let’s stop here as I think I’ve made my point.

Like any other medium, blogs are just tools that will be used thoughtfully and artfully for communication by some and viciously and vindictively to propagate lies and misinformation by others.

The important thing is to step back from the overt bias in the Forbes article and read through it a second time, asking yourself whether anything said is really false, or simply just a bit breathless and one-sided.

I am tired of the thoughtlessly, relentlessly predictable reactions I see. Few are interested in what is right for the nation, they are too busy “scoring points” against the “other side.”

We are all on the same side, but we have forgotten this simple fact.

Rome fell after centuries of success not because of external forces, but because of internal rot.

Before the invasion of Iraq, from the outside the United States appeared at its strongest, invincible.

Now?

…come the most unexpected inspirations.

From Tedrow Drive, the author (with the nom de plume of Vavoom) of which had his thirtieth birthday a scant five days before my 41st, today:

No, it didn’t happen that way. In fact, it was just the opposite. Take the antithesis of the above and that was my 30th birthday. I came home tired and monumentally unhappy. My parents called, I heard the story, but this time I had a different response. “Mom, who cares? Who cares about people? They’re nasty, selfish and worthless. Why should I help anyone? Look at all the terrible people I work with… should I really help them? Aren’t they just like everyone else in this world? I mean, what’s the point? I can be as good as I want and that’s not going to change anything…”

There was a long pause on my parents end. It was as if both were taking a deep breath. My Father responded, “What drives you, Vavoom?” “Huh?” “What drives you?” “Dad, what does that have to do with anything?” “What drives you? What keeps you around?” “Honestly, I don’t know… I honestly don’t know…” I broke down sobbing on that, my 30th birthday, “I just don’t think life is worth it anymore…”

My Mother said, “Breathe, Vavoom. Breathe.” My Father then said, “Find your center, son. Calm yourself.” He continued, “You are right, there are plenty of bad people and no, the world is not necessarily a good place. I wonder though, what would it be like if people like you give up? What drives you, Vavoom?”

I thought for a while. I still didn’t have an answer.

My Mother picked up the conversation, “When you were young, you used to put a cape on and jump off of our furniture and pretend you could save the world. Can’t you still live that way, just focusing on one person at a time?”

I smiled. Something about that rang true. Maybe the world is bad. Maybe some people truly suck. Still, what’s stopping me from doing my best and being good? Nothing.

The conversation ended with, “You know Dad, I do know what drives me.” “Good,” he responded. Funny, he didn’t ask what that something was. I guess that wasn’t the point of asking.

If you’ll excuse me, I’ve just put my cape on. It’s time to find some furniture to jump off of.

I repeatedly fail in my attempts to gain the optimism of the last line.

I never stop trying, though.

Perhaps that is the best any of us can do.

Happy 41st to me.

At first when I ran across this story, I didn’t believe it. So, I did some searching, and sadly, it appears to be real.

From towards the bottom of this page from the LexisNexis transcript of the MSNBC show Countdown from October 11, 2005 :

Tonight, a rare one-twofer here, two worsts in one story, a high school senior in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, doing homework as part of a class project on freedom of dissent and the Bill of Rights, tacked a photo of the president to a wall. The tack was placed somewhere on the president`s head in the picture.

The student then took a photograph of the photograph with his own thumb in the frame, giving the thumbs down. So you can see this now. The student then dropped off the roll of film to be developed at the photo department of the Kitty Hawk Wal-Mart. And they called the police, who, in turn, called the Secret Service. Two Secret Service agents went to the high school, confiscated the picture of the picture, interviewed the student, interviewed the teacher, threatened to turn the whole matter over to local the U.S. attorney.

And then somebody realized they had a really bad public relations nightmare on their hands. So the runners-up, the Secret Service, but your winner, the folks in the photo department at the Wal-Mart in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. They are today`s Worst Persons in the World.

The chain of stupidity here would be laughable, if it wasn’t so frightening.

Think about it.

Even if the Wal-Mart employees were stupid for calling the local police, those authorities should have recognized immediately this was a non-issue. Instead, they choose to call the Secret Service, who again should have understood there was no crime here. What happened? They threaten to turn the matter over to a federal attorney.

All over a project on our supposedly protected right of freedom of speech.

I repeat, think about it.

The SchoolNotes.com page for this class in Civics and Economics can be found here.

Ordinarily, I enjoy irony.

I find this one heartbreaking.

Technorati Tags: opinion, commentary, First Amendment, Bill of Rights, patterns in the white noise

At the risk of sounding idiotically pretentious, I have to get this out there so when it comes I can say, “I saw it!”

There is an undercurrent that eventually, whether it be in weeks, months, or years, will be recognized as a critical change in history.

What is that undercurrent?

Damned if I know.

I’ve just been around the block often enough to know the feel of a shadowy pattern in the white noise.

It is my job to spot underlying patterns in data, and I am very good at it, especially when the data is dirty with noise.

I’ve got an unpeaceful, uneasy feeling, and that has never been good.

Something “just ain’t right,” and I suspect that “something” is big.

Hell, like I needed a reason to lose sleep…

Ordinarily, my posts categorized “Patterns in the White Noise” are groups of links that I find have a common theme, if not immediately obvious to a casual observer.

Recently, however, I have found a series of cartoons (mostly political cartoons, but one blast from the past that is still relevant) that to me show a pattern that cuts through the white noise of the day.

Here they are:

And finally, the inimitable Calvin and Hobbes:

Technorati Tags: patterns in the white noise, commentary, opinion, politics