But it didn’t seem to bother him that TIME had a “pro-Bush/pro-war in Iraq” bias for years and did not ask tough questions, calling Bush on his lies and illegalities? Suddenly, when there is hope again in America for a chance at being a positive part of the global community of nations, it is “extreme” to report on the euphoria? Its “a disgusting failure”, when the market jumps 400 points based on a new Presidential appointee because the economy has so precipitously reflected the fear of depression that’s spreading around the US?
That’s hope, Mr. Halperin, not ‘extreme media bias’.
And who can forget Halperin’s lengthy post at his site back in February when he listed 16 things that “McCain can do” in taking on Obama that the vanquished Hillary Clinton could not. The list included “6. Allow some supporters to risk being accused of using the race card when criticizing Obama” and “11. Emphasize Barack Hussein Obama’s unusual name and exotic background through a Manchurian Candidate prism.” Since he is close to McCain’s campaign team, this was readily interpreted as direct advice and offended so many that Halperin later placed at the bottom of the post in red, Note: This is analysis of what is likely to happen, not advice or endorsement. And in that update he disingenuosly commented, “McCain has already been forced to denounce several instances of some of these efforts.” Gee, wonder who might have inspired “some of these efforts”?
It’s the old false equivalency problem. In his “disgusting” remarks at the forum, Halperin cited as the most obvious flaw the NYT’s late profiles of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama. Why, the McCain profile was more negative! But, come of think of it, Michelle did not have an affair with Barack while he was married to another, did not steal from her own charity and barely avoid jail, did not become a drug addict, did not lie about the the circumstances of adopting a baby abroad, and so on.
And of course, there is the second half of that argument from TIME: “there are too many opinions out there”.
Personally, I believe the proliferation of blogs is essential to reclaiming democracy. The mainstream media sucked at giving Americans well-rounded, global views of our country’s actions. This next generation relies on the voices of ‘the many’ to tell the truth, since we can’t rely on the voice of corporate media.
I’m 48. When I was growing up, something might happen to you in your day and you’d wait until you ran into a buddy or your family in order to share the ’story’. You’d have the ’story’ in your head and you’d process it in the minutes/hours until you shared it. Many times, you’d forget it, with the next arising ’story’. Now we process things instantly, thru text messaging, each and every thing that happens theoretically gets shared instantaneously. We’re sharing at warp speed.
Read,Write,Web blogs about the massive increase in instant mobile messaging. We’re interconnected, especially while ‘on the go’:
Mobile messaging is experiencing a period of record growth, according to some figures released from VeriSign earlier this week. Looking at the numbers more closely, some interesting trends emerge. Those include the use of messaging for social and political change, marketing, such as that done by U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s mobile campaign, and the use of mobile messaging for charitable donations. Other sectors experiencing significant increases are the enterprise and financial institutions. In those two areas alone, mobile messaging has seen a 115% increase in only a year’s time, and much of that is thanks to the financial industry’s adoption of the medium for business to consumer communication.
In Q3 2008, VeriSign Messaging and Mobile Media Divison’s mobile messaging networks enabled more than 58.3 billion messages per day to travel through their pipes…10% more than in the previous quarter and up from 280 million per day in Q3. Based on these record-breaking numbers, VeriSign projects that their mobile messaging networks will enable close to 200 billion total messages by the end of the year.
Enterprises and financial institutions have seen growing numbers of mobile messages sent, too. From Q3 2007 to Q3 2008, the total number of messages delivered rose from 129 to 227 million - a 115% increase.
Much of that activity comes from SMS’s new position as the preferred platform for mobile banking. VeriSign’s Mobile Banking platform, which includes seven of the top ten banking brands and three of the top five credit card companies, has grown 35% since last quarter alone.
My read: we are in the throes of global interconnectedness that will re-write all of our paradigms and systems. We just can’t see how that will yet unfold.
Danger Room: What’s Next in National Security, WIRED Magazine’s blog on the Military, has the following post:
Pentagon Wants $581 Billion From Obama –
War Costs Not Included
By Noah Shachtman
Give the boys in the Pentagon credit; they’ve got chutzpah. While the federal government hemorrhages money — and everyone from Goldman Sachs to General Motors to the city of Philadelphia is looking for more Washington cash — the Defense Department is getting ready to ask for its biggest budget yet. The Pentagon is telling the Obama transition team that it wants $581 billion for the next fiscal year, an increase of $67 billion. And that doesn’t even count cash needed to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The cash request “includes $524 billion in spending authority approved by the White House Office of Management and Budget this spring… as well as $57 billion in additional needs the Office of the Secretary of Defense identified over the summer,” reports Inside Defense.
I know we’re supposed to feel ’safer’, but I find it extremely creepy that our government spends so much time and money on this technology, instead of green infrastructure, or feeding our hungry, or providing health insurance to uninsured American children…
The Secret Service is tasked with protecting the President of the United States from assailants; and given that President-elect Obama has already been the target of assassination plots they may have their work cut out after January. But they have more than earpiece radios and armored limos to help them; the Secret Service can call on the very latest technology. Documents from a recent court case indicate that they have advanced directed-energy devices which are highly classified.
You may remember Donald Friedman, who claims that government agencies are misusing non-lethal directed-energy weapons. It’s easy to dismiss him as a crank. But his obsessive digging has turned up valuable information. For instance, one of his Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests unearthed a 1998 U.S. Army program looking at a microwave device to beam sound directly into the target’s skull which the rest of us had missed. (The same technology underlies the Medusa non-lethal weapon.)
Now he’s found something else. Friedman’s current court case involves attempts to extract information about any directed-energy weapons such as lasers and microwaves used by the Secret Service. Do they really have anything of the kind? A “Motion for an Enlargement of Time” (in other words, a request for a few more weeks) by the Secret Service’s attorney indicates that they have something, and it’s pretty secret:
“Plaintiff’s FOIA request is for document [sic] concerning directed energy technology that is very sensitive. Some of this documents [sic] pertain to research conducted by divisions within defendant agency that is used to carry out its mandate to protect very high government officials. In fact, in one case, the documents… could not be mailed but had to be hand carried interstate.”
So what is this “sensitive” technology? We don’t know for sure, naturally. But we can sure speculate…
Now, we’ve talked before about the Secret Service’s interest in laser dazzlers as a means of protecting the White House against suicide attacks by light aircraft, dating back to 1998. We don’t know if dazzlers have ever been deployed, but that would certainly explain some of the secrecy.
Portable dazzlers would also be a good way of dealing with potential snipers without the risk of harming bystanders. Other agencies also have an interest in covert dazzlers. Ex MI6 agent David Tomlinson claims a laser strobe was proposed for an assassination attempt on Slobodan Milosevic in 1992 by dazzling his chauffeur at a crucial point and causing him to crash. (Conspiracy theorists claim that a laser dazzler was used to assassinate Diana, Princess of Wales — but any bright flashes more likely came from photographer’s flashguns.)
A portable version of the truck-mounted Active Denial System — the Pentagon’s “pain ray” — might be used to similar effect. It could cause an assailant to flinch for a vital second, giving agents an opportunity to get the President out of the line of fire, without having to shoot into a crowd. Raytheon has been working on a rifle-sized version of the Active Denial System for some years, but nothing has been heard of it recently.
Another likely candidate is a directed-energy device to neutralize suspected improvised explosive devices, or IEDs — something that produces an intense, narrow beam of microwaves to fry the electronics. Tomlinson also claimed that MI6 has “sophisticated radio transmitters that would knock out the electronics of the limo at the press of a button, causing the airbags to inflate.”
Presidential protection is likely to include a range of jammers to stop remote bomb detonation, and possibly remote-controlled aircraft attacks. With all this jamming, interference can occur and make radio communication impossible — if you leave any frequency clear, the bad guys might use it to send a detonation signal. So perhaps the Secret Service may have a microwave voice-transmission system as an emergency backup when radio communication is impossible. This would allow them to beam instructions to agents at a distance. At a pinch it could also be used to distract a would-be assassin — having a voice suddenly booming inside your head should put off most snipers (though they might have a few voices in there already).
We know that the Air Force has looked at microwave sound as a non-lethal weapon, and long-range acoustic systems like LRAD are already in use by the military and others. So a Secret Service microwave sound system is not totally, completely out of the question.
Donald Friedman may yet manage to get more information about secret directed-energy weapons. All we know so far is that they exist… Unless anyone out there can tell us more?
Treasure Secretary Henry Paulson is handing out $160 billion to banks in the hopes that they will stabilize and the financial markets will calm. But he won’t tell you which banks are in trouble. Instead, he’s giving cash to a range of banks, so that NO ONE CAN POINT A FINGER AT THE WEAKENED BANK.
Its like the lice patrol at my kids’ school: they notify parents that lice is present but don’t name kids, so the innocent kid doesn’t get stigmatized. Problem is, banks aren’t elementry school kids. Banks intentionally lent out lots and lots of money on the fractional reserve system, and bought and sold dangerously valued subprime mortgage and credit derivative products.
I think more banks should fail. The weak or badly damaged banks should close. The banks that do get government support (purchased by the government in the biggest Socialist grab ever in the US) should not lend out the money they’re given. The stronger banks should recapitalize, but not MERGE into bigger, more dangerous weapons of money destruction.
Someone needs to explain to the American people that the bank bailout does not mean money will be immediately be lent out again. Because its the excess lending that got us in this mess.
Then we should get on with it. There are other dominos falling.
