America's top spies have divined the following shocking revelations after taking advantage of the very latest in tea-leaf and tarot card technology. Among their research-intensive findings, the most brilliant minds of our vaunted intelligence community have determined:
-The world will get warmer.
-The population will grow and age.
-New forms of energy will be important.
-American power and prestige will shrink.
Let's just set aside the fact that these things have already happened. I mean seriously, guys, you're not even trying any more. Are we honestly just paying American intelligence agencies to sit around and read the next Tom Friedman book?
The CIA's next groundbreaking work products: "Non-English Speakers Remain Difficult to Understand," "Japanese Cars Represent Ongoing Threat to GM," and the page-turner I can't wait for, "Mideast Political Future Appears Sandy."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
Charles Rangel, You Deserve It
I can't say that, as a liberal, I feel any sympathy for Charles Rangel whatsoever. Between using taxpayer dollars to build himself a monument at City College of New York, using rent-controlled apartments as offices, and apparently evading his taxes here and there, he'd be your average slimy politician.
But the man went one step worse than that. He, alongside Louis Farrakhan, helped the men who murdered New York City Patrolmen Phillip Cardillo to evade justice. As I mentioned in a previous post, in April of 1972, Cardillo and his partner were called to a mosque in Harlem for a report of an officer down. It was a fake call that drew them into an ambush. Cardillo was shot and died a week later in the hospital, but when a crowd of local citizens saw the commotion, they were angry only that the police had entered a mosque.
Rangel, aided by Louis Farrakhan, denied the police officers the ability to investigate the crime scene using the threat of a riot. They assured the cops that the perpetrators would turn themselves in at the local precinct, and because of Rangel's influence, the New York City police had no choice but to accept this travesty and leave the scene. In addition, Rangel helped twist the deputy police commissioner's arm into apologizing for the incident in the first place. Neither the mayor nor the police commissioner attended Officer Cardillo's funeral, but Cardillo's widow and his three children certainly did.
Representative Charles Rangel helped a cop killer to go free, and we're surprised that the guy might cheat on his taxes? He's a disgrace to the Democratic Party. The sooner someone has the courage to drag this pond scum into the light of day, the better.
But the man went one step worse than that. He, alongside Louis Farrakhan, helped the men who murdered New York City Patrolmen Phillip Cardillo to evade justice. As I mentioned in a previous post, in April of 1972, Cardillo and his partner were called to a mosque in Harlem for a report of an officer down. It was a fake call that drew them into an ambush. Cardillo was shot and died a week later in the hospital, but when a crowd of local citizens saw the commotion, they were angry only that the police had entered a mosque.
Rangel, aided by Louis Farrakhan, denied the police officers the ability to investigate the crime scene using the threat of a riot. They assured the cops that the perpetrators would turn themselves in at the local precinct, and because of Rangel's influence, the New York City police had no choice but to accept this travesty and leave the scene. In addition, Rangel helped twist the deputy police commissioner's arm into apologizing for the incident in the first place. Neither the mayor nor the police commissioner attended Officer Cardillo's funeral, but Cardillo's widow and his three children certainly did.
Representative Charles Rangel helped a cop killer to go free, and we're surprised that the guy might cheat on his taxes? He's a disgrace to the Democratic Party. The sooner someone has the courage to drag this pond scum into the light of day, the better.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
YouTube Fights Back
Just out of curiosity, why did this little blow to international terrorism take so damn long? I'm all for keeping this little series of tubes open and free from unreasonable restriction, but the idea that YouTube has been removing videos for copyright violations but not violent, hateful and potentially murderous messages...along with education viewers on how to act on those messages? Why did it take Joe freaking Lieberman to get people's attention?
It's very similar to child pornography; everybody recognizes, internationally, that that material both stems from unacceptable, repugnant activities, and that it also helps perpetuate them. In one case it's child molestation, and in another, it's hate speech and try-this-at-home walkthroughs on bomb-building. The scope of damage is obviously different, but they both clearly represent a public menace.
That's what allows me to advocate a restriction on free speech, especially over the Internet, which is something I'm not ordinarily prone to doing.
There's a good argument to be made that keeping such videos out in the open permits intelligence agencies to track who's viewing them. But that tends to get into privacy issues, and is within spitting distance of the PATRIOT Act. Furthermore, if you take that initial easy access to the material away, that starts to narrow down the number of people who are willing to put in the effort to find the stuff. The truly dedicated ones were going to find it anyway, and if they didn't find the extremist material, they were going to make their own. But this helps with the low-hanging fruit...the bored or disaffected who might have come across the stuff casually.
And the "whack-a-mole" point is valid. If you shut them down off YouTube, they'll go somewhere else. But that goes back to the child-porn example. If it becomes progressively more difficult to find using mainstream websites, all but the most dedicated searchers will give up and do something (hopefully) more lawful with their time. It's the same theory that leads China to use basic obstructive techniques on their "Great Firewall." Any decent hacker can get around the Chinese net controls, but they're not doing it for hackers. They're doing it to help corral the general population.
Not that I'm advocating corralling anybody. But big enterprises like YouTube have an obligation to parse the most offensive and dangerous material out there, and I remain surprised that they didn't have any restrictions on it until now. You couldn't stand on a streetcorner and pass out how-to flyers on bomb-building. Someone would call the police and you would be out of luck.
This will obviously not stop people who want to hear violent hate speeches, see attacks on American troops, or learn how to build a bomb. But it does force them to take additional steps and expend additional effort. This additional time and effort is the cornerstone of the three D's- Deter, Delay, Disrupt. Making it tougher- even if only a little- to find the videos that they want will help deter the half-hearted, delay the committed, and provide a little more time to help disrupt their activities.
It's very similar to child pornography; everybody recognizes, internationally, that that material both stems from unacceptable, repugnant activities, and that it also helps perpetuate them. In one case it's child molestation, and in another, it's hate speech and try-this-at-home walkthroughs on bomb-building. The scope of damage is obviously different, but they both clearly represent a public menace.
That's what allows me to advocate a restriction on free speech, especially over the Internet, which is something I'm not ordinarily prone to doing.
There's a good argument to be made that keeping such videos out in the open permits intelligence agencies to track who's viewing them. But that tends to get into privacy issues, and is within spitting distance of the PATRIOT Act. Furthermore, if you take that initial easy access to the material away, that starts to narrow down the number of people who are willing to put in the effort to find the stuff. The truly dedicated ones were going to find it anyway, and if they didn't find the extremist material, they were going to make their own. But this helps with the low-hanging fruit...the bored or disaffected who might have come across the stuff casually.
And the "whack-a-mole" point is valid. If you shut them down off YouTube, they'll go somewhere else. But that goes back to the child-porn example. If it becomes progressively more difficult to find using mainstream websites, all but the most dedicated searchers will give up and do something (hopefully) more lawful with their time. It's the same theory that leads China to use basic obstructive techniques on their "Great Firewall." Any decent hacker can get around the Chinese net controls, but they're not doing it for hackers. They're doing it to help corral the general population.
Not that I'm advocating corralling anybody. But big enterprises like YouTube have an obligation to parse the most offensive and dangerous material out there, and I remain surprised that they didn't have any restrictions on it until now. You couldn't stand on a streetcorner and pass out how-to flyers on bomb-building. Someone would call the police and you would be out of luck.
This will obviously not stop people who want to hear violent hate speeches, see attacks on American troops, or learn how to build a bomb. But it does force them to take additional steps and expend additional effort. This additional time and effort is the cornerstone of the three D's- Deter, Delay, Disrupt. Making it tougher- even if only a little- to find the videos that they want will help deter the half-hearted, delay the committed, and provide a little more time to help disrupt their activities.
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