CIA Veteran on Today's Intelligence and Mideast Policy

CIA vet Michael Scheuer: "I think Iraq is finished. We’ll just find a way to get out. I frankly don’t think we ever intended to win there." And: "As a professional intelligence officer, the last people you want to report to are generals and diplomats. And if General Hayden comes to the CIA, we’ll have Mr. Negroponte [a career diplomat] as head of the community, and a general as the head of the CIA." [via MetaFilter.com]

Little Known Spy Agency Watching Americans From Space

A little-known spy agency that analyzes imagery taken from the skies has been spending significantly more time watching U.S. soil.
In an era when other intelligence agencies try to hide those operations, the director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency [NGA], retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is proud of that domestic mission.
...Geospatial intelligence is the science of combining imagery, such as satellite pictures, to physically depict features or activities happening anywhere on the planet. A part of the Defense Department, the NGA usually operates unnoticed to provide information on nuclear sites, terror camps, troop movements or natural disasters.

The Great Flydini

Old, brilliant Steve Martin bit from the Tonight Show. [from MetaFilter.com]

TDS: Phone Logs and Fox Pundits

Jon Stewart and his team of very talented writers had a field day with the NSA warrantless wiretapping and the latest news from this USA Today article: "NSA has massive database of Americans' phone calls."
Stewart: Well now it turns out that there was one specific type of domestic call the government was keeping tabs on. All of them....
The round up of FOX News pundits defending this new development was hysterical. Neil Cavuto wins the top prize as the biggest suck up when he says:
Cavuto: Yes, it is not great to necessary hear they're collecting our phone records, but it's a heck of a lot better than collecting our remains...
Stewart: Wow, the entire network of anchors has been hired to be the press secretary...
The Daily Show website hosts a ton of past video clips. Always check it out if you're looking for segments that you've missed.

Darfur reality: More killings, more rapes

Despite a cease-fire, the horrible situation in Darfur persists. Based on Google Trends data, it appears that, as of January, people are becoming interested in Darfur again (or at least they're researching it more), which may be a catalyst for politicians to act. Or maybe not... [from MetaFilter.com]

Christian Nationalism

Christian Nationalism is just one name for that ideological and aggressive species of Christianity just may be more organized, ambitious, and successful than you imagined. The dream transcends the elimination of abortion, the teaching of intelligent design, and the preservation of marriage within American politics, but instead reaches out to restore America to an imagined Christian state. Or more? "World conquest. That's what Christ has commissioned us to accomplish." Or maybe just 29% of it. But some resistance from within Christianity is starting to appear. [from MetaFilter.com]

Things to look forward to

We have about 4 billion years left until our planet is going to be destroyed. If a meteor doesn't smash us in first, over the next 250 million years the continents will continue drifting to form another pangea. If we're all still friends having survived the climate change and each other, we'll be roasted by the expanding red giant after our sun exhausts its interior hydrogen supply. In about 5.5 billion years time the helium left in the core will get hot and dense enough to burn, flaring up in a massive helium flash engulfing what remains of the solar system. When the helium core is gone, hydrogen in the outermost layers will drift off to form a ring nebula, leaving in the middle a bright white dwarf star that will slowly cool down into a cold, dense black dwarf: a silent and forgotten fossil, floating through infinite space. In other news: cats are funny! hahahahaha!

Surprise

Brian Eno is the godfather of electronica, the inventor of ambient music, and producer of the best work by bands like the Talking Heads and U2. Tchad Blake has helmed the mixing board for Elvis Costello, Tom Waits, Soul Coughing and the Bad Plus, to name just a few. Paul Simon is one of the most recognized names in pop music both for his work with Art Garfunkel and for his fusion of American pop music with African and South American music. Surprise is the the album they collaborated on, the new Paul Simon record featuring Eno's signature sonic landscapes all over it, and the entire lovely thing, complete with liner notes, is available to listen to on Simon's website. [from MetaFilter.com]

Living without Numbers or Time

The Pirahã people have no history, no descriptive words and no subordinate clauses. That makes their language one of the strangest in the world -- and also one of the most hotly debated by linguists.

Halliburton Solves Global Warming

SurvivaBalls save managers from abrupt climate change

An advanced new technology will keep corporate managers safe even when climate change makes life as we know it impossible. [Speech, photos]

"The SurvivaBall is designed to protect the corporate manager no matter what Mother Nature throws his or her way," said Fred Wolf, a Halliburton representative who spoke today at the Catastrophic Loss conference held at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Amelia Island, Florida. "This technology is the only rational response to abrupt climate change," he said to an attentive and appreciative audience.

Expunged Report on Domestic Wiretaps

Administrative Office of the US Courts removes report about wiretaps. The Memory Hole restores it:

Each April, the Director of the Administrative Office of the United States Courts is required by federal law to submit to Congress a report detailing the number of federal and state wiretaps approved or authorized during the previous calendar year. On 01 May 2006, the Office posted this report here: www.uscourts.gov/wiretap05/contents.html
One PDF file contained the main body of the report, and multiple separate PDFs contained the 9 text tables and 4 appendix tables.
A press release about the report is here.
On the evening of 03 May, a librarian reported on an email discussion list that all the files had been deleted from the US Courts website. A copy was not in Google's cache, although the cache did show a page with a deleted link to the 2005 report.
I contacted several journalists who had written about the report to see if they still had a copy of it on their hard drives. They didn't, but on 04 May, one of the reporters called the US Courts' press officer, who said that the report had been yanked because it contained information that is still under judicial seal. A sanitized version of the report is expected to be posted soon.
Soon after I contacted Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center about this, Sherwin Siy of EPIC kindly emailed the body of the original, uncensored report, which he had downloaded and saved.

PDF of report here.

Cato: The Constitutional Record of George W. Bush

In recent judicial confirmation battles, President Bush has repeatedly—and correctly—stressed fidelity to the Constitution as the key qualification for service as a judge. It is also the key qualification for service as the nation's chief executive. On January 20, 2005, for the second time, Mr. Bush took the presidential oath of office set out in the Constitution, swearing to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States." With five years of the Bush administration behind us, we have more than enough evidence to make an assessment about the president's commitment to our fundamental legal charter
Unfortunately, far from defending the Constitution, President Bush has repeatedly sought to strip out the limits the document places on federal power. In its official legal briefs and public actions, the Bush administration has advanced a view of federal power that is astonishingly broad, a view that includes

• a federal government empowered to regulate core political speech—and restrict it greatly when it counts the most: in the days before a federal election;
• a president who cannot be restrained, through validly enacted statutes, from pursuing any tactic he believes to be effective in the war on terror;
• a president who has the inherent constitutional authority to designate American citizens suspected of terrorist activity as "enemy combatants," strip them of any constitutional protection, and lock them up without charges for the duration of the war on terror— in other words, perhaps forever; and
• a federal government with the power to supervise virtually every aspect of American life, from kindergarten, to marriage, to the grave.

President Bush's constitutional vision is, in short, sharply at odds with the text, history, and structure of our Constitution, which authorizes a government of limited powers.

Full Text (PDF, 966 KB)

Junking their fast food addiction

“The image that is most disturbing to me,” says Schlosser, “is the rooms full of very intelligent adults with lofty degrees in psychology and anthropology sitting around trying to figure out how to manipulate three and four-year-olds.”
He could also have mentioned the picture of a child with his head in an MRI machine that scanned his brain activity as he watched commercials — research into “neuromarketing”. Lolly-maker Chupa Chups is very keen on this type of research, hoping to harness activity in the brain associated with its brand image to “create loyal customers”.
Schlosser wouldn’t mind those brainy graduates’ machinations to hook pre-schoolers on burgers and fries “if it was incredibly healthy and good for them, but thinking about getting them to do something that’s going to harm them . . .”

The Music Animation Machine

...A way to visualize complex music - fugues and sonatas and all that. Other tools, such as those mentioned previously here and here, accomplish a similar task in a way, but this is still very, very cool. Watch and download all the videos you can. Bach, Chopin, Scarlatti... if only there were more! Of course, you could buy the DVD. [from MetaFilter.com]
{I bought the tape for this years ago via Edward Tufte. One-of-a-kind video! -- McLir]

Feds Go All Out to Kill Spy Suit

Bush administration signals intent to invoke the obscure state secrets privilege in order to stop the EFF lawsuit against AT&T, (previously discussed here) for providing the NSA direct access all 312 terabytes of its customers' telephone and internet traffic since 2001, (including those Good Vibrations charges you racked up). In a nutshell, according to legal experts, invoking the privilege kills the judicial process dead: the courthouse doors are closed, and there's nothing but grownup stuff to see here; move along, kids. [from MetaFilter.com]

Bush challenges hundreds of laws

President Bush has quietly claimed the authority to disobey more than 750 laws enacted since he took office, asserting that he has the power to set aside any statute passed by Congress when it conflicts with his interpretation of the Constitution.
Among the laws Bush said he can ignore are military rules and regulations, affirmative-action provisions, requirements that Congress be told about immigration services problems, ''whistle-blower" protections for nuclear regulatory officials, and safeguards against political interference in federally funded research.
Legal scholars say the scope and aggression of Bush's assertions that he can bypass laws represent a concerted effort to expand his power at the expense of Congress, upsetting the balance between the branches of government. The Constitution is clear in assigning to Congress the power to write the laws and to the president a duty ''to take care that the laws be faithfully executed." Bush, however, has repeatedly declared that he does not need to ''execute" a law he believes is unconstitutional.
Former administration officials contend that just because Bush reserves the right to disobey a law does not mean he is not enforcing it: In many cases, he is simply asserting his belief that a certain requirement encroaches on presidential power.
But with the disclosure of Bush's domestic spying program, in which he ignored a law requiring warrants to tap the phones of Americans, many legal specialists say Bush is hardly reluctant to bypass laws he believes he has the constitutional authority to override.

U.S. prepares to face U.N. on torture as Amnesty report blasts 'war crimes'

As the United States prepares a team of 30 to defend its record on torture before a U.N. committee, Amnesty International has made public a report blasting the United States for failing to take appropriate steps to eradicate use of torture at U.S. detention sites around the world...
U.S. compliance with the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment will be the topic of May 5 and 8 U.N. hearings in Geneva.
...The Amnesty report reviews several cases where U.S. detainees held in Afghanistan and Iraq have died as a result of torture. The group also lambasts U.S. use of electro-shock weapons, inhuman and degrading conditions of isolation in "super-max" security prisons and abuses against women in the prison system -- including sexual abuse by male guards, shackling while pregnant and even in labor.

U.S.: More Than 600 Implicated in Detainee Abuse

Two years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, new research shows that abuse of detainees in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, and at Guantánamo Bay has been widespread, and that the United States has taken only limited steps to investigate and punish implicated personnel. A briefing paper issued today, 'By the Numbers,' presents findings of the Detainee Abuse and Accountability Project... the first comprehensive accounting of credible allegations of torture and abuse in U.S. custody in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo. The project has collected hundreds of allegations of detainee abuse and torture occurring since late 2001 – allegations implicating more than 600 U.S. military and civilian personnel and involving more than 460 detainees.
[from MetaFilter.com]

Google Releases Sketchup for All

Google has released a free version of SketchUp (video and tutorials), quite possibly the coolest and most intuitive 3D authoring tool. An added bonus of SketchUp is it's integration into Google Earth. Google has also provided a 3D Warehouse for the posting of your models, which can be downloaded into either application (SketchUp for editing, Earth for displaying). Kind of gives you some insight into their plans for using Google Earth as an Automotive (Honda and Volkswagen) GPS service. (Sidenote: how long until this is seen as a threat to national security?) [from MetaFilter.com]

SNL Funhouse: "Conspiracy Theory Rock" '98

This cartoon "Conspiracy Theory Rock" by Robert Smigel was shown on "Saturday Night Live" during the March 14, 1998 broadcast but edited out of reruns. For that broadcast, the host was Julianne Moore and the musical guest was the Backstreet Boys.