Archive for category the Internet
Tea Partyers Say Net Neutrality Hurts Freedom
Posted by Richard Warnick in Activist groups, Civil liberties Infringement, Conservative, National Politics, Tea Bag Party, The Constitution, This Blog, the Internet on August 16, 2010
Via TPM, one more addition to the growing collection of hilarious headlines that begin with “Tea Partyers Say…”
The tea party, a movement whose success on the grassroots level is in many ways attributable to the power of free and open Internet communications, is joining the growing conservative crusade against the FCC’s plan to enforce net neutrality on internet service providers. According to one tea partier involved in the effort, the movement is opposing net neutrality because “it’s an affront to free speech and free markets.”
To sum up, the Tea Party is all in favor of Freedom and Equality — except for the freedoms and equality guaranteed by the Constitution in the First Amendment, Fourth Amendment, and the 14th Amendment.
On HuffPo, Robert Creamer tries to explain what’s up with the Tea Party extremists. They’re making the mistake of going public with the GOP policy agenda (emphasis added).
The main difference is the willingness of the Tea Party gang to say what they believe out loud. This, of course, is driving Republican political consultants crazy. Republicans have never gotten elected by laying out to the voters the core components of their economic agenda. When they have been successful it has generally been by soft-pedaling or sugar-coating the things that mattered most to their corporate backers and playing instead to the fears and anxieties of their rank and file voters.
Who’s in favor of net neutrality? Everybody who believes in free speech. Who’s opposed? ADC, Alcatel-Lucent, AT&T, Cisco, Comcast, Qwest, Time Warner, and Verizon. Google seems to be switching sides from good to evil, despite their corporate motto.
What would happen if the corporations were allowed to take away net neutrality? The Internet would become more like cable TV, with corporate control over how different types of content can be accessed.
UPDATE: AT&T claims net neutrality is oppressive
UPDATE: House Dems: FCC Must Reject Google-Verizon Deal To Ensure Net Neutrality
UPDATE: Tea Party Groups Out AGAINST Net Neutrality
UPDATE: Four Dem members of Congress stand up for net neutrality.
The Afghan War Diaries
Posted by Richard Warnick in 4th Estate (Media), Afghanistan, American History, Military, National Politics, Taliban, This Blog, Transparency, War, War Crimes, the Internet on July 25, 2010
It is one of the biggest leaks in intelligence history, and certainly the most voluminous. The Afghanistan War’s equivalent of the Pentagon Papers has arrived, after months of anticipation. WikiLeaks today released over 75,000 secret military after-action reports covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. These are now available on WikiLeaks as “The Afghan War Diary.” Release of another 15,000 reports is pending.
According to WikiLeaks:
The material shows that cover-ups start on the ground. When reporting their own activities US Units are inclined to classify civilian kills as insurgent kills, downplay the number of people killed or otherwise make excuses for themselves. The reports, when made about other US Military units are more likely to be truthful, but still down play criticism. Conversely, when reporting on the actions of non-US ISAF forces the reports tend to be frank or critical and when reporting on the Taliban or other rebel groups, bad behavior is described in comprehensive detail. The behavior of the Afghan Army and Afghan authorities are also frequently described.
…This archive shows the vast range of small tragedies that are almost never reported by the press but which account for the overwhelming majority of deaths and injuries.
WikiLeaks has also given the files to three news organizations: The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. All three are in the midst of publishing their own analyses.
UPDATE: The Guardian has a spreadsheet and map of key incidents. The White House spin can be found here.
UPDATE: House to Vote on $33 Billion War Supplemental as World Reads WikiLeaks.
UPDATE: On Danger Room, Spencer Ackerman reports that the WikiLeaks after-action reports recount 144 incidents in which coalition forces killed civilians over six years.
Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahedeen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.
UPDATE: WikiLeaks Docs Show Pakistan-Taliban Cooperation Against U.S.
UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald:
Whatever else is true, WikiLeaks has yet again proven itself to be one of the most valuable and important organizations in the world. Just as was true for the video of the Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad, there is no valid justification for having kept most of these documents a secret. But that’s what our National Security State does reflexively: it hides itself behind an essentially absolute wall of secrecy to ensure that the citizenry remains largely ignorant of what it is really doing. WikiLeaks is one of the few entities successfully blowing holes in at least parts of that wall…
UPDATE: At least 45 civilians, many women and children, were killed in a rocket attack by the NATO-led foreign force in Afghanistan’s southern Helmand province last week, a spokesman for the Afghan government said on Monday.
UPDATE: Report Finds Link Between Civilian Deaths And Recruitment For Insurgency In Afghanistan
UPDATE: White House Attempts to Downplay Fallout from Wikileaks Afghan Logs. “Nothing to see here, it’s old news.” But it’s new news to most Americans, who’ve been kept in the dark about Afghanistan.
UPDATE: HuffPo headline: “WAKE THEM WHEN IT’S OVER: Major News Outlets Bored By Afghan War Leaks, ‘Not News’ That War Is Going Badly”
UPDATE: WikiLeaks Iraq Cache More Than Three Times As Big
Related One Utah posts:
‘We Were Fighting To Make It Home Alive’ (April 9, 2010)
Wikileaks Obtains Video of 2007 War Crime (April 5, 2010)
Leaked: US Rules of Engagement for Iraq (February 4, 2008)
WordCamp!
Posted by Glenden Brown in the Internet on January 11, 2010
Okay, so I’m back from Atlanta WordCamp.
A couple points:
- WordPress is coming out with version 3.0 in not too long and it’s gonna rock our worlds – or maybe not but it’s going to have many many improvements.
- The whole issue of PlugIns is a really big deal and the consistent answer from folks is “You have to figure out that one’s you want.” And, interestingly, many of the speakers said, “I just write my own.” However, the whole plugin thing is a big deal because they add functionality and customizability to sites.
- WordPress was originally a blog program and is increasingly being used to create and host websites that are used for far more than blogging – many members of Congress and many nonprofits and businesses use it for their sites.
- Many of the campers were there because they’ve been occupationally displaced and are looking for ways to leverage their connections and knowledge of WordPress to become freelancers and make a living. It can be done and the living can be quite nice but it requires a very different mindset than having a job.
- The term “social media” a popular and current buzzword and is ridiculously overused in some circles but social media is here to stay – the specific forms may change – myspace, meetup, twitter, facebook, and so on may come and go but they are only the specific brands of tools; the basic tool itself is not going anywhere anytime soon.
- We’re only beginning to tap into the real power of the internet to trasnform our lives.
- What used to be the province of the nerds has become the province of hipsters and its a good thing.
The challenge at any conference like this is the vast disparity in technical abilities. For someone like me, I don’t really know and probably won’t ever master the technology that’s under the hood. I expect it to run smoothly and I expect some fundamental mastery from the user side, but I’m not a programmer and won’t become one any time soon. From my perspective, I want to be able to make the site do what I want it to do. At WordCamp, there were folks who literally are writing code to support WordPress.
I think what we’re seeing is nothing new – users like me want to develop a greater mastery of the tool without having to learn code. The programmers and developers, by contrast, want to get into the technical wonky side of things – they want to talk about and alter plugins and other things.
The other challenge is that the “basics” workshops were too basic. The intermediate workshops were too highly specific. I don’t know and won’t pretend to have a solution but I know there’s one out there.
I met one presenter who really impressed me – Adria Richards. She is very sharp. I like her observation that WordCamp Atlanta was more diverse than most such gatherings, but I have to admit I was hoping for a far more diverse crowd – hell I flew to Atlanta and it wasn’t much more diverse than what I often see here.
Utlimately, however, our technology is only as good as we are. Douchebags in real live are douchebags on the internet – doesn’t matter if they’re tweeting or facebooking or blogging, they’re still douchebags. People who are amazing in real life are amazong online.
GOP: Let’s Blame the Dems for Bush’s Multiple Catastrophes
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bush Failures, Democrats, Disaster, Economy, Elections, Federal Budget, Health Care, Hypocrisy, Liars (politics), National Politics, Party Politics, Republicans, This Blog, congress, the Internet on January 7, 2010
The right-wingers love this YouTube by an anonymous Republican flack who claims to represent “blue collar democrats, independents, and conservatives.”
Oh, the outrage. In short sentences. For the dimwitted.
DEMOCRATS are a threat to the economy? Which party lost jobs (first time since Herbert Hoover)? Which party left us with a negative GDP (minus 3.5 percent)? Which party came in with a budget surplus, then doubled the National Debt to $11 trillion and saddled the next administration with a record deficit?
DEMOCRATS are a threat to health care? Which party enacted Medicare Part D without paying for it? Which party did nothing while 45,000 Americans died every year due to lack of access to preventive care?
DEMOCRATS are a threat to individual liberties? Which party passed the USA PATRIOT Act, initiated warrantless surveillance of Americans, suspended the right of habeas corpus, imprisoned U.S. citizens without charges, and resorted to torture?
DEMOCRATS are to blame for the Wall Street billionaire bailout? That was the Bush administration. But the billionaires took all the money, gave themselves bonuses, and did nothing to save the real economy. Now the Obama administration is struggling to do that– while the Republicans vote NO on everything.
DEMOCRATS are corrupt? Ever hear of Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff, Duke Cunningham, Mitch McConnell, Don Young, John Ensign? Do we have to list all the crooked Republicans? The Bush administration was bought and paid for by special interests from day one.
It’s like the aftermath of the Reagan and Bush I years, but worse. The Republican wrecking crew did their worst, and charged it all to the national credit card. This time they almost plunged us into Great Depression 2.0, and literally left parts of America in ruins. It’s going to take many years to rebuild after Bush’s multiple fiascoes.
Let’s not forget foreign policy, two unwinnable wars, America’s newfound world reputation for war crimes and torturing detainees. Let’s not forget the crises the Republicans steadfastly ignored, like the urgent needs for a new energy policy and reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and fixing neglected infrastructure (remember the I-35W bridge?).
President Obama and the Democrats in Congress can get away with blatantly corporatist policies for one reason only– coming after the Republican catastrophes of 2001-2008, everything they do looks better by comparison. Oh, and Republicans, if you’re in the top two percent I hope you enjoy the Bush tax hike that’s coming a year from now.
Another Smart and Funny Video Concerning Heath Care
Posted by Larry Bergan in American People, Health Care, Laugh, the Internet on November 10, 2009
I previously posted a great video which I believe condensed the health care debate to simple terms. I found this additional video by the same young men.
I have nothing to add here except the fact that these young men did NOT impugn the police department in any way.
FBI Arrests Hal Turner for Threats Against 7th Circuit Court Judges
Posted by Richard Warnick in Bigotry, Gun Control, National Politics, Racism, Republicans, Sean Hannity, Terrorism, White Supremacy, the Internet on June 24, 2009
Today, FBI agents went to the New Jersey home of white supremacist blogger/radio host Hal Turner and arrested him “on a federal complaint filed in Chicago alleging that he made Internet postings threatening to assault and murder three federal appeals court judges in Chicago in retaliation for their recent ruling upholding handgun bans in Chicago and a suburb,” according to a statement released by the Justice Department. A summary of Turner’s dangerous tirade against the judges:
Internet postings on June 2 and 3 proclaimed “outrage” over the June 2, 2009, handgun decision by Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook and Judges Richard Posner and William Bauer, of the Chicago-based 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, further stating, among other things: “Let me be the first to say this plainly: These Judges deserve to be killed.” The postings included photographs, phone numbers, work address and room numbers of these judges, along with a photo of the building in which they work and a map of its location.
Turner is a friend of Sean Hannity and a frequent guest on his radio show, and also ran for Congress as a Republican in 2000. In recent years, his rhetoric has become more and more violent. He was especially enraged at proposals for immigration reform. Before the 2006 election, Turner announced on his website:
We may have to ASSASSINATE some of the people you elect on Nov. 7! This could be your LAST ELECTION CHANCE, to save this Republic… Sorry to have to be so blunt, but the country is in mortal danger from our present government and our liberty is already near dead because of this government. If you are too stupid to turn things around with your vote, there are people out here like me who are willing to turn things around with guns, force and violence. We hope our method does not become necessary.
On June 3, 2009, Turner was arrested and charged with inciting injury to two politicians in Connecticut and a state ethics official. The warrant issued was for inciting his website’s readers to “take up arms” against the officials.
This case may be of interest to us all because it’s about: (1) what you can get away with saying on a blog without the FBI knocking on your door, and (2) the 7th Circuit Court ruling that Chicago’s gun ban is not prohibited by the Second Amendment.
American Recovery and Reinvestment Act Goes Online
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Democracy, Economy, Jobs, National Politics, Rush Limbaugh, This Blog, the Internet on February 17, 2009
Today, recovery.gov went live. It provides full transparency and accountability regarding the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
This site is so user-friendly, even Rush Limbaugh could probably figure out how to search it.
UPDATE: President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act today in Denver. Tomorrow in Arizona, Obama will unveil another part of his economic recovery effort — a plan to help millions of homeowners fend off foreclosure.
What I am signing… is a balanced plan with a mix of tax cuts and investments. It is a plan that’s been put together without earmarks or the usual pork barrel spending. And it is a plan that will be implemented with an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability.
Day One
Posted by Richard Warnick in American History, Barack Obama, Democracy, Economy, This Blog, War, the Internet on January 21, 2009
Accomplishments so far include:
- New WhiteHouse.gov website up with all policy proposals… and a blog.
- On Tuesday afternoon, ordered federal agencies to halt all pending regulations from the Bush administration.
- Suspended special military tribunals for Guantanamo detainees.
- Today, ordered new ethics rules for “a clean break from business as usual.”
- Announced a change in policy that will require each federal agency and department to give full attention to Freedom of Information requests, potentially revealing secrets hidden by the Bush administration.
- “Transparency and the rule of law will be the touchstones of this administration,” Obama said in a statement to reporters.
- Circulated a draft executive order to end CIA secret “black sites,” and close the extra-legal prison at Guantanamo Bay within a year.
- Made phone calls to Mahmoud Abbas and other Middle East leaders.
- Met with economic advisers in the Roosevelt Room.
- Held a meeting to discuss Iraq withdrawal plans with the National Security Advisor, SecDef, Chairman of the JCS and top commanders in the Situation Room.
- Decided to appoint George Mitchell as a special Middle East envoy.
- Oh, and the President attended a nice White House Open House today.
Slaying the Slime. Death by Blogosphere: A Day in The Life
Posted by Cliff Lyon in John McCain, Republicans, This Blog, the Internet on October 24, 2008
Update: “(CNN) — Bail was set at $50,000 Friday night for a GOP campaign worker who made up a story about being attacked by a man angered by a John McCain bumper sticker on her car.”
I’ve decided to try to write more commentary that documents the role of The Internets in destroying the right-wing slime machine and the pond scum that help smear it. Not only is it an important anthropological learning opportunity, but OneUtah is an especially fermented petridish of case studies.
Thanks to our unusually high number of prolific propaganda agents (slime spreaders) OneUtah has long been on the bleeding edge of breaking slime.
Todays episode brought to us by one of our beloved ’smearing agents’ (lets call him Bob to out of respect for his anonymity) Bob wrote about a Texas woman named Ashley Todd who claimed she was robbed then beaten when the attacker discovered she was a McCain supporter. Today, she is claiming she was also sexually assaulted.
This one is so ridiculous, our favorite Lime Queen Michelle Malkin was the first to throw her fellow College Republican, Ashley Todd under the bus as a sort of ‘gimme’ to her critics, since she too is headed the way of most Internet slimers (oblivion).
So within 3 minutes of the stories break by a news station (4:03pm EDT) , Our ‘Bob’ posts it on OneUtah (2:06pm MDT)., and by the next morning we learn that she is just an earnest young Republican who got creative in the bathroom and painted a ‘B’ on her face (forgetting that the mirror reverses things) and that she was Twittering about it the whole time.
Another ‘Day in The Life of Slaying the Slime. Death by Blogosphere.
Update II:
The Internet and the Death of Rovian Politics
Posted by Cliff Lyon in American People, John McCain, This Blog, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, the Internet on October 23, 2008
I’m posting this article because it speaks well to one of the overriding purposes for starting this blog in January of 2006. John Dean had already demonstrated the power of the Internet by raising some $48 million.
I started blogging at on Slate’s Fray when it looked like Bush might actually get re-elected. I couldn’t figure out how people could be so blind to this idiot. Half of America already considered him the worse president in modern times. My engagement in the arguments with right-wingers brought home in the most visceral way, the notion that the intellectual objectivity across our species varied dramatically.
And this began my search for an answer. As many of you know, I found it. Altemeyer and this interview express it best.
The Internet bubble had burst, The DailyKos was soaring, and the web had begun to flex its muscle as an unstoppable, horizontal, democratic vehicle for human interaction. I believe we are still at the beginning.
This article describes the power of blogs like this one, to counter the corrupt, tribal character that has been so destructive throughout our civilization.
McCain is running a textbook Rovian race: fear-based, smear-based, anything goes. But it isn’t working. The glitch in the well-oiled machine? The Internet.
“We are witnessing the end of Rovian politics,” Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google told me. And YouTube, which Google bought in 2006 for $1.65 billion, is one of the causes of its demise.
How fast things are changing…
Back in the Dark Ages of 2004, when YouTube (and HuffPost, for that matter) didn’t exist, a campaign could tell a brazen lie, and the media might call them on it. But if they kept repeating the lie again and again and again, the media would eventually let it go (see the Swiftboating of John Kerry). Traditional media like moving on to the next shiny thing. But bloggers love revisiting a story. So when Palin kept repeating her bridge to nowhere lie, bloggers kept calling her on it. Andrew Sullivan, for one, has made a cottage industry of calling Palin on her lies. And eventually, the truth filtered up and cost McCain credibility with his true base: journalists.
The Internet may make it easier to disseminate character smears, but it also makes it much less likely that these smears will stick. Read on…
Only a year ago, I might have bothered to argue stupid comments like;
Richard Okelberry: Cliff, The very fact that you called CNN right wing shows that you really need to talk to your doctor…
The few remaining Okelberries out there still banging away, have been marginalized. Just in the past year, we have seen them lose their ’swift boat’, ‘mob’ power. And I know this viscerally. People like Ken, Richard Okelberries, Bob S, JD etc, have been reduced to an embarrassment to a thinking, progressive America.
They have helped destroy the ‘other party’ for the next decade.
McCain and his strategists missed this transition. So did the corrupt corporate media. I think Rove tried to warn them, but they suffer from terminal ’sheeple’ effect – that terrible disease that so plagues our planet.
God bless the Internet and the millions of thoughtful people around the world standing tall upon it.
Note: I also believe the Internet is ready for a serious, next generation, publishing platform like the one being build by ManyOne.
Joe The Terrorist Backs McCain
Posted by Richard Warnick in 2008 Election, John McCain, National Politics, Terrorism, the Internet on October 22, 2008
Not really a picture of “Joe The Terrorist”
Via Talking Points Memo…
OK, his name isn’t really Joe and he may not even be a licensed terrorist. According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors al-Qaeda communications, a Web site message this week said they would welcome a pre-election terror attack on the U.S. as a way to usher in a McCain presidency. The message is credited to a frequent and apparently respected contributor named Muhammad Haafid. However, Haafid is not believed to have a direct affiliation with al-Qaeda plans or knowledge of its operations, according to SITE.
The message, posted Monday on the password-protected al-Hesbah Web site, said if al-Qaeda wants to exhaust the United States militarily and economically, “impetuous” Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain is the better choice because he is more likely to continue the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“This requires presence of an impetuous American leader such as McCain, who pledged to continue the war till the last American soldier,” the message said. “Then, al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming elections so that he continues the failing march of his predecessor, Bush.”
UPDATE: WaPo quotes Adam Raisman, a senior analyst for the SITE Intelligence Group:
“The idea in the jihadist forums is that McCain would be a faithful ’son of Bush’ — someone they see as a jingoist and a war hawk… They think that, to succeed in a war of attrition, they need a leader in Washington like McCain.”
UPDATE: In a conference call, McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann says no, no, noo– the terrorists are really rooting for Obama. Spencer Ackerman writes: “To describe the call as panicked would be an understatement.”
UPDATE: Unlike the panicky McCain advisers, the Obama spokespeople have nothing they want to say about Joe The Terrorist. When your opponent’s campaign is shooting itself in the foot, why not just quietly enjoy the moment?
UPDATE: Writing in Mother Jones, Tom Engelhardt grades Bush’s so-called “Global War on Terror.” It failed, in a series of humiliating defeats.
Previous One Utah posts:
McCain’s Secret Plan to Capture Osama bin Laden (October 10)
Richard Clarke: al-Qaeda May Try to Help McCain (October 6)
Al-Qaeda (The Real One) Is a Bigger Threat Than Last Year (August 13)
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