Daily Archives: 7 May 04

Phish This, You Scum

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Imagine you had a Web browser that said when you typed in a new address, “The Internet site you’re about to visit is known to steal credit-card numbers and use them in unauthorized ways.”

Now imagine that you can actually use such an application today. It’s already been developed and it’s being distributed — free.

The company behind this is Earthlink, one of the largest Internet service providers in the United States. The effort, known as ScamBlocker, is still in its early days, and its database of sites to warn users about is in its infancy. But the idea of fingering scam artists before they can do much damage is fantastic, and there’s a very interesting tale behind it. — Brian Livingston, Datamation

Stalking More Prevalent Than Thought?

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“Hollywood stars are not the only people to be hounded by stalkers.


Stalkers are more likely to harass ordinary people than generally thought, according to a study published in Britain on Thursday, which said one in eight British adults are victims of ‘persistent or unwanted attention.’


‘The public perception is of stalking as a crime that effects only celebrities,’ said the report by researchers at the University of Liverpool.


‘However, recent large-scale studies in the USA and Australia suggest the prevalence in the general population may be far higher than expected.'” — Reuters

The Misunderestimated Man

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How Bush chose stupidity [adapted from the introduction to The Deluxe Election-Edition Bushisms by Jacob Weisberg]

“The question I am most frequently asked about Bushisms is, “Do you really think the president of the United States is dumb?”


The short answer is yes.


The long answer is yes and no.


Quotations collected over the years in Slate may leave the impression that George W. Bush is a dimwit. Let’s face it: A man who cannot talk about education without making a humiliating grammatical mistake (“The illiteracy level of our children are appalling”); who cannot keep straight the three branches of government (“It’s the executive branch’s job to interpret law”); who coins ridiculous words (“Hispanos,” “arbolist,” “subliminable,” “resignate,” “transformationed”); who habitually says the opposite of what he intends (“the death tax is good for people from all walks of life!”) sounds like a grade-A imbecile.


And if you don’t care to pursue the matter any further, that view will suffice. George W. Bush has governed, for the most part, the way any airhead might, undermining the fiscal condition of the nation, squandering the goodwill of the world after Sept. 11, and allowing huge problems (global warming, entitlement spending, AIDS) to metastasize toward catastrophe through a combination of ideology, incomprehension, and indifference. If Bush isn’t exactly the moron he sounds, his synaptic misfirings offer a plausible proxy for the idiocy of his presidency.


In reality, however, there’s more to it. Bush’s assorted malapropisms, solecisms, gaffes, spoonerisms, and truisms tend to imply that his lack of fluency in English is tantamount to an absence of intelligence. But as we all know, the inarticulate can be shrewd, the fluent fatuous. In Bush’s case, the symptoms point to a specific malady—some kind of linguistic deficit akin to dyslexia—that does not indicate a lack of mental capacity per se.” — slate

Bush’s New, New Lie

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‘Transfer of Sovereignty’: “June 30 simply marks the selection of yet another ‘governing council,’ picked by foreigners (some combination of the UN, U.S. and UK) to act as a front for the U.S.-led occupation army. It will be just business as usual, except for a new set of misleading titles. For example, the ‘Coalition Provisional Authority’ will be renamed the ‘United States Embassy,’ staffed by some 2000 employees.” — Christopher Scheer, AlterNet

A Wretched New Picture Of America

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Our Own Worst Enemy: “Among the corrosive lies a nation at war tells itself is that the glory — the lofty goals announced beforehand, the victories, the liberation of the oppressed — belongs to the country as a whole; but the failure — the accidents, the uncounted civilian dead, the crimes and atrocities — is always exceptional. Noble goals flow naturally from a noble people; the occasional act of barbarity is always the work of individuals, unaccountable, confusing and indigestible to the national conscience.

This kind of thinking was widely in evidence among military and political leaders after the emergence of pictures documenting American abuse of Iraqi prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison. These photographs do not capture the soul of America, they argued. They are aberrant.

This belief, that the photographs are distortions, despite their authenticity, is indistinguishable from propaganda. Tyrants censor; democracies self-censor. Tyrants concoct propaganda in ministries of information; democracies produce it through habits of thought so ingrained that a basic lie of war — only the good is our doing — becomes self-propagating.” — Philip Kennicott, Washington Post

Bush, Kerry differ on war only in degree of delusion

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“The good news for opponents of the war in Iraq is that President Bush’s challenger has finally called for a rapid American withdrawal.

‘Every day the U.S. military remains in Iraq,’ he said, ‘we imperil U.S. security, drain our economy, ignore our nation’s domestic needs and prevent democratic self-rule from developing in Iraq.’

The bad news is that the challenger’s name is Ralph Nader.

John Kerry, by contrast, sounds as though he thinks the only thing worse than making a mistake is correcting it. He recently asserted his fervent view that ‘we cannot fail. I’ve said that many times. And if it requires more troops in order to create the stability that eliminates the chaos, that can provide the groundwork for other countries, that’s what you have to do.'” — Baltimore Sun

Rumsfeld Offers Apology for Abuse of Iraqi Prisoners

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He claimed “full responsibility” for the events that happened on his watch — New York Times; however, textual analysis of his message undoes any meaning to the apology, which was as much pugnacious and arrogant as contrite, telling the rest of the world in effect to watch how the pros recover from mistakes that he continued to insist were rogue activity attributable to a few misguided miscreants rather than the consequence of the climate created by upper management. This is a textbook example of an empty apology devoid of humility or penance. Another ‘independent commission’ is going to investigate, i.e. whitewash. Obviously, after Bush apologized clumsily yesterday, , there was nothing for Rumsfeld to do but follow suit. Colin Powell has already likened the Abu Ghraib revelations to the My Lai massacre, for which there also was no accountability up the command structure; there will be no real consequences here either, unless a whistle-blower à la Clarke or Wilson comes out of Rumsfeld’s inner circle, and soon.