The ashes of poet Allen Ginsberg and his lover Peter Orlovsky were interned in Colorado on Sunday.
Thursday, 2 September 2010
Afghan war unwinnable quagmire, ex-CIA man says
The war in Afghanistan is an unwinnable quagmire and poor US intelligence is leading to the deaths of Australian soldiers, a visiting former CIA officer says.
Robert Baer, a decorated CIA field officer of two decades experience who had spent years in the Middle East, said any chances the US and its allies had of defeating the Taliban in Afghanistan had already been squandered. The Coalition was fighting an unwinnable war, he said, and this was the case because victory required reliable intelligence.
''[US intelligence agencies] have the same problem they had before 9/11. It is a system that doesn't work.''
That system sees CIA operatives and allied intelligence officers unable to gather reliable information because security concerns do not allow them to travel widely. And most do not speak the local language. ''They're all stuck behind the wire; they don't get out … it's like the crusades where you're stuck on your castle imagining what the natives are doing,'' he said.
Describing Washington DC as a ''blank spot on the map'', he said that despite the massive growth of the intelligence agencies post September 11, 2001, there remained systemic failings.
''American intelligence after 9/11 has been unable to co-ordinate … the FBI will not share with the CIA. CIA has operational databases which they won't share with even others inside the CIA.''
All of this led to a dysfunctional intelligence community unable to provide reliable, contemporary intelligence that could allow the Coalition to win in Afghanistan.
''Twenty-two American soldiers have been killed since Friday, and Australia has lost 21 men … Afghanistan is a quagmire and it can only be fought with an effective counter-insurgency. It cannot be fought with Abrams tanks and F16s,'' he said.
The author of four books and a film consultant, he has previously described how the CIA's role as a provider of human intelligence - on-the-ground intelligence gathering by field officers - has been steadily degraded under poor management.
Earlier this week Mr Baer said the Australian government should confront Washington with the poor intelligence on Afghanistan that was recently released by WikiLeaks.
''The Australians should take the WikiLeaks information to the US [administration] and say: please tell us you have better information than this,'' Mr Baer said.
Mr Baer is in Australia to speak at the Australian Security Industry Association Limited conference in Sydney.
Dylan Welch @'SMH'
Wikileaks: that sinking feeling
Reading a recent lengthy and detailed Sydney Morning Herald article detailing the latest charges against Wikileaks frontman Julian Assange, I can only nod my head knowingly.
This was always going to be the way things worked out. From the time last year when we all became aware of Assange, I felt a twinge of fear, an inner voice saying Something isn't right here. It took me a few weeks to articulate that feeling into a real, grounded rationale for my dread.
Long ago, before I moved to Australia, before I'd done any of the work that I'm known for within the technology community, I had some peripheral contact with the 'hacker' world (In this usage, 'hacker' means folks who break into computers, not the folks who stay up all night programming them in weird and wonderful ways).
One of the things I learned very early on was a simple rule of thumb to separate the accomplished from the n00bs and fools: only a n00b would brag about their exploits. Only a n00b would tell others that he'd broken the law. Those who do crimes keep silent about their darker doings. Those who wannabe, they're loud about it.
When Assange suddenly became the public face for the increasingly fascinating Wikileaks, it confused me on several levels.
First, why does Wikileaks need a public face? It's a dropbox service that promises anonymity to whistleblowers across the world. That kind of service is best kept low-profile, very nearly invisible except to those who might want to avail themselves of the service. If you need it, you'll know where to find it.
Second, why would Assange - or anyone, for that matter - consent to being the public face of Wikileaks? Wikileaks has worked hard to anger some of the most powerful institutions on the planet. In no particular order: the US Department of Defense, the Central Intelligence Agency, the US Department of State, MI5 and ASIO. These are organisations with institutional memory and global reach. If you vex them, they have it within their capacity to make things very difficult for you. Possibly terminally so.
If this all sounds very much like a John LaCarre novel, that's because we're dealing with the stuff of Cold War thrillers: spies, secrets, dropboxes, whistleblowers and the great mass of ignorance which is the body politic. Information is power, and Wikileaks pricks a big hole in the plans of the powerful. So again, why would anyone willingly associate themselves with Wikileaks? Isn't that the equivalent of painting a great big target yourself?
Finally, what does this public exposure say about the long-term security and stability of Wikileaks?
An invisible organisation presents no surface that can be attacked, or compromised, or tortured into submission. An organisation that has resolved itself into the body of a single individual has placed an enormous burden on that individual - and placed them into substantial danger. Assange knows this, and all of his recent troubles in Sweden are, to his account, disinformation campaigns conducted by organisations seeking to thwart him and Wikileaks. This should have been expected. This is how that particular game is played. Everyone knows the rules. You can't scream and shout when your opponent makes a counter-move on the game board. You wouldn't need to scream and shout if your opponent has no idea who you are.
I don't mean to sound naive; these organisations are well-resourced and probably would have gotten to Assange eventually (Then again, given how long it's taken to find Osama Bin Laden, maybe not). Being visible gives Assange the protection of visibility. If he's taken down publicly, it could look bad. But whether or not Assange remains a free man, Wikileaks has been substantially weakened by his representation.
Faceless, pervasive and powerful, Wikileaks might have grown into the mirror image of al-Qaeda, a force which could terrify the rulers while simultaneously becoming folk heroes for the ruled. Instead, all the power of the State is landing on Wikileaks and Assange. Whatever remains of Wikileaks in a year's time will only be those components deemed to be unthreatening. Wikileaks will be compromised; that became inevitable as soon as we all got a look at Assange. Hence my dread.
As much as we might regret this, it will not bring an end to this new era of whistleblowing, any more than the court-mandated dismantling of Napster was the end of peer-to-peer file sharing. Indeed, just a few days after Napster disappeared, a new network, Gnutella, opened for business, and having learned from Napster's mistakes. Where Napster was centralised, Gnutella was distributed. Where Napster was noisy, Gnutella was quiet. Where Napster had a surface that could be sued into oblivion, Gnutella was slippery, and very hard to grasp. Gnutella is still around. Napster has been gone for a decade.
Any organisation that follows Wikileaks will learn from the mistakes made by Assange & Co. It will be invisible unless sought for, as pervasive as necessity requires, and much more impervious to attacks that attempt to corrupt its essential functions and integrity. Will it be perfect? No. This is a cat-and-mouse game, a process where both the forces of State control and the forces which seek to thwart the control of the State are both evolving, both learning from one another.
Within a few years, we'll be drowning in information from 'whistleblowers'. The State will try to swamp these new channels with meaningless or useless information in order to render them unusable. With so much, how can any of us know the truth, or know what truths are significant?
This presents the most interesting opening for 21st century journalism: investigative reporters will be those who have dedicated themselves to winnowing the wheat of truth from the chaff of noise, in order to share it with the rest of us. At the end, we're precisely where we started; the State tries to keep things hidden, while a few brave souls work hard to shine a little light into the dark places. The means will have changed, but the aims remain the same.
Mark Pesce is one of the pioneers in Virtual Reality and works as a writer, researcher and teacher.
Mark Pesce @The Drum'
Facebook CEO: Keep private life out of lawsuit
Facebook Inc Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg says a lawsuit by a man who claims to own a huge chunk of the popular social networking website is seeking to uncover unnecessary details about his private life to harass him.
Zuckerberg is fighting a civil lawsuit filed by Paul Ceglia, an upstate New York resident who claims an 84 percent stake in the privately held company, believed to be worth several billion dollars.
Ceglia, an owner of a wood pellet fuel company who lives in Wellsville, New York, is trying to return the case to a New York state court, after Zuckerberg moved it to federal court.
"They filed this remand motion to harass defendants under the pretext of obtaining jurisdictional discovery into Zuckerberg's private life," lawyers for Zuckerberg said in a Monday filing in the federal court in Buffalo, New York.
Ceglia alleged in a June 30 lawsuit that a 2003 contract with Zuckerberg entitles him to control of Facebook. Forbes magazine in March estimated Zuckerberg was worth $4 billion.
Federal courts can hear cases from parties in different states. Zuckerberg, 26, considers himself a California citizen, while Ceglia said both men are New Yorkers.
"The higher the stakes, the more likely you want to take advantage of procedural moves to improve your chances of winning, or settling on the most favorable terms," said Adam Steinman, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey.
Steinman said "conventional wisdom" is often that defendants prefer federal court to state court, because cases might be dismissed faster or less likely to reach juries. "There could also be a 'home-field' advantage if a state judge were more sympathetic to a local plaintiff," he said.
It is unclear what details Ceglia hopes to uncover, or Zuckerberg wants to keep from being revealed.
Social networking companies such as Facebook have long faced concerns over privacy. They must balance users' concerns about how much personal information is made public with a need to generate revenue by sharing details with advertisers.
In May, Facebook introduced tools to give users more control over what information is shared.
Zuckerberg, a Dobbs Ferry, New York native, launched Facebook in February 2004 as a Harvard University sophomore. He dropped out after that year and moved to California.
Now based in Palo Alto, California, Facebook said it has more than 500 million users and 1,600 employees.
Terry Connors, a partner at Connors & Vilardo LLP in Buffalo who represents Ceglia, said he expects to respond to Zuckerberg's allegations in a court filing within two weeks.
Facebook, in an emailed statement, said "Ceglia's claim that Mark Zuckerberg lives in New York is another ridiculous and demonstrably false claim in an already absurd lawsuit."
In June, Zuckerberg said he had no date to take Facebook public. The next month, he told ABC News he was "quite sure" there was no contract ceding Facebook ownership rights.
A hearing on Ceglia's lawsuit is set for October 13.
The case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of New York, No. 10-00569.
Jonathan Stempel @'Reuters'
Zuckerberg is fighting a civil lawsuit filed by Paul Ceglia, an upstate New York resident who claims an 84 percent stake in the privately held company, believed to be worth several billion dollars.
Ceglia, an owner of a wood pellet fuel company who lives in Wellsville, New York, is trying to return the case to a New York state court, after Zuckerberg moved it to federal court.
"They filed this remand motion to harass defendants under the pretext of obtaining jurisdictional discovery into Zuckerberg's private life," lawyers for Zuckerberg said in a Monday filing in the federal court in Buffalo, New York.
Ceglia alleged in a June 30 lawsuit that a 2003 contract with Zuckerberg entitles him to control of Facebook. Forbes magazine in March estimated Zuckerberg was worth $4 billion.
Federal courts can hear cases from parties in different states. Zuckerberg, 26, considers himself a California citizen, while Ceglia said both men are New Yorkers.
"The higher the stakes, the more likely you want to take advantage of procedural moves to improve your chances of winning, or settling on the most favorable terms," said Adam Steinman, a professor at Seton Hall University School of Law in Newark, New Jersey.
Steinman said "conventional wisdom" is often that defendants prefer federal court to state court, because cases might be dismissed faster or less likely to reach juries. "There could also be a 'home-field' advantage if a state judge were more sympathetic to a local plaintiff," he said.
It is unclear what details Ceglia hopes to uncover, or Zuckerberg wants to keep from being revealed.
Social networking companies such as Facebook have long faced concerns over privacy. They must balance users' concerns about how much personal information is made public with a need to generate revenue by sharing details with advertisers.
In May, Facebook introduced tools to give users more control over what information is shared.
Zuckerberg, a Dobbs Ferry, New York native, launched Facebook in February 2004 as a Harvard University sophomore. He dropped out after that year and moved to California.
Now based in Palo Alto, California, Facebook said it has more than 500 million users and 1,600 employees.
Terry Connors, a partner at Connors & Vilardo LLP in Buffalo who represents Ceglia, said he expects to respond to Zuckerberg's allegations in a court filing within two weeks.
Facebook, in an emailed statement, said "Ceglia's claim that Mark Zuckerberg lives in New York is another ridiculous and demonstrably false claim in an already absurd lawsuit."
In June, Zuckerberg said he had no date to take Facebook public. The next month, he told ABC News he was "quite sure" there was no contract ceding Facebook ownership rights.
A hearing on Ceglia's lawsuit is set for October 13.
The case is Ceglia v. Zuckerberg et al, U.S. District Court, Western District of New York, No. 10-00569.
Jonathan Stempel @'Reuters'
Koch-Funded Organizations Launch New Campaign To Protect Big Oil Profits
As ThinkProgress and others have reported, Koch Industries and its billionaire owners, Charles and David Koch, have played a leading role in the apparently successful effort by polluters to stymie Senate passage of comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation.
Not content to simply stop progress, however, the Koch brothers and various Koch-funded organizations have also been actively trying to roll back existing clean air and clean energy laws — both at the state and national levels. David Koch, who lives in New York City and whose company is based in Kansas, is secretly bankrolling the Proposition 23 effort to roll back California’s landmark clean energy law. Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity helped make opposition to “cap-and-trade” a Tea Party talking point and then launched its so-called “Regulation Reality” tour to attack Supreme Court-mandated Clean Air Act regulations being finalized by the Environmental Protection Agency.
Today, a new Koch-backed national effort to protect the energy industry, dubbed “Rally for Jobs,” begins with rallies in Texas and will continue next week with events in New Mexico, Colorado, Illinois, and Ohio. While the American Petroleum Institute, Big Oil’s Washington lobbying arm, is the “presenting sponsor” of the Rally for Jobs tour, several Koch-backed groups are also involved:
• FreedomWorks, whose Koch-founded precursor, Citizens for a Sound Economy, received some $5.7 million from Koch foundations.
• Americans for Prosperity, which received at least $5.1 million from Koch Foundations from 2005-2008 and is an offshoot of the Koch-founded Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation, which itself received more than $6 million from Koch foundations.
• The American Highway Users Alliance, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• Americans for Tax Reform, which received $60,000 from Koch Foundations from 1997-2008.
• The Institute for Policy Innovation, which received $35,000 from Koch foundations.
• The National Petrochemical and Refiners Association, of which Koch Industries is a member.
• The National Taxpayers Union, which has received $20,000 from Koch foundations.
• The Natural Gas Supply Association, of which Koch Industries appears to be a member.
• The Texas Prosperity Project, on whose board of directors sits Bill Oswald, Government & Regulatory Affairs Director at Koch Industries.
• The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce, which recently held an event sponsored by Flint Hills Resources, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Koch Industries.
Continue reading
Joshua Dorner @'AlterNet'
The State of Internet Music on YouTube, Pandora, iTunes, and Facebook
"More people are engaged with music than ever before," said Tom Silverman, founder of Tommy Boy Records and the New Music Seminar. "It's a hockey stick going up; it's an incredible opportunity that so far has eluded us." Silverman was speaking this morning at the New Music Seminar in New York City, where he and Eric Garland, CEO of Big Champagne (who also unveiled the Ultimate Chart today), gave a State of the Music Industry address. Even if you aren't a player in the industry and only an avid music listener, the figures that Silverman and Garland culled will surely surprise you. Here are a few of their key findings.
A shift from albums to singles
Of the some 100,000 albums released last year, 17,000 of them sold only 1 copy; more than 81,000 albums sold under 100 copies. In fact, just 1,300 albums sold over 10,000 copies, an astonishing figure given that these numbers combine physical and digital album sales. And for physical sales alone? According to Garland, only 2% of new albums on Soundscan sold over 5,000 copies--that's a skydiver's plummet from the golden era of the music industry. This chart shows you how much the industry has changed:
"The music business historically has been built around albums," explained Silverman. "This album-centrism is like saying the sun revolves around the Earth. We don't listen to albums now; we listen to collections of songs."
Of course, the reason for significant single-growth and slowed-album sales is due in part to iTunes hawking every song as a single for 99 cents. "Historically, the price of an album was five times greater than a single," said Silverman, who believes setting the price at a tenth of an album's cost was a mistake and that even $1.29 is too low. "It should've been a $1.99, and then we would've seen higher digital album sales because it would've been a bigger discount for buying an album." But both Silverman and Garland agreed that this is changing, citing the fact that about 14% of all of Universal Music's digital sales are for iTunes "Complete My Albums," a program where you receive credit for having already purchased the single, but have the option to upgrade and purchase the full album. This suggests the $9.99 price-tag is becoming approachable for consumers.
Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter: Track your FFF number
According to Garland, industry folks today are obsessed with "FFF numbers"--that is, an artist's friends, fans, and followers. "It's a race, but to what end?" he wondered. Garland showed through a series of charts how Twitter and especially Facebook are ballooning in popularity for artists like Lady Gaga, while once popular Myspace's numbers are stymied.
However, Garland points out that Facebook recently forced most users into converting their profile favorites into "fan" data, which arbitrarily inflated the social network's numbers. For example, Garland tells the story of how when Susan Boyle's performance first blew up, a friend of his added the YouTube star to his Facebook profile. When Facebook imported this data though, he instantly became a "fan" of Susan Boyle. "[He] had no interest in it--[he] liked her for like 30 seconds, once!" Garland relates. "It doesn't really indicate any consumer activity--it's automated," added Silverman.
Garland's story serves as an indicator of just how difficult it is to figure out the influence of an artist through his or her FFF number. After all, even if Lady Gaga starts losing friends on Myspace, that's less of an indication of her popularity, and more a sign of Myspace's falling use.
Google and YouTube more important than iTunes?
Interestingly, it wasn't Apple that Garland viewed as the most important name in music, even though the company's iPods, iPhones, and iTunes indicate otherwise. "YouTube is increasingly the category killer," argued Garland. "When people ask me what is the biggest name in music in my opinion, they want me to say Apple. I usually answer: YouTube."
Garland told audiences that if you actually look to where people are listening to music--not even just looking at videos--consumers are turning more and more to YouTube, which he calls the "largest catalog of on-demand music on the Internet." If only Google could make this service profitable, right?
Internet radio: Pandora
Garland and Silverman pointed out that Pandora is now the most popular Internet radio service, with a 52% market share, close to 60 million registered users, and more than 1 billion stations.
And in a sign of just how much the Web has impacted music, Silverman told the crowd that Pandora now represents 1.7% of all radio listening--really a shocking figure to think about. Obviously, traditional music media is going away. But is the music industry ready for the change?
Austin Carr @'Fast Company'
Wednesday, 1 September 2010
MelbourneBitter Wow. My iPad's auto correct thingy changes 'cunt' to 'Cynthia'. Glad my name's not Cynthia.
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