abumuqawama Andrew Exum
The poll numbers on Afghanistan are interesting. 6/10 say US hasn't finished the job. http://nyti.ms/jvuFfB
Wednesday, 4 May 2011
Glenn Greenwald: The illogic of the torture debate
But even if it were the case that valuable information were obtained during or after the use of torture, what would it prove? Nobody has ever argued that brutality will never produce truthful answers. It is sometimes the case that if you torture someone long and mercilessly enough, they will tell you something you want to know. Nobody has ever denied that. In terms of the tactical aspect of the torture debate, the point has always been -- as a consensus of interrogations professionals has repeatedly said -- that there are far more effective ways to extract the truth from someone than by torturing it out of them. The fact that one can point to an instance where torture produced the desired answer proves nothing about whether there were more effective ways of obtaining it.
This highlights what has long been a glaring fallacy in many debates over War on Terror policies: that Information X was obtained after using Policy A does not prove that Policy A was necessary or effective. That's just basic logic. This fallacy asserted itself constantly in the debate over warrantless surveillance. Proponents of the Bush NSA program would point to some piece of intelligence allegedly obtained during warrantless eavesdropping as proof that the illegal program was necessary and effective; obviously, though, that fact said nothing about whether the same information would also have been discovered through legal eavesdropping, i.e., eavesdropping approved in advance by the FISA court (and indeed, legal eavesdropping [like legal interrogation tactics] is typically more effective than the illegal version because, by necessity, it is far more focused on actual suspected Terrorism plots; warrantless eavesdropping entails the unconstrained power to listen in on any communications the Government wants without having to establish its connection to Terrorism). But in all cases, the fact that some piece of intelligence was obtained by some lawless Bush/Cheney War on Terror policy (whether it be torture or warrantless eavesdropping) proves nothing about whether that policy was effective or necessary.
And those causal issues are, of course, entirely independent of the legal and moral questions shunted to the side by this re-ignited "debate." There are many actions that the U.S. could take that would advance its interests that are nonetheless obviously wrong on moral and legal grounds. When Donald Trump recently suggested that we should simply take Libya's oil and that of any other country which we successfully invade and occupy, that suggestion prompted widespread mockery. That was the reaction despite the fact that stealing other countries' oil would in fact produce substantial benefits for the U.S. and advance our interests: it would help to lower gas prices, reduce our dependence on hostile oil-producing nations, and avoid having to degrade our own environment in order to drill domestically. Trump's proposed actions are morally reprehensible and flagrantly lawless despite how many benefits it would produce; therefore, no person of even minimal decency would embrace it no matter how many benefits it produces.
Exactly the same is true for the torture techniques used by the Bush administration and once again being heralded by its followers (and implicitly glorified by media stars who keep suggesting that it enabled bin Laden's detection). It makes no difference whether it extracted usable intelligence. Criminal, morally depraved acts don't become retroactively justified by pointing to the bounty they produced.
* * * * *
It was striking to note in yesterday's New York Times the obituary of Moshe Landau, the Israeli judge who presided over the 1961 war crimes trial of Adolf Eichmann. It's a reminder that when even the most heinous Nazi war criminals were hunted down by the Israelis, they weren't shot in the head and then dumped into the ocean, but rather were apprehended, tried in a court of law, confronted with the evidence against them for all the world to see, and then punished in accordance with due process. The same was done to leading Nazis found by Allied powers and tried at Nuremberg. It's true that those trials took place after the war was over, but whether Al Qaeda should be treated as active warriors or mere criminals was once one of the few ostensible differences between the two parties on the question of Terrorism.
Speaking of which: I know that very few people have even a slight interest in the unexciting, party-pooping question of whether our glorious killing comported with legal principles, but for those who do, both The Guardian and Der Spiegel have good discussions of that issue.
@'Salon'
ggreenwald Glenn Greenwald
Bradley Manning's detention conditions have improved considerably-exposing the false excuses for his inhumane treatment: http://is.gd/SWB4gt
The Gentle Good - Colled
'Colled' means 'Loss' in Welsh and the words describe the coming of a black swan, symbolic of death. This song was written to imitate the style of an old Welsh poetic meter that is found in many traditional songs called 'Hen Benillion' (Old Verses). Thanks to Twm Morys for giving me a book full of them. Each verse has 4 lines of 7 syllables each and there is a specific rhyming pattern both within and between lines. The harmony is sung by the beautiful Cate le Bon and the harp played expertly by the astouding Harriet Earis. The string arrangements were written by Seb Goldfinch and performed by the Mavron Quartet.
Second Edition--Vin Diesel vs. Arthur Russell
Fragments of an aborted recording session at Battery Sound NYC in 1986 which brought together fledgling rapper Mark Sinclair--today better known as the actor Vin Diesel--and avant composer/dance music maven Arthur Russell in a project midwifed by Gary Lucas, who discovered Mark Sinclair rapping and break-dancing on the streets of the West Village, and greenlighted by Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records and Barry Feldman of Upside/Logarhythm records.
"I'm the Man of Steel" the teenage Sinclair asserts, foreshadowing his stellar ascent as a worldwide action movie hero ("Triple XXX", "Pitch Dark", and most recently the #1 box office hit "Fast Five")-- but even Diesel is no match for Arthur's crafty diabolical beats, which keep dropping "the one" out from under him, breaking up Sinclair's delivery and eventually rendering the session useless.
"It's the white part of me fucking it up!"
--Mark Sinclair at the recording session
archival tape courtesy of Gary Lucas
HERE
"I'm the Man of Steel" the teenage Sinclair asserts, foreshadowing his stellar ascent as a worldwide action movie hero ("Triple XXX", "Pitch Dark", and most recently the #1 box office hit "Fast Five")-- but even Diesel is no match for Arthur's crafty diabolical beats, which keep dropping "the one" out from under him, breaking up Sinclair's delivery and eventually rendering the session useless.
"It's the white part of me fucking it up!"
--Mark Sinclair at the recording session
archival tape courtesy of Gary Lucas
HERE
blakehounshell Blake Hounshell
Least surprising op-ed ever written: John Yoo claims enhanced interrogation led to bin Laden's death. online.wsj.com/article/SB1000…
Why the truth will out but doesn’t sink in
Bin Laden used a woman as a human shield and fired at the commando team sent to kill him – at least according to the first reports. These have just been corrected to say he was unarmed and standing alone, but the retractions follow a useful pattern – media friendly version first, accurate version later – because the updates make little impact on our beliefs.
In this particular case, I can’t speculate why the corrections came as they did. Maybe it was genuinely the ‘fog of war’ that led to mistaken early reports, but the fact that the media friendly version almost always appears first in accounts of war is likely, at least sometimes, to be a deliberate strategy.
Research shows that even when news reports have been retracted, and we are aware of the retraction, our beliefs are largely based on the initial erroneous version of the story. This is particularly true when we are motivated to approve of the initial account.
Psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky has been studying this effect for several years and not just with abstract test material. Here’s a summary of his study study on retracted reports of the Iraq war:
Even explicitly warning people that they might be misled doesn’t dispel the lingering impact of misinformation after it has been retracted.
So while the latest reports say Bin Laden was alone and unarmed, the majority of people are likely to believe he was firing from behind a human shield, even when they can remember the corrections.
And if this isn’t being used as a deliberate strategy to manage public opinion, I shall eat my kevlar hat.
Vaughn Bell @'Mind Hacks'
In this particular case, I can’t speculate why the corrections came as they did. Maybe it was genuinely the ‘fog of war’ that led to mistaken early reports, but the fact that the media friendly version almost always appears first in accounts of war is likely, at least sometimes, to be a deliberate strategy.
Research shows that even when news reports have been retracted, and we are aware of the retraction, our beliefs are largely based on the initial erroneous version of the story. This is particularly true when we are motivated to approve of the initial account.
Psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky has been studying this effect for several years and not just with abstract test material. Here’s a summary of his study study on retracted reports of the Iraq war:
Media coverage of the 2003 Iraq War frequently contained corrections and retractions of earlier information. For example, claims that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war after they surrendered were retracted the day after the claims were made. Similarly, tentative initial reports about the discovery of weapons of mass destruction were all later disconfirmed.More recent studies have supported the remarkable power of first strike news. The emotional impact of the first version has little influence on its power to persuade after correction, and the misinformation still has an effect even when it is remembered more poorly than the retraction.
We investigated the effects of these retractions and disconfirmations on people’s memory for and beliefs about war-related events in two coalition countries (Australia and the United States) and one country that opposed the war (Germany). Participants were queried about (a) true events, (b) events initially presented as fact but subsequently retracted, and (c) fictional events.
Participants in the United States did not show sensitivity to the correction of misinformation, whereas participants in Australia and Germany discounted corrected misinformation. Our results are consistent with previous findings in that the differences between samples reflect greater suspicion about the motives underlying the war among people in Australia and Germany than among people in the United States.
Even explicitly warning people that they might be misled doesn’t dispel the lingering impact of misinformation after it has been retracted.
So while the latest reports say Bin Laden was alone and unarmed, the majority of people are likely to believe he was firing from behind a human shield, even when they can remember the corrections.
And if this isn’t being used as a deliberate strategy to manage public opinion, I shall eat my kevlar hat.
Vaughn Bell @'Mind Hacks'
How to buy 'No Wave' (Mojo June 2011)
Indebted as much to free jazz as punk-rock, and closely related to the mid-'70s East Village avant-garde New Cinema scene which revered director Jean-Luc Godard's dictum that "there are no new waves, only the ocean", no wave music emerged from the dripping lofts and performance art spaces of Lower Manhattan in 1971, offering an abrasive, nihilist rejoinder to perky new wave rock. The scene's gate openers were Suicide, purveyors of heroically confrontational downtown art-noise epiphanies since the early '70s. Like Suicide, no wave musicians were largely autodidacts - their predilection for texture over melody and disavowal of blues-based worthiness matched by lyrics of unabashed psychic torment.
No wave's fire burnt intensely, if briefly, wafted by émigré Brian Eno after he'd witnessed the cavalcade of visceral art screamers and jazz-punk tyros who graced New York, New York, a five-day 'noise festival' staged at SoHo's Artists Space gallery in May 1978. Inspired, Eno convinced Island Records to invest in a vinyl showcase for this latest incarnation of Gotham underground desecration and so the seminal No New York album was born, Eno producing the cream of the acts. Although dismayed by the jarring, clamourous results, Island released the album in 1978, enshrining the no wave 'moment' and catapulting the careers of hitherto obscure scenesters like Lydia Lunch, Arto Lindsay and James Chance.
No wave's mayfly heyday bequeathed a mere smattering of essential waxings - though subsequent anthologising would turn up a wealth of fiercely uncompromising music - but its influence is conspicuous in everything from Sonic Youth to The Birthday Party,The Pop Group and even Riot Grrrl.
10 VARIOUS N.Y. No Wave
Restricting itself only to tracks recorded for the Ze label, and with an erroneous subtitle, The Ultimate East Village '80s Soundtrack (many of its tracks in fact date from the late '70s), this is still a useful, if by no means definitive, introduction to no wave, proffering key tracks by Mars, Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, The Contortions, etc, alongside interesting, if arguably post-no wave cuts, from Lydia Lunch's Queen Of Siam solo debut and Arto Lindsay and cinematographer Seth Tillett's spoken-word project, Arto/Neto. lt also finds room for avant-funk tracks by French chanteuse/guitarist Lizzy Mercier Descloux.
9 GLENN BRANCA Songs '77-'79
String-terrorising composer Branca had worked with Rhys Chatham's Guitar Trio project before coming to prominence in two late-'70s bands, Theoretical Girls and The Static, documented here. Omitted from the No New York compilation (DNA's mischievous Arto Lindsay having convinced Eno to overlook his downtown rival), Theoretical Girls were critical no-wave scenesters despite only releasing a solitary single. This anthology exhumes their convulsive, unreleased recordings and live tracks alongside densely strummed essays by The Static, featuring Barbara Ess (of no wavers Y Pants).
8 JAMES WHITE AND THE BLACKS Off White
Lounge-suited, sax-toting James Siegfried (aka White, Chance, etc) was Lydia Lunch's erstwhile paramour and co-founder of the elemental Teenage Jesus And The Jerks, although actually schooled in free jazz and abetted by atypically adroit instrumentalists, The Blacks, AKA The Contortions, whose debut Buy also appeared in 1979. The marginally less frenetic Off White still lurches merrily from the cathartic (art-funk-disco cri de coeur Contort Yourself) to the bizarre (Stained Sheets, essentially a dirty phone call between White and Lunch).
7 GLENN BRANCA Lesson No.1
Lesson No.1 was evidence of the more structured compositional work Branca had commenced while helming Theoretical Girls. Originally issued as a twelve-inch mini-LP featuring two extended instrumental tracks, the aggressive, self-explanatory Dissonance and the more accessible title track (influenced by Joy Division's Love Will Tear Us Apart and featuring one Harry Spitz on sledgehammer), this reissue boasts a third track, the metallically textured Bad Smells, essayed by a larger guitar ensemble whose numbers include a pre-Sonic Youth Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo.
6 SUICIDE Suicide
In the words of Glenn Branca: "If you have to find out who the godfather of no wave was, it was Alan Vega. He was doing no wave years before any of us." Indeed, Suicide's sometime light sculptor frontman, along with keyboardist partner Martin Rev, had been delivering antagonistic yet transcendent aural assaults on downtown New York audiences for several years before no wave struck. While this, their debut album, would influence a legion of subsequent synth duos, Suicide's eerily distorted, shimmering songs, and Vega's uncompromising attitude made them equally crucial no wave progenitors.
5 DNA DNA On DNA
Brazilian-born Arto Lindsay, DNA's gaunt, bespectacled frontman, was, and remains, a downtown prime mover. His first band was arguably no wave's most explosive. Backed by untrained female Japanese drummer lkue Mori and performance-artist-turned-keyboardist Robin Lee Crutchfield (later replaced by Pere Ubu bassist Tim Wright), Lindsay's primal scream vocals - partly delivered in fractured Portuguese - were matched by the white-noise detonations he conjured from a randomly detuned Danelectro twelve-string guitar. DNA On DNA collates the band s modest studio repertoire plus grainy live recordings.
Mars were the no wavers who came closest (relatively speaking) to rock orthodoxy - their heavily textured sound an augury of early Sonic Youth and effectively a blueprint for post-punk. Formed in 1975 by vocalist Sumner Crane and guitarist/singer China Burg, the quartet (completed by bassist Mark Cunningham and drummer Nancy Arlen) committed only eleven songs to tape during their three-year existence and played fewer than thirty gigs, none outside New York. This set collects the lot, including the compelling, insectoid Helen Forsdale.
3 JAMES CHANCE & THE CONTORTIONS Buy
Released almost simultaneously with James White And The Blacks' Off White (and featuring ostensibly similar personnel), The Contortions' full debut is an enduring no wave benchmark, its paroxysms of warped funk-rock and yelping free-jazz straddling the chasm between Richard Hell's Voidoids and Albert Ayler. Chance decants his volatile, agitated persona into a dozen squirming, nihilist titles like I Don't Want To Be Happy and Contort Yourself (a veritable no wave standard, also recorded by The Blacks), as the uncredited Contortions squirm on.
2 TEENAGE JESUS AND THE JERKS Shut Up And Bleed
Notorious for ten-minute sets, and creators of a mere handful of EPs during their lifespan, Teenage Jesus And The Jerks were propelled into the spotlight by their feral, needle-sharp contributions to the No New York anthology, securing the iconic status of Medusa-like teenage leaderene Lydia Lunch (plus future Bad Seeds/Grinderman drummer Jim Sclavunos). Shut Up And Bleed corrals the band's entire oeuvre (alongside tracks by the subsequent Beirut Slump), including the malevolent narratives of Baby Doll, Orphans, et al.
1 VARIOUS No New York
Fresh from producing new wave's artier outriders, Devo and Talking Heads, curator Eno whittled down a long list of NYC "research bands" to just four for this seminal compilation, applying an uncharacteristic hands-off approach to the production of primal, art-rock deconstruction from Mars and DNA; self-styled 'aural terror' from Teenage Jesus And The Jerks; and squealing, rudimentarily miked punk-jazz from The Contortions. Released by Island's esoteric Antilles imprint, the lyrics printed, with apposite wilfulness, on the inaccessible inside of the outer sleeve, No New York was the genre's definitive document and remains an ideal entry portal for the no wave ingénue.
AVOID THESE!
No wave was so fleeting that anything produced during its succinct heyday is worthy of investigation. The Manhattan-centric tendency did Produce some questionable responses in the remainder of the US underground, however. Not least was a 1979 No New York retort entitled Yes L.A., released by Californian punk imprint Dangerhouse. A limited edition one-sided LP boasting tracks by X, The Germs and other CA new wave stalwarts, its sleeve bore the petulant disclaimer "Not produced by Brian Eno". Caveat emptor: this now expensive collector's item reveals only that the sound of the '79 West Coast underground was rock'n'roll cheese to New York's art-music chalk.
Via
Via
FBI warns that fake bin Laden video is a virus
he U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation warned computer users Tuesday that messages claiming to include photos and videos of Osama bin Laden's death actually contain a virus that could steal personal information. The warning comes as security companies said that they've spotted the first samples of malicious software disguised as photos of the dead Al Qaeda leader.
Security vendor F-Secure said Tuesday that criminals are e-mailing a password-stealing Trojan horse program called Banload to victims, and Symantec said it's seen criminals spamming victims with links to fake "Osama dead" news articles that launch Web-based attacks on visitors.
U.S. authorities do have photos of bin Laden, who was shot in the head during an early morning raid Monday in Pakistan. But these photos have not been released publicly.
Scammers have also used a technique called search engine poisoning to try to trick search engines into listing hacked Web pages that are loaded with malware in their search results. "It's unlikely you'll find pictures or videos of Bin Laden's death online -- but searching for one will certainly take you to sites with malware," wrote F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hyponnen in a blog post.
The FBI warned Internet users to watch out for fake messages on social network sites and to never download software in order to view a video. "Read e-mails you receive carefully. Fraudulent messages often feature misspellings, poor grammar, and non-standard English," the FBI warning stated.
As a major international news event, bin Laden's death has shown the amazing way information can spread online. Many learned of the terrorist leader's death through Twitter, where the story first broke, or Facebook. But it also underscores how the unfiltered media can quickly spread bad information worldwide.
In the two days since the early morning raid, the bin Laden story has generated fake photographs, fake quotes, and plenty of scams.
Security experts said that shady marketers and so-called rogue antivirus vendors have also jumped on the bin Laden bandwagon. The rogue antivirus software bombards victims with pop-up messages telling them they have a computer problem. Its aim: to nag them into paying for bogus software.
Shady marketers are spreading messages on Facebook that try to lure victims into spreading the message to friends and visiting marketing Web sites, by claiming they have a censored video.
"Osama is dead, watch this exclusive CNN video which was censored by Obama Administration due to level of violence, a must watch," is a typical lure used in the scam. Users are encouraged to cut and paste malicious JavaScript code into their browser, which then sends the message to all of their Facebook friends. Security experts say never to cut and paste scripts into the browser.
Robert McMillan @'ComputerWorld'
Security vendor F-Secure said Tuesday that criminals are e-mailing a password-stealing Trojan horse program called Banload to victims, and Symantec said it's seen criminals spamming victims with links to fake "Osama dead" news articles that launch Web-based attacks on visitors.
U.S. authorities do have photos of bin Laden, who was shot in the head during an early morning raid Monday in Pakistan. But these photos have not been released publicly.
Scammers have also used a technique called search engine poisoning to try to trick search engines into listing hacked Web pages that are loaded with malware in their search results. "It's unlikely you'll find pictures or videos of Bin Laden's death online -- but searching for one will certainly take you to sites with malware," wrote F-Secure chief research officer Mikko Hyponnen in a blog post.
The FBI warned Internet users to watch out for fake messages on social network sites and to never download software in order to view a video. "Read e-mails you receive carefully. Fraudulent messages often feature misspellings, poor grammar, and non-standard English," the FBI warning stated.
As a major international news event, bin Laden's death has shown the amazing way information can spread online. Many learned of the terrorist leader's death through Twitter, where the story first broke, or Facebook. But it also underscores how the unfiltered media can quickly spread bad information worldwide.
In the two days since the early morning raid, the bin Laden story has generated fake photographs, fake quotes, and plenty of scams.
Security experts said that shady marketers and so-called rogue antivirus vendors have also jumped on the bin Laden bandwagon. The rogue antivirus software bombards victims with pop-up messages telling them they have a computer problem. Its aim: to nag them into paying for bogus software.
Shady marketers are spreading messages on Facebook that try to lure victims into spreading the message to friends and visiting marketing Web sites, by claiming they have a censored video.
"Osama is dead, watch this exclusive CNN video which was censored by Obama Administration due to level of violence, a must watch," is a typical lure used in the scam. Users are encouraged to cut and paste malicious JavaScript code into their browser, which then sends the message to all of their Facebook friends. Security experts say never to cut and paste scripts into the browser.
Robert McMillan @'ComputerWorld'
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