Blue in Red Zion » International Politics

How YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook will Change the World

Curtis Haring — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:56:50 +0000

Iranian College Student’s computer, destroyed by militia forces

The tumultuous times in Iran are of major importance to our world, and these events do deserve their own recognition. But once the dust settles, for better or for worse, one thing will become clear: this was the internets first example of its true potential.

Over the past week a new phrase has entered my vernacular: “cyberwar.” True, I have heard the phrase before or two-bit sci-fi movies, but I had never actually heard it used in real world terms. Indeed, BoingBoing’s “Cyberwar guide for Iran Elections” may prove to be the opening salvo for a new generation of intelligence and counter intelligence.

In many ways the Green Revolution is a digital revolution. Pro and anti-Ahmadinejad are using tactics similar to overt warfare online – blocking access to strategic pro sites, cutting off or reducing bandwidth (read: supplies) to anti sites, tracking (and yes killing) anti blog writers, and ambushing pro supporters through communication. In short the information superhighway looks less like a road and more like the trenches.

And that is the key – this battle in particular, and struggles in the future, will place information management, disinformation, counter attacks, and media blitzes at its forefront. Sadly, weaponry will still be a part of these disputes, but as the internet becomes more and more integrated, it will be the international community – and more specifically the international citizenry, that decides who is right and who is wrong.

Today, as it comes out that Iran has opened fire on its own people, the Pandora’s Box effect follows soon behind. The simple fact of the matter is that once something is posted, it only spreads. Indeed, that is what the internet is about, the spreading of information – no matter how insignificant or Earth-shattering. We may often mock stupid YouTube clips or Tweets, but, today, we see why the internet is so important.

None of us knows what will happen to the people or government of Iran, but the otherwise tame tool of the internet has shown its teeth. This is the first internal struggle that has had direct fighters from all over the world, where the internet culture is taking active steps to protect those on the front line, feeding everyone vital information. Indeed, information is the only true power the masses have and, in the end, we have seen that governments really do work only through the consent of the governed.

2009 – The next 1962?

Curtis Haring — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 07:59:00 +0000

On September 12, 1962, John F. Kennedy proclaimed these famous words:

There is no strife, no prejudice, no national conflict in outer space as yet. Its hazards are hostile to us all. Its conquest deserves the best of all mankind, and its opportunity for peaceful cooperation many never come again. But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

It is for these reasons that I regard the decision last year to shift our efforts in space from low to high gear as among the most important decisions that will be made during my incumbency in the office of the Presidency.

Now here is my question to you: what happens when we replace the word “space” or “moon” with “energy independence” and “stop climate change?”

The simple fact of the matter is that we must act, and act now, in order to address the energy/climate crisis. Our dependence on current energy systems is an economic issue, and the climate change issue is a very moral one. Likewise going to the moon was an economic issue in that we were fighting a competing economic system that could have potentially destroyed the American system; it was a moral issue because it not only rallied Americans around a cause during times of strife, but it also made the case that democracies were better than totalitarian regimes.

And so I say that we are at another a similar point in history – but this time the issue is of global necessity, not just of national pride. New energy sources will benefit all nations (even the ones producing oil), new energy sources will clean the air and make new technologies and industries viable, new energy sources will help lift nations out of poverty and fend of coming conflicts that will focus around increasing diminished resources such as water . In short, we must do these things because it needs to be one we are unwilling to postpone.

Now, let us look at our leaders. Indeed Obama is a similar, charismatic, leader who seems to have the wind at his back on this issue. With the days of the Bush Administration soon a terrible memory, it is obvious that anything will be an improvement in the treatment of the environment and how the government reacts to the idea that we need to do more than just “drill, baby, drill.” Those who do not understand this as an economic and indeed a moral issue will be regarded with either disdain in the future if we don’t act, or as dinosaurs who did not have a clue. If I am wrong about climate change and energy supplies, but we still continue down the path of an energy revolution, all I lose is an outdated system that is not in the best interest of the American people – if, however, energy revolution skeptics are wrong, the consequences could be dire on a global scale.

This is a chance for humanity to unite, as one people, towards a common goal. Whereas the moonshot first time united a nation around a great technological and pioneering moment, so to will the “Energyshot” be the first time a world rallied behind a great need. We can not fail, we must not fail, and we will make this world a better place.

P.S. Though it pains me to admit that I agree with Greenpeace on something, I must admit that this little ad did quite a number on me:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tP1RxVKD6vQ&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&feature=player_embedded&fs=1]

Greeted as Liberators Indeed

Curtis Haring — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 23:33:00 +0000

The BBC reports:

A surprise visit by US President George Bush to Iraq has been overshadowed by an incident in which two shoes were thrown at him during a news conference.

An Iraqi jouralist was wrestled to the floor by security guards after he called Mr. Bush “a dog” and threw his footwear, just missing the president.

The soles of shoes are considered the ultimate insult in Arab culture.

But why would the liberated show the liberator “the ultimate insult?”

All’s well that ends well…right?

Curtis Haring — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 07:01:00 +0000

Many of you may have seen this bumper sticker floating around your city:

So this leads me to the question, how low will gas go once Bush leaves the White House on January 20th? The national average right now is around $1.72 and dropping fast, at the current rate of reduction at $1.44 less per six weeks, gas will be 28 cents by Inauguration Day!

But the long and short of this post is not to praise the dramatic drop in oil that has, thankfully, taken some of the edge off of this recession…no it is quite the opposite. Gas prices are a symptom of the failed policies of the Bush Administration, and, ironically, so are the record highs we saw just five short months ago.

The volatility we are seeing in today’s world is due to the fact that our economy has run rampant over the past eight years, fueled by the idea that the free market can do no wrong and that the governments role is to play no role at all. Why is this ideology fundamentally flawed? Well let me tell you.

Our economy has people in it.

That’s right, a pure free market system will fail every time because people exist within the free market. The idea of free and open markets is pure – and in fact quite good – but people tend to pick and choose which parts of the free market ideology to peruse when attempting to create a system where a product gets to a consumer in the most efficient manor possible.

Greed, manipulation, fraud, theft; these are all creations of human nature. Likewise government is a necessary counterbalance and an amalgamation of all human nature. Governments are created by people to protect people from people because, when left to our own accord, we have yet to prove that we won’t all devolve into a more basic condition. We create laws on things, like an unabashed free market, to ensure that certain individuals will not harm other individuals and impart a sense of justice as well, all in an attempt to make people be good.

In short government regulation is a good thing…to a point.

Now we can all sit back and nit-pick about how much is too much, however I am not interested in discussing any of that at this point; all I will say is that the Bush Administration has clearly chosen a level that is far to low for the global economic situation we currently live in. Many conservatives may not like what I say, but do you also like $700 billion (and rising) of or tax dollars going to fix the situation we are currently in?

Deregulation of everything from banks to oil derricks has created an atmosphere rife with potential corruption, collusion, and profiteering. This atmosphere creates a booming economy that hums great until the slightest wind blows it off course. Sure enough that wind started to blow this time last year, and we now see ourselves in the trouble we are in today.

The greed and arrogance of those who took the money and ran thanks to Bush Administration policies has caused a global crisis not seen in many years – even the low cost of gas is a symptom. No one can afford to fill up so demand goes down. Because demand goes down price goes down (simple free market concept there).

We will get out of this hopefully sooner rather than later, but I can’t help but point the finger towards Bush. After all he has presided over two recessions in his eight years, a feat not seen for over fifty years. In short, we need protections and enforcement that, though it may inhibit growth in the short term, provides long term security for all members of the economy.

Just be happy that you are not 65 and seeing that your Bush supported, GOP approved, privatized social security check started coming in this month.

Sarah Palin v. United States

Curtis Haring — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 19:56:00 +0000

So I know I am a little behind the curve on this whole “Sarah Pailn has foreign policy experience because she is next to Russia” thing, but I heard it again today and have yet to hear this as an legal argument.

If, when refereeing to her tenure as Governor of Alaska, someone says that Sarah Palin has experience with trade envoys and being the first line of defense against Russia, what they are really saying is that Sarah Pailn is in direct violation of the Constitution of the United States.

But don’t take my word for it – allow me to quote from Article I, Section X

Paragraph I:
No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation…

Paragraph II:
No State shall, without the Consent of the Congress, lay any Imposts or Duties on Imports or Exports, except what may be absolutely necessary for executing it’s inspection laws: and the net Produce of all Duties and Imposts, laid by any State on Imports or Exports, shall be for the Use of the Treasury of the United States; and all such Laws shall be subject to the Revision and Controul (sp) of the Congress.

Paragraph III:
No State shall, with the Consent of Congress,…enter into any agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay.

So, allow me to translate:

Paragraph I:
No state (Alaska being one, last I checked) can never, never, never have any form of diplomatic relations. NEVER!

Paragraph II:
Unless the United States Congress specifically says that it is ok, no state (Alaska being one, I dare to point out) put a tariff, or tax if you will, on anything that leaves or comes into its ports. If they do get permission, the money goes straight to the United States Government, not the state where it was taken in.

Paragraph III:
No state (Alaska has been one for almost 50 years now) can never, never, never, go to war with another state or country unless they are invaded first and, for some reason, the United States Government, can not or will, not respond.

So, what the Constitution is saying is that a state can not conduct any diplomatic, economic, or military procedures against another country. It is almost as if the Founding Fathers wanted states to focus on being part of the republic, not their own countries.

So then, I ask to you, right-wing pundits. Was Sarah Pain engaged in foreign policy while Governor of Alaska? If so, she is in blatant violation of the Constitution of the United States of America and has committed treason. If not, I guess it would mean that you are wrong, and it is a lie to continue perpetrating it on the American people.

P.S. Sorry that, yet again, that pesky little Constitution got in the way of your grand schemes.

Deaths in the Global War on Terror from September 11, 2001 to today

Curtis Haring — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 06:23:00 +0000

Side note to the Olbermann Post

Curtis Haring — Sat, 17 May 2008 02:15:00 +0000

Does anyone else get the feeling that Bush saying “I won’t golf during war” is similar to “let them eat cake?”

Keith Olbermann – True patriot

Curtis Haring — Fri, 16 May 2008 23:56:00 +0000

Once again, Keith Olbermann is showing the folly of the Bush administration. On Monday Olbermann presented this special comment that I feel is worth your time to watch/read:

President Bush has resorted anew to the sleaziest fear-mongering and mass manipulation of an administration and public life dedicated to realizing the lowest of our expectations. And he has now applied these poisons to the 2008 presidential election, on behalf of the party at whose center he and John McCain lurk.

Mr. Bush has predicted that the election of a Democratic president could “eventually lead to another attack on the United States.” This ludicrous, infuriating, holier-than-thou and most importantly bone-headedly wrong statement came during a May 13 interview with Politico.com and online users of Yahoo.

The question was phrased as follows: “If we were to pull out of Iraq next year, what’s the worst that could happen, what’s the doomsday scenario?”

The president replied: “Doomsday scenario of course is that extremists throughout the Middle East would be emboldened, which would eventually lead to another attack on the United States. The biggest issue we face is, it’s bigger than Iraq, it’s this ideological struggle against cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives.”

Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created, includes “cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives?” They are those in — or formerly in — your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.

Through your haze of self-congratulation and self-pity, do you still have no earthly clue that this nation has laid waste to Iraq to achieve your political objectives? “This ideological struggle,” Mr. Bush, is taking place within this country.

It is a struggle between Americans who cherish freedom, ours and everybody else’s, and Americans like you, sir, to whom freedom is just a brand name, just like “Patriot Act” is a brand name or “Protect America” is a brand name.

But wait, there’s more: You also said “Iraq is the place where al-Qaida and other extremists have made their stand and they will be defeated.” They made no “stand” in Iraq, sir, you allowed them to assemble there!

As certainly as if that were the plan, the borders were left wide open by your government’s farcical post-invasion strategy of “they’ll greet us as liberators.” And as certainly as if that were the plan, the inspiration for another generation of terrorists in another country was provided by your government’s farcical post-invasion strategy of letting the societal infra-structure of Iraq dissolve, to be replaced by an American viceroy, enforced by merciless mercenaries who shoot unarmed Iraqis and then evade prosecution in any country by hiding behind your skirts, sir.

Terrorism inside Iraq is your creation, Mr. Bush!

***

It was a Yahoo user who brought up the second topic upon whose introduction Mr. Bush should have passed, or punted, or gotten up and left the room claiming he heard Dick Cheney calling him.

“Do you feel,” asked an ordinary American, “that you were misled on Iraq?”

“I feel like — I felt like, there were weapons of mass destruction,” the president said. “You know, ‘mislead’ is a strong word, it almost connotes some kind of intentional — I don’t think so, I think there was a — not only our intelligence community, but intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment. And so I was disappointed to see how flawed our intelligence was.”

Flawed.

You, Mr. Bush, and your tragically know-it-all minions, threw out every piece of intelligence that suggested there were no such weapons.

You, Mr. Bush, threw out every person who suggested that the sober, contradictory, reality-based intelligence needed to be listened to, and fast.

You, Mr. Bush, are responsible for how “intelligence communities all across the world shared the same assessment.”

You and the sycophants you dredged up and put behind the most important steering wheel in the world propagated palpable nonsense and shoved it down the throat of every intelligence community across the world and punished anybody who didn’t agree it was really chicken salad.

And you, Mr. Bush, threw under the bus, all of the subsequent critics who bravely stepped forward later to point out just how much of a self-fulfilling prophecy you had embraced, and adopted as this country’s policy in lieu of, say, common sense.

The fiasco of pre-war intelligence, sir, is your fiasco.

You should build a great statue of yourself turning a deaf ear to the warnings of realists, while you are shown embracing the three-card monte dealers like Richard Perle and Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

That would be a far more fitting tribute to your legacy, Mr. Bush, than this presidential library you are constructing as a giant fable about your presidency, an edifice you might as well claim was built from “Iraqi weapons of mass destruction” because there will be just as many of those inside your presidential library as there were inside Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

***

Of course if there is one overriding theme to this president’s administration it is the utter, always-failing, inability to know when to quit when it is behind. And so Mr. Bush answered yet another question about this layered, nuanced, wheels-within-wheels garbage heap that constituted his excuse for war.

“And so you feel that you didn’t have all the information you should have or the right spin on that information?”

“No, no,” replied the President. “I was told by people, that they had weapons of mass destruction …”

People? What people? The insane informant “Curveball?” The Iraqi snake-oil salesman Ahmed Chalabi? The American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney?

“I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction, as were members of Congress, who voted for the resolution to get rid of Saddam Hussein.

“And of course, the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes.”

Mr. Bush, you destroyed the evidence that contradicted the resolution you jammed down the Congress’s throat, the way you jammed it down the nation’s throat. When required by law to verify that your evidence was accurate, you simply resubmitted it, with phrases amounting to “See, I done proved it” virtually written in the margins in crayon.

You defied patriotic Americans to say “The Emperor Has No Clothes,” only with the stakes — as you and the mental dwarves in your employ put it — being a “mushroom cloud over an American city.”

And as a final crash of self-indulgent nonsense, when the incontrovertible truth of your panoramic and murderous deceit has even begun to cost your political party seemingly perpetual congressional seats in places like North Carolina and Mississippi, you can actually say with a straight face, sir, that for members of Congress “the political heat gets on and they start to run and try to hide from their votes” — while you greet the political heat a
nd try to run and hide from your presidency, and your legacy — 4,000 of the Americans you were supposed to protect — dead in Iraq, with your only feeble, pathetic answer being, “I was told by people that they had weapons of mass destruction.”

***

Then came Mr. Bush’s final blow to our nation’s solar plexus, his last reopening of our common wounds, his last remark that makes the rest of us question not merely his leadership or his judgment but his very suitably to remain in office.

“Mr. President,” he was asked, “you haven’t been golfing in recent years. Is that related to Iraq?”

“Yes,” began perhaps the most startling reply of this nightmarish blight on our lives as Americans on our history. “It really is. I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be as — to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.”

Golf, sir? Golf sends the wrong signal to the grieving families of our men and women butchered in Iraq? Do you think these families, Mr. Bush, their lives blighted forever, care about you playing golf? Do you think, sir, they care about you?

You, Mr. Bush, let their sons and daughters be killed. Sir, to show your solidarity with them you gave up golf? Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn’t give up your pursuit of this insurance-scam, profiteering, morally and financially bankrupting war.

Sir, to show your solidarity with them you didn’t even give up talking about Iraq, a subject about which you have incessantly proved without pause or backwards glance, that you may literally be the least informed person in the world?

Sir, to show your solidarity with them, you didn’t give up your presidency? In your own words “solidarity as best as I can” is to stop a game? That is the “best” you can do?

Four thousand Americans give up their lives and your sacrifice was to give up golf! Golf. Not “Gulf” — golf.

And still it gets worse. Because it proves that the president’s unendurable sacrifice, his unbearable pain, the suspension of getting to hit a ball with a stick, was not even his own damned idea.

“Mr. President, was there a particular moment or incident that brought you to that decision, or how did you come to that?”

“I remember when [diplomat Sergio Vieira] de Mello, who was at the U.N., got killed in Baghdad as a result of these murderers taking this good man’s life. And I was playing golf, I think I was in central Texas, and they pulled me off the golf course and I said, it’s just not worth it any more to do.”

Your one, tone-deaf, arrogant, pathetic, embarrassing gesture, and you didn’t even think of it yourself? The great Bushian sacrifice — an Army private loses a leg, a Marine loses half his skull, 4,000 of their brothers and sisters lose their lives — and you lose golf, and they have to pull you off the golf course to get you to just do that?

If it’s even true.

Apart from your medical files, which dutifully record your torn calf muscle and the knee pain which forced you to give up running at the same time — coincidence, no doubt — the bombing in Baghdad which killed Sergio Vieira de Mello of the U.N. and interrupted your round of golf was on Aug. 19, 2003.

Yet CBS News has records of you playing golf as late as Oct. 13 of that year, nearly two months later.

Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you 6 1/2 years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your grief when American after American comes home in a box.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about what your addled brain has produced in the way of paranoid delusions of risks that do not exist, ready to be activated if some Democrat, and not your twin Mr. McCain, succeeds you.

The war in Iraq, your war, Mr. Bush, is about how you accomplished the derangement of two nations, and how you helped funnel billions of taxpayer dollars to lascivious and perennially thirsty corporations like Halliburton and Blackwater, and how you sent 4,000 Americans to their deaths for nothing.

It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next Jan. 20 will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heart-felt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice:

When somebody asks you, sir, about Democrats who must now pull this country back from the abyss you have placed us at …

When somebody asks you, sir, about the cooked books and faked threats you foisted on a sincere and frightened nation …

When somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead.

This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!

I love you Keith…please let me have your babies!

Iraq – March 19, 2008: Day 1,825 – 5 years, 0 months, 0 days

Curtis Haring — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 17:42:00 +0000

The Cost of the Iraq war as of March 19, 2008:

82,249 to 89,760 Iraqi Civilian lives (estimates vary).

29,395 American troops wounded in action.

4,297 American lives
175 British lives
33 Italian lives
22 Polish lives
18 Ukrainian lives
13 Bulgarian lives
11 Spanish lives
7 Danish lives
5 Salvadorian lives
4 Slovakian lives
3 Latvian lives
3 Romanian lives
2 Austrailan lives
2 Dutch lives
2 Estonian lives
2 Thai lives
1 Czech life
1 Figian life
1 Hungarian life
1 Kazakh life
1 Korean life

4,604 Total Coalition Deaths

86,853 to 94,364 allies and civilians killed
Average of 48 to 52 lives lost every day
Population of Sandy, Utah – 94,203

Total cost of the war as of 1:17:38 MST $503,882,371,145
Population of the United States – 303,666,343

Cost Per U.S. Citizen – $1,659.33

(compare to my previous post from December 2, 2007)

An Interesting Thought

Curtis Haring — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 18:50:00 +0000

Thankfully I stumbled upon an interesting Livejournal post today concerning “Fighting the war against radical Islam.”

The poster writes:

“McCain must present a strategy to defeat the threat of radical Islam” says Brent Bozell, in an op ed in today’s Washington Post, here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/03/07/AR2008030702845.html?hpid=opinionsbox1, encapsulating ably the conservative viewpoint of this election, and of the military challenges that face a new administration. The problem is that it cannot be done.

Never, in the entirety of recorded human history, has any strategy, particularly any military strategy, defeated an idea.

Let’s think about that again. Never in recorded human history. Did Julian the Apostate, with all the might of the Roman Empire at his disposal, defeat radical Christianity? Did the Moghul Empire succeed in erasing Hinduism from India? Looking at more modern examples, did Austria declaring war on France stamp out the French Revolution? Did even the final victory of the Coalition and the Restoration of the Bourbon monarchy succeed in ending the idea of Republican government in Europe? Did the Soviet Union succeed in pacifying Afghanistan? For that matter, did Communism succeed in Eastern Europe and the Third World?

Ideas cannot be eradicated by a national power strategy, and certainly cannot be eradicated by military power. People simply don’t work that way.

She feels that there is no way to defeat ideas, and explains why here.