Wednesday, April 28, 2004

Posted here Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 4:22:25 PM     A background article on the government approach to trouble - the case of Waco http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/2004_04_25_dneiwert_archive.html#108305345380975226 This is intrinsic to the nature of modern terrorism. It is inspired not just by fanaticism, but fueled in many cases by unaddressed grievances, many of which are not simply matters of fantasy but may be grounded in actual fact (mingled, inevitably, with the usual doses of irrational belief). And among the most egregious and radicalizing of these grievances are those involving violent attacks that appear to target deeply held religious and political beliefs. This is as true of Oklahoma City as of Sept. 11 -- and will remain true well into the coming century. This is, in fact, the dynamic currently at work in Iraq -- particularly the increasingly volatile situation in an-Najaf, the city now under control of the followers of the Shiite sect headed by Muqtada al-Sadr. Indeed, al-Sadr is beginning to look a lot like David Koresh; and the response of the United States is beginning to look a lot like that of the federal government at Waco. Which should not be a surprise, since some of the same people responsible for the Waco disaster -- the same people whose careers probably should have ended there because of their role in encouraging the catastrophic course of action that was taken -- are now running the show in Iraq. ... Rosenfeld discussed this at length in an unpublished op-ed I ran recently -- pointing out that, in fact, both Peter J. Schoomaker and William G. Boykin, key players in the Iraq drama, were the same two men whose advice as Delta Force officers led to the FBI's use of the worst possible tactical approach at Waco. Schoomaker is Donald Rumsfeld's hand-picked Army chief of staff and one of the chief overseers of the Iraq occupation; Boykin -- whose bizarre religious comments last year sparked a brief controversy -- is the deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, the man charged with tracking down terrorist leaders and cracking down on insurgents in Iraq. ********

Posted here Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 3:07:31 PM     Someone offered me a penny for my thoughts and it woke me from a nap. The trend towards infomatization and extended copyright are both apparently unstoppable. What are downsides? On information. It is possible there is actually less, not more. Ten copies of Hamlet do not have ten times as much info as one. As local differences are replaced by global news, we lose vast amounts of "information." which Goethe complained about, saying that travelling had lost its significance when the folks at the starting point and destination read the same newspaper. Information leads to everything interconnected in one system (lets have identity cards and one life time phone number...)and that system then is the single prime target for ownership and control. the head of planning at one of the largest multinationals told me "there is one table now in the world where the decisions are made, and we want a seat at that table - and we have one. Staying there means money. That is the strategy. Everything else is tactics." (a company famous for the TINA scenario, "there is no alternative" to globalizing economic power.) The way information spreads, by eliminating local differences, is actually entropic. What do we do when our leaders and institutions and technnology are integrated into an entropy creating society rather than an anentropic civilizational process? Property: the quote I gave from Macualay, that property follows from the law, not preceeds it, is a lost persepctive. We are all Lockians, and will be so long as we can't devise another basis for pesonal security in a complex and dangerous world where money bears interest, property inflates, and relationships are marginalized. Simply getting rid of the 14th ammedndment extension of personhood to corporations would go a long way. Otherwise we will find that all property will be owned by corporations, none by people. ********

Posted here Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 1:49:03 PM     Must read article, recommended by several, on the background of Muqtada al-Sadr http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0427/p01s03-woiq.html ********

Posted here Wednesday, April 28, 2004 at 11:46:40 AM     Power outage yesterday, so few postings.. spologies. ********