A female Samurai who dresses only in black and admires Hillary Clinton is running for president in Russia next month.

A Samurai Fighter, Clad in Jeans, Takes On Putin

Jeremy wrote:
] The sad fact is that US intelligence was not up to par. There
] are many reasons for that failure, but the most obvious one is
] the absence of an effective human clandestine intelligence
] service.

Hrm... I'm sceptical here. Was this really a failure of the U.S. intelligence community? The UN weapons inspectors were opposed to the idea. There was a lot of push and pull between the administration and the intel community. The politicians floated a document that was an edited version of some grad student's research paper. It was quite clear that there were quarters of the intel community who were saying that there probably weren't WMD, or that we didn't know, and that information was not brought to the forefront because the administration didn't want to hear that. Bush wasn't asking the CIA whats going on in Iraq, Bush was asking the CIA to "prove" conclusions he had already made. It seems to me that to go back and nail the CIA for "getting it wrong" is ridiculous. They were not allowed to "get it right" in the first place. The administration was operating on its own version of reality and we were all aware of that.

This issue gets deeper still. I really strikes at a fundamental problem with our democracy. Presumably, the people control the government. The government cannot go to war without people's approval. The geopolitical strategic reasons for the war were available and discussed here. However, the television watching public doesn't have the attention span to handle complex explanations for complex decisions. So, things end up getting simplified for them. The WMD justification was the simplification they ended up running with. It was a poor choice because they weren't sure it was even true. But people bought it. And now the television watching public is trying to grapple with the fact that this explanation was weak, and Bush is offering other equally simplified explanations in response. It seems like a really futile dialog.

How can people govern if they aren't willing to study? Did Bush lie to the public? Yes! Could he have run an honest explanation for what he was doing? Would we have supported it? Its not clear. Should he have?

These are the important questions, but we're not discussing them. We're busy freaking out because the simplification we got didn't hold. The administration should have seen this coming. They should have known that they might be wrong and they should have had a game plan in place to handle that possibility. Maybe this is it. Its called an independent commission, AKA, pin the tail on the CIA. This isn't the first time during this administraion that the CIA will take a political bullet for them, and as in the past, there will be no consequences. No heads will roll because its all bullshit anyway. The public will be made to feel like everything is ok.

But, everything is really really not ok. This isn't a democracy. This is a highly evolved system of consentual manipulation. And that is not an anti-bushism. Clinton played the same games all the time. And its not clear that we CAN be a democracy. We're not ready.

RE: Restoring Trust in America

The antiglobalization protesters almost shut Davos down the last two years. This year, they were nowhere.

Elephants Can't Fly

] Eight security experts held a Red Team exercise on
] January 19, using a GEMS server and six AccuVote-TS
] terminals, replicating an election scenario with no prior
] knowledge of source code. As suggested by the earlier,
] Hopkins report, the team quickly guessed the hardcoded
] passwords to administrator and voter smart cards. At a
] cost of less than $750, they were able to reset voter
] cards to allow multiple votes with the same card and
] suggested similar abuses with forged supervisor and voter
] cards. All 32,000 statewide terminal locks are identical,
] and the team picked them in less than 10 seconds,
] allowing physical access to the PCMCIA bay, which
] contains cards for the modem and the ballot definitions
] and results. These cards could be tampered with,
] destroyed, or stolen for their valuable data. Attaching a
] keyboard to the terminals allowed resetting of all
] counters in the PCMCIA bay without an administrator card
] needed.
]
] The server was missing over 15 Microsoft security
] updates, and the team was able to use the flaws used by
] the "Blaster" worm. By using insecure USB ports or more
] secure CD drives, the team was able to modify results and
] databases

LawMeme - Voting Machines Compromised in Election Simulation

"2004 is not an ordinary election; it is a referendum on the Bush doctrine. The future of the world hangs in the balance. That is the other point that I want to make; it is not enough to defeat President Bush. We must also develop and adopt a more constructive vision."

You can read a transcript of the speech, or you can download an MP3 of the introduction, speech, and discussion.

George Soros, Bubble Book Boy

Is the American middle class in jeopardy because modern communications technology enables U.S. firms to use workers in India for tasks such as call-center staffing and software development? Pundits appear to be divided on this issue.

I recommend this article because it is wrong. As someone eloquently stated in the threads attached to it, equilibrium conditions are states you reach in physical systems only when things stop changing, which only happens in idealistic models. Understanding whats wrong with this picture and you understand why you can't rely on the "everything is going to be fine in the long run" arguements from arm chair free market economists. The long run they are talking about could take generations... This article also links to a number of articles that this author disagrees with. The enemy of my enemy?

Taking Advantage

... Until the president is willing to employ carrots as well as sticks, he will make little headway in changing Iranian or Syrian behavior. The president's lack of initiative on this point is especially disappointing.

... and now you know the rest of the story.

Why Libya Gave Up on the Bomb

] his paper documents the use of pictorial images in social
] network analysis. It shows that such images are critical
] both in helping investigators to understand network data
] and to communicate that understanding to others.
]
] The paper reviews the long history of image use in the
] field. It begins with illustrations of the earliest
] hand-drawn images in which points were placed by using ad
] hoc rules. It examines the development of systematic
] procedures for locating points. It goes on to discuss how
] computers have been used to actually produce drawings of
] networks, both for printing and for display on computer
] screens. Finally, it illustrates some of the newest
] procedures for producing web-based pictures that allow
] viewers to interact with the network data and to explore
] their structural properties.

Carnegie Mellon: Journal of Social Structure: Visualizing Social Networks

] Two weeks after declaring his intention to run for
] president, Clark was still registered to represent a high
] tech contractor, Acxiom Corporation, giving him the rare
] distinction of seeking the White House while registered
] as a lobbyist. Shortly after Clark announced his
] candidacy, a company spokesman said the general no longer
] lobbied for Acxiom, but, according to the Senate Office
] of Public Records, Clark had not filed any termination
] papers.
]
]
] Clark has been lobbying for the firm since January 2,
] 2002; Acxiom has paid more than $830,000 for Clark to
] advance its agenda and meet with government officials.
] Clark also serves on the company's board of directors.
]
]
] According to federal disclosure records, Clark lobbied
] directly on "information transfers, airline security and
] homeland security issues," for Acxiom, which sought
] funding to do controversial informational background
] checks on passengers for airlines. Privacy advocates have
] criticized the program, called the Computer Assisted
] Passenger Pre-Screening System II, because of concerns
] that the data collected would be an overly invasive
] violation of individuals' rights to privacy. The public
] outcry has been so strong that there is a bi-partisan
] effort to create more oversight for the program to
] protect privacy interests if CAPPS II is implemented.

So Clark helped lobby for CAPPS II. While he was a presidential candidate. So that's fun.

The Buying of the President 2004 - Clark as lobbiest for CAPPS II

But something equally important has happened in South Asia over the past 15 years. India has been transformed by a market revolution.

Fareed Zakaria sees opportunity in recent regional economic and political developments.

So, when the IBM engineers lose their jobs to the Indians, they might be saddened, but at least they should sleep well -- they're fighting terrorism!

Wealth, or safety? Choose wisely.

Opening in South Asia