Category Archives: Government Incompetence

Neocons Gonna Neocon

Neocon William Kristol, writing on the pages of USA Today writes that “We were right to invade Iraq in 2003 to remove Saddam Hussein […]Even with the absence of caches of weapons of mass destruction…”

It’s quite clear that not only has Kristol not learned the lessons of Iraq but also is willing to rewrite the history in such a way to exonerate the Bush administration from its failings.

When President Obama took office, Iraq was calm, al-Qaeda was weakened and ISIS did not exist. Iran, meanwhile, was under pressure from abroad (due to sanctions) and at home (due to popular discontent, manifested by the Green uprising in the summer of 2009).

The Obama administration threw it all away. It failed to support the dissidents in Iran in 2009, mishandled the Iraqi elections in 2010, removed all U.S. troops from Iraq at the end of 2011, and allowed the Syrian civil war to spiral out of control from 2011 on.

Oh yeah I forgot, things were going great in Iraq until Barack Hussein Obama took office. If only the U.S. got more involved in the Iraqi elections (whatever that means) and “supported” dissidents in Iran (whatever that means) and kept U.S. troops in a bit longer (say another 100 years or so?) why today we might well be witnessing Jeffersonian democracy or a Madisonian republic in the Middle East! And the whole bit about WMD not being found in Iraq? Details. Who cares!

The USA Today editorial on the Iraq question has a bit more of a honest assessment directly challenging the Neocon narrative:

Nearly 4,500 Americans died, tens of thousands more were wounded, and $2 trillion was squandered in a war to destroy weapons of mass destruction that were never found.

And though the war disposed of a bloody dictator, Saddam Hussein, it ushered in something worse, at least for the United States: A sectarian civil war that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and gave birth to Islamist terrorism, now under the banner of the Islamic State.

The more legitimate Afghanistan War was orphaned, turning it into a quagmire, and allies were alienated.

Today, Iraq is splintered and reeling. With the capture this week of the key Sunni city of Ramadi, ISIL is firmly in control of one chunk, and Iran — the war’s big winner — has great sway over another.

Okay, fair enough. But, but Obama set a premature timetable for retreat from Iraq before the mission could be accomplished…

Obama’s policies have indeed made things worse. But in arguing that he should have kept troops in Iraq longer, his critics skip over the inconvenient fact that he pulled out on a schedule negotiated by Bush. And, of course, had Bush not launched the war in the first place, there would have been no such mistakes to make.

There’s just no getting around those fundamental facts. The Neocon experiments have failed.

But what can you do? Neocons are gonna Neocon.

Cause And Effect in Baltimore

grayWith what’s going on in Baltimore, we’re beyond simple deja vu. What we’ve been witnessing is a sickeningly predictable process. Police beat the shit out of a black guy, and he dies. People get mad. Protests turn to violence. Everyone views the incidents through their own prisms, and assigns blame and praise as their worldview permits them. We have been repeating this process for some time, but in recent times it was the death of Michael Brown that instigated what has become a nationwide movement.

In order to fix the mess that’s currently being made, we need to see what got us here in the first place. Simply sticking our fingers in our collective ears while hauntingly saying “well, don’t riot!” is like someone whose answer to sexual assault is to tell men “well, don’t rape!”. It’s condescending and unhelpful. We need to investigate how we got to where we are, both in Baltimore and other communities such as Ferguson, MO.

Do the protesters have legitimate complaints?

Only a partisan fool would argue that the protesters in Baltimore don’t have legitimate reasons to be extremely angry.

The flash point for this community was the death of Freddie Gray, who was taken into police custody on April 12th and somehow came out of it with a broken spine the likes of which usually happen in car accidents. The incident sprung from Gray seeing a police officer and taking off running. It’s unknown exactly what happened inside the police van that he was taken into, which is different from the case of Walter Scott, who was taped being gunned down from behind by a police officer.

In addition, police brutality is a major issue in Baltimore, and with so many payouts – of taxpayer money, mind – for brutality cases, keeping in mind that these are just the ones that got caught, a reasonable person can draw one of two conclusions: either the Baltimore Police Department is so incompetent that they can’t even get away with one of the easiest things for an officer to get away with, or police brutality is so prevalent in the BPD that it’s skewing the numbers.

So it’s a race thing, right?

That’s not cut-and-dried. Baltimore’s a bit different in that they have a black mayor, a heavy black population within their police force, and their minority population is mixed race, with Latinos and other ethnic groups mixing in and creating an eclectic mix. This isn’t Ferguson, whose white police force regards their black population as walking ATMs.

But at the same time, race is heavily tied to class in all of the cases that have sprung up. This goes back to decades old debates on the poor economic straits of black people in America, owing to hundreds of years of slavery, followed by Jim Crow laws, enhanced by racist mindsets throughout America. Those are different articles altogether, but the economic plight of black people in America, on a bird’s eye level, contributes heavily to the crime rate, which causes police to react disproportionately, and perpetuates a never-ending cycle of distrust. The chicken vs. egg debate of which came first – the black inequality or black crime – is irrelevant to this context. What’s important, right now, is that in many cases, the police – even black cops, like the one who covered up for Michael Slager – have not helped, for years, due to outright profiling.

Wait a minute. You just said blacks commit more crimes. In fact, most of the people who have been killed had rap sheets as well! That kind of justifies at least some action, right?

Ever hear of a self-fulfilling prophecy? Because that’s what’s happening in most cases. Yes, in many cases, as reported by the press, the individuals who have been victimized recently had prior run-ins with police. Despite consternation by some that this is a ploy to prove that black people are all criminals, it would be irresponsible journalism to omit those facts.

But this issue isn’t just affecting poor blacks with a record. CNN’s LZ Granderson on Twitter yesterday pointed out the reality:

There’s also New York Times columnist Charles Blow, who’s son was stopped at gunpoint at Yale University, where the son is a student. It was a black cop that detained that young man, but ultimately, it’s the colour blue that matters more. As Mr. Blow notes in his piece, all that matters is how you look.

So what does this have to do with someone that has a “rap sheet”? There’s a huge difference between LZ Granderson and some random guy in the projects, right? Well, let’s extrapolate this to its logical conclusion:

1) Man is stopped for superfluous reasons. There are provable statistics that show blacks are far more likely to be stopped than whites. This is often called “walking(talking) while black”.
2) Man is ticketed or arrested for a meaningless crime. This is partly the fault of overlegislation – chances are good that due to the addition of “regulatory” crimes, you are breaking the law while reading this – but it’s also a problem for black people, so often pulled over by officers needing to justify themselves, especially if there’s a financial impetus.
3) If that person is later the victim of brutality, reasonable doubt can be cast on the victim by referencing “previous run-ins” with police. This not only affects criminal and civil trials, it doubles as a character assassination.
4) The general public – still overwhelmingly white, mostly conservative, and educated with a strong belief in law, order and the police as a force of protection instead of oppression – are quick to label the action reasonably justified, unable – or unwilling – to personalize the problem. The spectre of police brutality is so foreign to most white people that even well meaning individuals simply cannot understand what it’s like to walk around with a constant fear of police reactions. It’s literally not in our realm of thinking.

Whatever, you bleeding heart liberal. So the police occasionally thump a guy too hard. But I don’t wanna hear this stuff about poor people! They have just as many chances as we do! Just look at others who made it! Look at guys like Herman Cain!

First off, if you’re poor, you don’t have as many chances as you think, as is easy enough to prove. I grew up poor, and it took an immense amount of work, four years of the military, and a lot of luck just to make it into the middle class, and if something goes wrong now, I’m largely screwed.

Now, go back to that Ferguson report, know that that report could be written for entirely too many communities – particularly in the South, where blacks are still fighting the ghosts of Jim Crow, slavery, and a significant number of people who feel the Confederacy was justified – and imagine how hard it would be to “come up” under those circumstances. It’s hard to climb the social ladder when it keeps getting kicked out from underfoot.

This is the major reason why so many communities are protesting, fighting, attacking, you name it. They see no way out of the hell they’ve been born into, and the people that are supposed to be protecting them are inflicting further injustice. The minutia of how we can get poor people out of their plight is a political debate for another time.

OK, maybe I understand that. But that doesn’t justify rioting! Looting isn’t helping! In fact, it’s taking away from that community!

Let’s get this out of the way: Yes, looting and rioting are bad, m’kay? Looting is not protesting. It is naked theft, brought on by a simple-minded materialism that some could argue is a major reason why the poor are poor. And flies are said to be more attracted to honey than vinegar. This is all true.

But in light of everything that’s happened in the past two years, it’s hard to argue that the “nice” way of doing things has worked at all.

The above argument is the one that The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates made recently, stating that calls for order are only made with no other solutions in mind.

Now, tonight, I turn on the news and I see politicians calling for young people in Baltimore to remain peaceful and “nonviolent.” These well-intended pleas strike me as the right answer to the wrong question. To understand the question, it’s worth remembering what, specifically, happened to Freddie Gray. An officer made eye contact with Gray. Gray, for unknown reasons, ran. The officer and his colleagues then detained Gray. They found him in possession of a switchblade. They arrested him while he yelled in pain. And then, within an hour, his spine was mostly severed. A week later, he was dead. What specifically was the crime here? What particular threat did Freddie Gray pose? Why is mere eye contact and then running worthy of detention at the hands of the state? Why is Freddie Gray dead?

(…)

When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the community.

As for the stealing, it’s bad. It’s wrong. It hurts the moral standing of the protesters. But if we’re talking in terms of scale, it’s worth noting that the City of Baltimore has a bad history of using civil forfeiture as a form of revenue enhancement. If we put the scale of that in a bar graph next to some assholes stealing some kit from the electronics department, the first bar is going to be astronomically higher.

Well… I still think what they’re doing is wrong. Win some elections and make change the right way.

Actually, Ferguson did just that.

It’s OK if you don’t care about the protests, and their resulting riots. It’s OK if Freddie Gray is just one more name on the news. If you want to mention some white guy somewhere that didn’t get this kind of attention – here, I’ll even do the work1 for you – then sure, even if you’re kind of being a dick.

But to sit there and assume that this is a problem caused by those in the streets is irresponsible, insensitive, and flat-out wrong. The people out in the streets right now aren’t nobodies, doing this for fun; they are citizens who think they have been getting a raw deal for years, decades even, and the death of one of their own, unjustified, by the people tasked with their “protection”, was finally the straw that broke the camel’s back. This isn’t the inane ramblings of a “social justice warrior” claiming that all sex is rape or some other crap. There are cold, hard, verifiable statistics showing that the poor and the black – too often synonymous terms – get an extremely raw deal all over America, and if it doesn’t change, what we’re seeing now will continue to be the new normal.

Note: In the time between this piece being written and being edited for release, six police officers have been charged with crimes ranging from false imprisonment to murder.

1 – Before reading that WT link – if you can get past all those damn surveys – go back up and read that Census link from before.

Christopher Bowen covered the video games industry for eight years before moving onto politics and general interest. He is the Editor in Chief of Gaming Bus, and has worked for Diehard GameFan, Daily Games News, TalkingAboutGames.com and has freelanced elsewhere. He is a “liberaltarian” – a liberal libertarian. A network engineer by trade, he lives in Derby CT.

Stop Calling Government Regulation of the Internet “Net Neutrality”

fcc-net-neutrality-voteImage from the FCC by way of Ars Technica

Stop using “net neutrality” to refer to government regulation of the internet.

That’s not what net neutrality is, and it’s certainly not what the government regulations promulgated by the FCC today are, in this case “Common Carrier” Rules.

People who don’t know any better are celebrating todays faux “net neutrality” FCC action as a victory for freedom and free speech on the internet, when in fact, it’s exactly the opposite.

I’ve written extensively about net neutrality and this is very much NOT it.

All the FCC has done today, is impose common carrier regulation on every ISP (oh and by the way, lots of other organizations as well who “provide internet access”. No-one has any idea how the regulations are going to be finalized, what the language will mean, who will be impacted and how… except everyone knows it’s going to cost a lot), instead of just the telephone companies it was already imposed on. Verizon for example, who was already one of the worst violators of net neutrality, even with common carrier regulation already in place for them.

Thus it makes competition and breaking of existing monopolies even harder, while not actually doing a damn thing to secure or improve neutrality… oh and it gives the FCC more control over the internet.

Absolutely none of those are good things.

Common carrier regulation is a big part of what made the current near monopolies on Internet access happen in the first place, because small independent companies, and even large regionals, couldn’t compete with the giant telcom conglomerates under those regulations. So, they all got swallowed up.

I’ve been working with telecommunications companies, and common carrier regulations, for more than 20 years. I’m an expert in governance and regulatory compliance, and I can tell you right now, NOBODY understands these regulations, because they are not capable of being understood.

These regulations and the rulings and case law associated with them go back to 1930s… and in some particulars all the way back to the 1870s. And of course, rather than replace them with something clear when they wanted to make new regulations, congress and the FCC just amended and added on and countermanded and…

I’ve flowcharted them before to try to see what applied how and where and when… the only thing I could come up with was “nobody knows for sure, it all depends what a regulator or judge says at the time”.

This wasn’t a blow for freedom and free speech… This was a giveaway to big corporate donors in the telecommunications industry.

The big telcos have been trying to get their primary competition, non-telco ISPs, burdened with the same regulatory load they labor under, for DECADES. Now, in one stroke, the FCC at the personal direction of the president, has given it to them.

Oh and guess what else common carrier regulation includes… SURVEILLANCE.

All common carriers are required to provide the government and law enforcement “reasonable access” for surveillance, as well as to give up records, usage details, and other subscriber and user data, WITHOUT A WARRANT.

What does “reasonable access” mean? Whatever the government says it means… and if you think I’m exaggerating, I’m not. I’ve dealt with the FBI on this issue, and that’s a direct quote.

Yes, this is not only a massive corporate crony handout, it’s also a huge gimme to the FBI and the NSA, who have wanted all ISPs stuck under common carrier for years as well.

Stop calling government regulation of the internet “net neutrality”. Letting the liars control the language helps them lie to you.

Net neutrality is not government regulation, and these regulations are certainly not net neutrality, nor anything like it. Don’t be taken in by fraud, cronyism, and statism, masquerading as freedom.

I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

While We Were Pretending To Be Charlie, Boko Haram Killed 2,000 Nigerians

ISISflag copy

The Charlie Hebdo attacks have derived almost universal scorn, rightly so. But in the end, twelve people died, with more killed the next day in the ensuing manhunt. At the end of the day, that’s a drop in the bucket compared to what extremist Muslim group Boko Haram has been doing in northern Nigeria since the beginning of the year.

The attackers sped into a Nigerian town with grenade launchers — their gunfire and explosions shattering the early morning calm.

As terrified residents scattered into bushes in Baga town and surrounding villages, the gunmen unloaded motorcycles from their trucks and followed in hot pursuit.

Residents hid under scant brush. Bullets pierced through them.

Some sought refuge in their homes. They were burned alive.

Many who tried to cross into neighboring Chad drowned while trying to swim through Lake Chad.

By the time the weapons went quiet, local officials reported death tolls ranging from hundreds to as many as 2,000 people.

That was January 3, nine days ago.

On Monday, bodies still littered the bushes in the area.

Official estimates vary, but at the very least, a few hundred people are confirmed dead, with local estimates being higher. This does not count the people who drowned on their way to Chad.

The group commonly known as Boko Haram – which translates to “Western Education is Forbidden” – has been around since 2002, but started radicalizing around 2009, when Nigerian police started to arrest members of the group. During this time, the group’s founder, Mohammed Yusuf, was killed under circumstances still in doubt, and was replaced by their current leader, Abubakar Shekau. Since then, the group has been carrying out attacks in northern Nigeria, including targeted assassinations of police and political personnel, which have worked to weaken the almost four year reign of President Goodluck Jonathan. The group came to infamy in the West in April of 2014 when they kidnapped 276 schoolgirls from the state of Borno. The kidnappings led to a hashtag campaign called #BringBackOurGirls by U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama, but outside of the 50 girls who initially escaped, none of the girls have been recovered and have been rumored to have been sold into slavery or forced marriages.

As of this writing, Boko Haram effectively controls northern Nigeria, as well as parts of Cameroon and Niger. This is in the face of Goodluck Jonathan’s 2015 Presidential campaign.

Boko Haram was initially founded as a means of rejecting Western “influences”, but since 2009, they have largely been a network of Al-Qaeda and most recently, the Islamist State. I fail to see the point of the wanton murder of 2,000 people, however. Looking purely from a tactical perspective, what does it accomplish? Is this a “Final Solution” of sorts to what they deem the evils of Western influence? I wish I had these answers.

Nigeria, of course, is a fertile breeding ground for a group like Boko Haram to ferment. They have a weak central government along with few employment opportunities, mass malnutrition, and rampant corruption at all levels of government. One of the points I made in my Charlie Hebdo piece was that people will turn to extremes to survive, and this is a case study in that regard.

However, scholarship only takes us so far. The goal is to find out how to engage this kind of evil. Declaring war isn’t that easy; it’s been demonstrated both that the enemy has literally no regard for civilians, and that civilian death – an inevitability with this choice – makes the enemy – a fluid enemy that cannot be broken down into old-fashioned armies – stronger. We’ve been using this choice since 9/11, and it’s been a failure.

Then again, we’ve seen how passively watching and waiting for things to magically get better works, too. That’s a more historical perspective, but in the case of England’s Neville Chamberlain, it led to the rise of the Nazi empire, and almost led to the fall of Britain.

The difference between Nazi Germany and the current Islamic State – I am shoehorning Boko Haram in with ISIL, as they have done at times – is that the Germans were married to an ideology, whereas the Islamic State is married to a religion, and an ideal that life is better after Earth. As Goldwater pointed out regarding Christians, it’s hard to have a conversation with people who are playing at a life beyond Earth; they’re too deranged. So any hopes at politics, at discussion, and at coming to a peaceful solution might be moot. Even if jihadis are learning a perverted form of Islam, perception is reality.

In the end, it doesn’t matter to the roughly 2,000 Nigerians murdered in January, the 5,000 or so that have been killed since 2009, and the scores more that have been displaced fleeing the violence in that time span. It also doesn’t matter to the thousands upon thousands killed in other areas under pressure from extremist Islam. In his book The Stranger, Chuck Todd notes that Barack Obama viewed Syria as a collection of nothing but “shitty” choices. That could be extended to the whole of the war with Al-Qaeda, ISIL, and other networked jihadi groups. Whatever shitty choice we make, we have to make it fast, or headlines like this are going to become more common. ??Then again, if I had the answers, I’d be telling them in front of the UN and not in a blog.

Christopher Bowen covered the video games industry for eight years before moving onto politics and general interest. He is the Editor in Chief of Gaming Bus, and has worked for Diehard GameFan, Daily Games News, TalkingAboutGames.com and has freelanced elsewhere. He is a “liberaltarian” – a liberal libertarian. A network engineer by trade, he lives in Derby CT.

Ethanol not only isn’t Green… It’s Blacker than Coal

Mother Jones Ethanol Problem Breakdown

Image credit: Mother Jones (oh… and that was 7 years ago. it’s worse now)

So everyone knows the whole song and dance when it comes to clean energy, energy efficiency, renewable energy. Every now and again we get a new technology or trend on the market that changes the whole game. Such as when we changed from incandescent lights to LED neon and the likes to cut down around 70% of lighting costs. Electric cars are supposed to be one of those cleaner technologies. Energy-efficient vehicles with little to no emissions and environmental impact… right?

A new total environmental impact metastudy has been published, rating the environmental impact of electric cars, with results for each type of electric car and the types of power generation used to fuel them; comparing them against conventional gasoline, and ethanol fueled vehicles.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/your-all-electric-vehicle-may-not-be-so-green-study-n268961

Their basic conclusion, is that electric cars are in fact no better, and are often worse for the environment, than conventional cars (because of their manufacturing inputs, waste outputs, and the impact of electricity generation).

Of course, anyone who has been paying attention to the actual technologies and manufacture of electric cars has known this for years… They’re essential philosophical symbols, rather than any real benefit to the environment.

… but that’s a different argument for another day…

What I find most interesting though, is the conclusions and comparisons they drew between different energy sources… particularly ethanol:

“The study finds that overall, all-electric vehicles cause 86 percent more deaths from air pollution than do cars powered by regular gasoline. But if natural gas produces the electricity? Half as many deaths as gasoline cars. Wind, water or wave energy? One-quarter. Hybrids and diesel engines are also cleaner than gas. But ethanol isn’t, with 80 percent more deaths.”

… 80 percent more damage (expressed here as deaths) than regular gasoline, just direct damage, not second order effects and the like. Nearly as much as straight coal.

When you add the damage ethanol causes from starvation, increased food costs, food insecurity, and additional transportation costs, as well as damage to vehicles and distribution infrastructure… it’s FAR worse than coal.

Resource Media - Ethanol, Food or Fuel

Image Credit: Resource Media

Then there’s the subsidies it soaks up and therefore the additional tax burden it creates… Ethanol is far FAR worse than coal.

Oh and then there’s the fact that ethanol is actively preventing better greener technologies from being developed; both by consuming resources which would otherwise be more productively used, as well as directly, because the ethanol industry lobbies against competing technologies, and for mandatory ethanol use.

… And of course, that’s ignoring the damage it does to our political process, dominating the early primary process, in effect acting as a filter for presidential candidate selection.

Ethanol is quite possibly the worst fuel in common use.

I am a cynically romantic optimistic pessimist. I am neither liberal, nor conservative. I am a (somewhat disgruntled) muscular minarchist… something like a constructive anarchist.

Basically what that means, is that I believe, all things being equal, responsible adults should be able to do whatever the hell they want to do, so long as nobody’s getting hurt, who isn’t paying extra

1 2 3 38