More about Iran, worth reading in its entirety.

I found this bit interesting:

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

It seems like a lot of people want to be on the historical record for standing up to the Bush administration at one point or another. This is essentially the rationale Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi) gave last week on Meet the Press for wanting to censure the Prez over his extra-legal phone-tapping program.

I wonder at what point wanting to be on the record as opposed to something that happens stops being enough.

More about Iran, worth reading in its entirety.

I found this bit interesting:

A retired four-star general, who ran a major command, said, “The system is starting to sense the end of the road, and they don’t want to be condemned by history. They want to be able to say, ‘We stood up.’ ”

It seems like a lot of people want to be on the historical record for standing up to the Bush administration at one point or another. This is essentially the rationale Senator Russ Feingold (D-Wi) gave last week on Meet the Press for wanting to censure the Prez over his extra-legal phone-tapping program.

I wonder at what point wanting to be on the record as opposed to something that happens stops being enough.

In the midst of discussing how disinformation spreads about Iran, and about how he challanged a reporter for misquoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad as saying he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map," Juan Cole drops this perl:

So this is how we got mire in the Iraq morass. Gullible and frankly lazy and very possibly highly biased reporters on the staffs of the newspapers in Washington DC and New York. And they criticize bloggers.

This is what many members of the press, particularly those who cover national affaris and politics still fail to realize: a lot of us out here in citizen-land hold them responsible of the mess we're currently in. Not solely responsible -- obviously -- but many of us believe the Fourth Estate is an important part of how a democracy works, and that the current lot are doing a piss-poor job of it.

I can imagine that people who work in the Press must feel differently. I had an opportunity to speak briefly last week with ABC's Mark Halperin (who writes "The Note" and has a feud with the blogosphere) after his appearance at PDF with Elliot Spitzer, and I pressed this point. He answeres somewhat evasively by saying that news organizations are businesses, and they have to follow consumer taste, and they don't have enough consumers who want reporting that holds people in power accountable.

This is a troubling position to hear a member of the Press take. Journalism isn't like making pizzas. There's a bit more on the line, and with regard to the government there's an important role for news organizations to fill. Copping out to "following the consumer" seems dubious. If that's not a dodge and this is really what Halpernin thinks, it's a remarkably irresponsible sentiment.

It is also a highly fatuous stance for someone so upset with the blogosphere. Halpernin also said he thinks Markos (the Kos in Daily Kos) Moulitsas is "one of the most destructive people out there." Putting aside the normative part of that judgment, where does Halpernin think the power to be destructive comes from? Obviously it's site-traffic. If no one reads you, you don't really matter. Site-traffic means consumers.

Clearly there is an large audience for investigative journalism and a vital Fourth Estate. The hostility between independent internet publishers and traditional news organizations exists precisely because the old-school Press is losing power, influence and attention. They are losing precisely because they are failing in this critical function and dissapointing this critical group of consumers.

We're clearly in a period of change. Power is shifting in big ways. Wheels are in motion. It's a crying shame that so many 20th Century institutions which are supposed to have the Public interest at heart are turning in such lackluster performances.

Meanwhile...

Only last week, U. S. intelligence "czar" John Negroponte said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls. Two days later, USA Today learned that NSA has secretly compiled databases of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls and uses computer algorithms to scrutinize them for suspicious patterns. How do you know they're up to no good? Because when Qwest refused to hand over customer data without a FISA court ruling, the government dropped the effort. The administration wanted not only Americans to be kept in the dark, but the U. S. government's own secret courts. That's probably because a 1986 federal law made it illegal for communications companies to divulge "a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer... to any government entity." (My emphasis ) ABC News has since confirmed that the FBI is scrutinizing its reporters' phone records as well as those of The New York Times and The Washington Post as part of a CIA "leaks" investigation. Leaks, that is, about torture, secret prisons and, yes, legally suspect domestic "intelligence" efforts—basically anything the government calls classified for reasons of political convenience. Possibly you recall the First Amendment, which reads in part, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But hey, look over there: Some stocky little brown guys are digging a ditch.

That's Geney Lyons, via David Neiwert. I too wish I had thought of that.

In the midst of discussing how disinformation spreads about Iran, and about how he challanged a reporter for misquoting Iranian President Ahmadinejad as saying he wanted to "wipe Israel off the map," Juan Cole drops this perl:

So this is how we got mire in the Iraq morass. Gullible and frankly lazy and very possibly highly biased reporters on the staffs of the newspapers in Washington DC and New York. And they criticize bloggers.

This is what many members of the press, particularly those who cover national affaris and politics still fail to realize: a lot of us out here in citizen-land hold them responsible of the mess we're currently in. Not solely responsible -- obviously -- but many of us believe the Fourth Estate is an important part of how a democracy works, and that the current lot are doing a piss-poor job of it.

I can imagine that people who work in the Press must feel differently. I had an opportunity to speak briefly last week with ABC's Mark Halperin (who writes "The Note" and has a feud with the blogosphere) after his appearance at PDF with Elliot Spitzer, and I pressed this point. He answeres somewhat evasively by saying that news organizations are businesses, and they have to follow consumer taste, and they don't have enough consumers who want reporting that holds people in power accountable.

This is a troubling position to hear a member of the Press take. Journalism isn't like making pizzas. There's a bit more on the line, and with regard to the government there's an important role for news organizations to fill. Copping out to "following the consumer" seems dubious. If that's not a dodge and this is really what Halpernin thinks, it's a remarkably irresponsible sentiment.

It is also a highly fatuous stance for someone so upset with the blogosphere. Halpernin also said he thinks Markos (the Kos in Daily Kos) Moulitsas is "one of the most destructive people out there." Putting aside the normative part of that judgment, where does Halpernin think the power to be destructive comes from? Obviously it's site-traffic. If no one reads you, you don't really matter. Site-traffic means consumers.

Clearly there is an large audience for investigative journalism and a vital Fourth Estate. The hostility between independent internet publishers and traditional news organizations exists precisely because the old-school Press is losing power, influence and attention. They are losing precisely because they are failing in this critical function and dissapointing this critical group of consumers.

We're clearly in a period of change. Power is shifting in big ways. Wheels are in motion. It's a crying shame that so many 20th Century institutions which are supposed to have the Public interest at heart are turning in such lackluster performances.

Meanwhile...

Only last week, U. S. intelligence "czar" John Negroponte said the government was "absolutely not" monitoring domestic calls. Two days later, USA Today learned that NSA has secretly compiled databases of hundreds of millions of domestic phone calls and uses computer algorithms to scrutinize them for suspicious patterns. How do you know they're up to no good? Because when Qwest refused to hand over customer data without a FISA court ruling, the government dropped the effort. The administration wanted not only Americans to be kept in the dark, but the U. S. government's own secret courts. That's probably because a 1986 federal law made it illegal for communications companies to divulge "a record or other information pertaining to a subscriber or customer... to any government entity." (My emphasis ) ABC News has since confirmed that the FBI is scrutinizing its reporters' phone records as well as those of The New York Times and The Washington Post as part of a CIA "leaks" investigation. Leaks, that is, about torture, secret prisons and, yes, legally suspect domestic "intelligence" efforts—basically anything the government calls classified for reasons of political convenience. Possibly you recall the First Amendment, which reads in part, "Congress shall make no law... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press." But hey, look over there: Some stocky little brown guys are digging a ditch.

That's Geney Lyons, via David Neiwert. I too wish I had thought of that.

A bit of a ramble about politics and a little drupalcon... Really just thinking out loud.

Are you in it for the country? I'm kind of wrestling with that right now. You see, I have a pretty solid sense that I'll be allright no matter what happens. I'm not really afraid for my life, and only moderately for my life chances. I'll be fine. Maybe dissapointed, but basically fine.

So that begs the question of why bother, why get into it? Why really give a shit about politics if you know your own life will be ok. The Ameican Dream is a pursuit best undertook in the private sector, son. Pollitics is just bullshit anyway, right?

Well, in a word, no. Because community is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics. I mean, the CEO track is similar, just takes seed money.

But are you in it for the country? Really? Do you have a vision for how it might all work? I sort of do, but I don't know how realistic it really is. It's a long game, you know? There was a time, right around the run-up to the Invasion of Iraq, and maybe through the election (or at least democratic primary), where things were really moving fast. The pace will pick up with politics again, but in real terms we're going to be dealing with these problems for a long time thanks to the fact that our country was lead through a terrible crisis by an incompatent bunch of shitheel Republican hacks.

That's something I'm unhappy about, because it could have been really different. They still could be.

I think it's interesting that Al Gore is positioning himself to capture that groundswell of internet support... starting a big media website, making those speeches, privately confessing that he'd only do it if he were drafted. He's setting up dominos, folks. I think that could be interesting to watch.

Draft Movements are a really under-explored tactic. You'd think someone would have realized that fundraising potential alone warrants further exploration. But they're also tricky things. If it's really a Draft, what if the Candidate turns out to be incompatible with the Draft Organization? The big one (Clark) didn't really work because the roots and the pros didn't really connect, and the campaign didn't really hit its stride.

It might work on a more local level, though. Could be a tactic for recruitment: local communities "drafting" their own members into service.

Oooh... what if you had a site which was Digg-like in that it allowed the community moderation system to rate itself up to the top, but rather than Tech News, it would be Political Debate. In order to vote you have to be logged in, and are yourself a potential candidate. You'd organize a good system for new content discovery, make a lot of use out of trackbacks, groups and ratings.

Sites like this are coming, but you have to be careful not to try and build the whole Semantic Web on your domain. Still, I find this idea kind of alluring. Might try it myself. You could use it to raise money for a PAC. Open Souce politics, baby. It's the only way to go.

Drupal is just starting to get organized, and it's pretty cool. It's funny, because we were in there in a session Zack had called for, named "How to make money and help Drupal at the same time," and we're all talking about how the emerging market is looking. Because we're all so politically minded we immediately start thinking about structuring it. Eric Gunderson, from Development Seed, a renegade international economist, sort of pulled us back in to reality: what we need is something simple and open, just a nice little phone book.

But we were all set to start premateurely regulating the market. It happened earlier too, in Greg Heller's talk about how drupal professionals should organize. At one point we got off on a tangent about whether to seek labor union affiliation. Even the person who brought it up originally made the note that it was quite premature, and that she simply recommended taking out the word "Guild" (which has a special meaning in labor lingo) and references to a "Bug" to distinguish Guild-Built websites.

Now, I admit that it's a pretty keen use of the drupal Droop, but I don't think Drupal Guild is quite the banner to push forward under. I don't have any alternate suggestiosn going forward, but I plan to write some stuff down soon and get the conversation going on the blogs.

Actually, that's a good tactic going forward in both cases, start getting some of the mailing list discussion public, draw some pictures.

So we're formin' a club, and lettin' everyone in, and we aint gonna cry no more.

A bit of a ramble about politics and a little drupalcon... Really just thinking out loud.

Are you in it for the country? I'm kind of wrestling with that right now. You see, I have a pretty solid sense that I'll be allright no matter what happens. I'm not really afraid for my life, and only moderately for my life chances. I'll be fine. Maybe dissapointed, but basically fine.

So that begs the question of why bother, why get into it? Why really give a shit about politics if you know your own life will be ok. The Ameican Dream is a pursuit best undertook in the private sector, son. Pollitics is just bullshit anyway, right?

Well, in a word, no. Because community is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics. I mean, the CEO track is similar, just takes seed money.

But are you in it for the country? Really? Do you have a vision for how it might all work? I sort of do, but I don't know how realistic it really is. It's a long game, you know? There was a time, right around the run-up to the Invasion of Iraq, and maybe through the election (or at least democratic primary), where things were really moving fast. The pace will pick up with politics again, but in real terms we're going to be dealing with these problems for a long time thanks to the fact that our country was lead through a terrible crisis by an incompatent bunch of shitheel Republican hacks.

That's something I'm unhappy about, because it could have been really different. They still could be.

I think it's interesting that Al Gore is positioning himself to capture that groundswell of internet support... starting a big media website, making those speeches, privately confessing that he'd only do it if he were drafted. He's setting up dominos, folks. I think that could be interesting to watch.

Draft Movements are a really under-explored tactic. You'd think someone would have realized that fundraising potential alone warrants further exploration. But they're also tricky things. If it's really a Draft, what if the Candidate turns out to be incompatible with the Draft Organization? The big one (Clark) didn't really work because the roots and the pros didn't really connect, and the campaign didn't really hit its stride.

It might work on a more local level, though. Could be a tactic for recruitment: local communities "drafting" their own members into service.

Oooh... what if you had a site which was Digg-like in that it allowed the community moderation system to rate itself up to the top, but rather than Tech News, it would be Political Debate. In order to vote you have to be logged in, and are yourself a potential candidate. You'd organize a good system for new content discovery, make a lot of use out of trackbacks, groups and ratings.

Sites like this are coming, but you have to be careful not to try and build the whole Semantic Web on your domain. Still, I find this idea kind of alluring. Might try it myself. You could use it to raise money for a PAC. Open Souce politics, baby. It's the only way to go.

Drupal is just starting to get organized, and it's pretty cool. It's funny, because we were in there in a session Zack had called for, named "How to make money and help Drupal at the same time," and we're all talking about how the emerging market is looking. Because we're all so politically minded we immediately start thinking about structuring it. Eric Gunderson, from Development Seed, a renegade international economist, sort of pulled us back in to reality: what we need is something simple and open, just a nice little phone book.

But we were all set to start premateurely regulating the market. It happened earlier too, in Greg Heller's talk about how drupal professionals should organize. At one point we got off on a tangent about whether to seek labor union affiliation. Even the person who brought it up originally made the note that it was quite premature, and that she simply recommended taking out the word "Guild" (which has a special meaning in labor lingo) and references to a "Bug" to distinguish Guild-Built websites.

Now, I admit that it's a pretty keen use of the drupal Droop, but I don't think Drupal Guild is quite the banner to push forward under. I don't have any alternate suggestiosn going forward, but I plan to write some stuff down soon and get the conversation going on the blogs.

Actually, that's a good tactic going forward in both cases, start getting some of the mailing list discussion public, draw some pictures.

So we're formin' a club, and lettin' everyone in, and we aint gonna cry no more.

A bit of a ramble about politics and a little drupalcon... Really just thinking out loud.

Are you in it for the country? I'm kind of wrestling with that right now. You see, I have a pretty solid sense that I'll be allright no matter what happens. I'm not really afraid for my life, and only moderately for my life chances. I'll be fine. Maybe dissapointed, but basically fine.

So that begs the question of why bother, why get into it? Why really give a shit about politics if you know your own life will be ok. The Ameican Dream is a pursuit best undertook in the private sector, son. Pollitics is just bullshit anyway, right?

Well, in a word, no. Because community is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics. I mean, the CEO track is similar, just takes seed money.

But are you in it for the country? Really? Do you have a vision for how it might all work? I sort of do, but I don't know how realistic it really is. It's a long game, you know? There was a time, right around the run-up to the Invasion of Iraq, and maybe through the election (or at least democratic primary), where things were really moving fast. The pace will pick up with politics again, but in real terms we're going to be dealing with these problems for a long time thanks to the fact that our country was lead through a terrible crisis by an incompatent bunch of shitheel Republican hacks.

That's something I'm unhappy about, because it could have been really different. They still could be.

I think it's interesting that Al Gore is positioning himself to capture that groundswell of internet support... starting a big media website, making those speeches, privately confessing that he'd only do it if he were drafted. He's setting up dominos, folks. I think that could be interesting to watch.

Draft Movements are a really under-explored tactic. You'd think someone would have realized that fundraising potential alone warrants further exploration. But they're also tricky things. If it's really a Draft, what if the Candidate turns out to be incompatible with the Draft Organization? The big one (Clark) didn't really work because the roots and the pros didn't really connect, and the campaign didn't really hit its stride.

It might work on a more local level, though. Could be a tactic for recruitment: local communities "drafting" their own members into service.

Oooh... what if you had a site which was Digg-like in that it allowed the community moderation system to rate itself up to the top, but rather than Tech News, it would be Political Debate. In order to vote you have to be logged in, and are yourself a potential candidate. You'd organize a good system for new content discovery, make a lot of use out of trackbacks, groups and ratings.

Sites like this are coming, but you have to be careful not to try and build the whole Semantic Web on your domain. Still, I find this idea kind of alluring. Might try it myself. You could use it to raise money for a PAC. Open Souce politics, baby. It's the only way to go.

Drupal is just starting to get organized, and it's pretty cool. It's funny, because we were in there in a session Zack had called for, named "How to make money and help Drupal at the same time," and we're all talking about how the emerging market is looking. Because we're all so politically minded we immediately start thinking about structuring it. Eric Gunderson, from Development Seed, a renegade international economist, sort of pulled us back in to reality: what we need is something simple and open, just a nice little phone book.

But we were all set to start premateurely regulating the market. It happened earlier too, in Greg Heller's talk about how drupal professionals should organize. At one point we got off on a tangent about whether to seek labor union affiliation. Even the person who brought it up originally made the note that it was quite premature, and that she simply recommended taking out the word "Guild" (which has a special meaning in labor lingo) and references to a "Bug" to distinguish Guild-Built websites.

Now, I admit that it's a pretty keen use of the drupal Droop, but I don't think Drupal Guild is quite the banner to push forward under. I don't have any alternate suggestiosn going forward, but I plan to write some stuff down soon and get the conversation going on the blogs.

Actually, that's a good tactic going forward in both cases, start getting some of the mailing list discussion public, draw some pictures.

So we're formin' a club, and lettin' everyone in, and we aint gonna cry no more.

A bit of a ramble about politics and a little drupalcon... Really just thinking out loud.

Are you in it for the country? I'm kind of wrestling with that right now. You see, I have a pretty solid sense that I'll be allright no matter what happens. I'm not really afraid for my life, and only moderately for my life chances. I'll be fine. Maybe dissapointed, but basically fine.

So that begs the question of why bother, why get into it? Why really give a shit about politics if you know your own life will be ok. The Ameican Dream is a pursuit best undertook in the private sector, son. Pollitics is just bullshit anyway, right?

Well, in a word, no. Because community is life, and community means organizing, and in a networked world organization means scaling and scaling means politics. I mean, the CEO track is similar, just takes seed money.

But are you in it for the country? Really? Do you have a vision for how it might all work? I sort of do, but I don't know how realistic it really is. It's a long game, you know? There was a time, right around the run-up to the Invasion of Iraq, and maybe through the election (or at least democratic primary), where things were really moving fast. The pace will pick up with politics again, but in real terms we're going to be dealing with these problems for a long time thanks to the fact that our country was lead through a terrible crisis by an incompatent bunch of shitheel Republican hacks.

That's something I'm unhappy about, because it could have been really different. They still could be.

I think it's interesting that Al Gore is positioning himself to capture that groundswell of internet support... starting a big media website, making those speeches, privately confessing that he'd only do it if he were drafted. He's setting up dominos, folks. I think that could be interesting to watch.

Draft Movements are a really under-explored tactic. You'd think someone would have realized that fundraising potential alone warrants further exploration. But they're also tricky things. If it's really a Draft, what if the Candidate turns out to be incompatible with the Draft Organization? The big one (Clark) didn't really work because the roots and the pros didn't really connect, and the campaign didn't really hit its stride.

It might work on a more local level, though. Could be a tactic for recruitment: local communities "drafting" their own members into service.

Oooh... what if you had a site which was Digg-like in that it allowed the community moderation system to rate itself up to the top, but rather than Tech News, it would be Political Debate. In order to vote you have to be logged in, and are yourself a potential candidate. You'd organize a good system for new content discovery, make a lot of use out of trackbacks, groups and ratings.

Sites like this are coming, but you have to be careful not to try and build the whole Semantic Web on your domain. Still, I find this idea kind of alluring. Might try it myself. You could use it to raise money for a PAC. Open Souce politics, baby. It's the only way to go.

Drupal is just starting to get organized, and it's pretty cool. It's funny, because we were in there in a session Zack had called for, named "How to make money and help Drupal at the same time," and we're all talking about how the emerging market is looking. Because we're all so politically minded we immediately start thinking about structuring it. Eric Gunderson, from Development Seed, a renegade international economist, sort of pulled us back in to reality: what we need is something simple and open, just a nice little phone book.

But we were all set to start premateurely regulating the market. It happened earlier too, in Greg Heller's talk about how drupal professionals should organize. At one point we got off on a tangent about whether to seek labor union affiliation. Even the person who brought it up originally made the note that it was quite premature, and that she simply recommended taking out the word "Guild" (which has a special meaning in labor lingo) and references to a "Bug" to distinguish Guild-Built websites.

Now, I admit that it's a pretty keen use of the drupal Droop, but I don't think Drupal Guild is quite the banner to push forward under. I don't have any alternate suggestiosn going forward, but I plan to write some stuff down soon and get the conversation going on the blogs.

Actually, that's a good tactic going forward in both cases, start getting some of the mailing list discussion public, draw some pictures.

So we're formin' a club, and lettin' everyone in, and we aint gonna cry no more.

RAGE!

When the revolution comes, Time Warner Cable will be the first with their backs against the wall. I feel sorry for the poor fuckers who answer the phones there. I've spent about 4 hours on the phone, faxed copies of utility bills and my drivers license. Still no progress, not even a consistant idea of what the heck is going on. While I'm on hold they make me listen to the audio from NY1, which is essentially an extended commercial.

This is the kind of shit that can only exist within a monopoly setting.

Though he's pretty terse already, I can't resist this old saw.

Shorter Neil Drumm: I'm not convinced.

He's got a point. The #revolution does need a kick in the pants.