robot wisdom weblog is finally back.
27
Jun 03
Iraqi Resistance Stiffens
Guerrilla resistance to American occupation forces has been stepped up. Note that the media is very careful to only discuss it in terms of ‘Baathist resistance’. It is very important to the US and to the western media by proxy not to give the idea that this resistance is supported by the Iraqi people.
- The soft-approach headline: Experts Question Depth of Victory:
- Because the war was so narrowly focused on Hussein’s government in Baghdad, a large part of the Iraqi population does not feel as if it was defeated, said retired Army Col. Scott R. Feil. “As I heard one Iraqi say, the Americans defeated Saddam, but not the Iraqi people, so the psychology of the loser is not present,” he said
- U.S. Soldier Shot Shopping in Baghdad-Witnesses
- 4 Dead, 2 Abducted in Iraq Ambushes
- British troops agree to suspend arms searches
- No First Amendment: Iraqi Youth Arrested for Insulting US Soldiers
- Marsh Arabs threaten to resist ‘army of occupation’
26
Jun 03
Incredible Flaming Mechanism
A friend of mine from high school called me up out of the blue last night and wanted to see if I’d be interested in resurrecting our long dead zine, Incredible Flaming Mechanism. We’d done like seven issues over a year or so and while it was a surprise I kinda liked the idea of it. I mean, to reattempt something after almost ten years when I’m older (and fatter) and arguably smarter, at least about some things. I wonder anything will come of it.
26
Jun 03
Yikes
Last night I slept 15 hours, from 6:00pm to 9:00am. I’m wondering if I slept so long because I was depressed or if I was depressed from lack of sleep.
23
Jun 03
Minutiae
Lately, I’ve been seeing some good films which have made me feel more excited about going to the movies. I feel like I’ve lost touch with the feelings and ideas that film can evoke. Last night I saw ‘Raising Victor Vargas‘ at the Dobie. I really liked how real the movie felt. It reminded me of a lot of things from my own childhood and adolescence. Especially how my little brother and I would spend the summers, completely bored and aimless yet thick as thieves, spending almost every waking moment together looking for something to do and talking to each other as we roamed the neighborhood. There is something about being bored which makes it where you have to make your own fun from the raw material of life. In my early teenage years I did the most drawing, reading, letter-writing and daydreaming I’ve ever done. In later life, time is so scarce and I barely remember what I do from one day to the next anyway. I think the main difference between being a kid and an adult is that when you’re a kid you always have something to look forward to. You’re always in anticipation of something else, summer vacation or going back to school or leaving home. I think when you are in control (more or less) of your own existence you lose this intense feeling of anticipation. Sometimes I can only see as far ahead as the end of the work day.
22
Jun 03
Little bits
- Obvious implications of the so-called war on terror being felt: Russian general say “war on terror” used as pretext for global dominance:
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“It is one thing when a country is fighting terrorism on its own territory, and some other countries assist them,” the Interfax-AVN military news agency quoted Kvashnin an officers’ graduation ceremony in Moscow.
“But it is quite another thing when, under the guise of fighting international terror, some countries are in fact trying to get involved in the internal affairs of the nation they are meant to be helping,” said Kvashnin.
He urged the graduating officers to keep this in mind as they “carefully analyze what is happening in the world.”
- India might be dangling the issue of Indian troop deployment in Iraq for an advantage at the expense of rival Pakistan: Indian Deputy PM, Advani, says US unlikely to release F-16s for Pakistan
- Space junk renders missions dangerous
22
Jun 03
Traffic analysis, transaction analysis, and social network discovery
From Cryptome.org, I found this a good point, and it’s something I’ve often thought about:
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One problem that most naive paranoid types completely fail to grasp is the titanic volume of modern communications. The flow is so overwhelming that only a powerful God could possibly process it all to find interesting material. The entire federal budget could not pay enough humans to screen and analyze ALL the electonic communications of even a medium size city in 2003. So communications intercepts are necessarily targeted very narrowly, even drag net fishing is likely done only in places where there is a real likelihood that something important will turn up with finite effort.
The notion that an all powerful big brother is listening to everything and capturing everything just is not realistic, and a very very high percentage of what does get captured is never looked at or listened to or even stored for very long.
Which of course is why traffic analysis and transaction analysis and social network discovery is far more important than flying airplanes around trying to collect incidental radiation from local copper T1 lines. Knowing who calls or emails who makes it possible to find the needles which you want to monitor in the vast haystacks. Thus there is a much greater probability that records of your calls and IP traffic addresses are looked at for patterns and association with known bad guys than that someone is actually listening to or reading your traffic looking for the word bomb.
18
Jun 03
US makes gesture to appease Pakistani militants?
Remember that one of the main demands of the Pakistani militants who took credit for the execution of Israeli-American journalist, Daniel Pearl, was the sale of the promised F-16’s to Pakistan. Is this a move by the US to coax the cooperation of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), Pakistan’s equivalent of the FBI, into diminishing support for Islamic militants who have been successfully disrupting the fledgling, pro-US puppet government of Afghanistan?
15
Jun 03
Oil and geopolitics
- U.S. troops may be headed for Africa:
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Under discussion: everything from positioning a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group off Africa’s vast west coast to establishing one or more forward operating bases in Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Equatorial Guinea or the tiny island nation of Sao Tome and Principe.
The spurs for what may prove an unprecedented U.S. military beachhead in sub-Saharan Africa are the region’s instability, potential attractiveness to terrorists and, most pivotal, its rich oil resources, Pentagon officials and Africa experts say.
As much as 15 percent of America’s oil now comes from West Africa – about the amount imported from Saudi Arabia. By next year, the West African portion is expected to jump to 20 percent.
Citing what he described as “large, ungoverned areas … that are clearly new routes of narco-trafficking, terrorism and a hotbed of instability,” U.S. Gen. James Jones recently signaled the Pentagon’s new focus on West Africa.
“I think Africa is a continent that is going to be of very, very significant interest in the 21st century,” Jones, who is head of the U.S. European Command, told a Senate panel in May.
- Israel wants to reopen a 50 year old pipeline for a piece of the spoils: Israel eyes Iraqi oil