Slashdot Mirror
Memory Holes and the Internet (updated)
blamanj writes "As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem. A recent Slashdot article discussed this in regard to the White House. Now, The Memory Hole has noticed that Time magazine has pulled an article by Bush, Sr. on why it was a bad idea to try and overthrow Saddam. How can we keep corporate America honest?" Update: 11/11 22:16 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh (former Time, Inc. employee, among other things) writes in with the non-conspiracy explanation for the change, below.
Declan writes "It is silly to claim that Bush Sr. and Scowcroft would strong-arm Time Inc. into removing an article from time.com -- when that article was an excerpt from their book that you can buy today from Amazon.com for $21.
Another explanation is more likely. And, yes, a quick search turns up a May 2003 article from Slate that debunks this rumor. It turns out that Time Inc. only had permission from the publisher to post the content for a limited time."
Archive.org, Google Cache, etc. all help.
Excerpt from "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, Time (2 March 1998):
While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasio route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
Once you've published something on the internet, it's very hard to remove it. There are too many 'bots beavering away in the background. If I do a search for my name on google, I get info going all the way back to my post-grad days at college some 12 years ago....
The only real way to get rid of something is to pull it quickly.. leave it around and you've no chance......
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
Since its becoming slashdotted, here is the cache
How can we keep corporate America honest?
1) Be helpful. Inform Time Magazine to their 404 missing page.
2) Donate to The Memory Hole.
Wayback Machine
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If you go to the TIMES table of contents thats posted on the "Memory Hole" page, you will see why the article is not online. Since it deals with a popular subject, TIMES moved it to their paid content... so the free version is no longer available. Go HERE and read the top line. In short, I doubt its a conspiracy, TIMES is just being greedy and wants more money. Which as a company is its right.
Sig- http://www.dreamhost.com/rewards.cgi?ayefly
What follows is a copy of his resignation speech in the House of Commons, which won applause from some backbenchers in unprecedented Commons scenes.
As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem
I don't think what Time does on their site has any real bearing on what most reporters and researchers will find. This is because most of them use lexis nexis. It is my understanding that lexis nexis will keep a copy of the article (I'm not sure, it costs money to use). Even if it doesn't, it will keep references to it. It will be shown to exist.
What would cause for concern is lexis nexis removing stuff.
i don't like my old sig.
No, definitely not a troll.
There is an excellent article in the Economist about this, unfortunately for subscribers only. Here is a pertinent quote:
A case in point is the near-total secrecy in which the Department of Homeland Security was hatched. No cabinet secretary was consulted. Nor were most senior advisers. The largest government reorganisation in half a century, involving huge numbers of civil servants and tricky questions of government relations, was decided upon by a handful of people (originally four, with aides) and without serious consultation with Congress. Did that improve the quality of decisions?
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Speech: U.S. Senator
U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY
The allies pretty much admitted that Al Qaeda wasn't in Iraq before the war, but they didn't make much of a noise about that because it served their purpose to have the public believe that Al Qaeda was in Iraq to bolster support for the war.
Untrue. It is still upheld that Al Qaeda training camps existed in northern Iraq before the war. They have proof the camp was being used even 1 month before the beginning of the invasion. Secondly, Iraqi disposed commanders are now in charge of these Al Qaeda cells which are in Iraq. If Saddam had no ties with Al Qaeda, why would Iraqi officials be "leading" Al Qaeda members to attack civilians and U.S. soldiers?
As for N Korea, Bush claiming it was part of his "Axis of Evil" didn't help. NK has now seen what has happened to one third of that (Iraq) and is now trying to make sure it isn't the next target. At this point, you can't really blame it for developing a nuclear deterrant.
Again, untrue. North Korea has admitted to never stopping it's nuclear amibitions following the consessions made with Carter on behalf of Clinton in 1994. Their buildup of nuclear arsenol never stopped, therefore stating they want a nuclear deterrant is FALSE.
...by content providers, perhaps more easily than things they published on the internet or on paper.
I worked for a company that provided large quantities of content to Lexis-Nexis for six years. They provide a method by which content can be removed by anyone who is providing it.
And my experience dealing with Lexis-Nexis as a company did not leave me with a good feeling about their concern for an accurate record.
Eternal vigilance only works if you look in every direction.
The "Liberal Media" is a myth. It used to be like that, but over the last 10 years the bulk of the media in the US, and in fact many countries has ended up in the hands of a small group of very wealthy men.
It should not be surprising that these men have a rather more conservative point of view than the press owners who they bought out.
By and large, today's media speaks for the establishment, and in the US the establishment is a Republican one.
Ceci n'est pas une signature
Not true.
The table of contents still lists all the other articles - if you click on any one of them (for example this one you get the first paragraph, and then an invitation to buy the rest of the article. Fine, that's their right - it costs money to archive so many pages...
But the article is question isn't listed - and the link given by The Memory Hole doesn't offer to sell you the article, it says it has been deleted.
And it's nothing to do with it being a 'popular subject' - Time states quite clearly that it's only issues over 2 years old that are archived, not 'historically important' ones.
Mark
Liked this comment? Why not buy me something nice
"The messages [Winston] had received referred to articles or news items which for one reason or another it was thought necessary to alter, or, as the official phrase had it, to rectify.... As soon as all the corrections which happened to be necessary in any particular number of The Times had been assembled and collated, that number would be reprinted, the original copy destroyed, and the corrected copy placed on the files in its stead. This process of continuous alteration was applied not only to newspapers, but to books, periodicals, pamphlets, posters, leaflets, films, sound-tracks, cartoons, photographs -- to every kind of literature or documentation which might conceivably hold any political or ideological significance. Day by day and almost minute by minute the past was brought up to date. In this way every prediction made by the Party could be shown by documentary evidence to have been correct, nor was any item of news, or any expression of opinion, which conflicted with the needs of the moment, ever allowed to remain on record."
There was a study from some Think Tank, and then an article by Jim Lobe summarizing/commenting the result, which had some fame, with title "We report, you get it wrong". Search the title, you'd find it on several sites, some of which of some interest, the source is Tim Lobe via the Asia Times
The biggest spending budgets have been Bush Jr, Bush Sr. and Reagan - Clinton's budgets were smaller, if you subtract the entitlements inserted into each by everybody's predecessors. Of them all, only Clinton balanced the budget into a vast surplus, partly by winding down the profligate military budget, without disrupting the economy or political stability. Each of those Republican presidents vastly increased the budget, the deficit, the debt, and the size of government, and each has started a recession/depression in their first couple of years. By subsidizing corporations, the military, and the uppermost class crossover of the two, at the expense of the public. More accurate:
Liberal: spends public money on the public, people
Conservative: spends public money on private corporations
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make install -not war
Geeze...I'm sure there are quite a few copies of that magazine and article in paper form or micro-whatever. Geeze...
I mean, you shouldn't be using one source for your research anyway. Especially the internet!
Blar.
Sure wish i knew mexican :T
"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" is Latin for "Who Watches The Watchers?".
I'd like to say I could've translated that. However, I still get some geek karma for it: I recognized it from having seen it before on the Star Trek TNG episode named, appropriately, "Who Watches The Watchers".
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The US government is at it as wel....
t m
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/draft-boards.h
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On 23 Sept 2003, the Defense Department Website called "Defend America" posted a notice for people to join local draft boards. "If a military draft becomes necessary," the notice explained, "approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on Federal guidelines."
In early November, that notice started to receive media attention, with articles from the Associated Press, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , the Oregonian, the Toronto Star, the BBC, and London Guardian (unsurprisingly, none of the major papers or networks in the US covered it).
In a familiar turn of events, the notice suddenly disappeared from the Website. (Thanks to LG for pointing this out.) We've mirrored the page and posted the text below.
"Free software as in beer, copy protection as in racket" - Telsa Gwynne
Misperceptions, The Media, and the Iraq War. It's a 312 K PDF.
Fox garnered a 80% misperception rate, while PBS/NPR audiences mispercieved about 23% of the time. I wonder what the equivalent rate among uruk.net readers was...