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."
Maybe if you tought some of the millions of mindless drones clicking "I feel lucky" on google and taking everything they read as god breathed. In schools they need to be teaching kids to look at the source of their information closely, and in the workplace instead of teaching employees route memorization of "click here to check e-mail, click here to delete a message, click here to close e-mail...etc" teach them some basic computing principles, including conducting research on the internet.
What's another word for Thesaurus?
-Steve Wright
> Isn't it the prerogative of the private sector to publish at will? This is done all the time in print and television media. Should be no surprise that certain things get "omitted" on an Internet site.
It wasn't omitted. It was excised. It was there, and now it isn't, but all the rest of the contents of that issue still are.
Virg
They dont 'have to keep honest'. There is no law that says they have to keep a story in place forever..
Its their resources they use to do so... when they are finished with the story they can dump it..
As long as what they report is the truth ( or with a disclaimer that its opinion and not fact ) then they are within their rights to do what ever they want with THEIR data...
Now when the government does this, thats a different issue...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Just go here:
CommonDreams
CounterPunch
Bad News: Noam Chomksy Archive
AlterNet
Or read a book.
Any good and honest right-wing folk (if you want to set up such a arbitrary left/right binary) should reply with their favorite truth-speaking resources.
Straight answer: You can't. If a corporation has financial reason to do something, they will, period. No "morality" or "social conscience" or "concern for human freedom" will play into it. That's the way corporations work; committees and boards of trustees don't have any kind of hive-morality, only a concern for their company's bottom line.
If media corporations and content-providing conglomerates have a financial or political reason to alter their records, they will, and they have no legal reason to do otherwise. We can only hope that the open-standard-based free internet can survive and let us remember electronically.
-3Suns
~~~~
The Revolution will be Slashdotted
The reason behind it doesn't matter. It's the act of doing it which draws our ire. Alteration through deletion is still alteration. Read 1984 and pay attention to how the government changes the memory of the people through media. Don't let things like this be the thin-end of a wedge.
Check out my sysadmin blog!
I think it's time to remember that the Internet is not a Parent nor is it a Governing Body. It is just a collection of writing. So you shouldn't come to it expecting truth or fairness. It just isn't that way.
You want to keep Corporate America honest? Two ways: government mandate and journalism. That's the way its always been done, always will be. By keeping the population informed (ideally) corporations and officials will have to be wellbehaved.
What is music when you despise all sound?
Things will sort themselves out if the internet reamains a free place where anyone can get on as a peer and publish. New publications will replace the old ones that act like Time. If the internet becomes more like broadcast TV, where only $pecial people with credentials can publish, it won't be trusted and the information superhighway will be just another billboard.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
You're not addressing the key point.
Whether or not the current action was a good idea is a very valid current topic.
National publications censoring their own previous publications in an apparent attempt NOT to embarrass the current president regarding this issue is definitely News, and Stuff that Matters.
It's the removal that makes it interesting - in a sense, THEY BROUGHT UP THE ISSUE FIRST
Why is it important for this to be posted on
There's absolutely no geek factor here anywhere!
"Lawyers are for sucks."
- Doug McKenzie
No we don't need to pick either because while Bush is a complete retard, his handlers (Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc) are criminally evil. Bush just stands up there and repeats what's being fed into his ear. I don't even think Bush himself is so much malicious as he is just a plain old asshole.
-- Give me ambiguity or give me something else!
It's b) but it looks like a).
Bush is no imbecile. He's very intelligent and he's a very effective manipulator (obviously, he's a perfect politician).
See, he puts a bumbling presence in the White House by doing things like fumbling for words and choking on pretzels. But, just because he's a somewhat inneffective orator (which is the only part of him most of us ever get to see) doesn't mean he's an idiot. By acting like the everyday Joe Blow and showing that he too has human characteristics that cause amusing, but inoccuous missteps, he endears himself to the average American citizen. He is the everyman who is no more immune to foible than the rest of us.
The problem is, a new picture is being painted of him in his dealings behind closed doors. He's bright and he's dangerous. He's capable of orchestrating huge PR moves, power grabs, and he's not afraid to "go it alone" if he has an agenda even if it's at everyone else's expense. The first and last points are critical. During the Vietnam war, Johnson stuck to his guns for what he believed in at everyone else's expense, but he couldn't get the public support behind him. He was crucified for his beliefs because he couldn't get popular support. Bush is different - he can pull public support for something that would normally be very unpopular (granted - with significant help from gentle allusions to 9/11). He's capable of manipulating Joe Blow while he pursues his own agendas.
I think Bush and his administration are perfectly capable and willing to do something like this if they feel it benefits them politically. I'll wait for evidence before I blame them, but I won't surprised if that evidence really does come.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
At that time, yeah, an invasion and occupation would probably have pissed off all the other Coalition members
As opposed to now? Let's be realistic -- Britain is the only significant coalition member still around from the first coalition.
It would have been the right thing to do
No it wouldn't have. If we had deposed Saddam in the early 90s then the most likely outcome was that Iran would take over control of Iraq -- giving the highly fundamentalist Iranian government control of 2/3rds of the land and population in the Middle East, roughly 1/3 of the oil, and every Muslim holy site except Mecca. BTW, for those keeping track, this is also the reason the US supported Saddam Hussein in the early and mid 80s -- because he was the lesser of two evils in the region.
At this point Iran's government has become somewhat destabalized -- they're in no position to be extending their influence right now. So circumstances have changed in this regard at least.
Funny that those who were so loathe to take Saddam to task for anything for so many years
What an utter load of bullshit. This is the kind of no-thought crap spouted by talk show hosts. Just because it's a bad idea to take out Saddam doesn't mean you think he's a good ruler or that he's not a despicable slimebag who isn't even worth turning into mulch. Hussein was taken to task for his crimes time and time again, but if you want to start stepping into the role of global police (a role which the right wing bashed Clinton for in Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere -- which we actually had a UN mandate for, unlike Iraq) then you'd better be willing to step up to the plate. Why the hell aren't we stopping countless dictators in Africa (like, oh say, Mugabe in Zimbabwe)? What about South/Central America? They've done as much, if not more, as Saddam Hussein ever did. Hell, while we're at it, let's dive into the Israel-Palestine mess, where both sides are guilty of horrific crimes.
The reality is that very little has changed in a decade. The only thing that did change was the stability of Iran. The other statements made -- about an unstable populace, the fallout of allies, the alteration of world political and military climate, and the need for the US to spend a long, long time peacekeeping in Iraq -- have not changed one iota.
Oh, and I say all of this as a moderate. I'm neither rightwing nor left. I was willing to go along with the invasion of Iraq because I believed that there was no way a president could engage in such a move without massive amounts of intelligence indicating a clear and present threat. Doing anything else would be abysmally stupid because the ultimate consequences would be setting not only the Middle East further against us, but also alienating our allies elsewhere in the world.
Oops.
What could Clinton do to decisively stop North Korea's nuclear program? Nothing, since they have thousands of howitzers in caves within range of South Korea's capital which could decimate it in a couple of minutes.
What will Bush do to decisively stop North Korea's nuclear program? Nothing, since they have thousands of howitzers in caves within range of South Korea's capital which could decimate it in a couple of minutes.
Isn't it the prerogative of the private sector to publish at will?
Absolutely.
The later retraction of an earlier published work is just the tip of the iceberg. More relevant is deciding what is news, what is not news, and how news should be reported.
Those decisions are being made by a private sector that is aligning itself closely with its business objectives (as it should) to achieve the most growth in revenue, and not necessarily some ideal of providing complete, accurate and unbiased news.
One problem is that greater growth in revenue can be gained not only by reporting sensational but inconsequential "news" (Rosie rants in court), or by culling pieces that advertisers might find offensive,but also by claiming to be an complete accurate and unbiased source of information, even if the claim is supported only by the purveyor of news. I mean, how do we expect them to portray themselves?
Read from multiple sources, including those you would normally not want to read, sources you think are off-base, weird and misguided and tell you things that you'd rather not hear.
Otherwise, we're in danger of living in a fantasy world.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
In that vein, here's an interesting piece on the so-called liberal media.
This is a study of the bias of sources used by the major broadcast media in the run-up to the Iraq war. FAIR classified sources as pro-war or anti-war on the basis of their affiliation with the administration, publicly expressed opinions about the war, and so on.
What I found surprising was that not even PBS gave equal time to those who opposed the war.
An excerpt: "The FAIR study found just 3 percent of U.S. sources represented or expressed opposition to the war. With more than one in four U.S. citizens opposing the war and much higher rates of opposition in most countries where opinion was polled, none of the networks offered anything resembling proportionate coverage of anti-war voices. The anti-war percentages ranged from 4 percent at NBC, 3 percent at CNN, ABC, PBS and FOX, and less than 1 percent--one out of 205 U.S. sources--at CBS."
a) Blowjobs.
b) Reaganomics, Star Wars, massive deficits.
I know which I prefer.
~Idarubicin
Let's edit:
"Apparently there were people near the top who know what they were doing,"
Take a good long look at the neocon "think tanks" from which our current foreign policy took its core. They regard the position George H.W. Bush took toward Iraq as a sign of weakness; they explicitly pushed for a unilateralist, aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East so as to re-shape that part of the world, well before 9/11.
The concerns the senior Bush shows in this article simply irritate(d) the high-ups in our current administration. The multilateral model, the concern about becoming de facto rulers of Iraq -- all that just bespeaks an America too wussy to step up to the plate, in the view of people like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They sent at least one letter to Clinton laying out this basic policy during the 90's.
"Fundamentalism" isn't about divine morality. It's about human authority.
It's the principle of the thing, for one. It's Orwellian. Secondly, Time readers searching the archives of Time will never find the article; it is now un-printed, nonexistent. And thirdly, how many other writings are being "un-printed" that are not favorable to the King? We can't look everywhere, all the time. And lastly, it's not beyond imagining that eventually the King's men will require Google and others to un-remember things they don't want remembered. A few laws here and there, and it's done. Hell, Scientology has tried it a few times, and actually succeeded in some cases in suppressing reality. They even did it to Google for a time; they really did it to Slashdot -- a thread critical of the Hubbardians that mentioned Xenu is now un-happened.
Corporations can't put you in jail for things (courts and juries do that.)
1 0683294 88834.html
Courts and juries should be following the laws.
If the laws are written by politicians who are beholden to corporate donors, then the laws will reflect the interests and needs of those corporations.
If a law reflects the interests and needs of profits of corporations, then, indeed, a corporation can put you in jail.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/10/
When there is too close a relationship between business and government, then the political rights and freedoms of citizens will take a back seat to profit-seeking, and whatever group of powerful business men currently controls the politicians will write the laws to their whim and fancy.
It's called facism. And its back with us, even worse than before!
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
- Milan Kundera
It's not Slashdot vs Bush... it's common decency and civil liberties vs Bush. Have you ever read George Orwell's 1984?
I remember a time when Reagan preached against the 'commies' because they spied on their neighbors and because the people had no freedoms. Now the same thing is happening in our backyard and you expect us not to say anything about it? Some cokehead who went AWOL is running our government and getting our young men and women killed so that we can have more oil to power our SUV's and you think this is a good thing?
Hell, even daddy Bush disagrees with you it seems.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
As a historian, nothing irritates me more than the neo-conservative hogwash that Regan or Bush Sr won the Cold War. The Cold War lasted from 1945 (actually 47 if you ask most historians) to 1991. As such, I don't find it unreasonable to assume that Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, and Carter also had something to do with that victory.
That said anyone who's studied the Soviet Era can tell you exactly how much sense the "Regan won the Cold War" theory makes. The X Telegram (George Kennan) stated in no uncertain terms that the Soviet Union must expand or collapse from within. Based on this document, it was the official position of the United States to contain the spread of communism. This was not a four or eight year process, but a stand which took decades. If Regan won the cold war for what purpose did our servicemen give their lives in Vietnam? In Korea?
All this aside, the argument I hear most frequently is that Regan's "genius" in backing the Star Wars program forced the Soviet Union into a spending spiral that caused internal collapse of the economy and thus the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
Unfortunately, this is totally unsubstantiated. First off, the Soviet Union consistently spent huge sums of money on the military. Many will toss figures at this argument quoting between 40% to 70% of Soviet GDP in the late 1980s. Realize two things when you see this argument. First, as a (officially) communist State the USSR has no GDP. No numbers were every kept to this extent in the USSR and any numbers we have are based on the (somewhat) biased estimates of the US armed forces and defense contractors (who have a vested interest here).
Secondly, earlier estimates from the Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Johnson administrations indicate Soviet Military spending at around 40% of the countries production capacity (think Civilization shields here, since we still don't have a real GDP here). Unfortunately I've been unable to locate decent links for this data. Apparently it only exists in dead tree media.
So what did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union? The answer is pretty obvious once you think about it... The Soviet Union caused it. Khrushchev started the ball rolling when he gave The Secret Speech at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. When Khrushchev released political pressures in the Soviet Union the result was what you'd expect. Give them an inch they take a mile. Khrushchev tried to clamp down on this movement, but was only able to stem its tide. Hard-line elements in the Soviet Government were less than pleased with this, and this was one of the factors that pushed Khrushchev to the now infamous military aggressiveness exhibited during his tenure.
After Khrushchev hard-line elements regained power in the Soviet Union and by instituting a Geritocracy favoring those who followed in the traditions of Stalin these elements kept the dissidents in perilous check.
Gorbachev changed all that. His policies of Glasnost and Perestroika snowballed. These policies were intended to allow some of the internal pressures to abate while keeping the Soviet system in power and the country under control. However, much like punching a hole in a dam, the tiny valve soon became a rushing torrent. Civil War erupted and on December 25 1991 the Soviet Flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time.
What caused it? More than anything else it was the tide of political conservatism in the Soviet Union. This tide wasn't encouraged by Star Wars or Stealth Technology. It was the result of Coca Cola and McDonalds, the product of Ford and General Motors. The Soviet people wanted what the United States had... prosperity.
And just as Kennan said, the Soviet model couldn't maintain a decent standard of living without expanding.
So my apologies to Regan and his crew. And in answer to your question "what was Regan's legacy?" The answer is as follows. Regan was in the right place at the right time and managed not to screw it up to badly. It's a foreign policy the right has been following ever sense.
Killfile(TGK)
No trees were killed in the creation of this post. However, many electrons were inconvenienced.
It's an excellent point, and another reason to do our best to keep the internet free, but the danger of repetition must not be forgotten. We hear so much about "limited attention spans" -- well, how many people are going to search for the truth when what was traditionally trusted (the evening news) isn't exactly telling us lies, but is only telling us one side of the tale?
Remember that conditioning relies heavily on repetition, and conditioning is what in Orwell's 1984 allows the police state to maintain control.
I mean, if the war is presented in terms of either pepsi or coke, how many people will think root beer? The greatest conspiracy of all would be if those two were actually owned by the same people. They'd have spent so much time forcing the choice on us like it was the only one... sounds a little like our media, doesn't it?
> I always thought it amusing that his administration fought so hard again UoM's affirmative action policy, when he benefitted tremendously from another form of affirmative action known as "legacy." There's NO WAY that idiot would've gotten into Yale or Harvard any other way.
His actions are very consistent, once you learn to view them as "preserving the system of privilege".
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade