Slashdot Mirror
Student Uncovers US Military Secrets
karthik_r085 writes "According to The Register, An Irish graduate student has uncovered words blacked-out of declassified US military documents using nothing more than a dictionary and text analysis software. Claire Whelan, a computer science student at Dublin City University was given the problems by her PhD supervisor as a diversion. David Naccache, a cryptographer with Gemplus, challenged her to discover the words missing from two documents: one was a memo to George Bush, and another concerned military modifications to civilian helicopters."
Oh OH, i can see it coming already, text analysis and dictionary software declared as Weapons of Mass Destruction! That, and Ireland is going to become the next member of the "axis of evil"
This is why I don't work for an intelligence agency. On the other hand, I'm still probably better qualified than people who think blacking out a few words in a document strips them of contextual information...
Ph-nglui mglw'nafh Gates M'dna wgah'nagl fhtagn.
Claire Whelan's personal homepage with more info
What this means, is the Government messed up? No way.. thats impossible
404
What did the documents reveal??? What kind of news is this?!?
Damn! I was hoping for downloads.
...said
"Please please please let the army attack Iraq"
Apparently the word that was blacked out was please.
Pretty funny, but luckily she's from Ireland. If an American did this they'd probably receive a visit from some intelligence goons in short order.
Must... Uncover... Words!
-Imidazole2
Can gov stop her research on National Security grounds.
An example of the program in use.
G.W Bush is the ____________ of the United States of America.
After the program
G.W Bush is the idiot of the United States of America.
Obviously, the next step the government will take is to require all documents be written in fixed-width fonts. Either that or they will require that all documents be converted into fixed-width before they are released for FFIA inquiries.
Don't see how this is a big threat.
The first task is to identify the font, and font size the missing word was written in. Once that is done, the dictionary search begins for words that fit the space, plus or minus three pixels
hmm, maybe this is wakeup call for govt. to maybe use a variable font size and spacing in classified documents. not sure how often they use 'blacking out' though.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
Maybe the government didn't know any names either and just made it look like something blotted out? Let other people try to find out :-)
The Monde (famous French newspaper) published an article on the story a few days ago. An English translation can be found here.
I always thought that blacking out text was a pretty useless form of security. There's going to be some difference in contrast, even after making a xerox of the original....
Recalls to mind this book that was published by someone who had to get it approved through the military -- they blacked out a bunch of it. He published it like how he got it back: with lots of black stripes.
The student didn't actually solve for any real US secrets, because the documents she was using were already declassified. However, as an academic exercise this demonstrates that there's still information being conveyed in the typical black-out way of "redacting" certain words from documents.
And, since the information was known, we're sure that she did come up with the correct solutions.
i don't see this as a huge deal. this is like a digital mad lib book.
"so n so gave information to XXXXXXXXX agency".
besides, the real good documents are the ones with paragraphs missing, not simple words.
This means they should revert to the old "Blacking out the PDF's" method, because that worked better.
I'm probably at the karma cap. Mod up a funny troll instead, it lightens the mood
Then, the text anaysis routine checks for words that would make sense in English.
Maybe the routine could do checks for The Register too!
Damn, with our nation in the state it is today? She'd be goddamn lucky to get ONLY a visit. Sad but true :(
This is a classic example of security through obscurity.. And how it fails miserably.
This statement is false.
Slashdot, this is yellow journalism.
Anyway this technique is easily foiled; just produce a document with randomly increased or shrink Blacked out boxes; or just subsitute all blacked out phrases with "***". Even if it's a photostat you can photoshop it.
I"m not impressed.
Perhaps the US government should start using text message lingo in their memos.
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an Egyptian srvic @ d sAm tym dat bn l@n wz plnin 2 exploit d operatives acces 2 d us 2 mount a terrorist strike"*
Could make decoding sensitive documents much more difficult and at the same time provide jobs for teenage cryptologists.
*lingo courtesy of transl8it.com
Change the length of the blacked out portion to some standard generic length to avoid disclosing the word length? Then you could only use context.
Or if you wanted to be really sneaky, randomize the length of the blacked out box, to spur wild goose chases.
Anyone know if there's a paper on this? This news came up on another site a couple of days ago, but they didn't even mention the researchers name, only implied it was presented at EuroCrypt'2004 in Switzerland. I looked though the list of accepted papers, but nothing stood out.
A search on IACR will give a single hit on the author, but it isn't this report/paper/work.
Belief is the currency of delusion.
anyone got mirrors?
So...can they now tell us how REALLY killed Kennedy?
Nuculer.
Dictionary-based approaches seem to miss this one for some reason.
If people knew how easy it was to "break" simple means of protection, we'd see far less in the media.
If you film a person in backlight, his face will be dark when you see him on tv. Cranking up the contrast (in most cases, just the contrast on the tv will do) shows the face clearly.
If you pixelize the face of a person, he's not recognizeable. But unless he stands completely still, his movements will give enough info to calculate the originating pixels after a couple of minutes.
If you apply a standard mixer filter to a persons voice, it sounds dark and unrecognizeable... Until you run the reverse algorithm.
If you black out sentences with a marker, it's often just a question of holding the paper up agains the light to read it.
I never understood this behaviour anyway. Why show a person on TV that obvoiously not want to be recoznized (however carefully concealed by the production)?
As for documents - I'm pretty sure most documents are available electronically. Why not just delete the stuff you don't want people to see?
I personally think she discovered it while her computer was infected with the Irish Virus
But most likely the resulting outcome will be that fewer documents are released. Or the pages will be so blackened that they will be unreadable.
And yes I can make fun of your typos.. nothing better then the kettle calling one black...
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As if that would work, only 1 in 10 RTFA to begin with.
quote of memo to bush from the article:
"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an XXXXXXXX service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative's access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."
and from the article itself:
"This eliminated all but seven words: Ugandan, Ukrainian, Egyptian, uninvited, incursive, indebted and unofficial. Naccache plumped for Egyptian, in this case."
AH-HAH!
so an egyptian operative told an *egyptian* service....
man this is some tricky work! uncovering covert secrets for sure!
seriously though the technique is pretty awesome
.. already out there now. Like I'd like to see a lot of the Black Vault's thousands of documents translated, just for one interesting example, one of many. woo hoo this is cool!
A fixed-width font (like courier) uses the same width for all characters. A document printed in a fixed-width font would make the process easier, because you would know with certainty how many letters fit into a black box.
If you read the article, the seven words that were found to be a possible fit range from seven to ten characters, implying that the document was printed in a variable width font.
What if the blacked out word is not in the dictionary? Most of these blacked out things are very likely names or places, things that could not be so easily brainstormed or listed.
from those green Irish leprecons!
...would have been if the censored bits were revealed by running the document through the spelling and grammar check in Word!
Wow, that is XXXXXXX amazing!
Table-ized A.I.
I always found this one funny, given that Ireland is the second largest exporter of software in the world, and has been for several years.
Now they will just start blacking out ten times the text before declassifying anything.
they won't know to mod this down
On the contrary, the Project for A New American Century group, a coupla dozen high ranking neocons, CLEARLY outlined what they were going to do once they got in power. It's all on their publically available website. Some of it is in PDF downloads, but it's there. They planned to invade basically the oil producing nations of the middle east, and some others. They got in power, in charge,and wow, they invaded. They also said they needed a "pearl harbor" like event in advance to justify the invasion, and get the US people all enthused around it, and golly gee mother of all coincidences, that event occurred..
I mean, it's real, it's there, you can see the names, the documents, it's written clearly, and the mass controlled media won't hardly ever mention it. I've seen very brief mentions at the best. I have yet to meet anyone in meatspace who has ever heard of them or their documents though. Wonder why that is? And I know it's been posted on slashdot several times, by various people, as well as on literally thousands of other forums and blogs. Radio talk show hosts all over have been clued in, but only a small handful even bother to acknowledge it, let alone come to the obvious conclusions looking at it. Journalists by the thousands have been clued in, yet there's a severe lack of coverage by most of the big names out there.
No I don't blame democrats, or republicans, I blame the US people in general for being so unbelievably stupid and naieve and un-caring for this disaster. We are a nation of sports and entertainment addicts more than anything else. No one gives a crap. They are taught from the time they are toddlers to NOT give a crap. They are taught to parrot one of two party lines that are always essentially complete lies, and to be happy with that, and to never go further than to keep corralled into one of those two parties and to swallow down the 6 o clock news pablum. So they do it, brainwashing since being able to understand human speech is quite effective apparently. They simply refuse to learn from history,and they refuse to acknowledge reality, and that's why we generation after generation keep getting hosed. You are force fed you are either a liberal-democrat, or a conservative-republican and that is SUCH A LOAD OF CRAP. I am so amazed people keep falling into that trap.
oh well...
do this to the Kennedy documents!!!!!!
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
According to my program, the missing word was "Escort"
The intel may in some cases be useless, but you dont want to reveal information that can allow your enemy to imply that you have broken his crypto, or that you have an agent planted near him.
END COMMUNICATION
Take words you don't want people to see and replace them with "[omitted]". Problem solved. No need to worry about word identification through pixel sizes, since the word was removed completely.
She didn't get these US Military secrects off of a BDSM site with pictures of women dragging men around on a leash did she?
Ooops, never mind
Steve
Like the US 'harboured' Timothy McVeigh, or for that matter the September 11 terrorists? The fact that there are terrorists in the country does not mean that they are 'harboured'. I'd like to see *recent* complaints from the British authorities or any other source that the Irish government is actively 'harbouring' terrorists, or not doing all it can against them, thank you very much.
If your definition does not require government support or acquiescence, but you are just pointing out that there are terrorist suspects living openly in Ireland, well we have these things called evidence and due process which in this country at least are required before people can be locked up (less so in the US I believe since the Patriot Act, Guatanamo Bay, etc.) Unfortunately there is not always sufficient evidence to obtain convictions against such suspects.
Besides, by that definition there would be *far* more terrorists being 'harboured' in Northern Ireland, which is British terrority last time I looked. Ipso facto, the British government is harbouring terrorists that kill its very own citizens. Sheesh.
http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/08/10 52206&mode=thread&tid=153&tid=99
You must be new here... :P
...
Hahahaha. You've gotta be fucking kidding.
Can we arrest people in Ireland for violating DMCA?
'Blacking out' text is obviously a protection device.
The helicopters they need to be worrying about are the black ones coming in...
These memos are archived in computers. Why doesn't US Intelligence merely replace the "deleted" words with "[deleted]"? Are they *cough Iraq cough* stuck in the Middle Ages?
--
make install -not war
How do we know that this actually works? If the blacked out words are classified, we have no way of knowing if indeed this research is anywhere close or way off base when it comes to the final determination of what word should "fill in the blank."
One way to solve this problem, of course, is to develop a font that constantly varies the size and type so that your document ends up looking like a ransom that's been clipped and pasted from a newspaper.
One nice thing about being paranoid, you're never bored.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
I find it amusing that Howard Stern's show on TV pixelates out the 'naughty bits,' but as an illustration of your point, if the person moves your brain will assemble an accurate picture regardless.
Well, there are two solutions to this method of cracking. The first is never release classified documents. However, this does not work well in a free and open society.
Nowdays, most, if not all, classified documents are created electronically. Perhaps the source document should be kept in an archive. When it is declassified, they just delete the text needed to lower the classification, or maybe replace the text with a few '#' to show were text was missing (but never a one-for-one character replacement). Then the released document is a little harder to crack.
What those who want activist courts fear is rule by the people.
Fill in the blank. The colors of the US flag are red, _____, and blue?
Mark
Has anyone any photos of this geek girl? Yes, I tried Google images, but I don't think she looks like a puppy.
8 of 13 people found this answer helpful. Did you?
... looking like a ransom note.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
The Memo Went like this:
URGENT: MSG from GEORGE W. BUSH
TO: JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF
1. ATTACK IRAQ
2. ____???____
3. PROFIT!!!
Claire has finally revealed the second step!
Read the article to find out.
Sorry, but in at least one of the cited examples, the methodology used requires an assumption that is false.
The proposed method depends on the calculated length of the missing word(s).
I believe that the "memo to George Bush" is the now infamous PDB of 8/6/03 (it was released in a PDF format). In this, the actual letters in the missing words were changed to nonsense characters (including non-alphanumeric symbiols) before the black box was drawn in. So the spaced taken up by the "redactions" have nothing to do (except by chance) with the length of the original words.
Sorry. Try again.
jjq writes "A decryption of the so-called Bush Memo, see the CNN news, http://edition.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/10/bush .briefing/ was presented at Eurocrypt 2004 (Interlaken) during the rump session. David Naccache shown how to recover words from removed text in several memos. See more about this story at Lemonde.fr (sorry, it is written in French)." Just use the the fish.
Full-justify all text!
Sean
but I've been looking at that site, and haven't found too much alarming stuff, speaking as a life-long, well-traveled american. Their principles are clearly stated... do you think other nations don't have groups strategically plotting their future course? The difference in America is that you can go on a website, see the players, and read what they have to say. My cursory perusal didn't turn up much objectionable material. Can you point me to some specific papers and/or citations? I'm genuinely curious.
I also never found a position paper advocating a conquest of the middle east and theft of their oil. For pity sake, americans want to buy the mideast's oil, not seize it (if the US military seriously wanted to take it, there'd be little to stop them... but that's not how americans see themselves on the world stage).
One can attempt to argue whether American prominence is good for the world... but I would challenge you to put forth a better choice (China? Russia? Iran?). It's the nature of world affairs for the dominant powers to emerge... I would also submit to you that "the United Nations" is not an appropriate alternative... the UN's lack of action has resulted in much pain and suffering around the world, and their ludicrous committee appointments (Sudan and Cuba in the human rights group, for example) bring the credibility of that body into serious doubt.
The US is the "big boy" on the block, and an easy target for derision... but on the whole I'd consider the US a force for good in the world... our track record in confronting various evils, and settling/winning various wars and conflicts speaks for itself.
Granted, whether we have the political will to make Iraq work out remains to be seen. We certainly have the physical ability, but unfortunately that's not america's achilles heel... it's politics.
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
Its ok we can solve this by arresting the student and banning any software that does this. Just like we solved the Iraqi abuse problem by taking their cameras away, and how we solved the Berg murder by making sure no news outlet would publish or link to the video, and how we solved the terrorists hi-jacking planes and crashing them problem with iris and finger scanning, (so now they can still get on the plane, but when they've crashed it we will know who did it and not to let them on next time). Or maybe its more like how the CD copy-protection system being defeated by the shift-key problem was defeated by threatening the student under the DMCA! or could it be how the drug problem was totally solved by throwing half the population in jail? [insert something about DRM solving everything and letting governments send sensitive documents in full without having to worry about someone reading the bad words] great, so i guess we can bomb for peace and fuck for virginity after all :)
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Has anyone here seen the proof? Maybe I'm a bit sceptical but I'd like to see something before believing in it.
"And a voice was screaming: 'Holy Jesus! What are these goddamn animals?'" - HST
the reference to pearl harbor is inside one of the downloadable documents from their site called "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century"
I read it a long time ago but don't have a copy now, I wiped my drive when I reinstalled OS last time, what I usually do, BTW, so I just relooked where it's located. the other documents are good there, too, to get a feel for the background of these guys and what they wanted. You can also reference who is connected to which international corporation, see where the money goes. Lot of the same guys there who really wanted us in the war sem to be profiting handsomely.
In it,back to the reference, paraphrasing, after first arguing for a huge massive increase in military preparedness and for getting the US on the ground in the mideast, says that it will be slow to get the US people to swallow it, short of a pearl harbor like event. and then-we had that event. And when theysay they had no prior knowledge, no idea, that they just missed it, that there was an "intelligence failure", etc..well, that's a whopper.
Plenty of websites out there have overlapping credible evidence that shows that there was prior knowledge, at least good enough for any normal grand jury. And the whitewash commission is just that, a whitewash.
Websites with a lot of the info about the lie of the "intelligence failure" abound on the web now,there's hundreds of them, so I won't pick out any particular one link, it's easy to find for anyone so inclined.
Now, I don't disagree that the US should always be strong, and it is the US governments and military's business to protect the US--I just don't think they have been doing it,they made it much worse, not better, and I sure don't trust anyone in the past few administrations. Plenty of evidence to show some serious shenanigans and malfeasance going on across major party lines there. Plenty.
...switch to random-width fonts! Fonts where the letterforms are randomly assigned width-offsets. I'd love to see an "i" stretched out to a hundred pixels.
As far as either being a dem. or republican is concerned, blame the voting system, not the people.
Our voting system is designed for two parties.
I don't understand why we even let third parties run under our current system; it is destructive and benefits the minority.
I think we'd all be much happier under a Approval Voting, where you vote for all the candidates that you wouldn't mind seeing in office, and don't vote for those you wouldn't.
The problem is that the people in power owe their victory to the quirks of our current system.
The title of this article sounds impressive, but the results are wishy-washy. It can only narrow down one missing word to maybe half a dozen possibilities. Who is to say the word is not North Korea instead of South Korea? And since most blackouts are several words long, it is not useful at all.
Also, considering the political state of Northern Ireland (which is part of Great Britain, etc.) last year, most of these terrorist groups have just become glorified drug gangs, since a major way they go their money was through the drug cartel, now with a cease fire, there is more infighting and killing between the protestant militant groups over drug issues, than between the catholic and protestant groups.
Are those documents redacted in the final photocopy, or are they redacted by hand (very expensive, but they're spending our money, after all)?
There are two simple solutions that go beyond and below high technology.
Unless they crank down the brightness as far as possible, most photocopiers put down a varying amount of toner to paper. A cloth soaked in, say, spirit solvents, when wiped across the page, will expose part, if not all, of the text. Similarly, this can be done with most magic marker inks.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
I read Slashdot all day and my bullshit filter is 98.5% effective. (yeah I just made that up)
Weapons of Mass Disclosure?
One can enumerate the reasons for Iraq's invasion as follows:
Establishing a precedence for preepmtive war. Now America has bybassed the UN, and global opposition to this unilateral action. If the will to build an empire arises, then it will be done without any regard to what the rest of the world think or say. You can read the following articles too:
The True Rationale? It's a Decade Old by James Mann, March 7, 2004
PBS had a good program before Iraq was invaded called the War Behind Closed Doors. You can watch the entire program in 30-60 minutes intervals:
Specially interesting is this page in the Project for the New American Century Statement of Principles where you can see who signed this document. Interesting to note that all of them are either now in the Pentagon (Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith, ...etc.), or are
aids to Cheney (Libby, Abrams, ...etc.)
An overview of who is who in the neocons circle of power.
Securing cheap oil. That is obvious. Bush's family history in oil makes that an easy one to figure.
Complete Dad's job. The personal desire of G.W. Bush to continue where his father has left, to finish the job, and do better.
The Israel Factor. Read the Israel connection, and how Zionism influences US foreign policy. If you take a look at the players in the PNAC above, and you will find them all staunch Zionists, whether Jews or Christians.
Construction Contracts. The Infrastructure contracts for US corporations to rebuild Iraq is a lucrative business. Of course the Halliburton link has been reported several times (Cheney used to be its manager or director). The defence spending, plus the contracts should fuel the US economy for a while, or that is what they thought would happen.
The planning to invade Iraq was done before September 11, 2001 attacks, as ex-secretary Paul O'Neill has revealed
As many would notice, Bush is not running the show. Bush is the ideal front for such an operation. He thinks he is doing the right thing, and that God has to do something with it. You can see this PBS program The Jesus Factor.
There are two factions grappling for Bush's attention. The moderate pragmatics (Powell, Armitage), and the extremist ideologue (Cheney, his subordinates, Rumsfeld, his subordinates). Powell's position is almost identical to Shimon Peres when he was the Foreign Minister in the Sharon government, a rational pragmatic dove amid the ideologue extremist hawks.
What is funny and sad at the same time, is that the US Foreign policy is now crafted by the Pentagon and the Vice President in accordance with neocon think tanks like the PNAC. No role whatsover is given to the Department of State (where it should really belong), and Powell is merely a messenger (go tell the UN we are doing so and so, try to sell it diplomatically, ...etc.). No wonder Powell has said that he will not seek a second term even if Bush gets reelected (and repeated it a few weeks ago). Not nice thing being in his shoes I guess.
I would not go as far as to say that they intentionally planned and executed the September 11 thing. But the neocons sure did exp
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
Yah, I remember the whole dang thing, which you prolly don't even date back to 1916 - take a look at what you pasty brits have done to us just during the decades since then!
Then multiply that by a few hundred years of oppression, decimation, and occupation fewl!
And we didn't saw off any of your heads on video tape in retaliation either - we merely fought back against your imperialism with the only weapons you had left us with!
So don't go blaming the palestinians for suicide bombers now, it's all that was left to them when you walked out on them and let Ben Gurion, Menachem Begin, and the rest of those self-admitted jewish TERRORISTS unleash the "we'll never forget" FINAL SOLUTION on them - and remember, it wasn't the arabs in Palestine that chased you out.
um.... Let's see now, Us, the Palestinian plight, Iraq carved up into little pieces (Kuwait being one of those), and not to mention the little jigsaw puzzle you created throughout the African continent....
Now let's put your little 1993 London exhibition into perspective here before you start throwing rocks at people you've spent the last 500 years slaughtering for ego and profit!
nt
my tragically bad spelling is a security feature?
Inteligence agent: Yeah, like classify the whole document, instead of just blocking out parts. It's the easier thing to do, anyway. And there are no drawbacks
But what about trampling the public's right to know?
As I said, there are no drawbacks.
[2.191] And kill them wherever you find them, and drive them out from whence they drove you out, and persecution is severer than slaughter, and do not fight with them at the Sacred Mosque until they fight with you in it, but if they do fight you, then slay them; such is the recompense of the unbelievers.
[2.192] But if they desist, then surely Allah is Forgiving, Merciful.
[2.193] And fight with them until there is no persecution, and religion should be only for Allah, but if they desist, then there should be no hostility except against the oppressors.
I read this as: fight and kill those who attack/persecute you, but once they stop, so should you. Also, don't exceed "the limits" (which I can only assume are elaborated elsewhere).
Now, I imagine many people have interpreted this in ways which allow them to carry out bombings of civilians and such ("they oppress us by their mere existance") but it seems pretty clear that that requires twisting the words.
...extradition for violating the DMCA.
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
During the reign of Pinochet, writer Ariel Dorfman used to convey the extent of the official censorship of his articles by incorporating the censored sections as blacked-out text and photos, with the understanding that people could fill in the blanks for themselves based on the surrounding text, knowing where the blanks were.
What's left out is as significant as what is included.
... especially the famous 19-minute expletive.
Good thing Ned Flanders wasn't around.
Monospace fonts anyone?
-
We seem to be developing a resonably large Asian community here, in Dublin at least - except that Asian in this context means Chinese rather than Pakistani as is the case in Britain.
We also seem to be welcoming them rather better than north of the border...
That is such a cop-out.
I think we'd welcome a little liberation here in Dublin...
for my XXX.
Keep modding so many good posts offtopic? I hope they get thier mod points cut off when they are meta-modded.
Will this give the US more of an impetus to create more "homeland security" laws. Hence taking away more rights.
If we don't make light of everything, we are just stumbling in the dark - Blank
in the US, 50% don't even vote, and in the popular vote it was an almost even split, so only 25% of eligible adult voters elected bush.
Of course, we have an electoral college, they actually decide. It varies state to state how they do that though.
I support "no professional politicians". Single terms for every elected office. No more than 10 years total government service or involvement, and no pensions whatsoever. Medical and survivors bereavement benefits for veterans, or people in current employ only. Limit campaign contributions to 100$, from individuals only, no soft money from corporations, no lobbying gifts, trips, speakers fees, etc. Let's call bribes "bribes" and finalize outlawing them. It's not a free speech issue.
And stuff like that there, along those lines.
Basically, turn government back to being a peoples government, and not a separate class of connected washington insiders.
How to get people to vote? Easiest way,not my idea, but, I heard this before and it's really cool, make income tax deadline day be the day before the main elections, instead of april 15th. You'll get much higher voter participation, no doubt about it.. We could also declare voting day a national holiday, so no one has to choose between going to work or voting, and make it a full 24 hour vote period. It SHOULD be patriotic to vote, and it SHOULD make a difference. Maybe if we even had runoffs instead of just any number majority wins, call it you need 2/3rds to win, like a supermajority in congress, it would help, and having a ranking system on the candidates, with a zero being a legitmate number. There's lots of possibilities.
People are still "afraid" to vote third parties or independents, they got brainwashed into that "lookout! you'll 'waste' your vote" meme, and you hear party activists from both the democrats and the republicans saying that. Don't "waste" your vote. Phooie. They just want to keep a lock on the process, like it's written someplace that we can only have democrats or republicans, forever and ever, like it's the law or something. To me, a vote not cast is the only wasted vote. I've been voting for decades, hardly ever got my guy in, so what, I voted who I wanted, not who I thought would win, and I won't vote against someone either.
Besides that, don't know. Whenever I hear people in meatspace bitching about somethin in politics/government, I question them, it's tricky but effective.. usually they get embarrased quickly, they can't hardly name any persons in politics, don't really know what's going on, but sure can rattle off their "teams" roster and the latest scores, or how their favorite band is doing, craplike that. I then nail them on some current events or names, get blank stares, and I go "How do you come to your opinion if you aren't aware of the issues or names?" Along those lines. Basically, I shame them, politely, show them they really don't know what's going on, then point them in a few directions in case they decide they SHOULD find out more and get active. Probably not effective, but dang if I'm going to stand there and nod my head "yes" to blather from people who really have nothing more than the most meager 15 second sound bite awarness of what's going on, then they think I should value their opinions or something. I just can't do that anymore, lost my patience long ago with that.
I can appreciate someone I really disagree with, AS LONG AS they have at least done some reading and research into a topic. Those people can learn from you, and you can learn from them, it's important to be honest and open to new data and be able to adjust your opinion, I certainly have over the years, I'm not static except from the POV of always trying to find out the real truth in a matter. I DETEST being lied to.. But the "don't bother me with any more facts, my mind is made up" crowd are nuts, better to just shine them folks on, it's a waste of calories dealing with them on anything more than the most trivial matters. doesn't mean they can't be nice people in all other aspects, but if it's anything important having to do with politics and directions and government, if their minds are locked, they are lost, they drank the kool aid, poisoned themselves. Just move on then.
3M signs multi-billion contract with the federal government selling whiteout.
... have to keep looking back in history to see what we really do. Iraq with saddam was really our mess to begin with. we set him up and supported him. As it was in other places, the example of the shah in iran being a good one, or like noriega in panama, etc. We keep letting these high level connected ones create these messes, then when it explodes in their face, we allow them to "solve" the problems.
The technique is called the heglian dialectic. they create a problem, they get the reaction they want from the target audience, they they offer their solution to the problem. We keep rewarding the guys who cause the problems in the first place basically.
I think saddam was a murderous tortuing goon, and the guys who helped set him up and keep him in power should not be allowed to deal with it, they should be in prison. and that's about the whole flock of neocons in this administration, and the drugged out morons in the last administration, and then back to the same morons we have now who got their starts in poppys and regans administrations.
wheels within wheels, the guys we were warned about from eisenhower in his retirement speech. To say they are machiavellian is an understatement.
We are nuts to keep electing these people and then we "elect" these private people right along with them indirectly to become the kings handlers, and they constantly mess up, and it's beyond criminal from my POV. We shouldn't reward them., no matter what they say in their think tanks. YES we need to look out for the US best interests, and to my mind, we could get a good start by stopping/ceasing the cycle of "create crisis/profit from crisis" we have gotten into with these so called "leaders".
... My lai established the precedent that lower ranks don't have to follow illegal orders, and torturing people is illegal. It just is. Even calling them "detainees" and not prisoners of war is illegal as far as I am concerned.
What goes around comes around, this governments complete bungling and arrogance is gonna keep biting us in the ass for decades now.
Thanks for the good article , I hadn't seen it yet. It's amazing how much stuff is out there. I still want to get to the bottom of 9-11, I don't want to be sidetracked into iraq, I already suffered through JFK getting whacked and the perps walking, then MLK, then RFK , then the lie of Nam, the Liberty cover up and a dozen others. This stuff has GOT to stop with the rogue shadow government goons ruling the US or we are quite *screwed*. There are WAY too many smoking guns showing their where white guys in suits and uniforms tied to 9-11 somehow, that's the REAL scandal now.
especially the back grounds on some of the key players. There's some additional you can look at. Google for a cult called "the family", and see some linkages there. Then there's the huge mass of evidence of governmental insiders having prior knowledge and/or involvement in the events aropund 9-11, the first WTC attack, and in the OKC attack. One of my favorite archives on 9-11 is at infowars.com.
At one of his mirror sites, prisonplanet.tv, you can find downloadable videos he (alex jones, talk show guy) has made for a cheap monthly fee, many hours of them. I have one called "9-11, road to tyranny", really excellent. They might even be found on the P2P networks, but I never looked, and he allows free copying and sharing of his vids, unlike most others. He only charges a minimum fee on his own site to cover bandwith, but if you already got it, you can share free. It's very eye opening, You show it to people, and a lot of them will go into one of those "paradigm shifting" modes.
We need to do whatever we can to wake people up, it's too vital to "not" do it.
*Now one wil discover the 3434s!!!!! %random% W3ap0ns of m455 de5trution *Note - I really do know how to spell --- this is simply an example.
90% of everything is crap. Also, crap is relative.
One of these actions is violent, causes fear and despair and is condoned by the Saudi royal family, and the other one is violent, causes fear and despair and is condoned by the Saudi royal family.
The British Empire (just like the current American Empire and the Roman and the Persian of the past) got so great by realising that subtle distinction.
When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
INLA and the OIRA are very hard core anti-drug. The Provos used to do whatever it takes. they have abandoned the true principles behind republicanism for the "whatever it takes to get the english out." Of course, that's all they are after. The Officials are no longer reall much of anything, but groups such as RIRA (Omagh bombing) have taken their place and their possitions.
Also, the 1993 bombing in London was what brought the British to the peace table. That is what eventually lead to the GFA accord (got the fuckers talking).
Of course, as an Irish-American, with Sinn Féin tattooed below a harp on my arm, who served w/ a Kerry group for a while, and who doesn't even talk to protestants around here, let alone in Ireland, my possition is rather biased. But I am sure you all knew that already.
IRA is also known as ADA. In Munster (Kerry, Cork, et cetera), the Garda don't really enforce drug laws. If you deal, the IRA kills you. If you do it, they blow your knee caps out. I know what i am talking about (and I can still walk.)
You know I barely got past the first few line and didn't want to read any more of that garbage. 1) The SINS of the fathers are not upon the SINS of the children 2) FACT, there is NOT one country that does not have at least one citizen or soldier that does not commit atrocious acts during the time of war. 3) War CAN, not that it will necessarily, bring out the worst all in people This includes the peace loving Canada. 4) WAR is necessary......there is no middle ground, you think it's right to let people kill defenceless women and children. Okay let's bring your wife into it? Or your mother or your children? Would you not want someone to protect them from someone who has cut off your hands? Sorry but this is the reality that will occur to your descendants if we do nothing to preserve our freedoms. 5) I saw the WEAPONS of MASS DESTRUCTION reason as a pretense used by the United States to goto war becase it was what most countries politicians could agree on. 6) Stop categorizing ALL Americans in the same POT, I think they call that discrimination or racism if you take action on it. 7) The people who turnout to vote in the United States elect the Goverment in hope that it will do the best for the people that is in the BEST interest of America --- NOTE for themselves, a Country is there to protect their people not the rest of the world. 8)The Republic of the United States of America, the U.S. wqas meant to be a republic yes democracy and rights exist. Do they exist IRAQ? Do they exist for the mother who was shot in the street for street for begging for food from a Soldier in IRAQ during Saddams reign? -- A friend of mine visiting IRAQ during Saddams regime watched this happen in IRAQ on a corner of a street. Could that happen in America? Yes, possibly, would the person be PUNISHED? YES! Would it happen again? MOST likely not. Britain, Germany, France enjoy similar freedoms the U.S. enjoys. Why you might ask becase young sons and fathers died in the second world war to preserve our freedoms from the likes of Hitler's rule. Did those soldiers know about the Jewish genocide occuring? NO, the horrifying details came out after the war ended. It made the soldiers who discoverd the atrocities sick and mentally and pyschologically scarred for life. Those soldiers sons fathers and daughters from all countries made the ultimate sacrifice, they gave up who they are to preserve our freedoms. It is our fundemental and moral responsibility to protect the lives of defenseless men, women, and children. For whatever reason the U.S. invaded IRAQ the end result is that the Iraqi people have a chance at a better life. 9)The Muslim States CONTROL the Oil, not the U.S., it's called OPEC, I don't see oil & gas prices decreasing now that the U.S. invaded Iraq? Prove to me that it has, last time I looked at a Gas station, the prices were about a 120% increase from where they were in 1998? 10) Hmm U.S didn't invade Iraq till 2002, I'm sure it's all about the OIL Signed a citizen of Canada
By "English" you may actually mean the Scots (who historically have the record for brutally slaughtering the Irish on their home territory - yes much over-looked but true) and latterly other Irish people (e.g., the notorious Black & Tans were in the majority Irish soldiers who had returned from WW1 to find themselves without work). Either way, I think you really mean the British. Unless you can prove that neither a Scot nor a Welshman had no hand in it at all.
I think yours is a very common view, but it's naive. The US has done good in the world, no question, but it doesn't stack up well against the endless vetoed UN resolutions and destabilized/propped up foreign governments.
This is not due to anything particularly American, and I agree that China, Russia, or Iran would be far worse superpowers. Rather, it's simply that the US government's sole duty is to serve the best interests of US citizens. It is not elected to help the rest of the world, does not represent them, and has very little incentive to help them. When foreign interests have collided with American ones, the latter have invariably won out.
Furthermore, it is in the logical best interest of the world's most powerful country -- which happens to be the US, but needn't be -- to corrupt or dismantle international law. International law gives every party an equal say and equal rights, regardless of military or economic strength; by contrast, the law of the jungle allows the most powerful country to do more or less as it likes. Hence as its power has grown, the US government has launched increasingly vitriolic attacks against the United Nations and pulled out of a wide range of international covenants.
Thus, the US may often be a force for good, but more accurately it is a force for what is good for Americans.
You suggest that the US could simply snatch the Middle East and bleed it dry of oil, but chooses not to because of ethics. But despite its dominant military, the US comprises just 4% of the world's population, and is sensitive to both casualties and domestic public opinion. The costs for the US of launching such an invasion would be unthinkable, and the US public would not tolerate it. This is what restrains more aggressive action, not the morals of politicians.
My point is not that the US is inherently bad, or even that a world dominated by a single superpower is necessarily bad, but rather that the US government rarely acts out of concern for the welfare of foreigners, and this is explained by entirely logical reasons.
I should buy some cement.
> I suspect that if the Army had shown a merciless Iron Hand in the immediate
> aftermath of the war...we would have instilled a level of fear-based respect
In who?
Instilled fear in men who welcomed us as liberators in the immediate aftermath of the war, but have been disillusioned by our actions during the last year? Men who were originally for us, but would have turned against us with the show of barbarism you advocate?
Not them?
Instilled fear in men willing to drive suicide car bombs?
Instilled fear in men willing to die in the explosion of their own anti-tank missiles to stop our vehicles?
Instilled fear in men willing to die by the dozens in daily gun battles?
Fear will never work against men willing to die by their own hand in order to strike at you. All it will ever do is create more enemies. With an estimted 20 thousand insurgents in Iraq and an estimated 20 million Iraqis, there is plenty of scope for us to make the problem much, much worse.
If we had acted in the Iron Hand way you suggest, there would be ten times as many Iraqis willing to die to hurt us.
If we had acted in the Iron Hand way you suggest, we'd deserve it.
Summary executions? What happened to America's morals?
Bring on the Roswell papers that are all marked out!!!!
Just 346 words remained on the list at this stage. The next stage is to involve the brain of the researcher. This eliminated all but seven words: Ugandan, Ukrainian, Egyptian, uninvited, incursive, indebted and unofficial. Naccache plumped for Egyptian, in this case.
Hmmm. So of the 346 words listed in the dictionary, the researcher had to guess? To a knowledgable attacker (eg. an analyst at the CIA who specializes in Egyptian terrorists) this step might be trivial, but in that case, they probably knew the answer anyway. On what grounds did the researcher choose Egyptian? Most likely because of the phrase "Egyptian Islamic Jihad". That is pure guesswork. It could have been an important point that the operative talked to Syrian intelligence or got captured by Mossad. The researcher simply didn't know.
The more general point is that algorithms cannot create information. Just like in image enhancement, if the data isn't there, in order to put it there you need other information to go on, and that is a non-algorithmic process (inference based on data), precisely because it is not guaranteed to be right.
Posters recognized by their sig,
Deuteronomy XX, 16-18 Would you associate all Christians & Jews with the above verses?
http://www.computing.dcu.ie/people/cwhelan.html
She's hot.
--
What would Bill Clinton do?
... it gets progresssively easier the lower you set your sites. Easier to get in an independent or third party candidate at the state and lower level.
Richard Mack in Utah is looking real good, he actually has a credible chance and is vowing to do all he can to return to constitutional government. he has a good track record, he's the sheriff that beat the feds on the brady bill in court, among some other accomplishments. And he has a coalition now, I think 4 of the third parties are endorsing him.
Use a font with constant width such as Courrier. Then, only the number of characters in the blacked out space can be known and that makes the dictionary matching a lot harder.
For a harder way to crack, randomly italicize letters in the document. That way, even the number of characters in the words are unknown. Of course, the document looks like shit.
Here's a hint: if you stop being such an arrogant fucktard you may get more people to listen to you and take your views seriously.
Just a thought.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Anthony Zinni is not stranger to the Middle East and Israel. He was the US mediator trying to end the current uprising there. He knows the players and the facts on the ground.
MORE MUSLIMS NOW SEE U.S., ISRAEL THE SAME WAY
Wayne Parry, Associated Press, 5/28/04
PATERSON, N.J. -- Israel's dealings with the Palestinians have long been the top grievance of many Muslims and Arab-Americans when they think about the Middle East.
But the prisoner abuse case and America's other setbacks in Iraq are increasingly linking the United States with Israel in the minds of many Muslims, who now equate American treatment of Iraqis with Israel treatment of Palestinians _ surely one of the last things President Bush hoped for when he authorized the war in Iraq.
"The more you look at Iraq, the more you see a replica of what is happening in the West Bank," said Hani Awadallah, president of the Arab-American Civic Organization in Paterson. "The story is no longer that we are there for liberation. It is clear to everybody that we are there as conquerors..."
Televised images of American troops battling insurgents in Iraq _ and graphic footage of wounded and dead civilians _ resonate among a Muslim community long used to seeing similar pictures beamed from Palestinian refugee camps.
At the Islamic Center of Passaic County, one of New Jersey's most influential mosques, many worshippers express concern.
"The same thing is happening in Iraq and in Palestine: One force has all the power and the other side is trying to defend itself and find its liberty," said Nabil Abbassi, the center's president.
"The whole reason we went to Iraq was to liberate it," he said. "What is going on is not liberation. All the problems of the people in the jail and the animosity toward the U.S. doesn't help us. It's definitely heading in the wrong direction. We're getting ourselves deeper and deeper into a quicksand situation."
Ahmed Shedeed, director of the Islamic Center of Jersey City, put it more succinctly: "An occupation is an occupation."
ISRAEL: NOW YOU SEE IT, NOW YOU DON'T
Robert L. Jamieson, Jr., Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 5/29/04
King County Democrats just pulled off a nifty magic trick.
They made Israel disappear.
Not the country, mind you, but the word -- as it had appeared in proposed language for the party's 2004 county platform.
The plank called for the United States to stop sending aid to Israel unless it treats the Palestinian people with dignity and respect. But when county Democrats, preparing for the big state convention, ironed out the final wrinkles of the platform Tuesday, "Israel" vanished.
Poof.
The whole thing makes me wonder if the "party of the people" is open to all so long as influential toes are not stepped on. Do that, and the Democrats suddenly become "the party of select folks who must be tip-toed around."
I'm talking, of course, about supporters of Israel.
This tale of abracadabra began May 8, when the King County Democratic Party gathered for a convention in Seattle. It was a time when thinking people could put forth thoughtful planks for the platform.
Naseem Tuffaha, a Seattle businessman and a voice of consciousness in the Arab American community, offered this: "We believe our tax dollars should not be sent to Israel while it is in violation of international law..."
ZINNI CHARGES NEOCONS PUSHED IRAQ WAR TO BENEFIT ISRAEL
Ori Nir And Ami Eden, Forward, 5/28/04
The simmering debate over the role of Jewish neoconservatives in drawing America into war in Iraq erupted with new fury this week. One of America's most respected ex-generals took to the airwaves to c