Quote of the Day, Re: Usenet as solution to Al-Jazeera jamming
Sometimes when you're in government you have to do things for the people whether they like it or not. That's what governing is all about, said Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno, R-Brunswick. Sometimes when you're trying to remain free you have to do things to leaders whether they like it or not. Barabbas Concerned about your privacy? Follow this link to get FREE encrypted email: https://www.hushmail.com/?l=2 Big $$$ to be made with the HushMail Affiliate Program: https://www.hushmail.com/about.php?subloc=affiliatel=427
S-Tools Stego makes an appearance in Law and Order-SVU
The S-Tools stego package had an appearance in tonight's Law and Order--Special Victims Unit, with a suspected child pornographer hiding images of children in they could be images of anything--sunspots, whatever. Stego...it's mainly used by spies. Even a mention of the etymology of steganography. I recall several mentions on The Agency and similar shows, usually involving the alleged secret messages from Osama (no evidence for this has been shown, to my knowledge). Mentions of anonymous remailers are now almost commonplace. Looks like stego is catching up. Implications for attempted bans on these tools, or enhanced sentencing, are left to your imagination. --Tim May
Practice to Deceive Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
... the administration sees the invasion as only the first move in a wider effort to reorder the power structure of the entire Middle East. Prior to the war, the president himself never quite said this openly. But hawkish neo-conservatives within his administration gave strong hints. In February, Undersecretary of State John Bolton told Israeli officials that after defeating Iraq, the United States would deal with Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Meanwhile, neo-conservative journalists have been channeling the administration's thinking. Late last month, The Weekly Standard's Jeffrey Bell reported that the administration has in mind a world war between the United States and a political wing of Islamic fundamentalism ... a war of such reach and magnitude [that] the invasion of Iraq, or the capture of top al Qaeda commanders, should be seen as tactical events in a series of moves and countermoves stretching well into the future. ...to date, every time a Western or non-Muslim country has put troops into Arab lands to stamp out violence and terror, it has awakened entire new terrorist organizations and a generation of recruits. ... a worst-case scenario that would involve the United States occupying the Saudi's oil fields and administering them as a trust for the people of the region. As one former Army officer with long experience with the Iraq file explains it, the physical analogy to Saddam Hussein's regime is a steel beam in compression. Give it one good hit, and you'll get a violent explosion. One hundred thousand U.S. troops may be able to keep a lid on all the pent-up hatred. But we may soon find that it's unwise to hand off power to the fractious Iraqis. To invoke the ugly but apt metaphor which Jefferson used to describe the American dilemma of slavery, we will have the wolf by the ears. You want to let go. But you dare not. http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2003/0304.marshall.html steve War is just a racket ... something that is not what it seems to the majority of people. Only a small group knows what its about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few at the expense of the masses. --- Major General Smedley Butler, 1933
Re: Run a remailer, go to jail?
At 06:06 PM 03/28/2003 -0500, Steven M. Bellovin wrote: What's unclear to me is who is behind this. Felten thinks it's content providers trying for state-level DMCA; I think it's broadband ISPs who are afraid of 802.11 hotspots. It looked to me like it was the cable TV industry trying to ban possession or sale of illegal cable descramblers as well as connection-sharing things like NAT, but it was a bit hard to tell how much of the language was new as opposed to older, so this may have been extending existing cable descrambler laws to also cover 802.11 or Napsterizing your Tivo. I don't think that banning remailers or crypto was the intent, but the cable industry has never been above using nuclear weaponry to discourage cable service theft, regardless of collateral damage.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 08:50:50AM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: Here's an interesting site about the FCF http://www.politicalamazon.com/fcf.html Interesting, but mostly insanely wrong. Written by someone who is a hardcore leftist, it seems, and heavily slanted. I know the folks at FCF, and they're not mass murderers, racists, xenophobes, or guilty of the other allegations the author makes. They are, however, law-and-order conservatives with ties to Ashcroft whose alerts can serve as useful advance warnings. -Declan
Re: Use firewall or a remailer, go to jail?
More details are here: http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994667.html Thanks :) The Texas law is problematic in certain often-used scenarios. Our corporate policy for remote access is to use SSL tunnels wherever practical. In Texas, a road warrior with an up-to-specs configured laptop would commit a crime by only sending and receiving mail using SMTPS and POP3S or IMAPS. Nonsense. Impractical, unenforceable nonsense, respected only by idiots without a clue about security. Regarding the Maryland one, I was unable to chew through the legalese and find/understand the part about format conversion software, but if it is as you say, it means that so trivial and common software like transcode (for conversion of video formats, unix commandline tool, allows retrieving files over FTP or HTTP or (with relevant libraries) even from streaming sources), mencoder (part of mplayer package, the same applies as for transcode) and mmsclient (a small utility for saving MMS streams as ASF/WMV files, handy for watching things you can't get through a not-so-wideband connection) are illegal and by mere ownership of them I become a criminal there? Technically speaking, even a patch cable led from a soundcard Line-Out of one machine into a sound card Line-In of another machine (common setup with more computers and only one pair of headphones) can be considered a circumvention device. How the Law copes here? Will a day come when BATFC (Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Copyright) commandos go busting Radio Shack shops, seizing lists of the customers who dared to buy 3.5mm stereo plugs or shielded cable? When will we have to declare and register all our electronic equipment? What worries me here is the quest of the Law Enforcement Departments for better crime statistics; so there is a good probability these nonsenses will get enforced, at least where they will be a low-hanging fruit. Sweeping antiterrorism surveillance powers will be very handy, after the time passes a little and their usage creeps to less serious areas. Do you have too many unsolved murders in your area? Make a pogrom on your local geeks, sweep-raid the suburbs and a local college, get your unsolved crime statistics from 50% down to 15% in a single day, get your quarterly bonuses. /rant Weird world...
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
FCF is in bed with fine folks like Scaife, Family Research Council, the Eagle Forum. Head of the FCF (Paul Weyrich) founded the Heritage Foundation. Lots more interesting bits here: http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipients/free_congress.htm -- J. Eric Townsend -- jet spies com buy stuff, damnit: http://www.spies.com/jet/store.html
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 07:25:41PM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 08:50:50AM -0600, Harmon Seaver wrote: Here's an interesting site about the FCF http://www.politicalamazon.com/fcf.html Interesting, but mostly insanely wrong. Written by someone who is a hardcore leftist, it seems, and heavily slanted. I know the folks at FCF, and they're not mass murderers, racists, xenophobes, or guilty of the other allegations the author makes. Hardcore leftist? Hmm -- well, I'm not sure about that, but from looking at FCF's site, I'd sure consider them to be extreme rightwing. Lke a lot to the right of the Birchers, which is not to denigrate the Birchers, all the ones I've known in the past seemed to be pretty much right-on (no pun intended) about the government at least. They are, however, law-and-order conservatives with ties to Ashcroft Well, there you are. Lunatic-fringe rightwing for sure. whose alerts can serve as useful advance warnings. That may well be. Sedition trials and concentration camps wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com We are now in America's Darkest Hour. http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org hoka hey!
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
At 18:42 -0500 2003/03/29, Declan McCullagh wrote: I went to the Timonium hamfest and computer show today (surprisingly good, even with the rain). On the way back, listened to an NPR Baghdad correspondent report that the mood in the city had subtly changed -- basically that since Saddam didn't seem to be getting his ass kicked, the locals now seem willing to fight, if not for Saddam himself, at least for the sake of their country. Door-to-door: Let's do it! Last week on BBC World, I heard a British military analyst say that while in his teens he was willing to do almost anything to remove Thatcher from office, he would have gladly taken up arms in the defense of Britain if the army of another country tried to remove her from power. -- J. Eric Townsend -- jet spies com buy stuff, damnit: http://www.spies.com/jet/store.html
Re: COWed news networks not showing Baghdad market dead
Status: RO Date: Fri, 28 Mar 2003 11:42:41 -0800 Subject: COWed news networks not showing Baghdad market dead From: Tim May [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sender: [EMAIL PROTECTED] I'm scanning all four COWed networks--CNN, Fox, MSNBC, CNBC--for images from the downtown Baghdad market and housing area strike. Supposedly Al Jazeera is showing the images of dismembered children, frantic searches under rubble, body parts blown against walls. Estimates are of 50 dead, though this may change. ... The BBCA evening news hosted by the lovely Mishal Hussein showed it all. Grown men screaming and crying over lost loved ones, a worried man muttering Allah Akhbar in clinging hope, a ten year old boy weeping near a puddle of blood on a stone stairway, frantic women screaming in hospital hallways, a child in hospital minus two legs. They were not targeted deliberately but that doesn't seem to console them. The specific operation underway now called Operation Iraqi Freedom is one small part of a much larger operation called The Project for a New American Century. This project aims, among other things, to depose brutal totalitarian dictators if and only if they make the mistake of opposing the interests of the U.S. government and its corporate partners without first acquiring nuclear weapons. The upside of the Project is that some brutal totalitarian dictators might possibly be replaced with the sort of kinder and gentler dictators we enjoy here in America. Which is good as far as it goes. Fewer people get thrown feet-first into plastic shredders, for example. I believe this Project will make more Arabs rally in support of firm Islamic government, reject Western culture and ideals, join radically anti-American militias, and commit more attacks against Americans. This threat will make more Americans rally in support of the U.S. government and gladly throw votes, dollars, and freedoms at the feet of those who promise security. This widespread popular support will enable the U.S. government to employ military tactics both domestically and abroad for the stated purpose of enhancing security. Of course, war is a racket, and the racket here is to expand the power and wealth of the government and its corporate partners. -- Patrick http://fexl.com
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 04:01:12PM -0800, jet wrote: At 18:42 -0500 2003/03/29, Declan McCullagh wrote: I went to the Timonium hamfest and computer show today (surprisingly good, even with the rain). On the way back, listened to an NPR Baghdad correspondent report that the mood in the city had subtly changed -- basically that since Saddam didn't seem to be getting his ass kicked, the locals now seem willing to fight, if not for Saddam himself, at least for the sake of their country. Door-to-door: Let's do it! Last week on BBC World, I heard a British military analyst say that while in his teens he was willing to do almost anything to remove Thatcher from office, he would have gladly taken up arms in the defense of Britain if the army of another country tried to remove her from power. Yeah, too bad they don't feel the same way about Ireland. The Irish have been trying to kick the Brits out for what, 400 years? At least. -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com We are now in America's Darkest Hour. http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org hoka hey!
Re: Quote of the Day, Re: Usenet as solution to Al-Jazeera jamming problem
-- On 27 Mar 2003 at 21:10, Major Variola (ret) wrote: Re: Usenet as solution to Al-Jazeera jamming problem I suspect that Usenet groups containing tens-o-megabyte files are often blocked by ISPs (and public sources would be overwhelmed). Also, wasn't Usenet plagued by evil message-cancellers? Depends on your Usenet server. The usual limit I encounter is about ten megabytes for any one post. I routinely download five hundred megabyte video files using the PAR and RAR mechanism to get around the ten megabyte limit. Message cancellation has been cancelled by most servers. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG zGNjNM42e2hEu8yIJrhenqbS0TkNf/6rzBfGJfBN 4YqqQnCTGeWDS3yBqZCEFGENvlML/3pgy37qawJDa
Re: Use firewall or a remailer, go to jail?
On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 11:49:22PM +0100, Thomas Shaddack wrote: http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/archives/000336.html According to this source, there are state-level law proposals which could More details are here: http://news.com.com/2100-1028-994667.html -Declan
Amerikan Nazis
Free Congress Foundation's Notable News Now March 28, 2003 The Free Congress Commentary Anti-war Protestors: It's Time YOU Start Imitating Our Troops! By Lisa S. Dean When it comes to supporting freedom of speech, I'm right there fighting with the next guy. But as with anything, there are limits to what freedom of speech can tolerate. Oh really? When I hear someone say there are limits to freedom of speech, I want to pick up a gun. In San Francisco last week, protesters rallied carrying a banner reading, We Support Our Troops Who Shoot Their Officers. Now, moronic slogans such as Bush is Hitler and Uncle Sam is a Terrorist are tolerated because we, as a nation, support the right for even the dumbest of our citizens to publicly dissent. That's what democracy is all about, or so they say. But that banner isn't expressing dissent and it's not freedom of speech. It's supporting sedition and is downright treasonous. Bullshit! The real traitors to Amerikkka are people like you and Dubbya. The troops are out and out war criminals. They are the most evil force on the planet at this time. In an attempt to calm the fury of patriots who wanted to rip these protesters in two, an apparently soft-hearted resident of San Francisco rationally explained where these protestors were coming from. He opined that they have fallen on hard times because of the dot.com failures and are lashing out at anything in order to vent their frustration. Nice try but NO SALE! You mean to say that someone can act irresponsibly, even going so far as to put the lives of others at risk, just because you are throwing a temper tantrum over your miserable, sorry life? I don't think so. Look, whatever you may think about this war, remember that these men and women are serving their nation and as a citizen of their nation, they are serving YOU. They are putting their lives at risk FOR YOU. They aren't doing this for publicity, or for some other self-serving reason, they are doing it FOR YOU. And in case you didn't hear me, let me say it again, THEY ARE RISKING THEIR LIVES FOR YOU! The fuck they are. They are over there to rob and murder the Iraqi people. My most fervent prayer is that they each and every one die the most extruciatingly horrible and painful death possible. And when the body bags start coming back, I plan to make a personal pilgrimage around the country to piss on as many of their graves as possible.
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 09:06:27AM -0500, Declan McCullagh wrote: Tim wrote: To cut to the chase, several of my former friends are calling me a traitor and claiming to have reported me to the FBI for my statements about how the war machine ought to be hacked and undermined. See below. A so-called conservative group is also tossing the term traitor about. Often these groups serve as early indictators of what their friends in power in the Bush administration think. Remember that Free Congress' Weyrich helped push Ashcroft's nomination through the Senate when it was in danger of dying... Here's an interesting site about the FCF http://www.politicalamazon.com/fcf.html -- Harmon Seaver CyberShamanix http://www.cybershamanix.com We are now in America's Darkest Hour. http://www.oshkoshbygosh.org hoka hey!
Re: COWed news networks not showing Baghdad market dead
-- On 29 Mar 2003 at 3:11, Patrick Chkoreff wrote: I believe this Project will make more Arabs rally in support of firm Islamic government, reject Western culture and ideals, join radically anti-American militias, and commit more attacks against Americans. Islamic government has been entirely discredited by the ease with which the US defeated it Afghanistan, and its conspicuous inability to impose any substantial costs on the continued US presence in Afghanistan. Baathism is not Islamic government, though Saddam, Bush, and Bin Laden are all trying to obscure the fact -- Baathism is a western ideology -- a mixture of communism and Nazism. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG cDyROq05eXVdXrQ/HStZ1tAb4kwCRb+ckvJgOZY0 4wVxnr4we+T1Xk1zbF5T4Ml44xzV8Gn2T1/GmudO/
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort?
On Fri, Mar 28, 2003 at 10:47:51AM -0800, Tim May wrote: (As they may be, but this whole clusterfuck is showing the well-known problems with invading another country with strung-out supply lines and with urban/guerilla battles. We could all write for pages and pages on Heh. I like this Washington Post article from this afternoon: In Basra Stalemate, Some See Prelude to Baghdad http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A47596-2003Mar29.html I went to the Timonium hamfest and computer show today (surprisingly good, even with the rain). On the way back, listened to an NPR Baghdad correspondent report that the mood in the city had subtly changed -- basically that since Saddam didn't seem to be getting his ass kicked, the locals now seem willing to fight, if not for Saddam himself, at least for the sake of their country. Door-to-door: Let's do it! -Declan
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Sat, Mar 29, 2003 at 04:36:08PM -0800, Eric Cordian wrote: Are there specific facts on that Web page that you believe to be in error? Did you read the hilarious description of FCF and EFF? I assume not, if you had to ask... I have better things to do with my time than critique this stuff or defend a group I'm criticizing for throwing the word treason around so loosely, so you'll have to look elsewhere for someone to do the painstaking debunking you seem to require. -Declan
Re: Practice to Deceive Chaos in the Middle East is not the Bush hawks' nightmare scenario--it's their plan.
-- For a long time, the west has been exporting its most evil ideologies and most disastrous economic policies to the middle east. Saddam is not Islamic fundamentalism, rather, Baathism is a mixture of Communism and Nazism. Even Bin Laden owes more to Heidegger than Mohammed, though he denies it. The bush plan is to export our more desirable ideolgy and economic order, the order and ideology of the Glorious Revolution, by force, as we forced on Napoleon's france, Hitler's Germany, and Japan. Of course there is something rather self contradictory in attempting to export that program by aggressive imperial war, and the practical effect so far has been to make America less free, rather than Iraq more free, Perhaps a more subtle means would be more likely to succeed, but exporting that program by some means is a sound plan --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG i57sGqsg2GlVWFyI/PkO7dqkqaAvdB7u2NI9bTsO 4nWbwIen7NnSiUUWUwLg0g3p3ByUf3b0kaAJ0Dnie
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Saturday, March 29, 2003, at 07:29 PM, J.A. Terranson wrote: On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: That may well be. Sedition trials and concentration camps wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The concentration camps are jails this time, where you are held as a material witness. The trials will be in a secret court, fed by secret evidence, where you won't be entitled to a lawyer nor the right of facing your accuser (after all, you are an enemy combatant now...). I forget where I saw it, but a television show had a perp being threatened by the DA that he'd be transported to Gitmo, where U.S. rights no longer apply. Fiction, maybe, but a sure sign of where American ideals have gone. Fearless Leader whines that the Iraqis are not treating POWs according to the Geneva Convention while a thousand illegal combatants captured on the battlefield in Afghanistan are held in cages, transported in metal shipping containers, and tortured. --Tim May Gun Control: The theory that a woman found dead in an alley, raped and strangled with her panty hose, is somehow morally superior to a woman explaining to police how her attacker got that fatal bullet wound
Re: CDR: Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: That may well be. Sedition trials and concentration camps wouldn't surprise me in the slightest. The concentration camps are jails this time, where you are held as a material witness. The trials will be in a secret court, fed by secret evidence, where you won't be entitled to a lawyer nor the right of facing your accuser (after all, you are an enemy combatant now...). -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Enraptured in Babylon
On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 10:04:25PM -0600, Neil Johnson wrote: Just saw this banner ad at wired.com (They must be real hard up for revenue). The text of the ad: SHOWDOWN: IRAQ - IS THIS THE SIGN OF END TIMES ? Find out from Tim LaHaye and other end time scholars ! Subscribe to the Left Behind Prophecy Club ! Well, Wired News (my former employer) is owned by Terra Lycos, whose U.S. entity is Lycos Inc. in Waltham, Mass. As of when I was there, Lycos had no dedicated sales staff for Wired News, so it's entirely likely that you saw an ad purchase for run-of-U.S.-sites or something similar. My point is only don't conclude that Wired News is that hard up for revenue. They're still around. If they were losing tons of money (they got very high CPM rates), I suspect WN would have been eliminated in one of the rounds of Terra Lycos layoffs in the last few years, including one as recently as last month. -Declan
Re: aljazeera.net hacked again?
On Thu, Mar 27, 2003 at 06:51:30PM -0500, Jamie Lawrence wrote, quoting Thomas Shaddack: Get the files - images, webpages, whatever you have, package them into suitably-sized files (if the size is too big, split the files to Basic and [...] Yeah, Cool, etc. But, who cares? Right. P2P networks right now are primarily useful for distributing porn, music, and perhaps movies. News articles don't fall into those categories: There's not the same threat model (copyright law, criminal prosecution) or level of interest. Nor is there a useful way to find the latest news given the current protocols and user interfaces. In this case, it's easy enough to automagically mirror some text articles from aljazeera.net on a half-dozen web sites. No need to do P2P. Doubt the attackers here can take out Geocities with a simple DOS attack. -Declan
RE: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
On Sat, 29 Mar 2003, Sarad AV wrote: The images shown at the begining of the war showing iraqi soldiers surrending and walking up with their hands behind their head might have cost US dear again. Iraqi tv then showed a iraqi general with a large rifle in his hand saying to iraqi tv-what do you think when I have this (rifle) in my hand,i wont die without killing two of them. So why is the US complaining about their troops on the air? After the war started around 3 civilians have joined the war as small unorganised groups. On invasion of your homeland is different than pushing you out of someone else's home. I don't think the US figured that one out. If the war drags to mid april the US troops wont stand the intense heat,i mean its going to hard for them. They are tough. But if the Iraqi's are saving their bug spray for summer, then the US troops won't be moving too fast for sure. properly. (There's also world opinion, which we care about a lot more than Iraq does.) I wont beleive that any more-the US doesn't listen any more to the world,its gone blind and deaf. I totally agree. The US has lost everything in terms of world opinion. We are morons led by an insane lunatic and the US needs to be dealt with accordingly. Once we start invading Syria, the world will retaliate in a big way. We're already building excuses to do so, so I won't be supprised if the US accidentally bombs a few targets inside Syria. Suspected al-queda/taliban prisoners were put in 6*8 meter cages in the open sun and badly beaten up-I remember seeing that on tv.They weren't given pow status either.May be they didn't look like humans :) Which is how the rest of the world will treat US POW's from now on too. I bet the weekend warriors weren't betting on that! hopefully they are treated well as its no fault of theirs that they are dragged into this war with iraq. You gotta use pawns when you have them. The US is streatched really thin now. A major attack on it's interests in South America would prove difficult to defend. Same with Korea and Taiwan. The nut cases in Washington are very capable of doing something really stupid and I don't think they appreciate how much military power can be brought to bear against them. If it stays in Iraq, the US has a chance. If they decide to make it bigger, the US will be toast. C'est la vie, n'est pas? Patience, persistence, truth, Dr. mike
RE: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
At 01:57 AM 3/28/03 -0800, Sarad AV wrote: ... They are finding it hard to hit armoured vehicles since they are well spread out in distinct patterns.US has told iraq to treat US soldiers as pow's and follow the geneva convention.they showed images of 3 US pow's,one women and 2 men-one of them were bandaged on their head.These had appeared a few hours after US made a press conference saying that they had taken 3000 iraqi's pow's and there were no US pow's. Yep. This led to complaints about showing POWs on TV violating the Geneva convention. For some reason, when CNN showed Iraqi POWs, we didn't notice a problem. (At some level, I think the projections of the people at the top were so optimistic, that a lot of people were just shocked that the Iraqis didn't just collapse and welcome the soldiers into Baghdad with flowers and cheering. This has a really depressing parallel with the way we jumped intp Vietnam, though I don't think the Iraqi soldiers are anywhere near as tough and committed as the NVA.) Iraq replied by asking them to follow the geneva convention and not to do cluster bombing in civilan areas. Be fair about this. We own the skies above Baghdad, at least above the range of small-arms fire. If we wanted the streets of Baghdad choked with corpses, they would be. Basically, civilian casualties have been the result of a small number of bombs missing targets, or screwed up targeting, or bystanders getting hit when they're too close to what looks like a miliatary target. I think we've probably played up our bombing accuracy a bit too much, but it's not like we're targeting civilian areas. If we were, the images from Baghdad would be very different; not just one market with a bomb crater, and one hospital flooded with injured and dead people, but every building reduced to smoldering ruins, and dead people so thick on the ground you couldn't walk across it. In any case US military pow's are going to have a hard time and since U.S didnot give pow status to *suspected* Al-Queda/taliban militants captured in afghan war-no body is going to put pressure on iraq either. Well, there's not a whole lot more pressure we can put on the top leadership of Iraq, since our public pronouncements have made clear that Saddam, his kids, and presumably most of the rest of the top echelon of Iraqi leadership is going to be jailed or executed when this is all done. I guess specific generals may have an incentive to treat US POWs better, since the issue will likely come up when the US takes over Iraq in another month or two. I think the usual inducement to treating POWs you hold properly is that you want your soldiers who've been taken prisoner to be treated properly. (There's also world opinion, which we care about a lot more than Iraq does.) I'm not sure how important the Iraqi government considers our treatment of their captured soldiers, though, and we're not going to shoot them all even if the Iraqis do that to our captured soldiers. Regards Sarath. --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Missile -launchers in iraq
hi, on the first or second day of the war-iraqi missiles hit kuwait-4 to 5 of them. After that there is no word of any more strikes in kuwait or else where.What is Iraq waiting for? Regards Sarath. __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
Re: Trials for those undermining the war effort
Declan writes: Interesting, but mostly insanely wrong. Written by someone who is a hardcore leftist, it seems, and heavily slanted. I know the folks at FCF, and they're not mass murderers, racists, xenophobes, or guilty of the other allegations the author makes. Hmmm. I read through the text at the specified URL, and got the distinct impression that the FCF was not being accused of being mass murderers, racists, or xenophobes, but rather of supporting and having links to various political figures to which that description might apply. Are there specific facts on that Web page that you believe to be in error? -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
Re: CDR: Re: COWed news networks not showing Baghdad market dead
James A. Donald wrote: Baathism is not Islamic government, though Saddam, Bush, and Bin Laden are all trying to obscure the fact -- Baathism is a western ideology -- a mixture of communism and Nazism. It's interesting that the US is waging war against one of the most secular nations in the Middle East, with a Coalition of Willing allies many of whom still stone people to death for heresy. American ReportWhores are constantly moaning over how Saddam isn't really religious, and only invokes the symbols of religion to communicate with his people, as if this were a bad thing. One might wonder if the Neocon supporters of the Bush/Sharon plan for regional domination have more in common with those who stone heretics than with those who advocate separation of church and state. There's an interesting article in the New York Times (l/p=cpunx/cpunx) in which we are treated to the smug remarks of a couple of US snipers who ride on top of armored vehicles, and pick off anyone who appears to be a threat as the US makes its way to Baghdad, in pursuit of its illegal war of aggression that the world seems powerless to stop. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/29/international/worldspecial/29HALT.html Let me quote a few of their comments, as it gives new meaning to the term World Arrogance, and illustrates why we should Support Our Troops(tm) only if they are on their way to the gallows via an international tribunal, along with their Commander in Chief. - ... They said Iraqi fighters had often mixed in with civilians from nearby villages, jumping out of houses and cars to shoot at them, and then often running away. The marines said they had little trouble dispatching their foes, most of whom they characterized as ill trained and cowardly. We had a great day, Sergeant Schrumpf said. We killed a lot of people. ... But more than once, Sergeant Schrumpf said, he faced a different choice: one Iraqi soldier standing among two or three civilians. He recalled one such incident, in which he and other men in his unit opened fire. He recalled watching one of the women standing near the Iraqi soldier go down. I'm sorry, the sergeant said. But the chick was in the way. ... -- Eric Michael Cordian 0+ O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law
RE: U.S. Drops 'E-Bomb' On Iraqi TV
helo, --- John Kelsey [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Be fair about this. We own the skies above Baghdad, bit too much, but it's not like we're targeting civilian areas. If we were, the images from Baghdad would be very different; not just one market with a bomb crater, and one hospital flooded with injured and dead people, but every building reduced to smoldering ruins, and dead people so thick on the ground you couldn't walk across it. Except for 'smart bombs' which has an accuracy 95% and the only bombings shown on TV-what about the rest.Even the patriot missles has a success hit rate of 1 out of 3.Is true that iraqi's are putting anti air craft and other light arms over civilian buildings-that should be the reason they got hit. How ever I wonder if the report of an Apache helicopter being shot down by a farmer with his rifle-the chopper was certainly downed but I find it hard to beleive that a bullet brought it down. The images shown at the begining of the war showing iraqi soldiers surrending and walking up with their hands behind their head might have cost US dear again. Iraqi tv then showed a iraqi general with a large rifle in his hand saying to iraqi tv-what do you think when I have this (rifle) in my hand,i wont die without killing two of them. After the war started around 3 civilians have joined the war as small unorganised groups. If the war drags to mid april the US troops wont stand the intense heat,i mean its going to hard for them. I think the usual inducement to treating POWs you hold properly is that you want your soldiers who've been taken prisoner to be treated properly. (There's also world opinion, which we care about a lot more than Iraq does.) I wont beleive that any more-the US doesn't listen any more to the world,its gone blind and deaf. Suspected al-queda/taliban prisoners were put in 6*8 meter cages in the open sun and badly beaten up-I remember seeing that on tv.They weren't given pow status either.May be they didn't look like humans :) I'm not sure how important the Iraqi government considers our treatment of their captured soldiers, though, and we're not going to shoot them all even if the Iraqis do that to our captured soldiers. hopefully they are treated well as its no fault of theirs that they are dragged into this war with iraq. Regards Sarath. --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Platinum - Watch CBS' NCAA March Madness, live on your desktop! http://platinum.yahoo.com
Re: Things are looking better all the time
At 02:06 AM 3/28/03 -0800, Sarad AV wrote: hi, That cannot possibly even happen-by mistake.Al-jazeera is qatar based.They might hit a chinese embassy but not AL-Jazeera. I believe we hit the Al Jazeera office in Afghanistan pretty early in our bombing campaign there. (I read an archived BBC story about it when I was looking for the al-jazeera in english website.) This is a bit of a pattern; we hit television stations in Kosovo and Serbia during our campaign there, as well. So we're unlikely to bomb their main office, but hostile media offices (and the embassies of countries that p*ss us off) do seem to come to a bad end when they're in bombing zones. 1500 turkish troops moved into north iraq-US cannot immediately do any thing about it since flying over Turkish air space is important for them. The tragedy for the Kurds is that they're just not important enough to get the kind of backing they'd need to establish their own state, given the large set of countries that this would offend. So, once again, I expect that we'll leave them hanging when they're done being useful. This is lousy, though not any different than most countries' management of foreign affairs. What was that famous quote from Austria-Hungary? Something like We will astonish the world with our ingratitude. ... Sarath. --John Kelsey, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
