For those of you pronosticators who want to get in on the ground floor of the Psychic Terror Network (a.k.a. the Policy Analysis Market), here’s the home of dot-com Homeland Security. Its homepage is appropriately reminiscent of the Heaven’s Gate Cult website, another modern pseudo-religion (their story here).
The Policy Analysis Market is cosponored by DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects, and a spin-off of The economist magazine, confirming my suspicion that this is the cult of the capitalists at work. It’s Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations here: there’s a “guiding hand” to completely unfettered markets that allows them to meet people’s needs better than individual intelligence ever could. Forget the CIA, we’ll use internet surfers! They’ll want to make money and they can do our intelligence gathering for us better than those desk jockeys in Langley! This Psychic Terror Stock exchange is the perfect marriage of Nineties dot-com can-do, eighties market-uber-alles and Seventeen-Seventies God-guides-the-rich Calvinism.
Trader accounts open in two days so get ready to join the Pyschic Terror Network yourself!
UPDATe: We’re too late. Pentagon canceling Pyschic Terror Network under the weight of ridicule they’ve received to the idea. Maybe the Pentagon should hire Nancy Reagan’s astrologer for their terror alerts instead (actually they should hire her great webmaster, whose great design sure beats that of the Heaven’s Gate dropout they used).
Quaker Ranter
A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley
Betting on Terror
July 29, 2003
The news sites are all reporting a Pentagon plan to bet on future terrorist activity (BBC). It’s reported as a stock market-style system in which sucessful predictions by investors would win them money.
Someone at the Pentagon has read a little too many books about the infinite wisdom of the free market. There are those who have a religious faith in the power of unfettered capitalism, who posit it as a kind of all-knowing, self-correcting God. With the input of enough self-interested actors, the truth can be discerned. I’d argue that stock markets are more like blogs (the highly-linked New York Times version of the article), with everyone rushing to make the same links (Associated Press).
The truth of the matter is that recent intelligence lapses have been the result of political meddling in the collection and analytical processes. When the boss wants a certain result (proof of weapons in Iraq, proof of Al Qaeda links), then the group-think pressure to conform will warp the sifting process. A stock market-style system for predicting terror would be about as accurate as a poll of CNN and Fox News watchers – it will tell you what everyone thinks but it probably won’t tell you the truth.
Friends Media Project
July 28, 2003
Lesson on Internet-time scoops
July 28, 2003
Memo to NYTimes: Buena ain’t your region
July 25, 2003
A nine year old in Buena went joyriding in a bright yellow-school bus. Strange enough as that is, what’s even stranger is that the New York Times covered it as a “local” story.
The only thing that surprises me about the incident is that the hijacker isn’t one of my very own next-door neighbor kids (formally known as “the Delinquents”). Sure, why not steal the bus and drive to your friends house?
“He wanted us to all get on,” said Millie, 13, who lives just up the block from the boy. “He let go of the wheel, and was beeping and waving at us. He could have killed somebody.”
No, what’s really bizarre is that this article appears in the New York Times, who placed it in their “New York Region” section. Since when is Buena the New York region? It’s easily a 2 – 1/2 hour drive from Times Square, it’s below the Mason-Dixon line for goodness sake (or to be technically correct, below it’s meridian since the line wasn’t drawn through Jersey). They helpfully tell us that it’s “pronounced BYOO-na” but I would have loved listening in on the phone when the reporter called down for “Bu-EN‑a” as she sure must have. Two weeks ago the Times put the Oaklyn, NJ would-be mass murders in the “New York Region” section too. Do we need to buy a couple of maps for the erstwhile Old Gray Lady? South Jersey just ain’t your region, a fact for which every native I’ve ever met is very happy. Every driver on the roads around Buena were surely muttering “go home shoobie” when your New York plates drove by.
UPDATE: Oh no, even bloggers are taking the Times’ cue that Buena belongs in NYC News!
Feds targeting activists at airports
July 25, 2003
There is now some hard evidence in the charges that the federal agency overseeing airlines has compiled a list that targets and harrasses activists. A Freedom of Information Act request has not turned up the names or who they represent but has discovered that the list itself is 88 pages long.
There have been a number of activists who have experience extra scrutiny and special searches, especially in the San Francisco and Oakland airports. The FOIA case, filed by the Northern California ACLU, is the first to start shedding light on the practice. Dissent is always challenged as unpatriotic in times of war and scandal. Contrary to the opinions of the many cranks who write in to Nonviolence.org, it’s not the military who has ever protected our right to free speech – it’s groups like the ACLU fighting to bring harassment to public attention.
Constituting Mediocrity: the new National Constitution Center
July 25, 2003
It’s obvious that the Center is just a holding pen for big bus trips. It’s not as much a museum or national shrine as it is a highway rest stop. On your left’s the super-sized cafeteria, on your right the store for crappy hats and t‑shirts. And for this we rip up Philadelphia?
Blunt assertions, no evidence, no investigation
July 21, 2003
The Washington Post has an article about the Bush White House’s common practice of making unattributed statements about Iraq without getting CIA feedback. Some of the whoppers include:
Sept 26: Iraq “could launch a biological or chemical attack 45 minutes after the order is given.“Sept 28: “there are al Qaeda terrorists inside Iraq”
Oct 7: “Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al Qaeda.”
All of these claims were strongly disputed by intelligence experts at the time and only the most die-heart Adminstration-booster would want to claim now that any of them are true.
The 45 minute claim has gotten a thorough rebuking in the U.K.
This is the second time in as many weeks where a Bush quote has suddenly taken me back to the Reagan years. That 45 minute claim just echos in my head of Reagan’s “the Sandinistas are just two days drive from Harlingen, Texas.” They both have that “oh my god, the barbarians are at the door” urgency. Both also posit an arch-enemy that turned out to be a paper tiger when all the propaganda was peeled back. (For the young’ins out there, Reagan responded to the two-drive fear by mining Nicaragua’s harbors, an act which was later declared illegal by the World Court).