The modern fascism
I think I've read this before, but... I'm copying a post verbatim, but somehow I don't think the author would mind.
[...]
One side of the Atlantic implements an oppressive law, tax, or spy on your own citizens regime, and then the other side of the Atlantic says, see they did it and it was good so we shall do it too and we can do it even better. Repeat over and over and.... BAMMMM ..... you are living in Fascist world.
Both sides of the Atlantic are also passing these same obscene laws because the same multinationals are lobbying, bribing and pressuring politicians the world over to legislate their profitability.
At this point I mostly debate if I lived in a world dominated by Fascist governments or governments which are for all intents and purposes organized crime syndicates, I think a little of both. They are taking vast sums from ordinary people and transferring it to their rich friends and themselves. It boggles the mind that working people in the U.S. are taxed at least 25% income tax and 12.5% payroll taxes(counting the employer half) for 37.5% at a minimum. Billionaire hedge fund operators are taxed at 15%. These same hedge funds manager tax their own clients more than that, over 20% (2% management fees and 20% of profits).
I was watching Frontline on PBS last night on Brookseley Born [wikipedia.org]. A great story. During the Clinton administration she tried to use the authority she had at the obscure Commodities Futures Trading Commission to regulate derivatives. If she had succeeded she might well have prevented at least the AIG part of the recent financial crisis. Instead she was crushed by Alan Greenspan, Phil Graham, Bob Rubin and Larry Summers. Long Term Capital Management collapsed during this period trading derivatives, nearly sparking a major panic, proving Born right and they continued to crush her.
Alan Greenspan supposedly told Born that she was NOT suppose to pursue fraud in derivatives or commodities though it was explicitly in her agencies charter to do just that.
Bob Rubin went on to help lead Citigroup in to complete ruin and billions of tax payer bailouts.
Phil Graham's wife was on the board at Enron, he went to UBS where his Swiss bank ran tax shelters for thousands of wealthy Americans, and was a leading player in the collapse during which he called us all a bunch of whiners.
Larry Summers is now Obama's senior economic adviser.
All four of these people should be run out of every government position, boardroom or any other position of authority because they are a delightful mix of stupid and criminal. Its especially obscene for Larry Summers to be calling the shots on financial matters in the Obama administration. Paul Volcker might actually fix the bankster problem but he has been completely shut out by Summers and Geitner.
UK – The police state
(BTW, I haven't written before because I'm lazy. Such is life.)
BBC:
Action to prevent an "illegal rave" in Devon last week has been defended by police, despite claims the event was merely an organised birthday barbecue.
[...]
Andrew Poole, who was celebrating his 30th birthday, claimed police riot vans turned up before any music was played.
But police said it had been advertised on the internet as an all-night party.
Mr Poole, a coach driver from Sowton, said 15 family and friends had come to the event, where they were watched by a police helicopter for about 15 minutes.
[...]
"The decision to close down a rave or illegal music festival is not taken lightly," a police spokeswoman said.
Yeah, I guess they just got bored of chasing witches terrorists, so they had to justify their paycheck. I wouldn't take my uselessness lightly either. Sure, unlicensed raves are actually illegal in the UK for a while, but that's hardly something the police should give a fuck about.
Then, there's also this, which I hadn't watched yet. Very very appaling.
The harassment and exclusion of legal observers, the violent arrest of women refusing to be searched, the aggressive interrogation of local residents, the threatening of journalists with arrest for doing their job, the confiscation of 100s of items such as childrens' costumes and crayons, attempted dawn raids on the camp, the use of batons and CS gas against peaceful protesters, and the forced search of 1000s of people and the adding of their personal data to a secret database. This type of political policing has to stop, and the right to legitimate protest re-established.
I will definitely be avoiding the UK the same way as I'll be avoiding Iran.
The new fascism
Hell, I'm just going to copy this from demachina. He goes from state interventionism to fascism ending with a description of how the fathers of this economic crisis are using the crisis to drive more profits to their former companies.
"Brown's picked up a short-term lift on account of how he does look good wearing a dark tie and a solemn expression whilst appearing to save the world from economic catastrophe."
He may or may not have saved the world from "economic catastrophe", that remains to be seen, but he most definitely did rush the world deeper in to state capitalism over night and without much beyond a whimper of dissent. State capitalism is also known as Fascism. Fascism and police states go hand in hand. The two events, the government seizing control of the financial system, and introducing ever greater surveillance are complimentary parts of the same agenda. All of the surveillance measures insures an orderly society, greater productivity, quells disruptive unrest and helps to enhance profitability. Seizing control of the financial system insures an orderly society, greater productivity, quells disruptive unrest and helps to enhance profitability.
Fascism became a dirty world during World War II but its making a comeback with a vengeance today, though most people are just afraid to call a spade a spade, making it so much easier for it to return to acendency since everyone is afraid to says its name, kind of like Voldemort in Harry Potter. It makes people feel better if they tell themselves they still live in free market Democracies. Just as 9/11 and the London and Madrid bombings were used to justify the police state, the financial crisis was used by ruthless politicians to justify a plunge in to state capitalism. Its kind of sad so much was expended in World War II to stop the tide of Fascism for it to just return through the back door 60 years later.
Its especially disturbing how its playing in the U.S. Goldman Sachs Trading Company and its "investment trusts", Shenandoah and Blue Ridge, were one of the original exercises in leverage in the U.S. financial system. Goldman Sachs created this highly leveraged scheme in 1928 during a bubble, right before the great crash. They sold them for $104 dollars a share, and they ended around a $1 a share. They were after that widely reviled to as a Ponzi Scheme shrouded in the legitimacy of Wall Street. Its somewhat ironic that with Goldman Sachs checkered history its CEO, Henry Paulson, was the point man in 2004 in successfully lobbying the SEC to lift leverage limits on the big Wall Street investment banks from 12-1 to 40-1 so they could once again create highly leveraged, Wall Street backed, Ponzi schemes. All the investment banks promptly ran their leverage up to 30-1 or more. It insured the investment banks would collapse at the slightest down turn. Leverage is hugely profitable in an up market because of the multiplier. But it works both ways and the slightest down turn, wipes out the leveraged company's capital reserves in a heart beat as it just did. It was entirely predictable leaving you to wonder either how could they be so incompetent, so ignorant of their own corprate history or what was the ulterior motive.
The crashing of the Ponzi scheme wasn't a problem since Henry Paulson had since become Treasure Secretary, and under the guise of a program that was supposed to buy distressed mortgage backed securities, and unfreeze the credit markets, instead he is handing the entire $250 billion first installment to Goldman Sachs and the rest of the over leveraged banks to undo a problem he while the whole world cheers the largest bank robbery in history. Are the banks going to loan out the money to unfreeze the credit markets... no. Are they going to help distressed home owners with it.... no. Does it get distressed assets off their books.... no. They are going to put it in their vaults to replace the capital that was wiped out due to excessive leverage and for them to draw their leverage back down to something like 15-1, where it was before Paulson's little scheme. He is using a quarter trillion in tax payer money to undo the damage he himself inflicted on the financial system. Only in America and only on Wall Street could a crime of this magnitude be perpetrated to the cheers of the press and policians, and with little more than a whimper from the people.
Another one of these high crimes originates in Robert Rubin another former Goldman Sachs leader. Rubin along with Greenspan championed complete deregulation of credit default swaps, a financial innovation Warren Buffet calls a financial "weapon of mass destruction". Swaps are basically insurance policies companies write to each other to promise to pay off debt if a company goes bankrupt, for which they get a fee, and which allows the buyer to increase their leverage. Probably an OK idea excepting since there is no regulation so there need be no reserves to back the insurance policy. Swaps quickly became another Ponzi schemes which generated huge profits and bonuses for the executives writing the swaps though they had no intent or ability to ever pay them off. They just had to hope no one ever defaulted on their debt and they could keep collecting their fees and putting them in their bonus checks. This scheme apparently reached a new height at AIG. There a small division of 300 people in a company of 100,000 employees raked in 3 billion in bonuses writing swaps, and brought down AIG when Lehman did in fact default on its debt. Once again Paulson just stepped in and pumped $120 billion and counting in to AIG to bail them out from a financial innovation that was destined to cause a collapse. A 1994 congressional budget office analysis of them said exactly that. Its quite likely that Paulson will have to pump tens of billions more in to AIG to pay off all the swaps that are coming due to keep it afloat.
OMG, the terrorrists use mobile phones!
Everyone who buys a mobile telephone will be forced to register their identity on a national database under government plans to extend massively the powers of state surveillance.
Phone buyers would have to present a passport or other official form of identification at the point of purchase.
How nice. It completly stops criminals. Unless they steal mobile phones or something.
The UK is a shining example of data getting lost.
How long before a terrorist hacker steals the info and spoofs a phonecall to a bomb that is detonated via cellphone?
Suddenly the possibilities of being wrongly implemented in a terrorist plot is so much more possible.
This is a bad idea all around.
I am glad that I do not live in the US or the UK - if my country implements this kind of policy I would start browsing using the TOR network, set up my own mailserver to do direct relay and eventually fall back on using older means of communication - snail mail and pretty much nothing else.
Who is it that said "As soon as we change our way of living the terrorists have won"?
I tell you now - terrorists are holding the citizens of the US and the UK captive via proxy, and the proxy is ironically the very governments they are battling.
They win on all fronts at this moment.
What happens when thugs search your luggage?
What Is TSA?
We are the Transportation Security Administration, formed immediately following the tragedies of Sept. 11. Our agency is a component of the Department of Homeland Security and is responsible for security of the nation's transportation systems.
It is a company made of very friendly people. They help you when you have to much nice things when you travel by taking them away.
As a screener at Newark Liberty International Airport, Pythias Brown was supposed to keep deadly objects off airplanes. But for the past year, authorities allege, Brown has been swiping electronic equipment from luggage of the passengers he was supposed to protect.
A laptop here, a cell phone there. Within months, he had snatched more than 100 items, authorities say.
But this summer, Brown got too ambitious for his own good, allegedly stealing a $47,900 camera from an HBO crew and a camcorder from a CNN employee, authorities said.
Fuck with regular people is ok (ask Paulson), fucking rich people is not ok.
Uselding said the TSA worked closely with homeland security investigators to bring the charges against Brown. She also said that his crimes were rare and that less than 300 TSA employees have been terminated for theft.
"The actions of a few individuals in no way reflect on the outstanding job our more than 43,000 security officers do every day to ensure the security of the traveling public," she said.
Yeah, that makes it so unlikely to happen... (For those outside of the US, I have learned that Americans travel a lot, especially by plain.)
But, if you travel with a gun...
Well, no they can't [search your luggage away from you,] at least when traveling with a firearm. You get to have real locks, the bag(s) are inspected in front of you, and you lock 'em. They also can't label it as having a firearm in it, in plain English or in a code/symbol/special tag, other than the bag has been cleared.
And any firearm will do. For under $100, you can get the action (serial numbered part, the part BATFE says is the gun) for a single shot shotgun - you don't need to keep the stock, barrel, etc. attached. You can put it in a camera sized case, locked, and put that in your regular luggage, also locked with a proper lock. Check in, tell them you need to declare a firearm (helps to have your airlines policies printed out, as well as the FAA and BATFE regs), get it checked, adn life is good.
Best part is getting to watch the look on the luggage guys face if your stuff doesn't show up or has been opened. Amazing what the phrase "Will you call the BATFE, or do I need to?" will do.
Of course, this doesn't help with international travel, but for domestic it works like a champ.
The foxes are guarding the henhouse
Here is the quote of the day:
...we and other global firms have, for many years, urged the SEC to reform its net capital rule to allow for more efficient use of capital. This is the single most important factor in driving significant parts of our business offshore, so that our firms can remain competitive with our foreign competitors risk-based capital standards must become the norm. The SEC has made it clear that risk-based capital rules can be implemented only when the Commission is confident that firms employing value-at-risk models have robust credit and risk management policies in place.
Translated into English, this testimony from back in 2000 was from someone asking that major brokerage firms be permitted to increase leverage subject to oversight of their wondrous mathematical risk models. The request was agreed to four years later, in 2004, and it helped lead to the meltdown in independent brokers this year.The speaker? Some guy named Henry Paulson, the then-CEO of Goldman Sachs. I wonder what happened to him.
ISO is worth nothing
I don't know why I've waited to post this. For several months, it has been known that Microsoft has bribed several companies, country officials of several nations in order to push their idea of standard through the whole world.
There is an actual open standard on office-type documents (no royalties needed, full specs) that is implemented by at least one program and being implement by several others, which stops everyone from having to use the same software for eternity to access those documents. The moment this started becoming a reality, several countries were going to demand the use of programs that implemented a standard for office documents.
Microsoft got scared. Very scared. Office was treatened, and with it also a lot of the necessity of using Window. So they started lobying and bribing (legally, except as concerns to undue influence of the market, which is a subjective matter even to courts). ISO saw a lot of millions and disregarded their own process, and also got invaded by a ton of countries that stagnate it because they don't care to vote on anything else.
Bank Security
Not too long ago, my Halifax ATM card got deactivated because I misentered the PIN number three times in a row. So, the next day, I went into the main bank branch to get some cash from a teller.
I headed to the counter with my card in hand and some ID in my pocket. I explained the situation and asked to withdraw a few hundred pounds to carry me over until a new PIN number arrived. After taking my ATM card, she handed me a slip and asked me to sign. I did that, and she then counted out the money and gave it to me. No questions asked.
Let's count the WTF's:
- (Obvious) Me monging up my PIN three times
- The teller did not ask for ID, aside from the defunct card
- She did not compare the signature to anything, as I never signed the back of my ATM card
- I didn't actually use a signature, instead drawing a big circle with a cross through it
- She did not notice that the card wasn't signed, nor that my "signature" looked like the X-Men symbol
- I was given the cash with no security questions whatsoever
As my mind was boggling at these things, she said "I noticed that you didn't respond to our letter about changing your account to a higher rate. Would you like to speak to my co-worker about that?".
I remembered the letter from a few months ago, and figured I might as well convert the account then and there. So, I went to a tiny office with her co-worker, who then lackadaisically explained why my current account sucked and how the higher rate one was miles better. He said this all while blankly staring into space; I looked over my shoulder to see if he was just reading the pitch off a cue sheet stuck to the wall. The higher rate account was a better deal, so I agreed to switch. And this is where the WTFs start with him.
The banker tapped my account number from my ATM card in, and then printed out a sheet that summarized my details: name, DOB, address, phone numbers, etc. He slid it across the table and asked me to double check that the details were correct. At this point, I could have been any mugger off the street who just withdrew several hundred pounds and had the full details of whoever I mugged. I'm fairly sure I could have closed the account and withdrawn the funds in full, without any security challenges.
Ironically, two days later I get a letter from Halifax telling me that I should stop using their phone banking service and switch to their ultra secure online service.
At least the teller was bright and cheerful whilst giving me the cash.
Jeremy Alison in 2005 about EU vs MS
This is old, so I'm just writing this to document this.
What the EU means by this is they want to see real competitors to Active Directory. Currently if you want to put your Windows clients and server into a "single-sign-on" environment (and let's face it, who wouldn't), your only real choice is Microsoft Active Directory. Why is this ? Well, the main obstacle is that Windows client won't log on in "Domain" mode without it, and Windows servers use information held in Active Directory to make authorization decisions for Windows clients. Enough of the protocols that the Windows clients and servers use to do this are not documented by Microsoft to make creating an inter-operable server a risky business for any commercial entity. Few have tried; Sun, with their "PC-Netlink" product was cut off from access to the Windows 2000 source code when their supplier AT&T abruptly had their contract to port the Windows source code terminated by Microsoft (thus instigating the EU case). Samba, as Free Software, is one of the few successes in this area. Sometimes not depending on a revenue stream is a distinct advantage !
The EU decision was designed to force Microsoft to unravel its undocumented web of protocol interdependence and allow third parties to create true alternative to Active Directory. On paper it looks perfect – all Server-to-server protocols must be documented, even down to the Active Directory replication methods. But Microsoft has learned much from the US Dept. of Justice settlement about sullen compliance with the letter of a court order, whilst subverting the spirit of it. Firstly, how to lock out Free Software ? This is easy to do; just require per-copy royalties on any product created from the specifications. In one simple stroke this eliminates their major competition. Now, how to make this as unattractive as possible to prohibit any commercial entities from making use of this ? Simple, limit the time allowed to use the information released to something rather less than the commercial life of a product, say five years and force any licensee to agree to acknowledge any existing Microsoft patents on the specifications. This has been so successful in the USA that a grand total of fourteen companies have signed up to the Microsoft Communication Protocol Licensing Program (MCPP); a grand success ! For Microsoft that is, not the US Dept. of Justice. None of these licensees dares to take on Active Directory. Few even have any competing products at all.
The one fading hope is that any licensing terms for the released information must be agreed to by the EU legal team. The Samba Team, via the Free Software Foundation Europe, is making our concerns known to them. However afore-mentioned devil is that the judge took the example of the USA MCPP licensing as his model for how Microsoft might be able to structure the European agreement. This is a hole big enough to drive Governor Schwarzenegger's personal fleet of Humvees through, and I fully expect Microsoft to take advantage of it.
It's been a grand ride, and I've learned much about courtroom drama, but in the long run it doesn't look like the EU case will have much effect on the Microsoft monopoly. No, it's still down to "we the people" to create our own Free Software alternatives; but then again, it always was.
I didn't blog about the end result at the time. What was it? A slap in the wrist (600 million $ is nothing to them) and having to supply documentation in a completly closed way that's unusable to their real competition, Samba. Big business wins again. Not even a fine for delaying.
What happens to Facebook?
Huh, the internet user's current favorite child has some interesing issues and connections...