Scott Granneman

An empire cannot be created by a republic

history, law, politics / /

From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):

Historians and pundits who leap aboard the bandwagon of American Empire have forgotten a little too quickly that for an empire to be born, a republic has first to die. In the longer run no country can expect to behave imperially – brutally, contemptuously, illegally – abroad while preserving republican values at home. For it is a mistake to suppose that institutions alone will save a republic from the abuses of power to which empire inevitably leads. It is not institutions that make or break republics, it is men. And in the United States today, the men (and women) of the country’s political class have failed. Congress appears helpless to impede the concentration of power in the executive branch; indeed, with few exceptions it has contributed actively and even enthusiastically to the process.

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Illegality practices by the US in the “War on Terror”

history, law, politics / /

From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):

The unrepublican veneration of our presidential “leader” has made it uniquely difficult for Americans to see their country’s behavior as others see it. The latest report from Amnesty International – which says nothing that the rest of the world doesn’t already know or believe but which has been denied and ridiculed by President Bush – is a case in point. The United States “renders” (i.e., kidnaps and hands over) targeted suspects to third-party states for interrogation and torture beyond the reach of US law and the press. The countries to whom we outsource this task include Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria (!), Pakistan – and Uzbekistan. Where outsourcing is impractical, we import qualified interrogators from abroad: in September 2002 a visiting Chinese “delegation” was invited to participate in the “interrogation” of ethnic Uighur detainees held at Guantánamo.

At the US’s own interrogation centers and prisons in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantánamo Bay, at least twenty-seven “suspects” have been killed in custody. This number does not include extrajudicial, extraterritorial “targeted assassinations”: a practice inaugurated by Benito Mussolini with the murder of the Rosselli brothers in Normandy in 1937, pursued with vigor by Israel, and now adopted by the Bush administration. The Amnesty report lists sixty alleged incarceration and interrogation practices routinely employed at US detention centers, Guantánamo in particular. These include immersion in cold water to simulate drowning, forced shaving of facial and body hair, electric shocks to body parts, humiliation (e.g., being urinated upon), sex-ual taunting, the mocking of religious belief, suspension from shackles, physical exertion to the point of exhaus-tion (e.g., rock-carrying), and mock execution.

Any and all of these practices will be familiar to students of Eastern Europe in the Fifties or Latin America in the Seventies and Eighties – including the reported presence of “medical personnel.” But American interrogators have also innovated. One technique has been forcibly to wrap suspects – and their Korans – in Israeli flags: a generous gesture to our only unconditional ally, but calculated to ensure that a new generation of Muslims worldwide will identify the two countries as one and hate them equally.

All of these practices – and many, many others routinely employed at Guantánamo, at Kandahar and Bagram in Afghanistan, at al-Qaim, Abu Ghraib, and elsewhere in Iraq – are in breach of the Geneva Conventions and the UN Convention against Torture, to both of which the US is a signatory

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America, a militarized society

history, law, politics / /

From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):

[Andrew] Bacevich is a graduate of West Point, a Vietnam veteran, and a conservative Catholic who now directs the study of international relations at Boston University. He has thus earned the right to a hearing even in circles typically immune to criticism. What he writes should give them pause. His argument is complex, resting on a close account of changes in the US military since Vietnam, on the militarization of strategic political thinking, and on the role of the military in American culture. But his conclusion is clear. The United States, he writes, is becoming not just a militarized state but a military society: a country where armed power is the measure of national greatness, and war, or planning for war, is the exemplary (and only) common project.

Why does the US Department of Defense currently maintain 725 official US military bases outside the country and 969 at home (not to mention numerous secret bases)? Why does the US spend more on “defense” than all the rest of the world put together? After all, it has no present or likely enemies of the kind who could be intimidated or defeated by “star wars” missile defense or bunker-busting “nukes.” And yet this country is obsessed with war: rumors of war, images of war, “preemptive” war, “preventive” war, “surgical” war, “prophylactic” war, “permanent” war. As President Bush explained at a news conference on April 13, 2004, “This country must go on the offense and stay on the offense.”

Among democracies, only in America do soldiers and other uniformed servicemen figure ubiquitously in political photo ops and popular movies. Only in America do civilians eagerly buy expensive military service vehicles for suburban shopping runs. In a country no longer supreme in most other fields of human endeavor, war and warriors have become the last, enduring symbols of American dominance and the American way of life. “In war, it seemed,” writes Bacevich, “lay America’s true comparative advantage.” …

For Bacevich’s deepest concern lies closer to home. In a militarized society the range of acceptable opinion inevitably shrinks. Opposition to the “commander in chief” is swiftly characterized as lèse-majesté; criticism becomes betrayal. No nation, as Madison wrote in 1795 and Bacevich recalls approvingly, can “preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”[12] “Full-spectrum dominance” begins as a Pentagon cliché and ends as an executive project.

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International Law in the modern world

history, law, politics / /

From Tony Judt’s “The New World Order” (The New York Review of Books: 14 July 2005):

Things go wrong, and not just in Iraq. International law – like the UN itself – was conceived in a world of sovereign states, a world where wars broke out between countries, peace was duly brokered among states, and a major concern of the post–World War II settlement was to guarantee the inviolability of borders and sovereignty. Today’s wars typically happen within states. The distinctions between peace-making and peacekeeping – between intervention, assistance, and coercion – are unclear, as are the rights of the conflicting parties and the circumstances under which foreign agencies may resort to force. In this confusing new world, well-meaning Western diplomats and observers have sometimes proven unable to distinguish between warring states – operating under conventional diplomatic norms – and locally powerful criminal tyrants, such as the leaders of Sudan. Negotiation with the latter all too often amounts to collaboration and even complicity.

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Wikipedia defines fascism

history, politics / /

From Wikipedia’s “Fascism” (5 July 2006):

Fascism is a radical totalitarian political philosophy that combines elements of corporatism, authoritarianism, extreme nationalism, militarism, anti-rationalism, anti-anarchism, anti-communism and anti-liberalism. …

A recent definition that has attracted much favorable comment is that by Robert O. Paxton:

“Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim-hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.” (Anatomy of Fascism, p 218)

…

Fascism is associated by many scholars with one or more of the following characteristics: a very high degree of nationalism, economic corporatism, a powerful, dictatorial leader who portrays the nation, state or collective as superior to the individuals or groups composing it.

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Who was saved in the storming of the Bastille?

history / /

From Wikipedia’s “French Revolution” (5 July 2006):

On July 14, 1789, after hours of combat, the insurgents seized the Bastille prison, killing the governor, Marquis Bernard de Launay, and several of his guards. Although the Parisians released only seven prisoners; four forgers, two lunatics, and a sexual offender, the Bastille served as a potent symbol of everything hated under the ancien régime.

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Napoleon’s losses in the invasion of Russia

history / /

From Wikipedia’s “Napoleon I of France” (5 July 2006):

The French suffered greatly in the course of a ruinous retreat; the Army had begun as over 650,000 frontline troops, but in the end fewer than 40,000 crossed the Berezina River (November 1812) to escape. In total French losses in the campaign were 570,000 against about 400,000 Russian casualties and several hundred thousand civilian deaths.

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Fouche’s blackmail of Napoleon

history, politics / /

From Napoleonic Literature’s “The Court and Camp of Buonaparte: The Ministers: Fouche“:

[Fouche,] who was so profoundly versed in the state of parties, — who was obeyed by one, courted by another, and feared by all; who, by means of his countless agents, could at any time congregate the scattered elements of resistance to the authority of government, was too formidable to be allowed to continue for ever in so dangerous a post. To this we may add that Buonaparte well knew the channel through which the knowledge of his amours passed to Josephine. Of the extent to which the head of the state was subjected to this galling system of espionage, Fouché furnishes us with an amusing proof:–

One day Buonaparte observed that, considering my acknowledged ability, he was astonished I did not perform my functions better, — that there were several things of which I was ignorant. ‘Yes,’ replied I, ‘there certainly are things of which I was ignorant, but which I now know well enough. For instance, a little man muffled up in a grey cloak, and accompanied by a single servant, often steals out on a dark evening from a secret door of the Tuileries, enters a closed carriage, and drives off to Signora G—-. This little man is yourself; and yet this fanciful songstress jilts you continually out of love for Rode the fiddler.’ The Consul answered not a word: he turned his back, rung, and I immediately withdrew.” — Memoires, tom. i. p. 233.

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Fouche proud of terror, expanded

history, language & literature, politics / /

From Napoleonic Literature’s “The Court and Camp of Buonaparte: The Ministers: Fouche“:

But whatever might be the merit of his services at Nantes, it was far eclipsed by those he had soon afterwards the happiness to perform at Lyons. On his arrival there with Collot d’Herbois, he announced to the terrified citizens the reward they were to expect for having dared to resist the majesty of the people, and especially for having put to death some revolutionary agents. “The representatives of the people will be impassive in the execution of their mission. They have been intrusted with the thunderbolt of public vengeance, which they will not cease to hurl until the public enemies are crushed. They will have the courage to march over countless tombs of the conspirators, to traverse boundless ruins, that they may arrive at the happiness of nations,–at the regeneration of the world!” He wrote in like terms to his employers at Paris: “Nothing can disarm our severity: indulgence, we must say, is a dangerous weakness. We never cease to strike the enemies of the people; we annihilate them in a manner at once signal, terrible, and prompt. Their bloody corses, thrown into the Rhone, must appear both on the banks and at the mouth of that river, a spectacle of fear, and of the omnipotence of the people! Terror, salutary terror, is here in truth the order of the day; it represses all the efforts of the wicked; it divests crime of all covering and tinsel!“

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Fouche’s daily list for Napoleon

history, language & literature, law, politics / /

From Central Missouri State University’s “Joseph Fouche“:

Fouché established an organization of policing and intelligence gathering that was decades ahead of its time. Napoleon, frequently on military campaigns, depended on Fouché’s information to maintain control over France and his military effectiveness. Six days a week, every week, Fouché sent secret reports to Napoleon. The information represented an incredible array of topics:

1. Palace gossip.

2. Audience reaction to a new play.

3. Stock market prices.

4. Desertions from the army.

5. Arrests of foreign agents.

6. Results of interrogations.

7. News of crime.

8. Offenses by soldiers.

9. Fires.

10. Rebellion against the Gendarmarie.

11. Intercepted correspondence.

12. Visiting personages.

13. Public reception of news of victories.

14. Shipping news.

15. Indiscretions of Fouché’s enemies.

16. Contractor’s tenders.

17. Agitation against the draft.

18. Suicides.

19. Prison epidemics.

20. Progress of construction.

21. Unemployment figures.

22. Extracts from inter-ministerial correspondence.

23. Persons detained or under special surveillance (Stead, 1983, pp. 41-48).

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Fouche proud of terror

history, language & literature / /

From Central Missouri State University’s “Joseph Fouche“:

As chief police officer of the revolutionary government, Fouché was given the power to impose the government’s policies quickly and mercilessly. He demonstrated his willingness to accomplish this feat when, after the population of Lyons revolted against the government, he personally presided over the mass executions in that unhappy city (Forssell, 1970, pp. 71-78).

As the guillotine blade dropped and the massed canon fire dispatched the condemned by the hundreds, Fouché proudly wrote to Paris of his accomplishments, “Terror, salutary terror is now the order of the day (Schom, 1992, p. 112).”

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Fouche praised with parallelism

history, language & literature / /

From Central Missouri State University’s “Joseph Fouche“:

Such was Fouché’s accomplishment that Chaumette, a Jacobin extremist in the Assembly, publicly praised his efforts:

Citizen Fouché has worked the miracles of which I have been speaking. Old age has been honored; infirmity has been succored; misfortune has been respected; fanaticism has been destroyed; federalism has been annihilated; the production of iron has been activated; suspects have been arrested; exemplary crimes have been punished; grafters have been prosecuted and imprisoned – there you have a summary of the labors of Fouché as representative of the people (Zweig, p. 41).

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Joseph Fouche the atheist

history / /

From Central Missouri State University’s “Joseph Fouche“:

Moreover, Fouché was not content with merely attacking the aristocracy. He orchestrated a campaign of atheistic fervor never before seen in Europe. He abolished clerical celibacy and ordered priests to marry or adopt a child within a month. Churches were pillaged, and priests were forbidden from wearing their robes in public. By his command Christian funeral services were banned and the inscription, “Death is an eternal sleep,” placed over the gates of the cemeteries (Zweig, p. 39).

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My new book – Linux Phrasebook – is out!

personal, tech help, technology / /

I’m really proud to announce that my 3rd book is now out & available for purchase: Linux Phrasebook. My first book – Don’t Click on the Blue E!: Switching to Firefox – was for general readers (really!) who wanted to learn how to move to and use the fantastic Firefox web browser. I included a lot of great information for more technical users as well, but the focus was your average Joe. My second book – Hacking Knoppix – was for the more advanced user who wanted to take advantage of Knoppix, a version of Linux that runs entirely off of a CD. You don’t need to be super-technical to use and enjoy Hacking Knoppix, but the more technical you are, the more you’ll enjoy the book. Linux Phrasebook is all about the Linux command line, and it’s perfect for both Linux newbies and experienced users. In fact, when I was asked to write the book, I responded, “Write it? I can’t wait to buy it!”

The idea behind Linux Phrasebook is to give practical examples of Linux commands and their myriad options, with examples for everything. Too often a Linux user will look up a command in order to discover how it works, and while the command and its many options will be detailed, something vitally important will be left out: examples. That’s where Linux Phrasebook comes in. I cover a huge number of different commands and their options, and for every single one, I give an example of usage and results that makes it clear how to use it.

Here’s the table of contents; in parentheses I’ve included some (just some) of the commands I cover in each chapter:

  1. Things to Know About Your Command Line
  2. The Basics (ls, cd, mkdir, cp, mv, rm)
  3. Learning About Commands (man, info, whereis, apropos)
  4. Building Blocks (;, &&, |, >, >>)
  5. Viewing Files (cat, less, head, tail)
  6. Printing and Managing Print Jobs (lpr, lpq, lprm)
  7. Ownerships and Permissions (chgrp, chown, chmod)
  8. Archiving and Compression (zip, gzip, bzip2, tar)
  9. Finding Stuff: Easy (grep, locate)
  10. The find command (find)
  11. Your Shell (history, alias, set)
  12. Monitoring System Resources (ps, lsof, free, df, du)
  13. Installing software (rpm, dkpg, apt-get, yum)
  14. Connectivity (ping, traceroute, route, ifconfig, iwconfig)
  15. Working on the Network (ssh, sftp, scp, rsync, wget)
  16. Windows Networking (nmblookup, smbclient, smbmount)

I’m really proud of the whole book, but the chapter on the super-powerful and useful find command is a standout, along with the material on ssh and its descendants sftp and scp. But really, the whole book is great, and I will definitely be keeping a copy on my desk as a reference. If you want to know more about the Linux command line and how to use it, then I know you’ll enjoy and learn from Linux Phrasebook.

You can read about and buy the book at Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0672328380/) for $10.19. If you have any questions or comments, don’t hesitate to contact me at scott at granneman dot com.

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Japanese nuclear secrets revealed on P2P network

law, politics, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Mike’s “That’s Not A New Hit Song You Just Downloaded — It’s Japan’s Nuclear Secrets” (techdirt: 23 June 2005):

While IT managers may not see the importance of security software for themselves, you would think they would be a little more careful with things like interns and contractors. Not so, apparently. Over in Japan, a lot of people are not happy after discovering that a lot of classified technical data on nuclear power plants was leaked onto the internet by a contractor using a computer with a file sharing app that was apparently left open to sharing everything on the machine. First off, what kind of nuclear plant contractor is putting a file sharing app on his work laptop? Also, the article notes that the laptop was infested with viruses, but later seems to blame the file sharing app rather than the viruses — so it’s not entirely clear what the viruses have to do with this story. Update: Another article on this story notes that it was the virus that made the material available via the file sharing app. It also notes that the guy was using his personal computer — and somehow this was allowed. It also details the information leaked, including inspection data, photographs and names of inspectors, as well as where they stayed when they did the inspections. No matter what, you have to wonder why the guy was allowed to use his personal computer or to use any computer for this data that hadn’t been checked first for viruses or other vulnerabilities.

From Mike’s “Security Through Begging” (techdirt: 16 March 2006):

Last summer, the surprising news came out that Japanese nuclear secrets leaked out, after a contractor was allowed to connect his personal virus-infested computer to the network at a nuclear power plant. The contractor had a file sharing app on his laptop as well, and suddenly nuclear secrets were available to plenty of kids just trying to download the latest hit single. It’s only taken about nine months for the government to come up with its suggestion on how to prevent future leaks of this nature: begging all Japanese citizens not to use file sharing systems — so that the next time this happens, there won’t be anyone on the network to download such documents.

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5 reasons people exaggerate risks

commonplace book, science, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Movie Plot Threat Contest: Status Report” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 May 2006):

In my book, Beyond Fear, I discussed five different tendencies people have to exaggerate risks: to believe that something is more risky than it actually is.

1. People exaggerate spectacular but rare risks and downplay common risks.

2. People have trouble estimating risks for anything not exactly like their normal situation.

3. Personified risks are perceived to be greater than anonymous risks.

4. People underestimate risks they willingly take and overestimate risks in situations they can’t control.

5. People overestimate risks that are being talked about and remain an object of public scrutiny.

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India’s transgendered folks

commonplace book, history / /

From Henry Chu’s “Bullied by the Eunuchs” (Los Angeles Times: 7 June 2006):

I was being hit up for a handout by one of this country’s many hijras.

They are eunuchs or otherwise transgendered people by birth, accident or choice. Something between male and female, they are shunned by Indian society as unclean. Many make a rough living through prostitution or by crashing weddings, birthday parties and other festive occasions, threatening to disrupt the celebrations with vulgar behavior and to bring bad luck unless they are paid off. …

India has somewhere between half a million and a million eunuchs. The estimates are very approximate, because the hijras live in a secretive, shadowy world they’ve created for themselves away from the abuse and persecution of general society.

They gather in public in large numbers only at their annual conventions, which always attract media attention for the skillful dancing, the raucous atmosphere and the sight of gaudy clothing draped around burly shoulders and dainty jewels hanging off overly thick wrists.

In antiquity, India’s eunuchs dressed as men, and a few were granted royal jobs — for example, as guardians of harems. But today’s hijras make themselves up as women. In the West, they would probably be identified as something between a cross-dresser and a transsexual; in India, they often describe themselves as a third sex, and refer to themselves as “she.” …

Only a handful of outsiders have managed to pierce the veil of secrecy surrounding the hijra community. The writer William Dalrymple, in his book “City of Djinns,” describes an often well-ordered sisterhood divided geographically into local “parishes” whose members, overseen by den mothers, diligently work their beat. …

The short one continued to appeal to me directly, gazing at me meaningfully and sprinkling her Hindi with unmistakable English phrases like “a thousand rupees” (about $22). At one point she knelt down and touched my feet in a sign of obeisance or importunity. Then, growing frustrated by my stinginess, she drew up the hem of her sari, perhaps to warn me that she was ready to flash her mutilated parts, a common tactic among eunuchs to hurry horrified partygoers into forking over cash to get their uninvited guests to leave.

How the hijras come by their condition varies. Some are born hermaphrodites, considered by many Indians to be a terrible curse. Others feel as though they are feminine souls trapped in masculine bodies and undergo voluntary castration — the luckier, better-off ones through chemicals or by trained surgeons, the poorer ones in dangerous back-alley operations involving little more than booze and a dirty knife. There are also hushed stories of boys being kidnapped and mutilated against their will.

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Why no terrorist attacks since 9/11?

history, politics, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Movie Plot Threat Contest: Status Report” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 May 2006):

… you have to wonder why there have been no terrorist attacks in the U.S. since 9/11. I don’t believe the “flypaper theory” that the terrorists are all in Iraq instead of in the U.S. And despite all the ineffectual security we’ve put in place since 9/11, I’m sure we have had some successes in intelligence and investigation — and have made it harder for terrorists to operate both in the U.S. and abroad.

But mostly, I think terrorist attacks are much harder than most of us think. It’s harder to find willing recruits than we think. It’s harder to coordinate plans. It’s harder to execute those plans. Terrorism is rare, and for all we’ve heard about 9/11 changing the world, it’s still rare.

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Why disclosure laws are good

business, law, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Identity-Theft Disclosure Laws” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 May 2006):

Disclosure laws force companies to make these security breaches public. This is a good idea for three reasons. One, it is good security practice to notify potential identity theft victims that their personal information has been lost or stolen. Two, statistics on actual data thefts are valuable for research purposes. And three, the potential cost of the notification and the associated bad publicity naturally leads companies to spend more money on protecting personal information — or to refrain from collecting it in the first place.

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Why airport security fails constantly

law, science, security, tech in changing society, technology / /

From Bruce Schneier’s “Airport Passenger Screening” (Crypto-Gram Newsletter: 15 April 2006):

It seems like every time someone tests airport security, airport security fails. In tests between November 2001 and February 2002, screeners missed 70 percent of knives, 30 percent of guns, and 60 percent of (fake) bombs. And recently, testers were able to smuggle bomb-making parts through airport security in 21 of 21 attempts. …

The failure to detect bomb-making parts is easier to understand. Break up something into small enough parts, and it’s going to slip past the screeners pretty easily. The explosive material won’t show up on the metal detector, and the associated electronics can look benign when disassembled. This isn’t even a new problem. It’s widely believed that the Chechen women who blew up the two Russian planes in August 2004 probably smuggled their bombs aboard the planes in pieces. …

Airport screeners have a difficult job, primarily because the human brain isn’t naturally adapted to the task. We’re wired for visual pattern matching, and are great at picking out something we know to look for — for example, a lion in a sea of tall grass.

But we’re much less adept at detecting random exceptions in uniform data. Faced with an endless stream of identical objects, the brain quickly concludes that everything is identical and there’s no point in paying attention. By the time the exception comes around, the brain simply doesn’t notice it. This psychological phenomenon isn’t just a problem in airport screening: It’s been identified in inspections of all kinds, and is why casinos move their dealers around so often. The tasks are simply mind-numbing.

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