Memory Holes and the Internet (updated) 801
blamanj writes "As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem. A recent Slashdot article discussed this in regard to the White House. Now, The Memory Hole has noticed that Time magazine has pulled an article by Bush, Sr. on why it was a bad idea to try and overthrow Saddam. How can we keep corporate America honest?" Update: 11/11 22:16 GMT by T : Declan McCullagh (former Time, Inc. employee, among other things) writes in with the non-conspiracy explanation for the change, below.
Declan writes "It is silly to claim that Bush Sr. and Scowcroft would strong-arm Time Inc. into removing an article from time.com -- when that article was an excerpt from their book that you can buy today from Amazon.com for $21.
Another explanation is more likely. And, yes, a quick search turns up a May 2003 article from Slate that debunks this rumor. It turns out that Time Inc. only had permission from the publisher to post the content for a limited time."
Archive.org (Score:4, Informative)
The problem wijth this (Score:5, Interesting)
If robots.txts are carefully used, a file can be kept out of archive.org and robots.txt forever.
And it isn't really like archive.org, if it saw these as a problem, could ignore robots.txt files, since the most common reason for robots.txt is to keep a crawler from falling into a CGI script containing something that, from a crawler standpoint, is a bottomless pit of randomly generated links to itself.
Re:Archive.org (Score:4, Informative)
Once it hits the net, it is around for a looong time.
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Archive.org (Score:4, Funny)
You are providing broken links to non-existant text that you claim are "still" provided by other subversive sources. Only a troll would provide broken links to non-existant articles claiming that they once existed. It is all a paranoid delusion.
Nothing Orwellian is going on here. The Ministry of Truth is simply working hard to keep the Internet, Google and other sources accurate and free from your kind of misinformation.
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Insightful)
If I own a website (and I do) I feel that I can publish/delete anything I want on my site. TIME.com is not part of the public domain; it is the sole property of TIME Magazine. If they want to pull something from thier website then that
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Insightful)
Please Note: The March 02, 1998 issue of TIME Magazine is now premium paid content on TIME.com...
Yet the story is not there. This is deceptive. It is not really the March 02, 1998 issue. It is the 2003 version of the 1998 issue.
Time magazine and other printed news sources like it purport to be a "papers of record". This means what they write should be useful as historical records of what happened at that point in time, not some revisionist ver
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Insightful)
Courts and juries should be following the laws.
If the laws are written by politicians who are beholden to corporate donors, then the laws will reflect the interests and needs of those corporations.
If a law reflects the interests and needs of profits of corporations, then, indeed, a corporation can put you in jail.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/11/10/
When there is too close a relationship between business and government, then the political rights and freedoms of citizens will take a back seat to profit-seeking, and whatever group of powerful business men currently controls the politicians will write the laws to their whim and fancy.
It's called facism. And its back with us, even worse than before!
The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.
- Milan Kundera
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Interesting)
They can't put you in jail -- directly. They can command government leverage to do that. Think Elcomsoft. Think RIAA. Think Scientology. They can jail you anytime they want by picking up a phone and getting their legal staff on the job. It's up to you to raise millions to defend yourself.
Corporations can't die. They can come after you for all eternity. Governments can be unelected.
Corporations are just collections of men, with their own agendas, but they pretend to be faceless artificial people who are therefore untouchable.
You can't pick and choose news corporations to find the best news for you. IF THEY ARE ALTERING THE HISTORICAL RECORD, HOW WOULD YOU EVER KNOW??? Informed consent is necessary to make a decision in a free market.
Corporations can collude in secret to remove articles that a partisan mindset shared among managers deems unsuitable. Governments cannot, at least not until this administration, hide what they do for very long.
People do pick and choose governments with ease, every four years. Try firing Microsoft.
Corporations, though "persons" with constitutional rights, have absolutely no personal accountability whatsoever for their actions. Want to talk to Time Warner about erasing the record? What is "Time"? Can you schedule an appointment with it? Make it do jail time?
Corporations now are the government. What do you call that form of government, komrade? "Police state" is a question begging term. Who owns the cops? Apparently the Secret Service has been ordering all the local law enforcement around the country to round up protesters in the President's path and detain them. Who owns the cops? Skylarov was yanked by cops on the sayso of Adobe; who owned the cops? Kevin Mitnick spent years in prison without charges because the corporations he insulted wanted him to rot, period. They seem to own the courts, don't they? The RIAA now can issue its own subpoenas and ruin people financially without ever talking to a court or the cops.
When the corporation becomes the law, you have a real police state. All the trappings of a democracy run by immortal, untouchable god-kings, who do whatever they like to whomever they like.
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Funny)
How do you know that? I have a different idea about the state of information and government (although I have no proof). I think that the patriot act (shudder), and a lot of the other civil-liberty restrictive legislation and activity we're seeing lately is a direct result of the recent wide availability of information on the internet (specifically,
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Informative)
This administration has ordered government agencies to hinder Freedom of Information Act requests.
This administration now has effectively refused to honor Freedom of Information Act requests.
This administration has ignored subpoenas regarding its energy polices meetings.
This administration has refused to cooperate with 9/11 investigators RE what the President's briefings said about the possibility of attacks just prior to 9/11. Simply hindered and refused.
This is what I know.
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Informative)
My god. Is our children learning? How in the hell can Bush's people be judged if no one wants to report on their actions on a regular basis?
No wonder the country has neocon fever. How could they not? They don't hear anything!
Links:
I do know. The Bush administration, on reaching office, immediately sealed the records of the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, as well as all future records of the current adminstration. Clinton's are wide open, though.
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=U TF -8&q=sealed+presidential+papers+Bush+
Bush Clamping Down On Presidential Papers (washingtonpost.com)
Records By George Lardner Jr. Washington Post Staff
www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A20731-2001 Oct31
NM&L (Fall 2001): Reagan's White House papers stay sealed
presidential papers after 12
www.rcfp.org/news/mag/25-4/foi-reaganp.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
CBS News | Reagan Papers Released | January 4, 2002 09:58:30
last January but were kept sealed as the Bush administration worked
www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/01/ 04/politics/main323121.shtml - 35k - Cached - Similar pages
Secret Papers
executive order stipulates that, in order for presidential papers to be
www.skepticism.org/politics/lib_SecretPapers. shtml - 19k - Cached - Similar pages
NM&L (Fall 2001): Reagan's White House papers stay sealed
presidential papers after 12
www.rcfp.org/news/mag/25-4/foi-reaganp.html - 7k - Cached - Similar pages
This administration has ordered government agencies to hinder Freedom of Information Act requests.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/2002/09/re090302.htm l
"For whatever reason, this administration has gone way way too far in its pursuit of secrecy in some particularly worrying ways," said Mark Tapscott, head of the Center for Media and Public Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation. "
"Even before the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration was expanding secrecy. It moved to hold up the release of presidential papers from former President Ronald Reagan and insisted on keeping secret members of an energy policy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney."
"This administration is the most secretive of our lifetime, even more secretive than the Nixon administration. They don't believe the American people or Congress have any right to information," said last week Larry Klayman, chairman of Judicial Watch, a conservative group that is suing the administration to force it to reveal the members of the energy task force. "
http://www.freedomforum.org/templates/document.a sp ?documentID=15902
"Among the more egregious actions, Attorney General John Ashcroft told government agencies in an Oct. 12, 2001, memo
Re:Archive.org (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Archive.org (Score:5, Interesting)
Example. American high school teacher that I know through a friend asks her class immediately before the invasion -- Gulf War II -- how many of them feel fairly certain that Saddam has nuclear capability. Most of the class did. Nuclear. Now, we know that Saddam didn't have nukes. Biological or chemical maybe, maybe. But nuclear, no way. That program was destroyed years ago and there was no evidence to the contrary. How easy is it to do what you want in a democracy if your citizens are kept ill-informed?
As for the government being the corporations, it's not unheard of in alien lands (like Canada) to have government-owned corporations, to protect interests that can't be trusted to those who see money as the bottom line. Let's face it: an executive can run a business like a sinking ship if that golden parachute is waiting, and we simply cannot afford , as a country, for that to happen to health care, our police, our prisons, and our utilities (though that last is being tinkered with). Some things are a public trust, and what is wrong with running them as a service (to break even) than for a profit? Now for obvious reasons that couldn't be the case with the media -- but that again shows why it is, and has to be, a class apart.
Let me point out what is really wrong with this Time magazine history-rewrite. They deleted the article from the table of contents. It's the difference between walking out of a store with an unpaid-for good in your hands, obviously forgetful and in a rush, and having that same article stuffed into your bag. That is Orwellian.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:4, Insightful)
I remember a time when Reagan preached against the 'commies' because they spied on their neighbors and because the people had no freedoms. Now the same thing is happening in our backyard and you expect us not to say anything about it? Some cokehead who went AWOL is running our government and getting our young men and women killed so that we can have more oil to power our SUV's and you think this is a good thing?
Hell, even daddy Bush disagrees with you it seems.
Re:Yeah, right. (Score:3, Interesting)
"Keep" them honest? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:2)
it should surprise no-one if they extend legislation like the Patriot Act into civil domains such as the Internet.
I doubt it. The Us Gubmint was unable to prevent publication of nuclear bomb theory after WW2 - this was while we were scared of Stalin getting a nuke of his own - so I doubt they'll be able to exercise any coersion over the Inet. Of course, most of the liberal media seems to be in the whitehouse's pocket...
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't think Stalin went so far as to edit his own family though...
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
The "Liberal" Media (Score:5, Informative)
It should not be surprising that these men have a rather more conservative point of view than the press owners who they bought out.
By and large, today's media speaks for the establishment, and in the US the establishment is a Republican one.
Re: The "Liberal" Media (Score:3, Interesting)
> Oh, yeah...the liberal media "Myth". Right. The only reason you think it's a "myth" is that you agree with the editorializing they pass off as "news".
Nope. The reason I know that most of the US media is conservative is that I don't agree with the editorializing they pass off as "news".
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
Conservative: "doesn't"
I dunno, sounds pretty accurate to me.
Seriously, though, I think the libertarians are the only conservatives left. FDR solidified the United States as a nationalist, statist, leftist institution and nothing has rolled that back. The only thing that has changed are the myriad ways that so-called conservatives and liberals have chosen to manifest the State's power, whether commercially, militarily, socially, etc.
Corporatism, ala Big
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:5, Insightful)
In that vein, here's an interesting piece [fair.org] on the so-called liberal media.
This is a study of the bias of sources used by the major broadcast media in the run-up to the Iraq war. FAIR classified sources as pro-war or anti-war on the basis of their affiliation with the administration, publicly expressed opinions about the war, and so on.
What I found surprising was that not even PBS gave equal time to those who opposed the war.
An excerpt: "The FAIR study found just 3 percent of U.S. sources represented or expressed opposition to the war. With more than one in four U.S. citizens opposing the war and much higher rates of opposition in most countries where opinion was polled, none of the networks offered anything resembling proportionate coverage of anti-war voices. The anti-war percentages ranged from 4 percent at NBC, 3 percent at CNN, ABC, PBS and FOX, and less than 1 percent--one out of 205 U.S. sources--at CBS."
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Insightful)
This access is in a way dangerous, because it means you can always find a source that agrees with your preconceived ideas, but it also means that those who wish to explore the diversity of opinion have the best opportunity in human history to do so.
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember that conditioning relies heavily on repetition, and conditioning is what in Orwell's 1984 allows the police state to maintain control.
I mean, if the war is presented in terms of either pepsi or coke, how many people will think root beer? The greatest conspiracy of all would be if those two were actually owned by the same people. They'd have spent so much time forcing the choice on us like it was the only one... sounds a little like our media, doesn't it?
Re:"Keep" them honest? (Score:3, Interesting)
FAIR is truthful and seems to follow the general rules of journalistic integrity.
But their articles and research do generally focus on flaws in "conservative"* media.
This could either mean that FAIR is biased or that there is a "conservative"* trend in media.
I would actually like to see a "conservative"* version of FAIR. Does something like that exist? A collection of research which objectivly illustrates "liberal"* bias in media.
*I hate the words "liberal" and "conservativ
Re: "Keep" them honest? (Score:4, Informative)
Fox garnered a 80% misperception rate, while PBS/NPR audiences mispercieved about 23% of the time. I wonder what the equivalent rate among uruk.net readers was...
Troll? (Score:5, Informative)
There is an excellent article in the Economist about this, unfortunately for subscribers only. Here is a pertinent quote:
A case in point is the near-total secrecy in which the Department of Homeland Security was hatched. No cabinet secretary was consulted. Nor were most senior advisers. The largest government reorganisation in half a century, involving huge numbers of civil servants and tricky questions of government relations, was decided upon by a handful of people (originally four, with aides) and without serious consultation with Congress. Did that improve the quality of decisions?
Nothing like (Score:2, Funny)
Wishes (Score:5, Funny)
Wish as hard as you can. Maybe click your heels three times, for luck.
Why is this any different? (Score:3, Interesting)
Revisionism (Score:5, Insightful)
It wasn't omitted. It was excised. It was there, and now it isn't, but all the rest of the contents of that issue still are.
Virg
It matters a lot. (Score:3, Insightful)
It shows that the situation in Iraq was understood back in 1990.
So why did Bush think that the situation would be different now?
Re:Why is this any different? (Score:2, Insightful)
As the page says:
"But a funny thing happened. Fairly recently, Time pulled the essay off of their site. It used to be at this link, which now gives a 404 error. If you go to the table of contents for the issue in which the essay appeared (2 March 1998), "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" is conspicuously absent."
That means, they are efectively rewriting things as to look like they never
Re:Why is this any different? (Score:4, Insightful)
Isn't it the prerogative of the private sector to publish at will?
Absolutely.
The later retraction of an earlier published work is just the tip of the iceberg. More relevant is deciding what is news, what is not news, and how news should be reported.
Those decisions are being made by a private sector that is aligning itself closely with its business objectives (as it should) to achieve the most growth in revenue, and not necessarily some ideal of providing complete, accurate and unbiased news.
One problem is that greater growth in revenue can be gained not only by reporting sensational but inconsequential "news" (Rosie rants in court), or by culling pieces that advertisers might find offensive,but also by claiming to be an complete accurate and unbiased source of information, even if the claim is supported only by the purveyor of news. I mean, how do we expect them to portray themselves?
Read from multiple sources, including those you would normally not want to read, sources you think are off-base, weird and misguided and tell you things that you'd rather not hear.
Otherwise, we're in danger of living in a fantasy world.
The Excerpt (Score:5, Informative)
Excerpt from "Why We Didn't Remove Saddam" by George Bush Sr. and Brent Scowcroft, Time (2 March 1998):
While we hoped that popular revolt or coup would topple Saddam, neither the U.S. nor the countries of the region wished to see the breakup of the Iraqi state. We were concerned about the long-term balance of power at the head of the Gulf. Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in 'mission creep,' and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under those circumstances, furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-cold war world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the U.N.'s mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression we hoped to establish. Had we gone the invasio route, the U.S. could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land. It would have been a dramatically different--and perhaps barren--outcome.
Proof the article existed (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only is the Times playing at Big Brother, they are not even competent when doing this... A simple Google search restricted to the times website found that in 2 sec.
The Idiot chills out for five minutes (Score:5, Interesting)
Look at this page, and as you are looking, reflect upon it, asking yourself if any other leader of any other country at any point in history would have reacted even remotely similarly.
If this doesn't convince you that The Idiot isn't in charge of the country - or worse, that the 9-11 attack was expected, which is the obvious conclusion from the hundreds of reports from the CIA, FBI and other intelligence reports from around the world which were wilfully ignored - then I'm not sure what will.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Insightful)
You people really need to pick one of the two:
A) bumbling, incompetent retard who can't pick his nose without someone dusting cocaine on his finger first, or
B) cunning, devious, criminal mastermind of Illuminati-like proportions and power
Those two caricatures are mutually exclusive, but a lot of you seem to see Bush as both. Perhaps the paranoia is pickling your eyeballs or something.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Funny)
William Rivers Pitt of truthout had a great quote about that particular subject... I'm paraphrasing...
"Blaming George Bush for this administration's missteps is like blaming Mickey Mouse when Disney does something evil.
Re: The Excerpt (Score:4, Insightful)
> I always thought it amusing that his administration fought so hard again UoM's affirmative action policy, when he benefitted tremendously from another form of affirmative action known as "legacy." There's NO WAY that idiot would've gotten into Yale or Harvard any other way.
His actions are very consistent, once you learn to view them as "preserving the system of privilege".
Re:The Excerpt (Score:5, Insightful)
It's b) but it looks like a).
Bush is no imbecile. He's very intelligent and he's a very effective manipulator (obviously, he's a perfect politician).
See, he puts a bumbling presence in the White House by doing things like fumbling for words and choking on pretzels. But, just because he's a somewhat inneffective orator (which is the only part of him most of us ever get to see) doesn't mean he's an idiot. By acting like the everyday Joe Blow and showing that he too has human characteristics that cause amusing, but inoccuous missteps, he endears himself to the average American citizen. He is the everyman who is no more immune to foible than the rest of us.
The problem is, a new picture is being painted of him in his dealings behind closed doors. He's bright and he's dangerous. He's capable of orchestrating huge PR moves, power grabs, and he's not afraid to "go it alone" if he has an agenda even if it's at everyone else's expense. The first and last points are critical. During the Vietnam war, Johnson stuck to his guns for what he believed in at everyone else's expense, but he couldn't get the public support behind him. He was crucified for his beliefs because he couldn't get popular support. Bush is different - he can pull public support for something that would normally be very unpopular (granted - with significant help from gentle allusions to 9/11). He's capable of manipulating Joe Blow while he pursues his own agendas.
I think Bush and his administration are perfectly capable and willing to do something like this if they feel it benefits them politically. I'll wait for evidence before I blame them, but I won't surprised if that evidence really does come.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Insightful)
a) Blowjobs.
b) Reaganomics, Star Wars, massive deficits.
I know which I prefer.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:5, Insightful)
That said anyone who's studied the Soviet Era can tell you exactly how much sense the "Regan won the Cold War" theory makes. The X Telegram (George Kennan) stated in no uncertain terms that the Soviet Union must expand or collapse from within. Based on this document, it was the official position of the United States to contain the spread of communism. This was not a four or eight year process, but a stand which took decades. If Regan won the cold war for what purpose did our servicemen give their lives in Vietnam? In Korea?
All this aside, the argument I hear most frequently is that Regan's "genius" in backing the Star Wars program forced the Soviet Union into a spending spiral that caused internal collapse of the economy and thus the collapse of the Soviet Union itself.
Unfortunately, this is totally unsubstantiated. First off, the Soviet Union consistently spent huge sums of money on the military. Many will toss figures at this argument quoting between 40% to 70% of Soviet GDP in the late 1980s. Realize two things when you see this argument. First, as a (officially) communist State the USSR has no GDP. No numbers were every kept to this extent in the USSR and any numbers we have are based on the (somewhat) biased estimates of the US armed forces and defense contractors (who have a vested interest here).
Secondly, earlier estimates from the Kennedy, Eisenhower, and Johnson administrations indicate Soviet Military spending at around 40% of the countries production capacity (think Civilization shields here, since we still don't have a real GDP here). Unfortunately I've been unable to locate decent links for this data. Apparently it only exists in dead tree media.
So what did cause the collapse of the Soviet Union? The answer is pretty obvious once you think about it... The Soviet Union caused it. Khrushchev started the ball rolling when he gave The Secret Speech [mira.net] at the 20th Party Congress in 1956. When Khrushchev released political pressures in the Soviet Union the result was what you'd expect. Give them an inch they take a mile. Khrushchev tried to clamp down on this movement, but was only able to stem its tide. Hard-line elements in the Soviet Government were less than pleased with this, and this was one of the factors that pushed Khrushchev to the now infamous military aggressiveness exhibited during his tenure.
After Khrushchev hard-line elements regained power in the Soviet Union and by instituting a Geritocracy favoring those who followed in the traditions of Stalin these elements kept the dissidents in perilous check.
Gorbachev changed all that. His policies of Glasnost and Perestroika snowballed. These policies were intended to allow some of the internal pressures to abate while keeping the Soviet system in power and the country under control. However, much like punching a hole in a dam, the tiny valve soon became a rushing torrent. Civil War erupted and on December 25 1991 the Soviet Flag was lowered over the Kremlin for the last time.
What caused it? More than anything else it was the tide of political conservatism in the Soviet Union. This tide wasn't encouraged by Star Wars or Stealth Technology. It was the result of Coca Cola and McDonalds, the product of Ford and General Motors. The Soviet people wanted what the United States had... prosperity.
And just as Kennan said, the Soviet model couldn't maintain a decent standard of living without expanding.
So my apologies to Regan and his crew. And in answer to your question "what was Regan's legacy?" The answer is as follows. Regan was in the right place at the right time and managed not to screw it up to badly. It's a foreign policy the right has been following ever sense.
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Insightful)
So, explain why Gorby did what he did. If he was like the other hard-line commies, he wouldn't have instituted policies that "broke a hole in the dam." I say that the reasoning behind his actions were that he saw a failing economy trying to compete militarily on a global scale with a burgeoning economy.
Reagan outspent the Soviets, and in so doing caused the collapse of the Union. It was Reagan who said that the cold war was like two scorpions in a bottle, only one will live. When he came into office, t
Re:The Excerpt (Score:3, Insightful)
Lenin [ex.ac.uk] 1870-1924
Stalin [marxists.org] 1879-1953 (note this period)
Khrushchev 1894-1971
Brezhnev [allrefer.com] 1906-1982
Andropov [cnn.com]1914-1984
Cherenko [britannica.com]1911-1985
Gorby 1931-????
Note that everyone up to Gorby was not only alive during the Lenin years but was policialy indoctrinated in the S
Re:The Excerpt (Score:5, Insightful)
As opposed to now? Let's be realistic -- Britain is the only significant coalition member still around from the first coalition.
It would have been the right thing to do
No it wouldn't have. If we had deposed Saddam in the early 90s then the most likely outcome was that Iran would take over control of Iraq -- giving the highly fundamentalist Iranian government control of 2/3rds of the land and population in the Middle East, roughly 1/3 of the oil, and every Muslim holy site except Mecca. BTW, for those keeping track, this is also the reason the US supported Saddam Hussein in the early and mid 80s -- because he was the lesser of two evils in the region.
At this point Iran's government has become somewhat destabalized -- they're in no position to be extending their influence right now. So circumstances have changed in this regard at least.
Funny that those who were so loathe to take Saddam to task for anything for so many years
What an utter load of bullshit. This is the kind of no-thought crap spouted by talk show hosts. Just because it's a bad idea to take out Saddam doesn't mean you think he's a good ruler or that he's not a despicable slimebag who isn't even worth turning into mulch. Hussein was taken to task for his crimes time and time again, but if you want to start stepping into the role of global police (a role which the right wing bashed Clinton for in Somalia, Bosnia, and elsewhere -- which we actually had a UN mandate for, unlike Iraq) then you'd better be willing to step up to the plate. Why the hell aren't we stopping countless dictators in Africa (like, oh say, Mugabe in Zimbabwe)? What about South/Central America? They've done as much, if not more, as Saddam Hussein ever did. Hell, while we're at it, let's dive into the Israel-Palestine mess, where both sides are guilty of horrific crimes.
The reality is that very little has changed in a decade. The only thing that did change was the stability of Iran. The other statements made -- about an unstable populace, the fallout of allies, the alteration of world political and military climate, and the need for the US to spend a long, long time peacekeeping in Iraq -- have not changed one iota.
Oh, and I say all of this as a moderate. I'm neither rightwing nor left. I was willing to go along with the invasion of Iraq because I believed that there was no way a president could engage in such a move without massive amounts of intelligence indicating a clear and present threat. Doing anything else would be abysmally stupid because the ultimate consequences would be setting not only the Middle East further against us, but also alienating our allies elsewhere in the world.
Oops.
Wrong tense, there (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's edit:
"Apparently there were people near the top who know what they were doing,"
Take a good long look at the neocon "think tanks" from which our current foreign policy took its core. They regard the position George H.W. Bush took toward Iraq as a sign of weakness; they explicitly pushed for a unilateralist, aggressive foreign policy in the Middle East so as to re-shape that part of the world, well before 9/11.
The concerns the senior Bush shows in this article simply irritate(d) the high-ups in our current administration. The multilateral model, the concern about becoming de facto rulers of Iraq -- all that just bespeaks an America too wussy to step up to the plate, in the view of people like Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld. They sent at least one letter to Clinton laying out this basic policy during the 90's.
A matter of public record (Score:5, Informative)
The only real way to get rid of something is to pull it quickly.. leave it around and you've no chance......
Simon
Google Cache of Memory Hole (Score:4, Informative)
Education? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Education? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the old system, people were taught to think and they could think for themselves. In the new system people are taught to remember what they have been told recently and to recite it.
The new system appears to get better results and colleges and universities are measured on results. The client (student) is not interested in any more than the bit of paper that will get them a better wage. So US/UK society is dumbed down.
Ironically Russia and China etc. still respect true education and the client in those countries (and most other Eastern block/Asian) still appreaciate deep learning.
Corporations dont have an interest (Score:5, Insightful)
Its their resources they use to do so... when they are finished with the story they can dump it..
As long as what they report is the truth ( or with a disclaimer that its opinion and not fact ) then they are within their rights to do what ever they want with THEIR data...
Now when the government does this, thats a different issue...
Worried about memory holes? (Score:4, Insightful)
CommonDreams [commondreams.org]
CounterPunch [counterpunch.org]
Bad News: Noam Chomksy Archive [monkeyfist.com]
AlterNet [alternet.org]
Or read a book. [amazon.com]
Any good and honest right-wing folk (if you want to set up such a arbitrary left/right binary) should reply with their favorite truth-speaking resources.
Re:Worried about memory holes? (Score:2)
Well, that's about it.
Re:Worried about memory holes? (Score:4, Interesting)
The story is about a news site that has pulled an article that might embarrass the current president, so I provide links to "alternative" "left-wing" news sites that often have their own copy of the story because they've already posted it, or they have an editorial about the article in question. I remember this Bush Sr. article being fairly heavily discussed when it was first noticed well before the war started. If you look at the histories of some of those sites, you'll find it.
And while I'm at it, I forgot two of the most relevant:
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting [fair.org] (more serious)
Take Back the Media [takebackthemedia.com] (more rabid)
Hey (Score:2, Insightful)
How can we keep corporate America honest? (Score:5, Insightful)
If media corporations and content-providing conglomerates have a financial or political reason to alter their records, they will, and they have no legal reason to do otherwise. We can only hope that the open-standard-based free internet can survive and let us remember electronically.
It's like the old joke... (Score:5, Interesting)
Answer: His/Her lips move.
Lets face it, nobody wants to "Look bad" and if they can alter the records to "help you" forget what they said/did, they will do it. It's what keeps them in power and in control.
Or did we forget that its the winners that write the history books.
-Goran
The Internet is not a parent (Score:5, Insightful)
You want to keep Corporate America honest? Two ways: government mandate and journalism. That's the way its always been done, always will be. By keeping the population informed (ideally) corporations and officials will have to be wellbehaved.
Re:The Internet is not a parent (Score:5, Insightful)
Umm...this story is about Time Magazine (Journalism) covering up an unfavorable article on behalf of Bush Jr (Government). Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?
Re: Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes? (Score:4, Informative)
"Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?" is Latin for "Who Watches The Watchers?".
I'd like to say I could've translated that. However, I still get some geek karma for it: I recognized it from having seen it before on the Star Trek TNG episode named, appropriately, "Who Watches The Watchers".
Keep Corporate America Honest? (Score:2, Funny)
Think about it.
Libraries? (Score:4, Insightful)
Things will sort themselves out if the internet reamains a free place where anyone can get on as a peer and publish. New publications will replace the old ones that act like Time. If the internet becomes more like broadcast TV, where only $pecial people with credentials can publish, it won't be trusted and the information superhighway will be just another billboard.
Online Journalism Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
Silent protest (Score:5, Interesting)
Someone at Time should take notice. (And no, we have never been at war with Oceania...)
Re:Silent protest (Score:3, Insightful)
sigh (Score:2)
This is clearly "spin" if I ever saw it. It's not just everybody's favorite whipping-boy "corporate America", but government, small business, large business, organizations, and individuals that lie. In short, the question should be: How can we keep anybody honest? There are several answers. Sites like Memory Hole, Archive, Wayback, etc. are good. Citizen's advocacy groups, and voting are other ways. Still another way is to seek to find the honest truth yourse
From the archive on web.archive.org (Score:5, Informative)
Also remember Robin Cook, the now former UK FM (Score:4, Informative)
What follows is a copy of his resignation speech in the House of Commons, which won applause from some backbenchers in unprecedented Commons scenes.
Also John Brady Kiesling's letter of resignation (Score:4, Interesting)
Also Senator Patrick Leahy - Concerning Iraq (Score:4, Informative)
Speech: U.S. Senator
U.S. SENATOR PATRICK LEAHY
Two words: (Score:3, Informative)
lexis nexis (Score:4, Informative)
As reporters and researchers depend more and more heavily on the Internet as a research tool, manipulation of the net becomes a serious problem
I don't think what Time does on their site has any real bearing on what most reporters and researchers will find. This is because most of them use lexis nexis [lexisnexis.com]. It is my understanding that lexis nexis will keep a copy of the article (I'm not sure, it costs money to use). Even if it doesn't, it will keep references to it. It will be shown to exist.
What would cause for concern is lexis nexis removing stuff.
Re:lexis nexis (Score:3, Funny)
What would cause for concern is lexis nexis removing stuff.
btw. I is grammar stupid. It caused coffee not having.
lexis nexis can be edited... (Score:5, Informative)
I worked for a company that provided large quantities of content to Lexis-Nexis for six years. They provide a method by which content can be removed by anyone who is providing it.
And my experience dealing with Lexis-Nexis as a company did not leave me with a good feeling about their concern for an accurate record.
Question! (Score:5, Funny)
Bush or Time magazine?
I'm sorry, I don't get this. (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is it important for this to be posted on
There's absolutely no geek factor here anywhere!
I don't see what the big deal is (Score:5, Funny)
Are people allowed to change their mind? (Score:3, Insightful)
The world changes, no one expects us to follow the policies as laid out in the cold war toward the Soviet Union. With that in mind, I believe it is only the painfully naive that would suggest that we treat the world the same way we did pre 9/11.
I think the 300,000+ bodies in mass graves, and the payments to suicide bombers post Gulf War I show us that Bush Sr. was mistaken.
Obligatory excerpt from 1984 (Score:4, Informative)
The source of the term 'memory hole' (Score:3, Insightful)
But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness, which in any case must soon be annihilated. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed -- if all records told the same tale -- then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past,' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.' And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control', they called it: in Newspeak, `doublethink'.
Copyright, not Orwell. (Score:4, Informative)
Feel a Draft ? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.thememoryhole.org/mil/draft-boards.h
--------
On 23 Sept 2003, the Defense Department Website called "Defend America" posted a notice for people to join local draft boards. "If a military draft becomes necessary," the notice explained, "approximately 2,000 Local and Appeal Boards throughout America would decide which young men, who submit a claim, receive deferments, postponements or exemptions from military service, based on Federal guidelines."
In early November, that notice started to receive media attention, with articles from the Associated Press, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer , the Oregonian, the Toronto Star, the BBC, and London Guardian (unsurprisingly, none of the major papers or networks in the US covered it).
In a familiar turn of events, the notice suddenly disappeared from the Website. (Thanks to LG for pointing this out.) We've mirrored the page and posted the text below.
Tinfoil Argument (Score:2, Interesting)
Care to present an alternate reason why it's missing, then?
Virg
Re:Tinfoil Argument (Score:3, Insightful)
Or maybe the author asked them to pull it?
I wonder if anyone will bother to find out the truth, or if everyone will just assume Bush is guilty.
Re:Tinfoil Argument (Score:3, Funny)
Time, a 'liberal' news outlet, pulled without announcement from their archive something critical of the Bush administration, at the expense of the public's perception of their journalistic integrity, on the hope somebody would stumble across its absence and post on a Slashdot-type forum and generate publicity for Time's..hmmmmm, lack of integrity? The discussion has come full circle, please pass a Tin Foil Hat.
Re:Do they sell tin-foil hats at Thinkgeek? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do they sell tin-foil hats at Thinkgeek? (Score:5, Funny)
Instructions are here [zapatopi.net].
Re:The only way (Score:2)
All you see is remembered.
Does... (Score:2)
Re:Wow... another attempt to attack the president (Score:5, Insightful)
You're not addressing the key point.
Whether or not the current action was a good idea is a very valid current topic.
National publications censoring their own previous publications in an apparent attempt NOT to embarrass the current president regarding this issue is definitely News, and Stuff that Matters.
It's the removal that makes it interesting - in a sense, THEY BROUGHT UP THE ISSUE FIRST
Re:Wow... another attempt to attack the president (Score:4, Insightful)
What could Clinton do to decisively stop North Korea's nuclear program? Nothing, since they have thousands of howitzers in caves within range of South Korea's capital which could decimate it in a couple of minutes.
What will Bush do to decisively stop North Korea's nuclear program? Nothing, since they have thousands of howitzers in caves within range of South Korea's capital which could decimate it in a couple of minutes.
Re:easy (Score:4, Interesting)
2-4 years, I expect.
Thankfully the Internet Archive is there and also has several instances [archive.org] of the lost page.
In fact, it does a significantly better job of this than Google does.
A robust Internet memory would require three or four such archives under different political control (the Way Back machine itself depends on the Smithsonian and thus possibly on funds coming from the US government.)
I'd like to see net archives made by the British Library, by the Library of Congress, by the UN, by the EU, etc.
Re:How can we keep corporate america honest? (Score:4, Funny)
I keep trying to post this comment, but everytime I hit "Submit", I get an ad for Belkin's Parental Notification. [slashdot.org]
Not true... (Score:5, Informative)
The table of contents still lists all the other articles - if you click on any one of them (for example this one [time.com] you get the first paragraph, and then an invitation to buy the rest of the article. Fine, that's their right - it costs money to archive so many pages...
But the article is question isn't listed - and the link given by The Memory Hole doesn't offer to sell you the article, it says it has been deleted.
And it's nothing to do with it being a 'popular subject' - Time states quite clearly that it's only issues over 2 years old that are archived, not 'historically important' ones.
Mark