And the winner is...the only guy running

(I started writing this 2 weeks ago and got side-tracked)

So depending on who's shoveling shit into your ear, today was either a great day for Afghan democracy, or just another example of business as usual in the weary war-torn country. Today's acceptance speech by President-until-NATO-kicks-him-out Hamid Karzai marks another sad page in Afghanistan's painful, bitter history. It shows the retreat of what could have been a meaningful foreign policy decision by the NATO powers vis-a-vis the endemic corruption that permeates the Afghan political community. Instead, we all get to sit back and watch as the status quo remains the same and the corrupt flunkies that caused the initial snafu are allowed to keep their jobs.

Remember that this all began with the elections in August in which there was so much wide-spread voter fraud that some of the ballots for Hamid Karzai were still in their original ballot booklets. And don't forget the imaginary polling places that never opened their doors to the voting public but still managed to rack up thousands upon thousands of votes for President Karzai.

Despite many people's claims that Karzai is a puppet of the West, it's even worse than that. If he were our puppet and he did what we told him, there would be some arguments to justify the complete perversion of our imposed democratic system over there in the interests of calm, stability, and development. But he isn't even our puppet. He's the puppet of the drug growing rapists who run Aghanistan today and that's one of the few things that could be even worse than if he were a Western puppet.

In the past year we have seen the Afghan parliament come up with laws that allow for husbands to withhold food from wives who withhold sex. We have seen President Karzai pardon a group of powerful elites who somehow managed to find themselves convicted of rape (something that is extremely difficult to convict someone of in Afghanistan). We have seen an escalation in NATO and civilian deaths and yet the British and the American leaders are still talking about "how many" more troops to deploy in the region as opposed to "why are we in the region?"

The best possible course of action for the Afghan people, and the NATO soldiers who are dying or being wounded trying to do what their leaders tell them is the right thing to do, is for NATO to withdraw from Afghanistan immediately. It does not appear that Karzai's government has any interest in curbing corruption or correcting the misogyny that exists in their laws and so it does not seem fitting for us to stay there. The presence of Western soldiers in Afghanistan creates a recruiting bonanza for terrorist groups and inevitably leads to more civilian casualties, which further undermines any stabilizing missions our soldiers are undertaking.

As the FoxNews Opiniontainment says over and over again, where's the Hope and Change you promised us Mr. President? Change course from the Bush/Cheney policies in Aghanistan and give the world hope in a new American foreign policy; one that isn't stained with blood.

Iran Election Pt 3

I have been a bit cautious with regards to jumping into the Iranian election debate for fear of overreacting as the rest of the Western media seems to have. In the words of an Iranian who did vote for Ahmedinejad "there has been no fraud at all." While I still profess that I do not know if there was or wasn't fraud committed, and if there was fraud committed by whom was it committed or attempted, but I think that as things calm down we will see that there are more and more people like Mustafa who voted with their conscience and hope that their candidate prevails.

Iran Election Pt 1

I'm going to write something about this non-stop manufactured consent that is taking place in America at this moment with regards to the recent Iranian election. For those of you who have been bombarded by the relentless screeches of "fraud" and "stolen election" here are some articles that might help immunize you to the coercive journalism that is filling the air.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0609/23745.html


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/14/AR2009061401757.html

Spam: Survival of the fittest

After reading about the recent lawsuit in which Facebook won a $873 MILLION verdict against Canadian spammer Adam Guerbuez (read about it here) it made me think about what a Malthusian challenge spam has created for our society. To date I have received dozens, if not hundreds of spam messages telling me that my Amazon account is blocked, or my credit card was used in a foreign country, or a friendly member of the Nigerian royal family wants to cut me in on a good business deal and never have any of these resulted in me divulging any information that would allow an online account to be hijacked, my money stolen, or my identity assumed by the spammers. And why have I been so fortunate as to survive these assaults that claim millions of people every year? I think the two best explanations are that I am not "click happy" and I have am sufficiently proficient in English grammar and spelling.

My best guess is that over 95% of the spam/phishing/scam emails I receive are filled with terrible spelling and grammar that looks like someone threw a Chinese sentence into babblefish (does anyone still use that?) and translated it into 4-5 other languages before finally translating the last results into English. Those emails are also dreadfully inpersonal, typically addressed to "user" or "customer." From working in IT I know that businesses and organizations spend a shit-ton (that's a lot) of money to make their mass emails seem personalized. They also spend a good deal of money to hide user information in their mailings so if you receive something that's addressing something as serious as credit card or bank accounts, and you can see 30-40 email addresses in the CC: box, then you know that's fake too.

Ultimately, those who are not suceptible to these kinds of fraudulent attempts will continue to hold onto their identities and accounts while those who aren't will continue to be fleeced. I guess in a way that's the natural order of things and I imagine the same people who are being conned and hoodwinked today are probably similar to those that were tricked by the snake-oil salesmen of the past.

So while this Facebook lawsuit might deter some from scamming, it's going to keep happening so long as the "n00bs" out there keep clicking on links and giving away their account passwords, or opening the emails that say "Dude...you gotta sea this!!!!***!!!!"