Door Hop Galley - Q&A with Col. Anthony Shaffer

And that's all she wrote...

Ford's Theatre of the Macabre

Ford's Theater of the Macabre from Spike EP on Vimeo.

"Constitutionally, gentlemen, you have the president, the vice president and the secretary of state, in that order.

As for now, I'm in control here, in the White House."

General Alexander Haig, March 30, 1981

Rand

It has come to my attention that you have now asked an additional question: “Does the President have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil?” 

The answer to that question is no.

Sincerely,

Eric H. Holder, Jr.

Haig in '81

"When two of his companies were engaged by a large hostile force, Colonel Haig landed amid a hail of fire, personally took charge of the units, called for artillery and air fire support and succeeded in soundly defeating the insurgent force ... the next day a barrage of 400 rounds was fired by the Viet Cong, but it was ineffective because of the warning and preparations by Colonel Haig. 

As the barrage subsided, a force three times larger than his began a series of human wave assaults on the camp. 

Heedless of the danger himself, Colonel Haig repeatedly braved intense hostile fire to survey the battlefield. His personal courage and determination, and his skillful employment of every defense and support tactic possible, inspired his men to fight with previously unimagined power. 

Although his force was outnumbered three to one, Colonel Haig succeeded in inflicting 592 casualties on the Viet Cong ... "

(HQ US Army, Vietnam, General Orders No. 2318 (May 22, 1967)

"If The Establishment Hates You, and Wants to Suppress You, They Don'tPut You on the Cover of Time..."

A Brave New Wikiworld

By Cass R. Sunstein

Saturday, February 24, 2007

In the past year, Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia that "anyone can edit," has been cited four times as often as the Encyclopedia Britannica in judicial opinions, and the number is rapidly growing. In just two years, YouTube has become a household word and one of the world's most successful Web sites. Such astounding growth and success demonstrate society's unstoppable movement toward shared production of information, as diverse groups of people in multiple fields pool their knowledge and draw from each other's resources.

Developing one of the most important ideas of the 20th century, Nobel Prize-winning economist Friedrich Hayek attacked socialist planning on the grounds that no planner could possibly obtain the "dispersed bits" of information held by individual members of society. Hayek insisted that the knowledge of individuals, taken as a whole, is far greater than that of any commission or board, however diligent and expert. he magic of the system of prices and of economic markets is that they incorporate a great deal of diffuse knowledge.

Wikipedia's entries are not exactly prices, but they do aggregate the widely dispersed information of countless volunteer writers and editors. In this respect, Wikipedia is merely one of many experiments in aggregating knowledge and creativity, that have been made possible by new technologies.

The Central Intelligence Agency disclosed the existence of its top-secret Intellipedia project, based on Wikipedia software (and now containing more than 28,000 pages), in late October. The agency hopes to use dispersed information to reduce the risk of intelligence failures. NASA officials have adopted a wiki site to program NASA software, allowing many participants to make improvements.

In the private domain, businesses are adopting wikis to compile information about products, profits and new developments. The Autism Wiki, produced mostly by adults with autism and Asperger's syndrome, contains material on autism and related conditions. Wikileaks.org, founded by dissidents in China and other nations, plans to post secret government documents and to protect them from censorship with coded software.

But wikis are merely one way to assemble dispersed knowledge. The number of prediction markets has also climbed over the past decade. These markets aggregate information by inviting people to "bet" on future events -- the outcome of elections, changes in gross domestic product, the likelihood of a natural disaster or an outbreak of avian flu.

In general, the results have proved stunningly accurate. For elections, market forecasts have consistently outperformed experts and even public opinion polls. (If you want to learn who is likely to win the Oscars, check out the Hollywood Stock Exchange at http://www.hsx.com.) Many companies, such as Google, Eli Lilly and Microsoft, have created internal prediction markets for product launches, office openings, sales levels and more. At Google, which has disclosed some of its data, the aggregation of dispersed information has yielded remarkably reliable forecasts.

Interest in open-source software -- software whose "code" is available to users, so that they can improve it as they see fit -- has also risen dramatically. But the idea of open source is not limited to software.

Open-source projects, some of which are emerging in medicine and biotechnology, dispense with the protection of intellectual property law so that numerous users can contribute to improvements. In the domain of health, open-source biotechnology projects such as Bioforge.net might end up saving numerous lives, especially but not only in poor countries. Well-funded projects claiming the protection of intellectual property law will often do much worse than cheaper ones that benefit from widespread collaboration. Other experiments involve open-source cars ( http://www.theoscarproject.org), open-source cellphones, open-source toys ( http://mindstorms.lego.com) and even open-source voting machines, which are designed to reduce the risk and appearance of fraud.

Of course, collaborative projects can go badly wrong. Pranksters have altered Wikipedia entries to say that Tony Blair's middle name is "Whoop-de Do"; that David Beckham was a Chinese goalkeeper in the 18th century; that the golfer Fuzzy Zoeller had abused alcohol and drugs; and that John Seigenthaler, a respected journalist, was thought to be involved in the assassinations of both Kennedys (before absconding to the Soviet Union).

The falsehoods about Zoeller and Seigenthaler were no laughing matter, and more serious mistakes, endangering reputations or causing financial losses, are possible. Anyone can vandalize an encyclopedia that "anyone can edit." No less than stock prices, prediction markets may be subject to manipulation. And in medicine and biotechnology, as elsewhere, intellectual property law may be needed to provide adequate incentives for innovation.

But the track record of the new collaborations suggests that they have immense potential. In just a few years, Wikipedia has become the most influential encyclopedia in the world, consulted by judges as well as those who cannot afford to buy books. If the past is prologue, we're seeing the tip of a very large iceberg.

Cass R. Sunstein teaches at the University of Chicago and is the author of "Infotopia: How Many Minds Produce Knowledge."

The CIA Freedom Fighter's Manual (1983)

"Practical gude to liberating Nicaragua from oppression and misery by paralyzing the military-industrial complex of the traitorous marxist state without having to use special tools and with minimal risk for the combatant."

Miriam Oren

Footage of Miriam Oren's eye-witness account of the Yitzhak Rabin assassination was shown numerous times on the fateful night of November 4, 1995. But once Rabin's death was announced, it vanished.

This week, it was made available to the public via the internet for the first time in 11 years.

Miriam Oren of Ramat Gan was the director of a department in the Na'amat women's movement. She was on stage with Prime Minister Rabin during the Tel Aviv demonstration and escorted him to his car where convicted assassin Yigal Amir waited.

Miriam Oren on stage with Prime Minister Rabin

She emphatically stated again and again to Israel TV that Rabin was not hit:

Oren: "…Suddenly shots were heard and…"

TV: "Was Rabin injured?"

Oren: "Rabin was not wounded. I saw that Rabin was not wounded… Yes, there were shots. They pushed him [Amir] up against the wall, and Rabin's car sped out of here… I was standing very close to Rabin's car. Rabin put one foot in the car, and we heard shots. Rabin's car sped away."

TV: "Was Rabin wounded?"

Oren: "Rabin was not wounded. [Shaking her head] Rabin was not wounded. Rabin was not wounded.

TV: "Was he wounded?"

Oren: "No! No, I saw that he was not wounded."

TV: "How far were you from him?"

Oren: "I was one meter away."