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Trying to lose This news makes me happy that I have no hopes for ‘victory’ in Iraq, beyond having a battlefield for European Islamists to go and die on far away from European and American cities.
Banning your own side from telling your side of a war is pretty dim, especially when the MSM is effectively scouting for the other side. It does not seem beyond the competency of the US armed forces to issue its bloggers with a “Do Tell” and “Don’t Tell” list.
As for the pretext that bandwidth is the problem, it reminds me of the British grocery store in the 1960s that stopped stocking up on a certain brand of bread “because we keep running out…”
The tyrant of Baghdad is dead. His successors are dead. That’s all that can be hoped for under the existing rules of engagement.
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The bandwidth issue is serious and is getting worse. In 2001 it took all the bandwidth capability from a single billion dollar Milstar satellite to operate a single predator over Afghanistan. Compression techniques have improved things a bit but the demand for comsat capability has gone through the roof.
The Pentagon buys massive amounts of comsat time from commercial providers and pays a hefty premium for it. Its needed for everything from normal bureaucratic recordkeeping, getting pay and allowences to the soldiers is pretty important, to telemedicine.
If youtube and myspace eat up too much time on the official networks the troops in some places will be able to use private networks and if there is enough demand these networks will expand. (Our old friends supply and demand.)
I suspect that the bandwidth issue is, if the BBC are to be believed that the favourite communications app is YouTube, more down to troopers uploading their videos for their nearest and dearest to watch. Rather than block access the US Mil might perhaps persuade their soldiers to just use Skype or other messenger programmes instead and tell their troops to get a webcam.
There are alternatives to “offical” military networks in most places, if not as convenient as “myspacing” from work. Never forget that military networks exist for doing work, not play. Any other functions that can co-exist at a lower priority are just gravy.
There’s a lot of questionable content on youtube and myspace, from the point of view of what a professional should be looking at during their duty day. And they are bandwidth HOGS. Echoing the comment above, satellite bandwidth costs. A lot.
Most installations have either MWR (Morale, Welfare, and Recreation) networks, or commercial internet cafes, or both, alongside their offical network. Just as any employer can ban blogging during work hours, the military hs an acceptable use policy, and it covers using an inordinate amount of bandwidth.
This is not ‘news’, this is another “look at the big bad military, see how they abuse the troops that we support and want to bring home, let’s hurry up and lose this war” propaganda piece.
Skype and messenger programs are security vulnerabilities- many corporate environements block them as well, for exactly the same reason.
Operating your own messenger service within the network is an option, but one that also costs money. Which ahs to be justified to the IG as well.
The fact is, that people take the use of their employers network too casually. Just because it exists and is accessible, doesn’t mean it’s a commons. Private property with no fence arround it is still private property. In this case, it’s the taxpayer footing the bill.
Now, I’m highly in favour of the military network and internet access being available for other acceptable uses, as long as it doesn’t impact the mission. Which in this case, it clearly is. The Embassy network in Baghdad AVERAGES 85% saturation (most networks don’t average 30%- peak time usage is usally less than 85%). Don’t even bother trying to browse the web between 5pm and 10pm Baghdad time- gmail times out regularly.
“As for the pretext that bandwidth is the problem, it reminds me of the British grocery store in the 1960s that stopped stocking up on a certain brand of bread “because we keep running out…”
Sure, if you’re operating on a profit model… Dealing with a zero-sum budget is different.
Is this a blog for libertarians or the John Birch Society?
Do you really think Brian Williams and Katie Couric are against America? That is the most extremist view I have come across in some time. Have any proof the big TV networks are against America? Would be a big deal, I suppose, if you did. Or do you indict the media’s mainstream while leaving out the biggest tributaries–the evening news programs?
And by the way, which side are they batting for? The Kurds, the Shiites, or the Sunnis? As you may recall, we are in a three-way civil war.
Proof?Only of my eyes and ears.
Of course self-evident truth(like the Constitution) is not recognised by philosophy professors these days.
Or their acolytes in the MSM.
While I’m at it, the statement that the entire bandwidth of a Milstar was needed to sustain one Predator Drone is evidence of waste.
Miniature aircraft are stable, unlike fighters, and if there is an interruption they keep flying.
If true, then they should damn well make them more independent using robotic AI and use the band the way an OS uses a processor, ie allowing for multiple threading and shared processor time.
Compression helps; encryption might not;realtime pilot input is just a waste.
They don’t care who wins, as long as George Bush is humiliated.
pietr
War is wasteful, no doubt about it. However most of the bandwidth used by predators and global hawks is not used for flight controls but to send the imagery and other data fvia satellite from 20-30,000 feet over Afghanistan to Washington for photo interpreters and other analysts to work on.
The Milstars were designed in the 1970s to provide survivable connectivity during a nuclear war, they have other functions but that is the one they were designed for.
pietr: Care to invent useful AI for an attack drone to use to engage its target, and only its target, and be able to tell fleeing hostiles from non-hostile civilians via infrared imaging?
Human monitors are pretty good at reading body language and all that. Saying “oh, just get some AI for it” would be fine and good if AI capable of doing that reliably existed. It does not, to the extent of my knowledge.
Flying a Predator isn’t the problem. The issue is that without someone watching the feed and making attack decisions, it’s pointless to have the drone at all.
(Remember, the Predator is not just a surveillance drone, though even for that Taylor’s comments are sufficient; they also can and often do carry missiles and are used to blow people up.)
Pietr,
If it is that obvious, please take a shot. When was Brian Williams anti-American?
How about Katie Couric?
Charles Gibson?
If you cannot show where the current evening news, which is the backbone of the MSM, is anti-American, you thesis is bunk.
By all means, show us.
Jordan,
Yes, the media criticize George Bush.
After all, just take the NY Times. It criticizes George Bush daily. Does that mean it is “effectively scouting for the other side” against America?
Its star columnist, Maureen Dowd, won a Pulitzer for her withering coverage of Clinton. When those pieces were printed, did that mean the NYT was “effectively scouting for the other side” against America?
Is there a vital difference, other than party affiliation? Is one side sacred while the other is to be pilloried at any opportunity?
That wasn’t my point at all. Criticism is just fine. The fact that they provide a nightly body count without any useful context (what were the soldiers doing, how many terrorists were killed, etc) or information of positive developments is the problem. They are actively seeking a loss in Iraq by demoralizing the public. They can’t stomach the though of victory in Iraq because it will benefit their nemesis, George Bush. Their country be damned.
Jordan,
What kind of “useful context” would you like? Enemy body counts didn’t improve “public morale” in 1968, why would it now? And what positive developments? 50 more empty school houses? Even our own military propogandists no longer bother.
The only positive developments in Iraq is that there is one less day to 1/20/2009 than yesterday. Blaming the media is just like Gonzales blaming McNulty, simple avoidance of accountability for the most incompetent and proto-fascistic administration ever in American history. As far as I’m concerned dumya has already lived up to his lowest expecations. I don’t need any more dead brothers to prove it.
We all want to win in Iraq but even Bush has redefined victory to be “less Sectarian violence” Wow! What a resounding success that would be…
Jordan,
I agree with you that the news is demoralizing.
I also am frustrated daily by the lack of context on the news. The Daily Show, while not “news” gives it pretty well for TV. Stewart takes the speeches of the day and compares them to what the speakers said earlier–illuminating. NewsHour on PBS also has a decent roundtable with Shields and Brooks. But, really, that is what books are for. Journalists usually lack a grasp of the issues to provide it.
What positive trends are the media avoiding in Iraq or Afghanistan?
Michiganny
Those of us on the Eastern shores of the Atlantic don’t know about the John Birch Society.
I am a libertarian, partly because I know what horrors any government machinery can do. When there is a war, however, I want the least evil side to win, completely and quickly. If that means dropping atomic bombs, carpet bombing Tokyo, phosphorous bombing Dresden, I am for it, if it ends the madness quicker, better than the sort of nonsense going on in Afghanistan and Iraq now.
War is the negation of civilization, humanity and peaceful commerce. It is to be avoided if at all possible, but performed with utter savagery if necessary. The idiocy of the welfare war, or nation building war is the worst sort of a Willets.
As for war propaganda. 1) You destroy the enemy’s ability to communicate its version of the truth, as a matter of priority. 2) You treat any information gatherers wandering about the battlefield as enemies, unless they are actively on your side. 3) You allow your troops to say what they like, and court martial them if they pass information to the enemy.
I once heard the claim that Lord Haw Haw didn’t actually have British citizenship when he was caught at the end of the Second World War, so the British gave it to him retrospectively so they could hang him for treason. A shocking abuse of due process if true, but a salutary tale for the MSM.
“oil take yes arl on!”
Seriously, the one I want to talk about now is the AI.
AI isn’t some 1980s film script-device.
What’s needed is an AI-enhanced human-machine interface.
For example, the Drone’s flight parameters and maneouvre capabilities are absolutely established, so flying the damned thing shouldn’t be necessary.
What would help is an on-demand point and forget navigational function.
This would require (almost) realtime two-way communication on a basic level.
For example, an image of a vehicle appears top-left.
Point and click on the image.
The historic position of the vehicle is recorded from the image time-stamp and geometry.
This could be updated four or five seconds later(slow automatic navigation towards the position based on inertial platform or simultaneous GPS down-link), and corrected.
Sensors on board could determine whether any incoming hostility was around, and the ‘AI’ could decide on Offense, Evasion or Retreat, with a human override and an upgraded data link(actively going to 0.5 second refresh for example).
All this is possible, easy even, although challenging.
As for the MSM, pick any article at random and I will try and analyse it.
Finding a specific example would be as tedious as hunting for straw in a haystack.
Good old Dave wanders in and makes my point for me. You see folks, there is no good news coming from Iraq. How does he know? Because the media doesn’t report any good news.
It would be useful to know, for example, whether a sudden spike in coalition fatalities has occurred in the midst of an offensive operation or whether the enemy has become more deadly. That’s useful context. We could reduce our death toll to 0 if we stayed inside our bases. Would you think it ok then, if the media continued its nightly body count devoid of all context? It matters.
Enemy body counts are part of that context. Given the quality of reportage coming out of Iraq, you’d think our soldiers just ride around all day waiting to be blown up or picked off by a sniper with impunity.
Your argument is there is good news but we don’t know what it is because no one, including our own propoganda machine, is reporting it? I agree more with Antoine’s 1/2/3.
My argument is that there’s good news, but those who only pay attention to the MSM miss most of it. Michael Yon, Michael Totten, Bill Roggio, Bill Ardolino, Austin Bay, and Iraq the Model provide a wealth of information that never makes it to the nightly news, to name a few. The U.S. military also releases a great deal of press releases, many of which are conveniently ignored by the wire services.
Jordan,
First, you assume alot about what and how I know things. But that will slide.
The real problem is you confuse feel good vignettes, the human capacity to adapt to and survive in horrendous environments, and the incomperable ability of our fighting men and women with “winning”. People need something to blame and many want to think it’s all the fault of the media for not reporting what’s “good” and that all we need is more “good news” to turn the tide (see number 7).
The sad reality is that violence is rapidly increasing to the point that bomings and civilian casualties are no longer reported, the press is excluded from attacks, and in fact civialian casualties are no longer included in official reports. Bad bad bad signs. The Iraqi PM has given up all pretense at including the Sunnis, the IPs suck, the ANA is starting to stagger, this all really blows and it’s getting worse, not better. History repeats itself, it’s repeating itself now, too bad humanity refuses to learn. Here’s a good (Link) to some milblogs
BTW, those Press releases are ignored because the Pentagons credibilty has been completely shot to hell.
So Dave1, what do you actually know and how do you know it? Don’t be so cryptic.
This whole thread is pretty much a hoot. It is probably no coincidence that there are so many experts on the internet where no one has to prove any bona fides. So, the U.S. Department of Defense does not know how to manage its bandwidth? Oh, wait; didn’t an agency called ARPA (US DOD) invent the damn internet to start with? The answer is, YES.
On the subject of reporting; plenty of first hand reports by reputable sources are available from Iraq and Afghanistan. The positive ones seldom show up in the big media. As to their motives, one should really ask them. You might as well ask what were the motives in 1968 when the TET offensive in Viet Nam was universally reported as a great Communist victory– when it was just the opposite? Most of the media have a point of view and an agenda and they are faithful to it.
To state that there is a three way civil war in progress in Iraq; i.e. Kurds, Shites and Sunnis, displays a breath-taking level of ignorance. Even the Mainstream Media is now occasionally reporting that many Sunni Sheiks in Anbar Province are coming into the fold and taking up the fight against (guess who?) Al Qaeda. The Kurds are waging peace and building a viable region. The Shia, except for the Sadr gang, are trying to build a country. I suspect that Iraq will eventually come together with less turmoil and bloodshed than was experienced in the United Kingdom and the United States. Now there were some real civil wars.
Cheers! To victory and the survival of western culture.
OldflyerBob
Mich- I don’t know any of the people you mention.
You have to remember that I’m trapped in the UK with a digibox and a newspaper.
Every dead man is a ‘hero’.
Every soldier ‘deserves better’.
All we get is regurgitated ‘mothers knee’ tales from way back in the journos memory, or considering their youth, ‘folk’ memory.
Whether they have or not, most of the journos like to pretend that they received their anti-war stance in their mother’s milk, rather like the babysitter on ‘Little Britain’ who turns a baby into a communist in three hours.
They are infused with an overwhelming projection of ‘moral’ superiority, and any opponents are shouted down as fiercely as the Jews in Nazi Germany.
Let’s face it, the Iraqi army was destroyed, Saddam and his family are dead.
If it were me I’d let the place split up.
But the troops are still there because of the journalistic moral position, not in spite.
Bob,
I didn’t intend to imply “secret knowledge.” I was simply responding to Jordan’s ill founded presumptions.
As for your “positive” stories. No media ever focuses on positive. Rightwing media focuses on irrelevent picaddillos of the left. Leftwing media demonizes the right. No one in influence focus on the boring facts or ever tries to sell the good except as counterpoint to a bad. It doesn’t sell.
To your points, Good things happen all over the place in Iraq and progress does occur. What I’ve been trying to identify is what are the DC punditry selling, specifically BushCo via their Fox et. al. mouthpiecs. And, unfortunately, they are selling enemy body counts and patience and are busy trying to hide the bad news parts from both the public and the soldiers and most importantly, trying to fix blame on the opposition. Not things needing to be done if the overall picture is good.
As for Tet, it was a military disaster for the communists but a political victory. Why? Because it disproved the DickCo lines about how irrelevent the VC were and weak the NVA was. Last throes anyone?
Pray tell, just how are they trying to hide the bad news? Also, I’ve never seen much ado about body counts from either Fox News (you might know it as Faux News because its scary) or Bushitler. Fox News reports a lot more on coalition and civilian body counts than terrorist body counts. What proof do you have to support your assertions aside from BDS?
I will admit that I’m pleased with your progress, Dave. You’ve gone from
to
One might be tempted to say “Mission Accomplished!”
Jordon,
There is a big difference between progress (as in Anbar, a battle front) vs winning the conflict (I.e. Militant islamisism vs. a stable and Western friendly Iraq). In place of “Progress” perhaps I should have said “small steps”. Unfortunately:
is the more applicable quote.
Fair enough. I just don’t understand why you bristle at those of us who call for the media to present a more complete picture, especially if you believe that picture would still support your current view. The more information we can get, the better, especially about an issue of such importance.
Jordan,
I did not understand your original post to be about how you felt the media was one sided. What I was responding to was “They are actively seeking a loss in Iraq by demoralizing the public. They can’t stomach the though of victory in Iraq because it will benefit their nemesis, George Bush. Their country be damned.” You seem to have come a long way too.
Anyway, I too want a “complete picture” without having to endlessly troll for actual data. It’s just very hard to find. (i.e. impossible) We also need to be careful not to exclude data we don’t like if it’s factual and include data that’s nonsense just because it supports our preconcieved views.
Pietr,
Thank you for failing to rise to the challenge. I knew you would not find anything un-American about the nightly news–because it is not. And also, how accurate are you being when you tell us you do not have access to any American media. Isn’t there a link on your website about Michael J. Fox here about an American TV show? You go on to link to USA Today on that same page–but you do not know anything about American media?
You were so confident in your earlier post about mainstream media scouting for the other side. Remember? “Proof?Only of my eyes and ears.”
But you cannot provide evidence? Why accuse people of treason if you cannot prove it or refuse to try?
All of their broadcasts are on their websites. Could you not even spend a few minutes looking? Pretty thin gruel you are serving up here, then.
OldflyerBob,
Thank you for pointing out those positive developments in Iraq. I agree they should get more coverage.
Antoine, you define propaganda, in part as, “You treat any information gatherers wandering about the battlefield as enemies, unless they are actively on your side.”
Isn’t it then propaganda to say the MSM is “scouting for the other side” whenever they bring up untidy facts? It is not a new charge. Generations ago, David Halberstam was accused of the same thing–he was a correspondent in Vietnam who did not copy down the 1960s versions of Jessica Lynch feel-good press releases. He was accused of terrible things by the US government. In the end, the historical record speaks for itself as to who was serving America better–Halberstam or JFK’s flunkies in the military who tried to coerce then silence him.
And that censorship of off-message communication is exactly what the brass is doing by stopping soldiers from commenting on the war they (not the Pentagon!) are fighting.
Mich, that’s an interesting conversation you’re having with yourself.
Pietr,
Touche!
There is no exchange of ideas to be had with you. Just assertions and your digibox.