Using mercenaries is seldom a good thing

Blackwater and co Iraq data-dump: mercenaries shot a judge with impunity, used bullets as hand signals, were not disciplined as this “would lower morale”
[Via Boing Boing]

Four years after their initial Freedom of Information Act request, Gawker has received and published 4,500 pages’ worth of detail on the way that mercenaries from Blackwater and other defense contractors conducted themselves in Iraq. Their basic procedure appears to have been to shoot any car that attempted to pass or tailgate any of the convoys they guarded, especially if the driver was a “military aged male.” Then, with no followup (or very little), they would conclude that the driver was unharmed and drive on, filing a report later. One victim of a Blackwater mercenary shooting was a judge, who was wounded in the leg (though Blackwater’s report claimed he was unharmed). The State Department backed Blackwater on this; in Gawker’s words, ‘The State Department determined that shooting at judges for driving too fast in their own country is “within the established Department of State policy for escalation of force.”‘ Other drivers were shot because they carried passengers with “devices” in their hands — such as mobile phones.

When Blackwater teams were caught lying about their roadside battles and executions, they faced little or no discipline. The State Department officials supervising the mercenaries’ behavior were told that discipline “would lower morale” among the mercenaries, and seemed to accept this at face value.

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They make it too easy to fight and they abuse their position in ways harmful to their ultimate employers. When did it become okay for America to require mercenaries to carry out our foreign policy and then to simply overlook their abuses?

As the evidence shows, the mercenaries our Executive branch paid for often presented a very corrupt approach, including killing innocent people and raping women. But they were outside any other control than the Executive branch and so could do what they pleased.

Funding their own private armies is one aspect of the Presidency that gives me real pause. Our forefathers were most afraid of a highly centralized and powerful Executive branch. That was the real source of tyranny.

Yet we seem to work harder everyday to make that branch even more powerful.

This is what frightens many consumer corporations

by DonkeyHotey

Sales Figures From Louis C.K.
[Via Daring Fireball]

Louis C.K.:

The show went on sale at noon on Saturday, December 10th. 12 hours later, we had over 50,000 purchases and had earned $250,000, breaking even on the cost of production and website. As of Today, we’ve sold over 110,000 copies for a total of over $500,000. Minus some money for PayPal charges etc, I have a profit around $200,000 (after taxes $75.58). This is less than I would have been paid by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video. They would have given you an encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use. They would have withheld international availability indefinitely. This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want, and you can watch it in Dublin, whatever the city is in Belgium, or Dubai. I got paid nice, and I still own the video (as do you). You never have to join anything, and you never have to hear from us again.

Sounds like a success. I watched it the other night and it was great. I hope it continues to sell like hotcakes.

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Louis C. K. financed the show himself and sold it online with no DRM for $5. No intermediate company, no recording company, no video company, no distributor. He did it all himself.

In less than a week he had sold 110,000 copies, even though people could have just downloaded it from torrent sites for  free. Many people are quite willing to pay a reasonable amount of money, especially if they know most of it actually goes to the performer.

Apple showed the way with iTunes – pirating becomes much less ‘sexy’ when it becomes so cheap and easy to buy.

The media companies are scared to death of this because it destroys their business models. They make money  by increasing the scarcity of the works, by making it hard to hear people like Louis C. K. without ponying up huge amounts of money.

These sorts of experiments show a new approach, one that actually helps both performer and customer. The performer gets more, has more rights and connects directly with their audience. The customer gets access to the performer for much, much less money.

Just another example of the legislature giving the Executive branch too much power

Kill SOPA, save America’s Internet and American jobs: ACT NOW, bill goes to the House TOMORROW
[Via Boing Boing]

Tiffiniy from American Censorship sez, “Tomorrow, the US government will vote to have broad powers to block any site. SOPA would not only hurt free speech, it will choke off the internet workforce and its readers by taking down entire websites. Today is the only day we have left to have our voices heard. It’s time to pull all stops – please make a call right now to protest censorship. Your call matters. If you don’t call, SOPA will pass. If there is one call per minute into every one of our representatives, we have a chance of stalling SOPA enough so it dies for quite some time. Please call Congress now and tell them you oppose internet censorship and stifling the internet. If you own a site, you’re in the best position to spread the word. Please post this call widget. If we’re really going to stop SOPA, we need you to get involved. If you write emails or have a blog, or if you post to Facebook, twitter, tumblr, tell everyone by blacking out your text here. It’s super easy. SOPA kills jobs that we need right now and blocks sites to Americans for the purpose of serving copyright in vague and overbroad ways, in ways that are not even well-agreed on by academics in the field. Please help us stop SOPA now.”

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Who in their right mind does not think this will be abused? Like the bill that would allow the President to declare anyone – citizen or not – a terrorist and imprison them anywhere in the world without benefit of habeas, a lawyer or a civil court, this bill provides the ability of the Executive to shut down any site it wants to, simply on its say so, with no real check on that ability.

We have already seen the first timid uses of this sort of approach be misused to take down sites that are completely innocent of any ‘crime’ . What more will happen with a much larger accumulation of power?

Ostensibly to protect the monied interests of important corporations but in reality, a perfect way to centralize power and determine just who gets to discuss what on the Web.

American citizens falsely imprisoned

Immigration Crackdown Also Snares Americans – NYTimes.com
[Via NYT]

A growing number of United States citizens have been detained under Obama administration programs intended to detect illegal immigrants who are arrested by local police officers.

In a spate of recent cases across the country, American citizens have been confined in local jails after federal immigration agents, acting on flawed information from Department of Homeland Security databases, instructed the police to hold them for investigation and possible deportation.

Americans said their vehement protests that they were citizens went unheard by local police officers and jailers for days, with no communication with federal immigration agents to clarify the situation. Any case where an American is held, even briefly, for immigration investigation is a potential wrongful arrest because immigration agents lack legal authority to detain citizens.

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Americans held for up to a year, without trial, in violation of the Bill of Rights. But that is okay.

Computer screw ups due to incomplete databases send people into a Kakaesque world. But that is okay.

They lack the authority to detain American citizens yet do. But that is okay.

Apparently, better for a few American citizens to be held without bail or trial for as long as it takes.