The Real Deficit:

NYT: It's Even Worse Than You Think

Were the federal government to account for its Social Security obligations under the rules of accrual accounting, which govern public companies, its financial outlook would be far worse. By the end of last year, the Social Security system owed retirees and current workers benefits valued at $14 trillion. The system's assets, in contrast, were only $3.5 trillion. These assets include not only the trust funds' current reserves ($1.4 trillion), but also the present value of the taxes that current workers will pay over the remainder of their working lives ($2.1 trillion).

... In other words, the system's current shortfall — its assets minus its liabilities — is $10.5 trillion. Unless Congress chooses to rescind Social Security benefits that have already been earned, this shortfall must be shouldered by future generations. This implicit debt of the Social Security system is more than two and a half times larger than the government's public debt.

What's more, the magnitude of the Social Security shortfall grew immensely last year. At the beginning of 2002, the trust fund's deficit was $10.1 trillion. Under a system of accrual accounting, Social Security would have had to report a loss of approximately $370 billion. If this figure — and not the trust fund's annual cash-flow surplus — were added to other federal accounts, the federal government would have reported a $930 billion deficit last week. Add in similar adjustments for Medicare and other retiree benefits, and the flow of red ink last year surges even higher.

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If it's any comfort, most of the industrial world is supposedly in even worse shape.

If I were tyrant (clearly I'm not electable, so tyranny would be the only option :-) I'd be investing a great deal in research to slow the aging of the human brain. Were that to succeed I'd push the retirement age up in proportion to the therapeutic benefits. That might help in 20-40 years.

I'd strip benefits from employment, making it easier for people to move in and out of the workforce at any time of life.

I'd reform healthcare (yes, we do know how -- it's just that people don't like explicit rationing, they prefer their rationing to be hidden).

I'd raise taxes (yay, tyranny!) and fix the Bush economic disaster. (Clintonomics worked.)

Alas, I'm not tyrant!

Is Karl Rove an undercover agent for Al Qaeda?

ABCNEWS.com : Ex-Spies Furious, Betrayed Over Leak

Speaking to Nightline on condition of anonymity, with her voice digitally manipulated to avoid recognition, an undercover intelligence officer said the implications of the leak were grim.

'Just a few months ago, this administration went out of its way to tell us how important human intelligence is,' she said. 'We cannot find Saddam Hussein because we have no human intelligence. We cannot find Osama bin Laden because there is no human intelligence. And here you are, you have a case officer who is gathering human intelligence, who is running agents, and here you are exposing her and everyone that she came in contact with.'

As an undercover agent, Mrs. Wilson's duties would have included recruiting agents overseas in order to gather human intelligence -- the basic, but extremely dangerous brickwork, experts say, of intelligence work.

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Translators in Guantanomo Bay allegedly betray their nation and may receive the death penalty. The Bush administration betrays our nation and ...

Bush to axe Rumsfeld?

INTEL DUMP:Phil Carter quotes and comments on this Washington Post story:

Rumsfeld said in an interview with the Financial Times and three European news organizations that he did not learn of the new Iraq Stabilization Group until he received a classified memo about it from national security adviser Condoleezza Rice on Thursday.

Rumsfeld was asked several times why the changes were necessary. 'I think you have to ask Condi that question,' he said, according to a transcript posted on the Web site of the Financial Times.

Pressed, he said: 'I said I don't know. Isn't that clear? You don't understand English? I was not there for the backgrounding.'

Rumsfeld's tart remarks offer a window on the tensions among members of President Bush's war Cabinet, which are vividly described by administration officials but are rarely visible to outsiders. Rumsfeld's bluntness has occasionally rankled allies and caused headaches for the White House, but Bush is said to remain supportive.

The new group, headed by senior Rice aides at the National Security Council, gives the White House a stronger role in overseeing the reconstruction effort, which is under attack on Capitol Hill as poorly planned and unexpectedly expensive. Republican sources said the White House realizes that the consequences could be dire if the pace of the reconstruction does not improve markedly before the 2004 presidential election campaign begins.

Rumsfeld said he has not talked to Bush about the changes. When an interviewer said it sounded as though Rumsfeld had not been briefed about the changes before the memo and an interview Rice gave the New York Times, he replied, 'That's true.':

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Rove sees disaster ahead. Rumsfeld has served his purpose; now his incompetence makes him a liability. Look out below ...

Economist.com: Some little told stories on Al Qaeda's moves against worldwide shipping

Are terrorists now aiming to block shipping lanes and disrupt the flow of oil and other goods ?

ON MARCH 26th, the Dewi Madrim, a chemical tanker off the coast of Sumatra, was boarded by ten pirates from a speedboat. They were armed with machine guns and machetes and carried VHF radios. They disabled the ship's radio, took the helm and steered the vessel, altering speed, for about an hour. Then they left, with some cash and the captain and first officer, who are still missing.

...The temporary hijacking of the Dewi Madrim was by terrorists learning to drive a ship, and the kidnapping (without any attempt to ransom the officers) was aimed at acquiring expertise to help the terrorists mount a maritime attack. In other words, attacks like that on the Dewi Madrim are the equivalent of the al-Qaeda hijackers who perpetrated the September 11th attacks going to flying school in Florida.

...The Abu Sayyaf group in the Philippines kidnapped a maintenance engineer in a Sabah holiday resort in 2000. On his release in June this year, the engineer said his kidnappers knew he was a diving instructor; they wanted instruction. The owner of a diving school near Kuala Lumpur has recently reported a number of ethnic Malays wanting to learn about diving, but being strangely uninterested in learning about decompression.

...On September 16th 2001, America closed the port of Boston, fearing that terrorists would attack the gas terminal in the port. To this day, gas tankers bound for Boston have to be escorted by coastguards from 200 miles away from the port.

An incident on October 18th 2001 increased anxieties about terrorists using shipping, especially container ships, to smuggle people and explosives around the world. Authorities in the southern Italian port of Gioia Tauro found a stowaway in a well-appointed container, fitted out with a bed, toilet, heater and water. He also had a laptop computer, mobile and satellite phones, and airport security passes and a mechanic's certificate for JFK, Newark, Los Angeles International and Chicago O'Hare airports. Fears grew further after a torpedo attack by terrorists on a French tanker, the MV Limburg, in Yemen in October 2002.

The likeliest terrorist target is a tanker carrying liquefied petroleum gas (easier to explode than natural gas), reckons Aegis's Tim Spicer, formerly a British soldier and head of Sandline, a “private military company” (a euphemism for a supplier of mercenaries) that achieved notoriety for its work for the British government in Sierra Leone. He fears that hijacked gas and oil tankers could be used to block the Malacca Strait, or the Panama or Suez Canals. That could wreak economic havoc. The UN estimates that ships carry 80% of the world's traded cargo—5.8 billion tonnes in 2001.

...On October 1st, America's Bureau of Customs and Border Protection was supposed to introduce new rules requiring shipping lines to advise the agency by computer or by fax about the contents of incoming cargo vessels. It now says it has delayed publishing its requirements until later this month—although it is not entirely clear why.

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I wonder what kind of comic books Zawahiri read as a child in Egypt? Maybe that would help predict his next move. So much of Al Qaeda's plans and actions reminds one of the antagonists of the 1970's X-Men comics. What a world.

Fighting Spam -- yes, it's doable.

Spam Fighters Turn to Identifying Legitimate E-Mail: "People have been spending all their time creating filters to find the bad guys,' said Nico Popp, vice president for research and advanced products of VeriSign, the largest registrar of Internet sites and a seller of online identification systems. 'We want to turn that on its head and find ways to identify the good guys and let them in.'

Put simply, these efforts are trying to develop the Internet equivalent of caller ID, a technology that will let the receiver of an e-mail message verify the identity of the sender. As with caller ID for telephones, senders will be able to choose whether to remain anonymous. But also like caller ID, recipients may presume that those who do not identify themselves are sending junk.

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I've been clamoring for sending service authentication (the NYT has it wrong, this is about authenticating the sending service, not the sender -- the latter is the obvious solution but it's overkill) for years. I emailed influential folks, posted in newsgroups, posted on my web page.

It seemed self-evidently the right balance of intervention, enough to do the job but not overkill.

No-one seemed very impressed by my persistent presentations. Happily, it looks like the idea is catching on. (I'm pretty sure someone thought of this about 20 years ago, but what I found surprising was how hard it was to interest any expert in this approach. I never claimed it was my original idea.)

Cringely on privacy and identity theft: Third in a series ...

I, Cringely | The Pulpit

As I was getting ready to speak at last week's Toorcon 2003 information security conference in San Diego, I finally figured out that privacy was never intended for you and me. The system doesn't care about us at all.

The system doesn't care because the Post Office does nothing to protect our mail. Have you ever met a Postal Inspector? Neither have I. The system doesn't care because our government blithely gives away personal data on millions of citizens. For $3,200 and a couple pages of signatures, I could right now be running for Governor of California, but really harvesting the name, address, date of birth, and Social Security number of every registered voter in the state to be used for identity theft. Government does not protect our privacy, but is actively working to undermine it. Nor are we protected by the people with whom we entrust our money. For ONE DOLLAR I can get quickly this same information on anyone I like along with where they bank and their savings balance. This is supposed to be against the law, of course. We have laws and rules and regulations that supposedly protect our privacy, but they don't work. If we were to test them they would fail, so we don't test and they fail anyway...

...In the middle of this, we find the trinity of banks, government, and credit bureaus who betray us on our behalf. The banks and their bank-like sister companies are the airliners in our big economic sky. They use a modified version of the Big Sky Theory that says as long as theft is kept to five percent or less, it is tolerable. That's what insurance is for. They play the odds to achieve this, which is where the credit bureaus come in. They are the oddsmakers. This system works for us, too, because it enables us to get a mortgage without ever meeting a banker, it increases liquidity and makes easy credit available for nearly all of us. But the system works against us if we are among the five percent who are victims because our time, our reputations, and a certain amount of our money will never be recovered.

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See my earlier postings on this topic. He's absolutely right and it's nothing new. It's been this way for years. The main difference today is that soon identity theft will be fully automated; organized crime will churn through thousands of identities an hour, processing transactions on each one.

Nothing will happen until, just by chance, they steal the identity of a US Senator. Then there will be a maelstrom of stupid laws. Ahh, isn't democracy wonderful?

Bob Herbert wonders how Bush II could be so bad so fast

Shaking the House of Cards

The vicious release to news organizations of the identity of an undercover C.I.A. officer could serve as a case study of the character of this administration. The Bush II crowd is arrogant, venal, mean-spirited and contemptuous of law and custom.

The problem it faces now is not just the criminal investigation into who outed Valerie Plame, but also the fact that the public understands this story only too well. Deliberately blowing the cover of an intelligence or law enforcement official for no good reason is considered by nearly all Americans, regardless of their political affiliations, to be a despicable act.

According to an ABC-Washington Post poll, nearly 70 percent of Americans believe a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the leak.

Now that so much has gone haywire — Iraq, the economy, America's standing in the world — the tough questions are finally being asked about President Bush and his administration.

Perhaps foreign policy was not Mr. Bush's strength, after all. And even diehard Republicans have been forced to acknowledge that the president was surely wrong when he insisted that his mammoth tax cuts would be the engine of job creation. And nothing has ever come of Mr. Bush's promise to be the education president, or to change the tone of the discourse in Washington, or to deal humbly and respectfully with the rest of the world.

Americans are increasingly asking what went wrong. How could so much have gone sour in such a short period of time? Was it incompetence? Bad faith?

Loud warnings were ignored for the longest time. Now, finally, the truth is becoming more and more difficult to avoid.

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Meanwhile Wesley Clark's new book claims the Bush administration was planning a series of post-911 conquests beyond Iraq, and the word on the street is that the "real" motivation for taking Iraq was to help manage an expected collapse of Saudi Arabia. And, on another channel, the CIA is striking against the Bush administration on multiple fronts, leading to lurid speculation about what the CIA knows about Bush II plans.

I really wonder what Bush I is thinking about all of this. If nothing else, Bush II has proven the wisdom of not trying to conquer Iraq (not that I think the sanctions were a great alternative, but that's a longer story). I wonder if GB I is wishing yet again that Jeb had been the nominee.

Halifax Nova Scotia hit hard by Hurricane Juan

Unnoticed by the American media, Halifax was hit hard by a Category 2 storm .... One week later they're getting their power back ...



: "That might be because the hurricane, at first thought to be a Category 1 storm, will likely be reclassified as much more damaging.

'We sustained more than a Category 1 level of damage,' Peter Bowyer of the Canadian Hurricane Centre in Dartmouth said Wednesday night, explaining that 1 is the least severe on the 1 to 5 hurricane scale.

He said the uprooted trees, overturned rail cars and blown-off roofs all point to a much more destructive presence.

'My early guess is that it will be reclassified as a Category 2 . . . which is a big deal,' Mr. Bowyer said.

There's enough evidence in wind reports from an offshore oil rig and aerial views of the path of the hurricane, he said.

'When you piece that all together, it's starting to convince us that it was a Category 2,' he said.

Sustained winds at McNabs Island in Halifax Harbour measured over 150 kilometres per hour for two minutes, he said. "

More traveler resources: Radar Imaging, FlightTracker, FlightView

United States Radar by Intellicast

FlightTracker

FlightView

Air Traffic Control System Command Center: Terrific Traveler Resource

Air Traffic Control System Command Center

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Pretty amazing resource for travelers. Many thanks to Dave S for showing the way!

Using intestinal worms to treat inflammatory bowel disease ...

Entrez-PubMed

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This is the continuation of a study that got quite a bit of attention in 1999. Interestingly the f/u study has received little attention, but the therapy continues to look interesting. The U of Iowa is still early in its work. This is part of the same "diseases of hygeine" category as polio, asthma, and allergies.

PNAC.info - Exposing the Project for the New American Century

PNAC.info - Exposing the Project for the New American Century

Maureen Down, writing in the NYT, claims that the "New American Century Manifesto" is Rumsfeld's game plan and that he's been following it religiously.

NYT Magazine: Vegetative states and the nature of consciousness

What if There Is Something Going On in There?

The results of the study offered hints about the nature of consciousness. High-level thought -- like language and memory -- occurs in networks of neurons located at the surface of the brain in a thin layer of tissue called the cortex. These networks also form loops, however, that dip deep within the brain, where they converge and then return to the surface. According to a theory proposed by Rodolfo Llinas of New York University, a special set of neurons deep in the brain synchronizes the activity of the loops of higher thought. The harmony of all the different thought processes gives rise to a coherence that we call consciousness. Schiff and his colleagues say they suspect that when a number of these loops or the region that synchronizes them is damaged, the brain slips into a vegetative state. Yet even after extensive brain damage, they argue, some of the loops may still function, though in isolation -- like fragments of mind.

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I've long felt that consciousness was simpler than commonly assumed, and was as much illusion (and delusion) as it was a "real" state. So I find this fascinating ...

What Microsoft worries about: US Govt purchasing decisions mandating reliability and security.

To Fix Software Flaws, Microsoft Invites Attack

....By and large, vendors build what people are willing to pay for,' said Edward Lazowska, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington. 'People have historically been willing to pay for features -- not reliability or security.'

There is evidence, though, that corporations and the federal government are placing a greater emphasis on obtaining secure software. Within the last two years, the government has pushed security initiatives in its technology policy, especially in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Recent moves by the government include placing greater emphasis during the purchasing process on software design and reliability standards like the Common Criteria and the National Security Telecommunications and Information Systems Security Policy No. 11, a Pentagon directive that went into effect 14 months ago.
Such standards now apply mainly to the Department of Defense and national security agencies, but Congress is looking to extend similar standards to other federal agencies. The federal government is the world's largest buyer of information technology, spending nearly $60 billion a year.

'If the government made a serious commitment to buying better software, it would change the industry,' said Mary Ann Davidson, chief security officer of Oracle, the big database software company.

Two weeks ago, the House Subcommittee on Technology, Information Policy, Intergovernmental Relations and the Census, which is under the Committee on Government Reform, held a hearing on the impact of the Pentagon's programs to link procurement to tighter security standards for software.

Representative Adam H. Putnam, the Florida Republican who is chairman of the subcommittee, said he saw great promise for adopting similar standards.

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Buyers have traditionally not valued security or reliability, and vendors have met buyer's requests. I think this is a fundamental problem related to the inability of humans to make the "right" decisions in a world of fantastic complexity -- we need a wetware upgrade.

The changes in US Federal s/w purchase plans has been in the works for a while. "Change the industry" is a code-phrase for "displace Microsoft".

I suspect Microsoft was given early warning of this even before 9/11. Microsoft worries about only a few things:

1. European anti-trust legislation. Not so bad ... EU legislators can be bought.

2. Linux, in particular China or India mandating use of Linux solutions. A tough problem, but Microsoft may yet find a way to destroy Linux. (Consider their support of the SCO suit merely a minor skirmish.) Given Microsoft's cash reserves, they can buy a lot of key developers at $1-10 million apiece. OTOH, there are a lot of people in the world.

3. The US Federal government mandating security and reliability standards for government used software.

This last, I think, Microsoft's biggest fear. It's driving most of their current focus on security and their pending elimination of Symantec and the antivirus industry. I think they've already paid big money to US politicians to buy breathing time, but the price of a further delay may be getting a bit steep. Can they get their .NET/Palladium/Passport/Hailstorm solution set in place? What choice do the Feds have anyway?

Productivity and unemployment issues start to go mainstream ...

O'Reilly Network: Can computers help reverse falling employment? [Sep. 29, 2003]

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Interesting not because the suggestions are useful or the analysis deep, but because the issues of structural unemployment in our "new world order" are starting to go mainstream. At least the dialog is beginning.