Stop subtly glorifying Carl Icahn

i've posted on the odious carl icahn before... portraying carl icahn as an "activist shareholder" and an "agitator for change" is flat-out bullshit... carl icahn is out for himself and himself alone...


Carl Icahn

today's nyt...

Carl C. Icahn, the billionaire investor and activist shareholder, has decided to move ahead with plans for a proxy fight at Yahoo and will propose a dissident slate of directors, people with knowledge of the plans said Wednesday.

Mr. Icahn, who has told associates that he has bought as many as 50 million shares of Yahoo, is leaning toward trying to oust the entire board by proposing a slate of 10 candidates, these people said. The deadline for nominating a dissident slate is Thursday.

He is moving ahead with the proxy fight in hopes of pushing Yahoo to restart talks to sell itself to Microsoft. Yet Microsoft has given no indication that it would be willing to restart talks. Mr. Icahn’s decision to try to oust the entire board — as opposed to proposing only a couple of candidates — is considered a high-risk maneuver, analysts said. He might have a better chance of winning a campaign by proposing a smaller slate, several analysts added.

Under the proxy rules, Mr. Icahn can reduce his slate later, but had he nominated a smaller number of candidates he would not be allowed to increase it.

[...]

Mr. Icahn has a made a career of agitating for change at some of the nation’s biggest companies. In the last three decades, he set his sights on companies as varied as T.W.A. and Time Warner.

icahn sees an opportunity to increase his already vast wealth by luring microsoft into re-opening and enriching its bid... he doesn't give a fraction of a shit for the shareholders and never has, and with his fingerprints on yahoo, none of us - including myself, a 10+ year user of yahoo mail - will be the better for it...

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Microsoft + Yahoo ≠ good news for anyone

fewer and fewer owners, bigger and bigger companies - isp's, telcos, newspapers, television networks, radio stations - more and more opportunities for information to be shaped, controlled, and disseminated to serve the agendas of the powerful, monied elites...

Microsoft in $44.6 Billion Bid for Yahoo

The surprise offer of $31 a share, which represents a 62 percent premium on Thursday’s closing price, would bring relief to Yahoo’s long-suffering shareholders.

quite honestly, i don't give a goddam about yahoo's long-suffering shareholders... nobody's been holding a gun to their heads, forcing them to hang on to their stock... by contrast, nobody will HAVE to hold a gun to my head, forcing me to choose only one software company or isp when there's only one left...

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Microsoft takes spying to a new level

still MORE we aren't seeing in our domestic news media...

from the uk timesonline...

Microsoft submitted a patent application in the US for a “unique monitoring system” that could link workers to their computers. Wireless sensors could read “heart rate, galvanic skin response, EMG, brain signals, respiration rate, body temperature, movement facial movements, facial expressions and blood pressure”, the application states.

The system could also “automatically detect frustration or stress in the user” and “offer and provide assistance accordingly”. Physical changes to an employee would be matched to an individual psychological profile based on a worker’s weight, age and health. If the system picked up an increase in heart rate or facial expressions suggestive of stress or frustration, it would tell management that he needed help.

i'm sure the objective is to insure that there isn't a square inch on the face of the earth where we AREN'T under surveillance... if such a system is available for use on computer work stations in our places of employment, you can pretty well figure it's ALREADY in use covertly, and probably has been for some time now...

(thanks to kevin at cryptogon...)

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Here we go, ISP-initiated spying, just like Mettle said would happen

mettle has been scarce around these parts recently, but i simply couldn't read this without hearkening back to one of his posts from last july talking about this very thing... (because i think it's so highly relevant, i'm going to repost it below...)

For the last 15 years, Internet service providers have acted - to use an old cliche - as wide-open information super-highways, letting data flow uninterrupted and unimpeded between users and the Internet.

But I.S.P.’s may be about to embrace a new metaphor: traffic cop.

At a small panel discussion about digital piracy at NBC’s booth on the Consumer Electronics Show floor, representatives from NBC, Microsoft, several digital filtering companies and the telecom giant AT&T said the time was right to start filtering for copyrighted content at the network level.

Such filtering for pirated material already occurs on sites like YouTube and Microsoft’s Soapbox, and on some university networks.

Network-level filtering means your Internet service provider – Comcast, AT&T, EarthLink, or whoever you send that monthly check to – could soon start sniffing your digital packets, looking for material that infringes on someone’s copyright.

“What we are already doing to address piracy hasn’t been working. There’s no secret there,” said James Cicconi, senior vice president, external & legal affairs for AT&T.

from mettle, 31 july 2007...

Some tools for total surveillance are located on-site of telcos and ISPs, in that cozy Government/Corporate marriage. Other tools include OLAPs.

Types of tools coming online at present include "Deep packet inspection", an example of which is discussed here.

Much ballyhoo has been made of making particular digital pictures into crime. Those, as well as mp3 music files or other types of data files have identifiable "signatures", by means of "CRC", (cyclic redundancy check) and/or "checksum".

Much has been written already that the Vista operating system is Orwellian in nature. Now it is being reported that some anti virus companies may abandon scanning files for viruses and use "whitelisting" instead. Whitelisting will certify known files by their CRC or checksum. It is easy to see how that will fit into a police state.

The DoJ has already demanded records from major search engine companies. Apparently, only Google put up a substantial fight.

This article shows preliminary means to join the government grid.

For a peek ahead you can jump right to a look at the Global Justice Justice XML Data Model, or right ahead to see the National Information Exchange Model.

Of course, ultimately "users might need access to the global Centrix network, the Secret IP Router Network and the Non-classified IP Router Network to get all the information they require".

This report, among other topics, contemplates Information Sharing. (.pdf)

The pretexts for government to monitor all financial transactions seem similar to their need to know what library books people read and what Web sites they visit.

Starting with problems of a cashless society: government can cancel credit cards at a mere whim. And Government has been all over the alternate-forms-of-payment industry:

Consider E-gold and some of their tribulations.

The pretexts to monitor all electronic financial transactions are of course, framed in the emotional bugaboos of the day.

From comments on Press Esc:

'The Patriot Act is only temporary. It includes sunset provisions.' We all know what happened with that."

Similar legislation has already been shot down. (.pdf) (COPA was originally the basis for compelling the search engine records sharing compliance.)

So what else will Deep Packet Inspection look for? Consider this. (h/t slashdot)

just keep cranking out the ways the government can come after us...

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Time for a re-post on Mark Penn, HRC's Karl Rove

as hrc seems to be taking a hard turn toward the nasty, now hurling both ridicule and accusation - mostly in obama's direction - i think it's time to repost the item i put up back at the end of this past april that provides a wee bit of detailed background on the man i increasingly think of as hrc's karl rove, mark penn...

from the wapo...

In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, [Mark J. Penn] has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.

If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton's husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).

If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party's biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft's image in Washington.

And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.

markos, atrios, david sirota, and many other bloggers working feverishly for the grassroots/netroots/unwashed masses have cited case after case of the stupendously arrogant, elitist, inside-the-beltway, dlc-anointed, democratic campaign consultants that are so pathetically out of touch with the real democratic/progressive base... today's wapo offers up the quintessential profile of one of those very folks, and then tries to make it look like hillary is passively acquiescent while he calls all the shots... i say bullshit... he's there because she wants him there... the first part of the article talks about how gore fired him from his 2000 campaign for all of the same reasons hillary apparently wants him...

fine, hillary,,, you're the candidate... you're the one that wants to be president... you choose the campaign staff you want... just don't come calling on me to vote for you...

p.s. penn's firm, penn, schoen & burland, is owned by burson-marsteller, and guess who's burson's ceo...? and guess what's featured on burson's home page...?

Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn discusses the Internet's affect on U.S. campaign politics on Council of PR Firms' podcast [mp3]

from penn's burson-marsteller bio...

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mr. Penn oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mr. Penn focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mr. Penn has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Penn working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

just the kind of guy to be advising hillary about how to relate to the electorate in the 2008 campaign, the most critical presidential election in the history of the united states...

hrc sold her soul a very long time ago... whether mark penn holds the marker is immaterial... she has a person like mark penn working for her because she's that kind of person herself... period...

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Mark Penn, the behind-the-scenes, DLC, Washington insider that runs Hillary 2008

read this and then guess yet ANOTHER reason why i wouldn't vote for her...

In the four months since Clinton officially became a candidate, [Mark J. Penn] has consolidated his power, according to advisers close to the campaign, taking increasing control of the operation. Armed with voluminous data that he collects through his private polling firm, Penn has become involved in virtually every move Clinton makes, with the result that the campaign reflects the chief strategist as much as the candidate.

If Clinton seems cautious, it may be because Penn has made caution a science, repeatedly testing issues to determine which ones are safe and widely agreed upon (he was part of the team that encouraged Clinton's husband to run on the issue of school uniforms in 1996).

If Clinton sounds middle-of-the-road, it may be because Penn is a longtime pollster for the centrist Democratic Leadership Council whose clients have included Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.).

If Clinton resembles a Washington insider with close ties to the party's biggest donors, it may be because her lead strategist is a wealthy chief executive who heads a giant public relations firm, where he personally hones Microsoft's image in Washington.

And if some opponents see Clinton as arrogant, her campaign a coronation rather than a grass-roots movement, it may be because of the numbers wizard guiding her campaign and the PowerPoint presentations he likes to give on the inevitability of his candidate.

markos, atrios, david sirota, and many other bloggers working feverishly for the grassroots/netroots/unwashed masses have cited case after case of the stupendously arrogant, elitist, inside-the-beltway, dlc-anointed, democratic campaign consultants that are so pathetically out of touch with the real democratic/progressive base... today's wapo offers up the quintessential profile of one of those very folks, and then tries to make it look like hillary is passively acquiescent while he calls all the shots... i say bullshit... he's there because she wants him there... the first part of the article talks about how gore fired him from his 2000 campaign for all of the same reasons hillary apparently wants him...

fine, hillary,,, you're the candidate... you're the one that wants to be president... you choose the campaign staff you want... just don't come calling on me to vote for you...

p.s. penn's firm, penn, schoen & burland, is owned by burson-marsteller, and guess who's burson's ceo...? and guess what's featured on burson's home page...?

Burson-Marsteller CEO Mark Penn discusses the Internet's affect on U.S. campaign politics on Council of PR Firms' podcast [mp3]

from penn's burson-marsteller bio...

Mark Penn is worldwide CEO of Burson-Marsteller and President of Penn, Schoen and Berland. As CEO of Burson-Marsteller, Mr. Penn oversees a global network of 94 offices and 1600 employees that brings world-class public relations to companies around the world. As President of PSB, a position he has held since 1975 when he was an undergraduate at Harvard, Mr. Penn focuses on providing research-based communications strategy to political figures, corporations and crisis situations.

Mr. Penn has been called "Master of the Message" by Time Magazine; "The king of polls" by the London Times; and an "incandescent intellect" by the New York Times. On his wall are notes saying "you were brilliant" from Tony Blair after his historic third win and "thanks" from Bill Clinton after his impeachment acquittal along with photos of Penn working with CEOs including Bill Gates and Bill Ford, Jr. The Washington Post, in "Politics and Policy by the Numbers" summed up his influence in the White House and the corporate boardroom as a "unique vantage point: adviser to the preeminent innovator of the past decade in the realm of politics, Bill Clinton, and the preeminent innovator in the realm of business and technology, Bill Gates."

just the kind of guy to be advising hillary about how to relate to the electorate in the 2008 campaign, the most critical presidential election in the history of the united states...

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