Chris Boese's Weblog

Beware the coming social network wars?!

Link: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times.

What's up with this? A big "secret source" expose' on deep background? A coming onslaught?! The underdog forces of Google (ahem) and some conspiracy, some cabal, dare we say a back room deal? They are all marshalling their forces to SAVE US ALL from the utter takeover of the world by....

Facebook.  (er, Microsoft? The 1.6 percent solution?)

(full disclosure... these days I somewhat resemble that solution)

Beware the Jabberwock, my son!
The jaws that bite, the claws that catch!
Beware the Jubjub bird, and shun
The frumious Bandersnatch!

Oh no! Not the old frumious Bandersnatch!

What? You don't believe we Facebook users are in imminent peril? Well, just look at this secret-sourced NYTimes article below, and tremble with fear! Then you can say a little prayer that Google and friends are there to save us from ourselves.

Link: Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook - New York Times.

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook

By MIGUEL HELFT and BRAD STONE

Published: October 31, 2007

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 30  —  Google and some of the Web’s leading social networks are teaming up to bully the new kid on the block — Facebook.    

On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster and Ning, according to people briefed on the plans. Those people asked not to be named because they agreed to keep the alliance’s plans confidential.

The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

“It is going to forestall Facebook’s ability to get everyone writing just for Facebook,” said a person briefed on the plans. The group’s platform, which is called Open Social, is “compatible across all the companies,” that person said.

“Facebook got the jump by announcing the Facebook platform and getting the traction they got. This is an open alternative to that,” the person also said.

[...]

[Oh, OK, I get it. It isn't Facebook itself that is an offensive smell unto the heavens, it's the closed platform. Because we all know, none of those companies ever tried to advance any closed platforms themselves before, right?

I'm sensing crocodile tears, in other words.

Now, generally I'm the first one to rant against walled gardens, most often right here in this blog. Yet for some reason, I have no interest whatsoever in MySpace, which is much more open than Facebook.

Most of my work online is outside any walled gardens, in the blogosphere. And yet.

And yet what is this REALLY all about? (Alfie?)

I don't like walled gardens, yet I DO like to keep my EMAIL private. And I patronize both Facebook and LinkedIn, which are fairly (but not perfectly) tight on keeping email spammers away by creating an Opt-In Whitelist out on the Cloud.

And THAT, folks, is the real frumious Bandersnatch in this saga.

Google and friends might SAY it is about open standards. They might SAY it is about improving the quality and interoperability of the social networking experience. Yaddah yaddah. I remember back in 2003 or so, when open source advocates were trying to set up an open FOAF standard like RSS, to be published with any page. Yeah, I tried it just to try it. Man, did it sucketh muchly.

Where were all these Great and Terrible OZ Champions of open standard social networks then, back when the interfaces were rough and clunky and only geeks would touch it? Back when the idea was just starting to take shape? Nowhere to be found.

And I bailed just about as quickly as I tried it out. The reason? Because OPEN platform with FOAF meant ANYONE could get at any social links I chose to put in that space (including spammers), and that was precisely what I didn't want. That stuff is myowndamnbusinessthankyouverymuch.

So are we supposed to buy that this is somehow the sequel of that grassroots foray?

Here's what I think: Google and friends got a whiff of many chips really are on the table, the real threat Facebook poses, and got their noses bent out of joint because they were being forced to play Facebook's game to get a piece of the action

THINK: what has really been the BIGGEST killer app since the birth of the Internet?

There's only one answer to that question: email.

And how much has the basic interface of email changed or substantially been improved on since the bad old days of Pine and all that gnashing of teeth?

Email is still a reverse-chronological list with items you open and close, save or delete. Even Gmail and others out in the Cloud have not substantially altered anyone's single experience of email (other than gmail's "never delete anything" mantra, which is still ominous to me).

We are all inundated by spam now, of course, because of the frictionless direct mail and fraud space, but aside from the spam filter industry that has arisen to put up walls and have them breached and put up new walls and have them breached, what is happening to improve or change our experience of email?

I personally find the interface of the reverse-chronological email In-Box list oppressive. I'd like to delete it from my life. It hides important things I want to remember. They get pushed off the screen as other more recent, less important things arrive.

That is the nature of an interface ruled by clock time and screen boundaries instead of by values and human needs. It persists because on a basic level its utility serves better than any alternative so far, SO FAR.

The reverse-chronological list email interface rules humans and social groups, rather than humans and social groups ruling it.

People who matter to me are forgotten in the exigence of the email moment, just as TV occupies our front minds with trivia and disrupts the values most of us would consciously choose, if we were indeed conscious and controlling the interfaces that dictate our lives.

Trivial email as sonambulistic distraction on par with TV? I think it could be, yet email is probably the most important thing in my life, STILL. I blame the interface, not my quality email connections.

I'd like to put relationships in the center of my online experience, not a reverse-chronological clock.

People at Earthlink and other proactive ISPs often urge us to make liberal use of the blacklists and whitelists they enable for us, but those tools are not useful to me at all.

Blacklists are useless because spammers are a moving target.

Whitelists are useless because they are like your own personal Emily Dickinson, "A Soul Selects her own Society," shutting the door on the divine majority.

The old classmate or distant cousin can't find you if you erase yourself from online spaces in the name of protecting yourself from spam.

If you build the moat around your castle too wide and deep, no one will be able to get in.

It defeats the purpose of being online in the first place: to connect (and not to buy things endlessly trying to fill needy emotional holes in our souls, WWW=TV II, as many online ventures desperately want us to believe).

Interfaces must serve the users AND their social groups, and not the other way around. And when interfaces do not serve, social groups should be empowered to reshape fluid interfaces to fit their needs and wants. This was what I found in my doctoral research in the late 1990s, and we are apparently still learning this lesson now.

Facebook is hot right now because it has seized a middle ground, allowing us to both HIDE and CONNECT. One foot in water, one foot on land. That's a walled garden I can live with. Not invisible, but not vulnerable either, because basically the Emily Dickinson in each of us is still in charge, and can shut the door on any divine majorities she pleases.

Google and its secret superfriends who think they are going to save us from ourselves by luring us away from Facebook (uh, just like Google Video persuaded all those avid YouTube users to abandon the YouTube communities and choose Google instead?) are actually operating out of fear, the SAME FEAR that sent Bill Gates into the browser wars with Netscape.

Why did Internet Explorer seek to crush Netscape? Because Microsoft saw the browser as a primary competitor for Windows, the browser as new OS platform. From the standpoint of Microsoft, if Windows is a shell that sits on top of MS-DOS, a browser can also become a de facto shell that sits on top of Windows, potentially superseding it.

Did Microsoft buy that 1.6% stake in Facebook for this same reason, jockeying with Google? It does seem to be High Noon a lot these days between Microsoft and Google, but I have no insight into any of that competitive business activity. I'm interested in interfaces and platforms.

I think Google and friends believe Facebook is fast becoming The Platform of the Cloud, a platform that sits on top of the browser in the same way the browser sits on top of the OS.

Our primary interfaces will always be a moving target as fickle users and social groups gravitate toward the interfaces that resonate and are most useful to them.

Blog software opened web publishing to legions of non-specialists, creating new social network interfaces, a reborn and empowered public Commons through simple publishing interfaces (not discounting any of the many private, group, and intranet blogs in use out there, as publishing can be both public and private and inbetween).

Gmail is trying to get us to move the same old email interfaces into new wineskins, out on the Cloud, but Google has not substantially changed the basic function of reverse-chronological list email interfaces that have been with us since Pine.

So what do I get from Facebook? Right now, at least (until Facebook, as many tools I've tried before, changes my basic experience on the site, and I bail), I think I get what could be the successor to email-as-killer-app.

For the first time ever in my online experience, I'm not just getting another platform. I think I'm getting something that could replace email as the central interface and portal for me online.

I mean, I've been on the web since 1993, and regardless of how well the browser interface has conquered the world, it's clunky one-way "interactive" features kept it from ever upstaging email as my primary on-ramp online.

Personally, I think Facebook has the potential to edge out email as the ultimate killer app, and that raises higher stakes for all business players involved, more so than just adding another rung in the infinitely beckoning and totally temporal platform "layer" wars.

But I'm not done pointing up some things from the NYTimes article that set me off on this tangent. Here's some more juicy bits:]

The alliance includes business software makers Salesforce.com and Oracle, who are moving to let third-party programmers write applications that can be accessed by their customers.

The start of Open Social comes just a week after Google lost to Microsoft in a bid to invest in Facebook and sell advertising on the social network’s pages outside the United States. And it comes just before the expected introduction by Facebook of an advertising system next week, which some analysts believe could compete with Google’s.

[...]

For now, however, Facebook has become the preferred platform for software developers.

By teaming with others, Google hopes to create a rival platform that could have broad appeal to developers. A person briefed on the plans said that the social networks in the alliance had a combined 100 million users, more than double the size of Facebook.

[...]

[You know, that unnamed person above is waving something phallic-shaped around, but it sure ain't 100 million users. This smells like someone blowing PR spin to me. I don't care how many "registrations" they can name in articles like this, they wouldn't be shitting little gold bricks in this special competitive alliance if they thought those 100 million users wouldn't ditch them for Facebook in a heartbeat. Anyone can read trend reports and see which way the wind is blowing.

I mean, Google Video's attempts to trump YouTube also underestimated the power of the YouTube community. Google cried uncle first.]

The developers of some of the most popular Facebook applications, including iLike and RockYou, are expected to be present at a party Thursday evening when they will announce that they will tailor their programs to run on the Open Social sites.

The effort faces several hurdles. Developers may not see the advantage to writing programs that run across such remarkably different networks as, for example, LinkedIn, which caters to business professionals, and hi5, which is popular in Central America.

[...]

Google has not been able to establish itself as a force in social networking, and it clearly wants to. “One of the things to say, very clearly, is that social networks as a phenomenon are very real,” Eric E. Schmidt, Google’s chief executive, said in a recent interview. “If you are of a certain age, you sort of dismiss this as college kids or teenagers. But it is very real.”

Google said it has advertising relationships with several social networks, including a $900 million partnership to sell ads on MySpace, which the company said is performing well. Google is also making some money on Facebook, through ads that run inside applications that are used on that network.

A person familiar with Google’s efforts said that those applications have been far more effective for advertisers on social networks than users’ personal pages. “It is early, but those ads work very well, whereas the ads in overall social media platforms have shown less performance,” the person said.

[...]

[This is the New York Times and all, but I really hope the article above was not based on that single unnamed source, because that person is clearly a PR spinner releasing a trial balloon in advance of a more official announcement.

The New York Times wouldn't hinge this entire story on a single source, would it? I know it's pitiful, but there are a few things in this era of declining journalistic standards that I'd like to be able to trust, even if I do know better than to trust anything (except bloggers!).

One, two! One, two! And through and through
  The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head
  He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?
  Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!'
  He chortled in his joy.

 

JK Rowling outs Dumbledore... and reveals other tantilizing Harry Potter back stories

Oh man, I am LOVING this stuff! See, I always knew Dumbledore was gay. I am a total Harry Potter series nut, and I suppose at my age I should be embarrassed by that, but I never have been. I know why that series grabbed me and never let go (besides the phenomenal talents of Jim Dale, who brings the audio books alive even better than the films).

It was Dumbledore. I was always reading the Harry Potter series for Dumbledore. He was Harry's hero, but he was the reason I was reading the series, Dumbledore and hoggy woggy Hogwarts, which was my secret dream of utopia. There, I said it.

It's like, if you get to choose where you go when you die, the landscape of the afterlife, for me, it will be Hogwarts. Ooh, and I need Dumbledore to be there.  The last few books were hard for me that way (no spoilers yet, don't worry), but in the end, JK gave me what I needed by the end of the last book.

And in her talk below, makes me realize why the Harry Potter series also makes me want to sit and watch Donnie Darko over and over. It's not the literary stuff I'm valuing (cuz high literature/film, it ain't), but the same thing is drawing me, just like, also maybe, Ursula LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

Anyway, let's pull out some juicy bits below! Watch out. SPOILER ALERT!

Link: The Leaky Cauldron: J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumbledore is Gay; Neville Marries Hannah Abbott, and Much More.

J. K. Rowling at Carnegie Hall Reveals Dumbledore is Gay; Neville Marries Hannah Abbott, and Much More

J.K. Rowling  

Posted by: Edward

 

October 19, 2007, 09:17 PM

Note: A preliminary transcript is now at the end of this post; please note that there may be some small errors in phrasing, and all questions have been paraphrased to save time; this is not a final transcript, but the accuracy of the questions and answers have been maintained.

[...]

Tonight, the one thousand grand prize winners (and their guests) of the Scholastic's Open Book Tour Sweepstakes along with a companion got the chance to see Harry Potter author J. K. Rowling read from "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," answer questions and sign books at New York City's Carnegie Hall. We have exclusive information this evening on the myriad of "Deathly Hallows" questions she answered as well as in-depth details on a number of subjects she spoke about.  

A caution now.  Parts of the following WILL contain book seven SPOILERS.   

[...]

First, the biggest revelation of the night came when Jo revealed to her audience the fact that Albus Dumbledore is gay and had fallen in love with fellow wizard and friend, Gellert Grindelwald. This elicited a huge reaction and prolonged ovation. So much so, it promoted Jo to say:  

"If I had known this would have made you this happy, I would have announced it years ago."

The question was: Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?  

JKR: My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how i always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] "If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!"  

Jo also said after revelation: "You needed something to keep you going for the next 10 years! ...Oh, my god, the fan fiction now, eh?"   

[heh. That would about be the understatement of the year. hoo-eee.]

Jo also revealed that Neville Longbottom married Hufflepuff Hannah Abbott and she was to become the landlady at the iconic Leaky Cauldron Pub. She thought that people would find the fact of Neville's living over a pub particularly cool.

[Actually, I was more interested in Neville becoming Herbology teacher at Hogwarts. 19 years later, the other faculty had retired, but Hagrid was still going strong. Maybe half-giants live longer too, but big dogs don't live longer than small dogs. I was at least wishing Hagrid could have hooked up with Madame Maxime. And I expected Hermione to be Headmistress at Hogwarts, not running the Wizengamont (sp?)]

Equally large revelations were made concerning Petunia Dursley when Jo answered the question of what Petunia could not bring herself to say when Harry and the Dursleys parted ways before his seventeenth birthday. She would have wished him luck, saying:

"I do know what you're up against and I hope it's okay."

[Yeah, but how does she know? More backstory there? Hmmm. Not from listening to Lily and Snape through the bushes, that's for sure. The milk of human kindness still curdles in Aunt Petunia's breast.]

Information on the original Order members was also revealed during tonight's event. Jo related the fact that Remus Lupin, prior to the third book, was unemployable because he was a werewolf and upon his graduation from Hogwarts along with James and Lily, was supported by James using their own money. In addition to this she shed more light on the early days of the Order, saying James, Sirius, Remus and Lily were full time Order members. "Full Time Fighters," as Jo put it.  

Jo also went into further detail about the many portraits in the wizarding world and their occupants. An occupant can only move freely to other portraits in their dwelling or to another portrait in which they are depicted. She also revealed that Harry himself made sure that the portrait of Snape made it into the Headmasters Office, but doubts that he ever went to speak to it.

[I dunno. He named his kid after Snape. I always figured either Harry or Hermione would be in that office one day, and neither would mind if Snape's portrait was there, even if it were as unpleasant as the other Slytherin former headmaster, Phineas Nigelis (it's so hard when you're addicted more to the audio books, you hear words, but can't spell them!).

Then there's the rule, I think, for getting to be a portrait in the headmaster's office. You have to swear an oath of allegiance to support the current headmaster, whoever that is. I think that they said something about that one time when Phineas Nigelis was pretending to be sleeping and didn't want to do what Dumbledore had asked him to do. So even if Snape's portrait were in there and ornery, he'd have to support the headmaster. But wasn't there something else, about abdicating his post, which may have disqualified Snape from being in there?

On yet a third hand, Harry could never do well in a class with Snape in it. I mean, geez, the guy defeats the Dark Lord, but cowers when Snape sneers at his potions? I mean, come on, Harry, get over it.]

[...]

Finally, speaking about her personal feelings and experiences of the past seventeen years with the boy wizard, Jo said finishing the first book and the seventh book produced very similar feelings. She also admits that she was very difficult to live with for the weeks following her completing the last book in the "Harry Potter" series.  

A full transcript of this evening's event will be available on TLC soon. TLC will update throughout the evening with the latest from this event.  

Some highlights have been transcribed:  

[...]

How did you decide that Molly Weasley would be the one to finish off Bellatrix?  

I always knew Molly was going to finish her off. I think there was some speculation that Neville would do it, because Neville obviously has a particular reason to hate Bellatrix. ..So there were lots of optios for Bellatrix, but I never deviated. I wanted it to be Molly, and I wanted it to be Molly for two reasons.

The first reason was I always saw Molly as a very good witch but someone whose light is necessarily hidden under a bushel, because she isn't in the kitchen a lot and she has had to raise, among others, and [Arthur?] which is like, enough... I wanted Molly to have her moment and to show that because a woman had dedicated herself to her family does not mean that she doesn't have a lot of other talents.  

Second reason: It was the meeting of two kinds of - if you call what Bellatrix feels for Voldemort love, I guess we'll call it love, she has a kind of obsession with him, it's a very sick obsession ... and I wanted to match that kind of obsession with maternal love... the power that you give someone by loving them. So Molly was really an amazing exemplar of maternal love. ... There was something very satisfying about putting those two women together.

[I was actually sure of the rightness of Molly facing off with Bellatrix from the moment I saw what Molly's buggart was. That's how I knew she had to have her moment to step up and stand up to her fears. I just wish she were more of a full member of the order, instead of its mommy-cliche mad she-bear. After all, Charlie and the twins take after her more than dad. Of course she is a formidable witch.

As for this next one... oh dear, I knew this was coming. What a wonderful question! From the mouths of babes...]

[...]
 
Q: In the Goblet of Fire Dumbledore said his brother was prosecuted for practicing inappropriate charms [JKR buries her head, to laughter] on a goat; what were the inappropriate charms he was practicing on that goat?  

JKR: How old are you?  

Eight.    

JKR: I think that he was trying to make a goat that was easy to keep clean [laughter], curly horns. That's a joke that works on a couple of levels. I really like Aberforth and his goats. But you know Aberforth having this strange fondness for goats if you've read book seven, came in really useful to Harry, later on, because a goat, a stag, you know. If you're a stupid Death Eater, what's the difference. So, that is my answer to YOU.  

[loud applause]

  Did Dumbledore, who believed in the prevailing power of love, ever fall in love himself?

My truthful answer to you... I always thought of Dumbledore as gay. [ovation.] ... Dumbledore fell in love with Grindelwald, and that that added to his horror when Grindelwald showed himself to be what he was. To an extent, do we say it excused Dumbledore a little more because falling in love can blind us to an extent? But, he met someone as brilliant as he was, and rather like Bellatrix he was very drawn to this brilliant person, and horribly, terribly let down by him. Yeah, that's how I always saw Dumbledore. In fact, recently I was in a script read through for the sixth film, and they had Dumbledore saying a line to Harry early in the script saying I knew a girl once, whose hair... [laughter]. I had to write a little note in the margin and slide it along to the scriptwriter, "Dumbledore's gay!" [laughter] If I'd known it would make you so happy, I would have announced it years ago!

[...]

Q: What did Dumbledore write in the letter to make the Dursleys take Harry?  

JKR: Very, very good question. As you know, as we find out in book seven, Petunia once really wanted to be part of that world. And you discover that Dumbledore has written to her prior to the Howler...Dumbledore wrote to her very kindly and explained why he couldn't let her come to Hogwarts to become a witch. So, Petunia, much as she denies it afterwards, much as she turns against that world when she met Uncle Vernon, who is the biggest anti-wizard you could ever met in your life, a tiny part of her, and that's the part that almost wished Harry luck when she said goodbye to him in this book, she just teetered on the verge of saying, I do know what you're up against and I hope it's OK. But she couldn't bring herself to say it. Years of pretending she doesn't care have hardened her. But Dumbledore appealed in the letter you're asking about, so that part of Petunia that did remember wanting desperately to be part of the world and he appealed to her sense of fair play to a sister that she had hated because Lily had what she couldn't have. So that's how she persuaded Petunia to keep Harry. Good question.

[...]

[This next question the core for me, and I guess that means I identify as an older reader, but more, this is is where I owe my biggest thank you to JK Rowling. I'm just a sucker for people who can point out the bankruptcy of fascist, authoritarian thinking with such flair. I mean, it is troubling, she gives us Muggles, and yet in the wizarding world, there's the equivalent of Muggles too, like Fudge or Umbridge (I still love the names).

But maybe the lesson of the wizard fascists is that power corrupts, no matter what the source of that power may be.]

Q: Many of us older readers have noticed over the years similarities between the Death Eaters tactics and the Nazis from the 30s and 40s. Did you use that historical era as a model for Voldemort's reign and what were the lessons that you hope to impart to the next generation?  

It was conscious. I think that if you're, I think most of us if you were asked to name a very evil regime we would think Nazi Germany. There were parallels in the ideology. I wanted Harry to leave our world and find exactly the same problems in the wizarding world. So you have the intent to impose a hierarchy, you have bigotry, and this notion of purity, which is this great fallacy, but it crops up all over the world. People like to think themselves superior and that if they can pride themselves in nothing else they can pride themselves on perceived purity. So yeah that follows a parallel. It wasn't really exclusively that. I think you can see in the Ministry even before it's taken over, there are parallels to regimes we all know and love.    

[Laughter and applause.]  

So you ask what lessons, I suppose. The Potter books in general are a prolonged argument for tolerance, a prolonged plea for an end to bigotry, and I think ti's one of the reasons that some people don't like the books, but I think that's it's a very healthy message to pass on to younger people that you should question authority and you should not assume that the establishment or the press tells you all of the truth.  

[Loud applause.]

Q: What did it feel like completing your first Harry Potter book versus completing the last.  

JKR: What a great question. It felt strangely similar actually. Both feelings were more alike than with any of the other books. When I finished the first book, there was this incredible sense of achievement that i'd actually written a novel, i"d actually finished my book. And it was after seven years of writing and making notes and rewriting. And then when I finished the seventh book, that was 17 years. WIth the seventh book there was a huge feeling of loss as well. I couldn't believe I was done. And it took me weeks, as my poor, long-suffering husband will attest. He's here. [applause] Yes, you should clap him, he's very patient! [ovation] He's not the type to stand up and take about but trust me. Toward the end of a book i'm not that easy to live with. Yes Neil would bear witness to the fact that for weeks, really... it felt like a bereavement. I knew it was coming. I was prepared, I knew it would hurt, and it was huge. So, that's why I'm glad to be here and talk about it. Thank you.  

[...]  

Q: Harry often wondered about his parents lives before he died. What did Lily, James, Remus, Lupin and Sirius do after Hogwarts?  

JKR: To take Remus first, Remus was unemployable. Poor Lupin, prior to Dumbledore taking him in, lead a really impoverished life because no one wanted to employ a werewolf. The other three were full-time members of the Order of the Phoenix. If you remember when Lily, James and co. were at school, the first war was raging. It never reached the heights that the second war reached, because the Ministry was never infiltrated to that extend but it was a very bad time, the same disappearances, the same deaths. So that's what they did, they left school. James has gold, enough to support Sirius and Lily. So I suppose they lived foff a private income. But they were full-time fighters, that's what they did, until Lily fell pregnant with Harry. So then they went into hiding.

[Hmmm, I'm going to say something sarcastic here. So Dumbledore and the original Order of the Phoenix took in James, Lily, Sirius, and (we presume the Order would not discriminate against Lupin, would they?). If so, those are some pretty young wizards to be putting to work right off like that, just out of school, even if Lily and James were head girl and head boy. If Mrs. Weasley were around, she would have pitched a fit!

I mean, weren't there any older wizards who could be daring fighters in the Order? I'm sure there were, the names of the folks Mad Eye listed off, from that picture. Maybe they were just killed off first, the McKinnons and all that. Like Madame Bones, like Neville's grandmother.

I was just thinking, maybe Dumbledore was recruiting his army right out of school, maybe he'd been doing it for decades, just another version of Slughorn, eh? Maybe there was a good reason Fudge was so scared that's what Dumbledore was up to. Dumbledore's track record wasn't that good.

Also kind of illuminates Voldemort's goal in wanting to run Hogwarts. An innocuous little wizarding school it was not. It was prime recruiting grounds. Andover? Skull and Bones of the wizarding world?

I jokes! Psych!]

 

Let us consider Iraq and the president who cried "wolf!"

Sy Hersh with more required reading, the kind of thing should just give all thinking people chills.

Let's hit the high points. Bold emphasis below is mine.

Link: Annals of National Security: Shifting Targets: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker.

Annals of National Security

Shifting Targets

The Administration’s plan for Iran.

by Seymour M. Hersh   October 8, 2007

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”                                                                                 

[Bush is talking about Shia extremists? Like he knows anything about Shia extremists? The guy didn't even know the difference between Shia and Sunni before he went to war against Iraq! That embarrassing truth ought to keep that man from ever uttering the word "Shia" or "Sunni" ever again in this life.

You know, they must have been holed up for their August vacation hatching this brilliant PR offensive, waiting until after August, because, according to Andy Card, "When you’re rolling out a new product onto the market, you don’t do it in August—you wait until September."]

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants.

[I wonder if that has anything to do with the fact that there is "suddenly" a new head to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (General Peter Pace is out... too close to Rummy to be linked to a PR campaign that they want to be met with more than outright guffaws).]

The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.

During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.

At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”

[...]

[You know, this should give every Republican candidate for office out there deep and meaningful pause, mid-goose-step, over where their loyalties lie. The Bush administration sees them all as expendable.

I don't know about you, but that speaks volumes about the "scorched earth" GOP tactics undertaken at the talking points direction of the White House the past 7 years. While observing those tactics myself over the years, I thought, these idiots, they either think the world is going to end before the end of Bush's run of office, or they FULLY expect the GOP to NEVER be out of power again.

My mistake was thinking that they were REPUBLICAN scorched earth politics. The realpolitic here knows no party loyalty, yet demands absolute authority over all "followers," the fanatical true believers marching behind the Machiavellis in the White House.

That the White House is ready to scorch the earth of its own party just shows the exact same strategy turned inward, and that's the part that speaks volumes. It says: THE WHITE HOUSE SEES ITSELF AS PERMANENTLY IN POWER. A PARTY UNTO ITSELF.

Consider that idea for a moment. This isn't just Caesar getting ready to cross the Rubicon or nuke Foggy Bottom. Sure, I can invoke Godwin's Law and call Iran Poland to Iraq's Czechoslovakia. I don't think either is that far off base.

But it is more than a lame duck administration which jettisons its own party and continues to act with the same power-mongering, arrogance, and bullying, as if its power is permanent, and will be retained in perpetuity. What does the White House, and Cheney's office in particular, know that we don't know?

Because by their own behavior, it's a poor lie, a pitifully transparent lie, as pathetic as their stupid PR campaigns launched in September, ham-handed, graceless, only viable because party line threats force spineless news networks to repeat them, endlessly, as talking points.

Surely we can see underneath the PR drumbeats for war against Iran for what they really are: a way to up the ante, consolidate power in an imperial permanent war president, who will not become a permanent war president so much as a holder of an office for those who control him as war footing and posturing controls the presidential campaigns all next year, war news carefully timed to bump opposition and/or embarrassing news out of the headlines through the entire electoral season.

And if the polls are looking dim, well, there can always be a declaration of martial law. That's what I see through the transparency. A scorched earth approach that intends to never be out of power. It will hold on to power legitimately as long as it can, and if it looks like these tin horn dictators will be legitimately turned out of power, "something" will "happen" to prevent that from ever happening, to prevent the election from taking place.

I know I'm not the only one thinking this unthinkable thing. These folks may not leave the White House willingly, except under police escort. I hope to god I am wrong, for all our sakes.