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>And that's a process that they won't need to bother patenting...

They can't. Prior use. Why else do you think the UK is backing Bushes war in the middle east, against the wishes of the electorate?

Jeepers, always such high quality thinking going on at Valentine's! And just about any other arbitrarily important date, I suppose. Here's an interesting article from the Guardian about the science that gets press on this day of love.

Your idea is a valid one and scientists are currently thinking that the best chance to find life in our solar system will be on Jupitor's moon, Europa. However, it is actually extremely difficult to keep the robot probe itself from carrying contamination since modern electronics can't take the extreme heat needed to kill resilient strains which could possibly destroy any life on that planet. Recently scientists have been putting more effort into trying to figure out how to explore Europa without contamination.

Contamination has already been shown to occur easily. The first Apollo mission found the moon to be sterile, but later Apollo missions found strep bacteria from previous missions. Deeply buried in ancient Antarctic ice, Lake Vostok is an enviroment that is thought to contain ancient life forms, but scientists are reluctant to explore the lake until contamination can be prevented. Bacteria has already been found in drilling to just above the top of the buried lake.

Ah DO NOT get it!! What the fuck is my man Shrub Jr a-waitin' for? Let's try to see his reasons:

1. For Saddam to begin developin' them nukear weapons of mass distraction?? After all, all that talk about scary Saddam and his weapons of mass distractions is sure distracting ME from thinkin' 'bout that bad US economy that's already slippin' back into recession. No wait, Ah GOT it! For so he can rake in da profits?!! Mebbe he is a-waitin' for them gas stations to raise their prices to 2 dollars a gallon? Uh, mebbe not. Ok, let's try another reason then.

2. Mebbe he be awaitin' for them wimpy countries in UN such as them wine drinkin' an' cheese eatin' French and grumpy Germans to tell him, NO, You CANNOT attack Iraq by passin' a second resolution for UN inspectors to continue "inspectin'"? We all know them inspections are a sham. Iraqis are lyin' and everyone knows it! How do Ah know this? well, reason

3. Powell told us so! He even used drawings to prove it to us, and Ah for one am 110% convinced US gotto attack Iraq 'cuz Ah'm SO scared them Iraqis and that crazy Saddam are thinkin' of killin' me. It doesn't really matter when western journalists went to visit the site of the alleged "camp" where al Queda are making "poisonous gas" it turns out there is NOTHING there but Kurds?. It doesn't really matter the British report turned out to be a
plagiarizing job from the essays of some 29 years old student! After all, Powell cannot lie, can he????
Or mebbe Shrub Jr is a-waitin'

4. for the hundreds of thousand people around the world to come out on Feb 15 and tell him and that lap dog Blair "NO WAR IN OUR NAME!" so he can laugh at them? Hmm...Ah think ahm finally gettin' warm! After all,

5. Shrub Jr is obviously refusing to listen to Blix when The chief UN weapons inspector yesterday dismissed what has been billed as a central claim of the speech the US secretary of state, Colin Powell made. Hans Blix said there was no evidence of mobile biological weapons laboratories or of Iraq trying to foil inspectors by moving equipment before his teams arrived. gee, now I am SO confused! Who to believe, who to believe?? Mr Powell, who obviously says what he is told to say or Mr Hans Blix?? In fact, Mr Blix contradicted just about EVERY evidence Mr Powell presented-from the drawings of the "mobile chemical labs" to the claims the Iraqis knew in advance which sites the UN would inspectors would visit. In short, Mr Blix blew a hole through ALL of Mr Powell evidence, reducing it to smithereens. Ah doant think ah like Mr. Blix no more...;-(

6. Mebbe Shrub Jr still feels he hasn't made his case and hasn't been able to prove to the world Saddam is a manace? Well, y'all know what ah say to that? Screw the fucken world! Shrub Jr is in da house is he be takin' charge! So what if the majority of da fucken world still thinks Shrub Jr just a-wants the oo'l? Let them stop him if they can! Bwa-hahahha ah say! Y'all think this is the end? Hey, this be only the beggining! After Iraq, Arafat is a-gonna be eliminated. Them noddles eatin' North Koreans better stop be a-jumpin' up and daon, 'cuz they be next on da list! After them is Iran! After Iran is Saudi Arabia and so on!

Damn, ah STILL havent figured out WHY Shrib Jr is a-waitin'...But he be a smart an' educated man, so he must have a good reason, right? RIGHT!! Ah fooly trust him, for he shuree knows what he be doin'!

http://www.ebmb.org/mbs/mbs.php4?num=1044870015& th read=1044870015

By far the scariest aspect (curiously un-mentioned by the Mayor) is that these cameras will be hooked up to facial recognition software.

In theory, just those covering a small section of London (the financial district) - but I have no doubts this will be extended to cover the whole city in time (after all, it's touted as "automatically identifying suspects or known criminals" so what government in the world would turn down the chance).

I find this far more disturbing - paying to try and alleviate congestion is fine (London is very crowded, and a similar scheme did help alleviate the traffic problems in Singapore when congestion charges were introduced there), paying for the privilege of being treated as a potential criminal is more than a little scary...

Bill Gates has done more to threaten the free exchange of information than the medieval Catholic church. I'm not sure that he can buy his way out of that on any moral level, but he's not even really trying. The Gates foundation is about PR, not real help. Most of the bazillions we've heard about are not cash, but actually Microsoft stock. If he cashes it out, he'll devalue the company, so he can't really touch this until he retires anyway. This provides a very good way for him to manipulate M$'s tax exposure while investing in biotech and drug companies.

Where's the forensic evidence?

Do they have news down there?

I'm Australian. I lived in the US for 15 years before 9/11. I moved here after 9/11 because I did not like what was happening in America as a result of this 'incident', which I do not believe has been thoroughly investigated, nor properly treated according to American Law.

I have to give you some credit for getting the hell out of the country. Anyone ignorant enough to dispute Al Qaeda's responsibility for 9/11 shouldn't be voting.

The Two Towers. We see a great flick. Self-important Hollywood sees Elves and Dwarves beating up on Orcs, so we can fucking forget it.

It is widely expected that the Academy will hold off on rewarding Peter Jackson's Tolkien trilogy until it is finished.

America's foreign secretary according to Jaque Chirac.

Actually it was Nelson Mandela that said that.

SecurityFocus also has an interesting write-up;

"The new law against "Unlawful use of encryption" would establish prison terms for anyone who "knowingly and willfully uses encryption technology to conceal any incriminating communication".

Inter-jurisdictional searches would become allowed in case of "suspected financing of terrorist organizations, attacks on critical infrastructure, or computer crime."

" We want America to attack because of the bad situation in our country. ... We have two blankets for every soldier, but they are very thin and don't keep us warm. The officers beat us. And the food is disgusting. I'm only paid 50 dinars [about £3] a month."

The State of Kuwait has a great web site that documents much of Iraq's brutality. And don't forget Saddam's goons cheering the crashing of the Columbia space shuttle. "We are happy that it broke up," Iraqi government employee Abdul Jabbar al-Quraishi said.

The Iraqi leadership has been painted correctly.

The pending Iraqi war promises to deliver quite the display of modern, smart technology well beyond what we saw in '91.

Smart enough to know the difference between enemy soldiers and a wedding party?

Eventually, Van Riper got so fed up with all this cheating that he refused to play anymore.

Notice how the two credits are both British? The whole article lacks a, uh, how should I say, sense of authenticity. Maybe an interesting read, but so was this.

Lieutenant General Van Riper (read: LtGen = O-9, second highest rank he can attain = he knows how to make himself look good + actually does) "refused to play" ? Please. By refusing to play, especially in the army, he's risking not only his career, but his retirement (and at LtGen, he's almost certainly gotten his 20 years in), prison (especially if its as high scale and high profile of an exercise as this article makes it seem) and eventually a dishonorable discharge that'd make it hard for him to get another job anywhere.

It's ridiculous to think that Iraq could win a war against the US. In the first 12 hours of the Gulf War, Iraq's chances of winning were gone. In 10 years, things have changed, but not that much. Iraq does potentially have the ability to hurt us (through casualties, if hey have any of these weapons of mass destruction we've heard so much about), but other than that, what do you think they could do? They can't even fly planes in the southern half of their country, let alone far enough to do anything to 1) a US military base, or even 2) one of the regional bases US forces are using.

That said, it'd be nice if something happened to prevent a war altogether.

Is it just me, or does anyone else see a pattern in US strategic thinking along the lines of "We have bigger and better technology/supply lines/bombs, and that will make final victory inevitable." I don't intend to argue that logistics are not an essential part of military planning, nor that technological advantages don't give an edge. But there seems to be a wide spread feeling in the US government that because they are the biggest guy on the block, they will inevitably win.

With the greatest respect, cod's wallop!

The American high command seems to be infected with this attitude as well. It seems to me that much (if not most or all) of the talk from the US about how the US will win is posited on the massive technological/logistical superiority of America. But far more important is strategy and tactics. (See Wellington's Peninsular campaign to see an example of how superior strategy and tactics can defeat a much larger army.)

There is some evidence that much of the US military is still unwilling to be flexible in its tactical/strategic thinking. See this article in The Guardian for a insightful analysis of a recent, huge US military exercis - in which the American side *lost* and the "Red" (read Iraqi) side won.

I'm a Canadian and the reek of hubris from across the 49th parallel is stunning!

Apparently Alan Titchmarsh is going to step into his shoes.

Doesn't bear thinking about does it ?

I can see it now - Ground Force visits a group of chimps in Africa, and replaces their forest with decking, a pagoda and stone chippings.

Citizen? Aren't you folks in GB subjects? God save the Queen, and all that.

No. See, for example, this page on the site of the Australia British embassy.

You are right. In the UK, the government can outlaw people with red hair if it wants, and there is not a thing that anyone can do about it. There is no supreme court to go to to fight bad laws.

Just because it's not called the Supreme Court doesn't mean there isn't a highest court of appeal (which is all the US Supreme Court is). There is. It's the House of Lords. Like every other court of appeal in Britain and America, its job is primarily to decide on matters of law, not on the merits of legislation or the verdict reached in the case (unless there was a problem with procedure or there is new evidence).

And (notwithstanding the present government's efforts to do away with them) we have Jury trials and the principle of double jeopardy.

No written constitution. No bill of rights.

No we don't have a single codified document called a Constitution. But, we do have a Bill of Rights, passed in 1689 during the Glorious Revolution, on which the american Bill of Rights was in part based. It mainly concerns itself with defining the separation of power between monarch and parliament (and limiting the monarch's power). In addition we have Magna Carta which guarantees some basic rights like due process.

Only recently has the UK been forced to obey some kind of written code on human rights, by virtue of its being a part of the EEC.

Wrong again. Britain acceded to the Council of Europe (the treaty organization from which the European Court of Human Rights derives - note that this is NOT the same as the European Union, EEC or any of its predecessors) nearly 50 years ago (the treaty came into effect on 3rd September 1953). Furthermore we are a signatory to the UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights.

All this having been said, the UK is more free than the USA. Its hard to believe, but it really is true. Statring with the absence of an SSN here, the british are free to travel, theier driving licences dont have pictures, and you can say whatever you want, whenever you want.

The driving licenses do have pictures - and have had since (if memory serves me correctly) 1998. The new photocard driving licenses are almost always considered good enough ID to prove you are of legal age to drink (18). Many people saw them as the beginning of a national ID card scheme by the back door.

We do have social security numbers - everyone is supposed to be sent a number on their 16th birthday or before if they ask (you need one to work legally and to claim benefits; and also for some other things like reciprocal healthcare arrangements in the EU).

And of course we still have laws against treason, the various incitement laws, very prosecution-friendly libel and slander laws, the blasphemy law (still on the books but not sucessfully used since the early 20th century), and the Official Secrets Act to name but a few which have effects on free speech. In my memory at least once a year a major newspaper has had a High Court injunction put on it by the government to prevent it publishing a story considered embarrassing to the government (although these have often later been removed on appeal), and several important trials are effectively conducted in secret due to reporting restrictions - eg the David Shayler case.

Until the 1960s if you wanted to publicly show a play the Lord Chamberlain's office had to approve it and could first censor it (a tradition which went back at least as far as Shakespeare's time).

The compromises here are gentlemens agreements. There is a flexibility here that doesnt exist in other countries. Britain doesnt look free on paper, but in reality, its a very, very good place to live.

I would have to disagree here. Britain is a free country because it is a stable country. There has not been a successful invasion since 1066. The laws and systems of government have evolved and many hard-fought battles for freedom centuries and decades ago have been allowed to settle in over time. We have a pretty independent judiciary and had a very independent upper house (although it will in future be all-appointed by Blair from what I hear), and a constancy in our current long-serving monarch who has seen 10 Prime Ministers in her time. We have a reasonably competent and professional (if perhaps self-serving) civil service. We have had relatively good economic fortune over the last two centuries or so (as a nation), 500 years of falling levels of crime and have been a major player on the international stage meaning we could shape the world more to suit us.

In America, these things are simply not there - so there are things like the constitution to protect the people from their politicians instead.

Apart from that, its people are the most cultured and tolerant speakers of english on the planet.

Why thankyou!

"The Home Office's consultation on its ID (aka Entitlement) Card proposals closes today, amidst complaints from privacy campaigners that the government has broken its own rules in canvassing opinions on its controversial plans. Human rights group Privacy International has lodged a complaint on the consultation process with the Parliamentary Ombudsman, due to several alleged breaches of the Government's own code of practice. "

Perhaps I'm just showing my age, but perhaps a paragraph or two on the the Magnavox Odyssey and it's betaMax-like demise may be just the history we need so later failures learn the lesson before trying and dying on the lonely shelves of stores and warehouses.

Serendipitously, Gary Younge's article America is a class act was published yesterday, discussing how meritocracy has decreased in the US in the last 30 years.

I am reminded of something I once read : We do not live in a meritocracy - both shit and cream float

Yes, the Swiss had a public referendum on joining the UN. It won in a squeaker: 12 cantons (like US states) for, 11 cantons against.

In Switzerland, important changes to the law must be approved by the public.

This story gives a figure of $500 million for the CIA alone.

And yet some try

According to Victor Keegan, in the UK, Album sales increased by 3%. I recall reading some RIAA stats which showed the same thing. The CD single's sales have collapsed, but the 'real' business is ticking along as before.

Interesting how the BBC and now the FT puts publishes articles on Open Source and Linux's increasing popularity. Are they going for the Slashdot hits I wonder?

There's also this on the BBC today:
Life looks good for
Linux

Whereas the Guardian

(a Liberal paper?)

and the UK's Computer Weekly

continues to use the shall we say 'not the biggest open source fan in the world' Jack Schofield as a technology writer.

I believe someone posted something about him a few months ago. If you find and read his previous articles, you'll see what I mean.

A Russian source claims that U.S. will attack next month for oil. You can read the article here

At least there are some news sources that are verifying what was rumored last year.

Cheers,
W00t

Get Your War On Page 18

Although a lot of slashdotter's have never read the archives (someone must have posted a link at some point) these cameras are common in the UK. Motorway gantries have these cameras mounted on them, and they have two IR spotlights next to them, and they read your (front) numberplate, and take your photo.

Some distance further down the road, they read it again, and then they work out your average speed.

Police PR sources claim that they can get 15,000 people a day without loading the system. At the moment, they are just used on areas with roadworks, outside the M25 (London's outer carpark/ringroad) but they are used to enforce the variable speed limits which are supposed to ease congestion.

Also, as of the 7th(?) of Feb, all cars, vans, etc. that drive into the center of London will get their numberplates read, and the owner will be charged £5 for the privilidge of sitting in traffic for hours.
See this article in the Guardian for ways around the cameras! They are optical, and they are OCR.

Car cloning is one thing they mention, and to try and stop this, you now have to show documents to get a numberplate made up.. Of course, if you simply buy a numberplate making set, you don't need to show anything!

The real issue is whether the constraints on free speech are for a reasonable purpose and for a limited time. Ensuring a fair trial is considered a reasonable purpose in pretty much the whole of the developed world with the exception of the US. The problem is that the press are pretty much in the pocket of the prosecutors, a court journalist knows that the DA is going to be there much longer than any individual defendant, so better make sure you keep in with your sources.

It is pretty much proven beyond doubt that Ken Starr repeatedly made illegal leaks to the press during his time as 'independent' counsel. If a prosecutor can do that to the President with impunity they can do it to pretty much who they choose.

A much more serious problem is when politicians use national laws to try to suppress stories that embarass them. This is currently the case with the German Chancellor who has obtained an injunction in the German courts to prevent the Mail on Sunday from publishing allegations of adultery with a television reporter. The mail does not have a web site The Guardian has a good piece on this case.

The odd thing in the German case is that the Chancellor is attempting to use the German courts to impose an injunction on a UK newspaper. The reason that it is odd is that if you can't get an injunction under the notoriously plaintif biased British Libel laws then you can't have much of a case. Schroeder appears to be attempting to use the German privacy laws to suppress publication in the UK asserting that the EU is a single jurisdicition. Perhaps so, but in that case the German court would have to apply British law which does not recognise a privacy right.

There are other cases of cross jurisdictional disputes. The UK has long been a favourite destination for libel plaintifs sicne although 'truth is an absolute defense' the rules of the game are rigged so even if you have proof the jury probably won't hear it.

While the net allows people to route arround censorship they can only do so if they know they are getting a censored or filtered world view. People in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Israel know that their media is censored and they are pretty good at routing arround it if they are one of the minority who want to know what is really going on. If you buy the story promoted by the Murdoch press and the Republican echo chamber that the only fault of the US media is 'liberal bias' you probably won't go elsewhere to find out what is going on.

That is one reason I like Google news so much, you can compare side by side the US reports of an event with the local reports. You won't find a report of the arms embargo that Britain has imposed against Israel in the US press, but you can find it in the UK and Israeli press. One might think that is kinda an interesting little piece of data.

Not only is the Mac market bigger (and captive; no ability to just boot Windows if they wanted to play), the support for OpenGL is more polished and it would give them a proving ground for their work.

Are you sure about this? Just last week, I was reading that the sales of Linux boxed sets would put Linux desktops on a par with the Mac user base, and if you include iso downloads, then Linux will have overtaken Mac use for the first time ever.

I can't recall where I read it, though I've a strong suspicion it was in last Thursday's Guardian.

Like it or not, everything musical you purchase has an association with the RIAA; if the RIAA goes bankrupt from the rampant internet piracy of their intellectual property, the whole world will suffer, because all sources of music will dry up.

Back in the 80's, virtually all the news and comment that people read came from traditional media -- newspapers and magazines. When the internet came along and people started to give that stuff away for free, the old media started to panic, worried that nobody would want to read their lame old periodicals any more and they'd all collapse through lack of revenue.

Well, we're still waiting. People still read a lot of news online, but I don't see any signs that the media is collapsing. Far from drying up, two of the biggest UK news sites are those of The Guardian and the BBC, but both organizations have grown steadily over the last ten years.

Clearly, the RIAA doesn't have the wit or the imagination to make the most of technological progress. However, I see no reason whatsoever to subsidize them for their lack of imagination in this regard.

Let the fuckers crash and burn.

Sigh.

1. He wants to abolish taxes on dividends

If you knew the first thing about economics, you would know this is a good thing.

2. He wants to start a preemptive attack on a another nation

You could have fooled me.

3. He wants cut income taxes disproportionately in the favor of the rich

96% of federal income taxes are paid by 50% of the tax payers. It's hard to cut taxes on those who don't pay taxes. See response to point 1.

4. He wants to stop even the most mild forms of affirmative action

This is just a lie. An out and out lie. Racial quotas are illegal and unconstitutional. You do support the Constitution, right? Bush supports racial diversity, just not with programs that are illegal. Check out the program he instituted while governor of Texas.

It's no wonder the space program is in such disarray, with the amount of ignorance in those who support it. Do NASA a favor, either get educated or just keep quiet, you look foolish when you talk.

The summary: "Two fungal diseases, Panama disease and black Sigatoka, are cutting a swath through banana plantations, just as blight once devastated potato crops. But unlike the potato, and other crops where disease-resistant strains can be bred by conventional means, making a fungus-free variety of the banana is extraordinarily difficult."

Today's guardian has an article about these fungal diseases which threaten this staple of many poorer countries "Yes - in 10 years we may have no bananas" so this reseach comes not a moment to soon. Apparently some Honduran scientists peeled and sieved 400 tonnes of bananas to find just 15 seeds for breeding - and have come up with a fungus resistant variety which can be grown organically, so hopefully the GM route maybe a non-starter...

>>Oh, and "my new vidcadr r0x ur world".

Was that "gamer" or "lamer" emu?

And if you think leetspeek is bad, check out the latest Frenchspeak as described by Jon Henley: TheGuardian

The Turing tournament is a two sided tournament designed to find, on the one hand, the best computer programs to mimic human behavior, and on the other hand, the best computer programs to detect the difference between machine and human behavior. Two types of submissions will be accepted: an emulator, which mimics human behavior, or a detector, which detects the difference between human and machine behavior.

So, I suppose we could say by evaluating the success of response (as would be weeded out by whomever *actually* turns out an entry), we will have achieved our research, VOILA! It's a successful research incentive, the prize that is.

Whaddya think? no? heck of a fight though wasn't it? :P

There's an article that describes its demise pretty well here.

It tried to be a "portal site," only it wasn't a very good one at all. Botched implementation, a cluttered site and a search engine left unimproved sent a lot of users fleeing over time.

I guess they learned their lesson, albeit too late. If you look at their site now as compared to their site in 2000 you can see a significant difference.

Here's an article and press release about the company doing it. Fortunately they have it patented, which should impede progress in this direction for a while.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4552927,00. html

If it was good enough for Jesus, it's good enough for me.

AA Words Clog (to)
The art of snapping someone in a compromising position in a pub or wherever with your camera phone and emailing it to a web site. VK

From The Guardians "Survival guide 2003"

Interesting guide, by the way

There is a paragraph on Pattern Recognition from someone who sounds like he might have read it towards the end of this article in the Guardian.

It is absolutely vital to the continued existence of the internet as a medium of free speech that large corporations are NOT allowed to squelch opinions that do not cast them in a favorable light.

It is absolutely vital to the continued existence of the internet as a medium of free speech that large corporations are NOT allowed to squelch opinions that do not cast them in a favorable light.

It is absolutely vital to the continued existence of the internet as a medium of free speech that large corporations are NOT allowed to squelch opinions that do not cast them in a favorable light.

They never agreed on the colour of the universe, either. Is the cosmic spectrum turquoise? Or is it beige? These guys reckon they know, but I think this is another mystery - albeit a lot less important - that various groups will be disproving eachother over for a while.

Google apparently already turns a profit.

Item 1: In which a bunch of extremely poor peasants from all over the world "protest" the Earth Summit in Johannesburg: The Fake Parade

Item 2: In which a host of "people" oppose scientific research that shows problems with biotechnology: The Fake Persuaders

There are of course hundreds of other examples, some better known (the American Smokers' Alliance), some less.

Finally this technique is being used in the right direction!!

Yes and no. Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, looked at this kind of government action differently in the BBC Dimbleby Lecture a couple of days ago. He wasn't talking about centralizing the Internet, but it's a typical example. Williams thinks governments centralize control and thrash around for quick results because of their relation to what he calls the 'market state.'

To appreciate his view you have to step back from the view of marshalling technology to defeat vague, anti-democratic forces. Instead, look at the human beings behind the proposal. The motivation behind Internet monitoring isn't evil so much as it is a response to unintended consequences. Back in the '80s, some governments deliberately shrank while the power of weapons, money and ideas to cross national borders grew. While we techies were making bits stand up and dance for fun and profit, the rest of the world kept running on older urges. Let the Archbishop tell the story.

This reading of our present situation is [...] one where the nation state's inability to deliver in the terms we have become used to, its inability to meet the expectations we now bring, has led to a shift into a new political mode, the market state, in which the function of government - and the thing that makes government worth obeying - is to clear a space for individuals or groups to do their own negotiating, to secure the best deal or the best value for money in pursuing what they want. It involves deregulation; the 'franchising' of various sorts of provision - from private prisons to private pensions - and the withdrawal of the state from many of those areas where it used to bring some kind of moral pressure to bear.

In the United States and the UK during the eighties and nineties, government tended to strengthen a culture of prompt accountability, enforceable rights to see value for money in institutions, even those where we'd once have recognised that calculations of profit were not easily applicable. It isn't surprising, then, if the unspoken model of political expectation now is increasingly the consumerist one: the individual confronts the state, asking for what is promised - maximal choice, purchasing power to determine a lifestyle.

The issue is that, like it or not, there are irreversible changes in our international environment that have eroded our confidence in the nation state's possibilities. Those pressures that made the UK and US governments of the last few decades 'roll back the frontiers of the state' were perfectly real, in a world where neither military nor economic security lies with strong national government in the way it might once have done. The market state it seems is here to stay. But - here is the difficult point - if we ask about its legitimacy, its claim on us as citizens, we need to come up with a better answer than we've had so far if we are to avoid the reduction of politics to instantaneous button-pressing responses to surface needs.

He's saying that security is not an excuse here. The need to do something quick about security is what drives this ham-handed response. This comes in turn from the notion that corporations are the proactive source of most of the good in society, while governments should react to protect the good, nothing more.

I think Rowan Williams asks some good questions. The answers, though, are much harder beyond the first one. First, organize. Next? Well, probably a lousy Slashdot/libertarian answer, democracy is pretty good at dealing with perpetual uncertainty.

All of which, in my (paranoid?) mind, adds up to the US's playing very fast and loose with international law (what else is new?)

i don't deny that iraq has had chemical or biological weapons. but an april, 2002 interview with a former UN weapons inspector convinced me that the last inspections proved over 90% compliance and the remaining percentages were mostly due to iraq's poor documentation of weapons destruction. he went into great detail on all sorts of weapons. i don't have links but IIRC, he said "weapons grade anthrax", kept under ideal conditions, is only viable for 3 years and the last facility capable of producing it in reasonable quantity was destroyed in 1996 (the Halabja incident was in 1988). also, the missiles capable of distributing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were destroyed -- the missile remains were dug up and serial numbers checked. only 2 missiles were missing but he claimed that this could easily be due to the serial numbers destruction and, among the rubble, extra parts were found (possibly from the missing missiles).

i don't think my political bent blinds me to facts, i just get my facts from 'alternative' sources. i am skeptical of all news sources (including those i cite) so i admit that there may be some (very little) 'bad stuff' in iraq. but i also precieve a historical US attitude of 'US uber alles'. this and the fact that iraq would be foolish to actually challenge the US lead me to seriously doubt that iraq has nearly the power that our president says they have. also, there is the (sorry) slippery issue of oil and a president with a possible conflict of interest.

i read the guardian's world dispatches daily, espically those from brian whitaker and his reports on al-bab. he claims that US papers are preparing US citizens for war by seriously distorting the facts. if you read one of those, read the last link.

as for the mickey mouse war, yes the example i cited (radio sawa) is infecting culture but really, the damage is already done. the middle east as we know it was created by European imperialism and has been proped up ever since by US and European intervention and military aid in return for cheap oil. radio sawa isn't playing brittany spears, it's popular music of the region with some educational messages meant to empower the listeners. i see sawa (IIRC, means 'together') on a fine line between the alternative views that should exist in a free people and waging a mickey mouse war. the program is commercial free, and free of any obvious US influence -- it is run by former citizens of middle eastern countries. it's not perfect, it's not everything, it's the beginning.

the reasons that we are hated are many, complex and different depending on where you are talking about. but US media isn't it. to skim the shell of the nut(?), i'll say that the saudi royal family making millions off oil and none of that money making its way to the populace and the horrid human rights and squalid living conditions would cause more anger.

it's a large complex knot that can't be blasted through.

i don't deny that iraq has had chemical or biological weapons. but an april, 2002 interview with a former UN weapons inspector convinced me that the last inspections proved over 90% compliance and the remaining percentages were mostly due to iraq's poor documentation of weapons destruction. he went into great detail on all sorts of weapons. i don't have links but IIRC, he said "weapons grade anthrax", kept under ideal conditions, is only viable for 3 years and the last facility capable of producing it in reasonable quantity was destroyed in 1996 (the Halabja incident was in 1988). also, the missiles capable of distributing chemical, biological or nuclear weapons were destroyed -- the missile remains were dug up and serial numbers checked. only 2 missiles were missing but he claimed that this could easily be due to the serial numbers destruction and, among the rubble, extra parts were found (possibly from the missing missiles).

i don't think my political bent blinds me to facts, i just get my facts from 'alternative' sources. i am skeptical of all news sources (including those i cite) so i admit that there may be some (very little) 'bad stuff' in iraq. but i also precieve a historical US attitude of 'US uber alles'. this and the fact that iraq would be foolish to actually challenge the US lead me to seriously doubt that iraq has nearly the power that our president says they have. also, there is the (sorry) slippery issue of oil and a president with a possible conflict of interest.

i read the guardian's world dispatches daily, espically those from brian whitaker and his reports on al-bab. he claims that US papers are preparing US citizens for war by seriously distorting the facts. if you read one of those, read the last link.

as for the mickey mouse war, yes the example i cited (radio sawa) is infecting culture but really, the damage is already done. the middle east as we know it was created by European imperialism and has been proped up ever since by US and European intervention and military aid in return for cheap oil. radio sawa isn't playing brittany spears, it's popular music of the region with some educational messages meant to empower the listeners. i see sawa (IIRC, means 'together') on a fine line between the alternative views that should exist in a free people and waging a mickey mouse war. the program is commercial free, and free of any obvious US influence -- it is run by former citizens of middle eastern countries. it's not perfect, it's not everything, it's the beginning.

the reasons that we are hated are many, complex and different depending on where you are talking about. but US media isn't it. to skim the shell of the nut(?), i'll say that the saudi royal family making millions off oil and none of that money making its way to the populace and the horrid human rights and squalid living conditions would cause more anger.

it's a large complex knot that can't be blasted through.