Slashdot Mirror

http://inklingbooks.com/googlesettlement/googlesettlement.html

Both developers do agree about one aspect of their license clause. It is based on the first of science fiction writer Isaac Asimov's Three Law of Robotics, which states, "A robot may not harm a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." That, they say, is a good thing, "because the guy was right," Tegel says, "and he showed the paradox that almost any technological development has to solve, whether it is software or an atom bomb. We must discuss now what ethical problems we may raise in the future."

For what it's worth, I'm working on a book, Chesterton on War, that'll be an impressive 500 pages of what G. K. Chesterton (friend and ideological foe of H. G. Wells and G. B. Shaw) wrote on war, pacifist and militarism. During WWI, he warned that something had gone terribly wrong with Germany that, if not corrected, would lead within 50 years to a war more horrible than the First World War. And in 1930, he warned that war would break out over a Polish border dispute. Contrast that to H. G. Wells, who claimed that WWI was to be the "war to end all war." That, Chesterton said, was as silly as telling a man bound for work that he was about to engage in the "work to end all work."

Chesterton also pointed out that militarists and pacifists share the same grisly belief--a belief that might ought to triumph over right. One acts on that belief, while the other doesn't act because of that belief. The result in today's world is misery for millions of people who live far from pleasant little enclaves such as Berkeley and Upper Manhattan, enclaves that are only safe because of our military defends these simplistic, moralizing twits.

--Michael W. Perry, Inkling Books

Seattle, Editor of Dachau LIberated and Eugenics and Other Evils

--Mike Perry, Seattle

There's a far better reason for this corporate shyness. Books on eugenics are popular. I know, I've edited several, including the just-out Lady Eugenist, which details how one of the nineteenth century's most radical feminists, Victoria Woodhull (the first woman to run for President), was also a rabid early proponent of eugenics. In what was perhaps her last public statement, in 1927 the New York Times quoted her praising Buck v. Bell, a 1927 Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional (In 1973, Roe v. Wade continued to refer Buck v. Bell favorably.) Understand Woodhull and you undertand why mainstream feminists are such champions of legalized abortion for poor women. The same can be said about most liberals. Their eagerness to see a poor black woman have the "choice" to abort her baby isn't matched by a similar zeal to give her any choice about how that child is educated.

Check out any book on eugenics in the U.S. and you're likely to find mention of the American Museum of Natural History and several of their better known scientists. They were one of the foremost institutional champions of eugenics and, if memory serves me correctly, of the Darwinian racism that resulted in our nasty 1927 immigration restriction laws.

Like it or not, a belief that those from northern and western Europe were superior to all the earth's other "races" was a dogma once held by those who were also the most zealous defenders of evolution including, covertly, Darwin himself, who found outrageous the suggestion that Australian aborigines were on the same level as people from his race and class.

In July of 1925 the prestigious Forum magazine had two very interesting contrasting articles. One was "Mr. Bryan Speaks to Darwin," by William Jennings Bryan, best known as the fundamentalist opponent of evolution at the Scopes Monkey Trial. The other was the Rev. William Inge, a liberal English clergyman and a great champion of eugenics. The magazine noted that, "It would be difficult to find in all Christiandom a greater contrast between the beliefs of two men professing the same faith."

Bryan, we aren't often told, was such a champion of ordinary people, that he was called the Great Commoner. Inge, known as the "Gloomy Dean," bears quite a bit of resemblance to those who listen to NPR and talk of fleeing "Bush's Amerika" for cheese-loving France. Inge was also the very sort of racist we now link to Nazism. In July of 1925, he told Forum: "America, I am afraid, is becoming less Anglo-Saxon every year.... I know the new immigration laws are designed to preserve the dominance of the Northern European stock.... I doubt whether southern Mediterreans are desirable people to introduce into the country."

That's why the Gloomy Dean clashed with Bryan but got along marvelously with Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood. You can read and download the whole story from the discussion of birth control and eugenics at Inkling University.

And no, most corporate executives don't know that history in any detail. But they are clever people, and I suspect they sense that the American Museum of Natural History still has that same feeling of elistist snobbery that once drove it to promote eugenics and dogmas about the racial supremacy of those from Northern Europe. It is, after all, inherent in the very idea of the "survival of the fittest." And they quite rightly don't want to have anything to do with that sort of attitude.

--Michael W. Perry, editor of Eugenics and Other Evils, The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective, Lady Eugenists and (very soon) Free Lover: Sex, Marriage and Eugenics in the Writings of Victoria Woodhull.

The economic paths of the United States and Europe began to diverge in the 1990s. Right now, the Eurozone economies have growth rates that are a third to a half that of the U.S.

In the 1990s, the U.S. economy experienced a quantum increase in productivity. European investment in information technology as a percentage of gross domestic product is considerably less than in the United States and is declining. The European Commission estimates that, as of this year, labor productivity per hour in the European Union will have declined from 97 percent of the U.S. level in the mid-1990s to only about 88 percent.

The E.U. produces only about 70 percent of the U.S. GDP per capita. It has a smaller portion of its population in the workforce and much higher unemployment among those wanting to work.

Europeans work fewer hours per year and retire earlier. Over the course of a lifetime, American workers put in 40 percent more hours than their European counterparts.

The EU and the US are each reaping what they're sowing. IBM's layoffs are merely a symptom.

-- Mike Perry, Seattle

In most parts of the world, Origin of Species hasn't been controversial for well over a century.

Also, the ready acceptance of Darwin's ideas in places such as Germany is hardly something to brag about. Darwinism was simply Bismark's blood-and-iron/might-makes-right/Realpolitik written into biology. And the fruit of that foul tree was you-know-who and the ideology whose name begins with Naz....

If you check, the subtitle to Darwin's The Origin of Species is By Means of Natural Selection or The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. Hitler simply claimed that the Aryan was Darwin's favoured race. You may disagree and substitute your own race, but in Darwinian terms the world is divided into favoured and unfavoured races, with progress only occuring when the former out multiplies or out kills the latter. That link to progress is why most eugenicists were in the socialist/feminist/liberal/progressive portion of the political spectrum.

Perhaps that's also why the French and Germans are so indifferent to the hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people that Saddam murdered. Arabs aren't members of their "favoured race," so their lives don't count, only their oil and their availability as a market for European arms. The master race must have its 35-hour week and long vacations. Note too the common European tendency to regard the Arab world as "unfit for democracy," which is apparently suitable only for the higher races. Darwinism again.

There was also a critical a difference between how Darwin's ideas were promoted. In Germany, Darwin's chief advocate was Ernst Haeckel, ranked by historians among the proto-Nazis. In the English-speaking world it was Thomas Huxley, who so abhored applying Darwinism to human society that he spoke and wrote against the idea. (See his Evolution and Ethics.)

And if you're from immigrant stock that came to the US from the 1850s on, you should be quite glad the US has been so anti-Darwinian. It was applied Darwinianism, aka eugenics, that inspired immigration restriction, sterilization and Margaret Sanger's nasty birth control movement (today's Planned Parenthood). The NY Times once trumpted eugenics as a "wonderful new science" and about the only book-length criticism of the 1920s was the "reactionary" G. K. Chesterton's Eugenics and Other Evils.The chief supporters of eugenic schemes such as forced sterilization (the Supreme Court's 1927 Buck v. Bell) were liberals. The chief opponents were religious conservatives including Catholics and Fundamentalists.

More recently, Darwinism and eugenics lay behind the drive to legalize abortion and the liberal zeal to bring its "benefits" to the black and Hispanic poor. I once had a liberal English professor whisper to me, "That's why we need abortion" as he pointed to a young black man nearby. And one of my neighbors confided to me that she voted Democratic because the Democrats were doing something (i.e. aborting) Seattle's rapidly growing Asian immigrant population.

You can check the historical background for all this at the Inkling University blog There you can read original source documents on the topic. You can even download in sections the hardback version of a book that sells for $50. That's an even better deal than Google's online books.

--Mike Perry, Inkling Books, Seattle

Editor: Eugenics and Other Evils, & The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective

You might have seen some coverage of Jeff Gannon, a conservative reporter who lobbed softball questions during White House press briefings. It was discovered that he was using an alias to get past White House security.

Does SlashDot put a hefty left-wing spin on the stories they post? Undoubtedly. They missed one of the biggest Internet stories of 2004, and yet they cover this silly bit of drivel.

--Mike Perry

"Just three days after running a community-sponsored two-page ad, the New York Times is now running a news story on Mozilla Firefox. Our favorite browser is presented in a very favorable light..."

This isn't to say that Firefox is bad, just that the looney Deaniacs aren't far from the truth when they say the much of the mainstream press is driven by profit above all else. Dan Rather didn't depart CBS Evening News a year earlier than he may have liked because he used forged memos in a bumbled attempt to slander Bush. He went because his ratings are the lowest in network news. It wasn't that he was a liar. It was that he was an unsuccessful and widely disliked liar. That made all the difference.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Astronaut or not, Young's argument is no better. It's far easier, cheaper, and more certain to take steps here on earth to make sure humanity can avoid (asteroid) or survive (supervolcano) a planet-wide disaster than it would be to try to create a completely self-sustaining colony on the moon or Mars. Don't forget that the first thing to go after a planetary wide disaster on earth would be supply shipments to a small colony on Mars. They'd starve or freeze before we would.

Like eugenics, the population explosion, and global warming, this is just another dishonest scare tactic by grant-hungry scientists to get the power to meddle in our lives and take our money. The scientific community must develop ways to keep science from being abused this way and to condemn these sorts of tactics.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Year ago I worked with drug addicts and once heard a judge rake an addict over the coals, repeating over and over, "I told you that if you came back to this court...." Judges don't take kindly to being ignored and convictions for violating a court order are very straight forward.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Jonathan Rintels (president of the Center for Creative Voices in Media) commented, 'It means that really a tiny minority with a very focused political agenda is trying to censor American television and radio.'"

Cowboy Neal's remarks are typical of the powers that be at SlashDot. Despite the quoted claims, this isn't a censorship issue. Broadcast television gets free use of a valuable and scarce resource, the RF spectrum, that's publicly owned and worth many billions. It does that because it has agreed from day one that what it broadcasts must serve the public interest not the interests of the networks or a select group of artists.

For a parallel that fits what Rintels wants, imagine a society where only a few giant corporations are allowed to use our Interstate highways, while the rest of us can only travel on their buses where, when, and how they want. That's what TV networks want to do. It's "free speech" for a vanishingly small and extraordinarly wealthy few.

Imagine further that those networks have decided that more money is to be made by using the land alongside "their" highways to dump trash that gets blown into our neighborhoods. That's the network's current glorification of violence and sex. It blows into every neighborhood in the land.

The result of the programming is the same as with the advertising--our sons are more likely to get mugged and our daughters to be rapped. Never forget that if programming doesn't influence behavior, then neither does advertising and the networks are guility of fraud on a massive scale.

That's why "we the people" have every right to decide what is in the public interest and can or cannot be broadcast. If the TV networks don't like that, they have every right get out of broadcasting and publish their programming like the rest of us do--on DVD and video tapes where there is no issues involving a scarce public resource and thus no role for the FCC.

All this is so obvious, it makes you wonder why there's a fuss.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

It's time to celebrate! ! ! ! !

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

You did not see any of the networks or the AP put out misleading reports of a Kerry lead nationally - or in the battleground states of Florida or Ohio.

Cynics might suspect these old media news sources wanted most Americans to go to bed thinking the election was still up in the air and thus less inclined to believe Bush had a mandate. For the record, Bush is the first president since FDR in 1936 to win reelection and increase his party's strength in both houses of Congress. And he has the greatest margin of victory since LBJ in 1964, an election everyone regards as a landslide.

And this Eric Engberg of CBS should have visited some conservative/Republican blogs. All election day, they were putting out well-argued reasons why the exit polls on a few liberal blogs weren't to be trusted. Bloggers, like the mainstream media, aren't perfect. But they are providing a worthwhile alternative to reporters, most of whom think much too much alike.

By the way, we should show a bit of compassion for liberal bloggers. Their ideological peers in the old media treat them badly. In contrast, the conservative old media, typically political magazines, love their bloggers.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

By contrast, Sassen notes that global cities take on a distinct identity as they disconnect from their regional geography. If this is reflected in cultural reproduction then we can expect to see changes in people's sense of identity. We might find individuals thinking of themselves as New Yorkers first and Americans second...

Marvelous! This explains in part why the elites of New York City and Hollywood regard the rest of us as primitives living in "fly over country," and why the more loud-mouthed among them keep threating to leave the country. It also explains their love affair for the French-reared Kerry with his six homes scattered around the globe.

More disturbingly, it explains their scarcely concealed anti-Semitism. Arabs have many billions to channel through these money-obsessed "Cities without Borders." Israel is not only poor and small, Israelis love their troubled little land, something these people never understand.

But notice the post-election commentary from this elite group. They're already taking about how they'll package their candidate in 2008. No more "war hero" and fake hunter charades. He'll look religious and talk incessantly about "our shared moral values." But it'll be a sham to trick those they consider fools and rubes.

By then America will have alternatives to the Grey Lady (the NY Times) and the three weird sisters, ABC, CBS and NBC. We saw the beginnings of that in this election with the SwiftVets and Rather's bogus memos. In the 2008 election, a few dozen people in Manhattan will no longer dictate to us what is and is not news. We will decide for ourselves. In an increasingly decentralized world, centralized new gathering has no place.

Chances are their schemes won't work anyway. They pulled out all the stops for this election, spinning the news in Kerry's favor more than in any election since researchers began to keep tabs on such things in the 1960s. And yet Kerry not only lost by lawyer-proof margins, Bush became the first President since FDR (1936) to win reelection and increase his party's power in both the House and Senate.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Kerry, on the other hand, is very "in touch with his feminine side." That's the main reason his fellow SwiftVets loathed him during his short "tour of duty" in Vietnam. (Later they had more reasons.) No "real man" would take, must less lobby for, three Purple Hearts for scratches that were treated with a bandaid. No "real man" would flee when a mine exploded under a fellow swift boat and then file a bogus report describing his cowardice as heroic. Real men are obsessed with proving their courage under fire to their "band of brothers." That's what makes men such good warriors and the contrary POV makes women good mothers. Kerry could care less about being a man and that came through in the silliness of his attempt to portray himself as a hunter.

You see it in how color-coordinated his sports dress is. Women obsess with matching colors. Men would rather stick to drab colors so they don't have to worry about such things, except of course a loud tie that stands alone and doesn't have to match anything.

You also see it in his lackadasical attitude toward sports. No extreme stuff for him. He's as happy windsurfing in a light breeze as he has been doing nothing in the Senate for twenty years. Ditto his two marriages to super-rich women. Most men like the power having more money than their wives gives them. And most men consider Kerry's latest an intolerable bi_ch. Kerry would have been our first gigilo president. We're lucky we didn't get him. In the end even the French and Germans would have grown disgusted with him.

That's why, as I suspected, Kerry didn't have the stomach for a long ballot fight. He doesn't have the stomach for any sort of fight--Vietnam, the Senate, the world arena or national politics. In foreign policy, he'd be a mommy, forever suggesting that our problems would go away if we would "be gentle" and "share our toys." Not good in the age of terrorism.

No, Kerry cared only moderately about wining. He was in this simply in this to make the final check on his youthful "I'm like JFK" checklist. And like many women in the late 50s to early 60s, he has a crush on JFK. That's his final bit of girlishness and perhaps explains his eager hugging of 'pretty boy' John Edwards.

All that would have made Kerry a dreadful President, but it did allow him to conceed gracefully when so many deranged Democrats (including his lawyer-VP) wanted to hold the country hostage to party egoism yet again. For that he deserves to be commended.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

SwiftVets and POWs.

You can learn it now or, as with Jimmy Carter, you can learn it too late and suffer accordingly.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Personally, I do not think it is just a few silent christians. I think that it is the majority of America. I see that the fundamentalists are more akin to the 1980's moral majority, 1990's Al Qaeda, the 1930's German nazi party, or the 1900's USSR communist party. That is, just a small group with a very vocal opinion carry a message of their own choosing. The vast majority of people really just want to live and enjoy life. They are not concerned with changing it.

Two points: 1. Read Nazi literature or, better yet, go to Univ. of California TV and watch "From Darwin to Hitler" and you'll discover that Nazism was applied Darwinism in the same sense that Communism was applied Marxism. Disagree with Darwin and you're automatically a foe of Nazism and indeed in Germany, Hitler's bravest foes were the Catholics and orthodox/neo-orthodox (but not liberal) Protestant pastors. Read back issues of Time magazine from the 1930s and that's very clear.

The subtitle of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species was By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Survival. Hitler and Darwin would have undoubtedly differed over a technically--whether Jews belonged in the "unfavoured" category. But they would not have disagreed over the fundamental principle of Darwinism, stated in the last paragraph of Origin, that virtually all progress is a result of struggle, famine and death.

Nor were Darwin and his colleagues reluctant to discuss in private their belief that the favoured/unfavoured races distinction applied as much to human races as it did to animals. It's merely that the optimism of the latter half of the 1800s, when Europeans dominated the world, gave them a smug confidence that white Europeans would eventually rule the world. H. G. Wells wrote of exactly that in his 1901 Anticipations which is discussed here.

2. The poster is right that if everyone wanted to merely "live and enjoy life," we'd be spared the horrors of great evils. But alas, that isn't so. Great evil must be met by an equally great set of convictions, courage and committment. There has to be a core of people who believe in doing good just as strongly as others do in evil. That's Churchill in WWII, that's Reagan and the Cold War; that's Bush and the War on Terror. And all, particularly the last two, drew strong support from the "religious right." And lest we forget, the liberal/left and their friends in the press were AWOL on the latter two. Reagan got even nastier and more biased press in 1984 than Bush does today. Even today, few liberals have shown the integrity to admit that Reagan really did end the Cold War.

Post-Christian Western Europe simply lacks the convictions or courage to stand up to terrorism, as does most of the US NPR-listening left. They want to "live and enjoy life" in utter indifference to the horrors Saddam inflicted on his people. And particularly the French want to see the Middle East ruled by tyrants and perpetually on the verge of war so they can trade arms for oil and take their lengthy August vacations. They want to "enjoy life."

In that, the US remains different. Unlike Western Europe, it still has a substantial population with the conviction and courage to stand up for good in the face an "Evil Empire" (Reagan about the USSR) or the "Axis of Evil" (Bush about terrorism and the states that support them).

And we should never forget that history has no "givens." Just because Reagan managed to win the Cold War over the resistance of France and Germany doesn't mean that the War on Terror will be won in spite of the same weasely two and cowardly liberals. Much will hinge on tomorrow's election. A guy who thinks "wounds" that can be treated with a bandaid are worthy of a Purple Heart is clearly not the sort to stan

How did the NY Times cover that very newsworthy story? It got those thugs to pose, calm and serene, for a brief moment and ran that picture with their story. It said absolutely nothing about all the hatred, venom and threats of violence. In short, it lied.

Flashback to Germany about 1932 and imagine a German newspaper doing a similar whitewash of Nazi brownshirt violence. That's what I did that day. I promised myself that from that moment on I would never believe anything I read in the NY Times.

Foxfire may be a quite good browser, but these promoters are behaving no differently from a well-meaning group of Germans taking out an ad in the once popular Volkischer Beobachter in 1935. The only difference? In 1935 the untermenschen (subhuman) being deprived of legal rights was Jewish. Today it's the unborn baby, including a near full-term baby pulled halfway out of her mother's womb.

That vileness is what the Volkischer Beobachter stood for then. It's what the NY Times stands for today. Don't respect it. Don't read it when you don't absolutely have do. Never believe anything it says without outside confirmation. And for goodness sake don't give it any money for an ad.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

When I had my copyright clash with the Tolkien estate over my Lord of the Rings chronology, Untangling Tolkien, an ACLU lawyer who gave me advice told me that literary estates often get weird about protecting what they regard as their rights. In my case, J. R. R. Tolkien's now elderly son Christopher was that way, and his Manhattan lawyers were only too happy to enrich themselves at his expense. Only when they saw that they were on the verge of losing concurrent motions for summary judgment, did they offer to settle with me out of court. The judge drove the final nail in their coffin when she dismissed their lawsuit with prejudice. Fair use had defeated deep pockets.

The Gone with the Wind estate behaves similarly weird. Several years ago, they tried to block a parody called The Wind Done Gone, which gives the tale from the slaves's perspective. Ironically, if you go to Amazon.com, you'll find that people who buy the latter are also buying GWTW, so it has hardly hurt their royalties.

In the end, this lawsuit may prove a blessing. Eventually, national differences in copyright laws in the Internet age will have to be dealt with. Outside the dreadful Second Circuit, the courts probably offer more hope of a broad interpretation than an easily bought off Congress. After Wind Done Gone, the GWTW estate doesn't have the best of reputations in the copyright arena. And finally, the law does give greater freedom to non-profit publication and for educational purposes. Project Gutenberg fits both those categories.

I believe Project Gutenberg is headquartered in the Midwest. Let's hope the GWTW estate has to sue them there rather than in New York State, where the federal courts (at least since Castle Rock's lawsuit against Seinfeld Aptitute Test) seem to be in the pockets of large copyright holders. One Midwest court dismissed the dreadful judicial reasoning in the Castle Rock as "frivilous"--one of the worst insults one court can give another.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Whatever happens in this election, it's clear that that a great cultural and spiritual divide has opened up between the US and portions of Western Europe, particularly France and Germany. There a cradle-to-grave welfare state has created an increasingly child-like population, unable to deal with adversity and, since so few of them are having children, unconcerned about what the future might bring. They live the present, seeking to be as comfortable as they can now, with no will to alter their cultural and economic decline, to deal with the pending collapse of their extensive social programs, or to oppose the cultural and political disaster that will be Eurarabia.

That's why in the 1970s, France adopted a policy of providing a "safe haven" for terrorists and sold Saddam nuclear technology in exchange for oil. It's why in the 1980s, Germany clashed with Reagan. In exchange for minor concessions for East Germans, it was willing to consign all of Eastern Europe to perpetual, repressive Soviet domination. That same mindset remains in place, but today it's the Middle East that France and Germany want to see remain under repressive regimes in order to ensure that they have a stable source of oil. Note in particular how little interest these Europeans have in prosecuting Saddam for his Hitler-like crimes against humanity, fussing with Iraq because it dares to talk of executing the guy. They don't want to offend other Middle Eastern tyrants who differ from Saddam only in the scale of their attrocities.

It's important to remember that even if Kerry is elected, the US will not follow France and Germany down the primrose path to oblivion. Kerry may try take us down that path, but he lacks the leadership skills to succeed.

Kerry was over his head trying to command a patrol boat in Vietnam. That's why virtually everyone who served with him considers him "Unfit for Command" and why he scurried back stateside after a mere four months. It's why his 20 years in the Senate has been worst than lackluster. There is no significant piece of legislation bearing his name. Despite the best efforts of the Big Media to make us think otherwise, a Kerry presidency will discredit the "European model" of foreign policy as badly as Chamberlain did appeasement or Carter did detente. There's nothing that speaks as loudly as abject failure.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

This is an example of the questions asked:

Is it your perception that that experts mostly agree that just before the war Iraq had WMD:

Which had the result: Bush supporters 56%; Kerry supporters 18%.

But at the Outpost notes: "This question is simply too confusing to be useful. Is it asking whether before the war the experts believed Iraq had WMDs or is it asking whether that is what the experts are saying now."

Note that before the war, it was widely agreed that Saddam had WMD, so from that perspective Bush supporters are correct. Only afterward did the "experts" change their POV, making the common Bush answer "wrong." But even then the Bush supporters are right about the WMD facts, since some 50 such weapons have been found. Kerry supporters, with only 18% believing in WMDs, are clearly the ones out of touch with reality.

But by inserting a mention of "experts" but confusing the time, those doing the survey could decide for themselves which answer they call right and spin the results any way they want. And given the technical expertise that went into this study, we can probably safely assume that the spin was deliberate. It was intended to generate a media buzz just before the election.

Read Outpost for more details.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

"It's an interesting read, and shows voters supporting Kerry as being more in tune with the events and world attitudes surrounding the war in Iraq."

And how many Kerry supporters know that France's Chrac was building Saddam in the early 80s and stocking it with high-grade uranium so the mad tyrant could build an a-bomb? How many Kerry supporters know that quite a few officials in the UN, France, Germany and Russia were getting illegal payola from the Oil for Food program? Not many I suspect. The list could go on and on.All this study demonstrates is that you can fudge studies to prove almost anything.

All this is to elect Kerry, someone whose only significant accomplishment in a quarter century of political life was to lie and slander his "band of brothers" in Vietnam. If elected, Kerry will make Carter look capable and those who voted for him look like fools.

By the way, Newsweek, not troubled by the fact that we've not yet voted, has already annouced a book that'll describe the Kerry presidency. Amazon has it at: Election 2004

Not very little "d" democratic is it?

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The editorial history of the Times is vile. In the early 20th century it promoted eugenics as a "wonderful" new science. In 1927, it was delighted by Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional. Just this year it refused to give back a Pulitizer won in the early 1930s for covering up Stalin's murder of millions of Ukranian farmers. It the late 1950s it helped put the worst dictator in the Western hemisphere in power (Castro).

In the 1960s, it helped to cloak the drive for abortion legalization (intended to reduce the birthrates of poor blacks, hispanics and whites) behind a hysteria about a "population explosion"--while the US birthrate plunged rather than soared. More recently, it has found little of interest in the 300,000 people buried in mass graves in Iraqi. Pointing to them would make the paper's own "Great Satan," President Bush, look like the decent man he is. You could go on and on. There's little that's really nasty and foul done that it hasn't championed.

Those who want read how the liberal media in general promoted state-controlled breeding (eugenics and forced sterilization) can go to Eugenics and the News Media for more details.

Those who want to understand the 1960s drive for abortion legalization can read this PDF: Preface to The Pivot of Civilization. The entire book, a history of Planned Parenthood's roots, has been released under a Creative Commons license and will download from here: The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective. That's quite a deal. The hardback version of the book retails for $50. Feel free to pass copies on.

The good folk working with FireFox are making a serious ethical blunder. Compared to the New York Times, even Microsoft's evils are as nothing. Gates may be greedy and power hungry, but he's yet to become an open champion of scientific bigotry and forced sterilization. Nor has he helped to conceal mass murder or abortion as an elitist eugenic measure. For those, you must turn to the nation's "Bigots of Record"--the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

The idea of buying a full-page ad in the Times should be dumped. Something good like open source shouldn't be giving money to such a foul beast.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The editorial history of the Times is vile. In the early 20th century it promoted eugenics as a "wonderful" new science. In 1927, it was delighted by Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional. Just this year it refused to give back a Pulitizer won in the early 1930s for covering up Stalin's murder of millions of Ukranian farmers. It the late 1950s it helped put the worst dictator in the Western hemisphere in power (Castro).

In the 1960s, it helped to cloak the drive for abortion legalization (intended to reduce the birthrates of poor blacks, hispanics and whites) behind a hysteria about a "population explosion"--while the US birthrate plunged rather than soared. More recently, it has found little of interest in the 300,000 people buried in mass graves in Iraqi. Pointing to them would make the paper's own "Great Satan," President Bush, look like the decent man he is. You could go on and on. There's little that's really nasty and foul done that it hasn't championed.

Those who want read how the liberal media in general promoted state-controlled breeding (eugenics and forced sterilization) can go to Eugenics and the News Media for more details.

Those who want to understand the 1960s drive for abortion legalization can read this PDF: Preface to The Pivot of Civilization. The entire book, a history of Planned Parenthood's roots, has been released under a Creative Commons license and will download from here: The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective. That's quite a deal. The hardback version of the book retails for $50. Feel free to pass copies on.

The good folk working with FireFox are making a serious ethical blunder. Compared to the New York Times, even Microsoft's evils are as nothing. Gates may be greedy and power hungry, but he's yet to become an open champion of scientific bigotry and forced sterilization. Nor has he helped to conceal mass murder or abortion as an elitist eugenic measure. For those, you must turn to the nation's "Bigots of Record"--the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

The idea of buying a full-page ad in the Times should be dumped. Something good like open source shouldn't be giving money to such a foul beast.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The editorial history of the Times is vile. In the early 20th century it promoted eugenics as a "wonderful" new science. In 1927, it was delighted by Buck v. Bell, the Supreme Court decision declaring forced sterilization constitutional. Just this year it refused to give back a Pulitizer won in the early 1930s for covering up Stalin's murder of millions of Ukranian farmers. It the late 1950s it helped put the worst dictator in the Western hemisphere in power (Castro).

In the 1960s, it helped to cloak the drive for abortion legalization (intended to reduce the birthrates of poor blacks, hispanics and whites) behind a hysteria about a "population explosion"--while the US birthrate plunged rather than soared. More recently, it has found little of interest in the 300,000 people buried in mass graves in Iraqi. Pointing to them would make the paper's own "Great Satan," President Bush, look like the decent man he is. You could go on and on. There's little that's really nasty and foul done that it hasn't championed.

Those who want read how the liberal media in general promoted state-controlled breeding (eugenics and forced sterilization) can go to Eugenics and the News Media for more details.

Those who want to understand the 1960s drive for abortion legalization can read this PDF: Preface to The Pivot of Civilization. The entire book, a history of Planned Parenthood's roots, has been released under a Creative Commons license and will download from here: The Pivot of Civilization in Historical Perspective. That's quite a deal. The hardback version of the book retails for $50. Feel free to pass copies on.

The good folk working with FireFox are making a serious ethical blunder. Compared to the New York Times, even Microsoft's evils are as nothing. Gates may be greedy and power hungry, but he's yet to become an open champion of scientific bigotry and forced sterilization. Nor has he helped to conceal mass murder or abortion as an elitist eugenic measure. For those, you must turn to the nation's "Bigots of Record"--the editors and reporters of the New York Times.

The idea of buying a full-page ad in the Times should be dumped. Something good like open source shouldn't be giving money to such a foul beast.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

http://www.havenco.com/

in the Principality of Sealand:

http://www.sealandgov.com/

You can read the history at the second address. It's a sovereign nation created on an old anti-aircraft platform a few miles off the coast of the UK. It slipped into de facto nation status before that oxymoron "international law" made another such country impossible. This is for real. It's not a joke.

I suspect IndyMedia's woes are linked to some financial scam, possibily involving banking. That would explain claims that Switzerland is involved. And whatever it is has to be illegal in the US and UK for legal action to be taken there. So, it isn't selling old Nazi junk.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Manufacturing jobs haven't disappeared. The U.S. produces far more cars today than it did in the 1950s. It just makes them in highly automated factories whose workers are paid much better than ever before for more comfortable and safer work. And if we hadn't automated, those jobs would have simply gone to automated factories in Japan.

Similarly, programming jobs won't disappear. Some will move to India, giving the people there more money to buy from us, the world's trendsetter in almost every area. And many jobs will stay here. For most businesses, it'd be stupid to hire someone halfway around the world to do work he won't be able to understand. In programming, hire local will still be the best idea.

What will happen is that the market will mature. Many products will become good enough for the needed task that little labor needs to be spent improving them. Unlike many products, software doesn't wear out and Linux/open source will strip Microsoft and its cohorts of their ability to force unnecessary upgrades.

Those who want the government to 'do something to protect our jobs' want us to follow Western Europe into government subsidies and the protection of selected industries. The results are likely to be like that of France and Germany--near stagnent economies with little innovation and unemployment rates almost twice our own.

The scariest remark in the USA article is the Mr. Miano who dropped programming and went to law school. The biggest threat to programming jobs isn't outsourcing, it's the growing potential for lawsuits that choke competition and crush small companies. The mess that VP-candidate/lawyer John Edwards and his cohorts made of medicine could afflict the software world. THAT is the real bad news.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

In the early 80s I had a professor who'd maintained close ties to China since he was a Marine guard at the Peking embassy just after WWII. He was disgusted that China seemed to "have learned nothing" from the mistakes we made with industrialization.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Surviving an accident unharmed isn't just about not being crushed. Someone I know who works with accident victims says that huge SUV's often leave people with chronic back problems because they're so stiff, they don't absorb the impact. All the sudden changes in speed get passed on to riders.

Bouncing off a larger vehicle, as these cars are said to do, merely compounds that problem. Instead of going from 40 mph to zero in a fraction of a second. Riders will be going from 40 mph in one direction to almost 40 mph in another, compounding the whiplash etc. Not good.

And in either situation, victims often have trouble getting insurance companies to pay for medical treatment. "Hey," they say, "your vehicle was hardly damaged. How can you be having so many problems? You're faking it. We're not going to payl"

I like the idea of these frugal, easy to park cars and look forward to seeing cheaper (and perhaps better engineered) versions coming out of Japan. But I remain skeptical about their safety.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Hardcore Democrats have been nuts since the Gore-inspired "stolen election" hysteria of 2000. The fact that every objective study of the voting in Florida, including those funded by liberal newspapers, shows Bush won by a small margin means little to these fanatics. If the Democratic party were in more capable hands, it would have put an end to the madness much like Nixon did to legitimate evidence that JFK and the mafia fixed the elections in Illinois. But it isn't. Post-Clinton, the Democratic party is led by integrity-deficient rogues.

Look at recent news. Shots were fired into a Bush-Cheney headquarters in Knoxville, Tennessee. In Orlando, Florida, Democratic fanatics attacked a Republican party headquarters. The same thing happened in West Allis, Wisconsin. All that is a direct product of the "Bush = Hitler" rhetoric coming from the Democratic party leadership and their activist groups. And from someone who lived through it, it is also almost identical to the sort of violence-inspiring rhetoric that came from Democratic politicians (i.e. George Wallace) in the South during the last days of segregation.

This is serious stuff. My greatx4 grandfather and one of his daughters were murdered during the Civil War for opposing Southern succession in NW Alabama. My greatx3 grandfather was murdered for voting Republican in 1874 when Southern Democrats were as rabid about winning by any means as national Democrats are today.

Notice something else. If these attacks had been on Democratic headquarters, Big Media would be all over Bush demanding that he put a stop to it much like they did with the the very decent, honest and non-violent swift boat veterans. Why aren't they all over Kerry demanding action? Could this be bias? Oh no, we all know that Rather is as honest as.... well Clinton.

The chilling effect of these attacks is why, with the two candidates fairly equal in the polls, you see far fewer Bush stickers on cars than Kerry stickers. Bush supporters legitimately fear a rock through their windshield from all these crazed Democrats. Check NationalReview.com for an article on this "Climate of Fear."

Me? Much like my illustrious ancestors no one intimidates me. Despite warnings from my landlord about a smashed windshield, my car still has a homemade "Kerry Kills Babies" sign with a picture of an aborted baby. Oh, the obscene notes it is attracting from my smugly liberal neighbors!

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

SlashDot kept off its main page the #1 Internet story of 2004, never telling us how a handful of blogs run by "guys in PJs" took on one of the most powerful new outlets in the world--CBS-- and won. With that the Internet came of age as a news source and Slashdot revealed itself as either technologically clueless or horribly biased.

If Slashdot wants to be taken seriously as a news source, it need make some major changes in how it handles and reports news.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

In fairness, WA state has a very, very messed up B&O tax... In fact they maintain the most regressive tax structure in the nation.

As a Washington resident, I might remind those who equate Democrat with good and Republican with evil that this state with its dreadfully regressive business and sales taxes, no income tax, and massive subsidies for giant corporations is mostly Democratic. Our governor is a Democrat, as are both our US senators, and it is assumed that the state will go for Kerry in November. In part this is because our not-too-bright left concentrates on multiplying regulations (especially environmental/land use). That makes the state (especially King County where Boeing and Microsoft are located) so business-hostile that the legislature is forced to give massive tax breaks in an attempt to keep them here. Those same regulations also give us some of the highest home prices in the country, which also deters business investment.

Seattle, which dominates the state politically, has never been very bright. When we had forty-eight states, there was an expression: "There are 47 states and the Soviet of Washington." When you think of just how dreadful the Soviet Union was (especially under Stalin when that remark was common), you get a taste of just how much sense many of my neighbors have. They have no problem voting for Kerry, who is still proud of his early political activism that helped to turn Vietnam into a repressive police state so terrible over a million people fled the country. And amazingly, all that moral blindness is linked to an incredible smugness and sense of superiority.

Those of us not caught up in this perversity have to be thankful for the little things. My representative in the US House, Jim McDermott may have gone to Bagdad to kiss up to Saddam before the war, but at least the city council didn't proclaim Saddam's Bagdad a "sister city."

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Yes, there are some who fall for these silly styles, but most of us want a computer that "just works." If we want style, we'll hang a painting on the wall, not purchase an overpriced and soon obsolete computer.

Note too that Apple does far better in the laptop market where styling is subordinated to practicality. There, Apple listens to the public and gives it what it wants.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

" I believe Tom Rosenthiel got it right in that Boston Globe article when he said that the proper question is not whether you call yourself a journalist but whether your own work constitutes journalism. And what is that? I like his answer: A journalist tries to get the facts right, tries to get as close as possible to the verifiable truth not to help one side win or lose but to inspire public discussion."

And to quote a Boston Globe reporter on journalistic honesty is almost as funny. Next on to Rather and CBS, the Boston Globe was the most aggressive at defending those forged memos with bogus claims they could have been churned out on an early 70s typewriter.

The day after this now discredited CBS expose, Google news listed over 1000 stories in papers around the world. In none that I read did the reporter make even a cursory examination of those memos. They simply repeated CBS's doctored tale like parrots.

Into the breach stepped a handful of blogs, notably Powerline and Little Green Footballs. In less than a day and using the expertise of their readers much like open source and Groklaw, they demonstrated that the memos were clumsy forgeries done with a recent version of Microsoft Word. Five years ago, perhaps even two years ago, that would have been impossible.

It was easily the biggest Internet story of the year. A handful of blogs take on a powerful TV network, charge it with using forged documents, and win. It demonstrates perfectly the democratic, leveling influence of the Internet.

But those depending on Slashdot for their window on the world would have heard almost nothing about this amazing development. A story that should have been shouted from Slashdot's main page and updated several times a day, was buried on the politics page.

The select few that determine what stories Slashdot displays are free to vote for whoever they want in the November election. But they're not free to caption their pages with "Politics for Nerds. Your vote matters" and expect us to trust them. If they want to champion Kerry by burying contrary stories, they should change that slogan to "Partisan Politics for Nerds. Vote for Kerry."

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

I'm not sure if I'm Left or Right, however: I'm pro-choice and pro-gun. I guess I just don't like people very much.

Your honesty is commendable and not far from the mark. Planned Parenthood's roots lie in those who didn't like the early twentieth-century flood of Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics from Southern Europe. Catholics hate Planned Parenthood for much the same reason that blacks hate the Klan.

It's all detailed in a book that includes extensive quotes from Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's founder, and her liberal/socialist allies. You can download a free PDF of that book from:

Eugenics & Planned Parenthood

There you'll find out why many liberals call themselves "prochoice" rather than "prochoices." They want poor women to have only one choice available. It's as deeply rooted in what liberalism believes as Microsoft's behavior is in the similar Social Darwinian beliefs of Bill Gates--survival of the fittest, might makes right and all that.

Aside from the fact that discussions about Microsoft and abortion are both about people who want to crush those who get in their way, this is dreadfully off-topic.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

I'm not sure if I'm Left or Right, however: I'm pro-choice and pro-gun. I guess I just don't like people very much.

Your honesty is commendable and not far from the mark. Planned Parenthood's roots lie in those who didn't like the early twentieth-century flood of Jews from Eastern Europe and Catholics from Southern Europe. Catholics hate Planned Parenthood for much the same reason that blacks hate the Klan.

It's all detailed in a book that includes extensive quotes from Margaret Sanger, Planned Parenthood's founder, and her liberal/socialist allies. You can download a free PDF of that book from:

Eugenics & Planned Parenthood

There you'll find out why many liberals call themselves "prochoice" rather than "prochoices." They want poor women to have only one choice available. It's as deeply rooted in what liberalism believes as Microsoft's behavior is in the similar Social Darwinian beliefs of Bill Gates--survival of the fittest, might makes right and all that.

Aside from the fact that discussions about Microsoft and abortion are both about people who want to crush those who get in their way, this is dreadfully off-topic.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Doing research to discover who's right, perhaps by tapping the resources on Groklaw, is beyond this sort of journalism. Too much work, too much time, too much thinking and committment. Better to just join together quotes and be done with it.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Morris, who saw far less effective policies lead to disaster in the Clinton administration, credits the act and the cooperation it mandates between federal intelligence and local law enforcement with blocking a plot to destroy the Brooklyn Bridge and another to set off a bomb in NYC's Garment District. If both had succeeded, the death toll would have run into the tens of thousands.

Keep in mind that it is not good anti-terrorism policy to let these successes be too widely known, since they clue terrorists into the means being used to fight them. The Clinton administration would have trumpted every success it had, however pitiful, and claimed it was due to Bill's genius. The Bush administration prefers to do its job well and keep quiet about it.

The article answered a question that has bothered me. Given how desperate terrorists must be to hit back at the U.S., why haven't they accomplished anything in the past three years? Morris makes clear that the Patriot Act is one reason.

Yeah, I know this is flame bait to those who think Attorney General Ashcroft goes home each evening, tucks himself in bed, and reads reports detailing the "p0rn' books they just checked out of the library. For such people, facts are of little use.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

It took Pioneer 10 and 11 some 30 years to reach the point where this effect began to show up. If these planned followup probes aren't quite a bit faster, it'll be 2034 or later before astronomers and physicists start to get useful data back.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

1. The old iMac had a lightweight screen that floated almost magically above the computer and was easily adjusted to any angle with the touch of one finger. The new iMac almost returns us to the old days of bulky and immovable CRTs. To adjust your screen you have to move your entire computer. Duh! Like we were asking for that.

2. The old iMac didn't let you add anything internally, but at least you could discretely add a Firewire drive with out-of-sight cabling. With the new iMac, all cabling will be dangling in the air for all to see and making adjusting the screen an even greater hassle. Now the monitor will go where the cabling wants and not where you or I want. Lean back while listening on headphones and your screen tilts at an odd angle. What a stroke of genius!

3. Apple's always tended to make computers that get too hot, with the notable exception of the outsized G5 'blimp hanger' desktop. Are those G5s crammed into such a small form factor with limited circulation going to run hot as a toaster? Probably. Look for baked, yellowing white plastic inside a year. Look for the silly folks who bought this Edsel to whine and ask for Apple to fix the problem.

The pitiful thing is that this product isn't even 'innovative.' Sony already has a computer with a similar form factor and it's not exactly selling like hot cakes, for much the same reasons listed above. If someone wants a screen/computer combo, a laptop makes far more sense. This beast has all the disadvantages of a laptop with none of the advantages.

At least we can be happy about one thing. They didn't use their flashing lights patent on this one--the Mac for five-year-old boys who never grew up. "It flashes and squawks. It must be good!"

Yes, I'm sure some of these beasts will sell. Some people are so ga-ga over Apple's designs--good or awful, they'd buy a Mac if it were brown and looked like a pile of cattle poop, flies and all. (Attention Apple design!)

It's easy to see why, in spite of the best OS on the planet Apple's market share is in the low single digits. Apple makes well-designed laptops and they sell well. But their desktops seemed to be designed by the weirdest characters in Dilbert cartoons. And they sell pitifully and almost in spite of their designs. People buy them because they have to, not because they want to.

What the public wants in desktops is shown by what they buy in the Windows world--a reasonably priced box (color irrelevant) with modest features but easily customized to suit. What Apple sells is far from that. Buyers are forced to choose between an always slightly weird iMac that can't be upgraded and an overpriced (and currently oversized) desktop with more trendy features (i.e. optical video out) than most of us want, but so poorly designed it can't hold more than two internal and one external drive.

I'd love to upgrade my aging beige G3. The Windows/Linux world is filled with hardware that would suit. Unfortunately, When it comes to desktops, Apple keeps coming out with dumb stuff like this new iMac. They design computers to win awards from weird magazines rather than give the public what it wants.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

So is this scientific "proof" that liberals tend to be more compassionate but also more cowardly?

No, two historical facts and one fact from current events prove rather conclusively that liberals aren't "more compassionate." They merely claim to be.

1. From the 1920s until the aftermath of WWII, there was widespread support among liberals for Soviet communism. Roger Baldwin, founder of the ACLU even wrote a 1928 book claiming there was Liberty Under the Soviets . When an anti-Communist left developed after WWII, totalitarian support among the left was so pervasive, Americans for Democratic Action had to have an open policy of refusing membership to anyone with communist ties. There was no corresponding enthusiasm among conservatives for the Nazi dictatorship. Prominent Americans who liked Nazism (i.e. Charles Lindberg and Joseph Kennedy) tended to be advocates of big government.

2. For a century after the Civil War, the nation's two political parties clearly differed in their attitudes toward race.

The Republican party may not have done as much as it should about the mistreatment of black people, but it did enough that the party did not exist in the segregated Deep South.

In contrast, the Democratic party catered to Southern bigotry. In every presidential race but one (1940) between 1924 and 1964, it made sure that at least one of their two candidates (usually the VP) was from the South and that he had a reputation of not challenging the segregationist status quo. (That was as true of LBJ in 1960 as of John Sparkman in 1956.) During this period, both parties had liberal wings, but liberals overwhelming chose to affiliate with the Democratic party, the party of segregation. They preferred to win in alliance with the Klan to losing with "compassion." Some heart!

If you'd like to look at this in more detail, check out my:

Bigotry and Regionalism in Presidential Voting

In the 1950s and 1960s, political activism, primarily religious in origin, forced the nation to end legalized racism. And this politicized religious activity did not flow merely from black churches, In the mid-1950s, the Southern Baptist Convention (almost all its members were Southern whites) called for an end to segregation by an overwhelming 9000 to 50 vote.

In contrast, when the Democratic party began to change in the mid-1960s, a major portion of its leaders were still racists. To get his 1964 Civil Rights bills passed, LBJ had to turn to the Republican party for support. A higher percentage of Republicans voted for the bill than Democrats and opponents of the legislation included Al Gore's father.

What was the result of those changes? Political activism by black churches and to a much lesser extent by white churches in the South had wrecked what for the Democratic party had been a useful but covert alliance between northern liberals and southern racists. Northern liberals could no longer depend on a solidly Democratic South to give them a party majority and thus committee chairmanships in Congress. And now forced to compete with the Republicans for Southern votes, winning the White House became much more difficult. It is no accident that since 1964, the only two Democrats to win the White House were from the South.

The result was the Democratic party's current hostility toward political activism by churches, particularly in human rights issues. And that doesn't just mean the Rev. Martin Luther King. It also means Billy Graham, who integrated his crusades in the 1950s, denounced segregation, provided organizational advice for civil rights protests, and appeared on the same platform with King in 1957. Mixing church and state that way may have been good for the nation, but it was very bad for the Democratic party.

3. The third fact is one that's a current issue. Try to imagine an argument for legalized abortion tha

And Edward Kennedy does have terrorist connections. If memory served me right, he has used his political muscle to aid IRA terrorist leaders, getting them into the US to raise money. That probably got him (legitimately) on at least one terrorist watch list and that data was fed into the current one. So, it is phony for him to whine and claim innocence. When it comes to terrorism, he has blood on his hands.

Don't forget too that Ed Kennedy is very left and it is the left, particularly in Europe, that's providing political cover for so-called "fundamentalist" terrorists. You can read about how how Carlos the Jackal, former Marxist, has converted to Islam and how London's Sunday Telegraph is idolizing him like Marxist revolutionaries were once idolized at:

Carlos the Jackal

And recall that when his father, Joseph Kennedy, was UK ambassador after war broke out in Europe, he tilted his remarks so heavily in favor of Hitler that some historians call him "pro-Nazi." FDR had to do some clever manuvering to get him to leave the job quietly. Papa Joe hoped he could build on American isolationism and get himself in the White House. If he'd been successful in his schemes, Europe would still be Nazi. (There was, in fact, a rather badly done docu-drama that built on that theme.)

Then there is the Kennedy family's close friendship with Senator Joe Macarthy of the repressive Macarthy Era fame. Ed's brother Robert Kennedy served as Macarthy's legal aide and John Kennedy was the only member of the Senate not to vote to censure Macarthy for his demagogery. Ed was a bit too young to get involved in the family's efforts to suppress free speech, but his heart was no doubt with his kin. Witness all the slandering he has done over the years of rather ordinary Americans.

In short, Ed Kennedy, grossly obese and often drunk, is the last member of a rather vile political dynasty. There's probably no one more deserving of having his flights disrupted by a terrorism watch list. Edward and his kin have thrown their weight around and hurt a lot of innocent people over the years. There's no reason to feel sympathy for him now.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

And Edward Kennedy does have terrorist connections. If memory served me right, he has used his political muscle to aid IRA terrorist leaders, getting them into the US to raise money. That probably got him (legitimately) on at least one terrorist watch list and that data was fed into the current one. So, it is phony for him to whine and claim innocence. When it comes to terrorism, he has blood on his hands.

Don't forget too that Ed Kennedy is very left and it is the left, particularly in Europe, that's providing political cover for so-called "fundamentalist" terrorists. You can read about how how Carlos the Jackal, former Marxist, has converted to Islam and how London's Sunday Telegraph is idolizing him like Marxist revolutionaries were once idolized at:

Carlos the Jackal

And recall that when his father, Joseph Kennedy, was UK ambassador after war broke out in Europe, he tilted his remarks so heavily in favor of Hitler that some historians call him "pro-Nazi." FDR had to do some clever manuvering to get him to leave the job quietly. Papa Joe hoped he could build on American isolationism and get himself in the White House. If he'd been successful in his schemes, Europe would still be Nazi. (There was, in fact, a rather badly done docu-drama that built on that theme.)

Then there is the Kennedy family's close friendship with Senator Joe Macarthy of the repressive Macarthy Era fame. Ed's brother Robert Kennedy served as Macarthy's legal aide and John Kennedy was the only member of the Senate not to vote to censure Macarthy for his demagogery. Ed was a bit too young to get involved in the family's efforts to suppress free speech, but his heart was no doubt with his kin. Witness all the slandering he has done over the years of rather ordinary Americans.

In short, Ed Kennedy, grossly obese and often drunk, is the last member of a rather vile political dynasty. There's probably no one more deserving of having his flights disrupted by a terrorism watch list. Edward and his kin have thrown their weight around and hurt a lot of innocent people over the years. There's no reason to feel sympathy for him now.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

A few months ago CSPAN interviewed an American historian whose speciality was Germany. He noted a fact I found startling. American universities typically have major departments whose focus is some part of Europe. In contrast, European universities typically ignore U.S. history. In all of Germany, with some 70 million people, he said, there are fewer U.S. historians in the universities than there are in the state of North Carolina, with a mere 8.4 million people.

Yes, not everyone goes to college and not everyone who goes to college takes a course in French or German history. But in the U.S. any sizable group will have people who have studied European history. In Europe, it's often impossible for a college student to get a good grasp of U.S. history. And this is over a century after it became clear (following the Spanish-American war and the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt) that we were a world power.

As a result, all too many Europeans get their impression of the U.S. from their own (equally ignorant) news media, as well as our movies and the often odd views of culture and history that Hollywood presents. We're seen as a nation of cowboys whose cities are filled with crime, whose CIA kills a President, and whose Supreme Court (even the liberals) throws an election to a Republican.

Alas, there are also Americans who've swallowed this bizarre view of the U.S. Think, for instance, of Michael Moore, whose recent documentary is so dishonest he fabricated a newspaper's front page. In Europe his film won a prize. Here it won the praise of prominent Democrats. It should have made him the laughing stock of the entire world.

No, the problem of ignorance of others isn't confined to U.S. software programmers.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

Pay the BBC or Else

Follow the link to "Detection and Penalities." The fine for not having a license for your TV set, however modest and worthless, can run up to $1500, which also means that your name and address must be in the BBC's database. They also know about your vacation home and camper van.

Think they can't know if you watch in a windowless room? Think again, recalling WWII spy movies where a resistance radio operator is hurrying to get out a message as a Nazi radio van closes in. The BBC has a fleet of such vehicles prowling neighborhoods, listening for the "local oscillator" in your TV. You can read about that at:

TV Detector Vans

Think living in a crowded apartment or dorm filled with overlaping signals will protect you? Not so. An "enquiry officer" will prowl the halls with a hand-held scanner. Does this also constitute a legal "probable cause" to compel entry? That they don't say.

It gets even scarier. Suppose you've got better things to do with your time that watch TV. Well, the merry ole BBC won't take you at your word, like you're expected to take them at their word when they bring you the news. No way. If you'd like to know the details, download the BBC pamphlet from:

About TV Licensing

And you'll discover this little notice:

If people reply to our letters to the effect that no television is used at their address, we place a stop on further enquiry letters and arrange for a Visiting Officer to call upon them to verify the situation.

Reading all that makes me glad to live in the U.S.A., where streaming video, library tapes, and PBS make my TV viewing almost commercial free without all the cost and hassle of the BBC--Big Brother Collecting.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The French already work less than people in most other developed countries -- on average, nearly 300 fewer hours a year than Americans, according to one study.

That's no doubt one reason why the French are so irrationally angry at countries like the US where the spiral continues upward.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The privacy violation is of course that the lockers ALSO check your fingerprints against the FBI Terrorist Watch List.

A fingerprint check makes quite a bit of sense. Putting timed bombs in lockers is a standard terrorist trick for getting around guards spotting an unattended parcel and calling the bomb squad. A metal locker also provides metal fragments to wound and kill. And the Statue of Liberty with its "send me your ..." also represents a high priority target for those driven by hate and bigotry, whether of the Marxist, Nazi or Islamist variety.

Notice how history is repeating itself. In the early 1980s the U.S. left and the louder sort of Europeans went as ballastic over Reagan as they now are over Bush. Yet the Cold War ended just as Reagan had predicted, and it's quite possible that the Middle East will slowly democratize just as Bush and C. Rice hope.

I can't understand why anyone refers to these terrorists as "fundamentalist Islam." Those who excuse their actions (blaming Israel and the US) and want to do little to hinder the evil they do in the countries they rule are precisely the same leftist groups (and often the same people) who excused Soviet totalitarianism twenty years ago.

Even more disturbing, the European press has begun to write gushey little pieces in praise of Carlos the Jackel, a terrorist who recent changed his excuse for killing from Marxism to Islamist. I wrote about the vile Carlos here.

It seems some people never learn. While crying shrilly about their "rights," they're remarkably comfortable with evil as long as the evil is inflicted on others. For them it's OK for Saddam to feed screaming Iraqi citizens through industrial shredders (CNN deliberately suppressed such stories), but not OK to take their fingerprints.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

The privacy violation is of course that the lockers ALSO check your fingerprints against the FBI Terrorist Watch List.

A fingerprint check makes quite a bit of sense. Putting timed bombs in lockers is a standard terrorist trick for getting around guards spotting an unattended parcel and calling the bomb squad. A metal locker also provides metal fragments to wound and kill. And the Statue of Liberty with its "send me your ..." also represents a high priority target for those driven by hate and bigotry, whether of the Marxist, Nazi or Islamist variety.

Notice how history is repeating itself. In the early 1980s the U.S. left and the louder sort of Europeans went as ballastic over Reagan as they now are over Bush. Yet the Cold War ended just as Reagan had predicted, and it's quite possible that the Middle East will slowly democratize just as Bush and C. Rice hope.

I can't understand why anyone refers to these terrorists as "fundamentalist Islam." Those who excuse their actions (blaming Israel and the US) and want to do little to hinder the evil they do in the countries they rule are precisely the same leftist groups (and often the same people) who excused Soviet totalitarianism twenty years ago.

Even more disturbing, the European press has begun to write gushey little pieces in praise of Carlos the Jackel, a terrorist who recent changed his excuse for killing from Marxism to Islamist. I wrote about the vile Carlos here.

It seems some people never learn. While crying shrilly about their "rights," they're remarkably comfortable with evil as long as the evil is inflicted on others. For them it's OK for Saddam to feed screaming Iraqi citizens through industrial shredders (CNN deliberately suppressed such stories), but not OK to take their fingerprints.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

"Timothy" claimed that: "Both George and John are using copyright law to 'vaporize' information embarassing or harmful to their campaigns." But follow the links, and you'll discover that neither leads to a story about what either candidate is doing.

The Wired story is about NBC refusing to give a movie maker permission to include a clip from a Bush interview on "Meet the Press." Whatever NBC's rationale is, they're not Bush, and from research on the media elite, we can assume that roughly 90+% of the network's decision makers will be voting for Kerry.

The same is true of the Kerry link to a Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry website. It tells of a New England filmmaker who's treatening to sue the group over their use of two photos that are very unflattering to Kerry. He is a friend of Kerry, but the action is still his own and not that of the Kerry campaign.

Slashdot should learn from the traditional news media, where fact checkers are often used to confirm stories. Before it posts a story, it should at least take a few seconds to see if the links say what the home-page poster claims. All too often they don't.

Until that happens, I'll continue to tell friends that Slashdot interesting for the reader comments, but that the site itself is run like a junior high newspaper--sloppy, irresponsible and childishly rebellious.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle

But it doesn't matter. This was his BOSS. You stay in official channels when dealing with any personel problem, and you ESPECIALLY do this when a superior is involved.

What's scary is that this poster really thinks his appeal to authority is impressive. Note how he puts "BOSS" in all capitals. Even God only gets an initial capital in everyday English. And have you ever noticed that people who suck up to authority like that somehow regard it as a brave and difficult thing. I've always found that strange!

Alas, I grew up in Alabama. In college, I referred to voting in state elections as "choosing the lesser crook." That's why I find it amusing that so many 'Yankee' liberals try to deny that ex-President Clinton is a crook. "Hey," I think to myself, "he's a Southern Democrat. Looting the public is why he went into politics." (That and those bimbo interns.)

Nor is Slick Willy alone. Think of 'Landside Lyndon' (LBJ), a nicknamed earned fixing elections. Think of the father of the sore loser of 2000, Gore Sr., better known as the "Senator from Occidental Petroleum." Or think of strutting little Governor George Wallace, whose corruption gave my dad (who knew him personally) fits.

Things have improved a bit,, but the South still has the best politicians money can buy. And when you have crooks in power, you have a government where a boss does almost no work but doesn't get fired.

Let's hope this gutsy whistleblower wins his appeal, and "Boss Solitaire" gets fired.

--Mike Perry, Inkling blog , Seattle