Slashdot Mirror

"9/11 was to Bush what the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 was to the newly installed Chancellor Hitler, a disaster contrived by an opponent [...] that, in the government's view, was at once a proof of its policy and a means to advance it."

-- from Stanley Kauffman's review of Fahrenheit 9/11 in The New Republic

Direct link to the referenced review is here, you may need to be a subscriber to access it though.

"9/11 was to Bush what the burning of the Reichstag in 1933 was to the newly installed Chancellor Hitler, a disaster contrived by an opponent [...] that, in the government's view, was at once a proof of its policy and a means to advance it."

-- from Stanley Kauffman's review of Fahrenheit 9/11 in The New Republic

Direct link to the referenced review is here, you may need to be a subscriber to access it though.

Do you really think Bush is devicive enough to lie about WMD's, don't you think he's kind of an idiot? If he was 'smart' enough to lie about WMD's don't you think he would be 'smart' enough to plant them in Iraq so that he could say 'we found em!' How embarassing, and politically hurtful is it to Bush to not have found very much that's significant yet. If he was really as evil and devicisive as you thought he was, he would have planted some WMD's there to trick us.

He could have -- but if he were ever found out, the repercussions would be enormous. There's a lot of risk in trying to frame another country. I think that you'd have to be awfully desperate to try something like that. I don't think that Bush is that desperate.

The fact that he fesses up to saying there may be no WMD's there, is a hard thing to do, but there were several other reasons we went to Iraq.

Most of those reasons were given, in order, as the previous ones were shot down *after* we were in Iraq.

Your going to have to elaborate on [Cheney's hawkishness.

Take a look at this for a critical but in-depth look at Cheney's history.

I'm not sure you typed this right - you said Bush supports a Ban on weapons but Republicans are better about protecting gun rights (which usually means the ability to own guns if you want to)

No, it's right. One of the few points that I tend to agree with the Republican viewpoint on is gun rights. Unfortunately, Bush is not being traditionally Republican here, and supported the Assault Weapons Ban.

That's what the news wants you to believe, but have you been to other countries to verify this? Have you seen any unbiased polls? Or by unpopular internationally do you mean that the government of France doesn't like us.

The foreign news sources I read from news.google.com are quite critical, and the people that I speak to from other countries (including those on Slashdot) have been very critical of the United States' current stances.

So you did a poll of 1/1? Watch the news on some T.V. stations (i.e. ABC, NBC, CBS, or even CNN), and see what they call him, be a bit more scientific about it, by polling a larger gourp, then get back to me.

I don't watch TV, but I'll take a look at their news sites:

abcnews's top instance of "Bush" on their page is:

A new ABC News poll shows Sen. John Kerry gaining in personal ratings, but President Bush still maintains lead overall.

NBC doesn't seem to have online news.

CBS News's top instance of "Bush" on their page is:

Sen. John Kerry's strong debate performance has returned the presidential horserace to a dead heat and eroded some of President Bush's advantages on national security issues, according to a new CBS News/New York Times poll.

I've provided several instances, with quotes, supporting my view. Would you please provide even one instance of an article on any of the mainstream news sources that refers to Bush without his title and Clinton (or Kerry, I'll go with that as well) with their title?

He's also allocated more money than any other president towards AIDS research. Has anyone mentioned that?

He did more to set back the anti-AIDS effort by trying to quash condom education in Africa, I'd say. That research might pay off in a decade -- in the meantime, there are a lot more people becoming infected.

And he is fighting the war on terrorists now so we don't have to fight it later on our own soil.

Or making it worse. Iraq hadn't supported al Qaeda. Iraq hadn't really done much of anything by way of endangering the United States. *Now* there are scads of angry Iraqis that have become potential terrorists.

Here's a sampling of the best I've found:

Vodkapundit. Stephen Green's blog. Probably the best match for my own political views. Hawkish libertarian and consumer of fine ethanol-based beverages.

Instapundit Glenn Reynold's blog. Another decent match for my own viewpoint. Glenn's more of a linker than a commentator, but he's one of the best about linking to all sides of the blogosphere. When he does extended bits (such as at his MSNBC site or his TCS columns), he's quite cogent. Has a lot of outside interests (electronic music, space policy, nano-tech, constitutional law) that dovetail into my own and make his site more interesting than the politics-only blogs. Frequently mentions Slashdot and links to relevant discussions.

Reason's Hit and Run Another libertarian blog, run by Reason magazine. Much more in tune to the Libertarian Party than the above.

Virginia Postrel YALB (Yet Another Libertarian Blog). Postrel is a former editor of Reason. More of a social commentator these days and has written some fascinating books recently. Seems to have become ever-so-slightly more hawkish since 9/11.

The Corner National Review's blog. Conservative and largely Catholic, it's best feature is Jonah Goldberg (the token non-Catholic), who has a pleasantly snarky, pop-cultural laden view of current events. Least pleasant on the blog in John Derbyshire, who is quite the math geek but is way out there on the borderline-racist right (quite pleasant in email, though).

Andrew Sullivan. Classical liberal, Oakeshott conservative. A very incisive and passionate writer, he has an infuriating habit of demonizing the opposition. Originally very pro-war (and spent much time fulminating against the "fifth columnist" element on the left), he's now got a new enemy (those opposed to gay marriage/gay rights), so all those who were the enemy last year (the Democrats/John Kerry) are friends, and all those who were friends last year (the Republicans/George Bush) are enemies who can now do no right. When his emotions are not ruling his thinking, though, he's very, very good.

Mickey Kaus Slate's resident blogger, Mickey is a DLC "New" Democrat. He's one of the more honest of the bloggers (zings his own side often, recognizes good arguments on the other side) and a good source of insider media stuff.

Josh Marshall Establishment Democrat. I found his stuff to be really good a few years back, but recently he's spending more time rooting for the team (DNC/Kerry) than being objective. Also, darkly hints at constant "breaking soon" scoops that either never appear or completely underwhelm. Very bright guy, though, and insightful when not attempting to spin too obviously.

Kevin Drum Another Establishment Democrat. Kevin tends to be more self-reflective than Josh, which stands him in good stead. Great place to capture the mood of the DNC political types.

New Republic They have a couple of blogs (&c. and Campaign Journal). &c. is by far the better of the two. Skews left, but a sort of rationalist left (understands that while America may suck at times, other places suck more).

Tapped This used to be a great blog back in the

The second and more immediate problem is that Iraqis know they want immediate elections, but they have no idea what they'll be voting for. Only 35 percent were able to say that the elections are supposed to be held in January. Nearly as many didn't know; about 30 percent gave the wrong answer. [...]Nor do they know what's at stake at the election. The overwhelming majority, 74.6 percent, incorrectly believe they'll be voting for "President of Iraq." Not even nine percent correctly responded that they'll be voting for a Transitional National Assembly.

The second and more immediate problem is that Iraqis know they want immediate elections, but they have no idea what they'll be voting for. Only 35 percent were able to say that the elections are supposed to be held in January. Nearly as many didn't know; about 30 percent gave the wrong answer. [...]Nor do they know what's at stake at the election. The overwhelming majority, 74.6 percent, incorrectly believe they'll be voting for "President of Iraq." Not even nine percent correctly responded that they'll be voting for a Transitional National Assembly.

A good starting point, in my opinion, is to read the opinion mags. The New Republic is a leading left-of-center opinion magazine. National Review is indispensible for those of us on the right. The Wall Street Journal provides the most insightful coverage of the major papers that I have seen, although they are obviously pro-capitalism and are therefore accused of being right-of-center. They require a subscription to read online, but I enjoy reading their editorial pages, which are free, and love their Best of the Web Today feature.

Obviously, I'm right-of-center politically, and what I find insightful, you may find unconvincing.

I believe the only candidate which can offer the security the world needs at this vital point in history is Bush.

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing - EDMOND BURKE

Europe right now is in the same place it was in the 1930's (and I don't just mean rising anti-Semitism). It is a demoralized civilization that has outlived the "God that failed" (socialism) and so sees no reason to defend Western civilization against its enemies, no matter how awful they might be. I can't tell you how many times I've seen some German or Scandinavian attack the current administration for America for its supposed "religious fanaticism", yet when I point out the rising Islamic fundamentalism among their Arab & African minorities, how indifferent they are, and their typical answer of "yeah, it's bad, but it would be wrong to impose my culture on these other people" (as if immigrants have no responsibility to try and assimilate to the culture they have been generously let into, and away from the one which they fled!). I especially remember one Swedish guy who was anguished by the spate of "honor killings" among Turkish immigrants in his country. His solution? To do everything not to set-off the male relatives of the victims, because "even though I don't like their customs, I don't feel right imposing my own culture on them".

The President of America needs to convince "old Europe" that the West, liberal decmocracy, and freedom are worth fighting for, and that this is real and not some cover for U.S. hegemony. Bush, with his arrogance, has done nothing to address this problem and much to exasserbate it.

Biden told Ashcroft that prohibitions against torture are intended to "protect my son in the military. That's why we have these treaties. So when Americans are captured, they are not tortured. That's the reason, in case anybody forgets it."

Ashcroft said he needed no reminder, because his own son has been on active military duty in the Persian Gulf.

Washington Post

You don't have to support President Bush to know that Michael Moore is a vile human being whose only motivation is hatred of America and who drags down the political discourse with his lies and distortions (even anti-war activists never claimed that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was some kind of kite-flying utopia). Intelligent liberals realize this:

Stanley Kauffmann's wise--and, at times, generously angry--criticism is one of The New Republic's strongest assets. It is therefore deeply disappointing that he chooses to go easy on such a crude propaganda effort as Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, whose anger has no generosity and whose opposition to George W. Bush's war, like his opposition to Bill Clinton's war against Slobodan Milosevic, is motivated by a hatred of the United States that is, at bottom, deeply illiberal ("Accusation," July 19). Bush hatred is not an excuse for failing to call the poison of our own era's Father Coughlin by its true name; as liberals, the responsibility for doing so rests squarely on our shoulders. Moore's garbage immeasurably degrades the quality of public discourse and undermines the struggle against Islamist fascism.

Letter to the Editors, The New Republic 09.06.04

Good luck finding an intelligent news source that currently supports Bush's domestic policies. Conservative (not to be confused with Republican) commentators like Andrew Sullivan now reluctantly support Kerry. Zell Miller's bizarre keynote address at the Republican convention certainly didn't help matters.

This Olympic surveillence is not just "any attempt at surveillence", it's "supposedly [the] largest surveillance network ever". People are concerned about the protection of our basic human rights, because we don't trust the government. Governments do bad things, always have, probably always will. America was founded on distrust of the government, which spread around the world once we demonstrated how to build a better government based on the mitigations of that distrust.

Terrorist attacks don't just "happen". In the case of Al Qaeda's WTC planebombings, their organization was created and protected by the CIA. There was a great deal of information available to prevent the attacks, but the expensive, intrusive government structure that we pay and elect to protect us failed. The result has been not only the counterattacks on these terrorists, that they accept as the price of sowing chaos, but the increase in the oppressive power of our government.

That distrust of government is the unifying factor between the questions of "acceptable surveillence" you started asking, and your defense of DHS (that you drifted into) in their release of Al Qaeda info this past week, in conjunction with raising the Threat Level in NYC and DC. In early July, reporters predicted that Bush would produce a Pakistani terrorist during the Democratic National Convention, as he had asked. Bush asked for someone, the Pakistanis produced someone, DHS waited several days to announce it. *Hours* before Kerry's acceptance speech, and prematurely for intelligence purposes, slashing the terrorist's value as a double agent, and sending capturable terrorists into hiding. The importance of the pre-9/11 plans reportedly siezed in Pakistan, that were invoked to explain the new security measures in NYC and DC, are apparently higher than in Las Vegas, where similar info has caused no escalation, nor even notification of the city. The difference is that NYC is the site of the Republican National Convention this month, and DC is of course the perennial focus of both parties.

It doesn't take much all-American distrust of the government to see the appropriation of terrorism by the government to campaign for reelection, regardless of the cost in protecting us from terrorism. That's consistent with the government's appropriation of terrorism to get the war in Iraq they wanted. And that same government will use surveillence for all its other purposes, mainly perpetuation of its power, regardless of the cost in basic human rights, including liberty, and even life itself.

We're not facing some theoretical Constitutional scenario. We're facing vast abuses of our rights daily, on a scale only before imagined by paranoids. Small wonder that we are kicking back. And our fear is underscored, because we *need* the government to protect us from the actual threat of these terrorists. So we reject the actual destruction of our rights, while we search for ways to continue to protect us from the threat of terrorism. That seems sensible, and patriotic, to me.

But, it wasn't really a troll, I honestly think that the Bush administration has manipulated the public by, for example, trying to announce the capture of terrorist suspects to steal the spotlight from his opponent. I do think the democrats have a point that Bush depends on the image of an America divided, and fear helps that division.

Indeed.

Fortunately, Democrats have been listening to their base, and while network security may be a problem at the convetion, Some Democrats have been moving secret information the old-fashioned way:

In their pants.

Happily, they still have time to make sure that those who disagree with them will have to sit at the back of the bus:

Cement barriers, 8-foot-tall chain-link fencing, and heavy black netting have been installed around the protest zone outside the FleetCenter, angering protesters who say they will be penned in and closed off from Democratic National Convention delegates. Much of the area is located under abandoned elevated Green Line tracks that slope downward. The setup, which one netting installer called ''an internment camp," will force tall protesters at the southern end of the zone to lower their heads to avoid banging them on green metal girders.

Brokaw: Senator Kerry, what about the French? Are they friends, are they enemies, or something in between at this point?

Kerry: The French are the French. I think there's a . . .

Brokaw: Very profound, Senator.

Kerry: Well, trust me. It has a meaning. And I think most people know exactly what I mean.

citation here

I despise the French but know enough about their ways to have a similarly detached attitude to them. One thing everyone should understand- the recent wave of Franco-phobia in the U.S. has been so visible precisely because the average American- in their good-hearted ignorance- was genuinely shocked and hurt by the way the French turned against us. In their minds Franco-American relations are defined by LaFayette, the Statue of Liberty, and the Normandy landings, not DeGaulle, de Villepin, and amoral, a-ideological back-stabbing.

But since at least DeGaulle France has consistently betrayed the Western Alliance, caring more about "national honor" and grandeur than ideals or decency. I've heard French moans lately about why the President can't be more like FDR, and laugh when I remember that in the latter's time DeGaulle was a constant prick and thorn in the side of Allies, always caring more about France not looking little than winning the war.

French foreign policy has followed this course for the last 50 years, sadly. Automatic opposition to the United States to make itself feel important and relevant; convenient alliances with anti-American states (no matter how repugnant) to have more influence. Do people forget who built Saddam's nuclear reactor at Osirak? Or who gave arms to their Rwandan Hutu clients during their campaign of genocide?

But what makes this truly sad and despicable is that it is done for no larger purpose than self-aggrandizement. German opposition to the Iraq war was at least honorable because it was based on ideals; Joschka Fischer turned to Jurgen Habermas and his neo-Kantian ideal of foreign relations. France, on the other hand, had Napeoloen-worshipping Dominique de Villepen, and it wouldn't have mattered if the government was Socialist, National Front, or Communist- the outcome and selfish, short-sighted reasons for it would have been the same.

France- you were humiliated in WWII and have been trying to regain your national honor ever since. Hint- the way to do it is not through grand-standing, self-involved, perverse behavior on the international stage. Stop being the bitch-nation of Europe.

As others have mentioned, The Atlantic is a bright spot on the American media landscape. It's impressive in that it shows a lot of the deeper trends, and it isn't afraid to explore ideas. Instead of focusing on controversy, the articles tend to be more about getting past the shrill argument and down to the real matter at hand. William Langeweische and James Fallows write brilliantly. It's worth noting that the Atlantic has offered perhaps the best overall coverage of 9/11 and its aftermath of any American magazine.

For those who complain about supporting advertising, check out The New Republic. It gets right down to business. The pages don't have much advertising. Excellent coverage of a wide variety of topics make it a worthy suppliment to the Economist, and proof that not all American publishers underestimate the average American's brain power.

It can be very worthwhile to read The New Republic and then read The National Review. Also not aimed at children, the National Review is solidly right-wing Catholic. The experience of reading both magazines one after another can be incredibly jarring. But for me it reveals a lot about why American politics is dominated by polarization and controversy. It also forces me to confront a world-view that overlaps with my own only infrequently.

It's like you americans suddenly don't like the french because they wouldn't support your *stupid* war agains Iraq

Americans hate the French because deep down they know the only thing driving their actions is envy and a desire for undeserved attention. Communist or monarchist, radical left or racist right, a French government can be counted on to oppose American policy because the only ideals they have is their own aggrandizement.

The current poster boy for this is Chirac, whose right wing government opposed the war more bitterly than Germany's left wing one did. Take a look at his foreign minister, Dominic de Villepin: defender of multilateral diplomacy at the U.N. by day, degenerate, craven Napoleonic power-worshipper in France by night:

Describing Napoleon's philosophy as "Victory or death, but glory whatever happens," Mr. de Villepin added, "There is not a day that goes by without me feeling the imperious need to remember so as not to yield in the face of indifference, laughter or gibes" in order to "advance further in the name of a French ambition."

Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, "Diplomacy at High Speed, Pour la France!" http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F60 F11F83A5B0C7B8CDDAA0894DB404482

This is why Americans hate the French and everyone else despises them. Because they are weasely, cowardly, short-sighted cretins who will support any tyrant, betray any friend, sacrifice any ideal to live in a fantasy world where they are still a leading nation instead of a U.N. security council anachronism.

Let me weigh in with reviews of Bowling for Columbine, and one (the New Republic) review of his new movie. Moore is hardly honest, even accounting for his bias. And note that of these reviews, only the WSJ and National Post are conservative, the NYT, Slate, American Prospect, and TNR are left:

"Well, the speaker ought to know. As critics have pointed out repeatedly, Mr. Moore himself is a world-class expert on 'fictition'; in fact, when it comes to truth telling, not to mention logic, you might say that less is Moore."

"Mr. Moore is hardly the first to engage in a little nostalgic mythmaking. What makes him unique is his willingness to construct his myths on a scaffolding of calculated untruths. "
-- The Wall Street Journal

"Yes, it is a free country, but it is not a perfect one. Because in a perfect country, an irresponsible, intellectually dishonest windbag like Moore would not be a rich, successful, Oscar-winning documentarian. He would instead be just another anonymous nutter, mumbling about fluoride in the water and penning anti-establishment tracts by candlelight in some backwoods Appalachian shack. And he would never, ever find another funder for his 'art.'"
-- The New Republic

The problem is, once you delve beneath the humor, it turns out [Moore's] "facts and hard-core analysis" are frequently inaccurate, contradictory and confused...Like many of the political celebrities increasingly filling our TV screens and bookstores, he is entertaining, explicitly partisan, and all too willing to twist facts to promote himself and his vision of the truth.1
- Spinsanity

The slippery logic, tendentious grandstanding and outright demagoguery on display in "Bowling for Columbine" should be enough to give pause to its most ardent partisans...Mr. Moore, when it serves his purposes, is happy to generalize in the absence of empirical evidence and to make much of connections that seem spurious on close examination.
- The New York Times

ONE OF THE MOSQUITO-BITE IRRITAtions of being on the left is finding your ideals represented in public by Michael Moore...Although he'd have made a crackerjack ad man, he's a slipshod filmmaker, and the movie quickly collapses, burying its subject beneath bumper-sticker rehashes of received ideas...At once punchy and incoherent -- Moore contradicts himself vividly every few minutes -- the film has the scattershot shapelessness of a concept album made by a singles band.

Although Moore takes delight in thumping Cops and TV newscasts, he himself uses tabloid techniques and is guilty of manipulative heartlessness.
- LA Weekly

His journalism, in short, on the subject of Canada and Canadians, is nothing short of shoddy, manipulative and untrue. The same can be said for his journalism on his own country, and indeed on the terrible and complicated issue he purports to adjudicate.
- National Post (Canada)

If you want about as clear a demonstration as you're likely to find of the difference between truth and politics, go see Eminem's 8 Mile...and then go see Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine...Though Moore claims to have made a documentary, his examination of American gun culture presents viewers with a more heavily edited fiction than producer Brian Grazer's attempt to clean up Eminem. Whereas the rapper's movie reaches for the sort of truth mere facts cannot convey, Moore's film grabs viewers with the old demagogue's trick of using just as much factual information as is necessary to lead people toward false conclusions.
- The American Prospect

"[T]he greatest danger to liberalism isn't the likes of Rush Limbaugh or Andrew Sullivan, but blowhards like Alan Parker and Michael Moore--the thugs of humanism. Given the way in which it's administered, I don't support the death penalty for people. But I emphatically support it for certain careers."
-- Slate

There are much better sources you can look to if you want to attack this film. E.g. look at this New Republic article from a believer in global warming, who worries that the film is so exaggerated that it will only serve to discredit the global warming cause:

By trivializing the greenhouse effect into a subject as ludicrous as the premise of a scientifically illiterate disaster movie, The Day After Tomorrow may serve mainly to convince audiences the prospect of global warming is just another Hollywood gimmick. Unfortunately, it may not be. The real science behind the need for greenhouse gas reform is plenty troubling without preposterous exaggeration.

At least a few pundits have said the same. Here is one.

[T]he growth of the Internet has not substantially altered the political climate in most authoritarian countries. [...] [The State Department's] annual report on human rights in China, [..] released in March, said that last year saw "backsliding on key human rights issues" by Beijing--such significant backsliding that the United States is considering censuring China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Indeed, nearly all the Chinese political science professors I have spoken with agree that the mainland Chinese democracy movement is weaker now than it was a decade ago. [...] Why has the Web failed to transform such regimes? In part because, as a medium, the Web is in many ways ill-suited for expressing and organizing dissent. And, even more significantly, because, as a technology, it has proved surprisingly easy for authoritarian regimes to stifle, control, and co-opt.

According to Kurlantzick, the net has three major limitations:

It can only disseminate information, not actually produce it;

Its essence is primarily individualistic: therefore it doesn't naturally foster collective activities/a communal spirit;

It requires literacy.

He continues:

A 2003 study by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, two Harvard researchers, found that China has created the most extensive system of Internet censorship in the world and has almost completely controlled the impact of the Web on dissent. [...] [Zittrain & Edelman] note, "Many of China's up-and-coming Internet entrepreneurs see a substantial ... role for the government in the Internet sector. ... [They] have visions for Chinese Internet development that are inherently pragmatic and complementary to state strategy." So much for Barlow's idea that technology workers will reject the "tyrannies" of government. [...]

Even beyond its failure to live up to democratizers' dreams, the Web may actually be helping to keep some dictatorships in power. Asian dissidents have told me that the Web has made it easier for authoritarian regimes to monitor citizens. In Singapore, Gomez says, the government previously had to employ many security agents and spend a lot of time to monitor activists who were meeting with each other in person. But, with the advent of the Web, security agents can easily use government-linked servers to track the activities of activists and dissidents. In fact, Gomez says, in recent years opposition groups in Singapore have moved away from communicating online and returned to exchanging information face-to-face, in order to avoid surveillance.

In China, the Web has similarly empowered the authorities. In the past two decades, Beijing's system of monitoring the population by installing informers into businesses, neighborhoods, and other social institutions has broken down--in part because the Chinese population has become more transient and in part because the regime's embrace of capitalism has meant fewer devoted Communists willing to spy for the government. But Beijing has replaced these legions of informers with a smaller group of dedicated security agents who monitor the Internet traffic of millions of Chinese. "The real problem with groups trying to use the Internet is that you are actually more easily monitored if you use online forms of communication than if you just meet in person in secret," one specialist in Chinese Internet usage told me. Indeed, in May 2003 Beijing's security services imprisoned four people for "inciting the overthrow of the Chinese government"; press reports suggested the authorities learned

[T]he growth of the Internet has not substantially altered the political climate in most authoritarian countries. [...] [The State Department's] annual report on human rights in China, [..] released in March, said that last year saw "backsliding on key human rights issues" by Beijing--such significant backsliding that the United States is considering censuring China at the U.N. Human Rights Commission. Indeed, nearly all the Chinese political science professors I have spoken with agree that the mainland Chinese democracy movement is weaker now than it was a decade ago. [...] Why has the Web failed to transform such regimes? In part because, as a medium, the Web is in many ways ill-suited for expressing and organizing dissent. And, even more significantly, because, as a technology, it has proved surprisingly easy for authoritarian regimes to stifle, control, and co-opt.

According to Kurlantzick, the net has three major limitations:

It can only disseminate information, not actually produce it;

Its essence is primarily individualistic: therefore it doesn't naturally foster collective activities/a communal spirit;

It requires literacy.

He continues:

A 2003 study by Jonathan Zittrain and Benjamin Edelman, two Harvard researchers, found that China has created the most extensive system of Internet censorship in the world and has almost completely controlled the impact of the Web on dissent. [...] [Zittrain & Edelman] note, "Many of China's up-and-coming Internet entrepreneurs see a substantial ... role for the government in the Internet sector. ... [They] have visions for Chinese Internet development that are inherently pragmatic and complementary to state strategy." So much for Barlow's idea that technology workers will reject the "tyrannies" of government. [...]

Even beyond its failure to live up to democratizers' dreams, the Web may actually be helping to keep some dictatorships in power. Asian dissidents have told me that the Web has made it easier for authoritarian regimes to monitor citizens. In Singapore, Gomez says, the government previously had to employ many security agents and spend a lot of time to monitor activists who were meeting with each other in person. But, with the advent of the Web, security agents can easily use government-linked servers to track the activities of activists and dissidents. In fact, Gomez says, in recent years opposition groups in Singapore have moved away from communicating online and returned to exchanging information face-to-face, in order to avoid surveillance.

In China, the Web has similarly empowered the authorities. In the past two decades, Beijing's system of monitoring the population by installing informers into businesses, neighborhoods, and other social institutions has broken down--in part because the Chinese population has become more transient and in part because the regime's embrace of capitalism has meant fewer devoted Communists willing to spy for the government. But Beijing has replaced these legions of informers with a smaller group of dedicated security agents who monitor the Internet traffic of millions of Chinese. "The real problem with groups trying to use the Internet is that you are actually more easily monitored if you use online forms of communication than if you just meet in person in secret," one specialist in Chinese Internet usage told me. Indeed, in May 2003 Beijing's security services imprisoned four people for "inciting the overthrow of the Chinese government"; press reports suggested the authorities learned

In November, Amnesty International named 33 companies including Microsoft, Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems that it said were providing the Chinese with technology to achieve its Internet censorship aims. (article)

And has anyone noticed how much Sheik Yassin looks like Saruman [1] [2]? I knew he was evil and wnated to kill Israeli citizens, but I didn't know he wanted to breed men with orcs!

I don't believe that the Palestinians' tactic of murdering civilians is ever justified in any circumstance, and in general I find myself to the right of the people I know on this subject; I would call myself "pro-Israel." Nevertheless, the basic fact is that Israel is the occupier, "Palestine" is the occupied. Even Ariel Sharon has acknowledged this. They don't call them "the occupied terroritories" for nothing. I daresay the Israelis would be more than happy to sign a peace treaty right now, considering that they are currently in possession of the land that is in dispute.

Regarding the grandparent post, there's no need for anything as baroque as poison darts. Sheik Ahmed Yassin was killed by Hellfire missiles launched by an Apache. Hellfires are laser-guided, so there was either an IDF soldier on the scene or a remote drone like the one in the article. It's easy to imagine the Apache being replaced by a highflying Predator or other unmanned craft, with target designation being performed by a drone. Gregg Easterbrook blogged about this today.

The inability of the US to rein in pollution.
Um... World wide pollution levels are down dramatically over the last 20 years. Mostly due to American environmental policies. The US has some of the cleanest air and water in all the world.
If you really want to blame someone for any poor environmental policies it should be the Third World and Eastern Europe.
Toxic Emissions down nearly 55%
Polluted Coverage, good links.

Even more scary, though, is that now these belligerent feelings don't even need to be connected to real events. Some people, for example, think SARS is the result of a U.S. bio-weapons program (snip from a longer article:

In fact, most people here simply don't believe their habits have caused sars. Instead, many blame Americans--namely U.S. biological warfare against China. "The Americans fly over in planes and drop [sars] on us," one vendor assured me. His declaration brought nods of agreement among the crowd of fellow vendors and customers. This conspiracy theory has circulated in Chinese Internet chat rooms since the peak of sars last spring. It even resulted in the publication of a book last fall titled The Last Defense Line: Concerns About the Loss of Chinese Genes. The author, Tong Zeng, an activist for Chinese patriotic causes who has no medical background, suggested that American researchers who took blood samples in China in the 1990s for a longevity study may have created an anti-Chinese bioweapon--sars. The book's hypothesis was reported on the front page of the Southern Metropolitan Daily, one of the most popular newspapers in Guangzhou.

Reagan proposed SDI to protect the USA from an all-out Soviet bombardment.

SDI in the '80s was a ruse designed to trick the Soviets into spending more money on defense and defense research than they could afford.

The plan was an unmitigated success because regardless of whether we could actually make SDI work, *THEY* believed we could make it work.

I'm not exactly sure why the idea is still alive, unless the DoD actually thinks we can really make it work now. If they want to fend off potential terrorist missle attacks then a scenario of a dozen or so missles is far more likely than the *thousands* we were expecting in a USSR first strike in the eighties.

The interesting thing is that some people think the same sort of ruse may be afoot with Bush and his moon and mars idea.

To really see the impracticality of the proposal, see what Gregg Easterbrook has to say about it.

To really see the impracticality of the proposal, see what Gregg Easterbrook has to say about it.

What has been lost, for the most part, is the fact that concealed in Bush's proposal is a catch-all kill line that basically targets all pure-science research by NASA. Anything that doesn't support this new directive is going to be "scrapped" or "scaled-back" -- which is hardly a surprise from the least science-literate president in recorded history. (See: UPI Article)

Furthermore, the idea of using the Moon as a base of operations to reach Mars is laughable at best. Easterbrook (normally only moderately eloquent) wrote a great piece doing back-of-the-envelope calculations regarding the various payloads and fuel requirements for travelling to Mars.

This is not a good thing. As an astronomer, I lament the 'scaling back' of non-Moon/Mars projects -- many people (evidently many here on /.) believe that everyone who works for or receives funding from NASA is an astronaut. Not true -- much space science research is in fact funded NASA scientists, although it seems that may be coming to a bit of a close.

Excerpt:
The study is entirely a computer simulation, and as anyone familiar with this art knows, computer models can be trained to produce any desired result.

And:
The case for species preservation should be made on hard ground, not on computer-generated squish.

No.

Choice quotes from The New Republic's review of Quicksilver:

We also meet the heroine, Eliza, a "beautiful, saucy young blonde," who lets us know at several points that although she escaped from a Turkish harem with her virginity intact, she is nevertheless quite skilled at "using all the most ancient and sophisticated practices of the Oriental world to slowly drive [her partner] into frenzied, sweaty, screaming transports," because she did her "practicing on women." This is the sort of character that makes one suspect that the greatest influences upon Stephenson's work have been comic books and cartoons.

Not even when the characters in Quicksilver are by themselves is Stephenson able to provide them with anything resembling inwardness. At one point in the novel, a man is forced to travel by horseback alone. He begins to speak, but what he offers is not a glimpse into his consciousness. Instead he delivers a lecture to his horse: "'All right, then: all of this land--' (stomping the dune for emphasis) 'was part of Spain--you heard me--Spain! Then these fucking Dutchmen turned Calvinist and revolted, and drove the Spanish away, down south of the Maas and a bunch of other rivers with hard-to-remember names--past Zeeland, anyway--we'll be seeing more than we want to of those rivers soon. Leaving only a wedge of Papist Spain trapped between the Dutch Republic on its north, and France on its south. This Spain-wedge contains Brussels and Antwerp and a large number of battlefields, basically ...'" and so on, until the journey's end. The coarseness does not make the speech any truer: the man is still giving his horse a geography lesson. He does so because, like all the characters in this book, he has nothing significant to say. And the poor reader is abandoned to an intense sensation of solidarity with a bored horse.

When Stephenson tries to add romance to the mix, he is unable to lose his idiot-savant tone, and what results are the most embarrassing sections of the novel. "Monmouth got himself worked round to a less outlandish position, viz. sitting up and gazing soulfully into Eliza's nipples." Into the nipples?

Shattered Glass , starring Hayden Christensen as former contributing writer to The New Republic Stephen Glass, chronicles Glass's fabrications of his stories and the lies he told to try to further his young career. I really enjoyed it, and although it was a very limited release, it's nice to know that the movie industry hasn't forgotten that special effects and computers haven't always around and some pretty good movies were made without them. This is easily one of the better movies of 2003.

Later,
Patrick

Here's a nice opinion piece suggesting that we go back to using capsules, like the Russians and now the Chinese are using. It doesn't sound like a bad idea to me - if a "reusable" craft like the shuttle costs orders of magnitude more than one-time-use capsules, why not just make a bunch of capsules instead? You wouldn't have to worry about retrofits, upgrades, wear and tear, etc.

You're doing a risk-benefit analysis without looking at the benefit side. The risk to the astronauts would be acceptable if there were actual science being accomplished. I am not one of those profiteers who disdains "pure science," but any reasonable assessment of the shuttle program's scientific accomplishments has to conclude that sending old people into space and observing spiderwebs in zero gravity is not worth the tremendous cost in money and lives.

If we did away with the shuttle program (which over the years has turned into a huge pork barrel for the shuttle contractors), we could replace it with many more cheap unmanned flights plus manned flights with focused objectives. There's no reason to send an astronaut into space, at huge expense, to perform experiments that could just as easily be done on an unmanned craft. Instead, we should be sending those astronauts to Mars, which will never happen through the shuttle program.

Myself, I'm not sure I'd take the word of a sportswriter.

"A single chemical reaction between hydrogen and oxygen generates energy,
which can be used to power a car producing only water, not exhaust fumes. With
a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome
obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first
car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and
pollution-free." President Bush said these words during his State of the Union
address, introducing the FreedomFUEL proposal--which is really how the White
House spells it. The president wants to spend $1.2 billion over the next five
years to research the production of hydrogen as a replacement for gasoline in
automobiles.

Someday men and women will probably drive cars running on "fuel-cell"
motors that have no pistons, consume hydrogen, and emit no pollutants,
including no greenhouse gases. Between the zero-pollutants advantages of
hydrogen and the fact that its supply is in principle inexhaustible, the
world's petroleum-based economy will probably eventually yield to a
hydrogen-based economy--to everyone's benefit. Republicans relentlessly mocked
Al Gore for saying the internal combustion engine should be replaced by
something better, and now George W. Bush is saying exactly the same thing.

The attraction of hydrogen is great, since hydrogen-based transportation
would both be environmentally benign and reduce the need for the United States
to import petroleum. But Bush's proposal joins a new convention of
rhapsodizing about hydrogen-powered transportation--Jeremy Rifkin numbers
among current hydrogen zealots--while skipping over the small matter of where
we get the hydrogen. Worse, the White House plan offers a long-term
distraction from a short-term need: While the administration dreams big about
our hydrogen-powered future, it does little to improve fuel-economy standards
today.

here are many impediments to a future in which fuel-cell automobiles
dominate America's roadways. What form--gaseous, liquid, or mixed with
metallic dust to prevent explosion should there be an accident--would the
hydrogen we pump into our cars take? How would the hydrogen be moved in
commercial quantities to those filling stations? Could average motorists pump
hydrogen themselves, considering it is now handled only by specialists? But
these are engineering questions and presumably can be answered.

Unfortunately, a cost-effective answer to the question of how to obtain
hydrogen may prove more elusive than answers to questions about how to handle
it. At first glance, this issue would seem simple. After all, our world
contains gargantuan amounts of hydrogen--two-thirds of the oceans, for
instance, are made up of this element. But the pure form of hydrogen needed to
power fuel-cell cars does not occur naturally on Earth, where hydrogen is
chemically bound to other elements, such as oxygen in the case of the oceans.
And, while the stars contain an almost inexpressible amount of hydrogen in its
pure form, stellar material will not be on sale at your local filling station
anytime soon, or ever.

Because pure hydrogen does not occur naturally on Earth, any pure hydrogen
for use as fuel must be manufactured. Today, pure hydrogen is most often made
using natural gas as a feedstock, but that means fossil fuels are still being
consumed: Basically, the process turns a fossil fuel, methane, into something
that seems not to be a fossil fuel, hydrogen. Pure hydrogen can also be
manufactured using petroleum or coal, which of course are the very fossil
fuels whose grip we wish to loosen. And, while pure hydrogen has been
manufactured from agricultural products--plants contain hydrogen bound as
carbohydrates--at the research level, it remains to be seen whether this could
work commercially. Enviros rhapsodize about making hydrogen from seawater. But
there's a catch: Making hydrogen from water requires loads of
electricity, far more electricity than the energy value of the hydrogen that
is obtained, and something--be it a coal-fired power plant or an atomic
reactor--must provide the electricity. Indeed, the big misconception about
hydrogen is that it is a "source" of energy. Pure hydrogen is not an energy
source, except to stars. As it will be used in cars or to power homes and
offices, hydrogen--like a battery--is an energy medium, a way to store
power that has been obtained in some other way. Hydrogen makes an attractive
energy medium because its "fuel-cycle" calculations--the sum of all steps of
manufacture and use--show reductions in greenhouse gases compared with any
automotive fuel burned today. But hydrogen is going to be an expensive energy
medium and, in the early decades at least, will be a medium either for natural
gas, a fossil fuel, or for atomic power.

Today, the most practical means to make pure hydrogen is a process called
"steam reforming" of natural gas. A natural-gas molecule has one atom of
carbon and four atoms of hydrogen; "reforming" strips off the carbon atoms,
leaving pure hydrogen. But not only is a fossil fuel--natural gas--the raw
material of this process, energy must be expended for the "reforming" itself,
meaning a net loss of BTUs. Using Department of Energy estimates, the White
House says pure hydrogen from natural gas is currently "four times as
expensive to produce as gasoline."

Applied engineering and commercial-scale production would surely bring
down the price. The most optimistic credible projection I have seen comes from
Jesse Ausubel, a specialist in "industrial ecology" at the Rockefeller
University, who thinks commercial-scale hydrogen made from natural gas could
be produced for about 40 percent more than the price of gasoline. That's
within striking distance of a good deal. But there is a catch to this catch:
Optimistic estimates for hydrogen from natural gas are based on the current
low selling price of natural gas. Significant new demand for natural gas might
raise its price. And, while natural-gas supplies are steady at the moment, who
knows what the effect on supply would be if hydrogen manufacturing caused
natural-gas consumption to skyrocket?

So maybe the hydrogen should be made from coal or petroleum. Fuel-cycle
calculations show that using coal or petroleum to manufacture hydrogen would
lead to some reduction in greenhouse gases but not to a big cut; moreover,
we'd still be digging coal and importing petroleum. Maybe hydrogen should be
made from agricultural products-- "biomass," in energy lingo. But biomass
feedstocks might be grown using fertilizer, which is made mainly from fossil
fuels, and again the fuel-cycle calculations show only a moderate gain in
pollution reduction for the large capital costs entailed in establishing an
agriculture-hydrogen economy. (All hydrogen schemes, it should be noted,
involve large capital costs.) Owing to these concerns, John McCarthy, a
Stanford University professor emeritus of computer science, has written, "The
large-scale use of hydrogen depends on using either nuclear or solar
electricity." Otherwise, it's just repackaging fossil fuels.

But solar power on the scale required is far from practical. It is
possible to imagine a green-dream-come-true energy cycle that uses solar
collectors to generate electricity to crack hydrogen out of water: zero
greenhouse gases and endlessly renewable. For the moment, solar collectors are
much too expensive. The Worldwatch Institute, a much-admired, left-leaning
environmental organization, recently rated sources of electricity by combining
their capital cost and true social cost--that is, taking into account
"externalities" such as pollution and entanglements with the Gulf states.
Solar power finished last, much more expensive than coal-generated
power, even when coal's external costs are factored in. An indicator:
Solar-derived electricity currently wholesales for around ten times as much
per kilowatt-hour as coal-fired watts.

Even if the price of solar power fell by orders of magnitude, there would
be the not-so-little problem of where to put the solar collectors. To replace
the petroleum we use to power our cars with hydrogen split from water might
entail doubling America's electricity-generating capacity. Doing that with
solar collectors could require covering a land area roughly the size of
Connecticut with photovoltaic cells. In theory, the collectors could be put in
space, where sunlight has eight times as many watts per square meter as on the
ground and where no one's land need be taken. Figures in a recent study in
Science magazine suggested that doubling the electricity-production
capacity of the United States would require placing approximately 40
photovoltaic collector dishes, each the size of Manhattan, into orbit. Even if
capital cost were no object and society possessed the technical means to build
objects in space the size of Manhattan, such a project would take a century.

hich brings us to atomic power, the energy source everyone loves to
hate. In theory, lots of new atomic stations could be built to make
electricity to manufacture hydrogen, and the stations could use new,
"inherently safe" reactors designed so that they cannot melt down. (In
inherently safe reactors, the atomic chain reaction is initiated in such a way
that, if safety systems fail, the chain breaks; researchers have deliberately
turned off all cooling and safety systems of inherently safe prototypes and
nothing happens.) But political opposition to atomic reactors is intense, and
capital costs here would be high as well. Some estimates also suggest that, if
a significant number of new reactors were put into service, uranium--currently
plentiful--would become scarce after a few decades. This could be avoided by
building "breeder" reactors that make more fuel than they consume. But
breeders work by breeding plutonium, and most nations, including the United
States, have suspended construction of breeder reactors because such machines
would increase the risk of plutonium being diverted for nuclear weapons
production.

Many researchers continue to believe that "fusion" reactors, which mimic
the internal process of the sun, someday will be perfected. Over the long
term, fusion reactors might solve all global-energy questions, oddly, by using
hydrogen to make hydrogen! In a fusion reactor, tiny amounts of hydrogen
isotope are fused into helium, generating heat. (The sun fuses hydrogen into
helium for its luminescence, and nuclear bombs get much of their force from
fusing a small amount of hydrogen isotope.) Heat from a fusion reactor would
drive turbines to make electricity; the electricity would crack hydrogen out
of water in large quantities; the hydrogen would power cars or be turned back
into electricity in individual fuel cells in people's homes. Though a
hydrogen-to-hydrogen energy cycle might sound like a perpetual-motion machine,
it could end up being the technology that someday makes global-energy needs a
solved issue.

But this is all blue sky because fusion reactors barely function in the
laboratory--there is nothing remotely close to a commercial prototype. And,
even if a grad student ran from a laboratory tomorrow yelling, "Eureka!" and
clutching the secret of an unlimited-energy-fusion future, it would be another
century-long project to convert the world to an energy economy based on
machines that simulate the centers of stars.

Realistically, these concerns dictate that, for the next few decades,
hydrogen would be manufactured either from natural gas or by using power from
a new generation of atomic reactors. The most cost-effective combination, some
researchers think, might be natural gas heated directly by atomic reactors,
whose high operating temperatures turn out to be ideal for the reforming of
hydrogen from natural gas. But that means our miracle zero-emission hydrogen
will be produced from fossil fuels via an intermediate stop at a nuclear
reactor--not exactly what the Sierra Club had in mind.

All these drawbacks do not rule out hydrogen as a fuel, they merely
represent problems to be overcome. Hydrogen is sure to enter common use
someday, perhaps during the lifetimes of children now being born. After all, a
century ago, smart engineers and economists would have sworn it physically
impossible--to say nothing of impossibly expensive--for the world to consume
75 million barrels of oil per day, as we do today, at affordable prices. But
there is almost no chance hydrogen will make a dent in energy-use patterns
during a two-term Bush administration. Even the White House concedes that the
earliest a significant number of service stations could offer pure hydrogen
would be 2020.

Of course, it's not the public's fault if the facts are muddied. All too often, the media's brain-dead interpretation of "fairness" and "balance" consists of providing roughly equal time (or arguments of apparently roughly equal weight) even when that same outlet may already have thoroughly discredited a given argument. They are selling the appearance of fairness, after all. Actual fairness is as irrelevant as the *decrease* in aerodynamic performance caused by the rocket/jet fins and detailing of many cars in the 50/60's. Appearances are everything.

But to return to the pharmaceuticals companies: R+D is "a major expense" only after a tangled borderline perjurious accounting that was previously reserved for Ponzi schemes and the recording industry. Many of these ultra-expensive wonder drugs are sold for half as much in Canada, and a quarter the price or less in some parts of Europe, Asia or Africa. This wouldn't be the case if they were desperately trying to recoup genuine costs at their inflated US prices (because they'd be losing money on every non-US sale). They're just charging what the market will bear.

Further, as regards "innovation". Every week, I am bombarded by literally hundreds of ads (in medical journals, direct mailings an drug reps who barge in with no appointment, but are my sole source for "free samples" for my poor patients) for new wonderdrugs thhat are nothing more than 'me-too' knock-off. They move a hydroxyl group or a carbon atom on an existing drug, and run hundreds of tests (talk about expensive!) looking for some minute benefit over a current wonder drug (which they may also own). Almost invariably, the me-too is *less* effective or safe OVERALL than the existing drug (the lack of overall improvement is so consistent thatI sometimes think they're marketing the also-rans of the initial development effort - it would certainly be cheaper) Often the original 'wonder drug (progenitor of a new class) is itself only occassionally better than far cheaper and safer generic alternatives

Let me cite an example: in most cases, diuretics (drugs that cause you to urinate excess water) are both more effective and safer, at pennies a day, than Calcium Channel blockers and ACE (angiotensin convertine enzyme) inhibitors that cost several dollars a day -- for life! The study that proved this was one of the best and most unarguable in years, yet drug reps and execs will openly tell you that they aren't worried. "No one is pushing (marketing) cheap, safe diuretics which doctors have used for other purposes for centuries". Why do you think they market directly to patients? A few years ago, TVs and billboards were flooded with ads that didn't even specify what the drug was for, but urged "Ask your doctor". Perfectly healthy people came in, asking, afraid they were missing out on the Latest Greatest Thing.

Another example is the new anti-AIDS drug Fuzeon, widely hailed as an example of a drug whose high price ($20,570/yr = E19,000) is justified because it takes over 100 steps to prepare. Even if you accept their own figures justifying the cost, R+D was SFr 840 million ($620 million) and annual sales are projected to be $740 million per year, once hey hit full production (by which time, production costs are expected to be 10-15% of current levels)

Here are a couple of articles, for those who are still reading:
In U.S., marketing blurs into medicine
A more general analysis of the industry by the Markle Foundation (health care advocates)

Sorry for the rant.

Terrorists and dictators don't need to read scientific journals to make bio-WMD.


Crass Act
by Peter Beinart (The New Republic)

http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030224&s=trb02240 3

Why don't my fellow hawks ever discuss America's history with Saddam Hussein? I don't mean the 1990s, when Bill Clinton tried to ignore the Iraqi dictator--hawks (especially Republican ones) discuss that all the time. I mean the 1980s, when Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush armed him. The history is appalling, and it involves key officials shaping Iraq policy today. Yet barely anyone to the right of Ramsey Clark seems to care.

Saddam first used chemical weapons, in particular mustard gas, in 1983, in his war against Iran. By October of that year, according to recently declassified documents, the United States knew he was using them "almost daily." But the Reagan administration wasn't bothered. To the contrary, that December it sent Middle East envoy Donald Rumsfeld to Baghdad. According to the book Spider's Web: The Secret History of How the White House Illegally Armed Iraq, by Financial Times reporter Alan Friedman, Rumsfeld presented a letter from Reagan that proposed restoring diplomatic relations and offered U.S. military and economic assistance. When Iran launched a new offensive in February 1984, Saddam added tabun, a lethal nerve gas, to his chemical repertoire. In the spring of 1984, Rumsfeld returned for another visit. By November, the United States and Iraq had restored diplomatic relations.

It gets worse. Records from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a 1994 Senate Banking Committee investigation show that during Reagan's presidency, the United States sold Iraq anthrax, bubonic plague, and botulinum toxin, all supposedly for medical research. In 1988, the Commerce Department approved Dow Chemical's sale of $1.5 million worth of pesticides to Baghdad, even though many in the administration suspected Saddam would use them for chemical warfare. Over congressional opposition, the Reagan administration sold Iraq twin-engine Bell "Huey" helicopters, which appear to have been used in Saddam's chemical attacks on the Kurds.

All this was justified at the time, of course, by the need to stop fundamentalist Iran. But, by August 1988, the war between Baghdad and Tehran was over. And yet Saddam continued his genocidal "Anfal" campaign against the Kurds, which by late 1988 had resulted in close to 100,000 deaths, most of them civilian. So, in September 1988, then-Senator Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island introduced the Prevention of Genocide Act, which would have ended all U.S. aid to Baghdad. The bill passed the Senate, but the Reagan administration helped scuttle it in the House. And, when George H. W. Bush became president the following year, he doubled U.S. agricultural loans to Iraq--money that, it would later be revealed, Saddam was partly diverting to the military. As Samantha Power points out in A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, the Bush administration in 1989 refused to join twelve other democracies in calling for a special U.N. investigation of human rights in Iraq. In 1990, Bush's Commerce Department even considered selling Baghdad large numbers of "skull furnaces," valuable to Iraq's nuclear program. At the last minute, Iraq's invasion of Kuwait scuttled the deal.

Only left-wingers discuss this history. And for them the lesson is obvious: The Bush administration's current outrage at Saddam's crimes is bogus. If people like Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, Colin Powell, and Richard Armitage (all of whom held prominent government positions in the '80s) really cared about the Iraqi people, they wouldn't have helped Saddam brutalize them in the '80s. And, since the United States doesn't care about the Iraqi people, our real motivation for war must lay elsewhere--either in a thirst for world domination, or oil, or both.

I think the left has it wrong. First of all, France and the Soviet Union sold Saddam even more military equipment in the '80s than Washington did. So, if America's history of ignoring human rights in Iraq makes leftists cynical about our motives for war today, they should be just as cynical about France's and Russia's motives for opposing war (i.e., they'd be perfectly happy to go back to doing business with Saddam). Second, it is precisely because the United States abetted Saddam's repression in the '80s that we should atone for our sins and depose him today. Certainly the left never argued that because for decades the United States coddled apartheid South Africa, it should not have switched course and imposed sanctions. The antiwar movement can't simultaneously decry the United States for appeasing Saddam in the '80s and demand that it continue that policy today. But, if the antiwar movement misuses America's shameful history with Saddam, hawks ignore it altogether. (A LexisNexis search turns up not a single reference to Rumsfeld's Baghdad trip in either National Review or The Weekly Standard or by any major conservative pundit on television.) Hawks seem to assume that because they support war now, people like Rumsfeld have learned from their past. But it's not that simple. Just because the United States is going to war with Saddam doesn't mean we're liberating the Iraqi people. It's far from clear whether the Bush administration will help build a democracy in post-Saddam Baghdad rather than simply install another strongman. Already, the United States is considering allowing Turkey to send its troops into northern Iraq, with potentially disastrous consequences for the long-suffering Kurds. And Afghanistan doesn't offer much reason for optimism: The Bush administration's reluctance to expand the peacekeeping force beyond Kabul has condemned much of the country to instability and violence.

It would be nice, then, if prominent Bush officials acknowledged their past moral culpability and vowed not to betray the Iraqi people again. Rumsfeld should have trouble sleeping at night given his role in abetting Saddam's crimes. Instead, last fall on CNN, he insisted that in 1983 he "cautioned" Saddam about chemical weapons. But State Department notes from the meeting show no such thing. (Rumsfeld did mention chemical weapons to then-Foreign Minister Tariq Aziz, but only in passing--as one of various issues that concerned the United States.) In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee last September, Rumsfeld said, "It would be a shame to leave this committee and the people listening with the impression that the United States assisted Iraq with chemical or biological weapons in the 1980s. I just do not believe that's the case." But, according to recently declassified State Department documents reviewed by Newsweek, The Washington Post, and the Associated Press, it is the case.

It is a testament to Rumsfeld's immense arrogance and lack of moral reflection that neither on CNN nor before the Armed Services Committee did he betray the slightest hint that he or the administration he served did anything wrong in the '80s regarding Saddam Hussein. That's not a reason to oppose this war. But it sure makes me wish a better man were running it.

This administration lies about everything -- every goddamned thing -- as a matter of permanent policy. They will say anything that they want the public to believe, while they do whatever they want. And what they want is to get money for themselves and their big campaign contributors, that is absolutely all they are about. What a disaster for the country. The worst administation ever, the American version of a "kleptocracy."

BTW a "kleptocracy" is a "government by thieves," the best possible description of the Bush administration. A couple of recent examples of their mendacity (mendacity means "whorishness"):

How industry lobbyists totally control the White House

How the Bush "administration" is planning to let the lead industry start poisoning children again, like in the good old days.

Go ahead and mod me down again, I'll just repost my comment. I have karma to burn.

This administration lies about everything -- every goddamned thing -- as a matter of permanent policy. They will say anything that they want the public to believe, while they do whatever they want. And what they want is to get money for themselves and their big campaign contributors, that is absolutely all they are about. What a disaster for the country. The worst administation ever, the American version of a "kleptocracy."

BTW a "kleptocracy" is a "government by thieves," the best possible description of the Bush administration. A couple of recent examples of their mendacity (mendacity means "whorishness"):

How industry lobbyists totally control the White House

How the Bush "administration" is planning to let the lead industry start poisoning children again, like in the good old days.

Go ahead and mod me down again, I'll just repost my comment. I have karma to burn.

Well, Fair Use remains a body of common law, stemming from the Constitution. Congress cannot change it or reduce it

I know what you're thinking of, but this ain't it. Fair use first came from courts figuring out what Congress meant in its copyright laws, not interpreting the Constitution. Primary power over copyright is assigned to Congress by the Copyright Clause in Article I. Congress came in later and said, OK, we'll adopt what the courts have said.

Constitutionally, there is a free speech interest element in fair use, but it is narrower. This limit hasn't really tested yet because fair use is broader. In some ways fair use is more generous than need be, in others maybe it doesn't go far enough. The point is that fair use and free speech aren't the same thing, especially since the point of copyright is to allow monopoly over certain kinds of speech.

Whether and how the courts may review Congress's exercise of the copyright power is currently before the Supreme Court in Eldred; that case doesn't really go to fair use, but does look at what the heck that "promote" clause is all about. In other words, the Supreme Court is generally not enthusiastic to second-guess the elected legislature as to what "promote" means. But we'll see how Eldred comes out.

Fair use is controversial right now for obviosu reasons (DMCA). Here is an interesting discussion featuring /.

The IMF is a vehicle for implementing a policy that is designed to make poor nations poorer, and the US based financial world richer.

The IMF has a standard approach of privatization, deregularization, more taxes and less government spending. In practice, state assets are sold off to foreign investors, and capitals markets are deregulated to open the gates for speculation. At some point the price of basic living (cooking, heating, taxes) is raised, causing massive civil unrest, and collapse of the economy. In the ensuing turmoil, foreign corporations can buy the remaining assets of a country at garage-sale prices.

Don't take my word for it. Read about Joseph Stiglitz (Nobel laureate, former IMF economist and former director of the worldbank)

• salon
• The Observer
• The new republic online.

Exactly. Last week's The New Republic had an article on America's Other Drug Problem on how the pharm industry in the US has tightened its grip on politics.

Consumers vs. the pharm companies is the REAL War on Drugs.

Through the 80's, if you got 100,000 miles out of a car you were ahead of the game. If it didn't have major problems from the start, especially if it was American-made, you were relieved. Now cars are safer, more energy efficient (except for SUVs) and it doesn't occur to you to worry about whether they'll last.

Same for applicances. The average age of refrigerators and washing machines in the US gets older every year, despite the homebuilding boom of the '90s. Here's an article from the New Republic that argues that it's precisely these improvements that holds the economy back.

About cheap stuff you're right, I think, about both the problem and the cause (Wal-Mart and China).

Anyway, to answer the question -- no, my TiBook, Dreamcast and microwave are holding up fine. Haven't bought anything else.

Maybe it's time (again) to ask for whose interests friend-of-Verizon Michael Powell is really working? And whether our economy (especially the communications industry) can thrive during his tenure?

And if that isn't enough, how 'bout another word:

Spammer.

The ACLU has a a long track record of defending spam as somehow Frea Speach that's worthy of First Amendment protection.

1997: "commercial speech restrictions on telemarketing calls and unsolicited fax advertisements have passed First Amendment challenges but direct mail and door-to-door solicitations enjoy much greater protection. Given the Supreme Court decision in ACLU v. Reno, on-line messages should receive the same First Amendment protection given traditional print media, which includes commercial mailings."

2000: "...and groups like the American Civil Liberties Union that oppose any restrictions on commercial e-mail"

2001:The argument raised by the ACLU and other memters of the First Amendment lobby is that spam, like junk mail in our offline mailboxes, is a nuisance that still must be protected."

In fact, ACLU has always supported spammers, going back to 1995.

Source: CuD (Computer underground Digest) 7.50

This issue of CuD quotes from Canter and Siegel's (the original "Green Card Lawyers" spammers) as follows:

"In May of 1994, believing that the EFF really did support freedom of speech in the same broad and democratic manner as did the ACLU, we initiated a discussion with Mike Godwin, an EFF lawyer. We wanted his views on the censorship issues raised by the behavior of electronic vandals and access providers who had pulled our account for performing the perfectly legal act of Internet advertising. We were amazed when Godwin stated to us that he was so busy sympathizing with those who opposed us, that he had no sympathy left for the other side. So much for freedom of speech (p. 194)."

-- Canter and Siegel, "How to make a FORTUNE on the Information Superhighway: Everyone's Guerilla Guide to Marketing on the Internet and other On-line Services", 1995

To which I can only add:

"Fuck the ACLU and the pigload of potted meat product it rode in under."

-- Me, 2002.

The problem is that what the US thinks is right (for themselves) isn't alway what is right. And the us should start listening a little to the opinions of other countries that they share this planet with

We spend a great deal of time listening to what other countries say, but we decide for ourselves. Who are you arguing that we should be listening to anyway? Europe (continental pastime: burning synagogues and appeasing dictators)? The Arab World (not a democracy in sight, from Morocco to Indonesia)?

There are lots of other countries that do what they believe is right without beeing the target of terrorists

Indeed, there are a lot of countries where being terrorists is what they believe is right, and more which believe in appeasement. We believe (rightly, I would argue) that appeasement is much more dangerous in the long run.

USA have a foreign policy where they've interfered in just about every conflict. Standard practice is: choose one side help them as long as it fits US policy, then when it don't you cut all support and let them rot. End result: both sides hate the US. (afaik this is how Osama bin Laden became the monster he is)

It sure sounds like you've now arguing that we don't interfere enough, doesn't it? Which is it? At any rate, the idea that Bin Laden was created or trained by the US is a myth -- check out this article, from The New Republic (hardly a mainstream or conservative publication).

US foreign policy has been based on the bully in class principle: "We're big, noone can touch us, we do whatever we feel like, it doesn't matter if they hate us because they can't do anything".

Ours is the policy not of bullies, but of the heroes who actually change anything in the world: ``I am going to do what is right to the best of my ability. If the world loves me for it, great. If they hate me for it, at least I've done what was right.''

I don't know how it's portrayed in the US news, but here in the current conflict Israel is definitively portrayed as the bad guy, and in the background is the US supplying with everything they need to keep opressing the palestinians

This is a false portrayal, plain and simple. Far from `oppressing' the Palestinians, Israel has been trying to reach peace with them for decades, and in fact has left them completely to their own devices since Oslo. In peace offering after peace offering, Israel has offered the Palestinians land, independence, and everything else they claim they want, and asked only for an end to the murder-suicide bombings in return. They never got that end.

So yes, this illustrates what I am talking about perfectly. While the Arab world calls for genocide against Israel, and the Europeans rush to wash their hands of the Jews for the second time in three generations, the US sees a free, liberal democracy under assault by neighboring dictatorships, and says `this will not stand'.

I do not sympathize with the methods of any terrorists, but there are times I can sympathize with their cause

Which cause? The murder of civilians? Genocide against those whose religion is different? The destruction of those whose culture is not yours? These are the causes of the terrorists attacking us and attacking Israel. Do you really sympathize with these?