Slashdot Mirror

• He was asked if he'd vote for the Medicare bill with a prescription drug benefit that is likely to pass Congress soon? Dean wouldn't say. Why?
  
• Is he still for a balanced budget amendment? He said only that he's "tempted" to be for it.
  
• Should a gay marriage in Canada be recognized in the United States? He refused to give a responsive answer.
  
• Would he name the Democratic candidates who he said need a "backbone transplant"? No, he wouldn't.

There we have it ladies and gentlemen -- while many of you thought that Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Sayeed ``No American Tanks within 100 Miles! What's that noise?'' Sahaf was inflating civilian casualty statistics, jdfox has uncovered the real truth: he was actually underreporting them! What a brilliant thesis...

Of course, there are plenty of concrete reasons to doubt the statistics provided by Womens' Studies (should that be `Wimmin's studies'?) professor Marc Herold:

• the fact that Mr. Herrod was so spectacularly (and famously) wrong in Afghanistan, reporting more than three times as many civilian casualties as the sources he claimed to have gotten his statistics from, and more than twice as many civilian casualties as the Taliban themselves did (see the section on civilian casualties at the end of that article)
• The fact that Herold's statistical methods have been thoroughly debunked, which is no surprise, as he has no training or background in statistics at all.
• The fact that he steadfastly refuses to explain where he gets his numbers, despite repeated demonstrations that he is double- and even triple- counting actual incidents, and accepting other incidents as genuine based only on the allegations of Taliban and Iraqi Information Ministry sources.
• The fact that the non-partisan Statistical Assssment Service, a group of professional and academic statisticians formed to combat the incorrect use of statistics in the media has examined Mr. Herold's methods and found them fatally flawed.

What the homelessness industry really wants is total exemption from the law for street vagrants, so that they can remain publicly visible until the final throes of alcoholism and schizophrenia drive them to the hospital or the grave.

... the Manhattan Institute, a CIA initiated "think tank" funded by far right Eugenics advocates like the Pioneer Fund and corporations such as the Rockefeller's Chase Bank which have historically promoted the Eugenics agenda. The Manhattan Institute has sponsored research projects and books like the Bell Curve, Fixing Broken windows and numerous others which propose the idea that blacks are mentally inferior. While the Manhattan Institute is not publicly advocating mass extermination or mass relocation of minorities the policies it does promote are mostly about targeting black and Latino inner City populations in such a way as to make relocation an attractive option and elimination a day to day reality. ...

The corporations, banks and far right race-obsessed groups that fund the Manhattan Institute today were in many cases backing Hitler's rise to power just 70 years ago. They are also the same groups behind Giuliani's Senate campaign and GW Bush's Presidential bid. Chase Bank, the Manhattan Institute's main sponsor, has publicly apologized on numerous occasions for its avid support of Hitler and its enthusiasm to turn over Jewish Bank accounts to the Nazis before they were ever asked to do so. ...

The Manhattan Institute's founder, former CIA director William Casey, ... ...

Along with ongoing subsidies from a number of large conservative foundations, the Manhattan Institute has gained funding from such corporate sources as the Chase Manhattan Bank, Citicorp, Time Warner, Procter & Gamble and State Farm Insurance, as well as the Lilly Endowment and philanthropic arms of American Express, Bristol-Myers Squibb, CIGNA and Merrill Lynch. Boosted by major firms, the Manhattan Institute budget reached $5 million a year by the early 1990s."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A213 40-2003Feb3.html
http://slate.msn.com/id/2078104/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A167 19-2003Feb2.html
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/035/oped/Rebuild ing_the_dream_of_space_exploration+.shtml
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/17 63385
http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/68231. htm
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,482-564534 ,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/03/opinion/03ALDR.h tml
http://www.msnbc.com/news/867640.asp?0cv=KB10
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/002/204pkfxj.asp
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101030210/sctone. html
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A134 74-2003Feb2.html
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/ 5086944.htm
http://www2.bostonherald.com/news/columnists/bev02 022003.htm

Check out this article for an interesting look at the Clean Elections Law in Arizona and what a travesty it turned out to be. Stupid politicians, yes, but a stupid law too.

This movie (as well as much of Moore's other output) has been discredited time and time again, even by writers on the left who agree with his basic opinions. By all reports it is staged, manipulated, and completely worthless as far as getting unbiased data about the gun-control debate.

See:
From Spinsanity
From LA Weekly
From the National Post
From the Weekly Standard
From The Globe and Mail

Actually, I believe that Shatner's books are ghostwritten by one Ron Goulart; see, for example, this recent story on the use of ghostwriters by celebrities.

Nope, I wasn't aware that accidents and fatal accidents decreased when speed limits increased. Statistics can prove anything, 40% of all people know that. But seriously, I would appreciate a link to the factual data that you quote above.

Can't get to Google, so I can't find any links.

However, check out an NHTSA study indicating that indicates that traffic finds a safe speed at which it flows regardless of speed limits, and that speed limits are 5-15 MPH below this safe speed. In addition, it determined that raising speed limits caused accidents to decrease slightly and lowering them caused them to increase slightly. While it doesn't claim that the accident rate changes are conclusive, it does conclude that raising speed limits doesn't increase accident rates.

Your claims of traffic flow rates and red-light camera accidents--if true, I'll assume for now that they are--are at most flaws in a system we agree are necessary in our society. We should address these problems in the system instead of criticising the errors as inherent.

Linked to in a Slashdot story on red light cameras last week

Red light cameras are not an integral part of the traffic light system. There is agreement that the traffic light system needs to exist, there is no such agreement on red light cameras. These aren't flaws in the system. They're unnecessary modifications to the system, intended to profit the police and the camera manufacturers, that are causing an increase in accidents rather than the decrease that was promised.

For clarity, are you arguing that because traffic flows faster than the posted limits, we should abolish speed limits entirely? Or instead, increase the limits themselves

I actually do feel that that's a good idea. Replace speed limits with posted speed guides, and only ticket speeding when it's fast enough to constitute reckless driving. Let's have the police ticket people who are tailgating, weaving through traffic, refusing to move right out of the passing lane, and the other behaviors that, unlike speeding, actually do cause accidents. That's not going to happen, but speed limits badly need to be increased by 10-15 MPH in the US. (See the NHTSA study referenced above.)

Let me ask YOU: when compliance with a law is so rare that it is actually considered probable cause of illegal activity in at least than one state, isn't it pretty damn likely that the law is the problem? (Drug transporters have begun scrupulously obeying traffic laws in order to avoid police having an excuse to pull them over. The cops have, therefore, begun pulling over people who are driving the speed limit. As I recall, the Florida state Supreme Court upheld at least one conviction, which means that obeying the law is now legally considered probable cause of illegal activity in Florida.)

Incidentially, three teens in my community died this summer when the drunk-driver of the car (travelling 80mph in a 35mph zone) ran a red light, slid under a semi-trailer, and ran into a Bank. I believe that if we had red light cameras in our town for the last five years or so, we may have prevented something like this from happening. Wouldn't people be more careful of getting caught?

Are you trolling? The guy was drunk, doing almost triple the speed limit, and you think he would've stopped because of a red light camera? That suggestion is, to be honest with you, utterly absurd.

I guess I care more that peoples lives are saved than worrying if people have to fight unfair speeding or "menial" traffic violations.

And I guess I care more about ensuring that people are allowed to keep their hard earned money instead of funding corrupt police departments, and ensuring that the Fourth and Fifth Amendments still apply to people who choose to drive rather than moving the US even farther toward a police state. Aren't red herrings fun?

Screw cameras.

Indeed, wandering off-topic, but I've got karma to spare. :)

Of course, you have to make up your own mind on who's right, but it's always a good idea to get several conflicting and contrasting stories before you do. And here, I offer some contrast. First, a couple of hospital stories.

And, to top it off, a column by an Arab-American, quoting from Arabic newspapers. Think it was the Jews that forced the Palestinians into refugee camps? Read this. And another column on history by the same guy.

Don't take my word for it, though. And don't take the word of anyone else you read off of the 'net. Don't accept anything you learn as absolutely true unless you have researched it throughly, from every different angle and point of view there is, and you can integrate it, without contradiction, into the total sum of your existing knowledge.

The only view we have of the Republic is after the plot to overthrow it has been set in motion, apparantly for some time given when the clones were ordered. That means our entire perspective is tainted since for all we know the Republic could have been working fine up until that time. Heck, could any government withstand such a concerted, systematic, and well thought out plan to subvert it?

Additionally both Anakin and Amidala are being manipulated by the the same people plotting to overthrow the Republic so their perceptions are also tainted and lack credibility. The Count Dooku references are (again) tainted since we can infer that this was all part of the plan. We need to know if there were a credible group of seperatists before the overthrow plan was put in motion.

In effect the the premise of the article is that we know the Republic is bad becuase the people in the process of overthrowing it made it bad therefore they must be good. But what kind of argument is that?

And if you do not like that one, here is another one: Just because George Lucas wanted to show us a sucessful coup de tat in motion does not mean that the government being overthrown was bad before that plan was put in motion.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

To force compliance with government objectives--to ensure that all pipes lead back to Rome--they needed the networking superpower, Cisco, to standardize the Chinese Internet and equip it with firewalls on a national scale. According to the Chinese engineer, Cisco came through, developing a router device, integrator, and firewall box specially designed for the government's telecom monopoly. At approximately $20,000 a box, China Telecom "bought many thousands" and IBM arranged for the "high-end" financing. Michael confirms: "Cisco made a killing. They are everywhere."

Chinese xenophobia has led many other U.S. companies to play similar games, but Yahoo! was particularly eager to please. All Chinese chat rooms or discussion groups have a "big mama," a supervisor for a team of censors who wipe out politically incorrect comments in real time. Yahoo! handles things differently. If in the midst of a discussion you type, "We should have nationwide multiparty elections in China!!" no one else will react to your comment. How could they? It appears on your screen, but only you and Yahoo!'s big mama actually see your thought crime. After intercepting it and preventing its transmission, Mother Yahoo! then solicitously generates a friendly e-mail suggesting that you cool your rhetoric--censorship, but with a New Age nod to self-esteem.

Bad technology that takes away human initiative is used in the US because the good people are too expensive and the cheap people are not reliable. Besides there is a perpetual labor surplus especially of the people who will work for cheap due to basically unrestricted immigration. And since so many of the immigrants come from non-Western European countries there will never be mass public support for paying them higher wages. Those are the facts that limit the effectiveness of security in the US, or the effectiveness of many other things.

There is an incredible article in this month's The Weekly Standard Patio Man and the Sprawl People. David Brooks' insight into the American psyche is that the American approach to problems is to move away, especially to move away from people who are different, to move to a community of similar people. Where people stay rooted such as the South there is open conflict. Where people move to new communities such as the suburbs there can be a facade of acceptance--until too many of the different people start to move in.

In recent years I have noticed an increasing chorus in the media extolling the virtues of Europe, its peacefulness, its openness. I feel a small nagging doubt similar to when I heard praise for Japan's system in the early 80s. In the case of Japan the Sony headed by Akira Morita is not the Sony of today, and in the case of Europe, it does not seem to be headed in the direction of the one long-lasting democracy on that continent--Switzerland. The vaunted EU hardly submits every question of importance such as the Euro to referendum, unlike Switzerland. And even more worrisome, the direction of Europe the past century has been continuous fissioning of countries, instead of Switzerland's keeping itself together despite populations native speaking at least four different languages. Europe essentially murdered or expelled much of its Jewish population, it has not solved the Roma problem, and now Europe is struggling with Muslim immigration.

Even when European countries stay intact all is not well. Is not Italy's problem between north and south the same as the United States'?

Almost all conflict in the past couple of centuries can be summarized as the painful transition from agricultural serfdom to industrial society. A successful modern nation needs to actually pull off two incredible reformations, while most can't manage one. First agricultural serfdom has to be reformed so that small farmers own their land. Switzerland accomplished land reform in the 1800s, Japan had land reform imposed on it by General Douglas MacArthur during the Occupation because it was the only way to prevent a Communist insurrection. Once the land is put in the hands of a land-owning small farmer class there will be no danger of revolution. Sadly nations such as Russia have not accomplished just this one step over the past two centuries. Second, and perhaps paradoxically, the populace must in large part move to the cities and the power of the rural areas over the government must be diminished, for the rural areas tend to be more conservative and less willing to support reform.

Needless to say the vast majority of the nations on this planet have not successfully reformed themselves, twice. Thus there is an endless supply of refugees and endless labor surplus. Security remains far off and elusive.

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But occasionally, when an evil person dies, the Times swoops in and strips them of their honorific. Hitler was once "Mr. Hitler," as were Stalin and Mao. No more. Among the lesser totalitarian butchers, death cost Pol Pot his Times title: After his obit ran on April 16, 1998 he ceased being "Mr. Pol Pot." Serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy were demoted as well.

Gun Deaths != crime.
Allow me to explain.
According to the United States FBI and Do Health & Human services, in 1995, there where 13,790 firearm homicides in the US (about 5.51 per 100K). The same year, there where 18,503 gun suicides in the US, or 7.4 per 100K. Why guns? Because they're a very effective way to kill oneself. People who are intent on killing themselves will do so with the quickest means possible.

Don't believe me? Ask your beloved Japan, who had a suicide rate of 16.72 in 1994 International Journal of Epidemiology (1998)
Now, our total homicides (a category much clearer than the deceptive gun deaths) of 5.70 is still about 4 times higher than England's 1.41, but not 34 times higher, as your numbers might suggest to the uncritical reader.

So you feel safe in Europe, huh? How about london? Where you're twice as likely to get mugged, robbed, or assaulted then in New York City?
Quoting the Weekly Standard :
The same pattern can be seen throughout Europe--indeed, in much of the developed world. Crime has recently hit record highs in Paris, Madrid, Stockholm, Amsterdam, Toronto, and a host of other major cities. In a 2001 study, the British Home Office (the equivalent of the U.S. Department of Justice) found violent and property crime increased in the late 1990s in every wealthy country except the United States. American property crime rates have been lower than those in Britain, Canada, and France since the early 1990s, and violent crime rates throughout the E.U., Australia, and Canada have recently begun to equal and even surpass those in the United States. Even Sweden, once the epitome of cosmopolitan socialist prosperity, now has a crime victimization rate 20 percent higher than the United States.

Americans, on the other hand, have become much safer. Preliminary 2001 crime statistics from the FBI show America's tenth consecutive year of declines in crime. While our homicide rate is still substantially higher than most in Europe, it has sunk to levels unseen here since the early 1960s. And overall crime rates in this country are now 40 percent below the all-time highs of the early 1970s. In 1973, nearly 60 percent of American households fell victim to property crimes. In 2000 (the most recent data available), only about 20 percent did. Among the economically powerful democracies in the Group of Seven, only the Japanese now have a lower victimization rate than the United States.

Great Britains own Home Office, with a vested interest in preserving the status quo, shows that the US, with it's lax gun control laws, has less crime. And that using categories like 'property crime' and 'violent crime,' which clearly indicate that it's one person commiting a crime against another, contrary to your "Gun Deaths."

Also, none of this has mentioned how often guns are brandished or used to prevent crimes. (A legitimate gun death- where someone acted in self defense- would not be listed as homicide)Defensive gun uses have been estimated anywhere as low as 4.32 (National Crime Victimization survey) per 100K to as high as 103 (Dr. Kleck, Florida State University). If the truth lies in between, as is likely, the presence of guns offers a net benefit to society. Defensive Gun Uses include instances where simply brandishing the fire arm was enough to deter the criminal, and other instances where the criminal was shot)

Now, the article I cite goes on to list other reasons why the US crime rate has fallen, outside of firearm possesion. All things being equal though, I would much rather have the option to defend myself, my family, and my friends with the most effective means available- a firearm. Your gun control clearly doesn't make you any safer.

Also, if you think only cops should have guns- in the US, Police shoot the wrong person 11% of the time. Private citizens do so only 2% of the time.

I think I'll keep the loose United States gun laws, thank you, and you Europeans can laugh until the armed thug knocks on your door. Natural rights exist regardless of how bizzare you think they are, and you're better off exercising them then not.

Set. Bump. Spike. Thank you, come again.

A point where anything that doesn't exist in Google doesn't exist, period?

Like:

When the chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones" about a planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in the Jedi archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist, again, with terrible consequences.)

Converted links:
Texas Indecision http://groups.yahoo.com/group/texasindecision/
Dedman Site http://www.geocities.com/jdedman4/
David Rogers mailto:darogers@aol.com
"The Case for the Empire," http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Artic les/000/000/001/248ipzbt.asp

Conservatives will not be able to govern America over the long term if they fail to offer a more elevated vision of America's international role.

What should that role be? Benevolent global hegemony. Having defeated the "evil empire," the United States enjoys strategic and ideological predominance. The first objective of U.S. foreign policy should be to preserve and enhance that predominance by strengthening America's security, supporting its friends, advancing its interests, and standing up for its principles around the world.

[The Rebel Alliance's] victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

American hegemony is the only reliable defense against a breakdown of peace and international order. The appropriate goal of American foreign policy, therefore, is to preserve that hegemony as far into the future as possible. To achieve this goal, the United States needs a neo-Reaganite foreign policy of military supremacy and moral confidence.

STAR WARS RETURNS today with its fifth installment, "Attack of the Clones." There will be talk of the Force and the Dark Side and the epic morality of George Lucas's series. But the truth is that from the beginning, Lucas confused the good guys with the bad. The deep lesson of Star Wars is that the Empire is good.

It's a difficult leap to make--embracing Darth Vader and the Emperor over the plucky and attractive Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia--but a careful examination of the facts, sorted apart from Lucas's off-the-shelf moral cues, makes a quite convincing case.

First, an aside: For the sake of this discussion, I've considered only the history gleaned from the actual Star Wars films, not the Expanded Universe. If you know what the Expanded Universe is and want to argue that no discussion of Star Wars can be complete without considering material outside the canon, that's fine. However, it's always been my view that the comic books and novels largely serve to clean up Lucas's narrative and philosophical messes. Therefore, discussions of intrinsic intent must necessarily revolve around the movies alone. You may disagree, but please don't e-mail me about it.

If you don't know what the Expanded Universe is, well, uh, neither do I.

I. The Problems with the Galactic Republic

At the beginning of the Star Wars saga, the known universe is governed by the Galactic Republic. The Republic is controlled by a Senate, which is, in turn, run by an elected chancellor who's in charge of procedure, but has little real power.

Scores of thousands of planets are represented in the Galactic Senate, and as we first encounter it, it is sclerotic and ineffectual. The Republic has grown over many millennia to the point where there are so many factions and disparate interests, that it is simply too big to be governable. Even the Republic's staunchest supporters recognize this failing: In "The Phantom Menace," Queen Amidala admits, "It is clear to me now that the Republic no longer functions." In "Attack of the Clones," young Anakin Skywalker observes that it simply "doesn't work."

The Senate moves so slowly that it is powerless to stop aggression between member states. In "The Phantom Menace" a supra-planetary alliance, the Trade Federation (think of it as OPEC to the Galactic Republic's United Nations), invades a planet and all the Senate can agree to do is call for an investigation.

Like the United Nations, the Republic has no armed forces of its own, but instead relies on a group of warriors, the Jedi knights, to "keep the peace." The Jedi, while autonomous, often work in tandem with the Senate, trying to smooth over quarrels and avoid conflicts. But the Jedi number only in the thousands--they cannot protect everyone.

What's more, it's not clear that they should be "protecting" anyone. The Jedi are Lucas's great heroes, full of Zen wisdom and righteous power. They encourage people to "use the Force"--the mystical energy which is the source of their power--but the truth, revealed in "The Phantom Menace," is that the Force isn't available to the rabble. The Force comes from midi-chlorians, tiny symbiotic organisms in people's blood, like mitochondria. The Force, it turns out, is an inherited, genetic trait. If you don't have the blood, you don't get the Force. Which makes the Jedi not a democratic militia, but a royalist Swiss guard.

And an arrogant royalist Swiss guard, at that. With one or two notable exceptions, the Jedi we meet in Star Wars are full of themselves. They ignore the counsel of others (often with terrible consequences), and seem honestly to believe that they are at the center of the universe. When the chief Jedi record-keeper is asked in "Attack of the Clones" about a planet she has never heard of, she replies that if it's not in the Jedi archives, it doesn't exist. (The planet in question does exist, again, with terrible consequences.)

In "Attack of the Clones," a mysterious figure, Count Dooku, leads a separatist movement of planets that want to secede from the Republic. Dooku promises these confederates smaller government, unlimited free trade, and an "absolute commitment to capitalism." Dooku's motives are suspect--it's not clear whether or not he believes in these causes. However, there's no reason to doubt the motives of the other separatists--they seem genuinely to want to make a fresh start with a government that isn't bloated and dysfunctional.

The Republic, of course, is eager to quash these separatists, but they never make a compelling case--or any case, for that matter--as to why, if they are such a freedom-loving regime, these planets should not be allowed to check out of the Republic and take control of their own destinies.

II. The Empire

We do not yet know the exact how's and why's, but we do know this: At some point between the end of Episode II and the beginning of Episode IV, the Republic is replaced by an Empire. The first hint comes in "Attack of the Clones," when the Senate's Chancellor Palpatine is granted emergency powers to deal with the separatists. It spoils very little to tell you that Palpatine eventually becomes the Emperor. For a time, he keeps the Senate in place, functioning as a rubber-stamp, much like the Roman imperial senate, but a few minutes into Episode IV, we are informed that the he has dissolved the Senate, and that "the last remnants of the Old Republic have been swept away."

Lucas wants the Empire to stand for evil, so he tells us that the Emperor and Darth Vader have gone over to the Dark Side and dresses them in black.

But look closer. When Palpatine is still a senator, he says, "The Republic is not what it once was. The Senate is full of greedy, squabbling delegates. There is no interest in the common good." At one point he laments that "the bureaucrats are in charge now."

Palpatine believes that the political order must be manipulated to produce peace and stability. When he mutters, "There is no civility, there is only politics," we see that at heart, he's an esoteric Straussian.

Make no mistake, as emperor, Palpatine is a dictator--but a relatively benign one, like Pinochet. It's a dictatorship people can do business with. They collect taxes and patrol the skies. They try to stop organized crime (in the form of the smuggling rings run by the Hutts). The Empire has virtually no effect on the daily life of the average, law-abiding citizen.

Also, unlike the divine-right Jedi, the Empire is a meritocracy. The Empire runs academies throughout the galaxy (Han Solo begins his career at an Imperial academy), and those who show promise are promoted, often rapidly. In "The Empire Strikes Back" Captain Piett is quickly promoted to admiral when his predecessor "falls down on the job."

And while it's a small point, the Empire's manners and decorum speak well of it. When Darth Vader is forced to employ bounty hunters to track down Han Solo, he refuses to address them by name. Even Boba Fett, the greatest of all trackers, is referred to icily as "bounty hunter." And yet Fett understands the protocol. When he captures Solo, he calls him "Captain Solo." (Whether this is in deference to Han's former rank in the Imperial starfleet, or simply because Han owns and pilots his own ship, we don't know. I suspect it's the former.)

But the most compelling evidence that the Empire isn't evil comes in "The Empire Strikes Back" when Darth Vader is battling Luke Skywalker. After an exhausting fight, Vader is poised to finish Luke off, but he stays his hand. He tries to convert Luke to the Dark Side with this simple plea: "There is no escape. Don't make me destroy you. . . . Join me, and I will complete your training. With our combined strength, we can end this destructive conflict and bring order to the galaxy." It is here we find the real controlling impulse for the Dark Side and the Empire. The Empire doesn't want slaves or destruction or "evil." It wants order.

None of which is to say that the Empire isn't sometimes brutal. In Episode IV, Imperial stormtroopers kill Luke's aunt and uncle and Grand Moff Tarkin orders the destruction of an entire planet, Alderaan. But viewed in context, these acts are less brutal than they initially appear. Poor Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen reach a grisly end, but only after they aid the rebellion by hiding Luke and harboring two fugitive droids. They aren't given due process, but they are traitors.

The destruction of Alderaan is often cited as ipso facto proof of the Empire's "evilness" because it seems like mass murder--planeticide, even. As Tarkin prepares to fire the Death Star, Princess Leia implores him to spare the planet, saying, "Alderaan is peaceful. We have no weapons." Her plea is important, if true.

But the audience has no reason to believe that Leia is telling the truth. In Episode IV, every bit of information she gives the Empire is willfully untrue. In the opening, she tells Darth Vader that she is on a diplomatic mission of mercy, when in fact she is on a spy mission, trying to deliver schematics of the Death Star to the Rebel Alliance. When asked where the Alliance is headquartered, she lies again.

Leia's lies are perfectly defensible--she thinks she's serving the greater good--but they make her wholly unreliable on the question of whether or not Alderaan really is peaceful and defenseless. If anything, since Leia is a high-ranking member of the rebellion and the princess of Alderaan, it would be reasonable to suspect that Alderaan is a front for Rebel activity or at least home to many more spies and insurgents like Leia.

Whatever the case, the important thing to recognize is that the Empire is not committing random acts of terror. It is engaged in a fight for the survival of its regime against a violent group of rebels who are committed to its destruction.

III. After the Rebellion

As we all know from the final Star Wars installment, "Return of the Jedi," the rebellion is eventually successful. The Emperor is assassinated, Darth Vader abdicates his post and dies, the central governing apparatus of the Empire is destroyed in a spectacular space battle, and the rebels rejoice with their small, annoying Ewok friends. But what happens next?

(There is a raft of literature on this point, but, as I said at the beginning, I'm going to ignore it because it doesn't speak to Lucas's original intent.)

In Episode IV, after Grand Moff Tarkin announces that the Imperial Senate has been abolished, he's asked how the Emperor can possibly hope to keep control of the galaxy. "The regional governors now have direct control over territories," he says. "Fear will keep the local systems in line."

So under Imperial rule, a large group of regional potentates, each with access to a sizable army and star destroyers, runs local affairs. These governors owe their fealty to the Emperor. And once the Emperor is dead, the galaxy will be plunged into chaos.

In all of the time we spend observing the Rebel Alliance, we never hear of their governing strategy or their plans for a post-Imperial universe. All we see are plots and fighting. Their victory over the Empire doesn't liberate the galaxy--it turns the galaxy into Somalia writ large: dominated by local warlords who are answerable to no one.

Which makes the rebels--Lucas's heroes--an unimpressive crew of anarchic royals who wreck the galaxy so that Princess Leia can have her tiara back.

I'll take the Empire.

Jonathan V. Last is online editor of The Weekly Standard.

Some people think so.

If there was any desire on the part of Israel for peace, they would have given back the land they stole in the '48 and '67 wars. It is not stealing just because the UN, every country in the Western world, and even other Jews call it stealing, but because Israel signed this little contract called the "Fourth Geneva Convention," you may have heard of it. Land gained by war is inadmissable and must be returned as soon as the conflict is over.

Furthermore, if there was a desire for peace, they would have valued it in the 90s when they had it. Yes that's right, after Oslo and prior to the second uprising there was a period when there were only 3 Palestinian terrorist attacks in more than a year. How did the Jews say thank you to the Palestinians for quelling the extremism among their ranks? The assassination of 13 Palestinians (assassination is a war crime according to the Geneva Convention, to which Israel is signatory). Of course, we are also talking about a country where the soldiers shoot children with tumblers just for throwing stones.

Also, let's ask ourselves, which country in the region has actually fired upon US soldiers and sunk one of our ships (prior to the Gulf War)? You guessed it, Israel (we thanked them by selling them more weapons so they could do it again.) In the beginning of the 1967 war, the Israeli army shot and sunk one of our ships, so as to prevent it from reporting intelligence information about the Egyptian army and fleet movements. The reason behind this is because Epypt's air force was on the ground and two-thirds of their army was in Yemen. They were in no position to be the aggressor in a conflict with the Israelis, contrary to what revionist historians will tell you.

Then there is the Israeli nuclear bomb. That's correct; the only country in the region to have a nuclear weapon, and they've gone to nuclear alert three times already. The most interesting part of this story, however, is that the bomb was made with materials stolen from US uranium mines and european reactors, by Israeli intelligence agents. Then, when confronted with the possibility of UN investigations, they demanded that they would not allow the plant to be investigated unless the US agree to sell weapons to them. Now you know where Saddam Hussein got his biggest trick; could you imagine if he demanded to be sold weapons to!?

I'm not defending terrorism, but I'm not going to blindly endorse a country whose soldiers shoot children, and whose signature means nothing. Ariel Sharon is no man of peace, and the recent resolution by Likud that they will never give back any land to the Palestinians is proof that there is no serious desire for peace on either side, especially when you have a country who refuses outsiders to see what it is that they're doing (what are they hiding?).

I make no distinction between photo red light and murder. It KILLS people, but that's ok, because the major needs a new lemo.

(3) The cameras are nothing more than a money making scheme.

The article pretty much proves this point through unambiguous data. The cameras are not placed at the most accident prone red lights. Just to drive this point home, MOST of the worst accident lights in the cities with red light cameras were not chosen for the location of the cameras. They're placed at the intersections with the shortest yellow lights and most volume. Many of the lights they're placed at don't have any accident problems at all!

Most importantly, the reason these cameras are there is to reduce accidents. Is it working? NO!!! Read the article. All CREDIBLE studies done on this have conlcuded that the cameras at least do nothing and often increase accidents. Mainly rear end accidents because people slam on their brakes to avoid getting a ticket. In fact, at many of these intersections, the rear end accidents have doubled or more.

Intuition says these cameras should help save lives, but the statistics don't lie. This red light camera business is simply a Bad Thing in its current form. Maybe red light cameras could be used in certain places, in certain ways for good, but that's not what's going on now.

If you had actually read the report you would realize that these cameras DO NOT "make the streets safer". As a matter of fact, the statistics showed that red light cameras actually INCREASED the number of rear-end accidents by as much as 700+ percent in some areas (just about ALL intersections with cameras showed increases in rear-end accidents)!

Also, if they were truly intended to increase safety, they would be installed at the worst intersections (i.e. the ones with the most accidents), right? Well, they're not. Every one of these cameras is installed at intersections with the lowest yellow light times. It has nothing to do with safety. They are positioned in such a way as to maximize revenue.

If you start heading into an intersection with a yellow light and "miss the red" by one second or less (as over 75% of all 'violators' do), what, exactly, are you guilty of? Did you just make the roads unsafe? Imagine if you got fined $270 every time you were one second late for something, anything. That's what's happening to most of these people who get fined.

Also, a single photograph of your car in mid-intersection with a picture of a red light above it doesn't tell the whole story. The lights make absolutely no distinction of the rest of your driving behavior leading up to the incident. For instance, a drunk driver swerving all over the road, then running a red light will merely be fined for running the red light. What would happen if a cop was there instead? A DWI arrest.

You really should think before you post.

This is one of many examples of emergency vehicles actually getting tickets. Should I read the article to you as well if you can't find the information in it?

Despite the best efforts of the unamerican fuckheads at Cisco and Yahoo (and AOL, Sun, Netscape) even the great chinese firewall isn't impenetrable. Here's a good link on the subject. So why not do unto them as they do unto us - and hack and/or ddos sensitive chinese sites? Show 'em that Americans aren't as lazy and incompetent as they think we are, at least as far as hackers are concerned. Here's a link to get you started - the official state propoga^H^H^H^H^H^H^H paper The People's Daily, chinese edition.

Sure, but if you read this article, it seems unlikely that the Chinese government will allow much in the way of freedom over the internet. The US would do well to squeeze China into relaxing the iron fist of censorship in order to promote freedom of Web... then we will see some serious innovation and the realization of the internet's potential.

Sadly it's not that difficult at all. Take, for example the case of China where the government Allows international Access but still manages to filter out most (but not all) 'offensive' materials. Other governments such as France have chosen to use Legal actions or simple thuggery (see here and here

I agree with you about the Megacorps. AOL has caved in in the past and even smaller non-gvernmental groups can have a Big Effect. This ruling will only make that easier for them.

Much as I like some of JonKatz's prose, and much as I support the efforts of the File Room I think he overlooks just how weak the net potentially is. It's not just about my ability to put up a server (for all its abstractness the net depends upon physical objects), its about other people's ability to get to that same server. If I get sued out of business or simply attacked by thugs the server goes down. If a government or large media company chooses to deny their people/customers access to my server it might as well be. Either way I have been effectively silenced.

So there you go:
E-mails from a traitor

This journalist is already using the tool to track that Johnny Walker guy.

In this case the post were post-1996, but it's an example.

So get used to this... or don`t use your real name on Usenet!

It seems that Google Groups can become an interesting resource (or one that can haunt you from the past) for more than your own postings, see this article on John Walker's postings.

Now is a chance to point to the useful parts of Usenet and get them to try it. If you want to learn about XML/SGML, Perl, PHP, Java, apiculture and so on, it's the place to look.

Find some interesting newsgroups. Start with lurking and nettiquette.

The second, and more important message, is bin Laden's ultimate goals. He cautions us against falling into a trap of turning it into the West versus Islam, and Bush has indeed been extremely cautious about getting the support of the Middle East.

Tomahawk cruise missiles aren't going to get bin Laden to sign a confession and surrender to the 10th mountain division. He wants us to invade. He wants us to start gunning down children (and we will after they start walking out to infantry platoons carying grenades). He wants our soldiers to start making racist slurs. He wants us to start attacking other predominantly muslim countries where he has a few sponsors.

And when that happens, any support we have any farther east than Greece will collapse like the twin towers... and bin Laden will have his Islam v. Greater America holy war. I will admit that I read that into the essay.

But I think that was his point. He just couldn't say those words on the 14th. From the essay:

The only way to get Bin Laden is to go in there with ground troops. When people speak of "having the belly to do what needs to be done" they're thinking in terms of having the belly to kill as many as needed. Having the belly to overcome any moral qualms about killing innocent people. Let's pull our heads out of the sand. What's actually on the table is Americans dying. And not just because some Americans would die fighting their way through Afghanistan to Bin Laden's hideout. It's much bigger than that, folks.

Even though we've secured partial cooperation from Pakistan and Uzbekistan (which he goes on to talk about), I don't think they'll stay on our side once things get as ugly as i fear they will.

Perhaps it's not modded up because it mischaracterized the findings of the NAS. The NAS most emphatically did not agree on the global warming issue.

If you simply look at the actual report (rather than the press kit summary), you will see that they said there is no consensus and no certainty concerning the conventional wisdom of CO2 causing catastrophic global warming.

Here is what the NAS actually said:

Because there is considerable uncertainty in current understanding of how the climate system varies naturally and reacts to emissions of greenhouse gases and aerosols, current estimates of the magnitude of future warming should be regarded as tentative and subject to future adjustments (either upward or downward).

That's from page 1 of the report. If you click here you can order a copy the 28-page report yourself. As shot as it is, the word "uncertain" or "uncertainty" appears 43 times.

Or you can go here and read how two actual participants in the study reacted to the massive distortion of their findings by the global-warming crowd and their cheerleaders in the media. It's loaded with actual facts about the NAS findings, something the global warming debate could use a lot more of.

Please read this article and find out about the real science the "mainstream" media is hiding from you. Among many interesting points: global temperatures may simply be tracking the fluctuations in the energy output of the sun.

Hmm, I'm not doing that justice. Here's a link. It's worth a look.

For the goat paranoid (capriphobic?), it's:
http://www.weeklystandard.com/magazine/mag_ 6_29_01 /toby_feat_6_29_01.asp

Unsettling MOTD at my ISP.

The always reliable Arts and Letters Daily links to an interview with de Soto, a review and extract in the NYT and reviews here and here.

I'm trying to figure out what "the lessons of Columbine" would be about.

The Weekly Standard magazine did a one year retrospective with an article about the Columbine Massacre a few weeks back. It's not been widely reported that the teacher inside the building who called 911 was told to keep the students inside the building. Further, the SWAT teams adopted a "play it safe, hands off" policy. They were ORDERED to not enter the school building. A dozen police officers stood outside at an entry that was within fifteen steps of the library and did nothing. This gave the killers the time to taunt and kill with impunity.

A. Keiper
The Center for the Study of Technology and Society

It took me a bit of unintuitive navigation to find the article. The actual story is right here .