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Fired from an IP Law Firm for Anti-DRM Views?
dchallender writes to tell us that Inga Chernyak, recently featured in a VillageVoice piece entitled "Code Warriors", has been fired from an IP firm in NYC for having "incompatible views". From the article: "I was, and still am, a student interested in the scope of copyright law, and determined to pursue a career in the field. I wanted to gain an understanding both of the theory of copyright, which my work with FC provided, and its practice. The firm exposed me to the day to day operations of an IP lawyer, and I was nothing if not receptive to these lessons. I was baffled that someone saw fit to fire me over an expression of dissenting views. Doesn't the field become richer when the wider spectrum of legal thought is explored and encouraged?"
That's because our current war is idiotic.
Now, if we were at war with some country that had lots of large military targets (preferably full of explosive material) it would be an awesome war.
There just isn't much glory in rounding up old men and trying to figure out which one of them is actually the bad guy. War isn't the problem, Iraq is the problem. And Afganistan...and every other place we fight. Every evil despot out there (except for Saddam) is smart enough not to line up tanks and fight with us toe to toe. They can do more damage with a camera, a website, and a few well-chosen civilian targets (ours or theirs) hostage journalists or crazy suicide bombers than they could with the world's arsenal of aging Soviet tools of conventional war.
And if we ever do get into another war with a real military power, we will be so fucked ('we' meaning the entire world) that even that kind of war would suck ass.
War used to be cool...it just isn't any more. That's why I play Call of Duty 2...now that was a man's war (with nice French countrysides thrown in just for looks.)
But, sucking off the public's tit at a defense contractor isn't such a bad thing.
No reason to lie.
But being anti-invasion is correct and obvious. The naysayers were right; there were no weapons, the inspectors were booted out before they could pronounce Iraq clean, we were lied to, the CIA was made the fall guy, and we, as George HW Bush predicted, are mired in a occupation that can only end in failure.
Anyone pro-Bush at this time has amnesia.
Bushites were wrong, anti-Bushies were right. That's reality-based, not truthiness based. If Slashdot moderation kicks pro-Bush comments down, then they merely reflect the national political consensus. The majority think Bush lied, the majority think he should be impeached and removed if so, the majority think we are in deep trouble. The poll numbers are steady with Bush at 37-40 percent approval ratings.
Pro-war people are a distinct, and WRONG, minority. What you are complaining about doesn't reflect "bias"; what you are displaying is cognitive dissonance. You think that the war is doing well, Bush is a great leader, and commie hippy types have invaded with their "bias". The truth is you are becoming a dismissed minority, a fringe group that watches a Balkanized political news feed from Fox, MS-NBC, and sadly, CNN after its "cultural change" under the new regime that wants a "balanced" CNN. You are becoming a marginalized cult.
Damned near nobody else on the planet shares your war views. They don't see American news outlets. They see actual news. They're informed, we're not. They've been anti-Bush since he used 9-11 to invade Iraq. If we take them into account, you're not a 39% minority, you're more like 5%! Pro-Bush people are right up their with communists with mindshare of the wired world.
Since most Bushites think only a dismissed minority disagrees with them, they keep experiencing shock when they meet up with the pissed-off majority, and deny its reality, and disparage their motivations and affiliations.
The thing to keep in mind is, as Orwell said, delusional nations meet up with reality eventually, usually on a battlefield. We're on ours. We've slaughtered between 33,000 and 100,000 innocent people, killed over 2000 of our own troops. We're going to be kicked out of Iraq one way or another. NO ONE is on our side, because we are wrong. This is not a coffee house political argument. People have been burned and shot and blown up and tortured, TODAY, and there will be a cost. The trick is not to let Bushists take the results of our mistakes -- angry billion muslims who want us to die -- and use it as retroactive justification for the killing. (Look! We were right! They're blowing us up everywhere! TERRORIST MONSTERS! Kill more of them before they kill us! Craaaazzzzy people want us dead...)
War so far has never been cool. Necessary maybe. But cool no.
Things would be so much better IF leaders of any country calling for war actually had to risk their own lives significantly to call for a war.
e.g. if the "Attack Country X" referendum fails, the leaders involved get put on Death Row awaiting individual appeals on the "Don't want him dead though" referendum. We'll give them "purple hearts" if it turns out it was a good idea posthumously.
I'm not a soldier and never intend to be one (coward I guess), but I think that's fair.
And good for morale for soldiers on both sides of the war.
The Attackers: your leaders believe in the war enough to risk their own lives, and most of your citizens believed in the war.
The Defenders: most of the civilians wanted to attack you, so it's fine to attack all of them in defense.
Even if you kill all of them, if the referendum was 75%, then hey 25% collateral damage (assuming nobody against the war actually left the country) isn't so bad. It would be a vast improvement over the past (and present) where people were killing people who they really had nothing against, only because their leaders thought it was a good idea.
I suggest my proposal would result in fewer wars, and any wars would be vastly more "cool" than other major wars in history.