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Political Pressure Pushes NASA Technical Reports Offline
Trepidity writes "The extensive NASA Technical Report Archive was just taken offline, following pressure from members of U.S. Congress, worried that Chinese researchers could be reading the reports. U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA) demanded that 'NASA should immediately take down all publicly available technical data sources until all documents that have not been subjected to export control review have received such a review,' and NASA appears to have complied. Although all reports are in the public domain, there doesn't appear to be a third-party mirror available (some university libraries do have subsets on microfiche)."
The Chinese, Russian, North Korean, whoever governments probably all have a complete copy. The only ones this is gonna hurt is ourselves.
"Export control", just like DRM, deprives good citizens from the ideas of their own peers, while still allowing malicious types with connections and know-how to have the controlled ideas anyway.
Both forms of idea control fight a smarter enemy...by making non-enemies even dumber.
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I wonder how much money has been wasted discussing this, making it happen, and how much money will be wasted reviewing the documents. I am glad sequestration hasn't done anything to impair congresses ability to waste money.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
To be fair, McCarthy was right. There really were Communists in the State Department.
Even if that's true, it doesn't make McCarthy right. In this country, the government isn't allowed to prosecute people for their political beliefs. The problem with McCarthy wasn't just that there was a witch hunt in place. The problem was that if every single person he accused to be a communist was indeed a communist, the proper response is, "so what?"
The (Party-State) thing is pretty common for both parties, especially when talking about someone less known. If I were writing about Dick Cheney or Barack Obama or something, I wouldn't put it there, but if we're talking about regular Congresscritters, it seems like useful information to know their party affiliation and where they come from.
If you're seeing a pattern, perhaps rather than a conspiracy, it's simply that one party is attacking science more than the other one is, at least lately?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
If McCarthy was right it was entirely by accident. Many innocent people were smeared as Communists simply for advocating policies that McCarthy personally disagreed with. Among the many was George Marshall, the man responsible for the Marshall Plan and thus one of the people most responsible for saving Western Europe from a Communist takeover. The character of the McCarthy-like senator in "The Manchurian Candidate" is uncomfortably close to the truth.
If they transfer valuable secrets, prosecute them for that, and if they didn't then leave their political beliefs out of it.
Red to red, black to black. Switch it on, but stand well back.
To be fair, I myself have seen the horrors and bloodshed of Capitalism up close and personal in the United States of Amerika.
On another note, I have been screwed a lot more by Big Business than by Big Government.
To be fair, Ayn Rand saw the horrors and bloodshed of Communism up close and personal in Russia.
Yes and she left for a better place where her speech would not be suppressed ... how sad that she eventually forgot such notions and then suppressed the speech of those who opposed her ... of course, she was all about hypocrisy as she didn't appear to be above utilizing social programs ...
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Once the oppressed now the oppressor
When your political beliefs include the violent overthrow of the U.S. government, that's where the line is drawn. The 50s Communists believed exactly that. They weren't being persecuted for their political beliefs, they were being persecuted for the fact that they wanted to do the federal government what the Tea Party wants to do today. Do you agree with the Tea Party?
I don't agree with the Communists, and I don't agree with the Tea Party. I don't want to prevent either of them from being in positions in government, however. Other than by not voting for them, that is. If other people vote them in, that's their right, because I do believe in a representative government.
The line, by the way, isn't whether your political beliefs include violent overthrow of the U.S. government. It's when your actions support that. The moment you take up arms and try to force the government out and put your own government in place, I expect you to be shot down and arrested. I'm not going to support the government going after you for pre- or thought-crime, though.