The Plain Truth

2003-07-29T23:02:00.000-07:00

We've Moved!!

Thank the gods, we've got a new, non-blogger site now!!

Our new address is www.theplaintruth.cjb.net

Thanks to all the other cool bloggers we met here, and especially those who bought TPT merchandise (that's gonna activate the email features of the new domain, right now it's only got Web services setup); we'll see you all (all 5 of you? :-) at the new, high octane, Slashcode powered blog!

Cheers!

David

2003-06-11T22:19:00.000-07:00

The Wolf Showing It's Teeth
Ok folks, since everyone and their brother has been weighing in on Israel and the Palestineans, the "road map" and all else, I thought I'd toss in my 2 cents.

However many WMD Iraq had pre-invasion, you can bet your sweet ass that the US has tactical nukes in theatre, as they did in Gulf War I, and threatened to use them if chemical or bio attacks were launched at Israel.

Yes bucky tactical nukes are considered 'useable': they were designed to wipe out Soviet tank columns should Germany be invaded, so as to hit tank troops with lethal, but fast fading (days to weeks for almost ALL of it) radiation, hence overcoming Soviet numerical superiority and leaving densly populated German towns right next door unharmed.

The US, and it is believed Israel, retain most if not all of the remaining neutron bomb tactical weapons. Reagan wouldn't give them ALL up.

Let Yassir chew on THAT. Oh and the Dear Leader in Korea can go suck on it too and put as many troops as he'd want on the DMZ: American troops there are moving back, nuf said. Hey Kim, thanks for playing.

That's the trump card, and Bush likes high stakes Texas poker.

As someone said, look at a map, because Sharon surely has.

And the largest concentration of military power on the planet is right snug up against Jordan and Syria..

And Bush has proved he's not afraid to use it.

He and Sharon can afford to make nice and smile.

That's the wolf showing it's teeth.

Comments

Note:I use QuickTopic for Comments, which lets you post anonymously or logged in: it doesn't reveal your email address, and it flags comments that are authenticated, so you can't be impersonated by trolls.

2003-06-06T23:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks Dean!

We're over the top for the minimum to get a CafePress commission check in July, 100% of which is going to go towards hosting to get us off of BlogSpot.

A few more "Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy!" bumper stickers sold and we'll have enough to cover all costs to setup this blog with Blosxom, a Unix/Linux geek oriented open-source blogging package. Anything over the barebones base setup costs will go towards extending the duration of hosting covered.

We're also going to setup a Space Advocacy wiki; which is a collaboratively maintained site, similar in spirit to a group blog, but where anyone can contribute content and edits, with a moderation/approval system built in. Blosxom has a plugin for this, as well as integrated commenting/trackback, weblog pinging, rss feeds, and all the trimmings, but is oriented more towards being setup (and customized) by heavy unix heads and perl hackers (both of which I am) than Movable Type.

Thanks again Dean!

2003-05-29T03:54:00.000-07:00

The 17th Amendment and the 21st Century

IMHO one of the biggest problems with the US right now is the 17th Amendment. It's a case of too much democracy.

Senators were originally appointed by the State Legislatures so that they represented the individual States as entities.

This kept local issues local, as they should be, and also facilitates the experimental social laboratory effect: a bad policy in one state, trying a novel solution to an emergent problem, won't screw up the entire country, and as solutions are explored, the best competing solution or three will spread to be adopted most places.

With more and more at the Federal level since the 17th Amendment (so that voters are suseptible to the same media onslaughts as House elections, also making electing Senators vulnerable to the same large, national business and other interests as House elections), a mistake in one area now effects the entire nation at once.

The beauty of the original system is that in the House, the People all decided how much taxation pain they would accept to implement the policies of the educated, business leaders, intellectual elites and religious leaders that the upper house of the Senate represented. Our Aristocratic nature if you will. Those elites from each State probably CAN figure out solutions to complex national and foreign policy problems better, and will represent the views and experience of experiments in State legislatures with related problems.

But the People in the House can shoot down anything they don't like, and have to start funding bills. This is where the masses set the threshold of how much pain they will take, and hence which adventures of the upper class they will put up with. The rich and our elites have more to lose individually if our survival is threatened, and hence are given control over treaties, and must be older, and HOPEFULLY more wise, and hence also approve judges that the President nominates.

It's genius, truly.

The 17th Amendment was a result of the Progressive Movement in the late 19th century. Their original motivation was sound, as concentrated railroad and other monopoly industries had corrupted the Senate, since the amount of money newly flowing to otherwise previously backwater areas now available due to the Industrial Revolution was staggering.

Further evolution of Capitalism, in the form of labor unions, diversification of industry after the first flush of the Industrial Age, and movement into a service economy with the beginning of the Information Age at the advent of the 20th Century, later removed most of the factors that the 17th Amendment addressed. It served the function of shaking things up enough to address those issues.

But now with modern mass media, the same large interests can influence popular votes in all states at once, and once again large powers are influencing both chambers at once, and with both Houses in the pocket of 2 static parties in favor of a large govternment (especially with the stretching of the Commerce Clause to death since the New Deal), the experimental laboratory of Federalism has been destroyed.

Novel solutions to such issues as the Drug War and the decline of education all at once at the National level are far too frightening and risky, as a mis-step would be disaster everywhere all at once if unforseen consequences arise causing failure, hence nothing new is tried.

Abuse of States Rights to try to hold onto Jim Crow laws in the era of the civil rights movement have made us fear the diversity of our morals, and quest for absolute solutions in other area's where moral disagreement, but not absolute truth, will ever reign. Tragic missteps on the way to increased, uniform Liberty have made us gun shy about reasonable differences to other moral problems. Our different sub-cultures will each favor and emphasize different tradeoffs in which liberies they value most. This has historically been one of our greatest sources of strength in many sphere's of life.

We should embrace and not fear the fact that will will find different solutions to problems in different regions of our great Nation, this is a fundamental bedrock of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

We should in these trying times return to the Federal nature of our great Republic. Democracy is a required ingredient for Liberty, but not a be all end all in itself. Liberty also requires diversity and choice.

Fair whether Federalism is the only kind you see: the left wants states rights for the Drug War end-game, the right is terrfied of it there.

The left is terrified of it for abortion, while flyover country insists on it.

The left wants only total disarmament of the populace, and the NRA won't budge.

The Right wants it for vouchers and affirmative action, and the Left wants PC orthodoxy at Universities.

We have fallen into the Tyranny of Uniformity.

Most are aware of the Tyranny of the Majority in democracies, but the Tyranny of Uniformity that we have entered with increased Federal power is now strangling us as a People.

Returning more powers to the States will also allow Federal taxes to be lowered, and State taxes to be increased, as needed, to pay for what people in each State value most. Defense, foreign relations and international trade will always be best done collectively, drawing on the strengths that our different regions and approachs to life posses. All choices in the above issues have positive and negative tradeoffs in their opposing views, and we should glory in our amazing differences.

Repealing the 17th Amendment will help re-establish the Laboratory of the American Experiment, and allow ALL of us to regain more of our freedom, of the types of freedom that are best for each of us. We can choose which freedoms are most important to us personally, and express them by choosing where to live. What we want will conflict, that is why the Framers allowed each part of the country to develope socially in the ways that suited it, while pooling our great diversity and making it our strength in business and national defense.

The 21st Century demands that the Laboratory be reopened. The difficulty of the challenges listed above, not to mention the coming ones from the dawning bio-genetic and nanotech revolutions, CAN'T be left to the disasterous winds of chance that uniform national failure in any of these area's can abide.

The State Legislatures have a pulse on the interests and morals of their local people.

Retake Life America!

Repeal the 17th Amendment.

Prompted by Brail Fertilizer on this weeks Carnival of the Vanities at Dean's World.

Comments

2003-05-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Winning the Peace Well, seems like yesterday we got the UN sanctions against Iraq lifted in the Security Council, the US and Britain in charge of Iraqi oil money for rebuilding, and primary control of the political process, with the UN playing a token role in humanitarian relief and political restructuring. Now there's a total green light on rebuilding, since it will be mostly self-funded from oil revenues. Which is good, as things had not been going well in some respects, partially from underestimating how much on the ground crime control would be needed, partly from the Weasels blocking the lifting of sanctions, which was placing some rebuilding necessities in a legal limbo.

2003-05-07T23:55:00.000-07:00

The Dante's Inferno Test has banished you to the Seventh Level of Hell!
Here is how you matched up against all the levels:

Level	Score
Purgatory (Repenting Believers)	Very Low
Level 1 - Limbo (Virtuous Non-Believers)	Very Low
Level 2 (Lustful)	Very High
Level 3 (Gluttonous)	Moderate
Level 4 (Prodigal and Avaricious)	Low
Level 5 (Wrathful and Gloomy)	High
Level 6 - The City of Dis (Heretics)	High
Level 7 (Violent)	Very High
Level 8- the Malebolge (Fraudulent, Malicious, Panderers)	Very High
Level 9 - Cocytus (Treacherous)	High

Take the Dante's Inferno Test

2003-04-30T13:29:00.000-07:00

Shiite Religious Kritarchy

Milddle East Review has a very interesting piece on the different Shiite factions in southern Iraq.

2003-04-12T12:33:00.000-07:00

Information Minister Schwag

Steve over at littletinylies.com has created an awesome line of merchandise
with the Iraqi "Information Minister" as it's theme. Check it out!

Caption: "The Infidels Shall Taste the Dung of Misbegotten Goats, and...Funny, I Could Swear I Smell Diesel."

Good stuff!

2003-04-11T14:56:00.000-07:00

Democracy! Whiskey! Sexy! Bumper Stickers!

Yes, that's right, we've created an original DWS bumper sticker, now available to you via the miracle of CafePress!

Click here to get 'em while they're hot!

Oh, and T-shirts and other apparel, too!

2003-04-07T22:00:00.000-07:00

Tipping Point

After airing video of US forces in multiple Presidential Palaces in Baghdad, we have this in Basra.

As Baghdad crumbles, the 4th Infantry Division is being deployed to Tikrit, which is expected to be the last holdout to fall.
Kerbala has fallen, and now only Tikrit, Kirkuk and Mosul remain, out of the major cities, in the hands of Ba'ath Party loyalists.

"Quagmire" indeed!

2003-04-01T02:08:00.000-08:00

How Long?

Once again, Ralph Peters delivers the goods.

2003-03-31T05:29:00.000-08:00

Our World Historical Gamble

Much more eloquent version of many things I've said here and elsewhere before by Lee Harris.

2003-03-30T05:08:00.000-08:00

The Historical Military Perspective
VDH on the war so far. Comments

2003-03-24T23:12:00.000-08:00

The un-democratic Turks

The Turks have banned another Kurkish political party. Around 25% of the population of Turkey is Kurdish, and they are not allowed political representation.

I wonder WHY Turkey is afraid of them trying to break away, as they have tried to do periodically since the founding of modern Turkey. Maybe because their language and political parties have been so repressed.

And the Turks STILL won't own up to their genocide of Armenians in their territory.

The Kurds in northern Iraq have proven that they are at least capable of ACTUAL democracy, with formerly violently opposed parties participating in the govt. of their autonomous zone together.

Who's more democratic and worthy of our support?

The US isn't the only country that's burned up a bit of diplomatic capital lately.

2003-03-24T18:26:00.000-08:00

The Lighter Side of the War

(Welcome to the Amish Tech Support Blog A Day Tour!)

Watch out, Saddam! Poland Admits Iraq Combat Role After News Photos

Poland admitted on Monday that its elite GROM commando unit had taken part in the U.S.-led attack on Iraq after the soldiers posed for a Reuters news photographer.

The Defense Ministry had denied that GROM (Thunder) special forces were involved in combat, but on Monday it confirmed their participation after dailies splashed photographs of the soldiers in the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr, where U.S.-led troops are battling pockets of Iraqi resistance.

Defense Minister Jerzy Szmajdzinski refused, however, to divulge details of the troops' role in supporting the main U.S.-British force fighting to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "We are determined not to comment on secret operations," Szmajdzinski told reporters, saying only that GROM troops were operating "in the coastal region" of Iraq and in Gulf waters.

You know they're Special Forces because it only takes three of them with a ladder to screw in a light bulb instead of the whole battalion of 50 to turn the whole house around.

2003-03-23T23:48:00.000-08:00

Times Takes Turkey to Task

How's that for a headline?

2003-03-23T15:35:00.000-08:00

It's Halliburton or the French

Ok, after reading this, I feel the need to point out that the two largest oil field services companies in the world are Halliburton, and Schlumberger, which is French.

So WHAT if the only US company up to the job of rebuilding Iraq has ties to the US vice president, I guarantee you there are connections between those in power in France and Schlumberger, the number 2 in the field.

Who the hell else is gonna do it, the Russians?

2003-03-23T15:03:00.000-08:00

As Jerry Pournelle commented, now it's personal.

And he was AGAINST this war until it started.

These people truly do not understand the "American Street".

2003-03-23T14:58:00.000-08:00

Hans, Jacques, Gerhard: Bite Me

2003-03-21T17:46:00.000-08:00

Oil Fields in Southern Iraq Taken

2003-03-20T19:28:00.000-08:00

And now, the Royal Irish...

Lt. Col. Tim Collins addressing the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish. The British, Australians, Scots AND Irish are with us.

Of course an Irishman gave the best speech I've seen yet at the start of this war. Read it if you don't believe me.

The Canadians are at home like schoolgirls as if they actually were the 51st State or something. The Continent is very wishy washy. The French, Germans, Russians or Chinese will now do well to be reminded that a Permanent Security Council Seat is designed to stop anyone from moving against Permanent Members, and not to constrain their own actions.

Actually I'm pretty certain that the above named powers are quite well aware of that, and have been for the last 50 years. Their systems have all been left behind in the rearview mirror. So the rest of the world will now take note of it once again.

(Link via Jerry Pournelle.)

2003-03-20T18:23:00.000-08:00

Turkey allows US use of Airspace

Turkey is allowing the US to use it's airspace for attacks on Iraq, but not our air bases in Turkey, even for refueling. News reports have been emphasizing how this will mostly help for bombing raids, but it will also be very useful for getting the 101st Airborne into Kirkuk (which has 10 billion barrel oil reserves).

2003-03-20T18:20:00.000-08:00

More War Coverage Links

More good war coverage links over at E Pluribus Unum. And not a whole lot of overlap with the list I posted earlier.

2003-03-20T01:12:00.000-08:00

News Source Roundup

Click the link above for a handy list of sites for up to date news and commentary on the war as it progresses!

2003-03-18T14:05:00.000-08:00

Clinton backing Bush and Blair!

And putting the blame for the UN breakdown on France and Russia. Take that, Loony Left!

2003-03-10T23:45:00.000-08:00

Many Rants

I tend to write more easily when posting comments on others' blogs, and then often end up editing and posting here (with a link, of course!)

Tonight's been very productive on that count, with tirades on Torture, Corporate Scandals, Weird Religion, and other topics.

Watch This Space, these and other rants coming soon!

Oh and use the little bloglet thingy on the right, at the bottom of the blogroll, to get hot fresh rants in your inbox (we tend to post erratically :-)

2003-03-10T21:59:00.000-08:00

If there actually happen to be any readers out there

ACK, BLOGGER IS DRIVING ME MAD!!!!

Must...obtain...better....hosting....

2003-03-10T21:53:00.000-08:00

Did the Cold War really end?

Or are we just entering the next phase of the struggle between Liberty and Despotism?

After reading this letter from Soviet dissidents, I'm of a mind to wonder if the Cold War really ended, or if it just turned a corner?

At the end of my previous post today regarding Africa and the SC, I posited "It's us or the EU, China and Russia."

And the proposed new EU Constitution is beyond the pale of socialism, and would structurally permit a totalitarian state with little to no protection of actually important freedoms, such as of the press.

Hmmm, totalitarian states in Russia, China AND the EU...so it's NAFTA or The Reds, makes it a little bit clearer when put like that, no?

The KGB back in power in Russia and anti-democratic Socialist bureaucrats in Brussels on top in the EU.

I count it as a bright spot that Capitalists can now join the Communist Party in China.

So I guess in the never-ending boxing match of geopolitics, yes, we won the last round, and the next one started 9/11, and we're just now getting to see who's on the card for this one.

2003-03-10T12:33:00.000-08:00

Powell, Africa and the SC

Hmmmm, what's going on HERE:

Meantime, Powell met with Guinea’s foreign minister, Francois Fall.
The diplomatic niceties of that encounter alone illustrated what’s at stake for Washington in the current debate. NBC’s Betsy Steuart reported that Powell came out and greeted Fall before accompanying him into the building, a courtesy that he normally extends to heads of state ? in other words, only to officials who outrank him.

Maybe a little Black Power behind closed doors?

After all, American Blacks were sold into slavery by black africans and ARABS.

And now Black Americans are back holding ALL the cards. I think it plays well to tribal instincts in Africa to have their foreign minister shown public respect by the Administration, and it being by a Black American.

What other great power has Africans daily walking it's halls of power (and by that I don't mean the UN)?

Mr. Powell and Ms. Rice took Dr. King at his word, and show by their performance in this Administration that Africans CAN succeed on the world stage.

The French offer only more oppression to Africa, with their truly unilateral military presense and actions.

I think Powell and Rice might be saying to African SC members, "It's us, the EU, the Russians or the Chinese, take your pick; and by the way, who looks more like you? Me or them?"

2003-03-08T14:36:00.000-08:00

Test Post...

...just testing out pinging weblogs.com, Amish Tech Support has beat the drum enough!

2003-03-08T13:57:00.000-08:00

Turkey

Check out the latest over at Pournelle's.

2003-03-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

George Will on Conrad Black:

America has had "the most successful foreign policy of any major country" not just because of its strength but because "it has never had any objective except not to be threatened and when threatened, to remove the threat." And it "does not believe in durable coexistence with a mortal threat."

Black says that three of the greatest strategic errors of modern times -- Germany's unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and the Soviet refusal of postwar U.S. aid in exchange for liberality in Eastern Europe -- involved underestimating the dangers of provoking America. Khalid Sheik Mohammed, one of the authors of the fourth great error, the Sept. 11 attacks, may have belatedly understood that danger when, before dawn Saturday, he stood in his underwear, facing the drawn guns of the men who told him America would like to ask him some questions.

2003-03-02T23:05:00.000-08:00

Constitutionality of "Under God" in the Pledge
The following are some of my comments to a disscussion on this
topic over here:

(Starts out with someone else's reply to mike, with my response below)

>Hi Mike,
>
>Since the 14th amendment, we operate under the legal doctrine
of
>'incorporation,' in which many of the rights enumerated in the
>bill of rights are considered to apply equally to any
>governmental action at any level.
>
>For example, no level of government, including the government
>operation of schools, can violate the establishment clause. So
>basically no one, from the president through congress, and down
>to the principal at your local school, has the legal authority
>to take actions that effect the 'establishment' of religion.
>
>Prayer is under that umbrella...

Exactly, "can take no actions that effect the 'establishment' of
religion".
If it becomes established somewhere, they can't stop it. They
also can't do anything to encourage or disallow it's
establishment either.

We are in agreement, if you don't like that flavor, vote in the
market. THIS is one of the reasons vouchers are good.

2003-03-02T15:11:00.000-08:00

5 Lessons from the Iraqi Standoff

Just read it.

2003-03-02T14:50:00.000-08:00

Beyond the Pale

If anyone still has reservations that Saddam Hussein is among the most degraded despots to walk this earth and MUST be forcibly removed, the following excerpt from this article should remove all doubt:

By 1993, Alwishah and his family had left the Saudi refugee camp that they called home for 14 months and had resettled in the United States. That's when his brother, Gen. Abdallah, was arrested and charged as an anti-Saddam conspirator and sent to a small prison in Baghdad for high-ranking officials accused as traitors. I asked him about the experience.

ABDALLAH: I was in jail for eleven months. There was no judge. They just put you in. If one was to be executed or put in jail, no judge. They put us in the same room as those five generals who were executed. And they were killed with big knives. Those people were killed with big knives hitting them on the neck. And the room had blood everywhere.

SH: Did you think you might be next?

ABDALLAH: Yes. I thought that they would do the same thing to me. Every day they told me that I will be executed.

SH: How long?

ABDALLAH: Eleven months. Intimidation every day. At that time they found out about a conspiracy by another person who was a big general, a doctor actually, from the same town as Saddam. His name was Raji al-Tikriti. It's a very famous story in Iraq. And they made him a food for dogs.

SH: You were in prison when this happened? You heard about this?

ABDALLAH: They showed me these prisoners that were eaten by wild dogs. They made us--that was one kind of intimidation--they brought all of the generals and officers in the prison to watch it, to intimidate us. . . . They took us from jail and they put some blindfolds on our eyes and they took them off and we saw him. Before the dogs ate him we saw them read the judgment and they said why they were going to kill him. He was the head doctor for all the military, and he was the personal doctor for Saddam Hussein and for former Iraqi president Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr.

SH: Was he killed before this happened?

ABDALLAH: He was alive when these wild dogs . . .

SH: Do you remember what month this was?

ABDALLAH: It was the wintertime, but I can't remember exactly because for 11 months I didn't see the sun, nothing--I didn't know what time. There was only spider webs in the room, so I didn't know if it's day or night. [Pause] Probably what you're hearing is impossible to believe, but that's what happened. And all that you're hearing is nothing compared to everything else.

Abdallah later explained that Raji al-Tikriti was dressed in "prison pajamas" with his hands and feet bound when this was done to him. Abdallah and seven other prisoners were forced to watch. The five dogs, he said, "were like big wolves."

2003-03-02T09:35:00.000-08:00

Curiouser and Curiouser...

We all keep hearing about how it'll be too hot to fight in Iraq "any week now", but how hot will it get how soon?

Interestingly, their is no data listed for average monthly temperatures at Weather.com's Baghdad page.

Honest gap in the data, or strategic misinformation?

Hmmm.....must go digging elsewhere, more soon.

UPDATE: Well, they've got data for Kuwait City, avg. high in March is 78, April is 88, and May is 101, so I guess we really DO need to get a move on!!!

Damned paranoia....

2003-03-01T22:19:00.000-08:00

VodkaPundit down!

Ooops, looks like VodkaPundit is down!

His domain registration is expired!

Remember kids, when moving to a new house, check that your domains won't expire while the postal service is still figuring out what to do with your mail!

2003-03-01T00:56:00.000-08:00

Arrrggg

Blogger won't remove a post, arggghhhh!!!!

OR publish correctly...if you see this, it means it has.

I was starting to whimp out and get personal here, but decided to move that over to a livejournal.

2003-02-17T03:30:00.000-08:00

Defenders of Humanity This piece literally moved me to tears. The people of the Old World have not changed, and I do not just mean Eurpoe, Africa and Asia are as brutal as ever. We do not see things as others do, it truly is a New World here, and I fear that we may finally be on the brink of a war to impose Peace, and not the lukewarm hegemony so many decry as an American Empire. It now appears to be that, or a slide into technocratic despotism the likes of which is being built in (God save us) Britain, the EU and elsewhere. The American Left knew not what it asked for when chanting for years to "Do It For The Children". Who else has defended both Muslims and Jews? From Christians and each other? Who? Who defended Chinese Communists from Imperial Japan? And now Japan from N. Korea and China? And Muslims from Russians, and Russians from Germans? Must we be forever the Defenders of Humanity? We have erred, we have supported many crimes in the Cold War, and our never ending, brutal self examination has finally caught up with us. Washington called us the friends of liberty everywhere, but defenders only of our own. It appears that now that the world has been made one through our technology, that we may no longer draw that boundary. May the Republic rest in peace, she has been dying a slow death throughout the 20th Century. One cannot enforce happiness, that is the path our enemies take, and it fails now as it ever has. But by the will of the Senate and the People of the United States, God willing, we can enforce Liberty. May we not shirk from or fail at that task. (Link via Occam's Toothbrush) Comments

2003-02-06T00:56:00.000-08:00

What I think about the Shuttle....
Well, I previously have said much of what I think we should do about Space here.

Offer tax moratorium incentives to private space ventures, and maybe even prizes as Jerry Pournelle and others have suggested, and not just for "first place".

Jerry's been beating the drum on privatizing space for decades longer than I have, and I agree with nearly everything he has to say about it.
He has been involved in aerospace for years, and had the ear of Reagan, but alas, not the Bushes. He's thought long and hard about the issues involved in getting us off of this beautiful, fragile Green Planet of the Clocks. Cheap access to space, on an order of magnitude cheaper than comes from any govt. "space program", but only from private business, is what its going to take.

2003-01-28T17:03:00.000-08:00

I must now go get Beer... ...to play the State of the Union Drinking Game!!

2003-01-23T02:54:00.000-08:00

Bloglet Test Post Ignore this, nothing to see here, move along....

2003-01-23T02:48:00.000-08:00

Post UN World Order

I just posted the following on the comments to Samizdata on this article about potential post-NATO and post-UN political organizations, and the history thereof:

Uhm, companies from which country illegally helped North Korea with nuclear enrichment technology?

Germany.

When Uncle Sam was standing nose to nose with The Bear for 45+ years, where was his boot heel?

Germany.

I agree with Daniel, and the LAST thing the Poles, Czechs and many others (not to mention The French :-) want is ANOTHER resurgent militaristic Germany. It would take them no time at all to 'go nuclear', if they haven't done so illegally and undeclared yet.

I wouldn't put it past the Audi Kranzler for a New York minute.

They didn't ask the German People the last 2 times, did they?

But I'm certain the Poles and Czechs will be MORE than happy to have the Army's Corp V spend their paychecks there after the bulk of them are done with Iraq (and friends?)

The permanent members of the Security Council matter not because of their veto, but from Legal Nukes.

A new, post-UN world order centered around current Nuclear Powers makes more sense to me, with all new rules for membership. I'd make them like this:

If you've got a Nuke now, declare them, Inspectors verify, and you're One of the Boys. Powers that voluntarily relenquished past nuclear weapons tech (South Africa, Brazil, others??) get in as full voting Protectorate members. All Nuclear and Protectorate states agree to strict Nuclear Non-Agression mutally between themselves. All other candidate Protectorate states must be democracies (as confirmed by a vote of current members by a system they determine) Russia and China at least nominally qualify even on non-nuke grounds, see, we're "consistent"! and sufficiently Pro-Trade as to be WTO members.

Anyone nukes a member, the rest of the members retaliate against the offender.

Otherwise, most anything goes (except for LETHAL chem. and COMMUNICABLE bio).

Post-Cold War, Stable MAD.

Frank Herbert envisioned it as a stable future alternative in Dune...called the Great Convention of Man....that's how I'd apply it in our current climate.

Heck, sci-fi invented the satellite, why not a post-Cold War political structure?

2003-01-22T18:34:00.000-08:00

Elections Discussion via BoingBoing I posted the following on BoingBoing's discussion of this over here about Election Reform: Here's the election reform I'm in favor of: First, go a step farther with the House of Representatives, and ban all private money at all. Then repeal the (17th?) amendment, and let state legislatures appoint congress critters, and keep the private money there, where it belongs. The Founders intended to immobilize/partially ammeliorate the nasty effect large money interests buying politicians wholesale on a national level. They'd have to contend amoung the entire host of conflicting interests of local state legislators a state at a time. There are a LOT more politicians in state legislators to buy off than there are media networks to buy off, and this allows them a concentration of power unforseen by the Founders or the Progressives of the 17th Amend. The combination of the 17th Amendment and the popular vote for both the House and Senate with private money for both, makes whoever can afford the most media time the winner. Perversely, this is a failure of both too much (17th Amend.) combined with too little (private money for Reps. w/no caps or level playing field for support of local interests) democracy at the same time that makes an evil brew when combined with modern media, which weren't forseen at the time of the Progressive Movement which passwd the 17th. Amendment. So, in the face of modern communications technology, the original power balance set up by the Founders turned out to be more automatically flexible, and had it been left alone a hundred years ago, all would be fairly well (without the pendulum swing concentration of power due to the 17th. Amendment combinded with media, we now require the additional correction of taking private money out of House elections. I'm gonna post the above on my blog, and link to this discussion from there (I use QuickTopic too .

2003-01-22T04:50:00.000-08:00

Islamic Rage...the Good Kind Now this is what we've been waiting for, Aziz! Comments

2003-01-22T04:43:00.000-08:00

Human Shields Take that appeasers of the Left!

2003-01-22T04:37:00.000-08:00

Sprucing Up, but still Brown Wrapper

Well, we've finally gotten around to adding a BlogRoll, have added subscriptions via Bloglet (for those who prefer to receive their content via email), and are using QuickTopic for comments.

But the look is still deliberately unadorned.

See the title. **grin**

2003-01-18T22:12:00.000-08:00

What's Really Wrong in the Middle East

Wow, a week ago Angie Schultz summed it all up, and I missed it...the US is not the source of all Evil or Good, and the Arabs just need to Grow Up and Take Responsability for their Problems.

As do a lot of other people in the world.

Comments

2003-01-18T20:33:00.000-08:00

"Limited" vs. "Is"

The recent Eldred vs. Ashcroft decision reminds me a whole lot of Clintonian dithering about the meaning of the word "Is". The Court 's majority opinion stated that they didn't think it was their place to decide what the definition of 'limited' was, as long as Congress hadn't changed the 'shape' of copyright law, except for the timeframe.

Oh, they must have throught 'limited' only meant in space, not in time.

Well, if they're not the one's to decide what's an unreasonably long timeframe, who the Hell is?

This is the essence of what they were being asked to decide, and all of the 1st Amendment issues raised by Plaintiff clouded the issues more than anything else. As the court themselves acknowledged, only 2-3% of works that would have expired had Bono been overruled maintained economic value at all for the rights holders.

Hence, we've already reached the point where a further temporal extension of rights is not in the Publics' interest, the furtherance of which is the purpose for Congress being allowed to grant them at all, only that of a few already wealthy rights holders.

I believe that Plaintiff might have had more success if this point was hammered home to the exclusion of other issues, many of which I think the majority opinion was right in dismissing.

Now, don't get me wrong, the Eldred decision wasn't all bad news, as Balkinization (via Instapundit) points out: they (SCOTUS) have now setup things for a takedown of most of the DMCA by a test case arguing that it fundamentally does change the 'shape' of copyright, other than temporally.

So I think that Larry did lose this battle, in the sense of his line of argument muddying the real issue, but that he may have un-intentionally won the war, by losing in a way that's a total setup for the DMCA (the REAL big evil, compared to BONO) to take a fall.

Comments

2002-12-10T19:46:00.000-08:00

Whoa, can't believe that Gene Expression hasn't picked up this yet...guess I'll have to email them :-)

2002-11-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

Time for a New Party

As Eris S. Raymond has pointed out, the Democratic Party has become of bunch of Deconstructionist Postmodernists. But as it looks like the Demo's are going down the slow ugly slide a party makes as it dies in America, we need something to go in its place.

As my constructive alternative, I offer up my vision of a new party, the 21st Centurians (Ed: That name sucks. Yes, I know, I've since grown fond of the American Unity Party, or AUP) which would restore many of America's founding principles, States Rights and Individual Liberty among them, while adjusting for the changed world of the 21st Century we now live in, where Global Apocalypes and Technological Despotism are the greatest dangers we as a species face.

Initial Platform as follows:

The Federal Govt. is primarily about defense and the protection of liberty, hence:

Whack Iraq hard, pursue Al Queda, North Korea, and all other rogue states with WMD. Define WMD as communicable biologicals, lethal gas, and nukes. Sign Frank Herberts Great Convention with all other declared WMD powers.

Dismantle the DEA, redeploy it in the war on terror (they're still searching for banned agents, just different ones now).

De-list all schedule I-V drugs except PCP, make it the BATFM, tax appropriately, let states choose how 'hard' of I-V drugs have age limit, require scrip, and what tax rate (rec. drugs can subsidize theraputic for the elderly).

Acknowledge abortion a state issue.

Repeal the 17th Amendment.

Flat income tax on citizens, natural and corporate.

Repeal the Sherman Act.

Universal collective bargaining for all workers allowd based on freedom of association outside of the military. Promote guild-type unions for service and information workers.

Let the market and the above unions deal with healthcare.

Ban software patents, make copyright non-transferrable (protects creators rights, it's either work for hire, or its not, period).

Banish all porn to a .xxx domain name ghetto, and ban filtering of anything else online by common carriers,
and protecting owners rights for end user (leaf) networks.

Acknowledge the Individual Rights intent of the Second Amendment, and repeal all Federal Gun Control (Congress shall make NO law...the States can do what they want).

Privatize Space NOW, to ensure our species survives no matter what happens to us on this beautiful Green Planet. Encourage private SSTO ventures, and support private parties property rights to space resources.

Promote greener energy policy with tax moratoriums on plant based fuels, keep the oil for fancy
plastics.

Green fuels and legal weed will allow removal of most farm subsidies, and make small farmers viable again. Hemp has soooo many industrial uses, its a perfect cash crop. Put in tax moratoriums for industries that convert to green fuels/materials, this way established industrial players will win, too.

Leave the rest of it alone, that's quite enough.

Well, that should just about piss off/please everyone :-)

Discuss Time for a New Party

2002-10-29T17:01:00.000-08:00

Islam and Freedom of Conscience James Q. Madison has a great article up on City Journal about the struggles of Christianity to seperate Church and State, and how Islam is recapitulating some of that history. The kicker is the last line, where he states: "If the Middle East is to encounter and not merely resist modernity, it would best if it did this before it runs out of oil." I think he hits the nail right on the head, while there is still oil in the Middle East, income from that resource can be used to modernize Arab nations, or to build more religious schools. And when the oil money runs out in the next few decades, if the nations of the Middle East haven't made fundamental changes by then, we in the West will probably care as little about them as we do currently about Africa: Not a Lot.

2002-10-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hiatus

Well, in case any of my few readers are still around, I thought I'd just mention that I've recently moved, and have been working on more software and offline things...I'm sure I'll start posting more here after the election in November. Until then, I'm going to put up an "email be updates" widget shortly, and possibly move to another hosting system.

Until then, Ciao!

2002-09-25T07:09:00.000-07:00

Power, n.: The only narcotic regulated by the SEC instead of the FDA.

                                                   -anonymous

2002-09-24T18:44:00.000-07:00

Apologies to our Rural Brethren As Kieran Lyons has pointed out, I was somewhat injudicious in my choice of words in yesterdays rant against wife beaters, and he is quite correct that my characterization of "Rednecks" as being those most likely to engage in such behaviour was out of line and somewhat bigoted on my part, for which I apologize to any rural Americans who would be offended by that. I was in a bit of an angry mood when I wrote that post (obviously!), and projected that anger onto a group of people based on some negative experiences in my upbringing, when in actual fact the few times I've had to step in and intervene when a man was beating a woman weren't "Rednecks" at all....in point of fact both times it was individuals who'd be described by most as "Hippies", at least based on their individual appearance. I appreciate and value such feedback, for as I emailed Kieran, how can I pull my own head out of my ass if no one calls me on my own shit? If I'm way out there, let me know!

2002-09-24T00:41:00.000-07:00

In Defense of Women

Are you in favor of wife beating? No? I didn't think so. Would you step in and directly intervene if you saw a woman being beaten by a man? If you were larger than her male assailant, perhaps. If you were a smaller male or a (probably) smaller female, you'd hopefully at least call the police.

Do those in a position of strength have a moral obligation to stop violence against the weak? I would argue yes, and I think that just about every moral code conceived by man, no matter their differences, would tend to agree with me.

Except of course for the Sharia, the Islamic Law that sanctions the beating and repression of women. Yes, idiots in America can be found who also declare that their wife beating is "none of your god damn business", but our society tends to strongly disagree with them, hence laws against spousal abuse and the existence of battered women shelters.

We outgrew that phase in our social evolution, and now deeply value the unique contributions that women make economically and otherwise in the US, as eloquently outlined by Ralph Peters.

I categorically reject any arguments based on cultural relativism that it's "just their way", and that it's not our place to do anything about it. A "culture" that treats their women as barbarically as in the Middle East is Evil.

Yes, Evil, and I don't toss that label about lightly. I reserve it for child molesters, those who beat their women or others physically weaker than themselves, murderers and rapists.

And perhaps those who would do nothing in the face of those crimes. We must root out the Sharia wherever it is the "Law" of a nation, as it maintains that it is a man's right to beat his wife at will. It is my opinion that this is the only civilized thing that can be done at this point, as such nations show no inclination to reform themselves in this most fundamental way. Anything less would be morally bankrupt.

We are the stonger man who has come upon a crime in progress, and our inaction only allows and encourages it to continue. The EU is the small, snivelling man who won't even phone the police, which in this world right now, whether we like it or not, is the United States. And the UN is the biggest club full of wife beaters on the planet, so of course we shouldn't expect their approval.

Forget about the oil. Forget about geopolitics. Forget about "stability in the region."

Do it for the women.

2002-09-23T03:02:00.000-07:00

Steven DenBeste is at it again . Debunking opponents of America puncturing the festering boil that is the middle east. Here's one of the juicy bits: "Arab frustration and resentment isn't going to go away if we reform our foreign policy, because it is ultimately based not on what we do and not even really on our success, but rather on their failure. And the only thing we can do to make them cease to be failures is to force them to make the reforms which will remove the causes within their society that is making them fail. Altering our foreign policy won't do that."

2002-09-20T22:41:00.000-07:00

UN Obsolete? Interesting commontary on how the UN could end up without the US as a member at Pundit Tree Midwest Conservative Journal . I would tend to agree with Stephen Gordon that it is just about as pointless now as the League of Nations ever was.

2002-09-20T22:37:00.000-07:00

Laurence Simon in 2004 Check out our favorite candidate for president in 2004 so far at Amish Tech Support . Now THAT is what I call a platform!

2002-09-18T21:12:00.000-07:00

Space Now I'm in favor of getting us off of the wonderful little rock we call Earth as soon as possible, and am therefore in favor of unlimited private exploration and exploitation of space resources. I consider it a matter of long term species survival, and that every step towards permanent human settlement of space, starting with private ventures such as that discussed by Glenn Reynolds here , is to be encouraged. I hope we don't get smacked into by a massive asteroid any time soon, and I hope our much needed lancing of Imperialist Islam, or some much to be feared possible future conflict with the Chinese, doesn't end in nuclear fire. I also hope we don't suffer some sort of awful environmental or biological disaster. But do I give us good odds for avoiding these and other man-made or natural catastrophies of such a scope over the next 100 years? No, and it's not driven by some apocalyptical fear, but a growing sense of how fragile our place on this globe really is. Before now we couldn't really do anything about it, but with current technology we can. Our choice is ultimately between a vibrant, life filled existence in the stars, or the sterile Antarctic death that Sir Martin Rees would apparently prefer. I think that our species very survival depends on our attaining a permanent toe hold in space in the next hundred years, if not sooner. Space Now!

2002-09-18T20:23:00.000-07:00

Imperialist Islam

Steven DenBeste still wasn't sure of the veracity of my claim that the label "Imperialist Islam" captures the essence of what we are truly fighting:

"Update: David Mercer suggests the term Imperialist Islam. I don't know; it still doesn't seem
right, because a lot of those within the collective enemy are not imperialistic."

I hope my reply below, which I've emailed him already, is clear enough to convince him:
Ah, but the current cultural issues arise because of the Imperialist stance the Koran instructs
People of the Book to take, declaring Islam and Muslims to be superior to all other creeds/peoples...without the Imperialist attitude underlying Islam, we wouldn't have these problems with the Middle East, and the fundamentalist Islamic culture there would probably have been able to move more smoothly into the 21st century gradually.

How many in favor of the Sharia wouldn't rejoice at a return to the Caliphate, providing of course
that THEIR faction led it?

It is the past failure of Imperialist Islam that couldn't, and can't, be accepted by these
cultures, as you so eloquently argued. They have been trying to recapture its "golden years"
ever since they ended, rather than (as Mr. Peters would say) admit failure and move on.

If you could magically go back in time and edit the Imperialist edicts from the Koran,
these issues would have vanished, hence that's why I believe this is the core of the matter,
and hence that the label is correct. Remove the nostalgia for Empire, and belief in its
inevitability, and the house of nasty cards falls.

It puts its finger on the core of the problem.

2002-09-18T16:21:00.000-07:00

Our true enemy

Steven Den Beste very clearly points out at Who is our enemy? that our true enemy in this war is Imperialist Islam. The problem is that the Islamic Empire ceased being economically, militarily and culturally competitive with the West over 300 years ago, and can't accept that, so they lash out at the US, the pinnacle of Western success. He also links to Ralph Peters' Seven Signs of Non-Competitive States , which is an excellent analysis of the root causes of less developed nations' failure to be competitive with Western civilization in the modern world.

It's unfortunate in the extreme that this ideology is espoused in the Koran itself, what a nasty thread for Mohammed to weave into his re-write of the Bible that is the Koran. At least the Christian addendum to the Torah preached peace.

He says many things better than I can that I've believed for quite a while, but I think I can contribute a handy label for what he's grappling to put one on with the term Imperialist Islam.

If that label spreads, remember, you heard it here first.

2002-09-17T19:07:00.000-07:00

Geek media comes of age

I find it interesting that Instapundit lists Slashdot in his blogroll as a "Big Media" site. I guess we geeks have arrived now!
Bill Gates is the richest man on the planet and slashdot is recognized as part of the media establishment, who would've predicted that 20 years ago?

2002-09-16T21:01:00.000-07:00

OK, so I'm going to go back and add links to the last weeks posts, and thereby turn this into a full-fledged blog, otherwise, as pointed out by Instapundit, its just a pixelated op-ed page .

2002-09-14T16:48:00.000-07:00

The United States of Earth

An interesting thought I've had before, and have been having again lately, just got brought up by a comment in another blog. Why not open up statehood in the US to other countries? There is of course nothing to prohibit such a move, it's just not ever been tossed about much as a potential tool of US Hegemony.

Think about it, we already pay for most of the defense of Japan already, and making such mutually beneficial economic and defense relationships more explicit would solve a host of problems (while of course making new ones).

If you want our protection, petition for statehood. If we find that you have enough to contribute economically and otherwise, Congress would approve the application. That's how all of the United States after the original 13 entered the Union anyway (granted, after they were already territories of the US).

State laws already have an amazing amount of difference, Louisiana's legal system isn't even based on the English Common Law, but more on the Napolianic Code like most of the EU (and much of the rest of the world outside of the British Commonwealth) . So we already have at least some experience with vastly different Federal and State legal systems.

In the specific case of Japan, we already wrote their Constitution for them after WWII, and explicitly modelled it after ours. Why not full statehood in such cases? Sovereignty arguments are mostly moot, they are the most severe example of a "client state" that America has, we do not allow them the warmaking power that Sovereign nations normally possess.

2002-09-13T16:54:00.000-07:00

Why waste it as fuel?

Let's face it, the world will eventually run out of cheap crude oil. While many agricultural replacements for fuel uses (alcohol and biodiesel) are currently more expensive than petroleum for fuel use, synthetic replacements for crude oil's other industrial uses (plastics and pharmaceuticals primarily amoung them) are often much more expensive and difficult to fabricate.

Biodiesel currently costs less than twice petroleum diesel to produce, and that will only fall with increased production scale. We should horde our domestic petroleum reserves for future non-fuel industrial use, by phasing in biological fuels. Current economic players in the US need not lose out at all: gas and diesel distributors will still dominate that sector, and refiners will still be the ones blending and formulating fuel mixes. The only modification for a diesel burning vehicle required for it to burn biodiesel is to make sure all of its hoses and gaskets are made of synthetic rubber, and to add a simple fuel warming system to cars and trucks that operate in below freezing weather. As a bonus, all of the CO2 emissions are in a closed biological cycle. Give a nice tax break for biodiesel conversion and distribution, and give farmers subsidies for oil extraction and alcohol distillation equipment instead of to not farm, and it need not even cost more at the pump.

Then when the rest of the world is looking around wondering what to do when the oil runs out, we'll already be green for vehicle fuel, still have oil for plastics, and still have cheap gas.

That's a short, medium and long term win.

But of course Iraqi oil wouldn't hurt to buffer the transition.

2002-09-13T16:41:00.000-07:00

Put up or shut up

I just read the text to President Bush's speech before the UN yesterday. I haven't seen it yet, so I can't give any opinion of his delivery, but I think the text is masterful.
It challenges the UN to "put up or shut up" as it were.
Bravo to the President and his advisors, speech writers and editors, as that text adroitly walks a very fine line between many conflicting interests

2002-09-11T21:45:00.000-07:00

I don't believe in purely technological solutions to social problems, at least I haven't since I was 19. But the current American War on Terror is the first conflict to be covered by the blogosphere, and that is important. The American Revolution made extensive use of the printing press. The Civil War leveraged the telegraph. The World Wars of the Twentieth Century used the telephone, radio and film to devastating effect. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America. Public commentary via weblogs is helping keep America free in the face of the awful temptations to power offered by war.

2002-09-11T21:29:00.000-07:00

Why does all of this matter? Well, as you can see from the date on these initial posts to this Soapbox, it is as I type still the first anniversary of 9/11/2001. Our digital tools of speech will help keep us free. The Mullahs in Iran haven't figured that out yet, but the teenagers there have. The Chinese govt. knows it, hence the Great Firewall of China. But it is arguable whether that is working any better than the last Great Wall of China, at least at keeping out the barbarian hordes, or in this case their thoughts and images. I think the US Military should install wireless networks and give away cheap WebPads everywhere we liberate a suffering people, such as in Afganistan or (hopefully) Iraq. Make them compatible with eDinar and let them feel the cool breeze of free enterprise and open information.

2002-09-11T20:04:00.000-07:00

The initial research and development of the Internet was funded by the United States Department of Defense. Some in the Intelligence Community think that perhaps they wrought too well, and that now the genie is out of the bottle. Ah, but what better defense of Freedom Everywhere than an Electronic River of Speech?

2002-09-11T19:16:00.000-07:00

Yes, a Soapbox. Oh, we may call it a weblog, but it's really just a glorified soapbox. Just like in the Free Speach Area where I went to University, anyone can say ANYTHING they want to, and are free to be listened to or ignored by passersby.

Except this soapbox has the entire Internet as its sidewalk. That makes all the difference in the world.

2002-09-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, a Digital Soapbox!!