Politics

Politically, I’m very liberal — about as far left as one can go without sliding into Libertarianism.

This CBDPTA bill is scary

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Just in case folks haven’t figured out how sweeping the Hollings-Feinstein bill, aka CBDTPA is, well, keep reading.

The CBDTPA says that if I were to write and sell this BASIC program…

10 INPUT A$
20 PRINT A$

…after the regulations take effect, I would be guilty of a federal felony. That’s up to five years in prison and up to a $500,000 fine. Distributing my two-line application without charging for it, either via handing out floppies or by posting it on a website would be at least a civil offense and, depending on the circumstances, a crime as well.

It’s no joke. CBDTPA regulates ‘any hardware or software that reproduces copyrighted works in digital form.’ My program above does that, especially if my BASIC interpreter permits arbitrarily long strings.

— Declan McCullagh, in ‘CBDTPA bans everything from two-line BASIC programs to PCs’

The rest of the article is well worth reading, also. This bill is just plain scary.

I hate your politics!

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Yeah, well I hate your politics, too! Beautifully written, very funny, and very true.

Liberals: …Liberals are politically able to have all sorts of freaky mammal sex but typically don’t; good liberal foreplay is a permission slip and three layers of impermeable barriers. The only vaguely liberal person we know of who seemed to enjoy sex in the last 30 years is Clinton, and look what he got out of it….

Conservatives: …Conservatives don’t actually bother to spend time with people who are not conservative, and thus become confused and irritable when people disagree with them; fundamentally can’t see how that’s even possible, which shows an almost charming intellectual naivete….

Libertarians: …Never got over the fact they weren’t the illegitimate children of Robert Heinlein and Ayn Rand; currently punishing the rest of us for it…. Blissfully clueless that Libertarianism is just great as long as it doesn’t actually involve real live humans….

The American brand

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Having conflicting views about the U.S. — admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards — doesn’t mean you are ‘mixed up,’ to use Mr Olins’ phrase, it means you have been paying attention.

— Naomi Klein, in an article on the branding of America, something that in many ways has far too many overtones of Wag the Dog for me to be entirely comfortable with.

If we can’t torture here…

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This world just gets more and more frightening all the time.

The US has been secretly sending prisoners suspected of al-Qaida connections to countries where torture during interrogation is legal, according to US diplomatic and intelligence sources. Prisoners moved to such countries as Egypt and Jordan can be subjected to torture and threats to their families to extract information sought by the US in the wake of the September 11 attacks.

Afghanistan tactics

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Didn’t we learn anything from the years the Russians spent trying to fight in Afghanistan? Apparently not.

Hundreds of American troops were pulled out of the ground battle with al-Qaeda forces because they failed to adapt to the guerrilla tactics required for fighting in the mountains, according to their Afghan allies.

(Addendum: the MetaFilter comments thread for this article has some good points, if you can dig through the partisian bickering.)

Good mileage? Who needs it?

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Well, so much for getting cars with better mileage and less dependence on oil and gasoline.

The Senate yesterday defeated an effort to increase fuel efficiency standards for cars, sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks by 50 percent over 13 years, voting instead for a measure — backed by the auto industry — that would give the Bush administration two years to develop its own mileage rules…. Yesterday’s Senate action — which included passage of a measure to exempt pickup trucks from any new fuel economy standards — followed an intensive lobbying and advertising campaign by the auto industry.