| Monday
January 26, 2004
This is one view:
I’m sorry, but that is absurd. You are saying that one
blemish is enough to end the US Republic? Then it died the day it was born,
because it extended participating citizenship to while males only. It
permitted slavery to continue for decades. These are not singular blemishes,
but vast and fundamental errors designed into your (imperfect) republic from
the very start. Lincoln, during the Civil War and FDR during WWII,
disregarded the Constitution in various ways. Lincoln, for example,
suspended habeas corpus among other things so ending the Republic, by your
implied definition; but he did not, he saved it.
In any case, your apparently perfectionist vision of
what constitutes a republic has never been achieved anywhere or anytime—
certainly not in Rome, which both as republic and empire subsisted on
slavery. You’re confusing perfection of intent with perfection of result.
Nothing human is ever perfect in result, hence by your own perfectionist
criterion, a republic would be impossible.
You’re continuing to generalise from the particular.
Don’t panic
James Mangles
On that I have
replied in View.
And we have
Dear Dr. Pournelle,
After reading the story on travel insider, I found
this in the local paper. I thought the contrast was interesting. Shouldn't
different stimuli elicit different reactions?
http://www.dallasnews.com/s/nationworld/
nationprint/012504cckktwnatsecurity.4e9be84d.html
What good are they? What did they take her into
custody for, pointing out how stupid the whole dog and pony show is?
The moral: If you get past the TSA with WMD, for
heaven's sake, don't tell anyone. and in all cases; kowtow.
Patrick Hoage
I think you have identified the moral
properly. The intent of the law is said to be to make us more secure, but
its effect is to make us use more gasoline because we drive rather than fly
and avoid airports.
And again it is
The Old
Issue.
============================================
Of course there is considerable
doubt that the incident of the diabetic abused
by TSA was true. I list a few doubters:
Jerry,
The TSA horror story from the Travel Insider Forum
that you referenced Saturday does not ring true to me...I am quite
skeptical.
I'm a diabetic, and can attest that TSA folks (clumsy
and irritating and ineffective as they may be) know how to recognize
diabetic medications. I'm a Type 2, and while a Type 1 (what they used to
call Juvenile Onset Diabetes) may be different, his tale of woe seems
unrealistic.
Given that he has remained anonymous, and that there
have been other similar unsubstantiated tales in that forum, which I read
occasionally, I think I'd withhold judgment on this one. I smell an aura of
troll about this tale.
While I am no fan of the TSA as it is functioning (why
can't they simply make up their mind how to screen shoes?), it has improved
somewhat since they got rid of the non-english speaking screeners that were
a regular feature at San Jose. Actually, I've not had a really painful
experience since the TSA boys took over. Certainly a costly bureaucracy
which we will pay for forever, but in my experience they are generally less
arrogant than we had before with contract screeners.
Regards,
Bill Beeman San Jose, CA
and
Jerry,
Regarding the story about the diabetic detained by the
TSA:
I refuse to believe this story without more concrete
supporting evidence. The fact that the story was posted anonymously raises
my suspicions - perhaps this individual was indeed hassled by the TSA, but
he may have left some salient parts of the story out.
We haven't gotten to the point where some good press
coverage won't protect the innocent from official retribution; there is
simply no reason for us to be reading this as an anonymous post on some
obscure web page if the facts are as he has laid them out.
In general I share your misgivings about the direction
the country is going, but there's no reason to get excited about every
unsubstantiated rumor, especially in an election year.
Eric Baumgartner
Agreed: I don't believe it without
further evidence. The horror is that we cannot simply say "The FBI wouldn't
act that way. It cannot possibly be true. Go troll elsewhere."
But:
Jerry
You said, "If this story is true, the Republic is
gone. Can it be true?"
I certainly find it credible. Think about the behavior
of the police chief in Peoria. Think about how postal service supervisors so
"manage" their employees that we all understand what "going postal" means.
Think about how angry everybody in the whole country has been getting.
Many issues that you talk about, that no one in our
legislature or in our executive branch will fix, are making people angry.
They listen to angry "shock jocks" and to Rush Limbaugh. And the ones who
are too dumb and surly to sublimate their anger, well they take it out on
the rest of us.
Don't append my name to this. If you publish it,
regular readers will recognize the style, but I won't be the target of any
retribution.
And finally Mr Woosley:
Let's review the bidding.
The supposed respondent was, in order of revelation:
(a) owner of an expensive new camera (b) in a
wheelchair (hum, at what point these days does a patient boarding in a
wheelchair have the personal chair colletect and taken to baggage and an
airline chair supplied?) (c) diabetic and travelling with clearly marked
medications (d) mistreated by TSA agents and ignored by regular police
security forces for two hours in a holding area (e) despite travelling with
clearly marked medications, his proteatations were ignored by all until he
went into diabetic shock. EMTs called and and he was revived but not left
under any other medical observation. (f) at this point, the FBI joins him
knowing he had been in diabetic shock and continue the mistreatment. (g) an
attempt was made to force him to sign paperwork acknowledging that his
Miranda rights had been read to him while clearly non compos mentos (h)
photophoiric (i) fingerprints collected AT AIRPORT and not at police station
(j) at this point we learn that the respondent was a physician with
identification. Claims said identification was presumed to be faked depsite
being positively identified by airline personnel. (k) claims also to have a
police department identification. (WHY?) (l) claims also to have a state of
New York explosives certification/license (WHY?) (m) and last, but not
least, this story is stuck on a web BBS and hasn't been picked up by any
news media.
Incidentally, he's writing from the JAX Hilton, so
he's apparently in Jacksonville, FL, but that is apparently his destination
airport; he doesn't mention the airport he departed from, which is the one
he should be identifying.
I may be wrong, but this story just screams HOAX at
me. I have trouble buying that any TSA official would be seriously
uncourteous to a handicapped passenger. Even if the superiors who were
called over to the secondary inspection station hadn't seen what was going
on, the whole incident would have been visible to the other 3 or 4 TSA
agents at that check point. But even stipulated that the TSA contact
happened as stated, I've never known of an FBI agent who would be
discourteous to an obviously nondangerous person, even if that person is a
suspect. Or say "You're ID is obviously phony" instead of, "We're sorry,
sir, but we DO have to verify all identification." And this set of
credentials is completely not credible. Can there be more than one diabetic,
photophoric, wheelchair bound physician who has retained an active explosive
license in the US? Can there be even one?
Jim Woosley
As I say, I tend to doubt the
authenticity of that particular story. I do not doubt the trend it points
to.
AND SEE BELOW on
the source of the story
But:
Jerry
I don't know if the story about the diabetic man is
true or not. I've heard that story or one like it before. Perhaps it was the
same man; perhaps not. I ask myself, though, why don't politicians respond?
Why don't the CEO's of US airlines respond? They must know that fear of the
"monsters at the gates" is keeping a number of people from flying.
I think it is the George H. W. Bush effect. Remember
when George-1 encountered the barcode scanner and didn't know what it was?
People shopped for him in those days, and had for a long time. Imagine--the
President and Vice President of the US treated like royalty. It's like that
for Senators, Congressmen, Governors and airline executives.
VIP's never worry about getting harassed by the TSA,
so they don't know what an issue it is. VIP's don't worry about getting
threatened with 15 years in prison for a mild joke. They don't get it.
My prediction: the first man to wake up and make an
issue of this, to promise to make the TSA less abusive, that man will win
the Presidency.
I suppose it would be too much to expect him to look
at the BATF and FBI while he is at it, but the TSA would make a fine
political issue. The question is, are any of the dunderheads in office
and/or aspiring to office aware enough to see the issue?
Ed
And on that I can agree entirely. And
this ought to be enough on this one for a while.
=
On the young lady
who made a joke:
At the risk of running this particular subject into
the ground I was able to find out some more information; this was a joke and
it seems like all the TSA people involved realized that it was. If that is
truly the case then the authorities definitely over-reacted. It dovetails
with another issue you have discussed on your site; the large number of laws
on the books.
On the one hand there are way too many laws; enough to
make anybody a lawbreaker if the authorities are being picky enough. On the
other hand how would you codify a response to somebody that makes a joke
about a bomb in a suitcase at an airport. It would be nice to be able to
rely on common sense on the part of the authorities but not very realistic.
Or we can pass a law that makes a joke like this a misdemeanor and not a
felony, but then we have another law to add to the bookshelves of existing
laws.
I am not trying to be sarcastic here, I really am
curious if you see a solution that solves both parts of the issue.
Regards Ed Campbell
You say it well, but I believe the
answer is inherent in the way you pose the problem.
==========================================================
On the Costs of
Iraq
Subject: Cochrane and
the costs of Iraq
Dr. Pournelle: $50 to $60 billion a year seems like a
huge amount of money for incremental costs of military occupation (not
counting reconstruction costs). Assuming things like salaries, benefits, the
price of existing equipment (or equipment we would have procured anyway),
and all the other overhead of a "standing Army/Navy/Air Force" isn't
included, what the heck are we spending $5 billion a month on? Shipping MREs
and ammo all the way to Iraq? Combat pay? New vehicles and helicopters to
replace the ones that get blown up? We aren't expending cruise missiles. We
aren't flying hundreds of sorties off aircraft carriers. We aren't dropping
hundreds of fancy bombs. Where is that money actually going? I honestly
can't think of any incremental costs that should account for that much
money, and would appreciate being clued in by people who know more about
this than I do. "Poorly accounted for" seems to me to be the understatement
of the year.
Tom Brosz
=But see below
==========================
Where are the
Weapons of Mass Destruction?
Subject: I believe this to be the most likely
scenario.
from
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/26/
international/middleeast/26KAY.html?hp=&pagewanted=all&position=
-----
From interviews with Iraqi scientists and other
sources, he said, his team learned that sometime around 1997 and 1998, Iraq
plunged into what he called a "vortex of corruption," when government
activities began to spin out of control because an increasingly isolated and
fantasy-riven Saddam Hussein had insisted on personally authorizing major
projects without input from others.
After the onset of this "dark ages," Dr. Kay said,
Iraqi scientists realized they could go directly to Mr. Hussein and present
fanciful plans for weapons programs, and receive approval and large amounts
of money. Whatever was left of an effective weapons capability, he said, was
largely subsumed into corrupt money-raising schemes by scientists skilled in
the arts of lying and surviving in a fevered police state.
"The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a
corrupted process," Dr. Kay said. "The regime was no longer in control; it
was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not
vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs."
In interviews after he was captured, Tariq Aziz, the
former deputy prime minister, told Dr. Kay that Mr. Hussein had become
increasingly divorced from reality during the last two years of his rule.
Mr. Hussein would send Mr. Aziz manuscripts of novels he was writing, even
as the American-led coalition was gearing up for war, Dr. Kay said.
-------- Roland Dobbins
Saddam thought he had some...
On the Real State
of the Union:
Because with the exception of a few sites, yours among
them, it really doesn't do my blood pressure any good. With apologies to
Gibbon, my latest candidates to document the Decline and Fall of the United
States:
We have a Scottish family who will likely be denied a
visa due to 2 8-year-old parking tickets: <
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=94802004 >
Man, do I feel safer. No more Scottish terrorists can
get into the US.
Next we have an instance of a house sold for failure
to pay, not property taxes, but, wait for it...homeowner's association dues
totaling $120. Appraised value of $258,000, sold for $70,000. And yes, it is
sold, and the new owner wants the old ones out. <
http://www.sacbee.com/content/news/story/8153150p-9084793c.html >
And I thought the last one I sent, about the farm that
was sold in spite of attempts to pay the property taxes was bad. Oh, and did
I mention that the "late charges" and "collections fees" have ballooned the
original debt to $1,952 in basically a year? I'll leave the interest rate
calc as an exercise for the reader.
Now here is a bit of good news about MikeRoweSoft: <
http://www.canada.com/vancouver/theprovince/
story.asp?id=7EDC54B6-19FB-43D0-8692-226487D3EB64 >
Now, I think it's great that this is being settled in
a fairly reasonable manner (well, at least after Microsoft--no relation--was
held up to considerable public ridicule. But it points up a problem with
trademarks in the US--if one is not legally vicious in defending a
trademark, it's very easy to lose it. Remember, Aspirin is a brand name in
some countries, but not here.
For the record, all of these links came via WorldNet
Daily (<
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/ >.
As a possibly interesting sociological note, I've been
telling these stories my Dad, a WWII vet who doesn't "do" the Internet. His
best comment is "This isn't the country I fought for."
-------- Bill Seward, KG4SAQ http://web.northstate.net/~seward
Well I expected Microsoft to figure
out that it wasn't worth the fight. The homeowner story is local, upsetting
but endurable. And don't you feel safer knowing them scots scofflaws won't
be coming here?
==================================
The Chicken Flu
Jerry,
Would some scientist tell us how humans seem to be
getting the Chicken influenza virus? The news stories do not say just how it
is being transmitted.
So, is it from handling a live bird with feathers and
guts?
Is it from eating meat? Is it from eating eggs?
Is it from mouth to beak contact?
I am certainly willing to give up the first and last
method, but wish to hold out as long as possible on the middle two!
Yours,
Bruce Kebbekus Oak Harbor, WA
I have my opinions but I prefer facts:
anyone KNOW? No speculations, please. (And see below)
========================
Is this the
smoking gun?
This one is going to leave some people VERY
embarrassed.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4043576/
It seems that the US Army just captured a high-ranking
al-Qaida member *AND* the #2 Ansal al Islam member.
In Iraq.
Where there wasn't supposed to be any al-Qaida
activity.
With any luck, these two "gentlemen" (and I use the
term very loosely, as they say) will be persuaded to, in the vernacular,
sing like canaries.
--John R. Strohm
And when did they arrive?
Also see below
===============================
Vigilante War on Spam
In the best American business tradition, the high-tech industry isn't
waiting around to see how effective the new
national anti-spam law proves to be. Instead, they're sharing
their resources to try to find new ways to get rid of spam.
The most recent example is the ISP Messaging Anti-Abuse Working
Group, known as
MAAWG. Founded earlier this month and led by e-mail
software provider
OpenWave Systems Inc., the group will devote its time and
resources to coming up with legal and technological ways to block spam.
Though the problem is vast and decentralized, the cast of characters
suggests that some top tech minds will be hard at work here; participating
companies include Adelphia Communications, Bell Canada,
BellSouth and Cox Communications.
Its goals center around the idea of developing standard practices and
an ISP code of conduct and list of best practices that would reduce e-mail
abuse, not only for spam but for denial-of-service attacks, worms and
viruses and other "undesired content."
Openwave executive Omar Tellez said that the motive stems from
the companies' desires to block spam without paying exorbitantly for the
server space that many kinds of spam blocking software require to analyze
the content of incoming e-mail.
The MAAWG approach might wind up being eclipsed, however. Heavyweight
e-mail competitors Microsoft, Yahoo and America Online
announced a collaboration to exterminate the spam problem last spring and
say they are close to announcing the details of their "trusted sender"
initiative. The idea is to devise a caller ID-style system that would let
people's e-mail accounts accept legitimate bulk e-mail (like this tech
policy e-letter for example) while turning away messages of unknown
origin.
The "trusted sender" idea is not new -- Yahoo and the
Email Service Provider Coalition are making their own
explorations in this area.
And Microsoft researchers are pondering whether bulk mailers should be
required to make tiny payments for every mail sent. Microsoft in a
historical frame of mind calls it the
Penny Black Project. Then there's the similar "hashcash"
experiment that affixes a virtual stamp to every e-mail that a
discriminating recipient can trust. It's something spammers can use as
much as any other e-mail sender, but theoretically would slow their
operation down so much that it would cripple their computer hardware in a
mass mailing.
A number of spam experts see these methods as preferable to the spam "blacklists,"
compilations of Internet addresses that are known to be spam sources.
Blacklists are effective spam blockers, but if someone ends up on one of
them by accident it's virtually impossible to get back off.
One of the reasons that technology companies are banding together this
way is because of mounting evidence that legal remedies won't cure the
diease, said Ray Everett-Church, counsel for the
Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email.
"People were waiting to see Congress step up to bat. They took their
swing and hit a foul ball. Now it's up to those who have been dealing with
the spam issue thus far to redouble their efforts and to figure out what
more they can do, because the home run they were hoping Congress might hit
didn't materialize," Everett-Church said.
-- By
David McGuire, washingtonpost.com Staff Writer
On the Rule of
Law
Subject: A Nation Article in Support of Martha Stewart
Who would have believed...
<
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20040209&s=henwood >
-- Harry Erwin, PhD, Senior Lecturer of Computing,
University of Sunderland. Computational neuroscientist modeling bat
bioacoustics and behavior. http://osiris.sunderland.ac.uk/~cs0her
In fact who would have believed that
she is to be prosecuted over something that wasn't a crime to begin with?
But deference to the authorities is important and if they can bring her
down, the intimidation factor is very great, and they can expect more
docility in future. As they got after Waco.
=============================
Hardball tactics backfire on Boeing
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?
tmpl=story&cid=2027&ncid=2027&e=1&u=/chitrib_ts/
20040126/ts_chicagotrib/hardballtacticsbackfireonboeing
Mitch Daniels, then President Bush (news - web
sites)'s budget director and now the Republican candidate for Indiana
governor, thought the tanker deal violated government accounting rules.
"The central problem was that the tankers were
not on [the] Defense Department's wish list until somebody [at Boeing] came
up with this idea," an administration source said.
Faced with Daniels' objections, Boeing did what
only a handful of American businesses can do: It went over Daniels' head and
straight to Bush. Through a series of meetings among the president and his
staff and key members of Congress--including House Speaker Dennis Hastert
(R-Ill.)--Boeing applied enough pressure at the top to push its contract
through in May.
R
Ah well. Business as usual.
TOP
CURRENT
VIEW Monday |
CLICK HERE for
a Special Request. 
