Suffer the Children

For a perfect example of why no compassionate person should ever consider giving fiscal, moral, politcal, legal, or even rhetorical support to the Palestinian cause, just read this, and consider that the Palestinians believe that Israeli children are legitimate "military" targets, because they could one day grow up to serve in the Israeli Army.

Spirit of Radio

The December 2003 issue of Harpers has an article (Big World: How Clear Channel programs America, by Jeff Sharlet, not apparently available on line) about Clear Channel's domination of the radio and concert venue markets. I heard an interview with Mr. Sharlet on the Glenn Mitchell show on KERA, the Dallas NPR affiliate. The central thesis of the article, judging from online references and the interview I heard, seems to be that Clear Channel dominates the radio and live music venue booking markets, and is therefore ipso facto bad in some undefined way. Actually, the way in which Clear Channel is bad is defined, as a lessening of Democracy (you can hear the capital letter in the author's voice) brought about by Clear Channel's restricting the variety of entertainment and commentary available. Since this is done over "public" airwaves, democracy has failed to provide a variety of opinions. Since Clear Channel is so dominant, and it's so expensive to compete with them, capitalism has failed to counter this "monopoly". This represents a horrible misunderstanding of both democracy and capitalism.

As an aside, before launching into the main point I'd like to make, I'd just like to point out how the way I came to know about this article, and the methods I used to research it, themselves belie the claim: none of these sources involved Clear Channel in any editorial or direct financial sense.

Democracy in its modern connotation is not about making decisions directly by the vote of the majority, but about having representation or a direct say in what happens to and around you. In the context of entertainment (music, in this case), I would have to say that the closest approximation to this concept of democracy would be having a wide range of choices from which to select the entertainment that appeals to you. Such a choice is available. I do not get any of my entertainment through Clear Channel. Music is available not only over Clear Channel stations, but by buying music (I generally use the Apple Music Store through iTunes, but sometimes buy CDs locally as well), listening to non-Clear Channel radio stations (of which there are admittedly not many in most large markets), listening to samples online and buying those which appeal to you, or going to a local club (most of which are not, in fact, controlled by Clear Channel).

The fact that consumers of music do not generally chose to use those alternatives does not mean that democracy has failed, but that consumers are content - possibly even happy - with the product that Clear Channel provides. If not (as in my case), they can make the effort to go elsewhere. Clear Channel has not removed alternatives; they have merely made it easier to get Clear Channel-provided content than content provided by alternative methods. Mr. Sharlet appears to think that enforced diversity, against the expressed wishes of the majority, constitutes democracy. I disagree.

Mr. Sharlet apparently also has little understanding of how capitalism works. Clear Channel is not controlling the markets that it is simply because consumers are too stupid or lazy to go elsewhere. It is controlling the markets that it controls because consumers by and large want the product that Clear Channel offers. Mr. Sharlet, in the interview, himself noted how many good concerts he had attended at Clear Channel venues, and spoke of songs that Clear Channel played because people wanted to hear them, that he also liked. Apparently, he was mostly unhappy with the frequency with which Clear Channel programmed such songs, and the number of formats on which they program them.

I despise the centralization, dumbing down, and lack of choice on Clear Channel's stations - so I don't listen to them. Others like the way that Clear Channel programs - or at least are not so annoyed that they consistently seek out alternatives. If they were, Clear Channel would have two alternatives: change the way that they program, or accept that their market share would shrink, possibly to a level insufficient to sustain Clear Channel as a profitable company.

We have two political parties for much the same reason: political parties operate in a market where the currency is votes. Voters will generally swing back and forth between the two parties, such that each is maintained near 50% of the power base. In part, this is due to an ingrained tendency to be suspicious of too much concentration of power, but in part, too, this oscillation is due to the shifting policies of the political parties themselves, as their search for power impels them to get more votes, which in turn impels them to find policies that are more to voters' liking. However, either political party could find themselves in a distinct minority position overnight, should they move too far from the center of mass of the voters' collective opinion. So, too, could Clear Channel cease to exist, should they fail to stay near the center of music consumers' tastes.

If we are to maintain an Enlightenment society, we must maintain our trust in the ability of people to make decisions in their best interests. While the government should restrain any monopoly (including of political power) from being forcefully maintained, we as citizens (and as consumers of various goods) should be very wary of any attempts to force us to do things we don't prefer, simply because some person or organization decides it's good for us. Diversity is necessary in both politics and entertainment, but Mr. Sharlet's attitudes about the intelligence of the average person (if widely held) are more damaging to that diversity than anything Clear Channel can do.

Automatic Updates of Threat Level

Here is a simple perl script I wrote to update the threat level in the right-hand sidebar. It is in perl, and should work just fine on NT machines as well as on UNIX systems, so long as perl 5.004 or better is installed. Feel free to steal it.

This requires you to have a graphics file for each of the threat levels. It reads the DHS website to get the threat level, then copies the appropriate graphic. I have this scheduled to check once per hour, but you can schedule it as you like. (Note that this doesn't change your webpage - you still have to have a reference on the webpage to display the current threat level image file.)


#!/usr/bin/perl -w

# 2003 by Jeff Medcalf, http://www.caerdroia.org/oldblog/

# This script detects the current threat level by scanning the DHS site, and
# updates the current threat graphic accordingly. This graphic can then be
# included in web pages as an image.

use LWP::UserAgent;
use File::Copy;

%threatgraphics=(
'severe' => '/var/www/images/hs/dhs-advisory-severe.gif',
'high' => '/var/www/images/hs/dhs-advisory-high.gif',
'elevated' => '/var/www/images/hs/dhs-advisory-elevated.gif',
'guarded' => '/var/www/images/hs/dhs-advisory-guarded.gif',
'low' => '/var/www/images/hs/dhs-advisory-low.gif',
);

$currentgraphic='/var/www/images/hs/threatlevel.gif';

$dhswebsite='http://www.dhs.gov/dhspublic/index.jsp';

$ua=LWP::UserAgent->new;
$ua->agent('getthreatlevel/1.0');

# get the DHS home page
$response=$ua->get($dhswebsite);

# process it to determine the threat level
if ($response->is_success)
{
$response->content =~ /src=.\/dhs\/images\/dhs-advisory-(.*?)\.gif./;
$level=$1;
}
else
{
die "failed to get DHS website at $dhswebsite\n";
}

# update the graphic
copy ($threatgraphics{$level},$currentgraphic)
or die "could not copy $threatgraphics{$level} to $currentgraphic\n";

The "Ownership Society"

At first sight, this is promising. If the government is going to encourage certain behaviors by policy, it should do so directly.

For example, health insurance is currently tax-deductible - for companies. Were that deduction given to individuals instead, it would completely reshape the health care debate. For example health care portability and the problem of pre-existing conditions would be solved. Incomes would go up, as businesses stopped providing health benefits, and it is likely that not all of that increase would be absorbed by personal insurance costs at least for many workers. The debate over HMOs and such would be vastly different when people were voluntarily choosing who would provide them health care.

If done right, the idea of government giving options to people, rather than to companies (and rather than giving mandates to people) could be a great improvement. I am interested in seeing the proposal.

UPDATE (12/23): Forgot a space in the link tag, so no link. Fixed now.

Saddam and Iraqi Debt

Donald Sensing has an interesting post in which he asserts that the important part of trying Saddam is to bring out the truth of his crimes, and of those who supported him, in order to allow Iraq to move on from their past.

I concur, but I think that there may be a further point to such a trial: should Iraq be able, via such a trial, to fix the amounts or proportions of debt owed to foreign countries in connection with crimes against Iraq, Iran, Kuwait and humanity generally, such amounts or proportions of debt could simply be declared odious and thus invalid. This, too, would help Iraq in moving on to a better future.

LotR Reaction

If you don't want spoilers, don't read this. However, this excerpt (no horrible spoilers, I think) sums up my reaction to the worst part of the film:

VICINITY OF CIRITH UNGOL
GOLLUM: Dead hobbitses...(mutter mutter)...won't be long now...(mutter mutter)...will try wearing Ring on toe this time; yes, precious; very beautiful...
SAM: Hey! I heard that!
FRODO: Heard what?
GOLLUM: Nothing, Master! Fat hobbit wants Ring; yes, Master.
SAM: I do not!
FRODO: I think maybe you do. Gollum wouldn't lie to me, after all.
SAM: He's trying to kill us! We're walking straight into a trap. I'm not going one step further.
FRODO: Leave, then. I'm sick of your paranoid delusions anyhow.
SAM: But I...
FRODO: Go on - get out of here. Good riddance.
SAM: But you...
FRODO: Have a nice death.
FRODO stomps off. SAM stays behind, weeping piteously.
PEOPLE WHO HAVE READ THE BOOK: ...the f**k??

CREEPY CAVE
FRODO gets tangled in a gigantic spider-web.
FRODO: Egads! Does this mean a gigantic spider lives here?
GOLLUM: Ha ha! Smeagol tricked you, ssstupid hobbit! Did Master know "gullible" was not in dictionary?
FRODO: Oh, dear. Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to send Sam away.
AUDIENCE: Duh!
SHELOB appears and starts pounding down the tunnel. FRODO lights up the star-glass and gives us an all-too-clear look at her.
ARACHNOPHOBES IN AUDIENCE: Oh...dear...God.
FRODO cuts himself loose and runs like hell - but, being FRODO, falls down. GOLLUM jumps on him.
GOLLUM: Jussst kidding about "ssstupid" comment! Nice master! Hold still so spider can eat you, yes yes.
FRODO: I have a different plan, actually.
FRODO flings GOLLUM down an abyss.
PEOPLE WHO HAVE THE BOOK: You know, it's interesting: even though I've read the book, I have no idea what's going on.

(Actually, it's a great film. They just annoyed me in a few places.)

Three Visions

Wretchard of Belmont Club has two exceptional entries that, taken together, give a glimpse of the shape of political and foreign policy argument for perhaps the next fifty years.

In The Common Law of Nations, Wretchard examines the epemeral support for the US after the 9/11 attacks. This support, both in its shallowness and in its hasty withdrawal, is due to the false hope of the Left saw this as a natural way for the US to turn over control of its power to the UN (and particularly, to France and Germany):

As that dominance grew in the last decade of the 20th century, the potential of harnessing American might to the bidding of the "international community" became irresistible to the globalists. Under the model that they tried to construct, sole "legitimacy" would be vested in the world government; i.e. the United Nations, thus acquiring the exclusive lawful use of the US armed forces. As the sole civil authority, the "international community" could constitute a posse, consisting almost entirely of American arms, for whatever purposes they deemed lawful.

The curious antipathy of the Germany and France towards unilateral American action following September 11 was driven not by a sudden revulsion for American culture, but by the loss of something they deeply coveted: the means to exercise supranational police power under the aegis of international treaties. In the days following Osama Bin Laden's attack on New York, hopes ran high in Paris, Berlin and Moscow, that America in her grief would deposit her strength in the hands of the "international community" who, thus armed, promised to put a stop to terrorism and uproot its causes.  To provide the violins, the capitals of Europe expressed the utmost sympathy for the American loss and deluged embassies with flowers and letters of support. "We are all Americans now". For a moment, matters hung on edge, the most critical instant in modern history. Then the haze passed, and America shook the expectant, extended hand and said "I'll take care of it myself". The response was immediate and incandescent. The internationalists rounded on America with as much hatred as the sympathy they had professed mere moments before.

In The Postwar World, Wretchard looks at the need for a new world order from a different light:

t seems clear that any successor institution to the United Nations must be designed for meaningful action rather than intentional paralysis, within a framework of checks and balances. It must come to terms with the single most salient reality of the postwar world: the de facto supranational police power of the United States. The existence of this vast power is a temptation to create a world government, which is for the first time in history feasible, and for that reason utterly to be shunned. Instead of using it directly, which would be corrupting, international institutions should promote the spread of freedom and civil society, exploiting the historical opportunity of the existence of a power that provides a lower bound on the misbehavior and rapacity of rulers.

This opportunity for freedom has come before on a smaller scale, at Runnymede and Philadelphia. Not upon the promise of government but on the absence of tyranny. The world does not need a new framework of treaties, least of all a world government, but the freedom to prosper as nations on a planet in which everything except oppression is permitted. For it is self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with unalienable Rights, that the only excuse for government is to secure these rights and that these words can be translated into every living tongue.

It seems clear to me that there are three competing visions right now for ordering the world.

In the first vision, Transnational Progressivism, nation-states are outmoded. Group identity is the only important identity, with individual and national identities suppressed in favor of a transnational identity, under the control of a global dictatorship of Leftist "vanguard" activists. (It's not phrased this way, of course, but that's the logical end state of an agenda which removes government accountability from the governed, and reposes it in an unaccountable body whose power base and staff are both drawn from the Leftists and Transnationalist cadres.)

The second vision, global Islamism, is remarkably similar in end state to Transnational Progressivism, differing primarily in that the governing body would be fundamentalist Islamic clerics (as opposed to the UN, staffed by a Leftist elite) and the governing law would be Sha'ria (as opposed to "international law" as interpreted by the Transnational Progressivists). The other major difference is that the Islamists believe violence is the first and natural resort in the battle to bring this about, while the Transnational Progressives are far more willing to try to persuade (though they are certainly willing to resort to violence when necessary, and usually by proxy, direct violence having failed during the Cold War).

It appears that each of these two groups is currently trying to subvert the other. Transnational Progressives are hoping the Islamists and other tyrants bring about conditions where the powerful nations of the world turn sovereignty over to them (the Transnationals) in frustration. In turn, the Islamists see the Transnationals as a force to weaken the Western will to fight, as another weapon to be manipulated and weakness to be exploited. This is why you will frequently find groups like International A.N.S.W.E.R. (Communist front) aligned with groups like CAIR (Islamist front) in pushing "anti-war" demonstrations.

The third vision for a post-Cold War international order is what I will term, for lack of a better term, the "League of Free Nations" vision. In this vision, the nations of the world which are fundamentally free (which remarkably align closely with the "Coalition of the Willing" working together in Iraq) will band together in a free trade and mutual self-defense organization, replacing the UN. Such a League would be a free association of nations, and would work towards expanding democracy and free-market economics to the rest of the world. I wrote about such an organization here, but others have explained the same concept more eloquently.

I think that it's up in the air right now. Whether or not we in the post-Enlightenment West will be able to preserve those values in the face of challenges from within and without is not certain. I'd say that the odds are on our side, though, as long as the leaders of the West remain active in their unflinching support of freedom.

Steven Den Beste appears to be thinking along the same lines as Belmont Club.

If You're Not Worried Yet...

Dan Darling at Winds of Change has a post examining some of the war on terror stories that are currently going by under the radar. Some of this was new to me, and some not. Much of it is pretty scary, in that these stories form part of a tapestry, and indicate how much unravelling we will have to do (and how difficult that will be) to eliminate the terror networks.

I suppose what concerns me most - what has most concerned me for a while - is the continuing tendency to treat terrorists as criminals. Take this story, for example. Once we identify these targets, we need to go after them. Unless there's some intelligence value we are getting from them, we should be taking out terrorist financial nodes, just like we're taking out operational terrorist assets.

At some point, we have to start killing the enemy in depth, instead of just on the battlefield.

We'll Get Right on That

Howard Dean, Wesley Clark and other Democrat candidates for President claim that we should turn Iraq over to the UN ("internationalize" the situation, they usually phrase it, as if there weren't a dozen countries with troops on the ground in Iraq). Yeah, we'll get right on that.

Heh heh heh

Before going to see Return of the King, it might be wise to keep in mind these handly tips from Instant Karma:

1. Stand up halfway through the movie and yell loudly, "Wait... where the hell is Harry Potter?"
2. Block the entrance to the theater while screaming: "YOU SHALL NOT PASS!" - After the movie,
say "Lucas could have done it better."
...
5. Point and laugh whenever someone dies.
...
9. At the end, complain that Gollum was offensive to Ethiopians
...
11. When Shelob appears, pinch the guy in front of you on the back of the neck.
12. Dress up as old ladies and reenact "The Battle of Helms Deep" Monty Python style.
...
15. In The Two Towers when the Ents decide to march to war, stand up and shout "RUN FOREST, RUN!"
...
19. Start an Orc sing-a-long.
20. Come to the premiere dressed as Frankenfurter and wander around looking terribly confused.

OK, on point 20, you might go unnoticed.

Requires More Thought

Pejman had a link to an "ethical philosophy selector." Here's how I came out:

1. John Stuart Mill   (100%)  
   
2. Kant   (93%)  
   
3. Epicureans   (90%)  
   
4. Jeremy Bentham   (78%)  
   
5. Jean-Paul Sartre   (77%)  
   
6. Prescriptivism   (65%)  
   
7. Ayn Rand   (64%)  
   
8. Thomas Hobbes   (60%)  
   
9. David Hume   (54%)  
   
10. Nietzsche   (54%)  
    
11. Spinoza   (53%)  
    
12. Cynics   (42%)  
    
13. Nel Noddings   (42%)  
    
14. Aquinas   (41%)  
    
15. Aristotle   (41%)  
    
16. Stoics   (39%)  
    
17. Ockham   (29%)  
    
18. St. Augustine   (18%)
    
19. Plato   (16%)
    

I'm not sure I agree completely with the rankings (Hobbes is too low, for example), but this clearly indicates that I need to read more philosophy in any case.

Two Excellent Articles

Michael Crichton examines environmentalism as religion:

Today, one of the most powerful religions in the Western World is environmentalism. Environmentalism seems to be the religion of choice for urban atheists. Why do I say it's a religion? Well, just look at the beliefs. If you look carefully, you see that environmentalism is in fact a perfect 21st century remapping of traditional Judeo-Christian beliefs and myths.

There's an initial Eden, a paradise, a state of grace and unity with nature, there's a fall from grace into a state of pollution as a result of eating from the tree of knowledge, and as a result of our actions there is a judgment day coming for us all. We are all energy sinners, doomed to die, unless we seek salvation, which is now called sustainability. Sustainability is salvation in the church of the environment. Just as organic food is its communion, that pesticide-free wafer that the right people with the right beliefs, imbibe.

Eden, the fall of man, the loss of grace, the coming doomsday---these are deeply held mythic structures. They are profoundly conservative beliefs. They may even be hard-wired in the brain, for all I know. I certainly don't want to talk anybody out of them, as I don't want to talk anybody out of a belief that Jesus Christ is the son of God who rose from the dead. But the reason I don't want to talk anybody out of these beliefs is that I know that I can't talk anybody out of them. These are not facts that can be argued. These are issues of faith.

And so it is, sadly, with environmentalism. Increasingly it seems facts aren't necessary, because the tenets of environmentalism are all about belief. It's about whether you are going to be a sinner, or saved. Whether you are going to be one of the people on the side of salvation, or on the side of doom. Whether you are going to be one of us, or one of them.

Meanwhile, Orson Scott Card questions whether Democrats can rise above domestic politics even when it comes to national survival:

Watching the primary campaigns among this year's pathetic crop of Democratic candidates, I can't help but think that their campaigns would be vastly improved if they would only rise to the level of "Death to the Republicans."

Instead, their platforms range from Howard Dean's "Bush is the devil" to everybody else's "I'll make you rich, and Bush is quite similar to the devil." Since President Bush is quite plainly not the devil, one wonders why anyone in the Democratic Party thinks this ploy will play with the general public.

There are Democrats, like me, who think it will not play, and should not play, and who are waiting in the wings until after the coming electoral debacle in order to try to remake the party into something more resembling America.

But then I watch the steady campaign of the national news media to try to win this for the Democrats, and I wonder. Could this insane, self-destructive, extremist-dominated party actually win the presidency? It might--because the media are trying as hard as they can to pound home the message that the Bush presidency is a failure--even though by every rational measure it is not.

And the most vile part of this campaign against Mr. Bush is that the terrorist war is being used as a tool to try to defeat him--which means that if Mr. Bush does not win, we will certainly lose the war. Indeed, the anti-Bush campaign threatens to undermine our war effort, give encouragement to our enemies, and cost American lives during the long year of campaigning that lies ahead of us.

Osama bin Laden's military strategy is: If you make a war cost enough, Americans will give up and go home. Now, bin Laden isn't actually all that bright; his campaign to make us go home is in fact what brought us into Afghanistan and Iraq. But he's still telling his followers: Keep killing Americans and eventually, antigovernment factions within the United States will choose to give up the struggle.

It's what happened in Somalia, isn't it? And it's what happened in Vietnam, too.

Hat tip for both: Porphyrogenitus.

I think it's sad that the Democrats are rapidly becoming the CPUSA, reincarnated, with extra spicy anti-semitism thrown in. And really, with the stand the Democrats have taken on the war, the only way to ensure that you'll be able to vote for a Liberal in the future is to vote for a conservative today. (Actually, the prominent "conservatives" in the US are not really very conservative in any case.) What a terrible ruin the party of Truman and JFK has become.

Guess we Won't be Moving to Cleburne

Not that there was much danger of it anyway, but this is certainly a bad choice of priorities on the part of the Cleburne Police Department.

Credit and Credibility

Steven Den Beste has a post on "who's next" in the war on terror. His point, in very brief overview, is that we are fighting a war of ideals and ideas, not guns and bombs, and that bringing representative free-market self governance (he doesn't use those exact words) to Iraq is a larger threat to terror-supporting nations than is the possibility of our use of force.

By and large, I agree. Barbie and MTV will be bigger weapons than JDAMs and the 4ID, in the long term. But I do feel that we need to conquer more than just Iraq, and soon. If we don't, we may win the war while setting up the next.

It is not sufficient for Arab and Muslim nations to reform, though it is necessary. It is also necessary for at least the largest of the Arab and Muslim nations in the Mid-East (Iraq, Iran, possibly Syria) to democratize under Western occupation. Should the Arab/Muslim world reform itself, there would be a significant chance that the US would be seen as an obstacle to that change, which would have happened anyway (after all, countries we didn't invade reformed, yes?), rather than the instigator of it.

In one sense, this doesn't matter: we will still have ended the terror threat. However, we will not have broken the pride of the Arabs and Muslims, and this we must do. Otherwise, the Arab and Muslim world, free and economically vibrant and likely armed with nuclear weapons over most of its major states, will see us as the enemy still. And as long as the Arabs and Muslims see us as their enemy, instead of their friend and natural ally, they will remain a threat. Unless, that is, we break their pride, and show them convincingly and completely that the Caliphate will never return.

Must Stop Reading Democratic Underground

I went to DU to read their take on the capture of Saddam Hussein. I'd like to write about what I found, but my IQ dropped so low just from reading that drivel that I am now incapable of forming a coherent thought. Clearly, I need to drink more before reading such dreck.

Uh Oh

Which Historical Lunatic Are You?
From the fecund loins of Rum and Monkey.

WTC Reconstruction Begins

Bite me, Osama bin Laden.

Mmmm....Farscape

One of the best, if not the best, science fiction series will return to television, in some form or other. Three cheers are in order.

What is our Real Constitution?

I wonder what our real constitution is? Not our Constitution, since that is ignored roundly by all branches of government and by the public at large, but the one we actually live under. It seems to me that if we were to start with the written Constitution, add in important Supreme Court decisions (including the one where the justices decided that they alone could be the final arbiter of the Constitution's meaning), take account of the circumstances under which laws and their enforcement have deviated from the written Constitution, consider the aggregate feelings of the citizenry on what should be in the Constitution, and subtract out those parts that are no longer effectively in force, we would be close. So, how close can we get with the minimal number of changes?

My first cut requires one amendment with six parts:

a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, or any other circumstance or position in law, the Congress may make any law on any subject whatsoever, provided that it declare said law to be in the compelling interests of the United States.
b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution or of their respective State Constitutions, or any other circumstance or position in law, the legislature of any State may make any law on any subject whatsoever, provided that it declare said law to be in the compelling interests of that State.
c) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, or any other circumstance or position in law, the President or any executive agency of the Federal Government may undertake any act, provided that the President declares said act to be requisite to the security needs of the United States.
d) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution or of their respective State Constitutions, or any other circumstance or position in law, the Governor or executive agencies of any State may undertake any act, provided that the Governor declares said act to be requisite to the security needs of that State.
e) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution, or any other circumstance or position in law, the Supreme Court of the United States shall have the sole authority to determine what constitutes a "compelling interest" or a "security interest", or to modify or negate any law or act of the United States or of any State.
f) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Constitution or of their respective State Constitutions, or any other circumstance or position in law, the Supreme Court of any State shall have the sole authority to determine what constitutes a "compelling interest" or a "security interest", or to modify or negate any law or act of that State.

Stephanie challenged me to write a Constitution, then, if I think our desire to actually follow ours is so far off. I probably should. Not that I'm convinced it will do any good, but at least I'd be doing something other than just complaining.

About Time, and While You're at It...

Congress is apparently beginning to notice that we don't have enough troops, and is going to fix the problem even if the Pentagon objects. Good.

Call-ups of part-time troops from the Army National Guard and the Army Reserve to fill the ranks in Iraq have intensified the bipartisan sentiment that the Pentagon doesn't have enough troops to fight an extended war on terrorism while keeping enough well-rested, well-trained troops ready for an emergency.

"Momentum is building in Congress for" an increase, says Harald Stavenas, a spokesman for Rep. Duncan Hunter, R-Calif., chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. "Finally, everyone has come around to see enough is enough."

"This recognizes the reality in the strain and the stretch in all the services," says Missouri Rep. Ike Skelton, the senior Democrat on the House Armed Services Committee. Skelton promises "positive action by our committee early next year."

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly opposes increasing the size of the military on the grounds that the services are not efficiently using the personnel they already have, and increasing the number of troops is enormously expensive. Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita says Rumsfeld "hasn't seen any analysis that convinces him there is a need" for a large increase in active-duty troops.

If Congress forces the administration to add troops, it would mark a turning point in the downsizing of the active-duty military that began before the end of the Cold War. These forces peaked at 2.2 million in 1987 and fell back slightly because of budget concerns. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 speeded up the cuts, shrinking the force to just under 1.5 million troops in 1998, where it has remained.

While they are at it, there is one other area that the Congress needs to fix, over administration objections: intelligence. While the failure to foresee the Black Tuesday attacks was regrettable, it has to be realized that some things are just going to be missed. Our intelligence services were organized to prevent another Pearl Harbor, not this kind of attack.

On the other hand, the failure of NRO, CIA and others to pin down Iraq's WMD capabilities is unforgivable and unacceptable. This is, in fact, exactly the kind of thing we were primed to look for, and Iraq was almost our sole immediate strategic focus for more than a year before the war started. In all of that time, we were unable to reliably identify what weapons and programs Saddam had, and where he had them. I do believe that we will eventually find the evidence of the programs, but clearly the intelligence failed to find anything of significance that could be trusted, in that what was publically released (which presumably would be the easiest material to prove) has not held up at all.

This is a serious breach, because we will need good intelligence in the future. At what point do we invade Iran? How will we know the state of their nuclear programs? Will Congress believe the administration (any administration) that tells them it's time, if they were publically embarassed this time?

The President has refused to take action against the director of the CIA, who is ultimately responsible for that intelligence. I applaud the President for his loyalty, but not for his common sense: we need to be able to trust our intelligence services. The President won't fix this problem, but Congress can. It is time, I think, for the Congress to impeach and remove the senior intelligence officers for dereliction of duty in regards to pre-war WMD intelligence on Iraq. It would have a practical effect of concentrating the attentions of these officers' successors, as well as rebuilding Congressional trust in our intelligence services.

Internet Tectonics

It appears that the UN wants to take control of the Internet. (And they are already acting predictably anti-freedom about it.) Clearly, this would presage a major shift in the way that the Internet works, and I'm inclined to think that it won't be a change for the better.

But it's also irrelevant, in a way.

You see, when I got on the Internet in 1988, there wasn't a world wide web. We kept notes of the useful FTP sites where we could get software and information, and later there was the short-lived gopher, but communication similar to what the web provides was then accomodated through email lists and network news. (Network news is now pretty useless - more chatterbox than information or entertainment conduit - but mailing lists are still with us.) This was not long after the introduction of DNS - which replaced unwieldy lists of host-address mappings in text files - and was also before the consolidation of Internet backbones and the widespread use of firewalls.

I said all of that as preface to this statement: the Internet is not magic, and because of that, it is not static.

Let's say that the powers that be decide to censor the Internet, or to tax it heavily. For that matter, let's say that spam levels keep increasing at the present rate. In that case, the Internet as we know it would become less and less useful. What would happen? Would we just accept it?

I have no doubt that many would, because to them the Internet is magic. But in reality, the Internet is a set of INTERconnected NETworks. In other words, I have a network in my home, and it connects to Verizon's network. (I can't justify having a separate connection to second network, so my network connects to only one other.) Verizon's network connects to many, many networks, because Verizon's network is a backbone on the Internet. (That is to say, it exists primarily to connect other networks, as opposed to my home network, which exists to connect my computers to each other).

I don't have to connect to Verizon. I could connect to several backbone providers, singly or in combination, if that was the best deal for me. I could, in fact, buy a dedicated network connection to, say, my friend Nathan's network, another to my parents' house, another to my wife's parents' house, another to amazon.com, and so on. Clearly, this is less efficient than connecting to a backbone, which connects to other backbones, which in turn are connected to the leaf networks of interest to me. It also requires a higher level of skill at each of those end points than connecting via backbones and local providers (which local providers offer assistance to their users as part of the fee).

But if it was sufficiently onerous to me to use the public Internet, I could create a private internet, connecting those networks that are of use to me, provided that those networks agree to have me connect to them. (It would have to be pretty onerous to get me to shell out for that many dedicated data lines.)

Assuming that I was able to raise the capital, and was not otherwise employed, I could in fact start a backbone network, and set my own rules. I could use the existing protocols and equipment and software, or I could set up my own. (For example, the IPv4 addressing scheme is too limited, email has no built-in method for verifying the sender, there is no standard on-the-wire encryption, there is only a primitive concept of trust (you trust the router on the other end of the line; that's it), and so forth - any or all of which could be fixed, at some cost.) Presumably, in order to get people to attach to my backbone, I'd have to offer something that they can't get from the public Internet, and it would have to be something that they need enough to put up with having two connections (one to me and one to the public Internet), or only connecting to me, or connecting to me and relying on some translator somewhere to bridge their traffic to the public Internet as needed (with associated performance hit and loss of function).

So let's say I were able to come up with a series of changes to the basic foundations of the Internet that were a compelling alternative to the public Internet, and one part of that package would be that every end-to-end connection were encrypted to hide the content. In that case, it would not be possible to censor individual content (even the protocol in use could be hidden, with proper design). Governments or other organizations would have a choice: block all traffic to/from the new internet, or allow it. (There would be another large advantage as well: cracking computers remotely would become much, much harder, and in turn open source routing would become reasonable again.)

I suspect that, should the Internet get too disconnected, censored, overloaded or otherwise not useful, some smart person somewhere will come up with the details to make this kind of situation work.

The Internet doesn't really route around censorship as damage now, nor could it survive the nuclear war it was designed to survive, but sufficient censorship or disruption could give rise to a new internet that would survive those circumstances.

Steve Jobs at Disney?

According to Peeve Farm, there are rumors that Steve Jobs might be tapped to head Disney - or at least be on the board. Speculation on what that would mean then follows, but one key point is missed in the speculation: No more "Mighty Ducks" sequels? Could we survive such a tragedy?

My Enemy, My "Ally"

Mrs. du Toit nails something that's been bothering me about the French reporters recording the DHL attack:

Holding a camera instead of a gun doesn't make you an innocent.

Imagine CNN following Adolph Hitler around--allowing Hitler to pose and get his 30 second sound bytes for the entire world to see. But that is exactly what CNN did with Saddam Hussein and exactly what the French press did in the above story.

When you do things like that, you cease being a member of the impartial press and become a member of the enemy’s propaganda organ.

The enemy's propaganda organ is a fair, legitimate, and strategic target.

It's time people started to realize this. France is not an ally. It isn't even correct to describe them as a wayward friend or a friend we're quarrelling with, with hopes of putting aside our differences at a later date. France is, without a doubt, the enemy.