Archives for November 2002
No stopping college kids downloading Beck
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Washington Post crusades for morality
I thought I would open the Post today to find dozens of outraged letters to the editor, and maybe even an apology, regarding yesterday’s article on the backgrounds of UN weapons inspectors, so I didn’t post about it. But I was wrong–maybe I should have written a letter.The article criticizes the UN for not checking backgrounds before picking people to be on weapons inspections teams. Fair enough. But what’s their evidence of this failure? The fact that one of the inspectors, a security contractor who is a former Marine and Secret Service specialist, also happens to be–on his own time–a leader of a Washington-area S&M group. That’s it.
He doesn’t have ties to terrorists. He’s not a criminal. He wasn’t dishonorably discharged. No. He just likes to get tied up or whatever–in his own bedroom. Who’s business is this?! Certainly not the Post’s. The fact that they splashed this guy’s personal life all over their pages is disgraceful. I mean, this is like saying, one of the inspectors isn’t qualified because he’s gay or likes to play vampire role-playing games. Who gives a freak? This story was a smear job. For shame.
Dean Grady talks to teens
Here’s a very cute “Kidz News”-type interview with my torts professor, Dean Mark Grady. (It’s in Windows Video format.) Grady’s a very cool guy–and we have blind grading at GMU, so I’m not just saying that.Laughing at their misfortune
They say it’s not polite to laugh at others’ misfortune, but I have to take a moment to let out a hearty guffaw–not unlike Nelson’s on the Simpsons–at a couple of Leftist twits: Jose Bove and Hugo Chavez.
Bove, you’ll remember, is the French anti-globalist boob who’s claim to fame was vandalizing a McDonald’s restaurant. Well, the Court of Cassation just sentenced him to 14 months in jail for destroying fields of genetically modified crops. Some call him “the French Robin Hood.” But the way I see it, he’s just smashing up things he doesn’t like. Any idiot can do that. I don’t know what irritates me more, his self-righteousness or the fact that so many people listen to him. So, ha-ha to you, Mr. Bove.
The other idiot I snicker at is Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela, who just ordered his military to take over the police in Caracas. This to keep a grip on the legions of protestors who show up outside the presidential palace every day to clamor for his resignation. My father, who is Cuban and not fond of Leftists (especially those who coddle Fidel Castro), said it best when the Venezuelan people elected the red-bereted ex-coup-leader in a landslide. “They have elected him democratically,” he said. “Let them eat him with French fries now.” By this he meant that the day would come when they would regret it–I promise it makes more sense in Spanish. So, Mr. Chavez, may you meet an ignominious end, jerk. And to the Venezuelan people, I think the Brazilians are looking for a good French fry recipe.
What does Osama want?
Christopher Hitchens has an interesting piece in Slate in which he tries to define terrorism. Getting worked up over the semantics of that word is a waste of time, I’ve often thought. We all know what we’re “against” and what the current war is “on.” But Hitchens makes the distinction between people who employ terrorist tactics who can still conceivably be considered “freedom fighters,” and those who he terms nihilists because they “demand the impossible at the point of a gun.” I think that’s a useful distinction, although perhaps not in the definition of the word terrorist.When I first heard of bin Laden’s new tape, I thought it would turn out to be a fake because in it he demands that America convert to Islam. This sounded very out of character for bin Laden who up to that point only wanted the U.S. to retreat from its Middle Eastern positions–a doable, justified position to have even if his tactics are deplorable.
This new demand however, does set him up as a nihilist. It also gives credence to the “clash of civilizations” types (like Hitchens) and the idea that we are targeted solely or primarily because we are free. I still would like to think that it’s our foreign policy (something we can control) that makes us the target of terrorism, and not who we are (something we can’t control). However, Osama just made my case a lot harder to prove to people on the fence.
Hypothetically speaking, we’re taking the oil
So I was invited to join that great left/right/libertarian coalition against the war that is Stand Down. Here’s my first post.I’m happy to have joined Stand Down. For my first contribution, let me draw your attention to last Sunday’s Meet the Press. Tim Russert had White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card on and actually asked him a good question:
MR. RUSSERT: If we do go to war, and we go into Iraq, what happens to the oil fields? Do we take control of them?
MR. CARD: Again, I think that it will be a mistake for us to talk about the hypotheticals. The important thing is the disarmament of Saddam Hussein and his regime, and the eventual freedom and opportunities that can come to the Iraqi people. And we will be there to help bring that to reality.
How is what happens to the oil fields any more of a hypothetical than what happens to Hussein’s regime? And what’s with hypotheticals taking on the properties of kryptonite?
Well, to answer Russert, we don’t have to take them over. As Credit Suisse First Boston oil analyst Mark Flannery has said, “If you turn up and it’s your tanks that dislodged the regime and you have 50,000 troops in the country and they’re in your tanks, then you’re going to get the best deals. That’s the way it works. The French will have three men and a 1950s tank. That’s just not going to work.”
QUESTION: Is securing access to Iraq’s oil really the primary, if unstated, motive for George Bush’s war policy? Or is it just one of several complementary, if misguided, national security motivations?
NIPR: The secret government
No sooner had I finished reading the NYT article Joanne recommended on the Pentagon’s plans for data mining and electronic surveillance than I noticed on my logs a visitor to my site from bu-wcs1-kelly.nipr.mil. “WTF is this?” I said.A little digging uncovered that other bloggers seem to have been visited by NIPR, too. And what’s NIPR? It’s something scary-sounding called the National Internet Protocol Router Network run by DOD. The “Kelly” part refers to Kelly AFB, the home of the Air Intelligence Agency, the Air Intelligence School and the Joint Information Operations Center, according to this document.
Apparently this shady military outfit is spidering sites looking for info on Dmitry Sklyarov, the first person arrested on criminal charges under the DMCA. But my site, until now, hasn’t mentioned Sklyarov. Could it be I’m now on a list somewhere for badmouthing the administration as much as I do?
Once the war starts and all goes to hell and FEMA suspends constitutional government and the three branches of government crown Bush emperor, will black helicopters from NIPR come for me? Well, there I go again. But really, what’s a military outfit doing spidering an American citizen’s site? Have you been scanned by NIPR?
UPDATE: Holy crap, some smart guy wrote to NIPR asking them why they were visiting him. Check out their response!
Listen to Hitchens, Sullivan & their soft Brit accents
In case you missed it, C-SPAN’s has video on its Web site of this morning’s Washington Journal with Andrew Sullivan and Christopher Hitchens, everyone’s favorite maverick pundits. They’re witty and insightful as usual. They also make me want to begin affecting a faux, non-descript “intellectual” accent like Bill Buckley.War on terror on autopilot
I kept reading over and over in the press how the drone that blew up the Qaeda baddies in Yemen recently belonged to the CIA and how they were responsible. I kept thinking, who cares? The president had to give the go-ahead anyway. Turns out not! WTF! What did we hire this guy for?The NYT has done it again. It explains that “the president was not asked to authorize the specific decision to fire the missile” and that the attack was carried out under broad guidelines he’s set up.
“He had delegated operational control over Predator strikes against Al Qaeda to his military and intelligence team,” the paper says. “The decision to approve the missile launch was made by ‘very senior officials’ below the level of the president who had been closely monitoring the surveillance of Mr. Harethi and his associates…”
This is great. Bush can go out and do what he does best. Namely say things like “Hispanically” on the campaign trail. Meanwhile, Rummy, Wolfie, and the Chenester can stay back home and do what they do best: try to take over the world.
Exit poll: All hail Bushius Caesar
Against my better judgment, I’ve stayed up this late watching the poll results come in. Looks like the Republicans are increasing their margin in the House and taking over the Senate. All we need now is for the Senate to name Bush emperor and the analogy to Rome will be complete. It’ll only be a matter of time before the barbarian hordes use the rest of our technology to decimate us. But don’t worry, Chinese civilization will still be around to carry the human race forward. (Can you tell I’ve been reading Nonzero?)BTW: Americans really love freedom. My home state of Florida passed an amendment to its constitution banning public smoking 71 to 29. Meanwhile, Nevada snuffed a marijuana decriminalization measure 61 to 39, and Arizona turned down medical marijuana 57-43. Yeih liberty.
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This is the personal site of Jerry Brito, a lawyer and writer in Washington, D.C. He’s an academic researcher and the creator of Unclutterer and several other blogs. More »
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