Geodog

The National Security State, powered by Microsoft Technology

In preparing for tomorrow's Berkeley Digital Rights Management conference, I've run across some scary stuff. The scariest is probably this:
Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer

Overview
The Rights Management Add-on for Internet Explorer is a way that Windows users can view files with restricted permission. These restrictions help people to prevent sensitive documents, Web-based information, and e-mail messages from being forwarded, edited, or copied by unauthorized individuals.

Document authors, Web site authors, and creators of Web-based applications can deliver protected information by restricting permission. This provides protection, not only while the information is in transit, but also after the recipient of the information has received it.

How It Works
Authors can set restricted permission to limit what a reader can do with the content they receive. These restrictions are customizable, that is, one person may view the document but not print it, another may do both, and a third person may view and print the document, but only for five days

<snip>

Availability
This software is not yet available. When it is available you will be able to download it from this page.

Doesn't this start to sound like an Orwellian/Ashcroftian state? Just imagine if Ari Fleischer could make disappear after 5 days the widely shown video of the White House Press corps laughing him out ot the room for trying to pretend that that Bush wasn't trying to buy Security Council votes on Iraq. Or Fleischer's "Americans ... need to watch what they say" comment which he tried to erase from the White House Transcript. Words of limited duration for limited use. Sounds like the National Security State to me. And powered by Microsoft Technology. How convenient.

See also the part of the DOJ consent decree that Brett Glass pointed the IP list to, which states:

No provision of this Final Judgment shall:

1. Require Microsoft to document, disclose or license to third parties: (a) portions of APIs or Documentation or portions or layers of Communications Protocols the disclosure of which would compromise the security of a particular installation or group of installations of anti-piracy, anti-virus, software licensing, digital rights management, encryption or authentication systems, including without limitation, keys, authorization tokens or enforcement criteria....

Fits together rather nicely, doesn't it. Some nice closed API's and file formats, which can't be revealed to others for reasons of National Security. As I said, I am finding developments in this area fairly scary. It will be interesting to see how people at tomorrow's conference react to Microsoft's announcement that DRM will be build into Windows 2003 server, the next version of Office, and the next version of IE.

Aren't you glad we're yellow?

Thank goodness we are back down to yellow.

Did anyone catch Bush's speech last night? I missed it, but read accounts this morning. Did he really say that going to war with Iraq would bring peace to the Middle East? I'm wondering if he is starting to crack from all the strain since stealing the election, and hitting the sauce again. Did he look drunk?

Preparing for the Berkeley DRM and Stanford Spectrum conferences

I'm getting ready for the Berkeley Digital Rights Management Conference on Friday and Saturday and the Stanford Spectrum Policy Conference on Saturday and Sunday. The papers for the Stanford conference are interesting, although the main one is heavy reading. The Berkeley reading list is very long and less focused. Does anyone have any recommendations from the list?

Living in the Bay Area certainly presents me with an embarrassment of riches sometimes, and I'm delighted to be able to indulge in several of my interests at the same time: Technology, Policy, Law and Smart People. However, I am a little annoyed that the Berkeley-Stanford rivalry appears to extend to their law schools scheduling conferences with overlapping constituencies on overlapping dates. C'mon folks, get it together. Either have the conferences on different weekends, or have them back to back. Now I'll have to decide how to split myself up on Saturday.

Anyone else facing the same dilemma who would like to car pool?

My Iraq Rant

I have generally avoided writing anything here about Iraq. There are plenty of other good people writing, and I don't have any special knowledge on the subject. However, somebody wrote to me yesterday and asked what I was doing about Iraq. I replied that while I am doing some reading, and I have sent mail and called my Senators (I don't have to wonder how my Representative Barbara Lee stands on the war), and follow up on things like TrueMajority and MoveOn's Virtual March on Washington, but I mostly feel powerless and frustrated. This is not an administration that cares what outsiders think. So usually I try to bury my head in the sand, and hope that it will go away, and instead focus my energies on things that I can effect. However, today I feel the need to write about the situation in Iraq and the situation in this country.

<RANT ON>
My opinions are a sign of how incompetent, as well as evil, the Bush's administration is, for my starting position is close to that of war supporters Josh Marshall and
Ken Pollack. However, while they now very reluctantly support this war, I do not. I can imagine supporting a UN sponsored war to force the dictator Hussein to give up weapons of mass destruction, but I can't support this unilateral war to overthrow Hussein and plant an American "sponsored" government. When we have to openly bribe Iraq's next door neighbor Turkey, the most westernized Muslim country in the world, with $16 - $36 billion dollars in order to override the Turkish public's wishes, it calls into question how much Iraq's neighbors feel threatened by Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, and how much they feel threatened by America's "clout in international financial institutions." And of course there is always the semi-secret side deal, giving the Turks the right to occupy Northern Iraq and suppress the Kurds, which is strangely reminiscent of the secret Sikes-Picot Treaty the British, French and Russian allies signed during World War I. That treaty, agreeing how they would dismember the Ottoman empire at the end of the war, at least arguably started this whole mess. And we are repeating it. Is this a coalition of the willing, or a coalition of the willing to be bribed?

On the practical side, I imagine that the US setting up a government for Iraq will it work as well as the United States putting Ngo Dinh Diem in charge of South Vietnam worked, the big difference being that the Vietcong didn't have the idea of coming over to the United States and really bringing the war home to us. And all this at a time when the rhetoric and actions of the Bush administration have alienated so many countries that we do not have the same sympathy or assistance in the supposed "War on Terrorism" that was so important last year. This administration has managed in 2 years to throw away much of the goodwill slowly acquired over the last 50 years. Does anyone doubt that this war will result in less help from our (former) allies, and more terrorist attacks on the US?

On the moral side, who gave us the right to unilaterally go around the world deciding who gets killed and who lives, who is overthrown, and refusing to listen to anyone else' opinion? By what authority to we reserve to ourselves only the right to engage in pre-emptive attacks? There is nothing about establishing an American Empire that is worth on drop of any American's blood (or anyone else' either). The problem with a fundamentalist foreign policy based on believing with a messianic zeal that it is right, and that everybody should do as it thinks right, is what does it do with people who don't think they are right or are that the US is always the good guys? So far the answer seems to be lie to them, bribe them, dismiss them, threaten them or kill them.

Finally, and this, along with the Mobbs appointment, is what was probably the straw that broke this camels back and instigated this rant, the pundits, even fierce critics of Bush, are starting to say that yes, Bush was stupid and wrong, and should have really have tried to seek allies, but now that US prestige and credibility are on the line, we can't back down. This was the argument that Richard Perle made 6 months ago as a tactic to lock George Bush in place, and now it is being adopted by the Punditocracy. That argument is wrong, and it is the argument that kept us in Vietnam bombing civilians long past the point where anybody had any hope of accomplishing anything worthwhile. Please, let's not repeat that example. We all know what hubris leads to -- why are we insistent on re-enacting one of the oldest stories in human history?

</RANT OFF>

Here are some of the articles that I have been reading on Iraq:

Iraq: The Case Against Preemptive War, by Paul W. Schroeder in the American Conservative Magazine. A well written essay as to why adopting a strategy of preemptive attacks is practically foolish and morally wrong. Via JZ.

Of Gods and Mortals and Empire, by William Rivers Pitt. An interesting editorial that links together the war on Iraq with the desire of Richard Perle and his buddies at The Project for the New American Century to create a new pax Americana. The writer sees some hope in the demonstrations and international resistance to the war. The writing is a little over blown for my tastes, but Pitt makes some good points (via The Nana).

Everything that Josh Marshall writes in Talking Points Memo. I don't always agree with him, but he is smart as a whip.

I read Wendell Berry's Essay, A Citizen's Response to the National Security Strategy of the United States of America after completing this rant, but highly recommend it. Beautiful writing, and a thorough dissection of Bush's National Security Policy.

The man who would teach the Iraqis about democracy: Michael Mobbs

Yesterday's NYT has a story about a secret rehearsal the Bush Administration recently held of its plans for running Iraq after we conquer it. The government will be run by the Pentagon's newly created Orwellian sounding "Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Assistance." Buried in the bottom of the story was the tidbit that the civil administration would be headed by Michael H. Mobbs. Mr. Mobbs is a longtime associate of Prince of Darkness Richard Perle, and has also been a lobbyist for the Turkish government. He worked in the Reagan administration, and he has long worked for one of Perle's disciples, Douglas Feith. But he has made the news over the last year as a "Special Advisor to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy" and head of the Detainee Policy group. As such he is one of the architects of the Bush Administration's policy of asserting the right to detain "enemy combatants" indefinitely without trial or grant of POW status. He is also the author of the infamous Mobbs Declaration, where, as Judge Doumar eloquently put it, "I do think that due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?".

This is the man who is going to teach the Iraqis about democracy?

Thanks to The Nana for the tip.

Freed at last from Userland's Radio!

Another refugee from Radio makes a clean break. I just finished moving the last of my old Radio entries over to Movable Type, using Bill Kearny's radio.exporter tool. Thanks, Bill! It seems to have gone ok -- the only glitch that I have found so far is that things I had as drafts in Radio, unfinished thoughts and such, seem to have been published over on this site. And now it takes a l-o-n-g time for my site to rebuild -- I need to figure out what Phil is talking about. And I'm sure that next time I look at the site, I'll find a bunch of things broken, but at the moment it feels great. I should only have to run Radio one more time, when I insert the Robert's refresh code.

I took a long time writing up a how-to as I went along, because I couldn't find a good one, and I suspect that a lot more people will be doing this, especially if Salon does go under (I hope not). I'll clean it up and post it in the next couple of days.

Help Geodog find a job, subscribe to Salon.

Salon, one of the best left/liberal online magazines, is in dire danger of going out of business. While I have some beefs with some of the things they have done (I don't think that Andrew Sullivan needed yet another pulpit), they are still doing some of the best political writing and editorializing around. I still remember checking Jake Tapper's coverage of the Florida recount every night, and eagerly reading their live 9-11 coverage and their reporting from the ground in Afghanistan. While to some degree they are a shadow of their former self, they have at least survived the dot-com crash so far, and they are one of the few visible media that are willing to directly challenge Bush's lies. Dave Talbot writes today that if each subscriber could bring in one other subscriber, they would be in the black. If you can afford it, I encourage you to subscribe. You may be throwing $30 away, but you may also be helping them turn the corner, and will be able to tell your grandchildren how you helped saved Salon. I have an acquaintance who has free ISP service for life because he got Steve Case a tiny bit of money at a point when AOL was about to go under. Maybe you can get Salon for life?

Disclaimer: I have a personal interest in seeing that the Bay Area job market doesn't get flooded with even more technically savvy leftist liberal arts types, hence the title, "Help Geodog find a job, subscribe to Salon." :-)

The war on Iraq: How we got here

PBS's Frontline did what looks like a great special on Bush's Iraq Policy, The War Behind Closed Doors, and the evolution of Bush's dangerous doctrine of preemption. Had I known about it in advance I would have made an exception to our house's No TV policy. It will be broadcast over the net on February 25 -- maybe I'll get a chance to see it then. Check it out.

In the meantime, PBS has put a lot of background materials up on the net. One of the most revealing is the chronology. Bush had a war council discussing attacking Iraq 4 days after the September 11 attacks. These guys were using 911 to promote their political views 4 days after the attacks! Disgusting.

Implemented RKB's comment visibility design upgrade

Robert K. Brown implemented a nice design upgrade that makes it much easier to see who is commenting on a post and what they are saying. As soon as I saw it I wanted it, and he very nicely took the time to post a how-to on his site. I like this much better than Burningbird's Talkback. It makes the comments more visible, and links the name and what's been written, but without that Total Information Awareness aura that the the Talkback Search by name feature had for me. (Don't get me wrong, I don't impute any evil intent to Burningbird's feature. It seems kind of cool and shiny, as Phil would say, I just think that its social negatives outweigh the positives.)

While it does have some aspects of fiddling while Rome burns, sometimes it's a lot more fun to play with blogtech than to read more details on the disaster that Dubya is leading us into. So I spent most of tonight's blogging time implementing Robert's feature. Cool and shiny, methinks.

Thank you, Robert, leukemia survivor, political comrade, family man, and geek and writer.

Does Habeas anti-spam service work?

I just signed up for Habeas' anti-spam service after receiving an email from Glenn Fleishman with Habeas' headers embedded in it. The way the service works is that in return for promising not to spam (long legal document) and agreeing to have your IP address blacklisted if you do, you receive information on how to configure your email program to insert Habeas' 9 copyrighted and trademarked headers in your outgoing emails. If spammers use the headers, Habeas sues them based on trademark and copyright law (= big damages). Supposedly, recognition of Habeas' headers gets built into spam filters, and your email having a Habeas header gets it past the spam filters. I've had problems with my mail server getting put on one of the blacklists (SPEWS) because it was co-located with a spammer, so this might come in handy.

Does this work? I don't know. It certainly puts a butt ugly bunch of headers at the top of your email that are very visible in my old version of Eudora. I don't know if they are visible in other mail clients. The tradeoff between having all my mail looking butt ugly and making the maximum effort to make sure that it gets through might not be worthwhile. Also, this system needs widespread adoption to work - the fact that the user number I was assigned was less than 2,000 didn't inspire confidence. I wonder how deterred by the threat of a lawsuit in US courts Russian pornographers who fill up my spam folder are going to be. I fear that in the end a Habeas header might come to be as reliable a positive indicator of spam as the unsubscribe link is today. Still, it's free for personal use and it seems worth a try.

I'd be interested if anyone else has thoughts on this, or actual experience using the service. I'll post back in a month with the results of my trial.

Burningbird has a dangerous idea

By their own words shall they be known. Sounds like a reasonable idea, right? Aggregate all the comments someone has made on your weblog and display them prominently. Their every comment. Preserved. For eternity. In all its glorious intelligence and grace. For instance, every comment that Geodog has made on BurningBird's weblog. Stavrosthewonderchicken thinks it is cool and likes it.

Me, I'm not so sure. I can see the appeal of the old credo, "you own your words", and I tend to sign at least my pen name to comments. But I think of comments as ephemeral, and strongly contextual. Plus, as Gibbon might say, some things are meant to remain veiled in the decent obscurity of a obscure format. The last thing I want when someone puts my name in Google is to have the first thing come up be some stupid late night comment I put on a popular (dare I say A-list?) weblog. So will this cut down on stupid late night comments? Or just increase the number of anonymous cowards?

Thanks to Stavros... for the tip, and Burningbird for the idea and for implementing it. It'll be interesting to watch what happens.

US law says it's ok to lie if the truth would hurt

One important part of raising a child is inculcating values. Almost every child goes through the stage where they discover lying, and are intoxicated by its power. They are so transparent at first that it is almost cute to watch. However, as parents, it is our job to teach them that it is better to accept the consequences of their actions than to try lie their way out of them, for both practical and moral reasons. "Lying always costs more in the end," we say. Even if it isn't empirically provably true, our society as a whole will be better off if everybody were to act as if it were true, so that is what we teach. We can sympathize with the often painful choices that being honest entails, understand the occasional failure, and even confess our own failures, but the basic lesson remains that nothing is more important than integrity. If I leave my children with that belief, I will have done well as a parent. Unfortunately, it often feels like I am swimming against the tide. Very little in our entertainment, business or political culture seems to actively uphold integrity as a core value. Sure, there is a little lip service, but that seems to be it. An infuriating example came to light yesterday.

Now, many of our politicians of all persuasions have had trouble being honest about a variety of things, and I have fallen down myself enough times to be wary of casting stones at others, but today I discovered it has become law in the United States that it is ok to lie if telling the truth would cost too much. The NYT reports that late Wednesday night,

Representative Nathan Deal of Georgia had an amendment snuck into the $397 billion spending bill that passed Thursday. That amendment would "permit livestock producers to certify and label meat as "organic" even if the animals had been fed partly or entirely on conventional rather than organic grain ... if the Agriculture Department certifies that organic feed is commercially available only at more than twice the price of conventional feed ...It was included on behalf of a Baldwin, Ga., poultry producer, the Fieldale Farms Corporation ... Mr. Deal received $4,000 from employees of Fieldale, which is in his district, during his last campaign."

How corrupt our political process has become, and how Orwellian our discourse. A Representative adds an amendment gutting a law in return for a $4,000 contribution. Now organic food is organic, unless it would have been too expensive to make it organic, in which case organic is non-organic, but still called organic. This kind of thing enrages me. I think Nathan Deal should be recalled and jailed. But he won't be, for this kind of corruption is legal -- indeed it is built into the system. And pundits wonder why people aren't more interested in politics. It sure makes this a rough country to raise a child in. I'm still looking for that Costa Rican blogger.

Link via Dave Farber's IP list. The NYT also has another article the same day about all the pork stuffed into the omnibus spending bill.

Power Laws, Nano-publishing, Jeff Jarvis and Glenn Fleishman

I've been chewing since reading Clay Shirky's Power Law piece and Dan Gillmor's little writeup on Nick Denton's Pro blogs. Still didn't have any strong opinions, other than amazement on how hot tempers ran.

Finally, I ran across Jeff Jarvis's article Breaking the power law, which is the first thing I have read on the topic that really resonates. He says "Weblogs are the ultimate niche media."

One of the rules of marketing that I learned early in my career: segment the market until you get it small enough so that you can be the leader of it. The same applies to blogging. If being popular is what you care about, specialize in something, says Jarvis. Become the online expert at something. This makes a lot of sense to me.

The example is that came to my mind is Glenn Fleishman. Glenn is an extremely nice guy, who has lots of interesting thoughts about all kinds of things, and has general interest blog, Glenn Logs . He also makes a living as one of many Macintosh experts, writing articles on the Mac for general interest publications. But Glenn's current claim to fame (and online popularity) is that his WI-Fi news site has become the place people go to for news on what is happening with wireless networking. Early on, he took the time to wade through the arcane 802.11x specs and learn what all the issues were, and he put effort into explaining them to less informed people. WiFi news is now the clearing house for information on WiFi, and he is now a (the?) central node in wireless networking. I was at a conference he was at a while ago, and it was amazing to see the deference that the execs from the wireless companies paid to him. I'd be willing to bet a lot of money that WiFi news gets 10x or 100x the views that Glennlog does.

I also liked Jeff Jarvis's reply to Anil Dash wondering why he writes a little general interest weblog: "if I wanted to have a bigger weblog I would follow the law of the niche -- or the law of nano -- and I would not write about whatever I fancy but would, instead, pick one topic and cover it with laser intensity. I would be bigger but I'd be bored."

I feel the same way.

Weblogs are a lot more fun than journalism

I just ran across a really funny and true post by Phil Ringnalda. Even though Phil is one of my regular reads, I originally skipped over it because of the title, "Are weblogs journalism?" I've seen so much boring droning on about that topic that I couldn't imagine that there was anything else worth saying on the topic. I was wrong. Phil hits the nail on the head: "doing a journalistic blog means getting to do all the good parts of every job in journalism, without any of the nasty annoying parts. No wonder you keep asking." Phil is right, and he is funny to boot. Recommended.

Google buys Pyra, creator of Blogger

Dan Gillmor announces that Google is going to buy Pyra, makers of Blogger. It certainly validates blogging. I'm sure the blogoshere will be discussing nothing else for days.

I loved Ev's first response "Holy crap. Note to self: When you get off this panel, you should probably comment on this."

Congratulations to Ev and his crew. They certainly worked long and hard for this. I'm looking forward to seeing what Ev has to say. It isn't clear to me what the synergy is. Maybe it is just altruism? You could probably buy Pyra for Serge and Larry's pocket change. Why would Google want to get into the hosting business? And there will certainly be questions around fairness -- bloggers seem obsessed with Google and their Google rank - some of them will undoubtedly wonder if blogs hosted on Pyra/Google have higher ranks. No press releases yet from Google.

I wish Google wasn't located in Mountain View (a brutal commute from Berkeley). By all accounts, it is an interesting place to work.

Make up your minds

The NYT reports that the Bush administration is now advising against sealing doors and windows. Ridge is quoted as saying "we just don't want folks sealing up their doors or sealing up their windows". Well make up your minds, I say. Has anything changed?

Anybody else get the impression that the warnings and threat levels have more to do with trying to influence public opinion than anything else?

Created a link log

I read the debate about link logs this evening and thought: I want one. I have this huge mass of URLs in various places all over my computers, things that I want to remember, things that I want to go back to, things that I like but aren't worth writing about, and things that I mean to do. The idea of storing them in my MT weblog seemed great (as long as I remember to back up regularly). Maybe having one will also mean that I won't feel compelled to write as much, especially things in my Briefly Noted category. Plus there was the geeky fun of messing with my templates.

It turned out to be a lot easier than I thought it would be, primarily due to the work of Paul Hammond and the MTOther Plugin developed by David Raynes. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Geodog's link log now lives, and the last 3 days' excerpts are over on the right hand side of the page.

I hope people enjoy the link log, and the comments they will see when they mouse over the entries. I like them. As always, comments of all kinds are appreciated.

How do you spell S-C-U-M? Symantec

Wired is reporting that Security firm Symantec withheld information about at least one big cyberthreat for hours after spotting it, possibly harming millions of Internet users.

Wee confirmed that Symantec did not publicly release the information about Slammer until well the after worm had begun to spread.

"Unless you are a paid Symantec DeepSight Threat Management System customer, you would not have received the early notification," Wee said.

Incredibly scummy behavior, if true.

Happy valentine's day, family

Be Mine, Valentines

I love you. You know who you are (and there are more of you, but the heart machine was getting tired).

Hearts courtesy of my neighbor Jef's heart making machine. Found via Meg, who also taught the text tricks.

Powerful images from a hero

Nelson Mandela has been one of my personal heroes ever since I took a class in South African History with the incomparable DiCenzo-san in 1981. I read everything I could find by and about Mandela. Compare him with almost any 20th or 21st century leader and he comes out miles ahead. It is amazing how wise and magnanimous he was able to be, considering all the hardships he suffered. 27 years in a horrible prison for fighting against apartheid. Even after leaving the presidency of South Africa, he has stood up for what he thinks is right, even when it costs to him and his lifelong allegiance to the ANC.

The NYT had an interesting article a week ago about him. Apparently, at the age of 84, he has taken up drawing with charcoal and pastels, and he recently held an auction of some of his art for charity at Robben Island. I found the pictures very moving. They make it easier to imagine his 27 years on the island. Lithographs of his art is are on sale at the Belgravia Gallery in London. If this was still the dot com era, with people begging for my consulting services, I would consider purchasing one -- alas financial considerations make that impossible at this time. Consider it on my wish list.

Lord, please give these folks some wisdom

More and more, I am coming around to share Josh Marshall's thesis that not only does the Bush administration have the wrong values, it is incompetent. I had expected to disagree with the Bushies about things like tax breaks for the rich and the preservation of civil liberties, but I didn't expect to worry about them tearing NATO apart because of personal spite. Even a hardline conservative like Fred Kaplan wonders what Rumsfeld and Bush can be thinking. While I disagree strongly with most of what Bush stands for, I had at least hoped for competence. It is so infuriating to watch Bush throw away all the sympathy that the US had garnered after 911. Now it looks like by the end of this year we will be bogged down in a war in Iraq that we are going to try and win on the cheap, just like we "won" in Afghanistan. Check the news from Afghanistan recently?

Meanwhile, North Korea creates nuclear bombs that the CIA says it can attack the West Coast of the US with, but Bush says it is not a crisis, and Bush proposes increasing the enormous deficits that he has been running in order to give money to his wealthy cronies. I fear my son will be paying for the Bush deficits when he is a senior citizen. Please, somehow, give these folks some wisdom!

Note: I've been noodling on this post for about a week, trying to find a way to express my horror at what Bush is doing to the world, and about all the damage that the rest of us will have to live with for years, and how someone needs to bring the Bush administration to its senses somehow. Today, I ran across a fantastic speech that Senator Robert Byrd gave on Wednesday, February 12, Sleepwalking Through History, Reckless Administration May Reap Disastrous Consequences. It is a great speech, pointing out example after example where the Bush administration is creating huge problems for the United States down the road. Unbelievably, at least as far as I can tell, none of the major media outlets picked up the speech, so I am doing something I have never done before, reproducing it in its entirety below. Highly recommended reading.

US Senator Robert Byrd Senate Floor Speech - Wednesday, February 12, 2003 To contemplate war is to think about the most horrible of human experiences. On this February day, as this nation stands at the brink of battle, every American on some level must be contemplating the horrors of war.

Yet, this Chamber is, for the most part, silent -- ominously, dreadfully silent. There is no debate, no discussion, no attempt to lay out for the nation the pros and cons of this particular war. There is nothing.

We stand passively mute in the United States Senate, paralyzed by our own uncertainty, seemingly stunned by the sheer turmoil of events. Only on the editorial pages of our newspapers is there much substantive discussion of the prudence or imprudence of engaging in this particular war.

And this is no small conflagration we contemplate. This is no simple attempt to defang a villain. No. This coming battle, if it materializes, represents a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and possibly a turning point in the recent history of the world.

This nation is about to embark upon the first test of a revolutionary doctrine applied in an extraordinary way at an unfortunate time. The doctrine of preemption -- the idea that the United States or any other nation can legitimately attack a nation that is not imminently threatening but may be threatening in the future -- is a radical new twist on the traditional idea of self defense. It appears to be in contravention of international law and the UN Charter. And it is being tested at a time of world-wide terrorism, making many countries around the globe wonder if they will soon be on our -- or some other nation's -- hit list. High level Administration figures recently refused to take nuclear weapons off of the table when discussing a possible attack against Iraq. What could be more destabilizing and unwise than this type of uncertainty, particularly in a world where globalism has tied the vital economic and security interests of many nations so closely together? There are huge cracks emerging in our time-honored alliances, and U.S. intentions are suddenly subject to damaging worldwide speculation. Anti-Americanism based on mistrust, misinformation, suspicion, and alarming rhetoric from U.S. leaders is fracturing the once solid alliance against global terrorism which existed after September 11.

Here at home, people are warned of imminent terrorist attacks with little guidance as to when or where such attacks might occur. Family members are being called to active military duty, with no idea of the duration of their stay or what horrors they may face. Communities are being left with less than adequate police and fire protection. Other essential services are also short-staffed. The mood of the nation is grim. The economy is stumbling. Fuel prices are rising and may soon spike higher.

This Administration, now in power for a little over two years, must be judged on its record. I believe that that record is dismal.

In that scant two years, this Administration has squandered a large projected surplus of some $5.6 trillion over the next decade and taken us to projected deficits as far as the eye can see. This Administration's domestic policy has put many of our states in dire financial condition, under funding scores of essential programs for our people. This Administration has fostered policies which have slowed economic growth. This Administration has ignored urgent matters such as the crisis in health care for our elderly. This Administration has been slow to provide adequate funding for homeland security. This Administration has been reluctant to better protect our long and porous borders.

In foreign policy, this Administration has failed to find Osama bin Laden. In fact, just yesterday we heard from him again marshaling his forces and urging them to kill. This Administration has split traditional alliances, possibly crippling, for all time, International order-keeping entities like the United Nations and NATO. This Administration has called into question the traditional worldwide perception of the United States as well-intentioned, peacekeeper. This Administration has turned the patient art of diplomacy into threats, labeling, and name calling of the sort that reflects quite poorly on the intelligence and sensitivity of our leaders, and which will have consequences for years to come.

Calling heads of state pygmies, labeling whole countries as evil, denigrating powerful European allies as irrelevant -- these types of crude insensitivities can do our great nation no good. We may have massive military might, but we cannot fight a global war on terrorism alone. We need the cooperation and friendship of our time-honored allies as well as the newer found friends whom we can attract with our wealth. Our awesome military machine will do us little good if we suffer another devastating attack on our homeland which severely damages our economy. Our military manpower is already stretched thin and we will need the augmenting support of those nations who can supply troop strength, not just sign letters cheering us on.

The war in Afghanistan has cost us $37 billion so far, yet there is evidence that terrorism may already be starting to regain its hold in that region. We have not found bin Laden, and unless we secure the peace in Afghanistan, the dark dens of terrorism may yet again flourish in that remote and devastated land.

Pakistan as well is at risk of destabilizing forces. This Administration has not finished the first war against terrorism and yet it is eager to embark on another conflict with perils much greater than those in Afghanistan. Is our attention span that short? Have we not learned that after winning the war one must always secure the peace?

And yet we hear little about the aftermath of war in Iraq. In the absence of plans, speculation abroad is rife. Will we seize Iraq's oil fields, becoming an occupying power which controls the price and supply of that nation's oil for the foreseeable future? To whom do we propose to hand the reigns of power after Saddam Hussein?

Will our war inflame the Muslim world resulting in devastating attacks on Israel? Will Israel retaliate with its own nuclear arsenal? Will the Jordanian and Saudi Arabian governments be toppled by radicals, bolstered by Iran which has much closer ties to terrorism than Iraq?

Could a disruption of the world's oil supply lead to a world-wide recession? Has our senselessly bellicose language and our callous disregard of the interests and opinions of other nations increased the global race to join the nuclear club and made proliferation an even more lucrative practice for nations which need the income?

In only the space of two short years this reckless and arrogant Administration has initiated policies which may reap disastrous consequences for years.

One can understand the anger and shock of any President after the savage attacks of September 11. One can appreciate the frustration of having only a shadow to chase and an amorphous, fleeting enemy on which it is nearly impossible to exact retribution.

But to turn one's frustration and anger into the kind of extremely destabilizing and dangerous foreign policy debacle that the world is currently witnessing is inexcusable from any Administration charged with the awesome power and responsibility of guiding the destiny of the greatest superpower on the planet. Frankly many of the pronouncements made by this Administration are outrageous. There is no other word.

Yet this chamber is hauntingly silent. On what is possibly the eve of horrific infliction of death and destruction on the population of the nation of Iraq -- a population, I might add, of which over 50% is under age 15 -- this chamber is silent. On what is possibly only days before we send thousands of our own citizens to face unimagined horrors of chemical and biological warfare -- this chamber is silent. On the eve of what could possibly be a vicious terrorist attack in retaliation for our attack on Iraq, it is business as usual in the United States Senate.

We are truly "sleepwalking through history." In my heart of hearts I pray that this great nation and its good and trusting citizens are not in for a rudest of awakenings.

To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be a last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any President who can say that a massive unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over 50% children is "in the highest moral traditions of our country". This war is not necessary at this time. Pressure appears to be having a good result in Iraq. Our mistake was to put ourselves in a corner so quickly. Our challenge is to now find a graceful way out of a box of our own making. Perhaps there is still a way if we allow more time.

MT 2.6 and MT Pro announced

Ben and Mena Trott have announced the release of Movable Type 2.6 and the forthcoming (summer 2003) release of Movable Type Pro. Lots of yummy new features in both -- the Trotts never fail to impress. Upgrade instructions and details on new features available on their site.

Current terror level graphic

Alleged to change as the terror level changes, although I fear his site (and therefore mine) will get way slowed down after the Boing Boing link. Go to www.wackyneighbor.com/ashcroft/ to get your own copy of the code, and to see the other levels.

It would be funnier if it weren't so clear that Bush and Ashcroft are screwing up so royally. Found via Boing Boing.

Update: moved the graphic onto my site for now as wackyneighbor.com was getting very slow.

Looking for a new webhosting company

Does anybody have any recommendations for a cheap hosting company for this blog? I've used phpwebhosting for the last 2 years and been very happy with them until the last few weeks, where first I had my Berkeley DB get corrupted (which googling indicates is usually caused by a disk getting full), and now I am getting out of memory errors every other time I try to run mt.cgi.

I can understand that problems happen, and that for $10 a month people aren't going to stay up all night holding your hand if you run into any problems, but I have now filed 5 tech support requests in the last 7 days, and received one short response, to the effect that maybe the problem is because I have huge database. I have a tiny database. I have not had any other response. It isn't an acceptable level of service.

Maybe its time to move on, and to move my company Onscreen Systems' website too. Any recommendations? TIA.

WLIJAGDH

What Phil says to people who take Weblogging a little too seriously. Do we know anybody like that?

I like it.

Interesting event calendar

Mostly a note to myself to check back on the WorkIt Event Listings on a regular basis. May also be useful as a model for the Berkeley Blog.

Greenspan: Deficits matter

I was delighted to see Alan Greenspan come out against Bush's latest tax giveaway. Greenspan to Bush: Econ 101, deficits do matter.

TIA banned, at least for now

The NYT is reporting that the House and Senate conferees have barred TIA from being used against Americans and have required that all research stop until the Pentagon supplies a detailed report to Congress, including its costs, goals, impact on privacy and civil liberties and prospects for successes against terrorists. According to the NYT, "One important factor in the breadth of the opposition is the fact that the research project is headed by Adm. John M. Poindexter." Evidently, some congress critters decided it was payback time.

Huh?

I'm not sure that I understand this, but Phil says it's cool, so it must be cool. Right?

Update Feb 13, 2003: Adam Rice has a discussion and a cool logo for reversible. Check'em out.

Patriot II

The Washington Post has a good editorial on the recently revealed DOJ draft sequel to the so-called Patriot Act:

The result of such changes would be to magnify the government's discretion to pick the legal regime under which it investigates and prosecutes national security cases and to give it more power unilaterally to exempt people from the protections of the justice system and place them in a kind of alternative legal world. Congress should be pushing in the opposite direction.

Before the department asks Congress for more powers, it needs to disclose how it is using the ones it already has. Yet the Justice Department has balked at reasonable oversight and public information requests.

I'm glad to see even the normally supportive Washington Post troubled about Ashcroft's attempt to carve out even more exceptions to the constitution.

A different kind of spam story

Mike Masenick of Techdirt has written up the story of what happened to him when a spammer put his email address in the reply-to field of a piece of pornographic spam, My Short Life as an Unintentional Spammer. I happened to be at a conference with Mike when it happened, and I can attest that it took him quite a while to achieve the state of resignation and desire to look at the issue from an anthropological perspective that he refers to in the article. But out of the experience he has written a very interesting article. For instance, did you know that some people write back to spammers? Highly Recommended.

This kind of thing will happen to more and more people, as spammers become ever more wily in trying to evade spam filters. I don't hold out much hope for legal solutions to the spam problem, given the international nature of the problem. I suspect that eventually we will get to the point where email that isn't signed in some way will automatically be bounced.