One of the arguments in the illegal immigrant issue focuses on the people who hire them: go after thoses that hire illegals, fine them, and enforce legislation against them and there'll be less incentive for illegal immigrants and those that hire them to be, well, illegal in the first place. This is an argument similar to one in the "don't steal music," illegal filesharing, and p2p debate. I see these as parallel arguments in issues that almost mirror each other. Bear with me, if you will, and hold off on the 'denigrating hispanics as if they were low-bitrate encoded mp3s" retorts and subsequent calls for apology. Additionally, I'm somewhat shotgunning this, so tough it out.
Recently, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of a service was all important in whether a p2p software company could be sued for misuse, regardless, or rather even in respect of, the software company's intent. [
MGM v. Grokster] Interestingly and notably, the Court ruled that highly restrictive limits should not be placed on a newly emerging industry based upon rapidly changing technology. We have Digital Rights Management (DRM) that serves to hamper, but not eliminate, copyright infringement. There're many ways to circumvent all kinds of DRM as shown with the recent
PyMusique iTunes clone which can strip Apple's DRM. Focusing on the individuals who download music, the end user, seems not to be fruitful for the RIAA and the MPAA.
Similarly, there're all kinds of ways for illegal immigrants to get around legally obtaining a Social Security Number, paying income taxes, or for an illegal employer, paying unemployment taxes, or paying a living wage. There're registries set up by governments to check SS#'s for self-enforcement and there're ways for illegals to get checking accounts and drivers licenses to falsify or feign legitimacy. There doesn't appear to be a lot of enforcement which seems to stem from people wanting illegals to "do jobs that even [Americans] won't do" [Vicente Fox] and the idea that immigration helps drive our prosperity [Greenspan]. In essence, we as consumers appear not to want to do anything (but gnash our teeth) to restrict this flow of cheap labor. Are we infringing on our own economic sovereignty? Trying to round up all the illegals that come over and promptly disappear into our cities doesn't seem to be the answer.
There's some coincidentals with the recent years' Sarbanes-Oxley and corporate ethics prosecutions, too. [Scrushy, Lay, etc.] With these, they're going after individuals with power. The thread in these two (three) broad examples appears to be focusing on what's causing the demand for illegal behavior, not the supply, whether it's the technology enablers propagating a demand for illegal files, employers for the demand for cheap labor and us as citizens for cheaper goods, or corporate leaders demanding rakish profits.
If I could place a request for work to be done, go to bed, wake up the next day and have it done for me, I'd do it too. As Uncle BitTorrent'll do for me, all for the cost of leaving my bandwith on for a certain amount of hours - certainly cheaper than utilizing my credit card at my every whim. Who knows, said work may've even come from a foreign country, like India, who's awake when I'm not. Sorta like offshoring. I guess illegal immigrants are the "Right Shore" for non-digital outsourcing.
I've been on a security tangent lately and one of the documents I decided to read was "Trustworthy Computing," a Microsoft White Paper from 10/2002 [Mundie, deVries, Haynes, Corwine]. Here's a quote on the policy issues surrounding trust of computers:
We are entering an era of tension ... exacerbated by the fact that social norms and their associated legal frameworks change more slowly than technologies. The computer industry must find the appropriate balance between the need for a regulatory regime and the impulses of an industry that has grown up unreglated and relying upon de facto standards.
Substitute "immigration" or "corporate governance" for "computer" industry and there's a statement that rings true, even with gads of case law on the former.
Today,
Arundhati Roy - one of my very favorite leftist heros for almost
innumerable reasons - defined what it means to be an enemy combatant:
"anybody who harbors thoughts of resistance" and then promptly declared
herself to be an enemy combatant. Apart from the immediate
observation I had of this comment, first, she's a few years too late
picking up the mantle and second, I seriously doubt she has a t-shirt
declaring her as such (as I do), I don't think she really would want to
be an enemy combatant. Ideologically, though, I think we both are
- though her definition is too broad and dramatic to be of any real
use. There's a great quote from her conclusion speech today that
I'll have to transcribe for later. It's sort of like moral
aromatherapy: the smells feel nice in your head. Also, I have the damn t-shirt. Anyway, that's a
tangent.
She presided over the
World Tribunal on Iraq
held in Istanbul, Turkey where people came to describe the horrors
they've seen and experienced and to condemn the invasion of Iraq. As expected, they
delivered their condemnation. This exercise was styled after
Bertrand Russell and Jean Paul Sartre's
International War Crimes Tribunal
held in the 1960's against the Vietnam War. Being a prominent
writer, playwright, and emotionalist (in my head) one would've thought
I'd be right up there but for some reason, this didn't appear on my
Outlook calendar. I'm a bit disappointed, actually, since I was
looking forward to an international trip. The oddity of all this
is how such conclusions play into the body of statements and laws
called "international law."
As with Russell's forebearer of the UN's ICC, the
World Tribunal on Iraq
came out with a list of condemnations they've entitled "
Preliminary
Declaration of the Jury of Conscience World Tribunal on Iraq" in which
they find the US, UK, governments of other countries, private
corporations, the corporate media and UN guilty as charged. Some
of their recommendations include reparations, withdrawal, nullification
of laws, war crimes proceedings, calls for actions against the private
corporations and the military. Unlike Russell's tribunal, they
didn't condemn the US of genocide. Wussies!
One of the charges against the US/UK governments is "Using
disproportinate force and indiscriminate weapons systems". I
don't think they'd've been pleased if the US/UK decided to use nuclear
or chemical weapons on the Iraqi military which would've been a
"proportinate force" considering almost every nation and the UN were
convinced that Saddam's Iraq had wmd at the time. Ah well, gotta
have a clear conscience somehow. I'm not a Pespi product drinker
and therefore my conscience is clear (A recommended boycott list
includes Pepsi - go me!)
Edit:
Here's the statement I wanted to quote from Arundhati Roy:
Surely, we have the right to express an opinion, and surely, if that
opinion is irrelevant, surely, if that opinion is full of false facts,
surely, if that opinion is absurd, it will be treated as such, and if
that opinion is, in fact, representative of the opinion of millions of
people, it will become very huge.
They're not mutually exclusive states.
cackling ladies
whisper and whoop, orgasm
slip into ipod bliss
old fat women pass
monochromatic two-piece
slow Bantha shuffle
The guy who's supposed to be Zarqawi's 2nd in command / replacement in Iraq, Muhammad Khalaf Shakar aka Abu Talha, has been
captured in Mosul.
Reports are saying that about 70% of Zarqawi's chain of command have
been either captured or eliminated. Seems like whatever's left of
any concerted effort at an insurgency's going to boil down to random
acts of violence and grumbling Sunnis who want more political power.
Taliban chief: Bin Laden alive and well, AP/usatoday, Today
An interview in Urdu with a Taliban military commander conducted near Spinboldak, Afghanistan, 300 miles southwest of Kabul or 50 miles south of Kandahar, and broadcast on Pakistan's GEO television network claims that Bin Laden and Mullah Omar are alive and well. This adds to my theory that OBL is being given active safe haven in western Pakistan. This article in the Christian Science Monitor has some good background on OBL's whereabouts and why the "in and out of Iran" theory's specious.
Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani, the interviewee, was designated as a military successor/replacement Taliban leader for Mullah Omar, October 16, 2001, as Mullah Omar bailed during the defense of Kandahar. He's been previously reported as having hijacked an Indian airlines flight in 1999 as well as the contact between the Pakistani ISI and the Afghan Harkat-ul-Mujahideen (HuM), a group linked to the attempted assassinations of Pakistani President Musharraf (brief from South Asia Terrorism Portal). He's also the one behind attacks against Shi'a in Quetta, Pakistan, very close to Spinboldak. One odd report says that he may be in US custody as early as 1999.
As with Zarqawi speeches that are broadcast (one was, as recently as last month, on Radio Tajdid in the UK), these sorts of interviews are more a morale booster to keep their fight 1) going and 2) in public. Yes, that there's enough doubt that OBL is alive is one aspect, the other aspect being an affirmation that he and Mullah Omar are actually alive, but these are secondary, depending on your point of view. The Taliban is advertising publically via this interview and, since it was in Urdu, probably targetting a Pakistani audience for a replenishment of its forces.
This is the second time that Usmani stated that both OBL and Mullah Omar were alive, the first being in November 2002 during a release of an OBL audiotape, when it was mentioned that OBL was possibly travelling with Mullah Omar in Pakistan under the aegis of HuM.
More information about Spinboldak, Afghanistan:
What a great idea. And I only thought being even more knowledgeable about Islam would help defend myself from rabid Americans. ("Tafsir" is Quranic interpretation done by a religious scholar.)
Though having a scholar debate Islam with Al Qaeda terrorists seems to have worked in Yemen, I'm not sure military psyops'll be adopting this method of combatting terrorists any time soon. The responsibility is definately upon muslims to educate themselves and their own (and of course their non-muslim friends) about Islam and how Islam can work to promote peace.
Abdullah Al Muhajir, aka Jose Padilla, the "dirty bomber," has been
denied review by the Supreme Court.
His lawyers wanted to bypass the government's scheduled July appeal of
a February ruling by a South Carolina judge that "Bush has no authority
to have Padilla held as an enemy combatant." The government
appealed and that appeal is pending. Padilla's lawyer argued for
a bypass of procedure and wanted the Supreme Court to address the
issue. No go.
This has been a very interesting case for both the terrorism aspect and
the enemy combatant status. I'll be following up with more
information about Padilla and about the classification as some
historical background as I write more about the convergance of terror
& the law.
One of the most annoying things to do is upgradinging this blog. .Text to CS1.1 using Kevin Harder's converter read like it was straighforward, but it turned out it wasn't. It's possible I missed some option to create a single stand-alone blog, because Community Server is geared towards one site, many blogs (photo albums and forums, too). I wanted to replicate my single blog on my main url, not under some depth. Seems like there's a lot of good in CS, but last night all I could do was get frustrated with it.
My goal was to migrate my base-url blog from .Text to CS. I eventually found Dan Bartel's article on how to do a single blog configuration for 1.1, but not after completely messing up my directory structure. Yeah, I know, I can just back out (which I plan to do) and redo it, since all of the changes are config files and not code at this point, but what's a blog for if not for kvetch? Oh, right, as you might be able to tell, my css's hosed.
The Ideal Goal would be to get the multiple installs of .Text blog sites that I have on the server under one CS installation, yet still retain the individual URLs of these sites. With the cursory look into the CS structure, it looks like I'll still have to have multiple CS installations, but possibly a single CS database. I've a bit of trepidation in losing the authors of the comments when converting some of the more heavily commented blogs, though. C'est la .net blogs.
Calif. father, son held in al-Qaida investigation, MSNBC - Looks like Pakistani madrassa trained people (aka al-Qaeda sympathizers and potential terrorists) were caught in
Lodi, CA. MSNBC references an
FBI Agent affadavit (pdf), too. This one seems to be a cut and dry case of some people caught out in a lie. It's good the FBI keeps track of talking to these guys otherwise they may have had to wait until something actually happened. Complication: they're American citizens. How hard can the book be thrown at these two for lying?
The media's got some good ones, what with the al-Arian case (Florida CS professor accused of assisting Palestinian terrorist organizations) going on. Financial aid and comfort to terrorists? Probably, but they've got to prove it.
The USA PATRIOT Act's provisions are up for renewal soon (December 2005) and there's a bunch of debate going on in Washington as to it's extent. The Senate Intelligence Committee approved a proposal for giving "Administrative subpoena" powers to the FBI - allowing, in certain cases, requests for records from, say a hospital, without first going through a judge. (
Senate Gives FBI More Patriot Act Power, ABC News)
Jack mentioned something about allowing the FBI free rein to infiltrate mosques in the US. To me, it seems like an idea that's missing the mark. The FBI, as per above, has to pretty much wait until someone's broken a law somewhere before jumping into action. Enforcement of the law isn't usually an invasive or proactive thing and long drawn out court cases show exactly how quickly justice is meted out.
From the MSBNC article:
"Umer Hayat [the father] wore a concealed FBI listening device for the meetings, one source told the Bee [Sacremento news paper], an account confirmed by some of his relatives." The FBI used an informant to get more info to make their case. Much easier than a plant.
Amnesty International's kicks one in their own goal. Melana Zyla Vickers article
Shamnesty International is exactly right about how western institutions are played like a fiddle by Al Qaeda.
My only regret here is that I didn't come up with that title myself, upon first hearing about the report.
In the aftermath of the "Non/Nein" and Heard Round the World, it seems like there's some passive agressive rage going on with regards to the adoption of the Euro. There's been a call for the return of the Dutch Guilder and the Italian Lira as well as some pouting by Luxembourg, current holders of the rotating EU presidency (it changes every 6 months).
Both the Dutch and the Italians are ticked about the Euro-induced inflation they've had to endure since the switch to a single currency.
"Wouldn’t it be better perhaps to return, temporarily, at least to a system of double circulation (of both the euro and lira)?"
- Roberto Maroni, Italian Welfare Minister (
Times Online)
The Germans, who're huge EU supporters and have approved the failed EU Constitution, gave this retort: 'Going back to the deutschmark is not an option,' German finance ministry spokeswoman said. (
Forbes)
Frits Bolkestein, former EU single market commissioner, told Dutch television last week that he now regretted giving up the guilder, the symbol of Dutch trading success. (
Telegraph)
Jean-Claude Juncker, the Luxembourg prime minister, said he'd resign if his country votes no on their EU Constitution referrendum, July 10th (
Telegraph) -
"As a result of the referendums, the euro is weakened. What helps the economy for the moment could in the long term become a burden," he said. "It is a question of basic decency towards the voters of Luxembourg. If there is a ’no’, it is not the people who have to quit. It is up to me to go." (
Times Online)
This particular suicide bombing in Iraq merits a bit of analysis -
Suicide bomber kills 10 at Sufi Muslim gathering, Reuters. Does it matter whom the Islamists blow up?
Many people get that there're two large sects in Islam, the Sunnis and the Shi'i, and that the Shi'i are the majority in Iraq (and, post-war, in power) and in Iran.
There are other sects and one of the largest outside the main two is
Sufism, the mystical variant of Islam which emphasizes the spiritual connection with God and has adherents from both Shi'a and Sunni.
The Wahhabi Islamist movement that's been sparked by al Qaeda believes that all non-Wahhabi Sunni sects of Islam are blaspehmers and must be hunted down and destroyed. In Iraq, their current political motive is to rile up an internal Islamic religious civil war, pitting the strict Sunni interpretation of Islam versus all others and in particular, the Shi'i, who're in power in the new Iraqi government. In Pakistan, the sectarian strife that the Islamists are causing is a direct reflection of the country's political situation, where Musharraf has the unpleasant job of trying to balance appearing strong and kowtowing to the overwhelming pro-Islamist / retroactive Sunni majority.
This Iraqi suicide bombing and the suicide bombing of a Sufi gathering in Pakistan
last Friday could mean a few things: the Islamists are losing ground, having to strike out at a lesser publicly (Western) known sect of Islam or, alternatively, the Islamists are showing their supporters that they're committed to their version of Islam by rooting out apostasy in their midst. I'd argue that it's the latter, Islamists distinguishing themselves by striking out at any "unbelievers" is a reaffirmation of their ultimate goals for structure: a new Caliphate under their version of Shairi'a. Further, adding Sufis to their hit list (since they're still killing Shi'a ulema when they can get their hands on them, in Iraq) is a way to get the governments in question to protect this group and therefor implicate themselves in heresy, bringing more cause to overthrowing those in power.
They're not slapping randomly, they're building a case by attempting to back established governments into a corner where they can further denounce their legitimacy and the legitimacy of those that support the governments.
Not too much to say about this one, the news reports say it all: France, a founding member of the EU, votes no on adopting the EU Constitution. Euro,
mais naturellement, but
non to sociopolitical hugging. The Dutch, today, will also say no to it. It's pretty clear that while the EU knows that they need to band together economically to compete with ASEAN and the US, they're still bigoted people who'll eat their own before losing their socialist ways to take one for their team or allowing Turkey into the EU.
Over the weekend I had the opportunity to speak to a new friend, a Swede, who didn't think it was a big deal that France said no (although the rebounding US Dollar says otherwise - this'll be a short rebound, too) since his take was that they'll simply make a few edits and get consensus next time around. I tend to agree with him, even though the pro-yes noise and the analysis claimed that it would simply be too difficult to make changes and get them re-approved by the countries that have already ratified the EU Constitution. Although I agree with that, too, in the end, it comes out to be a wash: The EU Constitution will be (and is) a sign of how hamstrung and ineffective the EU is by their insistance on consensus. Their "great experiment" (as American Representative Democracy is often called) has fizzled in the test tube. The ones that voted yes (Austria, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain) look like chumps and the ones that vote no look like the wicked, mustachio-twirling bad guys that they are.
With that said, it's sad that the US's largest trading partner and largest "ally" continues to prove that it'd rather dither than do. Some percentage of the vote may've been anti-American or at least anti-Capitalist - are we supposed to be reaffirmed in looking out only for ourselves? I think that's definately part of the message Europe is sending to us. (France, in particular, who's a staunch advocate of the idea of an EU that's on par with America, loses out with the failure of the EU Constitution but quickly gives itself points for appointing de Villepin Prime Minister.)
The markets, as mentioned, are sending the US Dollar on a high ("
Euro Slides to Eight-Month Low Vs. Dollar, AP/yahoo) and dropping the US 10 year bond prices to beneath 4%. That's due to France saying "non" - quite a vote of no-confidence for the Euro. I expect this to be temporary financial schadenfreude.
Edit:
Euro vs. Dollar Chart, BBC.
"An exit poll broadcast by state-financed NOS television said the constitution failed by a vote of 63 percent to 37 percent, an even worse defeat than the 55 percent "no" vote in France's referendum Sunday." -
Dutch Voters Reject EU Constitution, AP/sfgate - that's a lot, people, especially when they didn't think more than 40% would turn out.