- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

14 Jun '04

The collection of concurrences on the merits are quite interesting. The Chief's opinion adopts the SG's argument -- darn-near-preposterous, IMHO (and that of Justice Thomas!) -- that the Pledge is OK in schools because "under God" is "not endorsement of any religion," but instead "a simple recognition of the fact [that] '[f]rom the time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God.'" Justice O'Connor joins the Chief's opinion, but writes separately to suggest that the Pledge in schools is ok only because of a confluence of "four factors" that will virtually never again appear in combination in any other case. This result derives directly from pages 24-29 of the amicus brief that Doug Laycock wrote: http://goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/newdow.laycock.pdf. Justice Thomas concludes -- correctly, in my view, see http://www.goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/Newdow%20Final%20Brief.pdf -- that if Lee v. Weisman was correctly decided, then public schools may not lead students in daily recitation of the words "under God." Thomas, however, would overrule Lee. > http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/html/02-1624.ZS.html ----- End forwarded message -----

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The Merits in Newdow
by None 14 Jun '04

14 Jun '04

The collection of concurrences on the merits are quite interesting. The Chief's opinion adopts the SG's argument -- darn-near-preposterous, IMHO (and that of Justice Thomas!) -- that the Pledge is OK in schools because "under God" is "not endorsement of any religion," but instead "a simple recognition of the fact [that] '[f]rom the time of our earliest history our peoples and our institutions have reflected the traditional concept that our Nation was founded on a fundamental belief in God.'" Justice O'Connor joins the Chief's opinion, but writes separately to suggest that the Pledge in schools is ok only because of a confluence of "four factors" that will virtually never again appear in combination in any other case. This result derives directly from pages 24-29 of the amicus brief that Doug Laycock wrote: http://goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/newdow.laycock.pdf. Justice Thomas concludes -- correctly, in my view, see http://www.goldsteinhowe.com/blog/files/Newdow%20Final%20Brief.pdf -- that if Lee v. Weisman was correctly decided, then public schools may not lead students in daily recitation of the words "under God." Thomas, however, would overrule Lee. > http://supct.law.cornell.edu:8080/supct/html/02-1624.ZS.html ----- End forwarded message -----

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(fwd) The Merits in Newdow
by Justin 14 Jun '04

14 Jun '04

Christ. The U.S. is now officially a Christian nation. ----- Forwarded message from Marty Lederman <marty.lederman(a)comcast.net> -----

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Re: War ain't beanbag....What the F*ck?
by Tyler Durden 14 Jun '04

14 Jun '04

Justin wrote... >I haven't lived in China, but my impression of the country leads me to >believe otherwise. If it's not *quite* socialist, it's fascist. >As above, this doesn't seem right. Hong Kong might be a major capitalist >center of operations, but Hong Kong is not really China, socioeconomically >speaking. Mainland China is already a capitalist giant. It's also arguably fascist, at least from an American's point of view. But if you don't f*ck with politicians, you can cut almost whatever deal you want. Start criticisizng Zhong Non Hai and your eyeballs will end up giving sight to some aging businessman or party bigshot (which basically means an aging businessman these days). >A majority screwing up a country is not "letting them figure things out on >their own". Maybe we should have let the Japanese figure things out by >themselves once they surrendered? Germany? No funds to rebuild France. >Oh, I want to live in *that* world, where we may not have won the cold >war. Well, there's a difference here. It's one thing to rebuild a country after we've gone to war with them, but messing with a country's internal politics and destabilising their local governments is a different story. And indeed, none of the countries where we've performed such duties (with our help from our friends in the SOAs) currently have a particularly stable economy, though Argentina is finally showing some dim hope. -TD _________________________________________________________________ Getting married? Find great tips, tools and the latest trends at MSN Life Events. http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=married

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This Spy for Rent
by R. A. Hettinga 14 Jun '04

14 Jun '04

<http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/13/opinion/13BAMF.html?pagewanted=print&posi…> The New York Times June 13, 2004 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR This Spy for Rent By JAMES BAMFORD ASHINGTON Assessing, cultivating and recruiting spies has long been a key job of Central Intelligence Agency officers. But now it is the C.I.A. officers themselves who are being assessed, cultivated and recruited - sometimes right out of the agency's cafeteria. In what is leading to a critical spy drain, private companies are aggressively seeking highly trained employees of our espionage agencies to fill government contracts. With the resignation of George Tenet as director of central intelligence and the final hearings of the 9/11 commission this week, the stage is set for the first major restructuring of the intelligence community in decades. While there has been much discussion of moving agencies and creating an "intelligence czar," the privatization of our spies has been largely overlooked. The C.I.A. is awash in money as a result of post-9/11 budget increases. But because of the general uncertainty over the future, it faces a long delay before it can recruit, train and develop a new generation of spies and analysts. So for now it is building up its staff by turning to the "intelligence-industrial complex." These corporations range from Fortune 500 giants like Booz Allen Hamilton and Northrop Grumman to small companies made up almost entirely of former senior C.I.A. officers, like the Abraxas Corporation in McLean, Va. For example, one Abraxas expert, Mary Nayak, formerly ran the Directorate of Intelligence's South Asia group; now she's been hired as a consultant to the C.I.A.'s review group on 9/11. Private contractors are taking over jobs once reserved for highly trained agency employees: regional desk officers who control clandestine operations around the world; watch officers at the 24-hour crisis center; analysts who sift through reams of intelligence data; counterintelligence officers who oversee clandestine meetings between agency officers and their recruited spies; and reports officers who act as liaisons between officers in the field and analysts back at headquarters. While there is nothing inherently wrong with the intelligence community working closely with private industry, there is the potential for trouble unless the union is closely monitored. Because the issue is hidden under the C.I.A.'s heavy layers of secrecy, it is impossible for even Congress to get accurate figures on just how much money and how many people are involved. But many experts inside and outside the agency feel that we are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars and thousands of contractors. As was made clear by the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, involving private contractors in sensitive intelligence operations can lead to disaster. And the potential for disaster only grows when not just the agents on the ground, but their supervisors and controllers back at headquarters too, are working for some private company. Another problem has been an increased cost to taxpayers. Desperate to fill their contracts, the companies frequently offer to double a federal employee's salary. Because the recruiters have security clearances, they often make their recruiting pitches at the C.I.A.'s headquarters in Langley, Va. And many of those who do sign on end up going right back to their old office - only now working for a private company. Thus, after spending millions of dollars training people to be clandestine officers, taxpayers are having to pay them twice as much to return as rent-a-spies. "The money is incredible," one agency veteran, who handled spies overseas for years, told me. "I doubled my salary to go out and come back in and continue doing what I was doing." But some of these former officers warned me that their talents are being wasted on unsophisticated tasks, and that because of the slap-dash nature of the rush to expand, the quality of intelligence produced has become questionable. "The problem is these jobs are mindless," one officer-turned-contractor with decades of Middle East experience told me. "So we're all just sitting there looking at each other, and we're making a ridiculous amount of money." Another former agency employee told me that he was among a group of contractors assigned to analyze e-mail messages on computer hard drives snatched by operatives in Iraq, Afghanistan and other countries. "A lot of it was in Arabic and none of us spoke Arabic - just a little problem," he said. "None of us really knew what we were doing and we had management who didn't know what they were doing either." As the United States gets more deeply involved in the war on terrorism and the war in Iraq, there will be a corresponding increase in private spies. This isn't all bad: by marrying well-trained federal employees with innovative contractors working in a less structured role, perhaps we can find more effective ways of tackling old problems. But better oversight is critical. If Congress doesn't even know whom the C.I.A. is hiring, how can anyone ensure that what they are doing (and how much they are being paid) is acceptable? As we decide how to remake our intelligence services, we need to find the right balance between the people who make the cloaks and daggers and the people who wear them. James Bamford is the author, most recently, of "A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies." -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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War ain't beanbag....What the Fuck?
by Tyler Durden 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

RAH wrote... >>I'd like to hear how children who werent old enough to pronounce the >>colour were 'reds' who were rightly tortured (apparently) in your >>view, as well as the many women raped and tortured at the hands of >>SOA graduates. >Funny how "liberals" always do the debits and not the credits in >these grotesque calculations. Shall we count the >several-orders-of-magnitude number of starved (*and* butchered) >children in various Marxist "paradises" around the world, too? I >thought not. It wouldn't be "fair". Holy shit, Hettinga. Most of the time you make some sense. This ain't one of 'em. So, in other words, if Salvador Allende is democractically elected in a foreign country, then it's OK for the US to send agents and train torturers and then assasinate their leader? This is a complete nonsequitur logically. The fact that "The Marxists would have killed even more" is irrelevant. As someone who seems to espouse a more or less deterministic viewpoint vis economics and crypto-anarchy, you yourself should support a notion of letting them figure things out on their own. More than this, this is the exact thinking that has caused us all sorts of problem. The best (and most obvious) examples are Vietnam and China. Both of these countries repeatedly kicked our ass in several theaters and then went through a brief socliaist period. In both cases, socialism is practically gone. Had we instead been smart with Mao and China (who we sent the moron Ambassador Hurley to meet) and Ho Chi Min (who was actually our ally against the Japanese), might the excesses of, say, the cutlural revolution been nearly as bad? Would Mao have felt it necessary to try to move the industrial base to the countryside where things would be much less easily A-Bombed (As MacArthur recommended)? Obviously not. There probably would have been a cultural revolution/cleansing of some sort anyway, but this has always happened periodically in China, and Fa Lun Gong is merely another example. In the end, China ended up being a major capitalist country, and our involvement against the Chicoms only slowed this process down. We're making a similar mistake in Iraq, and we New Yorkers will probably pay for it again (if Tyler Durden stops posting after WTC#2 comes tumbling down, you'll know what happened. I'll try to post one more time from under the rubble if I can sniff a WiFi hotspot.) -TD >From: "R. A. Hettinga" <rah(a)shipwright.com> >To: irtheory(a)yahoogroups.com, cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: RE: [irtheory] War ain't beanbag. Irony is conserved. >Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 15:45:37 -0400 > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- >Hash: SHA1 > >Ah. Here we go. A "liberal" hides behind the straw man, this time in >the shape of a child. How original. > >At 3:37 PM +0100 6/13/04, Lee James wrote: > >I'd like to hear how children who werent old enough to pronounce the > >colour were 'reds' who were rightly tortured (apparently) in your > >view, as well as the many women raped and tortured at the hands of > >SOA graduates. > >Funny how "liberals" always do the debits and not the credits in >these grotesque calculations. Shall we count the >several-orders-of-magnitude number of starved (*and* butchered) >children in various Marxist "paradises" around the world, too? I >thought not. It wouldn't be "fair". > > >I'd also be keen to see evidence of this free-market success of > >which you talk, because it isn't in central america for the > >countless millions in poverty. > >Freedom, market or otherwise, isn't about the fool's errand of forced >income redistribution, which is, invariably, what actually causes >famine and tragedy. See "children", above. (Not that "for the >children", above, isn't the "liberal" canard it has always been.) >Freedom, market, and otherwise, is about *choice*. The choice to work >hard and make money and do better than you started. Progress, more >stuff cheaper now than it used to be, more stuff cheaper tomorrow >than it is now, is the result. What you do with that stuff, is your >problem. More to the point, it is the very "maldistribution" of that >stuff that makes *progress* happen. > >Marxists have this problem with counting stuff. They deal in lumps of >labor, or "missing" jobs, or labor theories of "value", and it all >speaks to a basic innumeracy that does them ill in a world where >actual math and science are required to achieve things. > > >Before, a person encourages free-markets elsewhere, how about > >encouraging them in the United States in order to really test the > >theory and give these nations a chance of economic development. The > >three most successful industries in the united states (steel, > >agriculture and > >techonology/military) > >Straw man. You're comparing markets and economies that are, for the >most part, free, and pulling out subsidies which are, by definition, >exceptional, and then comparing them to economies in which private >property is, for the most part, criminalized, and saying that the >former is worse. > >Give me a break. > >Sure. I wish that government didn't control huge tracts of the >economy in the US, making them, for the most part, like the very >lands that they own -- sometimes to enhance it's take in graft, >sometimes to mystify nature for various useful idiots out there -- >productivity wastelands. > >Manufacturing in the US is done in *spite* of, not *because* of, >subsidy, not to mention over-regulation and the government-assisted >extortionate demands of labor "unions". So too with the political >feather-bedding and log-rolling in agriculture, mining, and, even, I >would claim, defense -- if it were possible to imagine a world with >force-monopoly to begin with, making the whole point moot. > > >are all state funded and protected in a exceedinly > >'socialist' manner. There is no evidence in Europe of development > >occuring in industry any other way either. > >Say no more. :-). In Europe industry is forbidden unless permitted. >In the US, where new industries are created (what medium are we >talking on, here, for instance) faster than governments can regulate, >much less subsidize them, industry is permitted unless forbidden. > > >The defence of America and by proxy Reagan's crime in Central > >America is alarmingly close to Hitler's defence of his Genocide and > >also Stalin's killing of counter-revolutionarys (if we hadnt done it > >they wou;d have killed more, theyre the threat not us etc). > >That's it. Go for it. You know you want to: Reagan = Hitler. > >Somewhere, even Mike Godwin, who probably didn't vote for Reagan, >though for different, more valid, reasons than yours, is laughing. >Godwin, a casual friend of mine, has another "law", by the way. See >my .sig, below, which points to an axiom of mine, which is, >"progress, like reality, is not optional". It's entirely appropriate >to this discussion of industry being created by government, and not >the other way around. > > > > >Exactly at which point does a war (any war) stop being defensive > >because according to the history books the US has never fought an > >aggressive war. > >I prefer to think about the McDonald's paradox: No country that has a >McDonald's has attacked another. :-). We'll see how long *that* >stands up. As for "democracy" somehow being magical, remember that >Athens brought on the Peloponnesian war, not Sparta. That Andrew >Jackson, the founder of the political spoils system that is one and >the same as the "Democratic" party in the US, was one of the great >war-mongers of all time. There is a hoary old joke among Republicans >in the US that Democrats start wars, and Republicans finish them. >Humor that is, in this case, rooted more often than not in reality. > > >I'm not sure that it is defensive to defend a country against its > >own people, when europe did so it was called colonisation. > >Yawn. When Europe did it it was called "economics". A word you seem >to be unfamiliar with. When their economic interests were attacked >(First the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then The Dutch, then the >English), surprise, they won. See Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", >for details. Eventually, having won all these mostly defensive wars, >they owned all this territory, and like other great rent-seekers >throughout history, they handed it all over to the government because >it was cheaper than hiring their own armies. > >Life is hard. Sometimes, people with guns come and kick your ass. If >you don't have guns, you can't kick their ass. More often in history, >though, people with swords and spears came to kick the ass of >*traders* with guns, who are there just to make a little dosh buying >cheap and selling dear, and, strangely enough, the guys with the >swords and spears lost, yielding their territory and, surprise, >sovereignty. Force is a geographically monopolistic market. Whadda >concept. It would be nice to change, but, like I said before, there >it is. > >Cheers, >RAH > > > >-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- >Version: PGP 8.0.3 > >iQA/AwUBQMyuysPxH8jf3ohaEQI6awCdFvUFdrn7FssYaPh+OkmcIgf7tMUAn2h3 >/L0Kr5caWMa3hcS5uzggzgzN >=TPoK >-----END PGP SIGNATURE----- > >-- >----------------- >R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> >The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> >44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA >"...any [network] architecture that can survive a nuclear attack can >survive withdrawal of government subsidy..." -- Michael Godwin > _________________________________________________________________ Watch the online reality show Mixed Messages with a friend and enter to win a trip to NY http://www.msnmessenger-download.click-url.com/go/onm00200497ave/direct/01/

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Casio's credit card watch
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

<http://www.engadget.com/entry/6562458580289881/> - Engadget - www.engadget.com Casio's credit card watch Posted Jun 9, 2004, 8:30 AM ET by Gareth Edwards Related entries: Misc. Gadgets Putting IC chips into things to turn them into electronic wallets is officially the latest Japanese gadget trend. Casio gets in on the act with a watch it has developed with card company JCB that can be swiped over a reader to pay for purchases, or get through security gates in office buildings. It uses the Sony FeliCa chip, which is fast becoming the de facto standard and will start appearing in Japanese cellphones very soon. Casio is very big on the fact that you now don't have to root around in your bag for a credit card or cellphone in order to pay for things or get in and out of the office. We're happier with the latter idea, if only because the standard IC-chip company ID cards are apt to snap in half if you look at them crosseyed; on the other hand, being able to pay for stuff with something that doesn't even look like a credit card sounds like a recipe for disaster, unless they have the hands swing to one minute to midnight when you're about to hit your credit limit. Also, it's worth pointing out that the kidz of Japan don't seem too bothered about watches these days; we recall a survey not so long ago in which the most popular watch brand among teens was "NTT DoCoMo". -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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[Neuclear-general] VERAX Beta Dollar the second NeuClear asset is now live
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

--- begin forwarded text

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RE: [irtheory] War ain't beanbag. Irony is conserved.
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Ah. Here we go. A "liberal" hides behind the straw man, this time in the shape of a child. How original. At 3:37 PM +0100 6/13/04, Lee James wrote: >I'd like to hear how children who werent old enough to pronounce the >colour were 'reds' who were rightly tortured (apparently) in your >view, as well as the many women raped and tortured at the hands of >SOA graduates. Funny how "liberals" always do the debits and not the credits in these grotesque calculations. Shall we count the several-orders-of-magnitude number of starved (*and* butchered) children in various Marxist "paradises" around the world, too? I thought not. It wouldn't be "fair". >I'd also be keen to see evidence of this free-market success of >which you talk, because it isn't in central america for the >countless millions in poverty. Freedom, market or otherwise, isn't about the fool's errand of forced income redistribution, which is, invariably, what actually causes famine and tragedy. See "children", above. (Not that "for the children", above, isn't the "liberal" canard it has always been.) Freedom, market, and otherwise, is about *choice*. The choice to work hard and make money and do better than you started. Progress, more stuff cheaper now than it used to be, more stuff cheaper tomorrow than it is now, is the result. What you do with that stuff, is your problem. More to the point, it is the very "maldistribution" of that stuff that makes *progress* happen. Marxists have this problem with counting stuff. They deal in lumps of labor, or "missing" jobs, or labor theories of "value", and it all speaks to a basic innumeracy that does them ill in a world where actual math and science are required to achieve things. >Before, a person encourages free-markets elsewhere, how about >encouraging them in the United States in order to really test the >theory and give these nations a chance of economic development. The >three most successful industries in the united states (steel, >agriculture and >techonology/military) Straw man. You're comparing markets and economies that are, for the most part, free, and pulling out subsidies which are, by definition, exceptional, and then comparing them to economies in which private property is, for the most part, criminalized, and saying that the former is worse. Give me a break. Sure. I wish that government didn't control huge tracts of the economy in the US, making them, for the most part, like the very lands that they own -- sometimes to enhance it's take in graft, sometimes to mystify nature for various useful idiots out there -- productivity wastelands. Manufacturing in the US is done in *spite* of, not *because* of, subsidy, not to mention over-regulation and the government-assisted extortionate demands of labor "unions". So too with the political feather-bedding and log-rolling in agriculture, mining, and, even, I would claim, defense -- if it were possible to imagine a world with force-monopoly to begin with, making the whole point moot. >are all state funded and protected in a exceedinly >'socialist' manner. There is no evidence in Europe of development >occuring in industry any other way either. Say no more. :-). In Europe industry is forbidden unless permitted. In the US, where new industries are created (what medium are we talking on, here, for instance) faster than governments can regulate, much less subsidize them, industry is permitted unless forbidden. >The defence of America and by proxy Reagan's crime in Central >America is alarmingly close to Hitler's defence of his Genocide and >also Stalin's killing of counter-revolutionarys (if we hadnt done it >they wou;d have killed more, theyre the threat not us etc). That's it. Go for it. You know you want to: Reagan = Hitler. Somewhere, even Mike Godwin, who probably didn't vote for Reagan, though for different, more valid, reasons than yours, is laughing. Godwin, a casual friend of mine, has another "law", by the way. See my .sig, below, which points to an axiom of mine, which is, "progress, like reality, is not optional". It's entirely appropriate to this discussion of industry being created by government, and not the other way around. > >Exactly at which point does a war (any war) stop being defensive >because according to the history books the US has never fought an >aggressive war. I prefer to think about the McDonald's paradox: No country that has a McDonald's has attacked another. :-). We'll see how long *that* stands up. As for "democracy" somehow being magical, remember that Athens brought on the Peloponnesian war, not Sparta. That Andrew Jackson, the founder of the political spoils system that is one and the same as the "Democratic" party in the US, was one of the great war-mongers of all time. There is a hoary old joke among Republicans in the US that Democrats start wars, and Republicans finish them. Humor that is, in this case, rooted more often than not in reality. >I'm not sure that it is defensive to defend a country against its >own people, when europe did so it was called colonisation. Yawn. When Europe did it it was called "economics". A word you seem to be unfamiliar with. When their economic interests were attacked (First the Portuguese, then the Spanish, then The Dutch, then the English), surprise, they won. See Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", for details. Eventually, having won all these mostly defensive wars, they owned all this territory, and like other great rent-seekers throughout history, they handed it all over to the government because it was cheaper than hiring their own armies. Life is hard. Sometimes, people with guns come and kick your ass. If you don't have guns, you can't kick their ass. More often in history, though, people with swords and spears came to kick the ass of *traders* with guns, who are there just to make a little dosh buying cheap and selling dear, and, strangely enough, the guys with the swords and spears lost, yielding their territory and, surprise, sovereignty. Force is a geographically monopolistic market. Whadda concept. It would be nice to change, but, like I said before, there it is. Cheers, RAH -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: PGP 8.0.3 iQA/AwUBQMyuysPxH8jf3ohaEQI6awCdFvUFdrn7FssYaPh+OkmcIgf7tMUAn2h3 /L0Kr5caWMa3hcS5uzggzgzN =TPoK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "...any [network] architecture that can survive a nuclear attack can survive withdrawal of government subsidy..." -- Michael Godwin

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Re: [irtheory] War ain't beanbag. Irony is conserved.
by R. A. Hettinga 13 Jun '04

13 Jun '04

--- begin forwarded text

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