-- Someone wrote:
Speaking of laws by Christmas, anyone want to give odds on the accuracy of Tim May's prediction on September 13:
Dark times are coming. I'll bet a complete ban on strong, unescrowed crypto is passed in all European countries, Russia, China, Japan, and the U.S. by, say, December 15th.
and
I'm betting, as I said in my last post, that strong unescrowed crypto will be illegal by December 15th.
Does anyone think this prediction will come true?
No, will not come true. All wars are good for government and bad for freedom, but a short victorious war against a far away regime is likely to be less bad than most. If we lost the war, and the war on terror turned inward, against Americans, and became like the war on drugs, then it would have come true. As I write this, the Taliban appears to have entirely collapsed, which will presumably soon result in the Northern alliance killing Bin Laden, and probably his children, relatives, associates, and everyone in his general vicinity. Problem solved. Perhaps they return to the good old afghan tradition of the women folk slowly skinning the foreigners alive. This was women's work, since men lack the patience and manual dexterity required. However, a wise government can always snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It seems we are going to do some nation building, fresh from our great successes in building the nations of Iran and Somalia. Right now the Afghans are chanting "death to Arabs" but if we stick around too long, doubtless we will once again be hearing "death to Americans" Of course, the problem with building nations is that soldiers cannot build nations. At best, soldiers kill bad guys and break their toys. For nation building something rather more is required, starting with a consensus. It would seem they are fair bit short of consensus in Afghanistan, though I saw on television that they are working very hard at it. The Afghan economy is entirely dependent on trade and smuggling, as it has been for the past two thousand years, which is a bit odd for a land-locked country occupied by xenophobic people. When local warlords put up roadblocks to collect tariffs every short distance, the economy collapses, as it did before the Taliban took over. The obvious solution is for the various tribes, warlords, militias, and armed mosques to agree on freedom of trade and movement, and agree to leave each other alone apart from enforcing that. Needless to say, such a solution does not seem to be on the cards, particularly if we "help" them form a government with a bunch of UN troops from various islamic tyrannies and one islamic democracy. Afghanistan cannot survive economically if divided into mutually hostile ethnic and religious enclaves, nor can it survive politically if one centralized unitary government is imposed on this quarrelsome patchwork of very different tribes, races, and religions. It will be hard for Afghan politicians to steer a path between these two catastrophes. For foreign politicians, it will be near impossible. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG sKNc0ZkzESI+/W74xc3mXuPDGrsBVO0GDRe9P7aw 4wEInsJIbFPzALwa1k4byM0nkV5lqxkVQzAnfrnsw