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Politics : Stockman Scott's Political Debate Porch -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lurqer who wrote (33993)	1/1/2004 3:03:25 AM
From: lurqer	Respond to of 89467

The year's lowlights and highlights in technology I've always tended to buy the muddle-through scenario. Human beings make some terrible decisions, and the malevolent among us do enormous damage, but somehow the species seems to muddle through and even make progress. That's how it looks from here as I look back at the last 12 months in technology, tech policy and overall economic matters. Amid the plentiful lowlights, there are plenty of highlights, too. THUMBS UP: To the gains we've seen in cleaning up the corrupt financial system. Give most of the credit to state officials such as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer, who've continually gone ahead of the feeble feds in policing the systematic abuses of investors and the general public. That's not to say federal regulators and prosecutors have been entirely asleep. Stung by public disclosures of their previous nonfeasance, they're moving forward -- though with painfully deliberate speed -- on some of the most outrageous scams from the bubble era, including Enron and WorldCom. But there's little reason to trust the system yet. Too many in the legal and accounting professions remain eager to provide cover for the scam artists who maneuver around ethics and the law. And there still aren't nearly enough cops on the financial-fraud beat. THUMBS DOWN: To a variety of people and companies for their continuing abuse of the intellectual-property system. Greed and control-freakery were all too abundant. The entertainment cartel kept up the pressure, as Hollywood and the music industry threw their considerable weight around with lawsuits and threats to curb not just copyright infringement but halt technological innovation if it might be used for infringing purposes. Their tactics gained unfortunate traction in other industries such as computer printers, where Lexmark used copyright law in a so-far unsuccessful effort to stamp out the business of a maker of cheaper refill cartridges. Meanwhile, the patent system continued to deteriorate. The U.S. Patent & Trademark Office kept issuing idiotic patents for non-inventions. And its previously granted bad patents were used as weapons by a variety of companies to extort undeserved money and thwart competition. The SCO Group, unable to compete in the marketplace, launched an ugly war against Linux, suing IBM and threatening users of the open-source operating system. Luckily, IBM, apparently acting on principle when it might have been cheaper and easier simply to buy SCO off, fought back and earned the thanks of the community. SCO's claims to be defending capitalism will go down as some of the most outrageous statements of the year. THUMBS UP: To the people at the edges of networks who showed how much they have to contribute to the formerly monolithic entities at the center, at least the ones with the wit to accept the help. Howard Dean's presidential campaign understood this earlier than most, and raced to a huge lead as a result. But other candidates, including Wesley Clark, also saw the value of ceding some control to activists. THUMBS DOWN: For the continuing assault on basic liberties in America. The Bush administration demonstrated an almost pure hostility to civil liberties -- apart from the right to own weapons. The administration had ample support from its Republican (and too many Democratic) allies in a Congress that defined spinelessness on this issue. As I write this, a high alert has been sounded for a new terrorist attack within our borders. Someday, such an attack will occur, and I fear it will mark the final demise of the Constitution's protections against untrammeled government power. Yet there were signs of hope, too. Organizations from left to right on the political spectrum have sounded the alarms over the continuing encroachments on our rights. They made small but valuable progress with the still too-few lawmakers who recall that the nation was founded, in part, on the principles that it's worth living with more risk in order to have the benefits of more liberty. THUMBS UP: To the activists who did a lot to promote representative democracy here and abroad in a variety of ways. Confronted with ample evidence of scarily shoddy and secretive practices by the vendors of electronic voting machines, election officials started asking the right questions and, in some cases, acting to preserve our most essential duty: voting. California will require printouts so voters can verify that the machine tallied what it was supposed to tally, and other jurisdictions were moving in that direction. If a free press is essential to self-rule, as I believe it is, the concept got a serious boost as Weblogging and other kinds of grass-roots journalism took root outside the developed world. Bloggers in Iran and China, for example, asserted themselves in profoundly valuable ways, shining lights on things that governments wanted to keep in the dark and which Big Media either hadn't noticed or had purposely ignored. The SARS crisis came to light in part due to short messages passed around on mobile phones in China. THUMBS DOWN: To economic policies that threaten our future. The Bush administration and a feckless Congress rammed through another tax cut, again skewed to the rich, that will make already terrible budget deficits even worse. Republicans and Democrats alike showed a disturbing lust for trade protectionism. Maybe it's just the run-up to an election year, but the damage we could do by curbing free and fair trade would greatly exceed any short-term benefit we'd gain. THUMBS UP: Finally, to the amazing folks who keep innovating and exploring the boundaries of technology. They are changing our lives, mostly for the better. I'm glad they're around. bayarea.com lurqer

To: lurqer who wrote (33993)	1/1/2004 5:33:26 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 89467

With Friends Like These _______________________ Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are coddling fundamentalist fanatics By Max Boot THE LOS ANGELES TIMES January 1, 2004 latimes.com To judge by Libya's promise to give up its weapons of mass destruction, President Bush's get-tough approach in Iraq and Afghanistan has impressed our enemies. But what about our ostensible allies? Pakistan and Saudi Arabia profess to be cooperating in the war on terror, yet they have done a lot more than Libya to spread terrorism and weapons of mass murder around the world. And, unlike Moammar Kadafi, they have no reason to fear a visit from the 3rd Infantry Division if they don't mend their ways. After all, the United States doesn't invade its "friends," right? But with friends like these…. Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have published investigative articles showing that Pakistan was probably a prime supplier of nuclear technology to Iran. This is quite plausible given the well-documented links between Pakistan and another member of the "axis of evil" — North Korea. Last year, U.S. spy satellites photographed a Pakistani cargo plane in North Korea loading missile parts. There is widespread suspicion that, in return for this technology, Pakistan shared nuclear know-how with Pyongyang. Meanwhile, parts of the Pakistani government continue to aid the Taliban insurgency against the U.S.-backed government of Afghanistan. Supposedly outlawed extremist groups like Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba are allowed to openly raise money and spread incendiary propaganda. Saudi Arabia is equally complicit in helping our enemies. The Saudi government spends billions of dollars supporting madrasas, or Koranic schools, and mosques around the world that preach a virulently anti-American strain of Islam. These institutions churn out jihadists faster than Delta Force can hunt them down, not only in Saudi Arabia but also in places like Pakistan. Abd al Aziz bin Issa, a leading Al Qaeda member, recently called Saudi Arabia "the primary source of funds for most jihad movements." Despite the Saudi establishment's expensive advertising campaigns to win the goodwill of the United States, the contempt in which it holds this country is evident. Princess Reem al Faisal, a granddaughter of the late King Faisal, was quoted in October as accusing the U.S. of committing "atrocities" that rank among "the worst in human history" — the latest being the occupation of Iraq. MEMRI, an invaluable website that translates Arabic publications, is replete with similar sentiments from other prominent Saudis. Many of their comments are aimed at exposing the supposed nexus between "Zionists" and "Crusaders." Umayma Ahmad Jalahma, a professor of Islamic studies at the state-run King Faisal University, last year repeated the old libel that for Purim "the Jewish people must obtain human blood so that their clerics can prepare the holiday pastries." This year, for an encore, Jalahma claimed that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was timed for Purim. The superficially reassuring thing about Saudi Arabia and Pakistan is that the leaders of both countries, Crown Prince Abdullah and President Pervez Musharraf, have disassociated themselves from such extremist rhetoric. Both claim to be allies in the war on terror — and to some extent they have delivered by detaining some suspects and closing some bank accounts. But neither one has done nearly enough to crack down on the extremists who have penetrated their own governments. In Pakistan, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency, and to a lesser extent the army, is riddled with hard-liners who support jihadist terrorists in Afghanistan and Kashmir. These radical Islamists may have been behind the recent attempts to assassinate Musharraf. In Saudi Arabia, Abdullah has to compete for influence with his half-brother, Prince Nayif ibn Abdulaziz, who runs the powerful Interior Ministry. Nayif has claimed that the 9/11 attacks could not have been committed by Saudis; they had to be the work of Israelis. After terrorist bombings that rocked Riyadh this year, Nayif cracked down on Al Qaeda cells and some of the mullahs who supported them. But, as Princeton professor Michael Doran argues in the new issue of Foreign Affairs, there are sharp limits to how far he will go in challenging the Wahhabi clerical establishment. To Nayif and others of his ilk, the biggest threat comes not from fundamentalist fanatics but from liberal reformers. The remarkable thing is that a U.S. president who prides himself on moral clarity has been willing to accept such equivocation for so long. No doubt George W. Bush fears that if the U.S. presses either regime too hard, the unintentional result may be to bring Osama bin Laden's acolytes to power. Both Musharraf and Abdullah need the U.S. at least as much as we need them. Neither one can stay in power — or, most likely, stay alive — if the radical Islamists prevail. In the long term, we do them no favors by allowing them to coddle our mutual enemies. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Max Boot is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of "The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power" (Basic Books, 2003).