Archive for the ‘Politics’ Category
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Let’s Talk Ron Paul Then
This is my response to a blog post by Jason Wharton that made the front page of Digg recently. As his post was (obviously) heavy with politics and religion, so too will mine. Expect colorful analogies and strong metaphors ahead.
Although I am not a supporter of Ron Paul or any of the other Republican candidates, I found in your post a lot to agree with. You quoted some of my favorite parts of the Bible, for starters. However, I seem to have learned a different lesson: help others, love everybody, and beware the wolves that would disrupt the previous two lessons.
I do not think that the laissez-faire philosophy preached by Ron Paul helps any of this.
In a time when the wolves of exploitation and the snakes of corruption are breeding and biting like never before, how can a “let’s turn a blind eye and let things play out, let’s not interfere” philosophy be the answer? That’s not a solution, that’s a surrender! The democratic system is a gift from God that lets us work together to create a society where the wolves and the snakes power can be limited.
But we were fooled. “Get the government off our backs!” whispered the snakes back in Reagan’s day, and we rallied behind them. It was a pretty catchy slogan after all, seductive enough to make us forget that life was pretty decent and the Bill of Rights was doing a pretty good job of that. We stripped away the laws and rules that our democratic system had produced, thinking that we were being more democratic and free for doing so. “The market will cure itself of anything bad that happens!” whispered the wolves, offering to hold for us the shield we had built to keep them back while licking their teeth.
We allowed the corrupt and the shameless to fool us into thinking that the democratic system was an impediment to liberty, and so we turned on the very thing that protected our freedom from those who would manipulate and abuse us.
We thanked the wolves and the snakes as they began to eat us for protecting the “right” of the wolf and snake to eat us. But of course, we keep hearing the same thing. “The government is on your backs! Repeal the laws and regulations that democracy produced, because what is good for the corporations is good for you!” And so they chewed. “Corporate regulations mean that you don’t have any rights either!” And so they swallowed.
The corporations have gone too far though lately. They’ve eaten too much, and we’ve finally glimpsed what’s going on. People have begun to see that they’ve managed to sneak into the government. For instance, all I need to say is “Oil” and the word “Corruption” probably comes to your mind, or perhaps if I say “Environment” the word “Crisis” flickers through your thoughts.
The solution is to restore the vibrant democracy that America once had. Their rights stop where mine start, and that is where regulations come in. Let’s work together. Let’s use that democratic system our Founding Fathers gave us to stand up for ourselves again, together. Let us never again cease the fight against evil with the belief that evil will fight itself.
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Response to Linux.com Accusations
Recently, Linux.com posted an article called “When open source projects close the process, something’s wrong.” It starts out as a seemingly generalized complaint about open source projects not being so open, but after the first two sentences you realize that it’s just accusing two groups in particular.
The first case accuses the Oxygen Project, which is associated with KDE, of not being open because two of their developers complained in their blog about some guy publishing their icons before them. The second case is about the GIMP, which is sorta-kinda associated with Gnome, not being open because they apparently told somebody that they didn’t have any spots on the team available for them.
With the KDE team, I don’t actually see the issue. They did not demand that it be taken down. They simply pointed out that in a more decent world, they’d be the ones who would get to release first, and that it was kind of an asshole move to take away the first final publication privilege. No actual demand though. See, just because you can take advantage of something, doesn’t mean you aren’t being annoying if you do. The KDE team didn’t actually do anything but say that they thought it was annoying. There is no clause in the GPL or CC license that says they can’t post to their blog when people do annoying things, even if those annoying things happen to be license compliant.
As for the GIMP thing, we’d definitely need more information. No FOSS project that I’m aware of gives final commit abilities to anybody that asks, not even Kernel.org, which is the most famous. However, most of the better ones will still definitely allow people who give a contribution to be on the team, most likely with their own separate SVN or CVS branch or something until they earn commit access to the big thing (notice all the small fish on Kernel.org). So if the guy was flat out turned away and told that they didn’t have room for him as a contributor, then that’s no good. But if they merely didn’t give him commit access, or if he didn’t actually contribute anything but still wanted his own SVN or CVS or whatever branch, that’s also understandable. The article really should have told us exactly what the person offered those GIMP developers.
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North Korean Blog
I came across a news site/blog hosted by North Korea meant to be viewed by Americans, complete with a section titled “Ask a Korean” where people like you and I can ask questions. The whole thing is very interesting, as I’m sure you’ll find. At any rate, here is what I wrote to them. I tried to keep it as civil as possible, since after all, that’s how politics should be, especially in a question-and-answer environment. After all, they don’t answer things that are flagrantly obnoxious, and I don’t like to be flagrantly obnoxious anyway (though they did have some questions up that sure did seem like they could be taken like that, as I’m sure you’ll see).
Dear Sir/Madam:
In America, many people have come to doubt what the Bush Administration says. In fact, President Bush now has a 70% disapproval rating. My generation is becoming increasingly independent, with people like myself abandoning political labels (‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’) and parties (‘Democrat’ and ‘Republican’). I’m proud to say that I think for myself.
However, we do have a free press. Yes, our mainstream media, namely Fox News, is very recently and quickly becoming discredited, but we do have open access to the Internet. Anybody can create or view any web page (with the obvious exception of child pornography). And the same idea applies to other mediums, such as paper. Anybody can publish and buy any news. No government approval is required, and one does not need an escort to travel the country with a camera crew.
Which brings me to my questions. Why do I not see North Koreans online? Could you link me to any North Korean web sites or “blogs” that criticize policies of your government or Kim Jong-Il? Why do North Koreans need government approval to publish things, and what is the process for getting this approval? And why is it that whenever any of our journalists visit your country they and their camera crews are escorted so closely by soldiers or policemen?
I hope I get to see North Korea for myself someday.
Sincerely,
“Square Bottle”I look forward to their response, and if they do, I’ll be sure to post what they say up here.
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Taliban Offered To Give Up Osama
I have mixed feelings about this. On the one hand, we now know that the CIA had been giving Bush reports every day about how Osama was planning to do something bad for a long, long time (hence how Clinton knew, and hence the whole “at least I tried” thing), so they should’ve done something. On the other hand, I don’t think any sane person really understood how bad September 11th was going to be.
So while it’s a very interesting clip from MSNBC in 2001 and it does certainly stir up some more feelings about how maybe Bush should’ve done more, I don’t know that the “Don’t vote Republican on Nov. 7th!” thing at the end would be too convincing to people who aren’t already voting against the GOP. Meh.
I don’t know. Maybe I just can’t handle this and its ramifications.
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