Cybrpnk's Rantings

On the occasion of Memorial Day we are supposed to think about all of those brave young men and women who have fought and died for our country. We are supposed to honor their sacrifice, and pay homage both to the nation for which they died, and to the patriotic spirit which leads them into combat. It is the motivation of these brave individuals which I would like to examine. Not to question or diminish it, but to wonder why it is so narrowly channelled. Why, I wonder, is our nation so adept at harnessing the sort of altruism which leads some of our best and brightest young men and women to join the military, and so hostile to harnessing that same altruism later in life? This point was brought home to me a few weeks ago on the letter page of the Los Angeles Times. In response to an article about public high schools contemplating banning military recruiters from campus, someone wrote in to praise the fine spirit of the military volunteer. He waxed poetic about how admirable it is for people to think of something bigger than themselves, to learn to stand up for ideals, to protect those who cannot protect themselves. I was immediately struck by the fact that the arguments being made in favor of military service are, in fact, exactly the same arguments that lefties like myself make when we argue in favor of taxation and social programs.

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I was recently asked by a conservative colleague to explain to him the ways in which my personal civil rights had been reduced since 9/11. Clearly there is still some health to our system, as I am allowed to write whatever I want on this blog, and have yet to be hauled off to a gulag. However I encountered a fine example of the growing American fascism this weekend in Albuquerque. As I approached security at the Skyport (the local quaint name for what the rest of us call an Airport), I was instructed to take off my shoes. Being a savvy traveller, I was wearing sneakers which I knew to be completely rubber. I informed the TSA person that my shoes would not set off the metal detector. She informed me that anyone who wore their shoes through the detector would be sent to secondary inspection. When I questioned this I was informed that it was a 'profile' issue and that anyone who wouldn't take off their shoes was supposed to be searched. Obviously this was a lie.

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Despite all of his tough-guy image and macho rhetoric, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger is a wimp. He makes a big show about his tough stance in taking on the state's problems, yet at the same time he continues the California gubernatorial tradition of genuflecting before the prison guard's union. I have long felt that if Arnold really wanted to fix California's budget, the prison system would be the place to begin. There is a massive hole blown in the budget by the cost of the state's extensive penal system. There is also a tremendous societal cost due to the large numbers of people in jail who shouldn't be there. Rather than making his first action a rollback of the vehicle license fee, he should have freed everyone currently in jail for possession of all drugs, or at the very least marijuana, for personal use. That would have been a true blow for personal liberty. He had a golden opportunity to restore some semblance of justice to the California penal system last year, but chose instead to campaign against the proposition to amend the three strikes law. When you hear Arnold whine that his political enemies are telling lies, remind him that he has extended the incarceration of thousands of people by telling lies of his own. A complete squandering of personal integrity to help out the prison guards.

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There was a truly outrageous story on NPR this morning about the US military releasing a report to the public with classified information contained within it. The report in question described the investigation into an incident in which US forces killed an Italian intelligence agent, and injured Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian reporter who had just been released by kidnappers. Some bright mind released the document in a digital format (PDF), and used software formatting to black out classified information. Since the implementation of this formatting keeps all of the information within the file, and just places black over it when it is displayed, it was trivial for technically savvy people to extract the classified information. When questioned about this lapse, a Pentagon spokesman blamed it on 'technical problems.' Bah! I say. This is not a technical failure, it is a gross mismanagement of secure data. Blaming it on technology is pathetic. Almost as pathetic as the NPR reporters accepting the military's description of the problem.

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