End the War on Freedom

A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own. -- H.G. Wells

Marty Two Bulls at Indian Country - Storage of nuclear waste in the Yucca Mountains... - cartoon commentary. Hehe. [sierra]

Chris Floyd at The Moscow Times - Empire Burlesque - watch your rhetoric. It could be thrown back in your face. Hahahahaha. [lew]

MECCA, March 22, 2005 -- President Osama B. Laden today called for a "regime change" in the United States, saying the military dictatorship led by unelected strongman George Walker Bush "is an ever-present threat to world peace."

Speaking in Mecca at a rally marking his first year in power, the Saudi president said that "issues of national sovereignty are beside the point when the civilized world is faced with the possibility of untold carnage. Bush has long been developing weapons of mass destruction. He has announced his willingness to use them. He refuses to abide by international treaties to curtail these tools of evil. I will not wait on events while dangers gather. We must act."

...

"What's more, it seems that President Laden's moral outrage is a bit selective," the official continued. "For example, China has a vast arsenal of weapons of mass destruction, and a very harsh, aggressive regime to boot -- but you don't see Laden and the U.S.A. getting ready to bomb Beijing. No, I'm afraid this 'regime change' rhetoric is just the same old trick we've seen throughout history: Using fancy words to get ordinary people to kill and die for the twisted ambitions of their leaders."

Robert Klassen at LewRockwell.com - American Dad - Mr. Klassen learned about liberty from his Dad. We should all be so wise. [lew]

Now I ask you, was my dad anti-American? Am I anti-American? Are my children anti- American? My family firmly believes in the absolute ownership and control of our private property, including our lives, wealth, and innovations. Our family firmly condemns slavery, including tax slavery, chattel slavery, and conscription slavery. Our family firmly supports freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of action. Our family accepts Constitutional government even knowing that it is coercive government. Our family rejects tyranny. Is that anti-American? AVOT says it is.

AVOT believes that we are sheeple to be herded according to their will. They seek to redefine an American as a slave. They seek to silence true Americans. They are the anti-American voice.

Vote Hemp - Ninth Circuit Court Blocks DEA Hemp Rule - I missed this when it came out on March 8. A California court of appeals blocked the d.e.a.'s ban of foodstuffs containing non-psychoactive industrial hemp. A hearing on the merit's of the hemp industries motion to stay is scheduled for April 8 in San Francisco. Sometimes the courts do the right thing.

Charley Reese - An Old Man's Fancy Has Nowhere To Turn - Spring has sprung, and Mr. Reese is no longer a young man. Well, he no longer lives in a young body, but as you'll see if you read this essay through, he's younger in spirit than most. The excerpt below reminds me of my opinion of hunting, which I did a few times between the ages of 14 and 18. What I liked about it was walking through the woods being very alert. I shot a deer the one time I had a good shot, but the hours of walking through the woods and not seeing a deer were more fun.

I've never been a good fisherman, but I enjoy it just the same. Holding a rod gives you a good excuse to stand and stare at the water. If you stood and stared at the water without some fishing gear, some fool would no doubt think you were about to jump in or were waiting for a drug drop.

I also used to enjoy sitting in tree stands with my deer rifle. I never saw any deer, there being in Florida a lot more hunters than there are deer. Nevertheless, I enjoyed seeing the armadillos, the squirrels, the birds and the sunrises. There again, you need the rifle. If people come along and see a grown man just sitting in a tree, they'll think he is crazy.

Lucky Green at The Mail Archive - 1024-bit RSA keys in danger of compromise - so why would anyone pick less than the maximum 4096-bit key? For those of you not good at arithmetic, if a 1024-bit key takes a second to break, then a 4096-bit key will take 2¹⁵³⁶ seconds (1536 = (4096/2) - (1024/2)), which is nearly 10⁴⁵⁴ years. Considering that the age of the universe is likely less than 10¹² (a trillion) years, this is a very long time indeed. [faisal]

While the interconnections required by Bernstein's proposed architecture add a non-trivial level of complexity, as Bruce Schneier correctly pointed out in his latest CRYPTOGRAM newsletter, a 1024-bit RSA factoring device can likely be built using only commercially available technology for a price range of several hundred million dollars to about 1 billion dollars. Costs may well drop lower if one has the use of a chip fab. It is a matter of public record that the NSA as well as the Chinese, Russian, French, and many other intelligence agencies all operate their own fabs.

Some may consider a price tag potentially reaching $1B prohibitive. One should keep in mind that the NRO regularly launches SIGINT satellites costing close to $2B each. Would the NSA have built a device at less than half the cost of one of their satellites to be able to decipher the interception data obtained via many such satellites? The NSA would have to be derelict of duty to not have done so.

Bernstein's machine, once built, will have power requirements in the MW to operate, but in return will be able to break a 1024-bit RSA or DH key in seconds to minutes. Even under the most optimistic estimates for present-day PKI adoption, the inescapable conclusion is that the NSA, its major foreign intelligence counterparts, and any foreign commercial competitors provided with commercial intelligence by their national intelligence services have the ability to break on demand any and all 1024-bit public keys.

Bruce Schneier - Crypto-Gram Newsletter March 15, 2002 - Mr. Schneier does not believe that Bernstein's algorithm is likely to make factoring of large primes practical.

Leonard Peikoff at Capitalism Magazine - Peikoff's Experience with the Library of Congress - Disgusting! Mr. Peikoff donated the complete works of Ayn Rand to the Library of Congress, but kept two pages as a memorium, sending photocopies to the library. They sued him for the two pages. On advice of counsel, he allowed them to take the pages, which they did. [unknown]

Nat Hentoff at The Village Voice - Jews Rise Against Ashcroft War - Yes, Virginia, it can happen here. It's happenning right before your eyes. [unknown]

"Delegates representing America's largest Jewish organizations and the national network of Jewish community relations councils [have] passed a resolution criticizing the administration's plans for closed-door military tribunals, detention of immigrants, and monitoring of conversations between attorneys and clients."

Since then, the new rules for the tribunals have been released, and they reflect some of the criticisms in this column and elsewhere of the original draft. But they still violate the rule of American law in crucial respects.

Fulton Gillespie at The Guardian - 'It was not the drug, but the criminalisation of it that killed my son' - Mr. Gillepsie's son Scott died at the age of 33 from a heroin "overdose". Why Scott would still be alive today were it not for the war on some drugs. [unknown]

I am convinced that he would be alive today if all drugs had been legalised and controlled, because he would have had no need to steal and would not have been in prison, the heroin would have been controlled and therefore not toxic, and proper treatment would have been available under such a regulated system.

...

I am no advocate of drugs - I wish to God people wouldn't use them - because for my son the drugs road led to a very dead end. But that need not be so for thousands like him if we take control of the supply. At least we will be sure that they will get treatment and the chance of rehabilitation. And for those foolish enough to keep using, we will be sure that what they take will not kill them.

Gary Clark at KeepAndBearArms.com - The NRA is to the 2nd Amendment as H & R Block is to the 16th - Why the NRA will never support the true meaning of the second amendment: they profit from government-mandated safety testing.

The mistake too many in the pro 2nd Amendment movement make is the assumption that the NRA is opposed to gun control. This assumption is false. The NRA is, always has been, and will continue to be a PRO GUN CONTROL ORGANIZATION! They will always support requirements for permits and attendance at gun safety and training classes because teaching these classes is what the economic life of so many of the NRA's strongest supporters, depends upon. Any assertion that the NRA does not virtually "own" the firearms and gun safety instructor training and certification market in this country is like making the assertion that Microsoft does not virtually "own" the computer operating system market. Both are obvious on their face.

It is because of this that I do not belong to, nor support the NRA in any way. Supporting the NRA is supporting (a form of) gun control and I am opposed to ALL forms of gun control... unless you define "gun control" as being capable of putting a .30 round through an enemy of the Constitution's left eye at 300 yards.

Declan McCullagh at Wired - Hollings Howls Will Have to Wait - Senator Patrick Leahy is not going to allow Fritz Hollings S.2048 excrement to become law this year. Good for him. Leahy is chairman of the Senate Judiciary committee, which Mr. McCullagh says has jurisdiction over the bill. It is currently in the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, which Mr. Hollings chairs. [wired]

Bill Ransom at Sierra Times - Klamath: Water Flowing Again - for all the good it'll do. And for how long? [sierra]

The water is flowing at Klamath to the over 1,200 farmers that were deprived last year of their irrigation water.

The United States Senate in the spring of 2001 voted 52 to 48 to deprive the farmers of the water that had been promised to them by two previous United States presidents. The environmental organizations got all the Democratic senators to vote against the farmers.

Randy Shandobil at KTVU News - Senator Perata Proposes Nickle Tax on Bullets - another good reason not to live in Kalifornication. It's probably not going to pass. Don't know if he's actually proposing a tax on loaded cartridges. He probably doesn't know the difference. [kaba]

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