Rosio Pavoris

There’s this sentiment, primarily in the US, that civilians owning guns is a good thing because it keeps their government afraid of them. This is mostly repeated by the idiots at the NRA, but also by people who are supposed to know better (such as Penn and Teller in their Bullshit! episode on gun control), so it bears addressing.

There are two things fundamentally retarded about the statement. The first is that the government should be afraid of the populace.
This meme is surprisingly popular in the US, but almost unheard of outside it, at least in the Western world, and with good reason. The idea that the government is the enemy in a democratic society is mind-boggling. Protip: the government isn’t the enemy of the people. It is the people.

Unfortunately, it’s become a self-fulfilling prophecy in the US, which, of course, has only helped the popularity of the meme.
I don’t think it’s a reversible trend for as long as a significant portion of the voting population keeps believing it can’t be any other way, though. The American populace doesn’t seem to have a clue what a democratic society is anymore (if they ever did), and wide-spread apathy creates fun vicious cycles.

Anyway. The second flawed assumption here is that an armed populace scares the government.
This is just a schoolboy fantasy that sadly carried over into adulthood, and its considerably more harmful than you might think.

What are you going to do when the police knock on your door, with or without a warrant? Refuse them entry? They’ll break down your door, regardless of whether you’re armed. Are you going to open fire? That’s a great way to get yourself (and your family) killed rather than detained for a bit. Yeah, you may take one or two of them down with you. I’m sure the families of the victims will appreciate that as well. At “best”, this mentality leads to situations like Waco.

Or maybe you’d like to organise an armed revolution? Get a few of your buddies together and burn down city hall? Depending on the city and the number of buddies you can gather, you may succeed, until they call in the military.
Most people seem to forget half the global military expenditure is the US’s, and despite efforts to cripple science on all fronts, they still have the most advanced army on the planet. Iraq may tie up a lot of resources, but you can be pretty sure they’ll be able to scrounge up enough firepower to take out your little insurgency.

Or maybe you think a nation-wide revolution is on the table? Surely even the US military wouldn’t be able to counter that!
If you really think you can organise that many people, why not just vote? The US is still nominally a democracy, despite your best efforts, and while vote fraud can fudge the numbers a bit (and has in the past), you don’t just disappear the opinion of, say, two hundred million people.

But no, what this basically boils down to is puerile schoolboy fancy. Surprisingly, though, owning big guns does not give you a bigger penis, it just advertises your insecurity to the rest of the world.
If there are good arguments against gun control (and I haven’t seen any yet, except possibly to defend against a zombie plague, and everyone knows only shotguns work for that), this is very much not one of them. Grow the fuck up.

A federal judge in Vermont has ruled defendants cannot be forced to reveal their PGP passphrase:

U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Niedermeier ruled that a man charged with transporting child pornography on his laptop across the Canadian border has a Fifth Amendment right not to turn over the passphrase to prosecutors. The Fifth Amendment protects the right to avoid self-incrimination.

In this regard, the US is more sane than the UK.
This is good news, but not primarily from a constitutional angle.

The main problem with forcing people to turn over their encryption keys (any encryption keys, not just PGP passphrases) is that good encryption produces essentially random data, but on any computer, the empty space on the HD (for example) is going to contain pretty much random data as well (as deleting a file doesn’t actually zero out the bits, generally (ignoring tools like shred and the safe deletion option on Macs), but just flags the area it was stored in as being empty space), so the only thing a prosecutor would have to do if withholding encryption keys were against the law would be to claim (part of) the empty space is actually an encrypted file, cleverly hidden (which a lot of software is capable of doing). There would be no way of disproving it.
I use the empty space example, but of course this applies to steganography of any kind. If you look hard enough, you can find random data “hidden” anywhere, and that’s all you need to claim someone is hiding encryption keys and thus breaking the law. The UK’s RIPA can make criminals out of anyone.

Of course, what with the presumption of innocence it might take a mildly corrupt (or ignorant) judiciary to allow it, but let’s face it, those aren’t in short supply.

If this decision holds in appeal, this could be a very important precedent.

(Of course, since this involves an alleged pedophile, many people are getting entirely the wrong message out of this decision, and a lot of the knee-jerk retards are actually rooting for it to be overturned. Let’s hope the judge isn’t swayed by the public opinion, because the public is comprised of ignorant morons.)

I didn’t get anything. ;____;
I did, however, skip class to help my mom set up the Christmas tree. It’s made of blinky lights and tastelessness.

And then it turned out classes were cancelled anyway because of some student demonstration (well, not officially cancelled, but the “we won’t punish you if you don’t show up” type of cancelled, which is the same thing in a hogeschool) against some proposed law that would fund higher education based on the number of credits students acquire each year.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out this is a fucking retarded idea, but apparently only 800 1,500 students (from all over Flanders) showed up to protest. I’m guessing the weather had something to do with that. And maybe the fact that although it was announced well in advance and there were posters all over our building, nobody actually knew what they were supposed to be protesting.

And of course, since the twit proposing it (Frank Vandenbroucke) is a member of the SP.a (the Flemish socialist party, which I voted for), the socialist education union didn’t support the manifestation, because obviously party loyalty comes before common sense, and even fucking party principles.
Neither did the KUL student council, by the way, though the KHL student council, which is technically subservient to said council, did. Of course, the problem with the KHL is that very few people there care about politics, what with the brain damage and everything.

Anyway, it’s just a proposal at this point. With luck it’ll get shot down in January.

(Side note: annual government funding for the entire Flemish higher education system is about a thirtieth of the endowment of Harvard University alone, even with the 10% increase in funding over the past decade or so.)

Edit: Okay, the Standaard said 800 students, VRT Nieuws said 1,500. I’m more inclined to trust the VRT.
1,500 still isn’t an enormous number, given the fact that there are nearly a hundred thousand students in just the five Flemish universities, and presumably considerably more than that in the hogescholen, but it’s better, at least.

Apparently WordPress.com has been blocked in Turkey.
I don’t understand why people are still seriously considering Turkey’s accession to the EU, considering that they keep doing shit like this. Most famously, they also blocked YouTube last March after someone posted a video claiming Atatürk was homosexual (which is probably the most ironic way they could have dealt with that), though that only lasted two days.

Turkey’s Great Firewall isn’t nearly as extensive as China’s, obviously, nor is it as hard to circumvent.
It just works on DNS level, so if you can specify different DNS servers than Turkey’s national ones, or you can access a website through its IP (which it probably isn’t, in WordPress.com’s case; subdomains can be odd), it’s trivial to get around the block.
If you can’t do that, you can just use Google as a proxy, or any of the countless proxy providers out there. Or you could use Tor or similar networks, which more people need to familiarise themselves with.

Still, since all of these things are likely to be beyond the average user still, and considering the influence of blogs and the influence of the blogosphere in keeping tabs on governments in general, this is a significant blow to freedom of speech (which, of course, is a basic human right, and the most important indicator of a free society) in Turkey.
Fewer people use WordPress.com than YouTube (I’m pretty sure), but the protest will probably be significant enough to repeal this block relatively quickly. Still, the fact that the Turkish government thinks they can get away with this (and without explanation) is a very bad sign.

This isn’t the first time some public figures have made controversial edits to Wikipedia—Diebold, Walmart, and Congressional gimps have all done it before—and I guess it shouldn’t surprise us that the news network with the biggest problem with reality has taken a page out of Colbert’s book. Still, the extent and blatantness (and especially the pettiness) of it are surprising, even by Fox’s standards.
Geeks are Sexy has the details.

Yes, much of that (all, maybe) is probably just individual Kool-Aid drinkers who happen to be using Fox’s connection rather than a deliberate attempt by the network to smear people who keep shattering their illusions (after all, that would be the type of employee they’d attract), but it’s still pretty funny.
Keep fighting the good fight, dickweeds.

American Red Cross sued over its emblem by Johnson & Johnson

After more than a century of sharing the same emblem, a red cross on a white field, Johnson & Johnson has sued the American Red Cross for using its trademark for other than non-profit purposes.

J&J claims the ARC is marketing first-aid kits to make a profit, while the Red Cross says the money from the sale of the kits goes exclusively to its relief services and called the pharmaceutical giant’s lawsuit “obscene.”

And ARC is right.

J&J registered “their” logo as a trademark in 1905, and claim to have been using it since 1887. The Red Cross has been using it since 1864, and the Geneva Conventions stipulate that it’s the only organisation that can use it.
When the US ratified the Geneva Conventions in 1882, it took a while to enable the necessary legislation (no surprise there), and by the time they did, lobbying by J&J ensured that they got to use the logo themselves, in violation of said Conventions.

So for over a century, J&J has been using this logo (illegally, though obviously not in the American sense of the word) for commercial purposes, while the American Red Cross has been using it for non-profit purposes.
Now they think the fact that the ARC is selling things to fund their (still non-profit) projects infringes on “their” trademark, and they’re demanding punitive damages (and legal fees).

Seriously.
The only way they could be more evil is if they actually shot puppies for profit.

You may or may not be aware that a while ago, bookseller Borders in the UK moved all copies of the comic book Tintin in the Congo to its adult section, and added stickers warning of shocking content, because it was considered racist. Since Tintin is Belgian, this made the news here at the time.

If you aren’t familiar with the album, in it, Tintin visits Congo, which was a Belgian colony at the time (1931). The actual storyline isn’t very interesting, but he interacts with the natives on several occasions, and yes, by today’s standards it’s quite racist.

And now, it’s in the news again.

Parket opent onderzoek naar racisme in ‘Kuifje in Afrika’

Bij het Brusselse parket is een vooronderzoek geopend naar de strip ‘Kuifje in Afrika’ van Hergé nadat een Congolese student een klacht had ingediend omdat hij het album “een belediging voor alle Congolezen” vindt.

A Congolese student filed a complaint because he thinks the album is “an insult to all Congolese”.
In particular, he objects to the stereotypical way the Congolese are drawn and speak, and the way Snowy talks to them.

This is a comic book written in 1931. Hergé was aware it was racist, but he was trying to capture the Zeitgeist of the time. He was quite explicit about this.
Nevertheless, he still toned it down when it was redrawn in 1946, and he even removed references to Congo being a Belgian colony, even though they wouldn’t become independent for another decade and a half. Newer editions are toned down even further.

Hergé has been dead for twenty-four years. The album is seventy-six years old, and somehow it went without lawsuit for all that time.
It’s a work of art, very obviously not intended to target blacks. It reflects the spirit of the time, and is emphatically not covered by hate speech or discrimination laws.

This guy is complaining about a cartoon dog thinking rudely in the general direction of cartoon black people.

It’s just a retarded attempt to get national attention, and apparently it worked.
If there was any sort of black/white racial tension in Belgium (there isn’t, really; Flanders can be retardedly racist, but really only towards brown people), this would be exactly the sort of thing to make it worse.

Congratulations, Mbutu Mondondo Bienvenu. You’ve successfully wasted the court’s time, and fed the stereotype of blacks being hypersensitive to racism.
Oh, and you got to appear on national TV. Go you.

So apparently my blog was crashing IE consistently (as opposed to randomly, which it manages all by itself). I couldn’t actually be bothered to figure out why, and embedded YouTube videos were blamed.
When I looked at today’s announcement to see what the transparent PNG looks like in IE, though, it still crashed, so clearly it was something in the sidebar.
Apparently it was that sidebar election poll.

It’s been up for about a month now, so I doubt it’s going to change much in the near future, except for maybe a few more random trolls voting for Republicans, so I took it down. Result are →

As expected, most people voted for Gore. The Ron Paul voters are the ‘tards trolling Technorati for Ron Paul posts, who dropped by a while ago. Not sure who voted for Thompson. Probably random Karel Dillen masturbators.

Anywae.

A poll by Het Laatste Nieuws found that if elections were held today, Yves Leterme would receive a hundred thousand fewer votes than he did in the June elections. Considering that he had 796,521 of them (not counting the votes to his party; voters can vote either for a party or for individuals within a party, here), I’d say that’s pretty significant.

(Incidentally, 796,521 was almost a record high. I think only one person in the history of Belgia got more individual votes than that. If it seems low to you, keep in mind that since he’s a Flemish politician running for a Flemish party, only voters in Flanders can vote for him (about six million people live in Flanders, though I’m not sure how many of those are over 18), and most people tend to vote for parties, not individuals.)

The main reason, apparently, is that the formation of the new government still isn’t over yet. He also essentially just sent away Jean-Luc Dehaene, one of our former (and still quite popular) Prime Ministers, who was appointed by the King to make sure things proceeded smoothly (presumably because he managed to resolve the apparently irresolvable political crisis in 1987 as an informateur, in much the same circumstances (”Sire, geef me honderd dagen”; it ended up taking 106, but it was still regarded as miraculous)).
Much of the reason things are moving so slowly is the fact that half of the people in these negotations (well, a little under) are, obviously, Walloon, and Leterme is at this point notorious for his contempt for Wallonia. Apparently this contempt wasn’t a real factor in losing him those votes, though.

Either way, if Leterme does end up Prime Minister (which is pretty much inevitable, though the way he’s been going, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he was asked to leave), I’d bet he’ll only serve one term. People tend to have a short memory for things that happen during a term, but they tend to remember what happened at the start and at the end.

MySpace bars 29,000 sex offenders

The company found more than 29,000 convicted sex offenders in the United States had profiles on MySpace - up from a figure of 7,000 given in May.

MySpace said it was pleased it had identified and removed the profiles of the offenders.

I’ve complained about this before—”sex offender” is far too broad a term, Megan’s Law is a miscarriage of justice, if these people are online they’ve already done their time (though double jeopardy doesn’t apply in this case, obviously), it’s not Myspace’s place to be a parent to your children, &c. &c.

“The exploding epidemic of sex offender profiles on MySpace - 29,000 and counting - screams for action,” said Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal.

In North Carolina, Attorney General Roy Cooper wants a state law that would require children to obtain parental permission before creating profiles on sites such as MySpace, and require the site to check parents’ identity.

Attorneys General Blumenthal and Cooper are fucking idiots, either out to get some easy votes or insane paranoiacs ignorant of their own laws.

That is all.

Edit: Alright, not quite all. There’s also this post by Stephanie Booth, which for the most part articulates my thoughts a bit more coherently. Go read it.

This dude is supposed to be our next Prime Minister, y’know.
I can kind of understand not knowing why the Nationale Feestdag is when it is (and not just because Verhofstadt didn’t know either), but confusing the Brabançonne with the Marseillaise?

(Via Kosmopolit.)

For some unfathomable reason, Hillary Clinton is still leading in the polls, and it’s looking increasingly likely that she’ll be the next president of the US. Whether the Bush → Clinton → Bush → Clinton pattern is neat or profoundly disturbing is open to debate, but what worries me more is that Democratic voters would actually vote for Clinton.

Clinton has the right idea about some issues. She’s right about fiscal policy (she opposes government debt and opposed Bush’s tax cuts). She’s right about energy policy, as far as I can tell. She right about the free market, which is a rare thing indeed in Ameriko (she’s opposed to an unfettered free market, and supports fair trade agreements). She’s right about the importance of the UN, human rights (and it’s sad this has to be explicitly stated), gun control (though obviously she doesn’t go far enough for my tastes), abortion (if you look past the “I’m personally opposed to it” pandering), stem cell research, and net neutrality.

However, she’s wrong on so many more issues, many of which are considerably more important.
She’s wrong about healthcare (she thinks she’s trying to help, but privatisation will destroy it). She’s wrong about immigration (though beyond “border security” (that is, building that goddamn wall, which she supports), her voting record isn’t actually that bad, I’ll grant). She’s profoundly wrong about Israel. She’s wrong (so very, very wrong) about flag burning. She’s wrong about crime (she’s in favor of the three strikes law, and is generally in favor of tougher punishments, which is so wrong-headed it’s not even funny). She’s wrong about the death penalty. She’s wrong about No Child Left Behind.

She’s wrong about violent video games, which I wouldn’t consider that big a deal if not for this incident involving GTA:SA (remember the Hot Coffee bullshit?): she warned Rockstar that if they didn’t change the game’s rating from M (17+) to AO (18+, because apparently that’s not an empty gesture since people go through a magical transformation when they turn 18, making them a whole different person from when they were 17), she would introduce federal legislation to regulate the sexual content of video games.
Rockstar changed it, and five months later, she introduced the legislation anyway.

She’s wrong about Iraq, obviously. She voted in favor of the war, and still refuses to admit that was a mistake. Considering her warmongering hawkishness, I don’t trust her not to piss off Iran.
And naturally, she’s wrong about “homeland security”. She voted for the Patriot Act, but so did everyone else (except Feingold, yes), so I’ll forgive her for that. She supported the filibuster against renewing it in 2005, but apparently only because New York (for which she’s the junior senator) didn’t receive enough funds.
I’m not convinced she understands the importance of not sacrificing civil liberties to gain some illusory sense of security.

And she seems to be a homophobe. She’s opposed to gay marriage (though she supports separate-but-equal “civil unions”, as if that’s not a retarded concept), she supports the (unconstitutional and Orwellianly named) Defense of Marriage Act, and she even refused to say homosexuality isn’t immoral when asked.

Now, you could say her wrongness is just a result of trying to pander to literally everyone at once (and it is; she’s even more blatant than McCain), and doesn’t necessarily reflect anything about how she’ll behave once she’s in office, but are you willing to take that chance?

My main concern, though, is that she’ll pull the Democratic Party even further to the right, thereby destroying any chance the US has of sensible government for decades to come. Bush and the neo-cons did it for the Republican Party (though the religious right, of course, already beat them to it; they just made it even worse), and the anti-Bush backswing isn’t undoing it.
From that perspective, it almost might be better if a Republican won the election, though not really. The most immediate problems are global warming and the threat to global stability posed by the Middle East, and a Republican can only aggravate both.

I seriously think that if Gore doesn’t run (he’s the only one with enough support to beat out Clinton, at this point), we’re all screwed.

Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq

By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, as amended (50 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.)(IEEPA), the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C. 1601 et seq.)(NEA), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code,

I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, find that, due to the unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States posed by acts of violence threatening the peace and stability of Iraq and undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq and to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people, it is in the interests of the United States to take additional steps with respect to the national emergency declared in Executive Order 13303 of May 22, 2003, and expanded in Executive Order 13315 of August 28, 2003, and relied upon for additional steps taken in Executive Order 13350 of July 29, 2004, and Executive Order 13364 of November 29, 2004. I hereby order:

Fuck it, way too verbose.
Boils down to this: the Secretary of the Treasury can now, without prior notice, freeze the assets (all of them) of anyone suspected of wanting to undermine Iraq’s “reconstruction”, or of anyone who has or is suspected of having any dealings with such a person, regardless of whether or not this person is a US citizen, as long as these assets are within reach of the US.

Just for the record, here’s the Fifth Amendment:

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Between this and the suspension of habeas corpus (still in effect), the only real part of that that apparently still applies is the double jeopardy one, and that’s essentially moot now anyway.

Of course, we can trust it’ll only be used against “terrorists”, right?
Note how the justification is some nebulous “national emergency”, yet again.

Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.

–Hermann Göring

Met given real time c-charge data

Police are to be given live access to London’s congestion charge cameras - allowing them to track all vehicles entering and leaving the zone.

Anti-terror officers will be exempted from parts of the Data Protection Act to allow them to see the date, time and location of vehicles in real time.

They previously had to apply for access on a case-by-case basis.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith blamed the “enduring vehicle-borne terrorist threat to London” for the change.

(…)

But they will only be able to use the data for national security purposes and not to fight ordinary crime, the Home Office stressed.

(For the non-British, “Met” is the Metropolitan Police Force, which is responsible for Greater London. Because apparently London is a separate country now.)

To be perfectly honest, I’m surprised they hadn’t been doing this, and that it took six years for them to actually have the gall to.

Yes, if there were a legitimate terrorist threat, this would be understandable, and perhaps even defensible, but remember, the “enduring vehicle-borne terrorist threat to London” consists of a single amateurish case involving two car bombs, neither of which would have been detected using these cameras.
Islamic terrorism over the past six years has had far less impact than the IRA in the ’80s and ’90s, and they apparently never merited this sort of bullshit.

But the worst part of this: why, pray tell, is “national security” suddenly an acceptable excuse when “ordinary” crime isn’t? They know damn well the people wouldn’t put up with using these cameras for regular crime-fighting (well, considering that this is London, they probably would; I wouldn’t be surprised if in a few years, they expanded their power to also allow for regular crime-fighting, and the people of London wouldn’t even notice), so why the fuck are we (well, they) supposed to put up with this for “national security”, a term so vague it might as well mean nothing at all?

Anyway. This acknowledgement probably means it’s been going on for years by now, and it’s a good example of how you will lose your rights if you don’t care about them.
I’m not sure if apathy or fear is the greater driving force behind the Londoners not doing something about this, but in the end, it amounts to the same thing.

First the creationist, now a global warming denialist?

(Got tired of waiting for DNS, so I’m just going to post this now and move it later.)

I wish I could link you to an article, but I only have it in paper form.
P-Magazine, a bikini-based weekly magazine aimed at male audiences (and one of the largest weekly magazines in Flanders, one our family has read every week for the past three or four decades), interviewed Salomon Kroonenberg this week (billed as a “global warming and Kyoto skeptic”), and it’s appalingly bad, even by denialist standards.
His points, such as they are:

1. The Earth has existed for a long time.
2. The climate has changed before.
3. Ages ago, temperatures were higher and most of Europe was under water, and the Earth wasn’t destroyed!
4. Global warming isn’t happening.
5. Global warming is happening, but it’s natural.
6. It’ll get colder after it gets warmer, and thinking in the terms of a generation is silly!
7. Al Gore is a big fat liar.

He doesn’t actually back that last one up, of course, instead prefering just the handwaving and the throwing out trivia every even moderately informed reader should be able to tell is bullshit.
The fact that his point openly revolves around the fact that the climate has varied wildly in the past and that global warming therefore isn’t a problem, though, is something that surprised me. The usual strategy is to claim that climate varied wildly in the past, therefore global warming is just another natural variation (which, of course, also isn’t true), as most people aren’t quite dense enough to suggest a world-wide change in climate won’t cause massive casualties.
Protip: the first result of a change in climate is crop failure.

(As a side note, the Facebook network page for the TU Delft is set to private. That’s a pity. It’d be interesting to see if there’s also a large conservative student body there.)

Anyway, P-Magazine disappoints me. A while ago their blog credulously linked to that one denialist “documentary”, and they have a history of being contrarian “just because”, but this is just…
Are they going to endorse Young Earth creationism next?

If you don’t look outward, you’ll lose your sense of direction and proportion.

I’m sure I could start a profound critique of modern society with a line like that, but no, just complaining about American politics.
In particular, the myth that the US has a progressive party.

You have a conservative party, and a regressive party. That’s it.

There are progressive individuals, sure (and Hillary Clinton, incidentally, is not one of them), and a significant portion of the American people is quite left of the center, but the political set-up you’ve got going doesn’t really reflect that.

(To which some would reply, “it’s not our fault the entire rest of the world has moved to the left”, which is insane. So insane I only mention it because I’ve actually seen someone posit this as what he believed to be a reasonable retort.
It’s also worth noting that, no, most Western nations actually have conservative or centrist governments right now. By their standards, and by the historical standards. By the standards of the world.)

FTC abandons net neutrality

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.

The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.

Ted Stevens be praised! The free market will solve everything!¹

Fucking corporatists. Where’s your democracy now?

¹ Offer void where prohibited, or for the poor, middle class, single parents, minorities, people who hold opinions we don’t agree with, people who have been charged with any crime regardless of whether or not they were convicted, enemy combatants, people on the East Coast, people on the West Coast, people who look a little funny, minors, the elderly, feminists, hippies, people who drive hybrids, and anyone we may have missed.

1. Get a blog with Google ads, and a Technorati account.
2. Occasionally tag a post with “Ron Paul“.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Well, it’s not that huge a jump in traffic, but it’s still a few dozen more unique visitors than usual.
At least know we know why more people aren’t pointing out Paul’s flaws: trolling can be a very effective way to shut people up; just ask Anonymous.
(By which I don’t mean Bret, incidentally. He was civil and at least tried to defend his position. The rest seemed a bit high on Kool-Aid.)

Either way, I’ve put up an ‘08 poll thing in the sidebar. Vote, if you haven’t already.
I know all of my regular readers would vote Democrat, but I’m kind of curious how things are divided between the candidates.

WHY is my internet full of Ron Paul fanboys?
“Ron Paul is the only candidate in this race that understands the idea of personal freedom and liberty and restoring the republic”? Fucking bullshit.

The man’s a standard gun-waving woman-hater who doesn’t understand how economies (and, for that matter, societies) work and is too stubborn to take advice.
He opposes the separation of church and state and has this “Christians are being persecuted!” attitude. He’s against embryonic stem cell research and abortion. He’s against net neutrality. He claims to be against too much government interference, but in practice, he’s just in favor of moving responsibilities from the federal government to the state governments (because everyone knows the state governments aren’t really governments). He apparently doesn’t believe in global warming, or at least doesn’t intend to do anything about it.

Yes, he’s against illegal wiretapping, and in favor of restoring habeas corpus, and essentially just running as the anti-Bush. Who the fuck wouldn’t be? Bush’s approval rating is the second-lowest in the history of the fucking nation, only a percent or two above Richard fucking Nixon’s right before he was kicked out.
Ron Paul is a “maverick” in the exact same sense John McCain was in 2000. Which is to say, not at all.

It may be true he’s not as horrifyingly bad a person as McCain or Guiliani or any of the other Republican candidates, but that doesn’t automatically make him a good choice. The fact that he’s a Libertarian candidate who decided to run as a Republican instead—and who has the support of such lunatics as Vox Day—should tell you something.

He’s a cynical populist, nothing more.

You’ve heard about how they’re banning violent pornography now, right? Well, not even just violent porn as such; “extreme” porn. It’s just aimed as S&M, but it’s so ridiculously broad that it can really apply to anything.
Not that it’d be more defensible if it were specific, of course.

Just read this “explanatory note”.

802. The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but that for the reasons set out below this is justified as being in accordance with the law, and necessary in a democratic society for the prevention of crime, for the protection of morals and for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.

I’ll repeat that, in case you missed it.

The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights under Articles 8 and 10 but

Said Convention is the European Convention on Human Rights.
Once again.

The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights

They know it violates human rights, and they passed it anyway.
Because porn… is icky (”The material to be covered by this new offence is at the most extreme end of the spectrum of pornographic material which is likely to be thought abhorrent by most people.”).

The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights

This isn’t fucking Belarus. This is the UK, a country that was once half a millenium ahead of the rest of the world when it came to human rights and freedom.

The Government believes that these clauses constitute an interference with Convention rights

Yeah.