People should not fear their governments; governments should fear their people.
AT&T Will Offer i-mode-style Product. Launch expected in April, exec says [allNetDevices Wireless News]
The article explains that the service, to be called “m-mode,” will be based on i-mode technology but won’t have all the features. Hopefully it will have enough to be worth the money.
Poor Nations Warn Rich on Terror. Leaders of poor nations warned their rich counterparts that if they want a world free of terrorism, they will need to pay for it. Drawing a direct link between poverty and violence, leaders at a U.N. summit said increased aid to the world’s neediest is more urgent than ever in the post-Sept. 11 world. [AP World News]
Or in other words, “give us money or we’ll send lunatics to blow up your cities.” If the US government was really serious about fighting terrorism, they’d declare the UN a pro-terrorist organization and kick it out of the country.
H.R. 2356.
H.R. 2356, the “Bipartisan Campaign Finance Reform Bill”, passed
the senate yesterday by a vote of 60 to 40, just barely enough to stop
the republican fillibuster. Bush has said that he intends to sign it
into law. Efforts are already underway to challenge it in the
courts. The first amendment has been seriously compromised.
Every representative and senator who voted for this abomination
is guilty of felony Bill of Rights violation. [End the War on Freedom]
This gives a huge advantage to incumbents, but also it means that basically the only people allowed to distribute information about candidates will be the media. Of course the people in the media who were covering this bill and writing editorials certainly knew that. Given the media’s overwhelming liberal bias, this will harm those politicians who are (or more likely, pretend to be) conservative.
Apple adds minimal PDA functionality to iPod [PDABuzz.com]
I expect there will be a great deal of hype over this, but really this isn’t a big deal. Apple is just following the example of some clever hackers, and the “PDA functionality” is so minimal, it doesn’t even qualify as a PDA. It’s more like the Franklin Rexx, or one of the Casio pocket organizers from the late 1980’s.
Bill Simon may be the GOP’s last chance to win California. [OpinionJournal]
This article is worth reading for anyone who believes that the Republican party is really “conservative.” The party backed Riordan over Simon in the primary here because they believed he had a better chance of winning. However, Riordan’s politics are basically indistinguishable from Democratic Governor Gray “We should be more like Singapore” Davis. This illustrates that the two major parties aren’t really different at all–they’re just two factions of socialists
Liberal Anti-Cloners Up to Bat. The contentious debate over therapeutic cloning takes an unexpected twist Tuesday as several pro-choice leaders argue against it in Congress. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News]
Sadly, this is not unexpected at all. The “pro-choice leaders” are all liberals, and there’s a very strong tendecy for liberals to be Luddites.
Gun Control: Opinion; or Treason?. The Hunter at Sierra Times –
Gun Control: Opinion; or Treason? – Treason. [safeskies] [End the War on Freedom]
bq. Just as surely as slavery was wrong 80 years and more before officials finally admitted as much, so is attempting to deprive people of the fundamental right of self-defense. Victim disarmament proponents are not just wrong, they are morally and I submit criminally wrong.
To clarify the author’s point, it is illegal under federal law (18 USC 241-242) to violate someone’s Constitutional rights. Every member of Congress (except Rep. Ron Paul) has violated this law at some point.
Ambrosia’s Escape Velocity Nova released [MacNN]
I can’t get through to any of the download sites (unsurprisingly), but I expect that once I get it my free time for the next few months will disappear.
15 Saudi arabian girls die in fire, not allowed to leave building due to dress code.. 15 girls died Friday in Saudi Arabia, when their school caught fire. The girls were not allowed to leave because they were not wearing the headscarves and abayas required by Saudi interpretation of Islamic law, according to this BBC article [kuro5hin.org]
The “police” in Saudi Arabia are not much different from the Taliban’s police–they even have the same name. I suggest that we should adopt a similar policy to the one we have towards Cuba with regard to Saudi Arabia. Any female Saudi who shows up at a US embassy, base, or whatever, should automatically be granted political asylum. If women there have someplace they can easily escape to, the insanity of the Saudi men will remove itself from the gene pool in about one generation.
