Jim

Democracies can engage in wrongful actions just like any government, although IMO they are less likely in the long term to do so. The United States has every right to refuse to deal with a country that refuses to recognize the right of an ally to exist. Why is this hypocritical?

I don't follow. You are equating recent US military action with attacks on Israeli civilians?

I hadn't focused on AOL and MSN. If they are self-censoring, I think that they would deserve some heat as well. I am focused on the details of Google now, because that is what is being reported.

I do not accept that it is ethical for all businesses to provide any services to repressive regimes (nor do I think you are suggesting such). There is a fundamental difference between selling a hamburger and providing access to a service which purports to link the global internet but which has been censored by a repressive government. The label Google intends to put at the bottom of the search listings is helpful ("Local regulations prevent us from showing all the results.") but it would be much more helpful to list at least the exact number of searches being censored. http://money.cnn.com/2006/01/25/news/international/davos_fortune/?cnn=yes

At least Google has stopped saying it does not censor: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/01/27/google_doesnt_censor/ Here's Google's justification: Very altruistic.

A good analogy. It would be like placing a single loaded weapon in a glass case in the middle of a stereotypical 19th western bar. At some point, a rancher or a sheep herder is just gonna have to break that glass.

Here's another two mottos: Google seriously needs to rework its mission statement. I'm still clinging to the hope for an Oprahesq 180 degree turn. Yahoo already caved, right?

I'd say it a bit differently: Given that we cannot disinvent the capacity to build nuclear weapons' date=' what manner of deployment of the weapons reduces the risk of catastrophe? As I'll discuss in response to the rest of your post, I do not believe the zero deployment scenario promotes safety, even if it were possible. Agreed that you have less risk if the developer only develops a single weapon. This assumption is premised on the notion that there can be an effective inspection and monitoring regime that would prevent breakout. What does it mean to say we will "work to disarm?" If this means reducing weapons to the point that we only have 3X overkill instead of whatever it is now (60X)' date=' sure but what good does that do other than save money? However, the real questions is whether we will retain the ability to turn any country that attacks us into rubble fit only for cockroaches. (Another legitimate question is whether we should advance counterforce - the ability to target nukes - technologies.) A huge assumption. As long as Israel has nukes, and probably so long as Israel exists and possibly as long as the United Sates exists, Iran will want nukes.

The only book I've read of any real substance is Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong. Lewis, an 85+ year old professor emeritus at Princeton, has been described as "the only genuinely acknowledged dean of Middle East studies in the West." His views seem generally supportive of my own: Or, perhaps, my views have been influenced by the one genuine intellectual I've read on the subject. So, I ask you, what authors do you recommend on this subject? I'm not really looking for authors with an agenda or talking heads from Fox, CNN or the NYTs. I'm looking for genuine academics who have spent their lives trying to understand this culture. FWIW, here's a New Yorker article which acknowledges Lewis' credentials, his "superior mastery of Islamic history," and seems to give him credit for good intentions but ultimately analogizes him to certain unidentified Chinese scholars who promoted Japanese imperalism in China in the 1930s. I'd take this charge more seriously if the author had deigned to identify the Chinese scholars for us to Google (heh, irony here) and if the primary basis for this criticism wasn't that Lewis fails to denounce the war in Iraq. See: http://www.newyorker.com/critics/books/?040614crbo_books The review seems to proceed from the assumption that Lewis must be flawed because he is not entirely pessimistic.

What is your reaction to Google's decision? http://www.cnn.com/2006/BUSINESS/01/24/google.china.ap/index.html My initial reaction is highly negative.

Very much so. Again, I wouldn't purport that this is controlling authority. I do think it establishes that the authorization of force by Congress can override their prior specific legislative prohibitions. Case law is more than just the "who won?", it's the "why did he?". .

Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, 542 U.S. 507 (2004) (emphasis added) http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=000&invol=03-6696

Heh, answer one of my questions and I'll answer yours. Naw, I'll bite. I admit that I do not listen to radio news so I cannot comment. Please exclude from my comments podcasts, Zines, paintings, radio, music, personal correspondence, billboards, political lawn signs, bathroom graffiti, and blogs.

Incidentally, here is a link to the DOJ position on the issue: http://news.findlaw.com/hdocs/docs/nsa/dojnsa11906wp.pdf There's a lot of good stuff: Again, I do not prejudge this issue. It's possible that were I in a position to decide this question (and if I studied for about two years to get the necessary background in Constitutional law), I would rule against the Administration. However, it's not possible to read this white paper and come away without believing that there is a genuine good faith basis for this legal position. The pretense that there is not a basis for the position is simply not intellectually honest.

Where did I say anything remotely like this? I made clear in the last post that I'm talking about mass media in America. I think you already knew as much.

Again, I'm not expert on this question. However, I wonder if the end result of this debate will hinge on what kind of "war" we are fighting. I'm uncomfortable with a conflict that is more like the cold-war than WWII. At the same time, we have to do everything we reasonably can to prevent another major terrorist attack. If you believe (as does Bacu) that the singularity is approaching, you must also believe that we are going to have some highly dangerous technologies arise over the next twenty years. I have a hard time believing that terrorists won't some day obtain city-killing technologies. I don't worry about another 9/11 so much as losing an entire American city, not to a natural disaster and not just a few thousand dead. I worry what will become of our country if we allow that to happen. If monitoring every email that comes into this country from a suspected El Queda operative (without regard to whether there is evidence that the receipient is an agent of a foreign power) helps reduce this risk, it is worth the price. Finally, in a sense, I agree this is not a partisan issue. The reason Bush was so besieged by this issue is that it pits legislators of both parties against the executive.