Day: March 28, 2003

But, You Always Have a Choice (the Winer Doctrine of Surrender to Evil)

One other thing about Dave Winer — does he think before he writes stuff like the Winer doctrine,

Then I came up with a new doctrine. It goes like this. If you have a choice, you have no excuse going to war. You can only go to war if you have no choice. I’m sorry Dubya. Let’s just put the tanks in reverse and bring the boys home. Say we’re sorry and ask for forgiveness. It’ll be a lot easier than playing it out. This war is just plain wrong.

But this is absurd since you always have a choice short of war. The United States did not have to enter World War II. It had plenty of other choices short of war even in the face of Pearl Harbor.

Gandhi certainly agreed with Winer and believed that even though Nazism was evil that fighting a war against Germany even to protect the Jews was wrong (Gandhi urged Jews to choose instead to sway Hitler with nonviolent resistance).

Where this sort of thinking leads you is Rwanda where Kofi Annan and the Clinton administration had plenty of warnings about the genocide that was coming but chose the easy way out rather than risk the political ramifications of having to intervene in Rwanda.

Winer’s doctrine is not some high minded philosophical approach, but one that leads straight to pacificism (which is always an available choice) and a surrender to evil.

Winer: Steal This Content Please

I’m as big a fan as they come of Creative Commons, but for the life of me I cannot understand what Dave Winer is thinking in this post about the Harvard weblogs he has set up,

Note that the main weblog and all new weblogs sport a Creative Commons license. I think it’s quite reasonable. Unless otherwise noted, all content may be freely reused, with attribution. I think everyone is protected, the author, Harvard, and the public. We found the right balance, imho.

So, by default, anything that appears on any of these weblogs can be used by anyone else for any purpose, including commercial exploitation and the creation of derivative works, just so long as proper attribution is given.

That seems downright idiotic. Winer’s audience is newbies who are just learning about weblogs. He should be protecting them so that if they’re going to have a CC license they start with the strongest protection and can give away their rights if they choose. Instead, Winer defaults them to giving away all of their rights unless they take the time to really dig into the Creative Commons license.

Stupid.

Anti-French Nonsense Reaches Appropriate Climax

This Yahoo! story discusses how the Air Force One menu recently featured “Freedom Toast” — French toast being verboten because of France’s refusal to agree to war against Iraq.

There’s just one problem — French toast doesn’t have anything to do with France. Instead, the invention of French toast is widely credited to Joseph French, an American colonist who supposedly first served his recipe in 1724 in Albany, New York.

Morons.

The Really Important Post-War Iraq Debate Begins

According to the BBC, American and British firms are already fighting the next big war in Iraq. When the U.S. and U.K. rebuild Iraq, will it get a GSM or CDMA cellular network.

California Republican Darrell Issa is reportedly not happy that U.S. funds might be used to build a European-style GSM infrastructure rather than a CDMA network which prevails in the United States.

Source:

Iraq war sparks wireless row. BBC, March 28, 2003.

Salon.Com – Bush Is Like a Klansman

Whatever will we do once Salon.Com finally shutters its site (after the requisite party at my place that is). I mean, how will journalism go on without rambling nonsense by Anne Lamott like this,

I am going to pray for George Bush’s heart to change, so that he begins to want to be a part of the human family. . . . He’s family. I hate this, because he is a dangerous member of the family, like a Klansman.

Apparently Salon.Com’s goal is to make Al Sharpton’s anti-Bush rhetoric look moderate in comparison.

Source:

Good Friday world. Anne Lamott, Salon.Com, March 28, 2003.

Kenya Requests $800 Million In Aid to Cover Corruption

In March the new government of Kenya reported that its treasury had all but been drained by the former government of Daniel Arap Moi and that the country would need $800 million in aid from the international community.

The incoming National Rainbow Coalition thought the government deficit would be in the neighborhood of $400 million, but Kenya’s Finance Minister David Mwiraria told the BBC that it would end up being closer to $850 million, forcing the African nation to ask for money from international donors.

Mwiraria claims any Kenyan need for such aid would only be for the short term, but whether or not the National Rainbow Coalition will be able to tackle Kenya’s widespread corruption remains to be seen.

Source:

Kenya needs $800m of aid. The BBC, March 11, 2003.