On Voting

Oh yeah, there's an election this year.

That sentence kind of sums up my feelings about this term's election. In fact, I'd say it sums up a lot of people's feelings. Nobody seems very excited about either candidate; I'd actually say that even the ones who are excited are more about hating the opposing candidate than they are about supporting their own.

Normally, my feelings are much less ambiguous. Part of that is the candidates tend to have pretty soundly different foreign policies, but I haven't heard a lot of difference between the two this time. The focus seems to be far more on domestic policies, especially economic stuff. Of course, I am not entirely convinced that any president has a large amount of control over the economy, which means that most of this is a smokescreen they're blowing for their core support groups. Blergh.

At the very least I am registered and everything. Unfortunately that means I should probably start researching what these two doofus' have been saying about their plans for the past few months. Not the sort of reading I'm looking forward to. Sigh. At least in this country we get to choose which idiot leads us, right? Too bad they're usually still an idiot...

On the First Ammendment: SOPA

So Hollywood wanted Congress to help stop online piracy of videos they made. They wanted Chinese websites and the like to not post the movies they'd spent millions creating. The obvious solution is to lobby Congress to get a new law passed, right?

And in true Hollywood tradition, that law calls for the establishment of a blacklist for websites that illegally use copyrighted material. The copyright holders--or, by pure coincidence I'm sure, the Attorney General--could obtain a court order to basically attempt to wipe these sites from search results and domain names worldwide. There are also provisions for holding search providers and other companies liable for assisting the sites which are in violation.

While I am all in favor of copyright law--as a writer who plans on making a career out of his copyrights, how could I not be--this is freaking insane. How this law couldn't be horribly abused straight from the outset is a mystery to me. False accusations could mean retaliatory suits against the people who shut down non-violation sites, but what if that person was the Attorney General? You know, the one who participated in arms smuggling recently and still hasn't even been indicted? Or what if the small business site is simply unable to raise the funds to make a case for itself? Do they get to claim reparations for their lost business? What happens if a business hires someone to post copyrighted material to a competitor's website, and then reports it to SOPA? Is there a difference between the use of a single uncited photograph, and the streaming of a whole movie? What if, perish the thought, the Attorney General is politically motivated in which sites he blocks, and targets opposing political sites, or sites for businesses which contribute to his opponents?

The worst part is how incredibly ignorant the members of Congress seem to be about this whole thing. At the hearing discussing the bill, it seems like absolutely no one was actually qualified to discuss Internet filtering, and the broad base of opponents to the law were generally excluded. The opposition to SOPA comes from virtually the entire political spectrum, from Tea Partiers to Politico. Google, Wikipedia, Reddit and other web based companies have taken a stance against this abuse of governmental power, to the point where some of them have blacked out their sites in protest today.

This bill, and a similar one called PIPA, are complete and total violations of everything the Constitution and the Bill of Rights sought to provide us with. If the bill sought to provide an opportunity for the Attorney General to burn a printing press accused of printing things in violation of copyright law, or shut down a newspaper accused of sedition or copyright violation, the reaction would be the same, because the abuses would be pretty much the same. I sympathize with Hollywood--you guys spend a lot of time and money to create entertainment for the world, and having it stolen by people and posted on the web has to be devastating. The fact that things like Twitter and Facebook have started to effect and change your industry can't be comfortable either. The fact is, though, that this bill is a disaster that will not help the situation, and even if it was effective, the cost to free speech and the abuses it would make possible for government and business officials would be too high.

In short, kill this bill. Kill it with fire and never look back.

Thus concludes the political rant. Will get back to more interesting things on Friday. See ya!

Blacked out Google image provided by, well...Google.

On Politics and Cyberpunk

One thing that I've always tended to avoid was the blatant introduction of political viewpoints into my books. I've always believed that including a clumsily worded or demonstrated political message would just outrage people and drive them away from what otherwise would have been a good story. So I've avoided that, and so far that rule has been rather good for me. It's kept me from making preachy stories that nobody likes, and I appreciate that kind of help. :)

With cyberpunk, though, it seems like the genre is heavily invested in having at least one political message, no matter what that message might be. Somehow, the cyberpunk genre has not only included a lot of stories dealing with politics and political viewpoints, but has also avoided becoming preachy or overly simplistic with it. Or at least that is my perception of the whole thing, from my narrow view of it.

Perhaps it is the equally dogged insistance of the genre on allowing things to be messy and complicated which prevents the preachiness from happening. Or maybe it is the omnipresence of some crazy world-spanning conspiracy elements. It is something I'm going to have to adjust to as I write this next book, and one that I might be a little uncomfortable with, honestly. But then again, a good writer stretches their limits right? I suppose my alpha readers and writing group will just have to let me know when I've messed it up and when it works well.

Well, enough rambling pondering. Time to write! Iron Angels isn't going to revise itself after all! See you around.

On the Fourth Amendment: The TSA

So, you can probably guess how this blog post will go.

The TSA, for those of you who don't use planes, is the federal enforcement agency responsible for airport security. Supposedly they've also been entrusted with the security of other passenger routes like bus systems and train stations, but their influence is a lot less clear there. The TSA is most known for the security checkpoints and screenings people go through on their way to commercial flights.

As further background, the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution guarantees the right of US citizens against unreasonable searches and seizures. This amendment is what compels most law enforcement agencies to obtain a warrant in order to search your person, your belongings and other such things, and even more especially, in order to be able to detain you and your belongings in the interest of the law. The warrant has to be issued by a judge, who must be convinced by the law enforcement agency that there is reasonable cause for a search/seizure.

Unless you're the TSA.

I don't mean to criticize the responsibility of the TSA to keep American flights safe. After Sept 11th, I doubt that anyone is ignorant of the threat to air travel by terrorists, both foreign and homegrown. Like most law enforcement jobs, it is probably a bitter, thankless job where you get treated to no end of irritated people who depend on you to guarantee their safety.

At the same time, I think that the TSA has taken a step too far. Their ability to unrestricted searches of US citizens goes far beyond the rights the Fourth Amendment has granted the government. They basically ignore the need to obtain warrants, to identify reasonable suspicion for frisk searches, and basically any kind of limit on executive power. It's gotten to the point that when the legislature in Texas tried to pass a law limiting the searches on travelers in Texas airports, the TSA threatened to shut down the airports completely. Basically, the TSA now has the ability to search any citizen without a warrant, confiscate their property without intent to return it, or even suspicion of criminal behavior, and then threaten the states of the Union with an air embargo unless they comply.

I imagine that the writers of the Constitution did not intend for any executive body to have that kind of power. They had already endured that kind of thing when England was conducting warrantless searches of their homes in order to find smugglers and rebels. Surely they knew, as we should have known, that granting any law enforcement agency that kind of precedent would lead to abuses.

And it has. There have been many reports of travelers harassed by TSA agents, theft by TSA baggage screeners, and worse. All in the name of security that, by all tests and accounts, the TSA isn't actually able to provide. Check after check of TSA procedures has shown them as ineffective in preventing bombs, guns, or other threats from boarding the plane.

All the while, the searches grow more and more invasive, and the restrictions of the freedoms of our citizens continue to grow worse. First it was removing shoes, then no liquids were allowed. Then we were occasionally required to get an X-ray photo of our body--basically a virtual strip search--or submit to an extremely invasive pat down. For those who think that the level of security we currently have will stop where it currently is, there is now talk of some terrorist groups supposedly trying to implant bombs surgically. How long before the TSA decides an actual X-ray will be needed to determine that nothing is tucked away in our stomach lining that could be a threat?

The saddest part is that the people who've provoked this response, the terrorists who have started this whole thing, are idiots. They're more likely to set their own underwear on fire than bring down a plane these days, and normally the private citizens flying with them are able to stop them short anyway. Yet they've managed to intimidate us into believing that this kind of violation of our personal privacy and our inherent rights is necessary to provide security when we travel.

I don't mean to make the lives of the people working at the TSA more difficult. I understand that most are just people going to work and doing their job, and that the whole thing is done under difficult circumstances. The fact is, though, that it seems like we're forgetting precisely who's in charge here. The TSA works for us, not the other way around. As much as the people who believe the TSA has been granted the authority by Congress to do this kind of thing would like us to forget it, the rights they are abusing are not somehow merely tolerated by the government, or granted to us by our benevolent leaders in Washington. They are inherent rights we enjoy as citizens, and when it comes down to it, neither Congress, nor any other branch of the United States government, has the right to suspend them.

There are threats to our safety, and terrorists have targeted our airlines frequently in their efforts to bring down our liberty. I know that as much as anybody else does. At the same time, there has to be a better way to secure our safety without giving up our liberty, or as Benjamin Franklin said, we will deserve neither. For my part, I would rather have my freedoms threatened and risked by a foreign foe than robbed from me by a tyrant close to home.

At least, that's my ranting opinionated stance. What's yours?

On the Sixth Amendment: Casey Anthony

Well, hopefully everyone already knows the background to this little essay. Casey Anthony was, at the very least, a very negligent parent whose actions eventually led to the death of her child. She was subject to a very public trial a la OJ Simpson where the prosecutors attempted to prove that she had murdered her child. After a very long media circus, the world was shocked when the jury found her not guilty.

The trial itself I won't get into, because I honestly didn't care enough to pay attention. The jury's decision was based on a lack of evidence presented by the prosecution, and while they might have convicted her of negligence, that wasn't the crime she was put on trial for. What bothered me was that in the aftermath, several people began to say that the trial was evidence that trial by jury was no longer called for, especially if it yielded such unjust results.

I think most people would hesitate to go that far, but there is a growing sentiment that juries are no longer the best way to give justice her due. Many people tend to think that juries are easily swayed to let murderers go free, or that they too often get hung up on technicalities, or that they are simply inconvenient for the rest of the populace to deal with. Many people seem to prefer the kind of justice you find on Judge Judy, where a single authority figure simple decides who was right and who was wrong without consulting a jury.

There are a lot of problems with that kind of a viewpoint. First off, trial by media is much, much worse than trial by jury at finding the truth, and for every sensational murderer that would be convicted rightly by a media circus, twenty innocent people would be convicted as well just to maintain ratings. The fact is, the jury had access to all the evidence, they had instructions to find her not guilty if there was a reasonable doubt, and there was a reasonable doubt that she did it. That meant that in spite of all the moral outrage that Fox, NBC or all the other networks could muster, the lady was found innocent. Whether that's the popular decision or not, that decision was a good one in the eyes of the law.

Second, trial by jury is by no means perfect. We all know that. The system has flaws, and occasionally a person will be wrongly convicted or unfairly escape punishment. The difference is that the jury is one of the few instances where the democratic whole of the United States makes its impact on the judicial process. Its the part of the court system that keeps the judge from being an autocratic tyrant, the lawyers from becoming wheedling lobbyists and the innocence of the defendent from being treated with arbitrary disregard. For example, as I understand it custody of children after a divorce is decided without a jury. It is also one of the more arbitrary judicial cases in our civil law today, where custody is determined almost on a whim.

Thirdly, the people who make up a jury are the same people who vote to elect the officials who run our government. If they cannot be trusted to use good judgment in court, then how can they be trusted to vote wisely? If they are not ready to participate in a jury for the good of a society, how can they still be considered ripe for a draft in time of war to defend that society? To abandon this part of the Constitution would be to abandon our trust in our populace to rule and judge themselves. To lose that trust would condemn any society to tyranny.

At least, that's my take on it anyway...

On the First Amendment: Videotaping the Police

So here's an issue that has been popping up more and more recently over the past couple of years. There have been a sudden increase in cases where the police, finding themselves being recorded by random passerby or by someone they approached, have decided to arrest somebody. For videotaping them. In public.

Now, I can understand why a police force would not want to have cameras around all the time. If you're setting up a drug bust or about to raid a hostage situation, you don't want some geek with an iPhone recording the SWAT teams' movements and streaming it to Youtube. That's about as common sense as not using our freedom of speech to yell fire in a movie theater. The rights of the first amendment are typically limited when we are actively endangering the safety and rights of others.

At the same time, I don't see any reason that a routine traffic stop or other every day law enforcement activity shouldn't be recorded. The police are in public. It's not like there's an expectation of privacy or something. In fact most police are probably already making a recording of the event, through cameras mounted on their cars or more recently smaller cameras that they carry. Some police will go on to sell that recording to shows that literally specialize in police stops, car chases or other things like that. I doubt that there is a satisfactory reason to be selling footage of such things to Cops, The First 48, and America's Wildest Police Videos when you aren't permitting your own citizens to make footage of the event on their own.

An argument that the right to a free press only extends to official news outlets is just as dumb. The press was never concieved to be limited to any particular set of people. Keep in mind that the men who wrote these amendments also campaigned for their freedom and then the Constitution as a whole by running off a bunch of pamphlets--the Revoluntionary War version of blog posts--and distributed them through the population. I doubt they waited to be recognized by the community at large as a news organization before they did so; otherwise the Federalist Papers would never have existed.

The only real reason to arrest these people--many of whom have been on their own property and not even really involved in the police action at all--is to avoid embarassment. Policemen are worried that some moron in their ranks is going to do something stupid, and the video will go viral. Such videos erode confidence in the police force and would lead to a less orderly society.

Of course, the best solution to something like that isn't to limit video of the police. It's to fire the idiots who screw things up for the good cops. Hiding the fact that police abuses exists only worsens the problem, which is why the Founders sought to guarantee the right to a free press to begin with. The ability to expose the corruptions of government officials, to talk about and share information without having to worry about what people in power would want, is critical to maintaining a free society. Compromising that right just to keep the police from looking bad is foolish and short sighted.

Or at least, that's my take on it. What do you guys think?

On the Second Amendment: Gunwalker

Alright, so full disclosure. I'm a pretty strong supporter of people's rights in the United States to own guns, even if I don't exercise that right for myself. It's always been my belief that the right to arm oneself is an expression of trust in one's citizens, trust that is critical when you depend on those people to choose your government representatives. The loss of those rights opens the way for tyranny, whether that of a foreign nation, a politician with influence over the official military, or some gang of punks down the way that the cops don't want to bother with. So I typically view any attempt to ban or manipulate the ownership of guns with a pretty jaded eye, even if I believe that the efforts are motivated by good intentions.

The recent news over Gunwalker, also known as operation 'Fast and Furious' at the ATF has not lessened my skepticism. For those who are experiencing grim feelings of foreboding, it's probably because the ATF is involved in an operation named after such a crappy, crappy movie, but that's besides the point.

The ATF is the federal organization in charge of enforcing the laws regarding alcohol and tobacco, along with guns and other weapons. If somebody wants a license to sell guns legally, they have to go to the ATF, presumably so they can make sure you aren't going to be selling them to criminals. If you want a license to buy a gun, once again the ATF will be in charge of making sure you aren't a felon or crazy person or something. If a state bans a particular type of gun, such as semiautomatic rifles, sniper rifles or other weapons, the ATF kicks down the doors and takes them. That's their job. Kinda.

You see, for the past little while the ATF has been forcing gun shop owners in Arizona and other areas to sell guns to gunrunners, who then sell them to the narcotrafficantes in Mexico. They likely threatened to take away the licenses for the shops--you know, the ones that supposedly mean you don't sell guns illegally--in order to provide sufficient leverage. The agents of the ATF watched through bugs, cameras and other means, while straw buyers walked into gun shops, purchased hundreds of semiautomatic weapons, sniper rifles and other guns, and walked out. They then traced the shipments to the border, but couldn't be bothered to continue their efforts after that. Mexico, who wasn't really consulted on the operation, has reported upwards of 150 deaths among their soldiers and law enforcement officers as a result of those guns, and at least two federal agents in the USA have been shot to death by them.

Let me repeat. While legal citizens of the United States have to literally take a suit all the way to the Supreme Court to own a handgun in Chicago, the ATF is funnelling guns to Mexican drug cartels by the hundreds. While someone is waiting days or weeks to recieve their concealed carry permit, the Zetas are getting their guns right away, all the better to kill mayors and police officers with in Mexico.

It's a common argument that strict gun control only keeps the guns out of the law abiding citizens, not the criminals, but does it have to be actual government policy? Seriously, how are we supposed to trust the government to regulate this stuff after this crap? When you have to honestly contemplate whether the senior officers of the gun control wing of the government need to be extradited to Mexico for gunrunning and felony murder, somethings horribly, horribly wrong, and I don't think the answer is 'more federal gun control.' Maybe that's just me, but I doubt it.

Rating Books

So my wife showed me a comment on a blog post the other day that talked about how crappy books have gotten in terms of moral decay. I guess up to that point I would have to agree. I mean, half the books that are published today have some kind of graphic violence or smutty sex scene in them, and it doesn’t seem like that trend is going to turn away from that kind of stuff any time soon.

The part where the comment turned interesting, however, was when the poster started talking about creating a ratings system for books. She talked about how readers have a right to know what is in each book without having to read it, and that parents need some kind of easy way to tell what is in the books their kids read. She felt the publishers were not helping to clarify what was in their books through their summaries, and that it was frustrating to have to spend money on a product that would have these surprise nasty stuff in them.

While I sympathized with her on how bad books have gotten, I disagree with her on the ratings system. I feel, first off, there is no right to know what is in a book without reading it. We have no inborn right to have someone screen what we read, and we certainly don’t have some kind of God given right to a ratings system. Saying that we do only feeds into a trend where we dress up what we want as an inborn right, and thus dilute the power of the actual rights that we do have. The thing that we want may be a good thing, but that doesn’t make it a ‘right’ like say, the right to free speech, or the right to bear arms. I hate it when people do that. Any day now I expect someone to say they have a ‘right’ to eat Twinkies.

Moving on to the actual ratings system, I don’t think there is any way that it would ever be effective or useful. Only two real results come from ratings systems; either they form a huge, faceless bureaucracy that overshadows and leeches off the industry while accomplishing nothing useful, or they are totally ineffective and roundly ignored by everyone involved.

The best example I have of the former would be the movie ratings system. Everything I’ve heard about it points to the group as some bunch of meddlers that make random demands and then slap a pointless label on films. Meeting those demands does not necessarily make a movie any more moral, and probably wastes quite a bit of money on the part of the producers, something the publishing industry cannot really afford. The worst part is how useless it all has become. Think of how many PG13 movies, especially comedies or romantic flicks, that you would actually want to see, let alone send teenagers to watch. The list isn’t long.

The best example of the latter form of ratings would be the food labels that the poster actually mentioned. She said that the FDA requires that a list of what goes into food be put on the side of everything, so why not a book? The answer is, nobody cares what is on the food labels anymore. The system of describing what is and isn’t in the product has gotten so incomprehensibly complex and obtuse that most people barely bother to scan what chemicals or other stuff is in whatever they picked up at the store. I can’t imagine books being any less complex to quantify and label, and I don’t doubt that the labels would quickly be ignored by most.

The best way to avoid bad books is to flip through one before you buy it. Anyone with any experience in books is going to figure out how bad one will be with just a short glance through. If you’re really nervous, check with a few book reviewers first; it’s not like the world is short on book bloggers who are willing to talk about what they’ve read. Establish a relationship with book authors and reviewers, and start figuring out who writes the crappy stuff so you can avoid them. If you need to screen what your kids read, just read through some of their favorite books. The same process applies to TV shows. If you want to know what your kids watch, go sit through a show with them. You don’t have to preview everything, just take a random sample and see how it goes.

Yes, every once in a while you’ll have to take a risk on a new book or series. There will be the occasional book that turns bad partway through, or the crappy novel by a formerly trustworthy author. That’s life. There’s no way to avoid stuff like that completely, and you just have to deal with it and move on. By deal with it, I mean toss the book and share the fact that it bites with everyone else you know, so that at least they don’t get tricked the same way.

So that’s my rant on the subject. What do you guys think? I hope life is going well for you, and I’ll see you later!

On Memorials

So when I heard that there was going to be a mosque put up near Ground Zero, I was kind of upset. After all, 9-11 was not the happiest time for me, or for anyone living in or near New York, and the idea of mosque going up at such a…shall we say sensitive?...site bothered me. Of course, further checking into the situation told me that the mosque was pretty much just a previous mosque being rebuilt a few stories larger, so it wasn’t such a big deal to me anymore.

What is kind of a big deal is the fact that Ground Zero is still a big hole in the ground. Nothing’s really been done other than clearing up some of the debris. I think the mosque thing wouldn’t be such a big deal for anyone if we had put something up by now to commemorate those we lost that terrible day. I’ve heard that there are various plans and ideas, from a series of smaller towers to a park to a community center. Some have even said that the simple elegance of the hole left by the Towers’ destruction is memorial enough to the tragedy.

I disagree. While not a New Yorker myself, I’ve been able to get to know plenty of people from the city while I lived in Connecticut, and such simple memorials are in no way really representative of the character, courage and charisma of the Big Apple. It just doesn’t fit either the tragedy itself, nor the city that bore it to leave things as they are, and I’m kind of dissatisfied with the plans that I’ve heard to remedy it.

Then again, my own personal idea of what an appropriate memorial would be might be considered a bit extreme. I envision three new towers, two of which are more or less replicas of the old. They would be called the New World Trade Center, and they would be places of business, commerce and enterprise, just like the old ones. I want all three of them to be full of stores, offices and headquarters for police departments and fire stations. I want them built back just the way they were, with the extra tower standing to the west, just a little smaller to not overshadow the replicas of the originals. I want them back, with one real difference to make sure we never forget what happened. You could call it a personal touch.

I want the South Tower to have murals on the ground level showing the wars in Iraq, the beginning of the democratic process in that country, and the defeat and trials of Saddam Hussein. The North Tower would have a mural depicting the struggle in Afghanistan, the defeat of the Taliban, and the democracy that is starting to form there. On the bottom of the third tower, I want two murals. One to show the trials, imprisonment, and executions of every single person responsible for what happened that day with the centerpiece being whatever suitable fate we eventually give Osama. The other would show the heroes that stood up in spite of it, the firemen and police that went into the Towers before they fell, and then a depiction of the Towers being rebuilt, story by story, floor by floor.

The last touch that I would want would be an empty field to the east. There would be no fences, no benches, nothing but grass and a single stone plaque facing east. On it, with words engraved in both English and Arabic, would be a single message. “There’s room for a fourth, you bastards. Signed, New York City, United States of America.”

That’s the only memorial I could ever find appropriate for the World Trade Center. Give me that, and you can build whatever you want around it, I won’t care. Then again, I might be satisfied with something else, if the politicians ever stir themselves to do something. Cause the hole in the ground is something they made. It’s not a memorial. When a terrorist attack claims thousands of American lives, something needs to be said by us, the ones they left behind. And a park just doesn’t cut it.