China in Space

There is post with some good links about the Chinese space program on Metafilter. I had a bunch of thoughts. I grew up on space exploration and science fiction, and Robert Heinlein’s novels featuring a colonized solar system. I remember the moon landing. I was 5. All very nice and a source of national pride, etc.

The best comment I ever heard anyone make about it was my mother, a true Jacksonian, Boston Irish style. She said if she had been Neil Armstrong, she’d have planted the flag on the moon and claimed it for America. “They could court martial me when I got back. It would be too late.” She would have. Old time lefties used to say the space program was all a front for the Pentagon. If only it were true. I wish we had gone into space to seize and hold the high ground over the planet to obtain a permanent and crushing military superiority for the United States. That strikes me as a worthy use of my tax money. Instead it was, to be blunt, a gigantic publicity stunt, which yielded us no concrete advantage at all. The Chinese, give them this much, will be seeking concrete military advantage with their space program, gaining experience with large, long-range missiles, with anti-satellite technology, with the military exploitation of space, developing the means to deny the use of space to the United States, their main adversary, the dragon they will have to slay one day, or at least drive out of the Pacific basin, back over the horizon to its lair in North America. Even a “moon base” could be used as a weapon platform to outflank satellite-based ABM technology. (See Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. A classic.)

The Chinese will probably talk the claptrap of humanity exploring the cosmos, the expansion of the frontiers of knowledge for all, blah, blah, blah. Unlike us, they aren’t stupid enough to believe in that stuff. They will do what is good for China, which means what is bad for China’s enemies, especially us. That’s what I’d do if I were them, and I don’t hold it against them and I’d expect no less.

How do say Jacksonian in Chinese?

Interesting Interview

Drudge links to a story about inactive-reserve Israeli military pilots who, as a political stunt, are refusing to participate in attacks on Palestinians. This is typical posturing by Israeli leftists whose agenda doesn’t have enough political support to be enacted via conventional democratic means; sort of the equivalent of U.S. leftists using the courts to bypass legislatures. Ho hum.

But the article links to another, much more interesting piece: an old interview (Part 1, Part 2) with Dan Halutz, the commander of the Israeli air force. The interview is long, and the questions are skeptical — almost to the point of hostility — about General Halutz’s claims of moral authority. But it seems to me that he has thought through the issues and answers the questions well. He comes across as articulate, morally serious and intensely pragmatic.

Time to Update the U.S. Privacy Act of 1974?

That’s what tech-journalist Declan McCullagh suggests in his latest online column — after learning that jetBlue Airways sold his (and lots of other people’s) personal info to a contractor who is doing research for U.S. government data-mining schemes.

A presentation prepared by contractor, Torch Concepts of Huntsville, Ala., describes how it merged the JetBlue database with U.S. Social Security numbers, home addresses, income levels and vehicle ownership information it purchased from Acxiom, a company that sells consumer data. Not all the details are clear, but the presentation discusses how Torch, on behalf of Uncle Sam, tried to rate each passenger’s security risk level by analyzing the merged databases.

That kind of disgraceful privacy intrusion demonstrates that it’s high time to amend the Privacy Act of 1974, which restricts databases that the U.S. government compiles but does not regulate how agencies access databases the private sector runs.

Enacted largely as a result of a federal report on automated data systems, the Privacy Act covers any “system of records” the government operates with personal information on American citizens. It limits the use and disclosure of those records and requires that the databases be protected with “appropriate administrative, technical and physical safeguards” to preserve their security and confidentiality. Government employees who disclose records in violation of the law’s procedures can be fined and imprisoned on misdemeanor charges.

In today’s world, the venerable Privacy Act doesn’t go far enough. It worked when computers could be defined as “automated data systems,” but Moore’s Law has exploded early 1970s-era notions of computing speed, and hard drive capacity has increased even more dramatically. The law fails to address the “databasification” of modern life.

Sounds good to me.

Clark is not really about Clark — He’s about Hillary

Hillary with Clark as VP? My long-standing prediction? It is looking more likely by the day. Mark Steyn has weighed in, suggesting that maybe, just maybe, what is happening is this: “General Clark is merely an unwitting “stalking horse”, designed to weaken both Dean and Bush just enough to enable the Democrats’ real white knight to jump in: waiting in the wings, Hillary Rodham Clinton.” William Safire analyzes the situation similarly, and more analytically, noting that control of the Democrat fund-raising apparatus is the key here, and Terry McAuliffe is the Clintons’ special buddy. But this guy, Craig Crawford gets it best of all. (Do read it all.) He starts out with some reverse spin “Sure, believing that the junior senator from New York will run for the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination might be the political equivalent of believing in Unidentified Flying Objects.” (Not on this blog, baby.) He notes that Clark’s entire entourage is Clintonistas. The Clintons needed time for HRC to wiggle out of her promise not to run. They needed someone to derail Dean’s momentum. “Husband Bill publicly launched the pledge-dodge maneuver for his wife just as Clinton loyalists working for Clark leaked word to the media that the general would definitely run.” Clark’s campaign deals lots of dirt to the other Donk candidates. So, how the heck do they get Hillary in and Clark out of the way in just a few weeks? These are the Clintons, remember. “Clark and Clinton stage a summit and in a sudden burst of activity, the deal is done and she takes over his campaign organization just in time for the Nov. 21 filing deadline for the New Hampshire primary.” Right. Watch that date. November 21, 2003. That is D-Day.

Bill Clinton, with his pack of loyal advisors on hand, is the greatest tactical politician we have had in the White House since Nixon, and probably since Franklin D. Roosevelt, and maybe ever. He wants to get back in the White House. He and the wife are set to do it. Put nothing, nothing, nothing past these people. If she runs, she gets the nomination, and odds are better than even she beats W. It will either be close, or she will walk away with it, but Bush will have a Hell of a time beating her.

War not Metaphor

Jonathan sent me this article by Lee Harris entitled War and Wishful Thinking from Tech Central Station. Instapundit cited the article favorably, and Jonathan tells me that Harris has had good posts on technical issues. OK, so Harris gets some slack. But he is totally wrong in this article.

I sent an angry email in response, but for this post I’ll strip out much of the harshness and profanity for this family-style blog we’ve got going here.

First, Harris says that Bush describing what we are currently doing post 9/11 as a war is a “metaphor”. That is just so cloyingly academic, it reeks so foully of the faculty lounge. Please. For God’s sake, be smart instead of clever. Calling the current war a war is not about metaphor, it is about legality. If you don’t call it a war you can’t send your planes to blow things up and your troops to shoot people. Bush is commander in chief. If he doesn’t call it a war he can’t legally use what he has at his fingertips to destroy our enemies. The alternative is to call it a crime, which would change everything about what you can do. We are a law abiding society and if you don’t clearly define what you are doing and by what authority you are doing it, you get in deep trouble. Bush got himself a Congressional authorization for this very reason. That means the Commander in Chief can release the hounds. (Michael Lind’s interesting book Vietnam the Necessary War discusses this convincingly. Good review here by John Lewis Gaddis.)

Harris says this: “It is wishful thinking to believe that what we have before us is simply another war, of the kind that we have fought in the past.” What? Who ever said this? Bush said clearly it was NOT like any war we’ve ever been in. I heard him say that. So, duh, no.

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