davidvanwert.com

Two days ago, Orrin Hatch suggested that technology should be developed to remotely destroy the computers of people who pirate music on the Net. Destroying someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights,” the Associated Press quoted Hatch as saying.

If that same suggestion applied to software, Hatch’s own website servers would be destroyed. The senator’s website uses a JavaScript menu system by Milonic Solutions, a software company based in the UK. The copyrighted code has not been licensed for use on Hatch’s website. The software’s license stipulates that the user must register the software to receive a licensing code, as well as provide a link in the source code to Milonic’s website.

As of today, Hatch’s site met none of Milonic’s licensing terms. They even removed copyright notices embedded in the code itself. I’m sure Hatch (meaning his webmaster) will hurry to comply with the license terms since being exposed, but here’s the piece by Laurence Simon that uncovered Hatch’s software piracy.

Speaking today at a Senate hearing on copyright issues, Orrin Hatch suggested that technology should be developed to remotely destroy the computers of people who illegally download music from the Net. Destroying someone’s computer “may be the only way you can teach somebody about copyrights,” the Associated Press quoted Hatch as saying.

Orrin Hatch is a composer himself and earned about $18,000 from his music last year, so I guess it’s personal. “There’s no excuse for anyone violating copyright laws,” Senator Hatch added.

That might be true, but there’s really no excuse for punative action without due process. It’s explicitly forbidden by our Constitution, a document which Hatch has sworn an oath to uphold every time he’s been elected. To hear a U.S. Senator, the head of the Judiciary Committee no less, argue for a “shoot first, ask questions later” approach is sickening.

Given the extraordinary ease with which identities, headers, dns addresses, etc. can be forged (or stolen) under current technology, Hatch’s idiotic suggestion would certainly result in punishment of the innocent.

But hey… punishing the innocent is what our current administration does best, with ignoring the Constitution running a close second.

According to Reuters today, retired American general (and current arms trader) Jay Garner, who is overseeing Iraq’s postwar reconstruction, said on Wednesday that his fellow Americans should beat their chests with pride at having toppled Saddam Hussein without destroying the country’s assets.

“We ought to be beating our chests every day. We ought to look in a mirror and get proud and stick out our chests and suck in our bellies and say: ‘Damn, we’re Americans!’,” Jay Garner told reporters, saying that Iraq’s oil fields survived the war almost intact.

Garner said the war was fought in a way that prevented Saddam’s forces from setting fire to its oilfields and had largely preserved Iraq’s infrastructure intact. “I was planning on the oilfields being torched, a huge humanitarian crisis and a monumental reconstruction task, ” he said. “There is no humanitarian crisis. And there’s not much infrastructure problem here, other than getting the electrical grid structure back together.”

After reading that report, I just had to wonder: Which freakin’ Iraq is Garner in? Because the only Iraq I’ve ever heard of is in the midst of a momumental, catastrophic humanitarian crisis which has lasted well over a decade and recently became a hell of a lot worse.

Since 1990, Iraq has been devestated by sanctions and embargoes which didn’t affect Iraq’s ruling class one bit, but did lead to the deaths of over 1.5 million civilians– including 500,000 children, according to the World Health Organization. In some cases, we wouldn’t even let them have clean water because it might be used in weapons of mass destruction or chemical labs. For over a decade, we held innocent Iraqi people hostage with sanctions, letting children die in hospitals without medicine, hoping maybe it would somehow hurt Saddam Hussein.

But at least the oil wasn’t hurt, right Jay?

No humanitarian crisis in Iraq? Garner should be smacked on the back of the head and sent home immediately. His statements reveal that he’s either an absolute fool or a soulless ass. Or possibly both. In either case, he obviously ain’t the guy for the job.

Video of American POWs shown on Iraqi television provoked outrage in Washington. Rumsfeld and Bush both cried foul quite loudly, claiming such video violates the Geneva Convention and therefore constitutes a war crime.

American television, especially Fox and CNN, gave the issue several hours of play on Sunday. Anchors with furrowed brows read Article 13 aloud so that we at home could furrow our brows as well.

A P.O.W.

Then during a commercial break, I visited the CNN website and downloaded some pictures of Iraqi POWs being led around. I also downloaded some pictures of Iraqi KIAs lying in the sand. I could have watched video of these same scenes (but it was pay content in crappy Real format.) Then I returned to watching the news, hoping somebody might explain why Iraq’s video is a war crime and ours isn’t. But nobody did.

It’s a sad (and/or disgusting) hypocrisy that our mainstream news sources simply repeat Rumsfeld’s rhetoric without question, while committing the same supposed crimes themselves without apology.

During the last war in the Persian Gulf, American tv showed plenty of footage that the current administration now claims is criminal. So if showing any POW video really is a war crime as Rumsfeld claims, then Bush the Elder needs to be captured and brought to justice after we’re done with Saddam. Wolf Blitzer should be brought in too — as the current Minister of Propaganda at CNN, he is certainly culpable.

My prayers for a safe return home are with every soldier, no matter where that home might be.

I pray that our POWs are treated humanely, and that we do the same.

And lastly, I pray for an end to thinly veiled propaganda pretending to be journalism.

Notice the surrender flag in this photo of Iraqi corpses…