The Hacker Cold War

We live, today, in a world of dying nations. Individual national sovereignty is slowly, but surely, dying out. But group conflict isn't dying out with it.

And make no mistake -- this dye-off is essentially now inevitable. As the "information age" progresses, we continue to find ourselves economically closer and closer to our not-so-near neighbors. Information continues to take a higher and higher role in the world; instantaneous money exchanges allows for you to buy something hand-made in Germany from the comfort of your own home -- and have it delivered in, say, a week -- directly from the producer. This is strongly reflected in the slow downward spiral in the strength of patriotism. To be called a "patriot" is almost an insult in some circles today; the term comes closer and closer to approaching hollowness.

The first and second World Wars were fought essentially between nations; they were the result, in many ways, of nationalist conflict. So, one would imagine, the global tensions of the world would be fading out as nationalism itself fades. And yet, tensions and strife continue to build up throughout the world, not just the continual conflict-cesspool, the Near Orient. (That's the Middle East for those of you not quite so familiar with the term.) So whom, then, will be the masters, and whom the soldiers, of the wars of tomorrow? Well, on one side at the least will be, of course, multi-national corporations. And the soldiers of both sides will be clear: "hackers." Information has reached supremacy in almost every other area of our world -- so it should come as no surprise to anyone that warfare and conflict should have the corrupting tinge of the techno-devil as well.

Microsoft, certainly, agrees with this. Consider the following, from a Microsoft employee, on a Microsoft-sponsored blog:

Microsoft employs some of the best hackers in the world and actively recruits them and develops them. They work on all kinds of projects, whether it be in development, research, testing, management and of course security.

[...]

We employ "white hat hackers" who spend their time pentesting and code reviewing applications and software looking for weaknesses and vulnerabilities so that others don't once we've released that code into the wild.

Disturbingly, it is painfully evident that the world simply isn't ready for this. The measures necessary to ensure that such conflicts at the very least don't spill over into the common public's inconvenience aren't at all certain. Our governments seem to be completely inept on the subject. American Judges believe that RAM-memory can be archived. Germany's new Anti-hacker law is so ubiquitous that simply saying your own password aloud where someone else can hear it is criminal. A significant portion of the corporate workforce of the world is so unfamiliar with computers that they can't understand how to select printers from a dropdown -- as this author can personally relay, having witnessed exactly this for himself only yesterday.

Meanwhile, it would seem that the governments of the world are still playing their information warfare games -- with even China, denying it all the way, stepping into the mix:

German weekly Der Spiegel reported espionage programs had been detected in computer systems at Ms Merkel's office, the Foreign Ministry and other government agencies in Berlin.

Investigations showed the programs could be traced back to People's Liberation Army hackers, it said.

"Hacking is an international issue and China itself is often attacked," [Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu] said.

And as all of this progresses, the "fallow" hackers -- the 'wild' ones out in the field -- continue to have a field-day stripping DRM technology from anything they can -- from the iPhone (as previously reported on this blog) -- to NetFlix:

A hacker has posted instructions for how to save streamed movies from the Netflix Inc. service, undermining Microsoft Corp.'s copy protection technology designed to prevent people from saving the content.

The hack is the latest in an escalating technical war by hackers against DRM (Digital Rights Management) technologies, which limit how music and movies can be used in order to prevent piracy.

[...]

Microsoft has updated its DRM technology twice before to block the effectiveness of FairUse4WM. Last month, hackers on the Doom9.org forum declared another victory, saying it had defeated Microsoft's DRM again, and the company said it was investigating.

Now, many of you regular readers might be asking; what has this got to do with the avowed purpose of this blog -- journalism of the libertarian/transhumanist sort? To be clear; the 'fallow' sort of hacker -- that is hacker, not cracker -- is amongst the forefront of the technophilic freedom-lover that we libertarian transhumanists must draw our spiritual and philosophical sustenance from. (Yes, because both libertarians and transhumanists are really evil blood-sucking vampires. Didn't you know? Rifkin and Fukuyama are really prescient clerics of the coming dawn!) And keeping track of what happens in this conflict -- the 'fallow' hackers -- not black-hats, but 'wild bunch', who seek to maximize the utility of information for the end-users whom they believe they champion (rightly or wrongly), and the corporations which seek to restrict the use of products to how they see fit -- essentially, using their economic and political wealth to ensure positions of dominance over the common man.

Consider this a "state-of-the-conflict" report, then: as demonstrated above, we're in a bit of a "Hacker Cold-War" today; though you wouldn't know it to look up those terms specifically -- and the prognosis is... "Iffy, with a moderate chance of 'Oh, S&*!.'"

A Screed Towards Explaining the Link Between Poverty Decrease And "Un-Insured" Increase

With the recent report of the disparity between the decrease, nationally, in poverty; in tandem with the increase -- if slight (.5%) -- in non-insurance coverage, one has to wonder; what exactly is going on in this nation?

Hillary clinton herself has made some buzz by asking, "We are the richest nation in the world; why aren't we acting like it?" There's a bit of a simple answer to this question -- and it's an unsettling one, in that it doesn't seem to be anywhere in the nation's political discourse. This article, which made the argument that alleviate tax & regulatory burdens on small business could directly remediate much of the poverty in this nation has a great deal to do with exactly this. Now, I as the author of this blog have on numerous occasions made the claim, and supported it, that the institutions of healthcare in this nation equate to nothing short of fascism. Fascism is most distinctly marked by large corporate entities and unions, which are in a direct relationship with the controlling/governing body. In our case, that's your local, state, and federal Congresses. In his last presidential address (itself an institution that most of our Founding Fathers deplored as it smacked of "Imperiousness"), Mr. Bush made the point that we would decrease the number of uninsured by ending the corporate tax exemption for providing health insurance and instead instituting an ongoing tax-credit to individuals (and families), to cover their acquiring policies of their own. How many people this would open up affordability of healthcare to is, indeed, questionable. But the simple fact of the matter is, as it stands now only those whom work for large corporations are receiving any kind of break on insurance -- or, rather, their employers are for them. And in what world is that a good idea, when the largest group of employers nationally is businesses with less than 10 people (see the previous article from this blog, already linked to above)?

I see I've jumped ahead of myself a little bit here. By way of supporting some of the previous and to-come arguments, consider this from Medicalnewstoday.com:

A report by the US Census Bureau this week shows that household income is up, the poverty rate is slightly down for the first time this decade, but the number of people without health insurance went up by 0.5 per cent to reach 47 million in 2006.

The Income, Poverty, and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2006 report draws on information collected in two surveys: the 2007 Current Population Survey (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC).

There has been a strong reaction to the report, with the presidential elections coming up next year, the New York Times describes it as a "presidential candidate's gold mine", with the main focus being on the fact that 47 million Americans still have no health insurance and the proportion of children with no health insurance has risen, with the poorest children the most likely to be uninsured.

This has boosted calls by many candidates to bring more people into the government scheme. Recently the government based schemes have received wide support in Congress even though President Bush has promised to veto any legislation that expands them.

Is expanding government coverage programs really a good idea, when doing so typically relocates much of the cost of coverage from the individuals onto the public-at-large? (Estimates vary, but 1-in-3 so covered is decent). And let us not deceive ourselves; those who push such programs are using essentially nefarious schemes to do so; such as expanding SCHIP -- a program enacted to provide health insurance for poverty-stricken children -- so that it covers middle-class adults; and yet when this is questioned, those who do so are assaulted as "hating the poor children of America". If you disbelieve this, see "It's for the Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me." And before we go any further, it is also worth noting that this increase in income is proportionately across the board. From USAtoday.com:

The nation's median household income rose to $48,200, and the poverty rate fell to 12.3% in 2006, the first time this decade that both improved, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

At the same time, however, median earnings for men and women continued to fall, an indication that household income rose as a result of more people working longer hours. The median is the point at which there are equal numbers of incomes higher and lower.

[...]

Bush seized on data showing that median income rose in 2006 for all income groups. "The Census data shows that income gains in 2006 were substantial and widespread across all income categories," he said.

So yes, someone actually provided valid information to our President -- and he paid attention, for once! Quick, somebody go get ready to perform CPR on Cheney when he finds this out -- it'd shock anybody these days.

But this article is being written to drive home a point that bears -- no, needs -- repetition: If we wish to alleviate poverty in our nation, and simultaneously provide greater access to health insurance to those whom lack it, we must heed the nature of our own economy, and address our solutions to best match it.

If we wish to raise people up out of poverty, there are two means by which we can do this: one, give them money and supplements. The other, at least equally as valid, is to not pull money out of their hands as soon as they start making it. And yet, since regulatory burdens are between 4 and 10 times greater on small, "start-up" businesses as they are on large corporations -- and it is far easier for those with no work history to create their own business than it is to gain a good-paying job in a corporate environment -- that latter is exactly what we're not doing.

And worse sense yet, when those people who manage to overcome the burden-of-government in succeeding as start-ups start looking to health insurance, they quickly discover that they are -- proverbially or literally, depending on your perspective -- "shat upon" by our current regime. Why, precisely, is it okay to have a set-up where Joe Wage-Slave has an easier time gaining good health insurance than Pauly the Pizzeria Owner? It seems to me that, as the infrastructure change needed to create this reform is as simple as a revision of the tax code -- as compared to the massive bureaucratic and institutional changes necessary to accomplish socialized medicine in our nation -- those who wish for greater coverage for all have absolutely no excuse to fail to support the individual tax-credit. In fact, they ought to be hitting the pavement in demonstrations for it. So we are left asking: Why, precisely, are the proponents of Universal Coverage not doing so? Why are they alright with allowing needless suffering to continue?

Joke of the Day: Law on the Side of Hackers -- Over Multi-National Corporations?

Poor Apple & AT&T won't get the revenue they're after, or so it is starting to appear. Well, AT&T anyhow. It seems that after-market modifications to cell-phones is legal under the DMCA... because you can't copyright-protect a cellphone network. Who knew?

So will Apple and AT&T's legal action deter hackers? Hardly. Individual users are already allowed to unlock their own phones under an exemption to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) that the U.S. Copyright Office issued last November. The exemption, in force for three years, applies to "computer programs…that enable wireless telephone handsets to connect to a wireless telephone communication network, when circumvention is accomplished for the sole purpose of lawfully connecting to a wireless telephone communication network."

[...]

Problem is, it could be argued that, in reality, the lock only protects access to a carrier's communications network—and communications services aren't copyrightable under the Act, explains Jane Ginsburg, professor of literary and artistic property law at Columbia Law School. "This law was written for DVDs and video games," she explains. "What's going on here is using the Copyright Act to achieve another objective."

Indeed, this time, hackers may have the law on their side. Remember, decades ago, automakers built their instrument panels so that only authorized radios of their own manufacture would fit in. Eventually, U.S. courts ended that practice.

Source.

Score one for the evil domestic info-terrorists. It's too bad there's no one like, say, Dateline NBC out there to protect us from these people, just like how Dateline's "To Catch A Predator" protects our children from those evil pedos -- you know, such as Wikipedia?.

It's For The Children! ... And Other Lies My Government Told Me

Children's issues -- or at least, what appear to be children's issues -- have been plastered all over the news (or at least at the edges), for the last few days. From more NCLB fears to SCHIP expansion and CBS's alleged child abuse for ratings; it seems we can't get away from the "little tikes". Are there any lessons to be learned from this new juvenile ubiquity?

There is little doubt that this nation has a pre-occupation with its children. There are plenty of reasons why this is -- but politically speaking it is clear that the nation's children are the one area where Democrats and Republicans agree completely: they ought to be placated, protected, and provided for -- because they are so precious to us. Unfortunately, however, if anything this pre-occupation can only result in the expansion of the already-prevalent neoteny in our society. And it's certain that even in terms of our children, this focus is leading to "unintended side-effects". Take, for example, the growing "epidemic" of obesity in children:

About every fourth American child between the ages of ten to seventeen is overweight. This is the finding of a new report which has stated, "The rate of childhood obesity more than tripled from 1980 to 2004. Approximately 25 million children are now either obese or overweight.

It is painfully revealing that someone the age of 17 -- a year away from legal majority and adulthood -- is considered a "child". There are plenty of reasons why this is going on, but one thing is certain; it is clear that obesity (in general) comes about as a combination of two things: the consumption of rich foods, and the lack of exertion. Both of these, if taken to extremes, represent coddling; so the fact that 1 in 4 -- 25% -- of our children are overweight/obese means, in plain terms, that we have physical evidence that we coddle our young.

And the reactions to circumstances where children are only slightly-less coddled than normal is fascinating. "
On Friday, the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists announced that it was investigating reports that allege abuse of children on "Kid Nation," which premieres Sept. 19.
" And mind you -- "Kid Nation" basically is nothing more than a bunch of 8-12 year olds whom were set up in a "ghost town" and given supplies to run their own town, without adults on-screen. The worst thing that happened was that a ten-year-old girl got a grease-burn on her face while cooking. For this, the parent is now suing CBS for 'child neglect'. A single, 1st-degree burn over a small area. Cases like these, once-upon-a-time, were thrown out summarily.

What is amazing to this author, however, is the fact that this national coddling represents less and less individual parental responsibility, while simultaneously representing a greater and greater outrage by society at the failures of society as a whole (in this case, read that as "the Government") to acheive in lieu of parents taking care of their own kids: we demand excellence, but can't be bothered to produce it ourselves, apparently. For example, NCLB's standards are being reported for their inflexibility, so greatly so that schools that individual (local) parents rate very highly continue to fail to meet up to NCLB's "adequate yearly progress" despite significant gains in statistical acheivements. And what, exactly, is the primary demand for the remedy of the nation's well-documented educational woes? More funding -- demand responsibility and effectiveness from our schools, we are told -- but also increase teacher pay so we get decent teachers; etcetera. But looking at raw numbers on this issue paints a very bizarre picture:

The United States spent an average of $8,701 per pupil to educate its children in 2005, the Census Bureau said on Thursday, with some states paying more than twice as much per student as others.

[...]

Students in northeastern and northern states tend to perform better on standardized tests than students in southern and southwestern states. But experts say the correlation between spending and testing performance is not strong.

[...]

[Tom Loveless] said Washington, D.C., has among the highest spending in the country but its students have among the lowest scores on standardized tests, while some states like Montana with relatively low spending have fairly high performance on tests.

So what, then, is this demand for more spending on schools accomplishing? It's worth noting that the single largest bloc for increased education spending is... teacher's unions. Meanwhile, private schools provide excelling education for pennies on the dollar compared to public schools; with a cost reported $3,116/yr. Is more money really what is needed, or is it just possible that someone has hijacked our unquestioning concern for our children for other purposes?

With that thought in mind, consider the other recent news item involving our children -- SCHIP renewal. The Cato Institute has an interesting take on some of the ads going around about SCHIP:

And of course, there's contention here. The following quotations come from the same source:

Gov. Mike Beebe joined with three Democratic members of Arkansas’ congressional delegation to support the federal reauthorization of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which provides health insurance for low-income children.

Okay -- support the uninsured low-income children! This is a good message -- how could anybody dislike it, or vote against it? How dare President Bush threaten to veto it? But then we dig a little deeper:

The House bill allows states to expand SCHIP to families with incomes as high as 400 percent of the federal poverty level, said [Representative John] Boozman’s [R-AR] spokesman, Ryan James. That’s $82,600 for a family of four.

$82,600 is to be the new cut-off for SCHIP? 4 times the poverty line? Well, maybe this is justifiable -- so long as it's just for the children. And it is, right? So now we dig a little deeper still:

Another concern among some legislators is the extent to which the children’s health program covers adults. Arkansas’ SCHIP funding covers some adults in the new ARHealthNet program, which began enrolling people in January.

That's right -- now it seems that "low-income children" applies to middle-income adults as well. How amazing!! Who would bring this to us? Why, our new, fiscally conservative, democratic congressmen, of course:

The blue dogs are consistent on one fiscal issue: stopping tax cuts. As a group they opposed the Bush tax cuts and the extension of those tax cuts, and a super-majority vote requirement to raise taxes–all in the name of easing the debt burden on future generations. But those concerns evaporated when all but nine in the blue dog coalition voted to expand the Schip health-care program to include many middle-class families, at a cost of $132.6 billion over the 2008-2017 period.

And remember, SCHIP was originall the child of a Republican sponsor-author (Chuck Hagel), in a Republican congress.

When the hell are we going to, as a nation, stop allowing our reliance on the government to screw us over? Rational ignorance or not, this "This legislation is for the children! Ignore the other shenanigans behind page one!" crud simply has to stop. And when are we all going to wake up and realize that there's no such thing as "money for nothing" -- even if it's coming from the government printing presses?

Corporations and Intellectual Property: A Match Made In Hell

Intellectual property is a necessary and vital element to the modern economy -- globally and locally to the US. Unfortunately, to most people "Intellectual Property" is now synonymous with the RIAA and music pirating.

Of course, IP Law covers so much more than simply who gets the money for the song you're possibly listening to at this very moment. And it is the colorization of the abuses of the RIAA in its efforts to eliminate music piracy that has caused much of the complaints against IP law in general. Studies have been flung back and forth in this debate about how piracy actually increases sales, or how piracy is costing artists money -- etcetera, etcetera. This has essentially gotten to the point where only the "fanatics" on either side of the issue seem to even care anymore; the common public just complains a little bit "at the water cooler" and then goes back to their desk to drink their morning coffee. So it is with this in mind that one can understand exactly why things like Antigua's request of the WTO to allow it to ignore American IP aren't catching any real headway in the eye of the public. After all; what harm could a little more music piracy do?

But consider the following:

AT&T is paying millions to be the exclusive United States provider of Apple’s much-hyped and glowingly reviewed gadget, the iPhone.

It took 17-year-old George Hotz two months of work to undermine AT&T’s investment.

Mr. Hotz, a resident of Glen Rock, N.J., published detailed instructions online this week that he says will let iPhone owners abandon AT&T’s service and use their phones on some competing cellular networks.
[...]
Neither Apple nor AT&T would comment on Mr. Hotz’s handiwork or on another unlocking technique revealed yesterday by an anonymous group calling itself iPhoneSimFree.

This represents what can happen when intellectual property laws are taken to their "natural extent" at the cost of the consumer: inevitably, the consumer finds ways 'around' said issue. And this was just one device, mind you -- where the creator wanted to control how the consumer would use said device.

As intellectual property laws develop in their complexity and ubiquity, the stress between "free/fair use" and "owner's rights" will continue to grow -- and along with it concerns about the sovereignty of nations:

A critical review of recent literature on these topics discloses a prevalent and rather persuasive view: that globalization of information and the impact of the Internet tend toward an international standard of strengthened intellectual property laws and the erosion of sovereignty notions, with the economic benefits flowing primarily to developed nations and transnational corporations.

It is, thusly, important to remember that there is a difference between capitalism and corporatism; that there is a difference between free-market economics and mercantilism; and that the direction we take as a nation deals directly with the level of outrage the common citizen has over any given path -- politicians are perhaps genetically codependent, and will please whomever is screaming the loudest. So long as that's multinational corporations, the common man is screwed.

But don't throw out the baby with the bathwater: Intellectual Property itself is not to blame for this state of affairs, and deals with a great deal more than simply who can listen to what song at what time. It behooves us all to remember that there is a right way and a wrong way to ensure that the creator of a given intellectual work receives their just deserts for its creation: it also behooves said creators to remember that the supply-and-demand theory does not allow you to charge whatever you feel like for a product; you can only charge what the public is willing to pay. Unfortunately; medical companies & "mainstream musicians" alike are abusing their political capital to place themselves in the position to exclude others from having any say -- and that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem; not IP laws themselves.

In today's society, when it seems that so few people understand the differences between capitalism, between mercantilism, and between corporatism; it remains painfully difficult to convey the dangers of the latter as being separate from the former. Where is all of this going?

When you complain that medicines cost too much, or that musicians are ripping you off -- when you complain that health insurance costs too much, or that the greedy capitalists are exploiting the poor -- what you are complaining about isn't the result of capitalism. Capitalism is responsible for the subprime crisis; as this is the result of investment practices -- but the rest? Those are, in fact, the result of corporatism: what happens when corporate entities start having a say in the halls of government. But much as no one would suggest that all art and music be the property of the Government, so too should we avoid handing over other areas to government control; it is simply absurd to think that some paper-pusher should have a say over whether or not the appropriately named Grandma "Ailing Ticker" gets a pacemaker, even if she has the money to pay for one outright. What needs correction here isn't the intellectual property laws; it is the actions of those like the "big Pharma", Microsoft, the RIAA, etcetera, whom abuse intellectual property laws and their association with government in order to manipulate the circumstances to their own profit. Eliminate those "corporate interests" -- and IP would settle itself out.

The best means to do so would be the abolition of the practice of professional lobbyism; abolish the lobbies themselves. But we all know how likely that is.

Someone At the "International Herald Times" Has A Sense of Humor

U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales resigns, reads the article's headline. But notice the location of the story.

WACO, Texas: Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, whose tenure has been marred by controversy and accusations of perjury before Congress, has resigned. He is expected to announce the decision to reporters at 10:30 Eastern time this morning in Washington.

And in case that wasn't enough of a "joke" for you -- consider the ending line of said article:

Senator Schumer said that "Democrats will not obstruct or impede a nominee who we are confident will put the rule of law above political considerations."

Emphasis mine; and I can only say -- how would they know such an individual when they saw him?

Source.
EDIT: The source is called "The International Herald Tribune", not the "International Herald Times".

When Memes Come Full Circle

In Soviet America, The Government Is Free From You.

The Bush administration argued in court papers this week that the White House Office of Administration is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act as part of its effort to fend off a civil lawsuit seeking the release of internal documents about a large number of e-mails missing from White House servers.

The claim, made in a motion filed Tuesday by the Justice Department, is at odds with a depiction of the office on the White House's own Web site. As of yesterday, the site listed the Office of Administration as one of six presidential entities subject to the open-records law, which is commonly known by its abbreviation, FOIA.

I wish there were a punchline.

Optical Neural Interface Used in Rodents

Via Neurophilosophy:

This year, several research groups have used bacterial proteins called channelrhodopsins to develop a technique with which light can be used to control the activity of nerve cells or the behaviour of small organisms.
[...]
Deisseroth's research team has now taken this new technology one step further.

Click on "Read More", below, to read the article in full.

read more | digg story

Bush's "New Vietnam" Admission: A Missing Piece

President Bush's admission recently that Iraq is indeed the new Vietnam is a welcome step in the correct direction for the dialogue on the issue in the US. But just as LBJ and Nixon were wrong in their conclusions -- as history has documented -- so too is Mr. Bush incorrect. Unfortunately, as it turns out, so too are the majority of Americans on both sides of this debate. What people need to understand is:Iraq is not the new Vietnam: it is the new "Soviet" Afghanistan. And we are the new Russians.

It's a somewhat convoluted point, yes. But it is also something that desperately needs saying. By way of reference, according to the online Wall Street Journal, the "Bush Argument" goes something like this:

President George W. Bush boldly abandoned that template with his speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars on Wednesday. In a skillful bit of political jujitsu, he cited Vietnam not as evidence that the Iraq War is unwinnable, but to argue that the costs of giving up the fight would be catastrophic -- just as they were in Southeast Asia.

And, no -- this isn't really news. Comparisons between Iraq and Vietnam are plastered all over the news, and have been for quite some time.

Why do I make the comparison between Iraq and Soviet Afghanistan rather than Vietnam? It's rather simple; we're fighting the same enemy in Iraq that the Russians fought in Afghanistan: Al-Qaeda. A bit of reference on the Soviet war in Afghanistan:

The Soviet war in Afghanistan was a nine-year conflict involving Soviet forces supporting Afghanistan's Marxist People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) government against the largely Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen insurgents that were fighting to overthrow Soviet rule. The Soviet Union supported the government while the rebels found support from a variety of sources including the United States, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other Muslim nations in the context of the Cold War. This conflict was concurrent to the 1979 Iranian Revolution and the Iran-Iraq War.

[...]

Some observers believe the economic and military cost of the war contributed significantly to the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991^[5].

This is, specifically, what we face. An enemy who wishes our destruction, plain and simple -- and is using the same tactics that they did on the Soviet "Empire". It worked once before -- why not again? Why else, do you think, there are so relatively few "IED"'s that are strong enough to kill immediately? There have been roughly 7.3 times as many non-fatal casualties as there have been fatalities. That takes fore-planning to achieve, even with modern medicine. By now it has been made clear that no attacks on US soil can bring us down; the relatively quick rebound from the massive damage done on the infamous "9/11" proves that. This is why Al-Qaeda's efforts not on "Arab soil" all take place in non-American soil: Greece, Africa, the (non-US) Philippines -- primarily places, ironically, where the Muslim presence is strong.

This needs saying, and nobody else is saying it: The longer we stay in Iraq the more we will be bled dry by "insurgents" who want nothing more than to kill us on their own soil -- and lack the infrastructure, support, and ability to inflict serious damage to us on our soil. If we wish to survive as a nation of wealth, prosperity, and freedom -- there is only one choice:

Bring our soldiers home.

Monthly Feedback Time

Yes, that's right, my 'gentle' readers: time once again for you, my loyal minions -- err, readers, to "[/lurk]" and begin with the input. Tell us about yourselves: where you get your nickname from; what interests you 'bout the site; what, if any, articles you liked most; what, if any, improvements you'd like to see in the site.

Make your voices heard!

Lapdancing Towards A Better Tomorrow!

"Sex sells", as they always say. Depending on the people and the environment, this can be taken as either a positive or a negative. One area where this is a bit of a cognitive divide, where sex and sexuality are concerned, is of course the transhumanist movement as a whole.

Yeah, you wouldn't know that to hear Ray Kurzweil talk on and on about how sexuality is going to change in the future -- nor would you know it to hear Khannea Suntzu speak out on the subject from Second Life. But as some of the controversy within transhumanist circles demonstrates, the traditionally libertarian viewpoint of transhumanists takes a bit of a beating when sexuality rears its (sometimes ugly) head. And 'poor' Khannea has at least once been on the receiving end of that controversy.

It amazes me, that transhumanists can talk about personal autonomy and reproductive rights -- yet when it comes to 'seamier' behavior, suddenly all us geeks and nerds get stuffy and suppress our indignation. You wouldn't know that from looking at our stated goals, though:

Transhumanists seek things like intelligence augmentation, increased strength and beauty, extreme life extension, sustainable mood enhancement, and the capability to get off-planet and explore the universe.

Where does this dichotomy, then, come from -- especially within a movement that seeks what they call "cognitive liberty"? Well, the answer to that is painfully simple; unexamined biases. It's as simple as that: our society as a whole disapproves of 'sex work', and therefore, on an emotional level, so do we. It amazes me to see someone discussing the idea of women in sex-work as teaching girls that "self-exploitation is okay". (And yes, I know; the article I'm using here is almost a year old already -- hardly 'news', but it drives home the point.)


It is by no means all that surprising that libertarians should be somewhat 'further ahead' on the scale where cognitive and sexual liberty are concerned. Take, for example, this entry from Gordon Unleashed, the personal blog of the former director of communications for the National Libertarian Party. His topic? "Strippers for Ron Paul." (No, it's no mistake that today's article is so closely related to his.) He mentions two whom specifically endorse Ron Paul, one of which maintains a blog entitled, "Hustle And Cashflow." From said blog:

If any of the other major contenders get elected it will be the same mediocrity as we’ve had for the past century or so. If Ron Paul gets elected I will be able to put off my plan of eventually fleeing to Malta for at least four years. That’s a chance worth taking, in my estimation.

So what is the connection, precisely, between transhumanist libertarianism and sex work? The answer ought to be obvious, yet seems not to be -- at least, there doesn't seem to be any other mention of it anywhere in google's search results. That being the case, the semi-euphemistic title of this entry comes into play: transhumanism is all about seeking out the betterments of ourselves and our natures. When done responsibly, legally, and openly, that is exactly what sex-work accomplishes for women; as "Khannea Suntzu" demonstrates; as "Hustle and Cash Flow" demonstrates; as Jenna Jameson demonstrates -- the list can go on and on. One of the areas that is most open to augmentation and enhancement, today, is one's physical appearance. This is an area that many strippers, porn stars, and prostitutes (where it is legal, which is an important distinction) take to in many cases the extreme. So in a very real sense the "sex worker culture" is inherently transhumanist. It is also very libertarian; in the senses of agorism and libertinism, at least. As a personal anecdote, I can also state that I have never knowingly met a single stripper who wasn't a Libertarian (by party affiliation); and I have met more than one; which is in and of itself fairly impressive for a hermit who doesn't see the point in patronizing said industry.

Both transhumanists and libertarians, as separate '