From: Brian D Williams (talon57@well.com)
Date: Tue Jul 02 2002 - 07:51:28 MDT
>From: Harvey Newstrom <mail@HarveyNewstrom.com>
>You're referring to the U.S., right? We are (apparently) not
>planning to comply with environmental treaties. You are exactly
>right. Private citizens won't do anything until government passes
>a law or mandates a treaty. (Or until somebody suddenly develops
>a radically cool, cheap and easy non-polluting source of energy.)
Yes, the U.S.. Were these treaties approved by congress?
And since politicians are elected, none are going to take such a
drastic step that would prove to be unpopular.
>I see the U.N. as weakening the ability of individual nations such
>as the U.S. to take arbitrary actions. I don't believe that the
>U.S. or any other large country will allow the U.N. to take them
>over. So, I don't see this as increasing government control, but
>rather as decreasing it or providing more oversight or more checks
>and balances. I don't expect world-control to go so far that it
>becomes a bigger threat than our immediate government.
I see a large number of people trying to increase the power of the
U.N. till it becomes a de facto world government.
There is a major battle going on now over the ICC which may
determine if we abandon a U.N peacekeeping role.
>You must have missed the squawking by the ACLU and EFF and other
>internet advocates. I have been participating with the liberal
>complaints since the telecommunications act. There has been no
>lack of complaining about these issues since the 1990s. It is
>totally inaccurate to say that liberals didn't complain. Maybe
>the democrats in congress got outvoted by the
>republican-controlled congress, or maybe they didn't put up a
>fight, but the more liberal and more rights-oriented organizations
>definitely complained when individual rights were reduced in favor
>of corporate access and government control over the Internet.
No I didn't miss any of it, I was on Cypherpunks the whole time, I
watched the EFF form, and I watched the Clinton administration
propose the Clipper chip, the V-chip, and greatly expanded
wiretapping.
I watched the Democrats vote unanimously to pass the digital
telephony act.
The 1996 telecommunications act killed our plans to deploy fiber in
the last mile by the way.
>I suspect that most of the disagreement on global warming is
>politically motivated rather than scientifically motivated. I
>don't think real scientists disagree much, except as they are
>hired for specific projects for specific corporations with
>specific agendas.
Actually the last time I checked the numbers were about 50/50.
The book I recommended a few months back, "The Secret Life of Dust"
points out that we already know dust to be a bigger factor than so
called greenhouse gases, and we don't even know if it's
positive/negative.
Brian
Member:
Extropy Institute, www.extropy.org
National Rifle Association, www.nra.org, 1.800.672.3888
SBC/Ameritech Data Center Chicago, IL, Local 134 I.B.E.W
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