The major parties do their best to keep the others out of the political process. Whether it is through rigging the election laws for ballot access and debate access, or outright criminal activity, like stealing ballot access petitions or violationg and ignoring federal non-partisan debate laws, it appears nothing will prevent the Democrats and Republicans from keeping the competition out of their monopoly on the US political process.

It was therefore a welcome change to see some third party presidential debates this year. The first of these was in New York City at the same time as the GOP convention, but was rather wooden and staid with a traditional format of pre-screened questions asked by the moderator. The second one, though, in a town meeting format at Cornell University, and hosted by poli-sci prof Ted Lowi, was a rather refreshing program to watch last night before dinner (10/10/04 6:30PM EST, C/SPAN).

Present were Michael Peroutka of the Constitution Party, David Cobb of the Green Party, Walter Brown of the Socialist Party, USA, and Michael Badnarik of the Libertarian Party. Notably absent was Independent candidate Ralph Nader, who has made a public statement of "being opposed to caste systems in politics" as being his excuse for not showing. (time to retire, Ralph)

The Moderator, Prof. Ted Lowi, managed very well and even interjected a few times with excellent commentary. When one student deplored the fact that all the candidates were white males (to which Cobb mentioned his female VP candidate and Brown talked about Susan B Anthony), Lowi stated that candidacy is a self selective process. If there are no black or female candidates it is because they did not nominate themselves to get involved, so they need to take responsibility and step forward. WOW, no politically correct mouse is he.

Each candidate started off with a three minute speech, and then the floor was open for students to spontaneously ask over a dozen questions of each of the candidates. Seeing each candidate answer the same question helped illustrate the differences and similarities between these four gentlemen. Peroutka stuck to his mantra of "God, Family, and Republic", which was dismantled from the beginning by an otherwise disheveled Walt Brown, who retorted that the pledge of allegiance was written by a socialist baptist minister from a large family. Walt was not the most presentable candidate, and seemed to be of the impression that he was in the 1924 presidential campaign, not the 2004 one. Both Peroutka and Brown received polite applause, but did not really reach the crowd. I'd say they both fought for last place: one with out-of-touch theological arguments, and the other with an out-of-touch generation gap, scattershot presentation, and impending senility.

David Cobb made a pretty good presentation of the Green Party stance on issues, talking about environmental protection and renewal, more social welfare statism, and ending the control of 'corporate fat cats' over the US political system. My sister commented "He looks and sounds like a gay Stacey Keach", but he did command a pretty good response from the crowd at certain points.

Michael Badnarik, though, was in his element. He has been getting ever more well polished, and his years of public speaking experience made him seem calm, collected, and unfazed by any question a student could ask. He got enthusiastic applause at many points, and even a few standing ovations. When the candidates were asked to comment on the Patriot Act, Badnarik described the barbed wire 'free speech zones' set up in Boston during the Democratic Convention, and responded by firmly stating, "Anywhere I happen to be standing, is a Free Speech Zone... [standing O] ... Anywhere YOU happen to be standing, is a Free Speech Zone.. {standing O]." Because of this fantastic performance by Badnarik, I'd score the debate as follows:

Peroutka & Brown: 4th place
Cobb: 3rd Place
Moderator Ted Lowi: 2nd Place
Badnarik: First Place, and uncontested winner.

There is a sort of band-aid theory among novel writers. Some believe in slowly exposing you the the setting and the gestalt of the book, letting you adjust your thinking to odd ideas or novel concepts being presented, while others believe in the 'rip it off quick' school, dunking you head first, full bodied, into a radically different reality. Charlie's novel "Singularity Sky" is an adherent to the "tear it off with joy, with prejudice, and a noogie on the side" school, which is a bit more extreme than your garden variety bandage ripper.

We are presented with an impoverished peasant boy, in a peasant village, on a primitive backwater planet in the distant future, who is suddenly presented, along with the rest of the inhabitants of his benighted world, with a technology and an entity so far outside their worldview that their culture can't help but self destruct in the ensuing local economic singularity.

This book is all about singularities. Not the gravity well, black hole variety, nor of the jump through to other planets variety, but the technological variety first posited by Vernor Vinge. He, along with SF luminaries like John Campbell have asserted for years that you can't write SF about beyond the singularity. Many an SF author has lamented this concept and cursed Vinges name. Stross proves them quite wrong here. It is quite possible to write about the posthuman future, just so long as you don't try to portray a truly transcendant entity face to face, because you will always come up short.

In Stross' novel, the truly transcendant entity is The Eschaton, who we never meet. The only evidence of its existence are the remnants it leaves of societies that try to screw around with technology that would alter the timeline, and the warnings it leaves etched in stone for future generations that never seem to learn the lesson. Sometimes these interventions are not so spectacular, sometimes nobody notices them at all, because they are performed by agents of "The Big E" behind the scenes.

Stross uses the 'rip it off' technique here to try to give the reader some idea of how truly shattering a "consensus reality incursion" can be. We've seen them before, when europeans met the native americans, etc. In this case, an entity called "The Festival" which operates as an interstellar cable guy visits this backward world, in the mistaken belief that the lack of interstellar network signals from this location need repairing. In order to get the local technology up to snuff, it engages in a campaign of dropping cellphones from orbit, by which anybody can "entertain" the Festival with original knowledge and receive technological goodies in return, including 'cornucopea machines', nanotechnological replicator machines. So long as you keep the Festival entertained, it will rain down upon you wonders that the former economy could never have presented even if it were allowed to by the government.

The only problem with this strategy is that this world is deliberately kept primitive by the neoluddite fascists of the New Republic government, which sees this 'consensus reality incursion' as an act of war, not as a mere issue of trade violation. To respond to this threat, it sends its primitive space navy, which is dependent upon the technological export castoffs of the anarchical transhuman economy of old Earth, to deal with this threat via a route which infringes upon the restrictions the Eschaton puts on humanity: No Screwing With The Time Line.

The resulting story is an entertaining object lesson in trying to outlaw the tide.

This is actually a chance for my Multiply buddies to review one of my own public performances, when I was a guest on New Hampshire Public Radio regarding the Free Town Project, back in June.

Listen in to the archive of this program, and please post feedback:
http://nhpr.org/view_content/6640/

[Note: This began as a post on the extropy-chat list, hence the references within. I tend to practice Azimov's Law of boosting one's publishing volume by reprinting content in multiple locations. It also helps ensure your words to posterity... ;) ]

I had the opportunity to attend a meeting of the NH Civil Liberties Union (can you imagine me there????) yesterday afternoon, where a talk was given by a registered Republican, who is now Dean of the Franklin Pierce Law School in Concord, NH, and was previously the CINCJAG of the Navy, Admiral John Hutson (Ret). Hutson was commenting on the situation with prisoners at gitmo and Iraq.

While he confirmed a lot of what I've previously posted to this list, he did clarify with actual White House memos by WH counsel Gonzales to Pres. Bush that the White House had actively sought a legal argument to specifically refuse to recognise that any prisoners met the criteria found in the Geneva Conventions, because they were not individuals in the service of any recognised government (even the Taliban were referred to as a 'failed state' due to its lack of diplomatic recognition around the world). Because of this legal determination by the White House, the 'competent tribunal' requirement of the Conventions needed to determine if an individual prisoner is a legal or illegal combatant (or noncombatant) was never triggered.

Hutson referred to this argument as being "too clever for one's own good", which I have some sympathy for, especially on the same logical reasons that Hudson rejects it for: that not taking the high road of treating all prisoners as POWs until determined otherwise by competent tribunal endangers American lives, since it is our military forces who are forward deployed in other countries more than anyone.

Of course one can point to instances where US military personnel had been badly abused prior to the Bush administration: Mogadishu, for instance, demonstrated that the enemy already had zero respect for the laws of war before the Bush administration started deciding that terrorist prisoners had no rights to Geneva protections. Whether the Bush administration decided to adopt this policy following the clear examples of Mogadishu and others is something else entirely to debate.

One is left in the position of really trying hard to argue for the 'turn the other cheek' argument when one is faced by this example, especially following the visceral destruction of 9/11. It was easier in yesteryear when images of badly abused bodies of military personnel dragged through the streets didn't automatically show up on websites and television broadcasts. The sensationalism of the instant press contributes to the baying for blood (on both sides), rather than to any reasoned or rational debate, or chance for sober minds to try to constrain policy before the mob demands vengance.

As extropians list subscribers in the late 1990's may remember, I have spoken on several occasions about how groups seek to apply revolutionary theory to get a free society to willingly surrender its rights through vicious cycles of oppression, atrocity, and more oppression, etc. Some of those here who disagee with me on things these days didn't believe me when I warned of exactly what they are now complaining about.

Giving up our liberties is what the islamist world wishes to achieve in the west. Rather than Patriot Acts, the best Homeland Security would be to rescind the NFA of 1934, the GCA of 1968, the FOPA of 1986 and the Brady Bill. Admiral Hirohito warned Tojo against invading the mainland US. He had studied at university here, and had a pretty good idea about mainland society. He said that an invasion would fail because, "there is a rifle behind every blade of grass".

There was no rifle (or other arm) behind every blade of grass (or airline seat) on 9/11. The hijacking phenomenon began when the FAA banned citizens from their 2nd amendment rights on aircraft, and it will cease when that ban is lifted. Terrorism will fail to succeed when the populace is once again broadly armed, when it is the rare individual who is morally scrupulous against use of arms who is unarmed on the streets.

Rather than a police society, we need to trust ourselves and our Constitution, and fight the enemy by making ourselves more free once again.