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“Democracies die behind closed doors.” So says federal judge Damon J Keith in an appellate ruling that it is unlawful to hold deportation hearings in secret without petitioning an immigration judge for the right to do so. After 9/11, the government held hundreds of such hearings without even disclosing the names of the potential deportees. One need only read the international news to see why our civil liberties are a big deal. Yesterday Spain shut down a fringe Basque political party (a move that’s sure to only spawn violence), and in Turkey a hunger strike among political prisoners continued, claiming its 55th death. In the West Bank, thugs executed a mother of seven for being an Israeli collaborator after they tortured her son until he concocted a story implicating her. As great a threat as terrorism is, stomping all over our Constitutional ideals to prevent terrorism is a greater threat, especially considering that I’m not convinced that any of the civil liberties the executive branch has tried to take away have helped to stop future terrorist attacks at all. ...

“Round up the usual suspects …”

Slate’s Chris Suellentrop profiles Richard Perle, America’s spokesman for invading Iraq.

Should students learning an object oriented programming language start out with a “Hello, world” program? That’s the question David H Steinberg asked in an onjava.com article this week. He does a pretty good job of covering the tradeoffs in the article, and I think that the question is worth some thought. As a writer of technical books, I guess I should attempt an answer. As far as I’m concerned, “Hello, world” is a fine example, even though it doesn’t really teach you anything about what differentiates Java from other languages. Heck, the most striking thing about “Hello, world” in Java is that it’s more cumbersome to write than it is in most other languages I’ve used. The main purpose of the first program you learn is not to teach you the language, but prove that your environment is set up correctly, that you can successfully compile a program, and that you can execute a program. You can start teaching the student about the language in the next program. ...

The Economist obituary for Abu Nidal is worth reading. Perhaps he is best remembered as proof that Yasser Arafat is not a worst case scenario. The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad who target their violence toward driving Israel and the Palestinians away from the negotiating table rather than toward it are his spiritual descendants. However, not even they ocncentrate on killing Palestinians rather than Israelis to achieve their ends as Abu Nidal did. ...

A big stash of weapons grade uranium was secured under heavy security in Yugoslavia today. Needless to say, unilateralism wouldn’t have gotten us anywhere at all on this one.

The secret FISA court that rules on intelligence-related federal wiretaps released publicly yesterday a decision they made in May that denied the feds the right to share information with law enforcement. They denied the request because of the problems they’ve had in the past with dishonesty on the part of the Justice Department, both in the way applications for wiretaps were filed and in what was done with the information gathered through the wiretaps. The barrier for obtaining permission to get a wiretap through FISA is low, so it’s critically important that the court not be used to make an end run around due process in regular criminal cases. I’m glad to see that the FISA court takes its role seriously in that regard. ...

For those of us trying to keep up with what’s happening on the subcontinent, the Economist offers this update on Pakistan, India, and the United States. Pervez Musharraf is tightening his grip on power more every day, but at the same time he’s helping us fight the war on terrorism. On the other hand, India says that Pakistan isn’t doing enough to stop terrorists from causing trouble in Kashmir, and there are reports of a major shootout between Indian and Pakistani forces earlier today. In the meantime, we’re sending an envoy back over there to settle things down, but we don’t seem to be doing anything to persuade Musharraf to give in to democracy even a little bit. What a mess. ...

A friend sent along a link to this 8/16 article from Army Times that includes a lot more detail about the rigged Millenium Challenge 02 wargame that I mentioned earlier. I was a bit dubious about the article, being that it was from The Guardian … the Army Times seems a heck of a lot more reliable.

I found a pointer in Joe Conason’s journal to a story which claims that the retired Marine general who was commanding the faux opposing forces in a giant military exercise quit in disgust after his orders were overridden by military brass because he was doing too well. The exercise was designed to test new tactics advocated by Donald Rumsfeld, and according to the story, the opposing forces were manipulated to insure that the tests were a success. It probably goes without saying that the opposing forces were playing Iraq. Of course, the fact that we’re running rigged military exercises doesn’t mean that we’d lose a war in Iraq, there’s no doubt in my mind that General Van Riper is a superior military commander to those we’d face in Iraq, and furthermore, the real American soldiers who served as opposing forces are no doubt better trained and equipped than real Iraqi soldiers. That said, using boneheaded tactics would doubtless cost lives on both sides of any conflict. It seems to me that if someone really wanted to improve the overall operations of the military, they’d crack down on the various bogus tests and exercises that seem to be run all the time. It amazes me that anything actually works when we go into battle, given the fact that every time we test something, it seems to be rigged. ...