everything is catching, yes, everything is catching...

So, now we find the United States telling a British court that the US can kidnap Britons if it wants to, which is not a very smart way of treating your allies. The point the Americans made was that this goes back to bounty hunters in the 1860s; that, in fact, is true. The point that was left out is that this practice was laid to rest for a good century, that it was revived (and defended) in the context of the drug war (...again...), and that it has typically applied to regions not in the effective control of any government with which one could negotiate. However, the taking it to this level - acting in direct violation of treaty against a citizen of a sovereign nation (an ally, even!) - because you don't like how long the extradition process is taking exemplifies the perversion of American government: anything which stands in the way of absolute power must be ignored, or, if that's impossible, overridden. (Link courtesy technoshaman here, who got it from mdlbear.) ETA: As noted in comments, Britons kidnapping American sailors for impression into British naval service was one of the key provocations leading to the War of 1812. It appears reasonable to assert that this would be an Act of War.

Meanwhile, in its ever-zealous pursuit of the surveillance state, back in 2004, the Bush Administration issued Homeland Security Presidential Directive 12, requiring all Federal employees and contractors to either sign forms permitting unlimited government investigation or be fired; it's a complete wavier of any shred of privacy or right to privacy protections. 28 NASA JPL scientists have refused in a bloc and have missed deadline, so are waiting to be fired; a legal battle is ongoing.

Also, the House just voted 405-6 to establish the "Violent Radicalization and Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Commission" (under HR 1955) which will investigate Americans and the Internet. The bill will also establish a Homeland Security Centre of Excellence for the Prevention Of etc. etc. etc.. Normally this wouldn't really bother me except as a waste of money - some middlin'-cost junketism more than anything else - but these times aren't normal, and there is no power or act that cannot be transformed into a horror and betrayal of fundamental principles, so in that context, it looks like the new House Un-American Activites Committee. But maybe it'll just be another junket.

For a moment of what should be comic relief but sadly isn't, here's Pat Robertson saying that God is using Interstate Highway 35 to purge America of "abortion clinics, gay bars, strip joints, and porn shops" through a series of "purity sieges." Video at the link. And another one of the same sort: Mike Huckabee talks to God on his cell phone, who tells him to "take care of... marriage," which is code for h8in' on the queers in his circles, along with several other agenda items. This was at the 2004 Republican Governors Association Dinner and he got a big round of applause. It was meant in fun - kinda. The part about actually talking to Jehovah on the cellphone is in fun, the policies and God's Backing (tm) and talking to Mr. Bush aren't. YouTube yanked the original video (unfortunately) linked to in this limited commentary, but fortunately, YouTube membership is kind of quick, so there's another copy here - at least, for the moment.

Back on the complacency of the press, we have Shrillblog, which elfs pointed out a couple of posts ago. It doesn't update as often as I'd like but it's got some amusement value going for it. They aren't fond of it either.

And finally, a few weeks ago, when I was talking about who was "next" to be kicked out of the GBLT population, I was guessing it was probably the Bs, if anybody; one of Sullivan's readers is all about the bi-males-are-really-just-gays-not-dealing-yet memeage, which, I'm told, is a very old meme going back to the 1980s. Sullivan is casually supportive, or so I get the impression. So maybe they'll try to wedge the bi boys out next. Oh, and the reader's not that fond of the dykes either. Not really a representative sample - tho' the Human Rights Campain poll they're talking about formally ditched the Ts in the terminology, so I guess that's official.

SUP, a Russian company, buys Livejournal

SUP, a Russian company owned by a former Yeltsin crony, has bought Livejournal. No, really. No, REALLY. ETA: NO. REALLY. THIS REALLY HAPPENED. THIS IS NOT IRONY OR PARODY. Here're a selected bunch of initial reactions pulled mostly out of the English-language announcement post on news:



Some English-language Russian argument over the possible badness of this here, particularly "I am a Russian user, luckily residing in the US. I have over a thousand friends, most of them in Russia. There is a sheer panic in the Russian LiveJournal community. People are contemplating mass exodus. This used to be one of the last free speech platforms for the Russians. Now the halcyon days are definitely over." (I don't know about the entire userbase, but his friendslist is certainly worried, and several are setting up accounts on places like GreatestJournal.)

The first person here is all Yay! Russia! and the respondent is, "Yeah, but for my two cents, Putin still sucks."

More Russian expatriate reaction in English here.

ladylightning asks about new Russian 'hate speech' laws are going to find their way down the chain.

as_p laughs (Xexe) and says in English DON'T PANIC, most of the rest of the Russian is a joke about a "big red button" that I don't understand.

georgedollie reports that a lot of Russian users were fleeing once SUP started managing LJ in Russia a year or so ago. A respondand links to here, here, and the Washington Post. Keep in mind that in Russia, Livejournal is not a second-tier player; that line about "blogosphere" in Russian being a shortened form of the Russian version of the word "Livejournal;" the Russian governmental oligarchy has a clear interest in taking control over the Russian internet opinion space. So.

dkmnow has a lot of links about SUP and the like here.

turkeyphant points to a critical Wired article about SUP. That's here. There are responses from one Russian LJ user in this chain.

marta is going around telling everyone again that "LiveJournal, Inc. is an American company based in California and is subject to California and US law. The servers will stay in San Francisco and the privacy policies won't change."

8irt provides convenient transliterations for LOL, OMG, and other important net words.

A couple of Russian-language speakers are going on here about this, and are kind of amused at all the kerfluffle to some degree but oxyd does note that the political community НБП was suspended shortly before the election. My checking shows that an NBP community (same thing, in Roman) has been deleted and purged, but the community ru_nbp still exists, and is specifically political - lots of discussion of election monitoring and charges of fraud. (I think it's a different community but I don't know.) Apparently there have been various efforts to throw off community moderators and such. And reportedly a lot of people have been (are?) leaving now that SUP owns Livejournal, Inc. outright.

So. Yeah. I recommend LJ Archive as a backup utility, it's easy and fast. Even if you don't do anything, or have to do anything, it's nice to have.

ETA: The Russian LJ News press release on sup_ru is pretty similar, tho' there, you have people tying the timing of unveiling of the "flag" button with the elections instead of, um, I lose track of what.

ETA3: penguin_yuh tells me that he doesn't see why everybody is running around spazzing and says that everything will be fine.