Another Asinine Acronym

Wired News reports on draft legislation of the "Vital Interdiction of Criminal Terrorist Organizations Act of 2003, or Victory Act."

Authored by Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), the Victory isn't just the latest asinine legislative acronym to come down the pike (the USA PATRIOT ACT, you'll recall, stands for Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act.) The bill, Wired News points out,

…includes significant portions of the so-called Patriot Act II, which faced broad opposition from conservatives and liberals alike and embarrassed the Justice Department when it was leaked to the press in February.

The Victory Act also seems to be an attempt to merge the war on terrorism and the war on drugs into a single campaign. It includes a raft of provisions increasing the government's ability to investigate, wiretap, prosecute and incarcerate money launderers, fugitives, "narco-terrorists" and nonviolent drug dealers. The bill also outlaws hawalas, the informal and documentless money transferring systems widely used in the Middle East, India and parts of Asia.
…

Critics say the bill is an opportunistic attempt to link the fight against drugs to the fight against terrorism by creating a new crime called "narco-terrorism." According to the draft, narco-terrorism is the crime of selling, distributing or manufacturing a controlled substance with the intent of helping a terrorist group.

Read the article here.

[Link via Free-Market.Net]

Comments

[dude]

Have wondered if they're going to try to get Patriot II though by calling it something else and/or passing it piecemeal. . . looks like that's so.

We need to come up with an irritating acronym for a bill which would ban naming bills with irritating acronyms.

What's Orrin "blowin' up you computer" Hatch smoking lately anyway?

[the Council for Realistic Acro]

This is just the latest attempt by politicians to extend their influence, and engage in still more mission creep for Ashcroft and Ridge.

Someone already speculated about the feds lumping the drug war in with the terror war...

http://davidm2.home.mindspring.com/03bh29.htm

Guess he wasn't too far off, was he?

Don't be surprised if, in the near future, the porn industry gets lumped under national security threats as well. Ashcroft's bible-thumping buddies will be comping at the bit to get sex declared a matter of homeland security.

[xray]

CRAP: good one.

[Rex Stetson]

Narco-terrorism?
It's still April fools day just once a year right?

This is unbelievable.

[Stickler]

That's assonance, not alliteration.

[Anonymous]

The Bush administration announced this month that it wants the Supreme Court's permission to strip prescription licenses from doctors who recommend medical marijuana ? an activity U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson called "no different from recommending heroin or LSD."

These fuckers are really starting to annoy me.

[xray]

ironic to name heroin and LSD since heroin is the base for lots of good painkillers and LSD was developed in a government lab.

[Kevin Carson]

So would selling crack cocaine in LA to finance the Contras count as "narcoterrorism"? I didn't think so.

Hatch is such an authoritarian pod person he's absolutely scary. It's no surprise that he's carrying water for Ass-crap.

[Jim]

They say the definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results. While I suppose that technically giving the government MORE power over our lives is still something different, I think if you believe in the intent of that statement then all our politicians are insane.

The cutesy acronym thing is a mixed blessing; I'm as irritated as the next guy but at least it puts what our congressmen and senators are doing into the minds of the average person, and may actually increase the likelyhood of public discourse on the subject. So next time you want to slip past a bill likely to enourously limit civil liberties, name it bill XZ78654k.203 or something similarly cryptic.

[joe]

Victoa or Deat.

[Warren]

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck FUCK! These assholes are really starting to scare the piss out of me. If they keep this up we'll be forced to come out in favor of legalizing terrorism.

[Gene Berkman]

The Howard Dean for Prez. campaign has an online petition against the Patriot Act. Go to http://www.deanforamerica.com/stopashcroft and you can sign it online.

[Xrlq]

"That's assonance, not alliteration."

Actually, it's both, but it's a better example of alliteration than assonance. Alliteration means the repetition of the same letter at the beginning of each word. Assonance involves the repetition of a the same vowel sound between syllables, usually stressed syllables.

The phrase "another asinine acronym" shows alliteration across the board, but it only has assonance as to the two words in which the initial "a" is the stressed syllable, making "another" the odd man out.

[Disgusted American]

VICTORY? So what exactly have they won? Not the war on drugs, as for the war on terror, there is currently no end in sight. So, where does this victory bullshit come into play? Sure its an acronym, but its more a slap in the face.

SHIT, Senator Hatch Is a Terrorist!

[Larry]

And they still have money laundering on the list of no-nos. Apparently no one has connected the dots.

>The drug dealers pay all their expenses, bribe everyone in sight, buy all the huge houses and fancy cars they want, and still have suitcases of cash left over.
>The only thing they can think of to do with the cash is invest it, even in the current economy.
>Therefore we invented the offense of money laundering to make investing inconvenient.
>But they couldn't make that much money unless they were selling all the controlled substances the black market will accommodate.
>>Therefore the necessity for money laundering prosecutions proves the rest of the war on drugs is a dismal failure.

[Hank]

All I can say is that I'm taking more Spanish classes this fall. Costa Rica here I come...

[Xrlq]

And An Astoundingly Asinine Attempt At Alliteration.

[Matt]

Wow. This could be the worst bill ever to be seriously considered in Congress. If you thought the war on drugs was bad before...

[amr]

I really hope they stop this acronym game. An unrelated bill, student loan relief for soldiers abroad (authored by MN Rep John Kline), was titled "Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students (HEROES) Act." Arrgh. I'll vote for the first candidate who promises to oppose all bills with stupid acronyms.

[Plutarck]

Narco-terrorism. Oh, that's nice.

You know what? From reading The Money Game, and now from taking that new set of filters and looking at politics...I almost don't want to hear any more about it anymore. It makes me just want to plug my ears everytime something comes on television just to be able to return to normal, happy cognitive functioning; otherwise I'll just be a damn constantly bothered wreck.

I've already begun turning channels just to avoid the input of things I have gone over, and over, and over, and over already, because I have developed the defense mechanism from "If you say it often enough..." of defeating arguments over and over again, through extended fantasy debates and arguments and formulations of opposition and tactics and perspectives, almost neurotically (stops at the end of the day, though, and I'm figuring out all sorts of neat tricks to bring them to an end earlier to keep something disturbing from ruining my whole day); it's damn handy to avoid indoctrination through commonality, but the stress created would be unbearable without an ability to just shut it off and go about my day.

I find Talk Radio and "the news" (Jesus Christ, please, somebody, anybody, find smarter, more informed people than this! convince them to stop talking when they so obviously have no idea what they are talking about!) particularly annoying. Worst of all, however, is Government Media Propaganda, and I don't mean the indirect type - the actual, bona fide, "we are spending YOUR fucking tax dollars directly on this ad, pal!" kind of shit. Damn how that stuff annoys me; I'll stop in the middle of anything to slam the station off, and now increasingly no matter what the message.

It all reminds me of the idea that the mentally ill are just people who've developed sub-optimal strategies to dealing with stresses, or whom have been simply subjected to too much stress for too long - not counting the outright physically deformed, of course. Without some mighty fine emotional and intellectual management, it's easy to see, at least for me, how you can drive yourself right down into an engulfing abyss of despair and doom and misery. But that doesn't sound like much fun, does it?

Oh, of course, to keep from becoming "close minded" I just stick my "dealing with shit I find absurd and rediculous...again" tasks into certain periods of time, and thus saving the rest of my life from the constant stress from living in a mad, mad, mad world.

That, and I'm trying out rational detachment on for size, along with Buddhist notions that life is a game (or much like it), and the goal is to avoid confusing your identity with your social roles and masks and the neccessities of life. No need to claim it as anything other than a mental trick to maintain health, and good to avoid taking it as The One True way; hmmm...you know, maybe that's a very big part of how it is that religion exists - as a kind of self-defense mechanism, a rational irrationality, where one is willing to accept something even if it's absurd or illogical, so long as it improves or maintains mental health (and thus outward physical functioning and maintenance). After all, horribly depression views of reality and the world as just as "likely" as good ones - just a whole lot less productive, so if you have to have one, you may as well pick a nice rosey sounding one and just get on with the rest of your life.

Viewing the world as a game, but not in the trivial sense of the word (game as in "Game Theory", not as in "Tiddly Winks" and "Barrel Full Of Monkeys"), I find to be a rather relieving way of looking at the world ("no one makes it out alive", and so forth). The insights that what people say typically has absolutely no neccessary relation to 'reality', and that humans are not rational in any classical sense of the word, and that people are typically utterly full of shit in all sorts of ways, I find to be quite relieving as well, once you come to grips with them.

Yes that's long, and I'm basically just talking to myself at the moment, so take it for what it cost me. 🙂

(A delightful Mexican saying, don't you think?)

[nm156]

All government acronyms are brought to you by the National Institute of Thesaurian Wackos and Intellectual Tinpots (NITWITs). Thank you.

[Oracle]

"I'm basically just talking to myself at the moment, so take it for what it cost me ..."

Precious TIME!

... and emotion ...

That's what it cost you, Plutarck.

However, the Law of Energy Conservation says that one thing cannot grow without shrinking something else.

[Acrobat]

What's a "Criminal Terrorist?"

(Perhaps some sort of tautologic redundancy?)

[kevrob]

I'm waiting for these Acts:

Ensuring Nationhood by Strategic Employment of Resources and Forces

Securing Unmutuals By Modernizing Information Technology

Community Order Per Enforcement of Law

and others, I'm sure.