🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1993Jan27.094642.1@tango.cchs.su.oz.au>, brennan@tango.cchs.su.oz.au (Luke Brennan) writes:
|> [...]
|> 	I can get DES sources from anywhere on the planet, yet I can't
|> 	re-export them once they land in USA??
|> 	What about all the PUBLISHED versions that have come from the
|> 	USA itself?
|> 	oooh..  right.. NOW it's clear..  U.S.A.  ...  right.. uh huh..

Our laws are made by congressmen who usually have no technical
qualifications.  Our laws are enforced by lawyers and/or police
who usually have no logical thought patterns at all (as if the
congress ever does).  So, if a law says "thou shalt not export 
such-and-such technology", these bozos will refuse to let you 
ship it out - even back to its original source!

Consider the infamous case of the Soviet reactor.  The Soviet Union
(when it still existed) sent a nuclear power source of the kind they
use in their deep-space probes to a technology exchange conference
as an exhibit.  It was a *real* reactor, but without the nuclear
material.  Well, the event ended and the Soviets wanted to ship the
thing back home.  Our laws wouldn't let them do so.  It is illegal
to ship such devices out of the U.S. - no matter *where* they came
from.  I never did hear how that came out.

In a world which contains Saddam Hussein and Mohamar Quadifi these
laws make a certain amount of sense.  It is their application that
often seems completely irrational.

-- 
J. Giles