Slashdot Mirror

How about the case of Nobel Prize winners arrested for protesting Bush's Iraq war policy? http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines03/0326-10.htm

Or how about Cindy Sheehan being arrested being arrested for her protests against Bush? http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0926-12.ht m

Then there was Bill Neel, only one of many many examples:

"When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."

The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0104-04.ht m

Then there's three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and thrown out of the President Bush rally at the Jackson County Fairgrounds Thursday night, after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1015-06.ht m

There have been too many documented cases of harrassment of people criticizing Emperor Bush for you to laugh it off, so, take a hike, Young Republican Kool-Aid drinker.

How about the case of Nobel Prize winners arrested for protesting Bush's Iraq war policy? http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines03/0326-10.htm

Or how about Cindy Sheehan being arrested being arrested for her protests against Bush? http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0926-12.ht m

Then there was Bill Neel, only one of many many examples:

"When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."

The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0104-04.ht m

Then there's three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and thrown out of the President Bush rally at the Jackson County Fairgrounds Thursday night, after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1015-06.ht m

There have been too many documented cases of harrassment of people criticizing Emperor Bush for you to laugh it off, so, take a hike, Young Republican Kool-Aid drinker.

How about the case of Nobel Prize winners arrested for protesting Bush's Iraq war policy? http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/headlines03/0326-10.htm

Or how about Cindy Sheehan being arrested being arrested for her protests against Bush? http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0926-12.ht m

Then there was Bill Neel, only one of many many examples:

"When Bush went to the Pittsburgh area on Labor Day 2002, 65-year-old retired steel worker Bill Neel was there to greet him with a sign proclaiming, "The Bush family must surely love the poor, they made so many of us."

The local police, at the Secret Service's behest, set up a "designated free-speech zone" on a baseball field surrounded by a chain-link fence a third of a mile from the location of Bush's speech.

The police cleared the path of the motorcade of all critical signs, but folks with pro-Bush signs were permitted to line the president's path. Neel refused to go to the designated area and was arrested for disorderly conduct; the police also confiscated his sign.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0104-04.ht m

Then there's three Medford school teachers were threatened with arrest and thrown out of the President Bush rally at the Jackson County Fairgrounds Thursday night, after they showed up wearing T-shirts with the slogan "Protect our civil liberties."

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1015-06.ht m

There have been too many documented cases of harrassment of people criticizing Emperor Bush for you to laugh it off, so, take a hike, Young Republican Kool-Aid drinker.

Given the notorious unreliablity of our voting process (broken voting machines, lost ballots boxes, etc) coupled with complete unaccountability (no proof of how my vote was registered, no recipt) why would I think my vote was ever counted in the first place? We refused UN oversight of our elections and you still expect me to believe in the voting process as a way to fix our broken system?
From: http://www.commondreams.org/news2004/0706-09.htm "We the undersigned Members of Congress hereby request the Electoral Assistance Division of the United Nations Department of Political Affairs to send election observers to monitor the presidential election in the United States scheduled for November 2, 2004. We are deeply concerned that the right of U.S. citizens to vote in free and fair elections is again in jeopardy"
Sorry, We haven't been a Democracy for quite some time.

The U.S. withdrew the inspectors dumbass. And then even Bush himself admits there were no WMDs, and that the war was against international law, something former weapons inspectors like Scott Ritter and Hans Blix were desperately trying to get the word out about before the war even started. See for example:

http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/w eapindex.htm
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0305-01.ht m

But of course the MSM wouldn't give either of them a platform to speak, there was too much money to made by Cheney's oil buddies to allow for any critical coverage of Bush's plans for aggression against Iraq in the run up to the war. ALL the MSM cheered the war from NPR to Fox and repeated Chalabi and Curveball's lies verbatim, do you remember? I do.

One must wonder what will grow out of Iraq in the next 20 years given the massive amounts of Depleted Uranium weaponry the US has littered the place with.

In some states, part of the punishment for committing a felony offense is the revocation of civic right to vote. That's part of the punishment. Perhaps your co-worker is rehabilitated, but their punishment continues.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A978 5-2004Aug17.html

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0226-05.htm

Essentially (yes, I did not RTFA) we are talking about injecting nano-particles into the frying oil to make it last longer?

Even though some nano-materials could be highly dangerous to human health? In other words, we may end up with highly dangerous cancer-causing products used in kitchens? To fry greasy stuff that we know are bad for our health anyway? Talk about a double whammy: if your heart attack does not kill you, cancer from nano-particles will. And do you want fries with that?

Then again, this is business as usual in the USA, so I guess it will probably be used soon.

> The cool thing about nukes is, all of the evidence to its origin is obliterated in the blast.

Why does factually wrong get marked as interesting?
Three other posters have pointed out that parent is wrong.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0319-04.ht m
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/02/politics/02nuke. html?ex=1296536400&en=341f6ecfda09ee14&ei=5090&par tner=rssuserland&emc=rss

Too late now. The article is stale and in the future it will only be read at +4 and the parent will seem accurate to those who don't know any better...

I carefully read Osama's list of justifications for attacking America, and economic exploitation was not among them. His principal complaints were American military and political intervention in the Middle East--especially troops in Saudi Arabia, sanctions in Iraq, and occupation in Palestine.

From an interview with OBL:

Rather, it already, by the grace of God, exists. As for oil, it is a commodity that will be subject to the price of the market according to supply and demand. We believe that the current prices are not realistic due to the Saudi regime playing the role of a US agent and the pressures exercised by the US on the Saudi regime to increase production and flooding the market that caused a sharp decrease in oil prices.

I should add OBL has an economics degree.

Although wealth disparity has been exacerbated within this country, wages in some 3rd-world countries (China for example) have converged somewhat with 1st-world wages, which tends to reduce the disparity

WaPo's version the AP article
Freely accessible archive of above

And I'm not suggesting that the future is bright. I have no idea what the future will bring. Unlike the idiotic devotees of Marxism, I have no preposterous pretenses about laws of historical development which predict everything that will happen. There are no laws of history which we can discern that govern all of historical development. As an example, most of the 20th century was marked with crises and wars that were surprises to almost everyone and that cannot have been predicted by any theory that was then available.

Actually, I (and other historians and politicians) find it depressingly easily to predict historical development from the past. The most notorious failures are people who insisted "history was over" in one way or the other, and that a given situation cannot possible be compared to other things: a view called exceptionalism. But human drives and emotions have remained unchanged for thousands of years. One can make some good predictions about given situations, and more importantly, history tells us what can work. (P.S., just about every major war in the 20th century was predicted -- ask Winston Churchil about WW2).

If you notice, in my previous posts, I do believe in free markets. Throughout history, free markets seem to have the least negatives (still negatives, but the lesser of all evils). More importantly, the freedom of individuals to do what they will seem to improve society & prosperity. It's only when one or more individuals decide to curtail other individuals' freedoms that problems arise. Whether they be the robber barons of old or governments of today. And the current version of globalization is, IMHO, a hideous amalgamation of the two. True free trade benefits everyone; social mobility benefits everyone, and seems to result in more peaceful societies. Current globalism is about corporations using governments to co-erce populations into channeling money & productivity to themselves.

Nevertheless, globalization presents a serious and realistic hope that many people in the world will enjoy a standard of living somewhat above the crushing poverty and desparation that had been the norm for almost everyone until recently. As such I find it amazing that so many people who claim sympathy with the poor would oppose globalization so vociferously. In my opinion, we have an ethical obligation not just to voice sympathy with the poor but to take steps which we have reason to believe could actually ameliorate their plight. As such we have an ethical obligation to be rational and effective, not just sympathetic

"The Health Costs of Wealth Inequality
by John Robbins

Not that long ago in this country, you could raise a family on a single paycheck. If you were working, you didn't have to worry about an unexpected medical bill making you homeless. If you were disabled, your basic needs were taken care of, and if you were elderly, you could count on benefits that made your final years restful and safe.

But real wages have been declining since the 1970s, and benefits have been deteriorating. Every year, more working people are losing their pensions and their health insurance.

Meanwhile, our wealth distribution has been becoming increasingly disparate. Today, many corporate executives earn more money in a couple of hours than the average factory worker makes in a year. The wealthiest 1 percent of America's population owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent combined. And the minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, has fallen by 37 percent since 1968, and become the lowest of any industrialized nation.

What impact is this having on the health of our people?

With 5 percent of the world's population, the United States accounts for nearly 50 percent of the world's healthcare spending, yet ranks only 26th in life expectancy, and 28th in infant mortality. Is it a coincidence that not a single one of the 25 countries that have longer life expectancies than the United States, nor a single one of the 27 countries that have better infant mortality rates, has as wide a wealth gap between its richest and poorest citizens?"

http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1001-29.htm

Our middle class is being gutted so our jobs can be replaced by wages so low in the third world that people have to live in bunk houses. I was arguing with an asshole up thread who said those bunk houses were a good thing. You you know what I say, I say screw that, screw bringing all people BOTH here and in the third world down to a subsistence level of living so .01% of the population can live in obscene opulence. And if you can continue to justify such obscenities don't be surprised if the black block trashes your yuppie downtown or people put their foot down in the third world and say enough imperialism and exploitation and elect more Chvezs. You can't fuck people forever and expect no reaction, sooner or later the looting of the world will garner a reaction and you are smug about your globalist looting expect it to be an ugly one.

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex

20 Amazing Facts About Voting In The USA
by Angry Girl of Nightweed.com

Did you know....

1. 80% of all votes in America are counted by only two companies: Diebold and ES&S. http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diebold

2. There is no federal agency with regulatory authority or oversight of the U.S. voting machine industry. http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0916-04.htm http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

3. The vice-president of Diebold and the president of ES&S are brothers. http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/private_comp any.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

4. The chairman and CEO of Diebold is a major Bush campaign organizer and donor who wrote in 2003 that he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year." http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/07/28/sunday/m ain632436.shtml http://www.wishtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=1647886

5. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel used to be chairman of ES&S. He became Senator based on votes counted by ES&S machines. http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2004 /03/03_200.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/031004Fitraki s/031004fitrakis.html

6. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel, long-connected with the Bush family, was recently caught lying about his ownership of ES&S by the Senate Ethics Committee. http://www.blackboxvoting.com/modules.php?name=New s&file=article&sid=26 http://www.hillnews.com/news/012903/hagel.aspx http://www.onlisareinsradar.com/archives/000896.ph p

7. Senator Chuck Hagel was on a short list of George W. Bush's vice-presidential candidates. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_28/b3689130.ht m http://theindependent.com/stories/052700/new_hagel 27.html

8. ES&S is the largest voting machine manufacturer in the U.S. and counts almost 60% of all U.S. votes. http://www.essvote.com/HTML/about/about.html http://www.onlinejournal.com/evoting/042804Landes/ 042804landes.html

9. Diebold's new touch screen voting machines have no paper trail of any votes. In other words, there is no way to verify that the data coming out of the machine is the same as what was legitimately put in by voters. http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0225-05.htm http://www.itworld.com/Tech/2987/041020evotestates /pfindex

Article in NY Times from 2004: US Is Losing Its Dominance in the Sciences , or directly from NY Times. Also Tracking Achivement

While one cannot be certain what exactly will happen, history has shown us that people usually react fairly strongly to anything that gets in the way of their freedom. And Americans have certainly proven this point.

When exactly in the last years?

There is a difference between rumours of elections being rigged versus actual evidence.

I'd say the evidence is there just nobody seems interested in picking it up. Might be because some KGB^H^H^H^H^H^H^H Federal institutions are actively persecuting people who have differing opinions?

Remember: Elections are not a sign of democracy. Hitler was democratically elected (besides, he won most of his wars and took personal responsibility after obviously loosing the last one). They are necessary, but they are not enough.

But the only way for the government to know if I'm calling a terrorist, or someone they suspect of being a terrorist, is to tap my line.

Thus, my rights ARE being violated because they're not getting a warrant to find out if I'm calling someone they should know about.

If you're not and they try something like that, you can sue the living crap out of the people that are doing it, and you'll have lawyers out the door to back you up. And you'll win.

No you won't because the government will say that they were doing so in the interest of national security. Once those magical words come out it is extremely unlikely that any judge will penalize the government for vacuuming your calls.

Yes, a judge recently ruled that the wiretapping, as a whole, is illegal but in this case you're talking about one person. Witness the Canadian citizen who was arrested on U.S. soil because the RCMP claimed he had met with terrorists and was sent to Syria to be tortured.

The Justice Department is trying to claim "state secrets privilege" in his case against them.

So, how far do you think you'd get if you found out your phone was being tapped?

I've asked before and continue to do so now - in what way was Microsoft's behvior detrimental to the public?

The question that you should be asking is "in what ways has and is Microsoft's behaviour detrimental to society".

The answer to this question is long and complicated, which is one of the reasons for why so many people disregard it and instead give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt.

I'm pointing you towards some other sources because I'm so tired of repeatedly answering this question:

Common criticisms of Microsoft
Halloween Documents
Dissecting Microsoft
Newly Released Documents Shed Light on Microsoft Tactics
Paul Allen's Microsoft Experience

These are just the tip of the iceberg.

I'm not worried about global warming, still a bit nervous about global cooling.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0130-11.htm

I work with complex scripts well enough to know that setting one cascade off, often causes a cascade in another process that's much more responsive to change.

I would think this will open up lots of new trade opportunities between Russia and North America. I don't know what that could mean, but it is certainly interesting. What kind of manufacturing prowess does Russia have that has been heretofore underutilized because they could not as efficiently get goods to North American ports? Or is this all a bunch of hooey?

(I thought of this because I remember reading this article about Pat Broe, which may or may not have been slashdotted, but it is about an investor in the Canadian port of Churchill, Manitoba, which could well profit from an opened northern passage.)

By the way, I live in Manhattan, and I think it's about time to move...to some city somewhere that's 20 or 30 miles inland.

Seriously? It's difficult to take things seriously when this person is quoted as a source.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0217-05.htm

"Walt Disney's characters are sinister because they encourage us, like those marchers, to promote the hegemony of the corporations even when we have no intention of doing so. He captured a deep stream of human consciousness, branded it and, when we were too young to understand the implications, sold it back to us. Comcast's hostile takeover bid suggests that the power of his company to seize our imaginations is declining. A giant media corporation may be about to become even bigger, but if the attack means that Disney is losing its ability to shape the minds of the world's children, this is something we should celebrate."

The man is a crazy and deranged extremist.

You must be blissfully unaware of the past 5-6 years of administration appointees. I almost envy you. Nearly ALL appointees over any sort of regulatory watchdog, scientific fact-finding, or pork-laden government spending bureau of the government has been an industry lobbyist of some sort who is assured to make sure that said industry (which donates lots of money to the Republicans) will make out like a bandit (literally) on the taxpayer's dime or taint and all evidence that gets in the way of said industry's profits.

Read more here:
Bush Has Appointed Over 100 Lobbyists as 'Regulators'
WhiteHouseForSale.org | Contributors and Paybacks Articles
Evidence that this has been a pattern of behavior as far back as when he was governor.
Some info on two of the officials reviewing the Dubai Ports World deal
An even longer list of crony appointees

The Bush administration is one of the more shameful examples of cronyism in modern US history. The term "conflict of interest" doesn't begin to cover it. Then, when you can't find a person with experience as an industry shill, you can always go to political advocates with no experience in the field (but solid Bush support):

Michael Brown's two political appointees deputees in FEMA
A petition for Bush to make political appointments with a list of 6 good examples
The Hertiage Foundation even endorsed making political appointees over experienced civil servants in 2001! ...No really, 7 ridiculous arguments straight from the horse's mouth! (How's FEMA workin' out there, HF?)
Why, just look how many Heritage Foundation flacks are now in the administration.

Any wonder why the DHS hasn't done hardly anything useful, why FEMA had someone with no emergency relief experience installed as it's head, why scientists are abandoning NASA, the EPA, the CDC, etc. in droves, and why hundreds of IRS agents that audit capital gains and estate taxes have been downsized? It's government with the wheels taken off -- oriented explicitly to do nothing but enrich special interests by people who have publicly stated that that's all they believe the government exists to do in the first place.

What, you didn't think they meant that they'd try to STOP it when they said that, did you? Yeah, I was fooled too, but not anymore. It's time we get people back in power who believe that the government is meant to serve the people. People who believe that it's part of the solution and not part of the problem. Otherwise, as we've seen, the temptation to just exploit "the problem" is just too much.

You can whinge about sources if you want, I dont give a crap, most murdoch/GE/etc owned news companies lie through their teeth, so the only place you CAN go for some of this news is "less reputable" sites.... (eg look up "outfoxed" on google video, a doco by ex fox news reporters, describing how dodgy the station ewnt after murdoch took over)

where the fuck is our War on Candy Bars and Whoppers, huh?

It's already here.

Jeez, just use google and search for "diebold ohio". If our free and democratic society can't have an open election process, then we'll have neither. Those high priced calculators are owned by a group of people openly committed to another group of people. No one owns the pencil and paper.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.ht m [commondreams.org]

http://rawstory.rawprint.com/105/blackwell_campaig n_letter2_105.php [rawprint.com]

They Already used them in my city "we fired non-lethal munitions, said Danielle Ashford, an officer with the Oakland Police Department, "There were a few agitators in the crowd. The majority of them were peaceful."

They Already used them in my city "we fired non-lethal munitions, said Danielle Ashford, an officer with the Oakland Police Department, "There were a few agitators in the crowd. The majority of them were peaceful."

It painted a pretty good argument FOR GM food... to feed the millions who are otherwise dying because it's hard to get crops to grow in their parts of the world.

The starvation in the world is not because we don't have enough food, it is because the food can't get to the right places. This is because of wars and corrupt third world governments, so GM will do nothing to help this.

What makes me at least wary, is actions like US companies getting the patent to basmati rice, even though this has been grown in India for centuries. Or stuff like genes being inserted so that the crops grown are infertile, turning farmers from an "open source" model, into one where they have to keep subscribing every year to get new seeds.

Is this true, or have Penn & Teller hoodwinked me?

Yes, they have. Their whole show is based on triumphantly knocking down strawman arguments and claiming that this is scientific investigation or rationality. Standard far right wing tactics. Turn off the TV and do some reading instead.

Brett Bursey
Police dogs loosed on recruitment protestors
Other protestors arrested
Veteran arrested on Veteran's day for reading an editorial out loud
Not arrested, just confined behind barbed wire
Military treating Quakers like terrorists
Grandmother arrested over "Investigate Florida Votergate" sign

I can see a medical problem causing problems with credit in the USA as the USA lacks a national medical care program

• Don't get sick

Actually it's a little more than 5%. 50% of all personal bankruptcies in the U.S. ar caused by medical expences. Most of these people actually had medical insurance at the time too.

Here's some links:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6895896/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0202-08.ht m
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?ne wsid=19515

more like diebold has shares in bush.

I regret to inform you that you have scored only two boxes in global warming skeptic bingo. They are, however, connected -- if you merely claim that 17,000 scientists signed a petition claiming that global warming is a lie, and that urban heat islands are contaminating the surface record, then I may complete my column and possibly win valuable prizes.

Also, what's this about "zeal and fervor?" I'm posting to slashdot, for Christ's sake. I'm assuming from your post that you don't believe any of this book larnin' about the planet getting warmer, so just look at it from my point of view: I believe that the planet is being pushed (essentially irreversibly) across a climatological barrier the far side of which contains massive flooding of costal cities, crop failure, drought, hurricanes, massive migration of starving or displaced people, war, and certainly the end of the comfortable first-world standard of living I (in the US) have become accustomed to.

What am I doing about it? I'm typing words into a little computer box, communicating with anonymous people who are picking their noses in basements thousands of miles from here and will never meet me or care what I have to say. That's basically my strategy.

And you're accusing me of too much zeal and fervor? Huh. That honestly hadn't crossed my mind.

Free speech

A 1-minute search on Google reveals this.

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0813-01.ht m

The NY Times a few weeks ago had this story about resuming the practice of using prisoners as test subjects for drug research. The implicit and flawed moral reasoning draws from a notion of reduced rights, and the bogus suggestion that somehow the prisoners that agree to be tested would later be beneficiaries of the research. I disagree with these premises on two counts. First, punishment was meted at out sentencing, adding later punishment gussied up in the name of research is just that: additive. Pronounce the sentence once, and only once. Indeed, given that prison populations show a racial bias the slippery slope is overwhelmingly repugnant. Second, since when does anyone close at hand benefit when the balance of power is clearly favorable to one side? Absolute bullshit. This is not much different from corporations going into third world countries and paying a pittance for whatever resource is desired with the in time trickle down promise.

Will these same extremists start lining up at prisons to protest minimally tested medications foisted on prisoners? And, no, do not think that anyone in that situation really would be given free will to say no. Will they be able to see past their own hate and acknowledge that those same prisoners are human and according to their own reasoning of equal status to animals in medical research? I doubt it. They'll be too busy dreaming up their next act, because the black/white mentality goes quite far in its ability to rationalize and reinforce selective reasoning, in an of itself an axiomatic characterization of all extremist ideologies.

That's a good question. A company that produces faulty machines with all sorts of blunders and glitches in the past and present - since this is a free market surely market pressure should eradicate this company. Yet it seems the government that should look into such irregularities (especially since free market is (supposed to be) one of the pillars of the GOP) apparently has no interest in doing so.. Could it be because Diebold not only supported the Bush campaign financially, but not only had the ability, but also the intention to to deliver the victory to their crony buddies? - Noo, that would be too outlandish and could never happen; the vigilant public would easily find out about it.

The Romans had a saying: Bis peccare in bello non licet. To blunder twice is not allowed in war. Thank god big business isn't warfare or after all these blunders heads would be a'rollin (and piling up).

That's a good question. A company that produces faulty machines with all sorts of blunders and glitches in the past and present - since this is a free market surely market pressure should eradicate this company. Yet it seems the government that should look into such irregularities (especially since free market is (supposed to be) one of the pillars of the GOP) apparently has no interest in doing so.. Could it be because Diebold not only supported the Bush campaign financially, but not only had the ability, but also the intention to to deliver the victory to their crony buddies? - Noo, that would be too outlandish and could never happen; the vigilant public would easily find out about it.

The Romans had a saying: Bis peccare in bello non licet. To blunder twice is not allowed in war. Thank god big business isn't warfare or after all these blunders heads would be a'rollin (and piling up).

Let us be frank here. Western companies -- European, American, and (to a lesser extent) Japanese companies -- do treat their workers much better than Chinese companies.

Foxconn is a Chinese company headquartered in Taiwan. Most Chinese just do not care about the principles of the EICC. In this very forum (Slashdot), you see a Chinese condemning the 3rd-party who raised the matter (of the abuse) to Apple management.

Notice the total lack of Taiwanese system houses (like Acer) on the list of companies committed to the EICC. Taiwanese companies are far more likely to manufacture their products in China. Notice the total indifference (by Chinese from Taiwan) to worker abuse in China. When was the last time that you read a story about how Taiwanese companies corrected an incident of worker abuse? The Chinese (in Taiwan and elsewhere) just do not care. Hence, Taiwanese companies continue to condone -- and even -- commit worker abuse.

Check out a damning report by the "San Francisco Chronicle". It reported that Taiwanese companies subject their slaves to physical abuse if they do not meet their quota.

Vote rigging?

Fortunately, every time I've read about dead people, convicted felons or illegal immigrants voting

Try watching The News Hour on PBS. Interesting, unbiased, fluff-free. Follow up

That's why Bush appointed Patricia Harrison, one of his politik propagandists and former GOP Chair, to be Chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. She has been directly involved in precisely the "fake news" we are discussing: "[A]s a senior department official, Patricia Harrison, told Congress last year, the Bush administration has come to regard such 'good news' segments as 'powerful strategic tools' for influencing public opinion." http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.c gi/37/9592

See also "Destroying PBS": http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0617-27.htm

On my local public radio I have heard gems like, "Is it possible for an atheist to have a morality?" When they ran "Socrates, the Soldiering Years" interviewing a military academy historian while Bush was beating the Iraq war drums, I said, "You've _GOT_ to be kidding!" And turned the dial. Forever. It is wishful thinking to believe there is U.S. broadcast media untouched by the rising fascism. Question _everything_ your TV and radio tell you.

If you are saying that non violent tactics such as monkey wrenching, sabotage, blockaids, and propaganda as strictly non violent tactics constitute war such that the state is justified in using violence against these tactics I'd say you are justifying a first use of violence against non violent people which is truly abhorrent. By that logic turning the fire hoses on Dr. King was perfectly justified as he was somehow "at war" with the state by using "subterfuge and propaganda" to change fundamentally racist government policies in the south such as segregated lunch counters, being made to ride on the back of the bus, segregated schools, and poll taxes and literacy tests and other sham tactics to disenfranchise African Americans. So no I don't think someone who is using non violent tactics is "at war" (slippery term) with society I don't accept your fundamental premise in the argument.

And yes I do know of what I speak for I have been arrested for blockading a logging road in Northern California. It's definitely the cops who used violence in this case, they hurt my wrist when they put the cuffs on, and very severely injured my friends shoulder. Note this is the same Humboldt county Sheriffs office that lost a court case for swabbing pepper spray directly in activists eyes, see:

http://www.mindfully.org/Heritage/2005/Pepper-Spra y-Eight29apr05.htm

If you want to say the cops who use violence against non violent demonstrators are "at war" with the activist community then I might be in agreement with you.

See also: http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0407-06.ht m

First off, as we're fighting this "war," like some of our other supposed "Wars" the things that we are losing the most are our freedoms. You say that that is a small sacrafice to pay for the comfort and security that our esteemed leaders are providing. Nevermind the fact that as the war continues and we keep killing people in the Middle East, we also are inflating the ranks of the Terrorists http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/1015-04.ht m.

My real issue lies in the fact that we are losing our freedoms to stay alive. Yet our claim to fame is in the American Revolution, where our forefathers gave up their lives for the freedoms that we enjoy. What has happened to our society in those 200 years? Granted this is a minor inconvenience but as the terrorists continue to become more creative, how many more rights will be sacraficed?

Where and when will the sacraficing of rights and freedoms stop? As both this war and the war on drugs continue (which both will be endless), the government seems to want to intrude upon the private lives of it's citizens in order to make them safer. You put that much power into an organization and eventually it will fall to the cliche "Absolute power currupts absolutely." As much as we need to protect our lives, we also need to protect our rights. It's our heritage paid for with blood and tears. Why do we give up on them so easily?

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court challenge over the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified bidder, Sequoia Voting Systems.

In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider donating or raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state GOP will use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that legislative Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.

They urged Blackwell to remove Diebold from the field of voting-machine companies eligible to sell to Ohio counties.

This is the second such request in as many months. State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, asked Blackwell in July to disqualify Diebold after security concerns arose over its equipment.

"Ordinary Ohioans may infer that Blackwell's office is looking past Diebold's security issues because its CEO is seeking $10,000 donations for Blackwell's party - donations that could be made with statewide elected officials right there in the same room," said Senate Democratic Leader Greg DiDonato.

Diebold spokeswoman Michelle Griggy said O'Dell - who was unavailable to comment personally - has held fund-raisers in his home for many causes, including the Columbus Zoo, Op era Columbus, Catholic Social Services and Ohio State University.

Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk said the party approached O'Dell about hosting the event at his home, the historic Cotswold Manor, and not the other way around. Mauk said that under federal campaign finance rules, the party cannot use any money from its federal account for state- level candidates.

"To think that Diebold is somehow tainted because they have a couple folks on their board who support the president is just unfair," Mauk said.

Griggy said in an e-mail statement that Diebold could not comment on the political contributions of individual company employees.

Blackwell said Diebold is not the only company with political connections - noting that lobbyists for voting-machine makers read like a who's who of Columbus' powerful and politically connected.

"Let me put it to you this way: If there was one person uniquely involved in the political process, that might be troubling," he said. "But there's no one that hasn't used every legitimate avenue and bit of leverage that they could legally use to get their product looked at. Believe me, if there is a political lever to be pulled, all of them have pulled it."

Blackwell said he stands by the process used for selecting voting machine vendors as fair, thorough and impartial.

As of yesterday, however, that determination lay with Ohio Court of Claims Judge Fred Shoemaker.

He heard closing argume

COLUMBUS - The head of a company vying to sell voting machines in Ohio told Republicans in a recent fund-raising letter that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year."

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell "upgraded" electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

Blackwell's announcement is still in limbo because of a court challenge over the fairness of the selection process by a disqualified bidder, Sequoia Voting Systems.

In his invitation letter, O'Dell asked guests to consider donating or raising up to $10,000 each for the federal account that the state GOP will use to help Bush and other federal candidates - money that legislative Democratic leaders charged could come back to benefit Blackwell.

They urged Blackwell to remove Diebold from the field of voting-machine companies eligible to sell to Ohio counties.

This is the second such request in as many months. State Sen. Jeff Jacobson, a Dayton-area Republican, asked Blackwell in July to disqualify Diebold after security concerns arose over its equipment.

"Ordinary Ohioans may infer that Blackwell's office is looking past Diebold's security issues because its CEO is seeking $10,000 donations for Blackwell's party - donations that could be made with statewide elected officials right there in the same room," said Senate Democratic Leader Greg DiDonato.

Diebold spokeswoman Michelle Griggy said O'Dell - who was unavailable to comment personally - has held fund-raisers in his home for many causes, including the Columbus Zoo, Op era Columbus, Catholic Social Services and Ohio State University.

Ohio GOP spokesman Jason Mauk said the party approached O'Dell about hosting the event at his home, the historic Cotswold Manor, and not the other way around. Mauk said that under federal campaign finance rules, the party cannot use any money from its federal account for state- level candidates.

"To think that Diebold is somehow tainted because they have a couple folks on their board who support the president is just unfair," Mauk said.

Griggy said in an e-mail statement that Diebold could not comment on the political contributions of individual company employees.

Blackwell said Diebold is not the only company with political connections - noting that lobbyists for voting-machine makers read like a who's who of Columbus' powerful and politically connected.

"Let me put it to you this way: If there was one person uniquely involved in the political process, that might be troubling," he said. "But there's no one that hasn't used every legitimate avenue and bit of leverage that they could legally use to get their product looked at. Believe me, if there is a political lever to be pulled, all of them have pulled it."

Blackwell said he stands by the process used for selecting voting machine vendors as fair, thorough and impartial.

As of yesterday, however, that determination lay with Ohio Court of Claims Judge

If you have a 401k or a pension plan you are a stockholder.

While much has been made in recent years about growing stock ownership across the entire population, the top one percent of stock owners in the United States still hold almost half of all stocks, while the bottom 80 percent own just 4.1 percent. Almost two-thirds of all households have stock holdings worth 5,000 dollars or less.[src]

"Would you let McDonald's do the FDA testing on their own food?"

Hate to burst your bubble, but that's exactly what the FDA does with pharmaceuticals. Both government and business will go out of their way to ignore safety issues when there's money involved.

We need to mobilize.

Steal a Diebold voting machine this election season. Take it apart, and post pictures on the web for the rest of us to analyze/critique.

Someone has to stop Diebold from giving the elections away.

Of course, be careful about doing it - if you get caught, you'll be labeled a 'terrorist' and be held at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without a jury of your peers. Remember citizen - during wartime as an "enemy combatant" you have no rights. That includes virtual wars against "ideals", and not a real declared war.

The scary thing is this guy is just a casual observer. If you step outside the mainstream media and dig deeper you will find things that sound like fiction, but the government is actually doing.

1 in 5 scientists at the FDA say that "I have been asked, for non-scientific reasons, to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information or my conclusions in an FDA scientific document" - UCS

Members of the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition (NSWBC) have been intimidated. Only recently have we needed an organization to protect whistleblowers, the intimidation against them to not go public is unprecedented.

I forgot if elections in 1984 were similar.

Well, I'd read about this years ago and originally, it was the oil industry owned the patent on NiMH after purchase from Ovonics. Then, recently( "Who Killed the Electric Car" ) stated that General Motors purchased a 51% stake in Ovonics and therefore their NiMH patent after which Texico purchased GMs stake in Ovonics. Now what you pointed out shows that Ovonics created a subsidiary called Cobasys but I do not see where they have a 50/50 owership in the patent.

What I did find was another reference to the court case Toyota and Panasonic got into with regards to putting prismatic NiMH cells in the Toyota Hybrids. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0308-09.ht m

I had read that Toyota/Panasonic 'won' this case because their original license for the NiMH said that they ahd to use only consumer sized( D-cell ) batteries when the NiMH tech is used in vehicles predominantly powered by electric power. The story goes they showed the Toyota Hybrid System(THS) is only 49% electric powered and 51% Internal Combustion Engine(ICE) powered.

WTF was Texico doing going after Panasonic for making prismatic cells? Why were they restricting the size of the cells when used in electric vehicles? And if they were so bent on making money off this tech they they should not have made everything look like they were trying to hinder its use and the original owner of the EV1 and majority patent holder( GM ) shouldn't be looking like an enemy to fuel efficiency. Heck, the same week that Toyota had the US press in Japan watching Prius's come of the same assembly line as the Camry and 3 other models, GM made a press release saying hybrid technology is bad for the US because it distracts us from the future which is hydrogen fuelcells.

So, if it quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, looks like a duck. It's a freak'n duck. IMO.

LoB

KEYSER F---CKING SOZE!!!

The industry that keeps environmentalists up at night, the butcher of the environment. A peerless, psycho, butcher who lights flames at night, nonchalantly dumps thousands of litres of black death on the environment and has been known to buy out, sue, and even kill to maintain its dominance over the entire world.

Who is Keyser Soze? ... Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Kobayashi tell it, anybody could have worked for Soze. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. - From the 1995 movie 'The Usual Suspects'

Note: This is from my highly speculative blog that no one reads or knows about.

Yep, the true greens still hate nuclear power. Why? Pragmatism... not idealism.

Have you read any of the arguments presented by the NRDC, FOE (Friends of the Earth) or Greenpeace? Here's a couple (sorry for the pdfs):
NRDC
FOE

Nuclear power is an unrealistic way to slow down global warming, poses more safety risks, is a national security threat and costs way more than switching to 100% renewable energy. Unfortunately, the US Government has a habit of illegally blocking renewable technologies such as wind power. Despite what the mainstream corporate media says we can meet the energy needs of the entire US with wind and solar power. Both the cost of wind and solar are rapidly dropping. Why should we punish taxpayers to support nuclear, when you can let clean renewable technology take over without doing anything?

P.S.
F--- the F---ing birds that are stupid enough to fly into wind turbines (or into the side of buildings for that matter). True environmentalists don't give a shit about birds when our oceans are turning to acid.