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Why do you make that assumption? You have no idea what a 'free-range' cow is eating, or what diseases it had.

Well, at least I know it is not eating the remains of other cows. Can you guess how mad cow disease spreads among cows ? Non-free-range cows are often being fed with protein that comes from... cow meat and bone meal ! Like in those trashy zombie movies, non-free-range cows do eat cow brains. I dont care what type of grass they find to eat out in the range, but I certainly dont imagine they will start eating each others brains...

For more info:
Brazil's Vegetarian Cows Don't Go Mad
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0107-04.ht m

Here here. Let's please not focus on ID just because it is the latest thing to come out of this government. Rather, let's focus on the torrent of unsound and unresearched scientific claims made by the administration and the stifiling of scientists who strongly oppose such intrusion.

Here's a great place to start:

Through observation & reproducability science is made. Only those observations and Theories that fit them should be imparted to future Generations as Science.

The President is, and never has been, a authoritative voice in the scientific community. As it should be. If you want to know about science ask a scientist. If you want to know about the complete disregard of science for policy ask the President:

http://www.creationethics.org/index.cfm?fuseaction =webpage&page_id=208
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0219-02.ht m
http://www.savearcticrefuge.org/scientist.pdf
http://www.fas.org/bethepr.htm

Don't Even Ask about Stem cells.

You can help:
http://www.ucsusa.org/rsi_calltoaction/index.php

Personally the *IAA stuff isn't nearly as disturbing to me as is the number of people who are likely to die because they will no longer be able to get generic drugs in their country.

See http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0727-03.ht m
and
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/07/2 9/1420251

In particular, the part about how there were protests in the other countries that were silenced by the military was interesting. Don't recall hearing about that in the mainstream US media...

Also interesting to hear about all the "computer glitches" recording votes the wrong way on this...

Well I never made any particular claims to sanity, as it turns out, but at least I'm not an utter fool, know what I mean?

The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."

The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."

The CIA's National Intelligence Council concluded in a report earlier this year that ''Iraq and other possible conflicts in the future could provide recruitment, training grounds, technical skills, and language proficiency for a new class of terrorists who are 'professionalized' and for whom political violence becomes an end in itself."

In the SF Bay area the Oil Company and GM were found guilty of conspiring to destroy the "Key line" system and they were fined $5000 each - they destroyed it, tore up the tracks 6 months or so before Pearl Harbor when 10s of thousands of people (esp African Americans) moved in to build ships at the Kaiser ship yards in Richmond and other areas.

That system would have changed the history of the Bay Area in the 1940s, 50s and after.

http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file =/news2005/0620-24.htm

Eddukashun? Enfra-what?

what in hell did your link (http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0721-33.htm) have to do with IPO's?

nice article and all, but nothing to do with IPO's

Maybe you should take a flip through this site http://intelligence.senate.gov/ where the actualy senate Intelligence report is actually located and you can read where the INR and the DO agreed even at the time with Wilson's assessment that all this Niger stuff was bogus. Look at page 73 for the INR for example. Fucking moron.

And if you're still feeling stupid, read Wilson's original New York Times Op-Ed which details what actually happened which you can find reprinted in its entirety at http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0706-02.htm "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq"

"Conclusions (Excerpted From Full Report)"

Fox is crap and the people who watch it are morons.

Then there are things that are less known...the NSA used to "grep" for certain 800 numbers from machines it had "sniffing" the Internet, that were in very good locations to do such a thing. Once I myself was reading a web site in Australia about CIA involvement in a sort-of coup d'etat they had there (the prime minister, who wanted to get Australia out of the Vietnam war, and who was beginning to establish relations with "Red" China was thrown out by an antiquated dominion law by a man who had CIA conenctions). Shortly after doing so I received an odd SNMP query to my IP address requesting information about my machine. If I didn't have my machine especially set up to log everything coming in, I never would have seen it (my machine did not respond witht he asked for information). The requesting machine was some US army information intelligence outfit in Quantico, Virginia, I suppose it was the Army equivalent of the Air Force OSI or something. One odd aspect was I was doing this from the US, so the Army would have been spying on me, as a US citizen, which it shouldn't be doing, although there are loopholes out of this I guess. It's unfortunate I have to go to other countries web sites to read about stuff like this, but that's how it is, the USSR had it's samizdat as well, and its KGB trying to track down who was distributing and reading it.

"Oh please, then what triggered 9/11?"

STFU you ape. How about a million Arabs killed by the actions of your government in Iraq alone before 9/11? http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0707-31.htm

As

" It depends on who you think cast the first stone. Based on bin Laden's fatwa, I'd say that his greviances are genuine and meritable, but the action taken was not in proportion to the damage done." - Indeed, America caused the death of literally more than a million Arabs leading up to 9/11. Definitely not in proportion. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm

They're not retaliating for the success of the West, they're retaliating for the inconsiderate interference of the West in their own development, and they have a point of truth in that the US foreign policy in the Middle East has been far from kind. There's a reason why those bombs didn't go in Germany's industrial states, or in Paris' entertainment clubs. Heck, it's hard not to empathise with them at times seeing that the US has not abandoned its shenanigans - Tenet criticised Chavez of Venezuela a couple of years ago or so by saying that "he does not have the interest of the US at heart" - why should an elected person of an indepdent nation have the interest of the US in his heart and not that of his citizens?! Next thing you had was the US orchestrating a kleptocratic coup against Chavez that almost succeeded, and a US-registered plane to kidnap him out of the country, just like they did with Aristide in Haiti where they arranged a coup to topple him as an elected president and send him to Africa - watch the documentary film "the Revolution will not be televized" by Irish documentarians to see how they did this.

Ever since the US's CIA arranged a coup in Iran in 1953 to remove an elected prime minister the Iranians have resented the US foreign policy, and the US has sought to do the same and sponsor despots around the world. Of the $15 Billion the US claims in aid to the developing nations a third actually goes to Israel, Egypt and Columbia - Israel's aid, despite it being one of the highest per capita countries in the world, is mostly military aid that invariably gets used to suppress the Palestians who get pennies to help them with the results of the US aid to Israel. The US aid to Egypt sustains a despot regime and is a reason for Al Qaeda's hatred for the US, given that Al Qaeda's Al Zawahiri - second in command and main ideaologue - was one of many who suffered from its human rights abuses. Equally was Qutub and most of the Egyptian ideologues and later members of Al Qaeda. The Columbian government too is equally abusive and has sought to interfer in Venezuela. And let's not forget the support of the US for despotic oil fortunes and royal families in Saudi Arabia and throughout the Gulf region countries in which many of Al Qaeda leadership grew up such as Bin Laden.

Additionally, most of the rest of the US aid, more than 90% of it, is actually subsidies to US contractors, many of which are in the military industrial complex - which inevitably causes suffering to the poor of the world. This contrasts with Europe that, not only that it gives more than 3 times as much aid as the US does, at $49 Billion, but far more of that is actually "real aid". http://www.actionaid.org.uk/1674/press_release.htm l

Though the US claims to spread democracy around the world, the evidence is that it's a heinous offender when it comes to the real evidence. Even after 9/11 - in Haiti, Venezuela, and other examples the US has not ceased from screwing up the development of the poor to serve the interests of its "special" industries.

It's hard not to empathise with the terrorists given how heinous the US foreign policy has been - in fact, I won't hesitate in saying that I respect Bin Laden for his principled stance for the poor than I care for racketeering Cheney who was responsible for killing literally more than a million of Muslims and Arabs in Iraq and elsewhere in illegal wars and war crimes that you can google for if you had been living under a table for many years. http://www.commondreams.org/views/090600-105.htm

1. I said If things continue as they are, in 20 years

You answered the statement you WANTED to answer by saying

There simply is not censorship here even remotely similar to the horrible things that take place elsewhere

I was not using the present tense - YOU WERE. I was saying that IF THINGS CONTINUE ALONG THE PATH THEY ARE AT PRESENT, we won't have much, if any alternative press in this country.

YOU decided that I was saying that the USA is like Iran TODAY, and responded using such a presumption. Why? Because you're a typical ninny.

2. You're wrong.

Have you been arrested and thrown in prison and then beaten for suggesting you do not like the president? I don't think so.

No, but many people have been arrested and then beaten or tortured or faced with asymmetrical application of state force for much less. Proof?

Here:

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

Take a look at her face and tell me that isn't torture.

http://www.constitution.org/ghansen/conghansen.htm

He wasn't tortured? He wa a former CONGRESSMAN (even)!

http://web.amnesty.org/report2005/usa-summary-eng

Oh - I guess you didn't read the Amnesty International Report, either...

I could go on and on about the evils of the American Government, but I won't. Suffice to say, you're wrong. RIGHT NOW most of the torture and fascist repression our government does (but not all) is visited upon our victims through proxies - client states and corrupt governments supressing their people in the interests of the local ruling class who support the insane and destructive American lifestyle and get rich in the process.

SOME of the torture is handled here, and is dished out as described above.

Make no mistake about it: the USA is quickly sliding into a new and unique form of "pseudo-democratic fascism" in the form of a 1.5 party state. The "winner take all" structure of the election system prevents third parties from getting any real daylight, and the power duopoly has been so eroded in the past several years by the neocon thugs in the Republican party that it is more of a monopoly of government by and for the corporations.

RS

I don't know why people offer that as a viable option. It implicitly agrees with the parent stance by not criticizing its logic at all, yet simultaneously offers no course of action which allows people to help one another out of a fundamentally flawed situation. We should want to (and actually engage in) helping other people. My friends and neighbors might be amongst the viewers and, simply through ignorance of how computers work and what the free software movement proved is possible, might accept the bound-to-be-bad advice offered. I don't think they deserve to be treated that way.

I've seen similar responses most recently around media criticism; point out how corporate news agencies will run government propaganda pieces as if they are news but they're really not, or point out how weapons manufacturers interests are served by the videogame-like war footage we see (Amy Goodman of "Democracy Now!" made this point in an intriguing talk she gave during a book tour), or point out an instance where pro-war voices are overrepresented in the popular news media and the almost non-sequitur response is "but you don't have to watch it! Just turn it off!".

This response tries to reframe a systemic issue as a point of personal preference--it's not about how the proposed system is likely to fail people in making important decisions, ignoring objectionable behavior instead of pointing out its failings is about letting the system have its way with people unimpeded in the slightest way.

Welcome to Bush's pwnership society. Seems like whether you support right or left-based politics, the way things go, the corporations win every time.

I think a lesson in world geography (you know, the 200 or so countries outside the US and that the US has not bombed) and political views (outside of the opinions of faux news) would be appropriate

I could have replied to any of the "you're wrong/a bigot/unaware/uneducated" replies that have been posted in reply to my comments, but I've chosen yours... No special reason other than yours was one of the least insulting replies (Gotta love those one-line "You're a XXX" replies that /. breeds)

While I can understand everyone's knee jerk reaction, I think that y'all are the ones in the dark about this kinda stuff. I've included some links for your reading pleasure. If you're really bored, you might try this sparkling new service called "Google", and type in something like "India anti-american". You'll find a lot more than the few that I've provided.

Not that these links are comprehensive of the entire situation, but they should provide you with enough reading material to show you that I'm not labeling all Indian people as anti-American, nor am I saying that everyone in the Middle east is out to get us. I'm simply pointing out that India, and a lot of the countries we outsource to, are not the USA-lovin' countries that you are assuming they are.

If you want to prove me wrong, drape yourself with an "I love America" T-shirt, and go walking down the streets of these countries, and send me some pictures. If you come out unscathed, then you have my apologies.

http://www.cnn.com/video/world/2001/10/22/mr.india .anti.us.cnn.med.html
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1411733/p osts
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article30 10.htm
http://pd.cpim.org/2003/0330/03302003_protests_res t.htm
http://www.getcustoms.com/2004GTC/Articles/ga-2002 -02-13.html
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/0519-06.ht m

Oh, what a romantic vision, those hard working people designing a bomb to kill Japanese civilians -- needlessly, when one considers that the Japanese gov't was frantically trying to make peace at the time of the bombing.

But our nationalistic historical revisions never remember General Leslie Groves' words, the military commander of the WWII Manhattan Project: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis."

Or even WWII journalist and author Studs Terkel's comments: "Why did we drop [the atomic bombs]? So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye."

Instead, we use such nostalgic "tourist attractions" to build up the PR for another new generation of nuclear weapons that the US is more eager than ever to use. :-(

Oh, what a romantic vision, those hard working people designing a bomb to kill Japanese civilians -- needlessly, when one considers that the Japanese gov't was frantically trying to make peace at the time of the bombing.

But our nationalistic historical revisions never remember General Leslie Groves' words, the military commander of the WWII Manhattan Project: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis."

Or even WWII journalist and author Studs Terkel's comments: "Why did we drop [the atomic bombs]? So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye."

Instead, we use such nostalgic "tourist attractions" to build up the PR for another new generation of nuclear weapons that the US is more eager than ever to use. :-(

Oh, what a romantic vision, those hard working people designing a bomb to kill Japanese civilians -- needlessly, when one considers that the Japanese gov't was frantically trying to make peace at the time of the bombing.

But our nationalistic historical revisions never remember General Leslie Groves' words, the military commander of the WWII Manhattan Project: "There was never, from about two weeks from the time I took charge of this Project, any illusion on my part but that Russia was our enemy, and the Project was conducted on that basis."

Or even WWII journalist and author Studs Terkel's comments: "Why did we drop [the atomic bombs]? So little Harry could show Molotov and Stalin we've got the cards. That was the phrase Truman used. We showed the goddamned Russians we've got something and they'd better behave themselves in Europe. That's why it was dropped. The evidence is overwhelming. And yet you tell that to 99 percent of Americans and they'll spit in your eye."

Instead, we use such nostalgic "tourist attractions" to build up the PR for another new generation of nuclear weapons that the US is more eager than ever to use. :-(

Injustice and conspiracy

Wasn't it Diebolds CEO that said he would do anything to make sure George W. Bush would win Ohio.

Yes, and here's the link.

Here's three links that support the parent:

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.ht m
http://www.veteransforpeace.org/Diebolds_political _030504.htm
http://www.boalt.org/biplog/archive/000546.html

If you disagree with the parent, be a man and argue the point with him. Don't mod him as 'flamebait' merely because what he says makes you feel uncomfortable.

and shout "LEWINSKI LEWINSKI LEWINSKI!" you liberals believe whatever you're told. http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0609-21.htm

I just finished reading Baghdad Year Zero. Thanks for passing it along. It was tremendously informative and insightful. A must-read for anyone who thinks like a journalist and just follows the money.

Considering that the US gets dragged into many hot spots in the world, I would prefer that they're not armed with poison gases or nukes

Well yes, except that the US usually drag themselves into hot spots, and are quite often responsible for the spots being hot in the first place. Besides, obviously they're in fact very selective in doing so -- I mean, how many US troops in Sudan?

Other countries sniff at our hyprocracy, but frankly, put up or shut up. Most countries don't even give a damn as to what happens to the people in other countries.

Agreed, absolutely. My own government could do much much more in the way of caring for other peoples. That said, do you really believe those troops are in Iraq for altruistic reasons? Torturing Iraqis for their own good? Oil and similar corporate interests have nothing to do with it? Again - how many troops in, say, Sudan?

Start spending huge amounts of blood and treasure in other places and then say "Sure! We think it's ok for you to have completely indiscriminate weapons of destruction in your unstable country."

The reason those soldiers are willing to spill their blood, or the only reason I can imagine at least, is they actually believe they are "helping Iraqis" or "defending the Homeland". Both arguments are easy to take apart. And the treasure, well that treasure is actually really just another channel from US taxpayer's wallets to corporate bank accounts. Unless you can point out the flaw in the following:
Pentagon uses taxpayer's money to buy bombs from Lockheed et al. Blows up Iraqi houses. Uses MORE taxpayer's money to hire AMERICAN companies to rebuild what was destroyed.

You, my friend, should really read up on some info rather than just repeat the propaganda lines. For instance, read Baghdad Year Zero by Naomi Klein. Either tell me where she's wrong or admit at least there's more going on then they're telling you..

And why can the US have them? Well, we sure don't get foriegn aid when we have a disaster, do we?

So, you're saying that not receiving aid gives you right to have WMD? Are you even serious? Well what's your beef with North Korea then? How much aid are you giving Iran? Come on..

But I'm curious, if the next 9/11 is going to be the US's fault. Why is that, and how would the US have to change to not have it happen?"

If such an attack would come from the outside, like it did last time, I believe it will very likely be the son of someone you bombed or tortured or dissappeared. Face it, current policies are only creating more terrorists -- even your own agencies are sort of saying this.

One idea would be to change your definition of a "free country" to actually involve freedom, not only subservience to US corporate interests.

GW Bush won his office through some questionable means. Not once, but twice. Every single instance of an election problem worked out in Bush's favor. When a voting machine screwed up, it was inevitably adding votes to Bush, or counting Kerry votes as votes for someone else. Right now in Ohio, there's a big scandal where money meant for investment wound up in the pockets of Republican campaigns.

I predict that some people will try to mod me down to suppress the truth, but they will fail.

More information:

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.ht m

OK, shithead, please show me _one_ USA law that says a corporation _must_ "take any legal action that will maximise shareholder profit". You are talking out of your @ss. There are _no_ laws that force a publicly traded corp to do what you suggest. So get off your fairy-tale horse and stop beeing an @ss-hole.

Here you go

Don't mind the hippy sounding url, the article was first published in the January/February 2002 issue of Business Ethics and written by a corporate securities lawyer with 23 years experience.

The relevant passage would be

In short, the law creates corporate purpose. That purpose is to operate in the interests of shareholders. In Maine, where I live, this duty of directors is in Section 716 of the business corporation act, which reads:

...the directors and officers of a corporation shall exercise their powers and discharge their duties with a view to the interests of the corporation and of the shareholders....

Although the wording of this provision differs from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, its legal effect does not. This provision is the motive behind all corporate actions everywhere in the world. Distilled to its essence, it says that the people who run corporations have a legal duty to shareholders, and that duty is to make money. Failing this duty can leave directors and officers open to being sued by shareholders.

You can also find some more general background on the subject here. Harverd Business School reputable enough for you?

Oh, and what you were referring to, the giving of money for hurricane relief, is called instrumental corporate social responsibility. It is permitted if the CEO is able to demonstrate that the philanthropy generates increased shareholder value, generally through there being more value generated by the resulting public goodwill than was lost by the expenditure.

Wow, don't you look stupid now. Who was the dumb asshole again?

Someone really needs to put up a web site shaming everyone who's used 9/11 to advance their own interests or to demonize the opposition as terrorists.

From The Demagogue Files...

"Interpol believes there is a significant link between counterfeiting and terrorism in locations where there are entrenched terrorist groups."
--Jack Valenti, MPAA Chief (Source: senate.gov)

"There are also indicators that some associates of terrorist groups may be involved in IPR [Intellectual Property Right] crime"
--Lieutenant John Stedman [View PDF], Sheriff's Department, County of Los Angeles (source: senate.gov)

"Anti-spammers are terrorists at heart and attack websites and email accounts of companies wishing to bring their products and services to the general public via email, an enviromentally sound, REMARKABLE medium!"
--StealthLaunch/PopLaunch, mass-marketing firm
(source: the Register)

The National Education Association is "a terrorist organization"
--Rod Paige, Education Secretary
(source: usatoday.com)

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say "you helped this happen."
Rev. Pat Robertson, Religious Leader (source: commondreams.org)

[Discussing liberal Federal judges]
"Over 100 years, I think the gradual erosion of the consensus that's held our country together is probably more serious than a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings"
[Followup question asks if liberal judges really are the worst threat America has faced in 400 years - worse than Nazi Germany, Japan and the Civil War...]
"Yes, I really believe that,"
Rev. Pat Robertson, Religious Leader (source: nydailynews.com)

[When asked about abortion in the US]
"I think after September 11th the American people are valuing life more and realizing that we need policies to value the dignity and worth of every life. And President Bush has worked to say, let's be reasonable, let's work to value life, let's try to reduce the number of abortions, let's increase adoptions. The fundamental difference between us and the terror network we fight is that we value every life. It's the founding conviction of our country, that we're endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights, the right to life and liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately our enemies in the terror network, as we're seeing repeatedly in the headlines these days, don't value any life, not even the innocent and not even their own," she added."
Karen Hughes, Bush Campaign advisor (source: cnn.com)

"It's absolutely essential that eight weeks from today, on Nov. 2, we make the right choice, because if we make the wrong choice then the danger is that we'll get hit again and we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States"
--Dick Cheney, Vice President of the US (source: about.com)

"America's under attack and so are we."
--Kenneth Lay, CEO, Enron (source: Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room)

Anyone got

Rumsfeld was Reagan's envoy to Iraq.

The Reagan arms shipments to Iran might have reached a value of $82B. Even the smaller, officially admitted figures account for TOW missiles illegally shipped through Israel, which were strategically valuable to Iran in its Iraq war. That's what "Iran/Contra" was (half) about, but I suppose you've got some kind of "legitimate" explanation that excuses that illegal guns/drugs/policy scam.

The memos were confirmed by the secretary who was in the office at the time of the events, while the denial comes from someone connected only by relation, speaking in partisan "defense" for a dead person who acted independently, according to their conscience. Witness vs. self-interested hearsay, but your "bias" sensitivity is oneway, at best.

Newsweek's retraction acknowledged only that it was irresponsible to cite only a single, anonymous Pentagon source before publishing. Of course, Newsweek let the Pentagon review the story for days, without complaint, before publishing it. Only when the White House blamed the story for Afghan riots did Newsweek retract, though even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the riots weren't caused by the story. While the military reports several acts of desecration ("inappropriateness"? talk about "bias"), including reports that they set of riots, and that a Koran was put into a toilet deliberately. Stories corroborated by independent people in the prisons, who had no way of synchronizing their stories. In prisons where other prisoners were being beaten, raped, electrocuted, and humiliated - "tortured" is the word, if you can forgive the bias towards "truth". I guess that the torture must be the product of our "left biased press". Which bias led them to promote Bush's lies about WMD, and Iraq's threat to the US, as much as possible. Screwball and Chalabi, Bush's uncorroborated anonymous sources, aren't biased, though - their WMD lies are true, right?
Many of these facts are reported by "left biased press", so I'm sure you'll ignore them. You dislike the conclusions drawn by the messenger, so the facts they document are irrelevant. Of course, you can't reply with an example of an "unbiased" source, because you prefer the rightwing propaganda you repeat. Which comes from the president and his execs, so it must all be true, right? Who needs the press, when the president can go around the filter, and tell us all the truth.

As companies find that they can't be profitable (enough) with real journalism, they'll stop doing real journalism.

You can drop the future tense here. To reduce costs, radio and TV channels are increasingly airing prepackaged news produced by the government. Of course, most of the time, they don't mention the origin of the news and make it appear as if they were independently produced and checked.

Economic pressures are pushing away from what it takes to make a good news source. In a competitive market, customers use the products they like most. Problem is that good news (ie truth) are not especially pleasant ; and can be quite unpleasant (when they prove you wrong). Also fact finding and checking is *very* expensive. All in all, papers willing to provide real news suffer a competitive disavantage against those who push cheap, sugar-coated content. The best example is the astounding coverage of Michael Jackson's trial. It's a perfect topic, business-wise. Content is incredibly cheap to produce (an anchor and a couple of *experts* arguing in a studio) and everybody loves a paedophilia trial involving a celebrity.

At the end of the day, serious news sources have a choice : stop doing actual news or die. None is good for democracy. This is one of the rare cases where free markets do not drive the public good. I realize that for many Americans, suggesting that this is possible at all verges on heresy. Yet, the merger of news and entertainment is a real issue that must be addressed.

I beg to differ...

A paper came out shortly after the Nov '04 election showing how exit poll data differend from official tallies in Florida, Ohio & Pennsylvania. Exit polls in all 3 states showed a Kerry win. Official results has Bush winning Florida & Ohio, and Kerry winning Pennsylvania by a much smaller margin than exit polling showed. Given the long, accurate-within-a-margin-of-error track record of exit polls, the probability of the exit polls being that wrong in all 3 states is 662,000 to 1.
http://www.buzzflash.com/alerts/04/11/ale04090.htm l

And who decides to not vote just because e-vote machines are in use? The method used to cast my vote at the polling station is the LAST thing on my mind when I go to vote.

Recently, UniLect had their e-vote machines decertified in Pennsylvania, thanks to the efforts of 1 citizen who coughed up $450 for a re-evaluation of their functionality. The results were pretty embarassing for UniLect, to say the least, and I'm baffled as to how this wasn't discovered BEFORE the election: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001364.htm

ES&S's explanation for the thousands of extra Bush votes counted by their machines in Franklin County, Ohio in Nov '04 was that the card reader they had hooked up their tabulation laptop was sending the data to the laptop too quickly for the laptop to process it, so some data got dropped. This is either a huge lie, or only demonstrates some magnificent incompetence in ES&S's development team: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001184.htm Either way, they should also have their e-vote machines decertified. Here's to hoping.

The Miama Herald also reported this week that their ES&S machines counted more votes than voters in Nov '04: http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00001390.htm

And the fact that Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc, sent a fundraising letter to Republicans in Ohio in 2003 saying that he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year" casts doubt on the legitimacy of all reported results from Diebold machines in Ohio in Nov '04.
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines03/0828-08.ht m

I realize that nothing that humans do is perfect, but these e-vote machines used in '04 show a definite trend towards "much less perfect" than in previous elections.

And if you are concerned but don't want to register, here's a NYTimes-free link. :-)

Yet oddly enough entry requirements have just been relaxed for visitors coming from Saudi Arabia, where 15 of the 19 9/11 hijackers came from.

Funny, that.

Yes, turbo diesel cars get incredible mileage, but the particulate emissions -- despite dramatic improvements over the past decade -- still fall near the bottom of the heap.

So, if you want to improve your mileage to save a couple of hundred dollars a year and/or to reduce dependance on foreign oil, a diesel is definitely the car for you.

On the other hand, if you're concerned about that grey haze hanging low in the sky that you notice every morning driving to work and wonder about what it's doing to your lungs, the current batch of gasoline hybrids make a ton more sense.

Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Lebanon has no bearing on Iraq whatsoever. They've been having Parliamentary elections for decades, before Iraq even had their dictatorship. Bush's Iraq war has no bearing whatsoever on Lebanese elections taking place. Palestine also had democratic elections in the early 90's, Arafat won, so Bush can't take credit for that recent election either. I should also point out that soon after that demonstration, an even bigger Hizbullah demonstration took place for the opposition.

Saddam Hussein, a secular dictator who is said to have executed people who went to the mosque too frequently, would never ally himself with Al Qaeda, an organization with an agenda to topple all secular governments and replace them with religious ones. They wanted each other dead. Osama Bin Laden's tape before the Iraq war called Saddam Hussein an "infidel". Now, what evidence is there that Ramzi Yousef had any Iraq connection? Show me. 2) Ansar Al-Islam, the organization where Zarqawi was said to be Bin Laden's rival? The claim alleged by Colin Powell at the UN, which was subsqeuently disproven? Mullah Krekar himself denied any such connection. The link fizzled out, next. 3) Zawahiri? Dream on, the guy was with Bin Laden in hating Saddam's regime and the others. Show me some proof that Saddam would fund a group that would assasinate him, given the chance. Where's your proof of a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection? 2 years and it's all been disproven.

Thucydides? Yeah, I read his stuff, I don't see how it has anything to do with Iraq. Do you think that the US is Athens and Iraq was some super-Sparta? That doesn't fit, but I'm not sure what connection you're trying to make.

Many Italians believe that her car was deliberately fired upon because of her politics.

Since the US does not want Italy think this, why would they hide a document that gives a explanation of the shooting?

background: prior to today it was quite a mystery why a US checkpoint would panic-fire on car already on exclusive VIP road [covering the crucial ground between the Green Zone and Baghdad airport]

Now we find out, supposedly: it was because the Italian diplomatic personnel on their return trip to the airport were not able to get back on the VIP road because 'the on-ramp .. was blocked'. So they had to approach the airport by public roads (much scarier for checkpoint personnel)

skepticism: But Sgrena is alive and was interviewed in the hospital. She remembers getting onto the VIP road safely! If the group had been unable to get onto this road it would have been highly- memorable (it would have been a sign they all might die). And her memory seems pretty good.

She says they were fired on from behind. ['We could see that all the back windows of the car were broken from behind.']. She said they had passed a tank on the side of the road, not a a checkpoint, and that no-one signalled them. [The driver was the only occupant not seriously injured]. ..In contrast, the new supposedly-secret document claims (implies?) the car was fired on from the front.

Note that the US has refused to the Italians see the car.

my quickie conclusion: because of the obvious discrepencies, the refusal to show the car, the unexplained motivation to keep this material secret, I am forced to conclude that this new document is a trick aimed at the Italians. I believe it is a fake-secret version with the idea that was designed to be discovered.

This kind of trick works, btw. It has even got some psyops name, if I am not mistaken.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0328-33.htm

Support ethnic cleansing in Palestine and help censor the American press!
If you are at an American University or further education college we are currently recruiting active censorship drones to spy on fellow students, lecturers and guest speakers on behalf of the Israeli government.

We can actively stifle democratic thought and criticism of Israeli fascist oppression.
-But only with your help!

Free housing.
In six short weeks we can show you how to build a rogue state by demolishing existing homes in Palestine and building new houses on top!

We are currently looking for experienced bulldozer drivers with a large western bank balance to emigrate to the expansionist state of Israel and call it home.

Simply choose a plot of land and start building! Its easy peesy!!

If your chosen plot is currently occupied by a Palestinian family, dont worry
-simply build over them!

Its as easy peesy as eeny meeny miney mo!


We can protect your future residential developments on occupied land with fully experienced snipers in full body armour and appropriately armed Apache helicopters kindly donated by the American public.

If you are an American citizen with a view to emigrating to warmer climes and a view of the Mediterranean, you may also be eligible for a fraction of the 3,000,000,000 (yes thats 3 Billion!) dollars donated every year by American tax payers to help support our broken-ass state.
Due to our endless appetite for weapons of mass destruction our economy is unsustainable and we require your contribution and support. WMDs don't come cheap you know. It costs a fortune to terrorise a whole region.
Our military personnel can barely afford to maintain our arsenal of 200 nuclear weapons, spy satellites and attack submarines.

Give a man a gun and he can kill a Palestinian child. Give him a helicopter and he can kill them all.

Part-time vacancies available
We are currently in construction of the world record breaking apartheid wall surrounding the largest ethic ghetto since Krakow.
The Israeli military is hiring expatriates preferably with a military background to monitor the prisoners and maintain watchtowers and sniper nests. If you are blinded by a covetousness of other peoples land, but yet have a keen eye with a sniper scope you would be the ideal candidate for our border watchtower guard division.

We need your help. Sponsor an Israeli colonizer.
Do it today.

P.s.
if anybody criticises you, just point a finger an call them anti-Semite.
It worked for the Liberty.

There is a difference between politics and policy, and it is one that this administration has forgotten. Policy is a bottum-up decision making process based on unbiased facts. Politics is a top-down decision making process based on domga and belief. This President cares nothing for policy, only politics, which is evident in his inability to ever, EVER admit a mistake unless he can pin it on a subordinate.

This tactic is essentially parallel to Tom DeLay's intimidation tactics used against lobbyists. This is dirty politics at its worst. This is intended to make it hard for the opposition party to have any power by cutting off all of the richest funding through belligerent threats.

This is not just. People who truly respect freedom try to compromise with their opponents and not bury them without giving them a voice. The Republicans' naked greed for power is just disgusting.

Here's a list of the topics they would've been working on:

* Recommendation for 400 MHz bands
* RLAN in the 5 GHz band
* Recommendation on harmonized frequencies for property protection
* Revision to Recommendation PCC.II/REC. 67 (XIX-01) on Low Power Radiocommunication devices,
* Radio frequency identification devices (RFID)
* Broadband Power Line Communications (BPL)
* Refarming of 700 MHz band
* Answer to Market questionnaire on IMT 2000 and systems beyond
* Results of the video conference on wireless broadband

History will be written by the winners. They'll be no trace of the dirty liberal hands that gave $250 to the Kerry campaign on these obscure telecommunication standards.

The Bush administation's genious is in it's recognition that all our problems, on all levels, are caused by liberal influence. Did you lose the signal on your wireless LAN moments ago? It's a little known fact that when this happens it's probably because of liberal influence.

Here are some more examples:

* Rebuilding Iraq : It's a well known fact that development specialists are mostly liberals. Which is why the Coalition Provisional Authority was wisely staffed almost entirely by young people with absolutely no relevant experience. What one and only one qualification they did all have in common, which no liberal could ever have, was they had all once sent a resume to conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation.

* The CIA : Why couldn't we find WMD in Iraq? Because the CIA is full of liberals. "'Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda.' said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House."

Sadly, you don't hear about this because of the liberal media. I didn't do it mommy, liberals did it.

Well, unfortunately your anecdote of failing personal investments has been duplicated millions of times across America. This is how the stock market now works ... for each new stock millionaire, you have to have 1000 people take a loss of $1000 each. I wish you luck with your investments, but I equally wish that you don't add to the housing bubble.

BTW, I came across this article just tonight:

Riotous Real Estate
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=2329
OR http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0419-22.htm
By Mike Davis

Select quote:

"The great American housing bubble, like its obese counterparts in the UK, Ireland, the Netherlands, Spain, and Australia, is a classical zero-sum game. Without generating an atom of new wealth, land inflation ruthlessly redistributes wealth from asset-seekers to asset-holders, reinforcing divisions within as well as between social classes. A young schoolteacher in San Diego who rents an apartment, for example, now faces an annual housing cost ($24,000 for a two-bedroom in a central area) equivalent to two-thirds of her income."

YES! WHAT A FANTASTIC IDEA!

Of course, the Indian Govt. never bows to corporate interests--"what only the rich and powerful want"--on any important issues like IT and software, only on incredibly minor ones like generic drugs that help AIDS sufferers and the World's poor.

Almost all the "first-tier" papers tried charging for content. The WSJ was the only one that was succesful.

First of all, none of the major newspapers tried charging for content. The WSJ was unique.

Second, the WSJ offers considerably more than the content of the print edition. It offers its complete online database of company information, the content of Barrons, the content of the Asian and European WSJ, and a personal portfolio management application. To an investor, access to the company information database alone is worth many times the cost of the subscription.

Third, it is not clear whether the Web site's profit takes into account the full cost of the content it gets from print edition and other sources.

NYTimes of the 1950s which has a large international staff (and thus plenty of original international content) probably could have had a pay website.

The New York Times still has more than 20 foreign bureaus. The problem is that only 15% of Americans say they regularly follow international news. It is therefore unlikely foreign news is the missing ingredient that would make a Web site profitable.

The NYTimes today doesn't have anything all that important to say.

The Times won a Pulitzer in 2005 for exposing the "corporate cover-up of responsibility for fatal accidents at railway crossings." The Pulitzer in 2004 was for a series of stories than examined "death and injury among American workers and exposed employers who break basic safety rules." The Pulitzer for 2003 was for a series that "exposed the abuse of mentally ill adults in state-regulated homes." The list goes on.

umm.. all that should be taken care of. When clinton sent an onvoy to convince opec that they could manipulate the production of oil to raise the prices and thereby increasing the amount of money availible to pay back the debt the third world countries encounter.

The tird world debt is realy a conclusion made because forgiving it was a top conversation list at the time and the trip to riase oil prices seemed to ocme after congress lost anyt hope of passing somethign that would forgive third world debt that is directly related to the oil prices of the70's and 80's. there is also secret oil deals he made to control the prices and make himself look good or in control while president.

http://mediamatters.org/archives/search.html?strin g=fox 961 problems with fox and counting. BTW, I love "a university media study" type citations. "In other news, Bob Jones University researchers found that Fox news, while the most centrist of news organizations was still way out left..." What liberal views get aired on fox? I've watched more than my fair share, and I get to listen to the dittoheads at work spout off about how great fox is all day long (I work at an Air Force Base). There is no liberal news on fox. If you want "liberal news" try Air America radio, http://www.commondreams.org, http://www.alternews.net, or a real liberal news source. CNN used to be centrist, but even they've skewed right. Same thing with NPR. The closest thing to centrist news available is the BBC. Everything else has been pulled waaaay right. Which you don't recognize until you actually read/listen to some openly liberal stuff. Then you'll see how out of whack all "news" in this country is. Not to mention the fact that stories that shouldn't matter nationally keep getting picked up by conservative bloggers and forced onto national media. Like Terry Schiavo. Should have been a local/regional issue at most. Got picked up and pushed nationally by conservative right-to-lifers (and I'm not even going to start on the irony of Bush's "culture of life" coming from a man who signed more death warrents than any other governer in HISTORY!)

You remind me of a famous quote.

'First they came for the Communists, but I was not a Communist, so I said nothing. Then they came for the Social Democrats, but I was not a Social Democrat, so I did nothing. Then came the trade unionists, but I was not a trade unionist. And then they came for the Jews, but I was not a Jew, so I did little. Then when they came for me, there was no one left to stand up for me.'

First They Came For The Terrorists.../a

First off, I would like to say that your complaints are completely rediculous. Now, since you're obviously close minded enough to have made your decisions about the bill before you read anything about it, simply based off of who created it, you're probably not reading this anymore. However, I'll explain why you're being rediculous anyway.

"The act doesn't make the source code open."
I sure as hell hope so. I mean, we wouldn't wanted somebody with a clear agenda of manipulating the election to insert obscure hack code into the system that would be awful.

"The bill requires background checks on programmers."
Your belief this means open source software could not be used is not true. The programmers of the linux kernel would not be the programmers of the voting machine. They would simply have created a tool to help those programmers. Unless they write the entire system in assembly, the programmers will be allowed to use tools created by other people, such as the people who created the C programming language, or the people who wrote the base modules for it, such as io or string modules.

"The bill prohibits distributing voting machine source code over the internet."
This would be devastating, if it were true. While I admit this is a very badly phrased portion of the document, it doesn't seem to mean what you think it means. First off, if you were trying to quote it you failed miserably. The actual line says "The manufacturer shall ensure that any software used in connection with the voting system is not transfered over the internet." I'm honestly not exactly sure what the intent of this line is, but if I had to guess, I would think it meant the code kept internally to the company. So that no one can change the code over the internet. The idea this prohibits open source also indicates that it prohibits just about every proprietary piece of software out their. They certainly won't be able to use windows, you can't run windows securely without the security updates that you get on the internet. Not to mention microsoft would never let their code be seen by any citizen that fills out the right request form. Even if this does mean flat out what you think it does, that none of the program can ever be available on-line, this STILL doesn't prohibit an open source base. A NetBSD based system is not the same thing as NetBSD, and the BSD license does not require free distribution like the GPL. So based on that, BSD could still be used.

-> Fritz