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There's no reason why the ESRB couldn't have given Quake III: TA a similar -- or the same -- rating. The "animated" seems redundant since all games are animated. But with the increasing levels of detail and realism, the industry will have to do something to make it clearer what is and what isn't suitable for kids, and how graphic the visuals and levels of violence are, or else it will suffer a backlash. If the previews are an accurate reflection of the game, I have no idea what they're going to do when Doom III comes out.

Now that the new ESRB violence descriptors provide more detailed ratings (presumably to keep up with advancing graphics technology), this should help defang some of the critics who want to prevent mature-themed games from being made. It's still amazing that a parent won't let their kids see an R-rated or NC-17-rated movie but have no problem with buying them games that are intended for adults, and are clearly marked as such.

As for Lieberman and his supposed anti-violence stance, being the political opportunist (source) he is, he sees the writing on the wall. All Lieberman wants is big, fat campaign donations from the entertainment industry elite he disingenuously eschewed during the last election.

Now that domestic game revenues are comparable to -- or surpassing -- Hollywood, what better way to get the big games-industry dollars than by praising the very industry he railed against the last time around?

There's no reason why the ESRB couldn't have given Quake III: TA a similar -- or the same -- rating. The "animated" seems redundant since all games are animated. But with the increasing levels of detail and realism, the industry will have to do something to make it clearer what is and what isn't suitable for kids, and how graphic the visuals and levels of violence are, or else it will suffer a backlash. If the previews are an accurate reflection of the game, I have no idea what they're going to do when Doom III comes out.

Now that the new ESRB violence descriptors provide more detailed ratings (presumably to keep up with advancing graphics technology), this should help defang some of the critics who want to prevent mature-themed games from being made. It's still amazing that a parent won't let their kids see an R-rated or NC-17-rated movie but have no problem with buying them games that are intended for adults, and are clearly marked as such.

As for Lieberman and his supposed anti-violence stance, being the political opportunist (source) he is, he sees the writing on the wall. All Lieberman wants is big, fat campaign donations from the entertainment industry elite he disingenuously eschewed during the last election.

Now that domestic game revenues are comparable to -- or surpassing -- Hollywood, what better way to get the big games-industry dollars than by praising the very industry he railed against the last time around?

> Independent counters determined that
> a state-wide recount would have given
> the state to Gore.

Please provide a citation, thank

How about several:

• chicagomediawatch
• Commondreams
• DrudgeReport

But note the qualifier ``state-wide''. Gore's request, and the resultant Supreme Court cases dealt with recounts in a handful of counties. So even if the court had not taken an activist role, Gore still would have been on the short end after receiving the recount he requested, despite the fact that more voters state-wide cast ballots for Gore.

Why not? The media has been a key to this whole illegal war. When the Bush regime trotted out its pack of lies about WMD to convince the American people to forget about the economy and to support the war (rah! rah! go team!), the corporate media did not question the lies and just jumped on the bandwagon. After all, who cares about truth when there's ratings to be had! (And now, given the FCC's recent ruling about monopoly ownership of media markets, the corporate mass media has been repaid for their slave-like service.)

When Private Jessica Lynch was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got captured, the US media ignored the stories of brave Iraqi doctors and nurses donating their own blood to keep her alive, and instead printed (now proven false) stories about her fighting while shot and fighting to the death until she ran out of image.

You'll never see stories like this in the US media.

Since this kind of blatant propaganda was a key to the support of the war, why not some propaganda directly aimed at computer geeks?! Hey, we deserve our own lies too!!

Why not? The media has been a key to this whole illegal war. When the Bush regime trotted out its pack of lies about WMD to convince the American people to forget about the economy and to support the war (rah! rah! go team!), the corporate media did not question the lies and just jumped on the bandwagon. After all, who cares about truth when there's ratings to be had! (And now, given the FCC's recent ruling about monopoly ownership of media markets, the corporate mass media has been repaid for their slave-like service.)

When Private Jessica Lynch was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got captured, the US media ignored the stories of brave Iraqi doctors and nurses donating their own blood to keep her alive, and instead printed (now proven false) stories about her fighting while shot and fighting to the death until she ran out of image.

You'll never see stories like this in the US media.

Since this kind of blatant propaganda was a key to the support of the war, why not some propaganda directly aimed at computer geeks?! Hey, we deserve our own lies too!!

Why not? The media has been a key to this whole illegal war. When the Bush regime trotted out its pack of lies about WMD to convince the American people to forget about the economy and to support the war (rah! rah! go team!), the corporate media did not question the lies and just jumped on the bandwagon. After all, who cares about truth when there's ratings to be had! (And now, given the FCC's recent ruling about monopoly ownership of media markets, the corporate mass media has been repaid for their slave-like service.)

When Private Jessica Lynch was in the wrong place at the wrong time and got captured, the US media ignored the stories of brave Iraqi doctors and nurses donating their own blood to keep her alive, and instead printed (now proven false) stories about her fighting while shot and fighting to the death until she ran out of image.

You'll never see stories like this in the US media.

Since this kind of blatant propaganda was a key to the support of the war, why not some propaganda directly aimed at computer geeks?! Hey, we deserve our own lies too!!

You can patent a process / technique, but you can't just patent arbitrary bits of information (like the "glowing" genes).

Then what's up with this?

What that case seems to say is that not only can genes be patented, but that farmers are infringing on the patent if they grow plants containing a patented gene without having a patent license-- no matter whether the seeds actually came from monsato or were produced naturally by the resulting plants. The farmer in that specific case wasn't even taking-- pollen containing the Monsato Roundup Ready blew onto his field against his will, and as a result of that a judge decided Monsato owned all the contaminated wheat and the farmer owed license fees. I don't see how that is a "process".

See here.

Here's Ted Turner's letter voicing opposition (!) to increased media consolidation.

Better yet, ask Halliburton, which has done huge business in direct opposition to the US national interest with many foreign countries including two of the three members of the Axis of Evil and Libya. The U.S. Gov't has fined Halliburton several million dollars for doing business with terrorist states, but then gave it a $7 billion contract to put out oil well fires. When there weren't any oil well fires to speak of, the U.S. Gov't told Halliburton to keep the money, we'd find other things for them to do.

The moral is that with the right connections, you can upset the US national interests all you want and the government will just bend over further and ask for a kiss.

As for foreign countries, the US indicted 14 members of Hizb'allah for the Khobar Towers bombing in 2001, which killed 19 US airmen. The suspects were in Saudi Arabia at the time and Saudi Arabia has refused to extradite them to the US to stand trial. We're not kicking their ass either. Instead, we're doing exactly what Osama bin Laden has wanted us to do for the last 12 years: taking our troops out of SA.

Pakistan sold gas centrifuges to North Korea to help its nuclear weapons program and is providing safe haven for the Taliban on the Afghan border. We're not kicking their ass either.

Seems to me that we just invaded Iraq to distract everyone from the sight of GWB bending over adn greasing up for the real terrorists.

Read about Bush and his Reichstag at:

The United States of Amerika

In fact it is much worse. The current US-Administration is practicing "Selective Intelligence - Donald Rumsfeld Has His Own Special Sources. Are They Reliable?".

It follows logically from Leo Strauss' Philosophy of Deception which is based on three rules: Deception, Power of Religion and Aggressive Nationalism:

"The people are told what they need to know and no more." While the elite few are capable of absorbing the absence of any moral truth, Strauss thought, the masses could not cope. If exposed to the absence of absolute truth, they would quickly fall into nihilism or anarchy...

Karl Popper has written "The Open Society And Its Enemies" about ideologies of this type in the 1940-ies. He had national socialism and communism in mind, but he seems to be pretty modern again.

Your Vote is Now the Property of a Private Corporation

Now recounts and audits are being barred so as not to violate the "privacy and trade secrets" of the the company whose software is used to count the votes. Check out some of the excellent commentary on this issue by "Thom Hartmann" at:

"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

"Now Your Vote Is The Property Of A Private Corporation"

An excerpt: (credit to Thomm Hartmann)

"Chuck Hagel was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska. What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

"When Charlie Matulka (the opponent) requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel, his request was denied because Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel.

Scary?

-Scott

Your Vote is Now the Property of a Private Corporation

Now recounts and audits are being barred so as not to violate the "privacy and trade secrets" of the the company whose software is used to count the votes. Check out some of the excellent commentary on this issue by "Thom Hartmann" at:

"If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines"

"Now Your Vote Is The Property Of A Private Corporation"

An excerpt: (credit to Thomm Hartmann)

"Chuck Hagel was re-elected to his second term in the United States Senate on November 5, 2002 with 83% of the vote. That represents the biggest political victory in the history of Nebraska. What Hagel's website fails to disclose is that about 80 percent of those votes were counted by computer-controlled voting machines put in place by the company affiliated with Hagel. Built by that company. Programmed by that company.

"When Charlie Matulka (the opponent) requested a hand count of the vote in the election he lost to Hagel, his request was denied because Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska, he said, are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel.

Scary?

-Scott

1. Afghanistan, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2003
2. Bosnia, 1994, 1995
3. Cambodia, 1969-70
4. China, 1945-46
5. Congo (now Zaire), 1964
6. Cuba, 1959-1961 ("Bay of Pigs" invasion)
7. El Salvador, 1980s
8. Grenada, 1983
9. Guatemala, 1954, 1960, 1967-69
10. Indonesia, 1958
11. Iran, 1987
12. Iraq, 1991-2000, 2003 (The U.S. government used radioactive bombs in the first war against Iraq. See United States War Crimes Against Iraq for what appears to be an accurate history.)
13. Korea and China, 1950-53 (Korean War)
14. Kuwait, 1991
15. Laos, 1964-73
16. Lebanon, 1983, 1984 (both Lebanese and Syrian targets)
17. Libya, 1986
18. Nicaragua, 1980s
19. Panama, 1989. The U.S. government called it "Operation Just Cause". The link is to a U.S. military web site.
20. Peru, 1965
21. Somalia, 1993
22. Sudan 1998. There are doubts that the pharmaceutical plant that was bombed was making weapons.
23. Vietnam, 1961-73 (An estimated 2,000,000 Vietnamese were killed.)
24. Yugoslavia, 1999

There are many sources for this information. For example, see this PBS web page: PBS: A Chronology of U.S. Military Interventions (PBS is the Public Broadcasting System in the U.S.) Also see From Wounded Knee to Afghanistan: A Century of U.S. Military Interventions [zmag.org] and The government of the United States is a consistent opponent of international law. [

Fixing elections with touchscreen voting isn't just a conspiracy theory. It happened in 2002 in Nebraska and Georgia. Read more.

1. If they weren't U.S. citizens, how could they have been eligible in the first place?

2. Half of the people who were removed from the rolls were caucasian, take whatever you like from that.

3. Many of the people had no criminal records.

4. Take a look. Apparently it was more important to get the felons off the rolls than to allow the innocent to exercise their franchise. Seems kinda backwards in the land of "guilty until proven innocent."

Along with all the military votes thrown out by LePore and the rest of the crooked Democrats, it's just more AlGore dishonesty.

No more crooked than letting party workers to prepare absentee ballots before they go out, and error check them when they come back in. Everyone in that election was dirty, and insisting the rules be followed to the letter is better than tweaking ballots once they've come back in.

This never would have been an issue if AlGore hadn't pissed on the Greens over the Florida Everglades, or even if he had won his home states of Tennessee or Arkansas.

Not sure what you mean regarding the first case. The main issue for the Greens was the attempt to get 5% of the national vote in order to qualify for federal election money.

And overall, no matter who you believe should have won, you miss the point of the article. The election system is already creaky, and adding more bells and whistles to it is only going to make it even harder work towards making it honest.

<ad hominem attack gleefully snipped>

The Hill Newspaper has confirmed that Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.) has an ownership stake one of the largest manufacturers of voting machines in the country. (Hagel's ethics filings pose disclosure issue)

Several others have alleged the role of this company, Election Systems & Software, in several surprising Republican upsets recently, including the defeat of Max Cleland, formerly a popular Democratic Senator from Georgia.

See:
If You Want To Win An Election, Just Control The Voting Machines
Peter Coyote on voter fraud

1996: Chuck Hagel wins "stunning upsets" in both primaries and the general election in Nebraska.

2002: Chuck Hagel gets reelected in a landslide, with 83% of the vote.

A single company programmed, installed and largely operated the machines that counted about 80 percent of those votes.

This company used to be headed by, and is still part-owned by, you guessed it, Chuck Hagel.

Coincidence, yeah right.

Oh, one more thing. Charlie Matulka, who lost the 2002 election, requested a hand count of the vote. His request was denied because Nebraska has a just-passed law that prohibits government-employee election workers from looking at the ballots, even in a recount. The only machines permitted to count votes in Nebraska are those made and programmed by the corporation formerly run by Hagel. Hmm, wonder who pushed that one through!

Matulka's comment:"If you want to win the election, just control the machines."

(most of the above info shamelessly plagiarised from that last link).

Now, this doesn't mean that you can't use electronic voting, just that the whole process needs to be completely open and exposed. The source code needs to be open, the hardware design needs to be open, you need independant and unbiased people to check that the open source code is actually what is running on the open hardware, the whole thing needs an open audit trail in the event that a recount is required etc. The whole process is a helluvalot more complicated than just a machine that counts votes. So people need to be given proof that their votes are not corrupted in any step of that process.

-1 Get Over It

I'm sure a few thousand mostly African-American Floridians will have some problems dismissing the fact that their incredibly important vote was prevented from being made. Losing one's voting right for no good reason is not a trivial thing. I'm not talking about pregnant and hanging chads here--more people lost their right to vote in Florida in 2000 than the number of votes difference between Bush and Gore. Since the Democrats don't seem to be concerned with the matter, and the Republicans benefit from pushing the issue aside, these voters have no major political party to turn to for getting off those scrub lists and regaining their right to vote. A lot of the people on those scrub lists were believed to be Democratic Party voters too.

The same company that prevented these thousands of (disproportionately African-American) voters from voting in Florida in 2000 (a Choicepoint subsidiary called Database Technologies) stands to be paid millions of dollars by the Bush administration to collect detailed personal information on the populations of foreign countries.

If this is the first time you've heard of these would-be voters, consider reading "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast, an American investigative reporter for the BBC who broke the story that was largely ignored by American popular media (and appears to be treated as somehow trivial today).

So, no, I won't forget about it and I won't push it aside as some historical footnote. The U.S. Presidential election of 2000 was not as simple as pushing the election decision to a handful of U.S. Supreme Court judges.

Look here for gemology alone. Take note of the Tanzanite, Iolite, and Songea Sapphire. Nigeria also produces decent facet grade emerald. A new find over there has what looks to be promising load of Kyanite that rivals Brazillian material.

Oh, then there's that whole diamond thing. You know, that little DeBeers thing where they control 85% of the world market in diamonds.

It's not necessarily about free speech, but about the government *respecting* Theo's opinion and right to free speech, and not punishing him for speaking out. If they actually believe in free speech, they will not only tolerate his speech, THEY WILL NOT PUNISH HIM FOR EXERCISING HIS RIGHT TO FREE SPEECH. Would they have pulled his funding for saying "That Saddams an evil monster, and boy, does he ever hate freedom!" ? Not bloody likely.

It's obvious that the US' dedication to freedom only goes as far as is legally required. Think about it. This is censorship, pure and simple. Censorship doesn't have to be Saddam-style, where the guy disappears in the middle of the night, it's also American-style, like Hollywood forcing Marlon Brando to apologize for saying "the Jews own Hollywood" or he's blacklisted. The end result is the same - ideas and the people who have them are controlled by those who don't want ideas that hurt their agenda, true or not, to be spread. We can have "legal free speech" all we want, but if Tim Robbins in the future gets blacklisted for speaking out against the war, for example, it's not exactly "free", is it? It's certainly not free from retribution. You have the right to free speech, just be aware that you may be punished for it. Nice doublethink there.

The freedoms enshrined for us by the government are just the guidelines, it's up to America to prove that they believe in and support freedom by not circumventing the intent of the law by alternate means.You guys are all keeping an eye out for Thug-style censorship, but you have to realize, WE DON'T DO THAT ANYMORE (CIA excepted, of course). We've evolved. Now we "apply pressure" to make things happen. That way, we're still the good guys, while doing the exact same thing we incite frothing maniacal hatred against the bad guys for doing. We just do it with style and nobody questions a thing.

Theo losing his funding for speaking out against the war is like me firing one of my employees because he likes the L.A. Raiders. It's stupid and makes me more determined not to ever vote Republican again. That's my freedom, not that my vote won't be disqualified like the last time for having the same name as a criminal dead for 20 years.

does consistency mean that much to you?

Big words coming now.

Hypocrisy: Noun
1. Insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have.

So why pretend that now was the time? What was wrong with 1991? What was wrong with 1985? Why now?

Try this on for size: The Reason Why.

Along with these three, I propose a new requirement for any man who would be President of this nation:
1. You are 35 years old
2. You are a Native-born citizen
3. You have been a resident of the United States for at least 14 years.

4. You serve at least one tour of duty in your countries armed forces in combat, not flying a desk at home, in combat.

Buy Now!

The subject of this article will care. And all of his cousins who've lost mothers and sisters will care too. The US response to this will be... PATRIOT2, more draconian legislation to take away more of the citizens "rights". The current administration has guaranteed an endless supply of Bin Ladens. One of them will get through and then...

I saw this in another thread last night. Someone posted it AC and I can't find a Google for it. It hits the nail right on the head though.

One constant throughout human history has been the struggle between the "haves" and the "have nots." For the purpose of this discussion, I will refer to the "haves" as "the elite" and will call the "have nots" "the rabble." I am doing this to emphasize the fact that the rabble, while comprising most of the population, is almost always pitifully weak and disorganized, thanks to constant manipulation by the elite. "Divide and conquer" has always been the name of the game here; it has always been easy for the elite to manipulate public opinion and keep the rabble squabbling among each other.

The elite, though comprising only 1% of the population (the exact percentages are arguable, though the figures I am using are in the right ballpark), control most of the wealth. (In modern America, one has to be worth at least $100 million to be a serious player.) The elite don't have to work per se; they spend their time making deals, which, although stressful at times, is much too stimulating to fall into the realm of institutionalized drudgery which people commonly refer to as "work."
Falling below the elite in status and power are what could be called "elite wannabes," "lackeys of the elite," or "wealthy rabble." These people are very wealthy by rabble standards.

Power and status are hardwired into human behavior. Before the rise of agriculture, when humans were nomadic hunter-gatherers, it was difficult to accumulate power and status, since possessions were limited by what people could carry with them. There were probably powerful lineages that got passed through the generations, but the gap between the powerful and everybody else was limited due to the nature of their lifestyle.

All this changed with the rise of agriculture approximately 10,000 years ago. For the first time, people became sedentary, and they produced surpluses of grain which had to be defended. These surpluses meant unprecedented power for whoever was able to control them, and the first elite was born. For the first time, organized war became possible.

Howard Zinn's "A Peoples' History of America" describes the real dynamics at work behind the American Revolution. Rather than some idealistic "liberty and justice for all," the American Revolution was actually fomented by the American elite, who chafed under the British royalty.

It has been pointed out that by fighting an enemy, one takes on many of the characteristics of that enemy. Interestingly, it was World War 2 when America became a fascist power. By fascism, I am referring to Mussolini's definition: "Fascism should more properly be called corporatism, since it is the merger of state and corporate power."

By 1945, state and corporate power in America had merged into what was later termed the "military-industrial complex," even though it wasn't until 1961 that Dwight Eisenhower gave his famous speech warning America about a system that had already been in place for 15 years.

Even though America had become fascist by 1945, there remained a vast amount of consolidation to do: there still remained the rabble and their pesky vote (an archaic carryover from the Revolutionary War era). The rabble had recently suffered two major traumas -- the Great Depression and World War Two, and had reached an unprecedented level of solidarity. The rabble had become dangerous, and it was necessary to manipulate them back into their customary position of helplessness, while at the same time enhancing the power of t

Earlier, Sabah walked out of Mansour's al-Saha restaurant - with our take-out lunch - only minutes before a huge explosion made shards of its windows, lacerating customers and freaking the neighborhood. But that is nothing compared with the real damage a block away.
Four or five houses have disappeared and in their place is a crater maybe 30-40 meters wide and 15-20 meters deep.
Some of the photographers use a chilling term they picked up from the US military in Afghanistan to describe what might have happened to a dozen or more people thought to have died in this missile attack. They have become "pink mist".
The smoldering crater is littered with the artifacts of ordinary middle-class life in Baghdad - a crunched Passat sedan, a wrought-iron front gate, the armrest of a chair upholstered in green brocade and a broken bedhead.

A quick excerpt from this article. Saddam must be a real bad guy to drop 8000 pounds of explosives on somewhere he "might" be.

Pretty much anybody. I guess the old saw about kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out is at play here.

Under the PATRIOT Act, an agent must explain only why he or she believes that the records "may" be related to an ongoing terrorism or intelligence investigation before being allowed to get a search warrant. This significantly curtails privacy protections, for it dramatically lowers the threshold, from requiring evidence to merely stating a personal belief. - CommonDreams.org

That's why.

Why should something created by people enjoy more freedoms than people?

That isn't the only similarity between this adiminstration and Nazi Germany.

Such as not wanting to click an "innocent-sounding" link and then see someone eating crap I think that this is an area where a simple law will not suffice.

The problem is that there are two issues under discussion here. The first is, what constituted "adult material?" and the second is "what constitutes misleading terms?"

Congress has tried again and again to define "Adult materials" but every attempt has been fraught with some difficulty. Most people would agree that pictures of one man eating crap or graphic sex are for adults but what about the New York Times? They print (sometimes) graphic pictures of war and violence and discuss topics such as HIV, Starvation, Karl Rove, and other things that could scar children. So must they register as an Adult site? All they say is "news." The same gor for protests sites, and indeed most of the world.

With that in mind lets turn to the notion of fale advertising. Personally I support laws that oppose it and I am incredibly pissed that Nike is claiming the right to lie. But, all those laws deal strictly with factual statements. When Nike says that they do not employ slave labor or ford says that their Pinto does not fishtail and explode in flames then those are factual statements that can be independently verified.

When a domain name such as Whitehouse.com is put up then the question of whether or not it is misleading is one of opinion. I personally have entered it in by accident and been annoyed but, at the same time I recognize that ".com" signifies a different domain than ".gov" and expect it to be different. As other posters have pointed out witehousecom has been around for a while and is highly generic.

Therefore any court case on the issue would devolve into the owners claiming that they don't see it as misleading and some parent's group claiming that it is. The courts would be forced to decide between two opinions. This is, of course something that they do all the time but it is always fraught with landmines.

Moreover, opinions change over time, as do names. Consider "XXX." That string has long signified strong porn. Now that Vin Diesel has made a movie of the same name however that is open for debate. What do you say when some pre-teen Diesel fan enters XXX-fans.com or some other name and finds something that their parents don't want them to see. All of a sudden the porn distributors have a new legal challenge on their hands.

This is why I favor greenspaces such as the .kids domain (legislation that has already passed the house BTW). In this case the law allows sites to opt-in and for parents to restrict their browsers if they wish. Going this route is like taking your kids to a private park or a publiuc one. In thje private park you can let them run free. In the public one you have to take a part but now parents know that they are getting into. Similarly the rest of us aren't forced to censor ourselves everywhere for fear of someone, somewhere seeing "adult" things.

I wonder if this is motivated by the fact that some browsers treat "foo" on the URL line as "foo.com" automatically thus making a child's entry of "whitehouse" into "Whitehouse.com"?

Irvu.

omething that can be done

Commondreams do run some questionable stories, yes, but this one has actually featured in respectable media as well. I just picked the first link I could find.

If you think this theory is "out there," believe me, you haven't seen shit.

You might want to read this.

Well, don't forget that CNN and NPR had US Army "psy-ops" officers working in their newsrooms as "interns". WTF?!! Gee, I wonder why this news story was not more widely published in the US. The article below was originally published in the Guardian UK.

"CNN, NPR Let Army Staff Into Newsroom "

Of course they wouldn't. Such a group would not be insightful in the US. It wouldn't even be appropriate. Wouldn't make sense.

In the United States, corporations have the right to lie to you. God bless 'em! Yee ha!

The fool who ruled that corporations are the same thing as persons should be dug up and shot a few times. Someone please explain to me how this is supposed to benefit individuals?

I won't pretend that they are unbiased, but the news-related sites I read are the AP wire on Salon, Google news, Metafilter, and especially WRT recent events: Truthout, Common Dreams, and also Disinformation.

reed

They tried diplomatic pressure and other means with America alongside. It didn't work.

But it did work, in the end there were results and that's why a lot of countries wanted the weapons inspectors to go on with their work. If there is proof, that the Iraq has a significant number of B- or C-weapons the USA never presented it. In the end the Iraq was complying (though grudgingly) with the demands layed down by the UN. In the meantime north Korea more or less publicly announced their intention to produce nuclear bombs, so shouldn't Bush et al. strike at north Korea before going for the Iraq?

So when Bush couldn't convince the world that Iraq was threatening the world with weapons of mass destruction he switched rhetorics and talked about having to free the Iraq of that evil dictator Saddam. Now Saddam Hussein is an evil dictator, but that's none of the USAs business, as it hasn't been for the past 20 years (like when the USA even supported the current Iraqi regime). The last demand that Saddam now leave the country within 48 hours is not an ultimatum, it's a joke. Everyone can imagine that that'd be suicide for Saddam.

This war isn't about terrorism either, it's easier to construct a link from Osama bin Laden to Bush than to Saddam Hussein, and war isn't a means to get at terrorists who're probably not even in the attacked country. As a result of the war even more terrorist attacks are expected in the US and the threat level is raised.

So the war isn't about chemical weapons or terrorists, neither is it an idealistic mission to free the Iraq people from their evil dictator (or do the USA now intend to attack any country where the government isn't to their liking?). Many people (even inside the US) see it that way and that's how they arrive at the conclusion that the war isn't justified but is just about oil and distracting the american people from their problems at home.

This war is also a very bad precedent, as it shows that the USAs government doesn't care what the UN have to say on the issue, they do what they damn well please anyway. So now whenever any country wants to start a war all they need are some unsupportable and made up reasons and then they can go ahead? Or is that only right for the USA but noone else?

Also the arrogant way the USA dealt with the UN and other nations (and also opposition at home) has weakened the UN and hurt diplomatic relationships worldwide. More and more the USA is percieved

Well it's funny. The US government said the same thing.

Is this the same freedom that the US prisoners down in Cuba have. They are not prisoners of war (and so the Geneva convention is not being followed) and they are not prisoners of the State (because they have no legal representation). The US was one of the few countries that did *NOT* sign up to the UN anti-torture pact in 1984. And despite finally signing up to it 10 years later tried to block the treaty.

For any country (including the UK) to have the moral imperetive it must be *seen* to be better than the bad guys. That's just not happening.

Oooh, completely wild speculation brought on by your question. Interestingly, there's at least one story in a major US newspaper about how fractured the administration's case is.

(I want to emphasize, at the outset and several times below that I make no assertions here, pure flight of fancy).

Saddam is the skeleton in the current administration's closet. Details about his rise to power, the way he armed Iraq before attacking Iran, where such nuclear knowledge as the nation possesses really comes from, stuff like that. Explosive (excuse me) stuff. Members of the administration have had dealings with him in the past, and he knows where the bodies are buried, and who signed the contracts (or made the handshake deals with) whom. If that information ever got out, it would be war crimes tribunals for lots of them. Nobody -- and with good reason -- would believe it if Saddam made these assertions, but still, you can never be sure. If he's dead, though, he can't make them. And any papers he might leave behind can be dismissed as forgeries.

OK, not entirely pure, although I want to reemphasize that I do not believe it. But the fact is that Halliburton had deals in Iraq through the 90's (that is, Halliburton whose CEO was Richard Cheney), that a former (at the time) Secretary of Defense went to Iraq to normalize relations the day after the US State Department announced there was evidence that Iraq had used chemical weapons against Iran.

Ahh, but that doesn't explain Blair's support (he's not even willing to back the "al Qaeda" link!). And it's not like the links establish anything solid anyhow.

at this stage of worldwide tension (thanks a whole lot Washington) it's best to keep a very open and skeptical mind about anything reported in any press...

"I see this software and I find myself very afraid. It neatly packages up a military grade cryptographic communications solution and makes it freely available to the public."

As opposed to the people who package up miltary-grade firearms and make them freely available to the public?

Or indeed, to Iran, China, Iraq, Indonesia, and others...

Ah, but what about Patriot Act II, which can revoke citizenship ?!

I wonder if accused terrorists with "revoked citizenship" can still claim social security benefits, or for their dependents (whom may not be [accused] terrorists)? If my dad were a left/right/religious radical, I still want what's mine dammit!

The links are just abbreviations, so you have to explore to discover what they mean, but the advantage to this is that I can cite the abbreviation easily each time I link a story found via that source.

The idea of putting them in rows at the top is so that frequent visitors to my blog can jump to other sources if they don't find anything new/interesting at mine. (I call them 'jumpbars'.) Lately I've started adding little asterisks for sources that have recently done especially noteworthy updates.

My local startpage duplicates the jumpbars, and adds less-frequent sources like monthlies. When I started blogging I made a serious effort to learn the update schedules of every online periodical, and I created a generic startpage that summarised these. (It's badly out of date now.) The idea was to encourage people to copy this page and customise it to their interests. But knowing when zines usually update makes it easy to prioritize my surfing-schedule. (I wish all periodicals spelled this info out on their front page, eg The Onion comes out late Tuesday.)

I think NewsHub still isn't appreciated for its headline-aggregation pages. I'd use NewsLinx too except that most all the tech zines have decided to use obnoxiously junky html-design, so I stick with Slashdot and the Register for tech news.

My politics are lefty, and Sam Smith's Progressive Review gives a very deep daily summary with links, while Common Dreams reprints full articles from many major sources. A newcomer is Memory Hole that specializes in stories the mainstream media tries to suppress/ignore.

For space news, NasaWatch is tops. I've mostly given up on Drudge and Salon, and am having doubts about the BBC science page.

Other daily faves include the AstroPic of the Day, two poem-of-the-day sites, Zippy the Pinhead, and various blogs. A weekly that I think is underappreciated is Dean Baker's Economic Reporting Review that gives a very dry weekly critique of economics-propaganda in the NY Times and Washington Post. (They very systematically distort the facts with the obvious goal of redistributing the wealth upwards.)

Common Dreams is absolutely incredible. Pulls together progressive news and opinion from newspapers and magazines all around the world. You truly will be exposed to news that you will never see if you stick with the New York Times. Don't let the word 'progressive' scare you either. While I would agree there is a lot of what many would consider "liberal" opinion, the emphasis is on hard news. Just as I would never discount something that's been labelled 'conservative' out of hand, allow yourself the same liberty with this fine site and do yourself the favor of truly broadening your perspective. This is what the internet was meant for.

> So you slashbots should come down from your high horse.

Yeah... it's an fallacy to think that someone has to commit a crime to actually be guilty and punished.

>And "profiling" is a much better way of stopping terrorists instead of stripping down some 80 year old grandma from Kansas City all in the name of political correctness.

Instead, they deny some 74 year old catholic nun from Wisonsin from flying, based on their participation in the pacifist movement. This is, of course, much better.

Be aware of those militant pacifist.

Or those pesky tree-huggers. They cannot be allowed to fly either. Surely, they just want to fly to do some terroristic act. For what other reason should they want to fly? It is against their believe.

So, building up a list of people, who are not allowed to fly, based on their political, social and cultural background is not dubious?

By the way, book stores are also required to tell the FBI about who has bought which books and diving-schools have to inform them about their students. But they are not allowed to make this public.

This is, of course, not the slightest bit disturbing.

Especially since they are either reading books, Muslims, politically active....

Well, let's turn in around, they are not democrats or republicans or policitally uninterested, and white.

I will avoid the obligatory cites:
1,2

Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska (a former conservative radio talk show host) owns part interest (a $1M-5M dollar investment) in The Macarthy Group, which owns a company called "Election Systems & Software". Sen. Hagel was, at one time, the chairman of ES&S. ES&S supplied the voting machines that count approximately 60% of all votes cast in the United States, and they counted all the votes in Hagel's 1996 upset and 2002 landslide wins in Nebraska. ES&S is loathe to reveal the source code. Sen. Hagel neglected to disclose his interest in ES&S on his FEC Personal Disclosure statements, claiming that his interest in The Macarthy Group (a privately held banking company) was exempt as an "exempted investment fund" (a rule which exempts candidates from disclosing their mutual fund holdings). Hagel's financial disclosures (or lack thereof) from 1996-2002 can be found here. Also interesting, in 1996 Hagel became the first Republican to win a Senate seat in Nebraska in 24 years to win a Senate seat helped in part by an unprecendented show of support by the black community who had never before voted republican.

While the use of proprietry software and the lack of a paper trail can't help, the problem appears more fundamental. It you turn elections over to private companies to run, which is really what you are doing if you use these voting machines, there are huge conflicts of interest. Take Senator Chuck Hagel who won the last two elections, against expectations, where 80 percent of the votes were counted using machines supplied and run by a company he indirectly owned.

Even if there is no impropriety going on in this particular case, their is certainly the appearance of impropriety. The question of who makes, owns and runs the voting machines appears even more important than the software and proceedures used by them. Rather worryingly the use of exit polls in the 2002 election was almost non-existent, so there was no indepedent check on the results. Potentially the people who control the voting machines control the result of an election.

Normally, I'm not the conspiracy-theory type, tending more towards occam's razor and healthy skepticism, but This article , on an admitedly rather left-leaning publication, if at all accurate in merely it's factual assertions, disturbs me to no end. And of course, there's no mention in the mainstream media.

Actually, my point was slightly different -- I don't know whether a lot of people realize that we have a lot more rights than the Constitution grants us, because we added them. So what Congress giveth, it can legally take away. The slippery slope argument is usually a canard because often we have to find a balance between purpose X (e.g., "privacy") and purpose Y (e.g., "law enforcement") rather than discard one or the other. So saying "slippery slope" warns of a risk but does not point to a solution.

Here, Congress giveth, preempting a court test of the plan for suspicionless spying on citizens. I suppose many perceived that the ridiculousness of the proposal would have been a deal-killer, provoking a fight that would have taken down the entire Act, so maybe we're a shade worse off this way. Right now the folks proposing this stuff generally believe they're doing the right and popular thing, and the polls back them up. There's actually a broad if not deep public support for stuff like letting the government read email and otherwise limiting civil liberties, far more than before 9/11 challenged their complacency.

I do feel a part of my country rather than its opponent and take responsibility for what it does. I don't control it and can't change it (probably for the best!) but I did waste my time writing real, paper letters to the President, our Senators, and our Representative, something I've never done before. They're on the desk, and they're not specifically about this misdirected antiterrorism initiative, though it does come up. There's another more pressing policy initiative that bothers me more than Patriotgate.

Never take anything for granted: Write your friendly elected representative. Some staffer really reads all of the mail (not just to look for threats) and tallies the sentiment. Selected letters are forwarded to someone in charge. At least, I hope I'm doing more than provide filler for my FBI file. :)