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All that being said, there are some things (i.e. voting machines) that just should not be electronic-ized, and I feel this is one of them.

When it comes to counting voter-verified paper ballots, I would agree with you that this task should not be done electronically. Humans can (and do in many elections around the world) manually count voter-verified paper ballots.

But when it comes to preparing the voter-verified paper ballot, I don't see the harm with electronic assistance: electronic preparation & verification of voter-verified paper ballots is a serious advantage for blind and illiterate people to vote in private. The computer reads the candidate list aloud over headphones and the voter can press buttons to indicate their vote. This vote is printed on the ballot. All voters can use electronic devices to read the voter-verified paper ballot to double-check what the ballot says or bring in someone they trust to verify the ballot with them. Of course any electronic preparation or assistance must be optional for all voters.

All ballots should be voter-verified and on paper so they can be stored and recounted whenever anyone wants.

Champaign County in Illinois, USA uses a pair of ES&S machines to prepare and count (plus store) the ballots. Use of the ballot preparation machine is optional—one can fill in the bubbles manually with a pen or pencil. This machine can also (again, optionally) scan a completed ballot and report to the voter how it read the ballot (informing the user of how that user voted, and any over/undervotes). But all voters must feed their voter-verified paper ballot into the counting+storage machine. I despise the use of the second machine. I also despise that both of these machines run on proprietary software; some citizens in Urbana, Illinois are fighting for instant runoff voting for local elections and they have quite a fight ahead of them trying to convince the proprietor (ES&S) to change the vote-counting software to work with instant runoff. This is one reason I endorse the use of free software. Urbana ought to have the freedom to get whomever they want to alter the software to their liking. Urbana can pay to send their modified software through the government-required approval process.

1. John Burge and others tortured suspects; public still funding their defense.
2. Anthony Abbate beat a 110 lbs. female bartender for refusing to serve him more alcohol.
3. Six cops beat up four men in a bar because they wanted to play pool.
4. Police Commissioner Phil Cline resigns as a result of above two incidents.
5. Cops beat four after police cruiser runs red light and almost hits one of the men.
6. citizens demand police officers be accountable to the public and not Chicago Police Department.
7. More than 800 complaints by citizens filed against CPD's Special operations section.

The vast majority of police are honest, hard-working people, but they _will_ break the law when it suits them. I've been witness to a Driving While Black incident and have also been illegally detained and searched because I was watching two cops shake down a girl I had recognized from the University. Sadly, incidents of police brutality, police shooting unarmed citizens and police harrassment of certain communities is not an exception, it's common practice in Chicago.

Moderation: -1 (Blatant plagiarism)

On this trip to the state where George Bush launched his disastrous political career, I purposely decided to wear my impeachment shirt while traveling, as a way of gauging popular sentiment."

Haha. You mean like it's the job of the head of the EPA to advocate for the environment? Or the job of the director of the Fish and Wildlife Service to protect endangered species? Or the job of the US Attorneys to prosecute cases in a fair and nonpartisan manner? Or the job of the director of FEMA to respond to emergencies? (I'm not even going to bother linking to that one.)

I agree with you 100%--in fact, 120--but c'mon! Where was the outrage six years ago? This wolf-in-sheep's-clothes act has been going on since literally day one. It's partly gratifying to see people finally waking, but mostly just depressing and scary. Should things really have to sink this low before we start asking more from our leaders?

What we were looking for specifically being nuclear WMDs weren't there, but there were still chemical (sarin) WMDs that he should not have had.

Keep in mind that we helped him get the chemical weapons in the first place and then provided intelligence to him when he tested his chemical weapons on the Kurds. Also keep in mind that these weapons have a short shelf life. The stuff we finally found had already degraded into useless bombs.

Every president before him tried diplomacy, and every president before him was summarily ignored. While it's not our job to be the world police I think it would be far more regrettable in the long run to stand by and do nothing. I think the war could have been better executed, but to some extent we have been hindered by the lack of support from the international community.

This isn't entirely true. We helped keep Saddam in power. The Reagan administration helped Saddam with WMD and intelligence. Not only that but we lied about our intelligence in the lead up to war. It's interesting that the very reasons Bush Sr. gave for not marching into Baghdad have come to pass.

This war was never about getting rid of a Tyrant. He was our guy until he over reached and the Saudis, our allies who supply oil and terrorists, freaked out over the invasion of Kuwait and insisted we do something about him.

Hell, we even gave Saddam the green light to invade Kuwait. So why should the international community help us clean up a mess of our own making?

Tim Griffin, Michael Elston, Paul McNulty, Monica Goodling
Sara Taylor, Bradley Schlozman, Steve Biskupic, Alberto Gonzalez, David Safavian, Lurita Doan, Ken Tomlinson
Tom Delay, Bob Ney, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, Kyle Foggo, Duke Cunningham, Brent Wilkes, Mitchell Wade, Curt Weldon, Donald Rumsfeld, Jim Tobin
Scooter Libby, Manuel Miranda, Darleen Dryun, Thomas Scully, Chuck Mcgee, Pete Domenici
Porter Goss, Brant Bassett, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Jerry Lewis, Ed Buckham, Steven Griles, Mark Foley, Paul Wolfowitz, Ken Lay, Conrad Black, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Roger Stilwell, Tony Rudy, Jack Abramoff, Michael Scanlon, William Heaton, Adam Kidan, Neil Volz,

i am confused on the aspect of race in this instance.

in every encounter i have ever had with the police, in a car or on foot, i have never had my car or my person searched, even when i was a passenger in a car that was pulled over for drag racing in I5 in seattle. white people's encounters with the police often go swimmingly. black people's encounters... not so often.

also, he didn't get a DUI.

You Anonymous lying fuck Coward, the US has been torturing prisoners to death for years in Bush's Terror War. Go Cheney yourself, Mr Vice President.

The senate page is from Senator james Inhofe's office. He has been labelled the "dumbest" senator, so I would hate to trust my kids future to his ideas.

Consider John Edwards's bit about eliminating poverty. Of course, Socialist Worker doesn't like him, but they wouldn't, now would they.

I should mention that anti-Semite != anti-Jew as you seem to be infering, perhaps a little education is in order -

Semitic Semantics

Actually I have nothing against Jews, or Aryans, I do however have something against Nazis and Zionists and anyone else who would use violence against any group of people for no reason other than a spurious claim to be Gods Chosen People(TM), perhaps that's the difference between a Humanist and a Psychopath.

I am not confusing different opinions. I personally know people who have the contradictory belief system that I mentioned. Click on the names of some of the people posting on Slashdot and view their posting history and you will see the contradiction. Not all leftists believe the way I mentioned, of course, but the people with contradictory beliefs certainly make up the loudest voices.

But aside from that, your statement had flaws. The ACLU is not a leftist group... they are civil libertarians and have no official political stance outside of civil liberty issues. Nowadays, the ACLU is just as likely to be attacked by leftwing groups as they are by rightwing groups.

Michael Moore and Ralph Nadar both attack American companies for doing buisness with countries like China, and attack American companies for not doing buisness with countries like Cuba or for pulling investment out of Venezuala, which is essentially the same contradiction that I am talking about.

Ralph Nadar openly supports lifting all sactions on Cuba under the pretense that the U.S. shouldn't "force" its values on other countries and trade embargos are "economic imperialism", yet at the same time wants a whole new set of trade restrictions (which pretty much amounts to an embargo) on China over human rights issues and control of labor prices by the government (the same issues that exist with Cuba).
http://www.counterpunch.org/cuba0715.html
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/jun2000/nad-j24. shtml

Ralph Nadar is a popular and mainstream figure on the left, and it is perfectly reasonable to assume that his view match those of many people on the left.

Just curious - would the US govt be interested in message boards where ppl are discussing how to bomb a building?

Then why shouldn't the India govt be interested in boards where people are planning/ inciting the next riots

. Of course, having observed how the riots always occur at convenient times for the local politicos, I don't believe for one minute that this has anything to do with public safety. But I do question the holier than thou attitude adopted by many Americans over free speech when their military has willingly killed journalists many many times.

Take note too of the special attention paid to the fact that Bruce Held [Sandia's chief of counterintelligence]. was a CIA officer, and remember that the CIA and all the associated apparatus of oldboys are under attack from the neocons because they wouldn't suppport the Bush administration's contention that Iraq had WMDs.

I smell a big stinky rat that just popped out of the sewer with this story. I can't help remembering the Wen Ho Lee story which waved the flag of patriotism to persecute a "foreigner" and think that if the USA is worried about foreigners stealing information then they should look to the Israelis

At best this is an unclear story, at worst it's a move by the neocons to ratchet up tension against China. Probably it's a way at having a go at some non-neocon security establishment likely loyal to the Democrats.

Iran is not threatening Israel with destruction. Iran's president has not threatened any action against Israel.

The most infamous quote, "Israel must be wiped off the map", is the most glaringly wrong. In his October 2005 speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad never used the word "map" or the term "wiped off".

His message was, in essence, "This too shall pass."

I'm glad to see you New York boosters coming out of the woodwork, but I'm not the one who's interested in an East vs. West fight... my contention is that the East coast media is -- in particular I've seen many whiney complaints about google in places like the Wall Street Journal (how dare these young whipper snappers tell us that we've been doing our IPOs wrong? And what about that "don't be evil" nonsense, are they accusing us of being evil?).

It is certainly true that despite the many flaws of the New York Times (and they're not small: Miller is gone but Gordon is still there). in comparison, the West coast has yet to come up with a daily newspaper worth paying much attention to. On the other hand, the British press kicks New York's ass... even if you insist on a conservative bias, the Economist totally trashes the American news weeklies.

Why exactly it is that the West coast press is in such poor shape is an interesting question... back in the early internet era, the San Jose Mercury News was doing some interesting things with combined print and on-line journalism... but there's the strange case of Gary Webb who re-opened the issue of the CIA-cocaine connection there, and got people annoyed enough that the Merc backed down.

The current version of the San Francisco Chronicle, always a lame newspaper, is put out by the Hearst corporation, and from what I understand is screwing up and losing money -- and this is the only daily newspaper in a city full of well-educated people who are definitely readers (SF spends the most on books per capita of any city in the US), and a fair number of them are politically concerned people who care about local news quite a bit.

Once the Chronicle goes down... or maybe even if it doesn't, if Hearst continues to subsidize it... there will be interesting times in San Francisco.

No, I meant more like these-

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4097267. stm - Missle defence shield test fails
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/12/national /main666433.shtml - Missle defense fails again
http://www.counterpunch.org/stclair09232006.html - Star Wars Goes Online...Crashes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/824828.stm - Test failur fuels skepticism
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn2924 - US missile defence test dodges decoys
http://www-tech.mit.edu/V125/N5/long4_5.5w.html - Missile Defense System Test Fails
http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Second_U.S._anti-missi le_defence_system_test_fails -Second U.S. anti-missile defence system test fails

I did know the americans bought a big piece of property here in the chaco, But did not know it was mr bush himself behind it.

Some voted him in because of non-science issues like Supreme Court nominations and anti-abortion stance. (Please don't say abortion isn an issue of science - it's an issue of metaphysics and ethics.)

No, abortion is a simple question of science and public health. Abortions are due to (a) a lack of reliable, scientific, high-school sexual education (or even a lack of education in general) including an ethical outlook on procreation and gender relationships, and: (b) a lack of available medical products, such as the pill, condoms, RU-486 (etc) to the general public. Uninformed, sexually active adults and teen-agers then become pregnant, and are unable to terminate the pregnancy before egg implantation, due to the fact that RU-486 is extremely hard to obtain in most of the States.

Check the stats: most countries where sexual education are a part of a normal school curriculum (Scandinavia, Germany, etc) have a much lower rate of abortion than the USA. Therefore, basic biological science is a way to avoid unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Considering that an unwanted pregnancy can seriously mess your life up -- especially for teen-agers -- I consider abortion the least bad solution anyway. Feel free to disagree with me on that (and I am sure you will).

Many of us who voted for him realized we were getting some good things (Justice nominations, etc.) and accepted that being at the cost of known bad things (leaning toward corporate interests), and never realized how bad a deal we were getting (settlement with Microsoft, ignoring global warming research, lying about and invading Iraq, caving to terrorists by trading away our liberties and refusal to torture, etc.)

Considering the fact that George W. Bush already had strong psychopathic tendencies long before the 2000 election, as well as a history of alcohol abuse (and, possibily, drug abuse), I consider your argument to be extremely weak. And that's putting it politely.

The fact is, when it comes to your country, you should always, always, always make an informed decision. Regardless of your religious affiliation. Voting for someone with a history of, shall we say, substance abuse, disregard for human life and violent behaviour is not exactly what I'd call an informed decision. No matter what you believe.

There's nothing anti-science about intelligent design. Intelligent design is just saying, "Hey, the universe seems pretty well ordered. What are the chances of that?" It's a metaphysical inquiry that's informed by science. There's no problem with teaching that (or don't you want students to question assumptions, such as reductionistic Darwinism (aka Epicurianism)?) You're probably upset with the teaching of a 6,000 year old earth based on the book of Genesis. I agree that that's a hard one to reconcile with carbon dating, etc., but that's truly a step beyond intelligent design.

Oh my, oh my. Where to begin?

• First of all, if I remember well, I never talked about Intelligent Design in my original post. I wonder why you have to drag this question in this discussion... But I am nit-picking, I guess.
• Second, if you think the Universe is pretty well ordered, I think you should read a lot more about science. Subjects like, let's see... basic biology, chaos theory,

There are roughly 3 Million public schoolteachers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher in the US.

The total combined salary caps of the NFL, NHL, MLB, and NBA comes to 10 billion dollars (my own calculation based on the '06 salary caps, per team: 102M, 44M, 128M, and 53M respectively).

Even if we liquidated the ENTIRE salary caps of all the teams, we would produce only a ~$3300 / year increase in teacher salaries.

Athletes are overpaid. They are not the reason teachers are underpaid. Even if all the money that people *choose* to spend on sports was instead spent on being teacher fanatics, it wouldn't make a difference to the majority of teachers.

I dislike overpaid athletes as much as most, but its just a convenient 'America is so hedonistic' scapegoat to roll out.

Should we be in Iraq? I don't think so, but others do. I know we have to stay the course now, until we can get out of there without collapsing what little government we've managed to prop up. It is our responsibility as a nation, now, along with the UK.

Whether or not we should be there is immaterial. If we can afford to spend $6.4 Billion/month in Iraq (not including afghanistan) http://www.counterpunch.org/wheeler04272006.html, we can afford to spend $6.4 Billion/month extra on improving education. That could simply translate into a ~$2000/month increase in teacher salaries, or whatever else.

The average starting teacher salary is $31000 in the UShttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teacher, and this is for the people who are entrusted with the safety and education of those we don't trust to do it themselves. Spending what we do on Iraq on education, the average starting teacher salary could be greater than $50,000.

If teaching were lucrative, maybe some of our brighter members of society would choose to do it.

When CNN re-aired the interview, the mention of Mehlman was edited out with no indication anything was missing.

Now, if you're a Jew and state that Arabs are sub-human - that, of course, would be a totally different matter.

go vote if you have not voted yet. no excuses

if you do not vote, you forfeit all right to complain about anything your government does until november 2008 (by which time, you will have learned your lesson and will vote, right?)

the gore bush fiasco back in 2000 should have finally once and for all taught everyone how much their vote really does matter

if the government does something you don't like from 2007-2008, and you do not vote today, then go find a mirror, and look at yourself for blame

and pal around with GWB laughing about what suckers we are.

http://www.counterpunch.org/cp10202006.html

It's a list of claims that Chavez has lied about this or that. Some of them sound like reasonably serious issues, most of them strike me as small beans, and over all I have no sense of why I should believe what the fellow is saying.

He apparently used to work for the New York Times, but then quit to focus on more partisan writing: Financial Times Reporter "Can't Possibly Be Neutral"

As you might expect, there are people who are critical of his writing:

• Alek Boyd: Francisco Toro is Bizarrely Out of Touch
• Venezuela's Media Tycoons - The Anti-Chavez Echo Chamber

Speaking as a fat, techie douchebag I'm interested in who you suggest I vote FOR? This leads on to the question as to what exactly we're all supposed to be sorry about?.

Because if your answer is that I should vote for one of the Democrats and the reason is supposed to be that they'll stop invading and occupying other countries and stop spying on us then I call bullshit.

The Democrats have the clearest possible record of voting (with a couple, and I mean two or three) for and proposing and crafting the exact same war-mongering, state-enabling, anti-citizen, freedom-curtailing measures that the Republicans do.

I'll lay odds that you're going to deny this vigorously and come out with some Lesser Evilism hypothesis, possibly even citing Chomsky's support of the war-criminal John Kerry during the last presidential elections.

So don't bother. I've heard it before and it doesn't convince me. The Democrats are every fucking bit as bad as the Republicans http://www.counterpunch.org/frank10232006.html and the only way to change this country is to vote for actual, committed anti-war candidates and people that are serious about environmental rectitude.

For everyone out there spluttering and sneering I issue the following challenge:

1. Draw up a minimal, simple list of say 4 or 5 policies you feel are essential for national well-being
2. Stick it up on the corkboard in your cubicle
3. Try to find a candidate that promises that s/he'll work to make them happen (and give you a blowjob)
4. Sit back and watch their voting record over the next term.
5. if slow witted {repeat steps 1 - 4 for several elections} else break;
6. Wake up and realize that this system isn't designed with you in mind.

Why would you ask an AI to look for threats if you are not even willing to listen to your close friends and allies?

Read for instance this letter from the French Ambassador to the United States in 2003
http://www.counterpunch.org/levitte02142003.html

It clearly warns about the mess a war in Irak would get us all in to.
It states that Iraq is not a threat and it predicts the rise in terrorism worldwide, the destabilisation of the region and the civil war in Irak that we see now.

One month after this the whole "freedom fries" thing started.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/03/11/sprj.irq .fries/

This AI will just add data to the heap that is allready ignored.

Although i never heard of RAW, i see he was the hero during the New Age era, where
he mixed rare known facts about the Illuminati, with fiction and occasionally added
some jokes. I guess in the heydays of his work he was very popular amongst people
who knew something about this cult.

However things have changed, This Illuminati, Kaballa, Mason stuff has turned out
to be not fiction or satire but the scary truth. Just remember Hugo Chavez's
recent appearance inside the U.N. What happened at the U.N. is of major importance.
Hugo Chavez steals the show at the U.N. quoting from Noam Chomsky latest book
"Hegemony or Survival" [1]. Although wearing a normal suit, he did a almost genuine act
of exorcism from behind the council speakers table:

http://www.niburu.nl/showarticle.php?articleID=143 86
http://www.dailykos.com/comments/2006/9/23/213219/ 005/59#c59
http://www.axisoflogic.com/artman/publish/article_ 23036.shtml
http://www.counterpunch.org/chavez09202006.html

"The devil is right at home. The devil, the devil himself, is right
in the house.

"And the devil came here yesterday. Yesterday the devil came here.
Right here." [crosses himself] "And it smells of sulfur still today.

Yesterday, ladies and gentlemen, from this rostrum, the president
of the United States, the gentleman to whom I refer as the devil,
came here, talking as if he owned the world. Truly. As the owner of
the world."

The real media file can be found here :

"Hugo Chavez, Venezuelan Pres., at U.N. General Assembly"
rtsp://video.c-span.org/project/ter/ter092006_chav ez.rm

Recently Greg Palast did a exclusive interview with Hugo Chavez from
his home in Venezuela :

"Hugo Chavez: An Exclusive Interview with Greg Palast"
http://www.gregpalast.com/hugo-chavez-an-exclusive -interview-with-greg-palast

pnm:rm.bbc.net.uk/news/olmedia/1985000/video_19856 70_ven22_palast_vi.rm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/ar chive/1985670.stm

So why is this a important breakthrough? It seems the tide is turning.
If Bushes hegemony was a reality, Hugo Chavez would never been able to
make this speech. Also remember that the President of Iran recently
made his heroic appearance in New York. The crock hunter may have died,
but here's the real hero :

http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/iranian-presid ent-steals-the-show-in-new-york/2006/09/22/1158431 902380.html

As the plot is folding, the analogy with Tolkiens trilogy, The Lord of
the Rings, is certainly there. "The Evil Eye" on top of the pyramid is
evident. The analogy with the Ring to rule all others Rings may not
seem so straightforward. It seems that this Ring is commonly known as
the holy grail, but the holy grail is a hoax in itself. So what is the
holy grail in fact? Chris Everard from EnigmaTV made a serious attempt
[2] to explain things. He claims that the full knowledge and
understanding of a scripture called The Cabballah is what ordinary man
can give ultimate power with the culmination in power the capability to
kill someone with a

It was interesting to read the very detailed answers given to the questions, but I couldn't help feeling that Jay didn't fully address the second part (and to me the more important) that I asked: namely how will it not be the case that accepting corporate sponsorship (in this case Reuters' $100,000) not inevitably lead to control of the organization.

Jay answers this by saying that he'll make sure that there's no undue influence brought to bear on the editor. That misses the point that Chomsky (yes, I know hate him if you must but he makes some good points) & Herman make about media censorship, which is that the people that occupy positions in which they know they're funded by big business are RARELY directly censored. Instead most of the time they self-censor (see paragraph 4). The Pacifica Radio Network made the decision to avoid government or corporate underwriting explicitly because they realised that any normal, reasonable person is influenced by the source of their funding and has it hovering in the back of their mind.

I like the idea that Jay proposes of having professional editors sorting the wheat from the chaff but believe that although the site may have initial success and credibility it will inevitably be slowly co-opted because of the process of media hegemony detailed by Chomsky and Herman.

B.t.w. anyone idolizing Bob Woodward should think about this perspective. I think he and Seymour Hersh are prime examples of how well intentioned individuals are unable to make an effective difference within a corporately funded system.

And Olbermann and John Stewart are the centrist voice on television today, right?

Both conservative. The only liberal press we have are the likes of The Nation and CounterPunch.

For sources, all it takes is a Google search; is that too difficult:

USSR's call for disarmament

Non-proliferation treaty's requirement for nuclear powers to disarm

*stan nuclear free zone (and US hypocrisy)

Also, we aren't talking about corruption in any other party because the Republican party is the one in power here

How convenient. So in New Jersey, Chicago, South Florida, California, etc. you're all over the corrupt Democrats? Unlikely. Incidentally, the Maryland House of Delegates and the Maryland Senate are controlled by Democrats. The Maryland judiciary (court of appeals) is no bastion of conservative thought either, led by chief judge Robert Bell. So what if you've got a conservative governor - the rest of the government (especially those who control purchasing) are all liberal.

and they're the ones pulling this shit

Interesting. I haven't seen a single Democrat oppose election fraud and demand identification. They come up with the most bizarre excuses - claiming they're poll taxes (when the legislation pays for the cost of the ID if someone has a financial hardship), claim racial profiling (as if minorities don't have IDs to buy beer, smokes, etc.) and other bizarre arguments. Yes, Diebold is incompetent and should be thrown over a cliff. Yes, ES&S doesn't give a damn about security (they claim that's the responsibility of the vendor of the operating system they use) and should be banned. But as long as we continue wearing partisan blinders, we'll be stuck with this mess.

It's all "Hey, look over there... while we steal the vote here" misdirection.

bring up what the Democrats did 30 years ago every time we talk about what the Republicans are doing now.

Where've you been for 30 years? South Florida's hanging/swinging chad and poorly designed "a vote for Gore is a vote for Buchanan" ballets was all incompetent Democrat election commissioner stuff. New Jersey and Chicago are constant nightmares. What about the convictions in Wisconsin for Democratic party employees interfering with elections? What about the Democrat party sponsored voter registration programs at illegal alien rallies? I'm glad you do recognize the corruption of 30 years ago - you should read about how Halliburton has repeatedly bought elections in Texas and how they made a Senator who later became President. Any guesses who that could be? Hint: His wife is one of the largest Halliburton stock owners.

The reality is that both parties are at war to out-do each other, while fat cats like Halliburton buy and control both sides. As long as we have fools who excuse the criminality of their party and oppose necessary reform (like showing a photo ID to vote) based on absurd, irrational excuses, we'll have fraud.

The reality is that we geeks miss the big crime while getting agitated about the insignificant ones. We're looking for grand conspiracies involving voting machines that are complicated and require incredible collusion, while the obvious crime stares us in the face. Let me ask: why go to all the trouble to hack into machines when a political party can load up bus loads of illegals, drive to Wisconsin, show no ID and swing an election with thousands of bogus votes? You don't need sophisticated tools to hack the cash register when the drawer is already open.

If you really want to stick it to the fat cats, quit blaming the other party and force both to clean up their acts.

I had to reply to this ridiculous comment.

Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that Ariel Sharon order Sabra and Shatilla.

Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they killed over 770 Palestinian children since 2000.

Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they built the apartheid wall to rob them of their land.

Israel cares so much about the Palestinians that they're starving them.

And on another note: Israel apparently cares about their own Israel-Arab citizens so much they didn't even provide them with bomb shelter during the recent Lebanon/Israel conflict.

It's time to stop supporting racism and get you're facts straight.

I'd say that animosity against the US in the Arab street was pretty strong in 1979 when Arabs stormed the US Embassy in Tehran and took 66 people hostage. That certainly wasn't George W. Bush's fault.

So you equate open support for Israel with "arrogance"?

Only a great fool would believe that Iran does not intent to develop nuclear weapons with thir nuclear program, especially considering that Russia has offered them as much enriched Uranium as they want for energy generation, and they are already sitting on one of the largest energy reserves in the world.

Russia and China both voted to authorize military action against Iraq, why would it be any different with Iran if they posed a similar threat with WMD's?

I agree with what you said.

However, this doesn't seem right to me:

"It would have been nice if having a president who's a former alcoholic could have led to some honest dialog..."

George W. Bush is not a former alcoholic. Once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic. His behavior is exactly what can be expected from an alcoholic: He is dishonest, violent (Iraq war), avoids being analytical, and is often disrespectful and anti-social (as in calling Russian President Vladimir Putin "Pooty-poot").

Unocal wants to put a pipeline through Afghanistan from the oil fields inland. That's why the U.S. military is in Afghanistan.

Unocal now has its contract. The idea is that the U.S. taxpayer pays for oil company security, thus raising the profits. The real cost of one gallon of gas is maybe $6.00. Three dollars directly paid, and three dollars indirectly paid through taxes.

Gonzo is not crap. Gonzo and New Journalism were a reaction to by a society under a lot of sress following the more staid 1950's. It was fuelled by the rising tide of drugs, rock, and pop culture, and the subject matter was often those sources of social tension, the war, and famously in Thompson's case, Nixon The Crook.

I think the reason "Gonzo" and New Journalism is so underappreciated today is two-fold. One, there is just no longer any capacity to be shocked by anything. Gonzo at it's best is shocking writing that jolts one out of a staid, or concrete mindset. But what is there left to be shocked about in 2006? I think one could argue pretty persuasively that Steven Colbert does Gonzo Journalism every night on Colbert Report. But Colbert Report is considered satire, not journalism and is largely dismissed by mainstream media. Ditto John Stewart, of course.

The second reason for the depreciation of Gonzo is simply dilution through imitation. There are/were so many HST wannabes (including yours truly) that the style has been run into the ground. Few people know or acknowledge that Wolfe, Thompson, Terry Southern, et. al. were serious writers who worked very dilligently at the craft of writing. It all looks thrown together, but that was artifice. For example, Thompson as a young writer used to spend evenings retyping Hemingway and Fitzgerald so that he could get a feel for the words as they were laid down on the page. Few so-called Gonzo writers today are that serious about their craft.

More's the pity. We could use some good Gonzo writing nowadays. With all the hair-pulling within and without the media and its close observers with regards to whether "objective" journalism and "journalism as usual" serves the purposes of an informed republic, how refreshing would it be to see a serious journal take the wraps off a new writer in the gonzo style willing to rip the status quo a new asshole. Giant bats are optional.

"We don't need to see it -- just report the story."

The defacement is the story. Were you being serious?

"You want to protest the war, fine -- but don't exepct me to care what you have to say when you can't make your voice heard in a public and legal forum."

And what sorts of "creative" things do you think groups of people do when their voice has been made null and void? When you attempt to have your "voice heard in a public and legal forum" only to be ignored because you simply aren't as powerful as the accused, what then?

So, to recap: don't show the page in question for which this story is directly mentioning, and shut up and get in line with the other voiceless people until you can build bigger bombs or find a pocket of oil in your backyard? Nice...

No asshole who runs an oil company deserves a 400 million dollar retirement package:

"Where are the excess profits going? One flow is into the huge executive salaries and retirement packages. ExxonMobil's retired CEO, Lee Raymond, got his rubber-stamp board to give him one man a $400 million going away package."

http://counterpunch.org/nader07292006.html

There is NOTHING they have done to deserve that compensation period, end of story. Not only did they not work harder than the person cleaning the toilet they worked FAR less hard. Don't be surprised that this sort of rip off results in anger when people find out about it. By engaging in way excessive greed in the long run you will kill the goose that laid the golden egg. Georgie boys popularity is in the 30s, people are starting to figure out what you strip the assets and run corporate con artists are all about.

For example Charles Hurowitz made hundreds of millions of dollars stripping assets from Pacific Lumber and logging the Redwood forests of Humboldt county at an unsustainable rate. Not only did that cause landslides that killed people, floods, and irreparable environmental damage, but it ruined the town of Scotia, and destroyed a family owned lumber company. See this article for details

http://www.northcoastjournal.com/072006/cover0720. html

So don't even give me that bullshit about how the market fairly compensates people for hard work, more often than not the market produces barren eco-systems, ripped off workers, and corporate crooks who fly the coop with hundreds of millions of dollars leaving wrecked communities and bankrupt corporations in their wake.

And no I don't believe in the government either, your best bet is to ALWAYS scrutinize large unaccountable organizations that have control over your life or resources. Screw both the U.S. government and the corporations for the terrible suffering and destruction both have caused in the world.

I am one of those people. So, are you saying then BillG created a charitable foundation in his name not to continue controlling his earned money without paying taxes, but to actually help poor people?

Do you remember that he 'donated' windows licenses to Indian schools to help poor kids? And the fact that he furthered M$ monopoly has nothing to do with it, right? If he cared about indian kids and being impartial, may be he should have donated cheap computers without an OS installed. Just a thought.

What about when he gives money to Africa to buy AIDS drugs from the company he has $200m stake in?

BTW, yes, I am also one of those people who spell M$.

the USA is absolutely dominating the EU for GDP
 
That's because the US have been inflating their GDP for years. For example, buying computer hardware adds the computer's price to GDP, but it also adds "virtual benefits" for increase of productivity that amount to several times the worth of the hardware. I'm not saying other countries aren't using similar creative calculations to make themselves look good, but the US are outdoing everybody at this sport.
 
Googling, you will find the occasional economist writing about it. But most economists don't care because they know GDP is a rather inconsequential piece of data that is easily forged and does not have direct consequences on anything. The unwashed masses like to know it, to have a feeling of knowledge of the inexplicably complicated webwork that is international economy, and if they can remain confident in the US for a bit longer and delay the inevitable crash of our current, relatively stable international trade relations, the better. The informed quietly prepare. (Example: Dick Cheney invests in European bond funds)

Yeah we sure have made life better for the Iraqi people. You have to wonder why they aren't grateful we are there to steal their oil and leave their society in ruins:

http://counterpunch.org/blum06222006.html

" Loss of a functioning educational system. A 2005 UN study revealed that 84% of the higher education establishments have been "destroyed, damaged and robbed".

The intellectual stock has been further depleted as many thousands of academics and other professionals have fled abroad or have been mysteriously kidnapped or assassinated in Iraq; hundreds of thousands, perhaps a million, other Iraqis, most of them from the vital, educated middle class, have left for Jordan, Syria or Egypt, many after receiving death threats.

"Now I am isolated," said a middle-class Sunni Arab, who decided to leave. "I have no government. I have no protection from the government. Anyone can come to my house, take me, kill me and throw me in the trash."[1]

Loss of a functioning health care system. And loss of the public's health. Deadly infections including typhoid and tuberculosis are rampaging through the country. Iraq's network of hospitals and health centers, once admired throughout the Middle East, has been severely damaged by the war and looting.

The UN's World Food Program reported that 400,000 Iraqi children were suffering from "dangerous deficiencies of protein". Deaths from malnutrition and preventable diseases, particularly amongst children, already a problem because of the 12 years of US-imposed sanctions, have increased as poverty and disorder have made access to a proper diet and medicines ever more difficult.

Thousands of Iraqis have lost an arm or a leg, frequently from unexploded US cluster bombs, which became land mines; cluster bombs are a class of weapons denounced by human rights groups as a cruelly random scourge on civilians, particularly children.

Depleted uranium particles, from exploded US ordnance, float in the Iraqi air, to be breathed into human bodies and to radiate forever, and infect the water, the soil, the blood, the genes, producing malformed babies. During the few weeks of war in spring 2003, A10 "tankbuster" planes, which use munitions containing depleted uranium, fired 300,000 rounds.

And the use of napalm as well. And white phosphorous.

The American military has attacked hospitals to prevent them from giving out casualty figures of US attacks that contradicted official US figures, which the hospitals had been in the habit of doing.

Numerous homes have been broken into by US forces, the men taken away, the women humiliated, the children traumatized; on many occasions, the family has said that the American soldiers helped themselves to some of the family's money. Iraq has had to submit to a degrading national strip search.

Destruction and looting of the country's ancient heritage, perhaps the world's greatest archive of the human past, left unprotected by the US military, busy protecting oil facilities.

A nearly lawless society: Iraq's legal system, outside of the political sphere, was once one of the most impressive and secular in the Middle East; it is now a shambles; religious law more and more prevails.

Women's rights previously enjoyed are now in great and growing danger under harsh Islamic law, to one extent or another in various areas. There is today a Shiite religious ruling class in Iraq, which tolerates physical attacks on women for showing a bare arm or for picnicking with a male friend.

Men can be harassed for wearing shorts in public, as can children playing outside in shorts.

Sex trafficking, virtually nonexistent previously, has become a serious issue.

Jews, Christians, and other non-Muslims have lost much of the security they had enjoyed in Saddam's secular society; many have emigrated.

A gulag of prisons run by the US and the new Iraqi government feature a wide variety of torture and abuse -- physical, psycho

India has done well in some senses at IT. But this is not a parable of private enterprise unchained. The topmost -- elite of elite Indian technologists / engineers come from a handful of institutions known as the Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT). Most of the Silicon Valley people are from there.These are entirely state-set up, state funded institutions. Not a single one of them is private (established or owned. Now, there are alumni in the US pushing to privatize the very institutions that gave them everything.

Most western correspondents only travel south west from Bangalore to Kerala to deride as "hidebound" a state that elected a Communist government in 1957, distributed land to the poor, has decent health stats, near 100 per cent literacy. In recent years the neoliberals have been running thing there too and in early June this year, in a by-election, voters gave their opinion on such matters as recent efforts to privatize education. Normally elections in Kerala are razor thin affairs. This by-election saw the Congress Party candidate shattered by a Communist Party (Marxist) in the Left Democratic Front who won with a margin over the Congress candidate of more than 40,000 votes, a Kerala record. The LDF is reckoned as a cinch to win the Kerala elections next year.

If you're that lazy, here's an article.

I have a feeling that IHBT though; either that or you're just not paying fucking attention. Oh well.

Ding, ding, mod parent up. The people of Nazi Germany thought they were free too:

http://www.thirdreich.net/Thought_They_Were_Free.h tml

the dirty secret of successful totalitarian control is rooting out the dissidents quietly while making sure the people who go along with it think "if I'm not doing anything "wrong" what do I have to worry about...?" Keep a constant watch on the watchers, some good resources to start:

Libertarian/Paleo right

http://antiwar.com/
http://www.lewrockwell.com/
http://www.amconmag.com/

Moderate:

http://buzzflash.com/
http://moveon.org/

Left:

http://counterpunch.org/
http://commondreams.org/
http://indymedia.org/

That should keep you busy for a while...

"What that law does state is that Palestinians who marry Israeli citizens would not be automatically granted Israeli citizenship."

And it also means the Palestinian spouse can't move to Israel to live together as man and wife. I don't think an Israeli citizen can easily move to the West Bank to live with their spouse either. The Israeli military restricts who can move to the West bank, apparently favoring to only allow Jews to move their to create "illegal" settlements secretly blessed by the Israeli government. Yes I think you can get married but you probably wont be able to live together and any children you have will be in legal limbo.

Contrast this with any non Palestinian who can marry an Israeli and get citizenship with no problem. Any Jew from anywhere in the world can easily move to Israel and get citizenship and in fact many American Jews have duel citizenship where they are given an Israeli passport merely because they are Jewish. I think Paul Wolfowitz, architect of the disaster in Iraq, carries
dual citizenship and duel alegience which is bad for a key decision maker in the Pentagon.

You can try to rationalize it anyway you like but in its current form it is a racist, apartheid policy designed to cement Israel as a Jewish state. It is a hard and fast rule a Jew from anywhere can get citizenship in a heart beat and its nearly impossible for Palestinians to even return to what was their home for centuries until they were driven out, often by threat of violence like the massacre at Deir Yassin.

"The Palestinians are currently at war with Israel."

Yes and likewise the Israelis have been at war with the Palestinians since they pushed them out of the homes 60 years ago. You act like its only the Palestinians who are at war. Far more of them die at the hands of the Israelis than the other way around. Its also unlikely there will ever be any real peace short of the Palestinians completely capitulating and accepting life in walled ghettos in Gaza and the West Bank for the rest of time, most probably in eternal povery since the occupied territories are economically unviable inside an Israeli noose.

If you had been driven out of your home and in to refugee camps for 60 years I'm pretty sure you would be doing the same things the Palestinians are doing.

Onealternative viewpoint to consider and .

What do you define as illegal? Seems like the illegal things this administration does gets overlooked and lost in a myriad of "National Security" crapaganda. Do you think that its legal for the NSA to wiretap the entire Internet? Under who's juridstiction? If I were a lawyer I would sue the government for breaching my client confidentiality. No one specified that my line as an attorney should be tapped. So why should the NSA under this administration be allowed a free ride to break the law? You should take the time to read about the statistical improbability of the NSA actually narrowing down and finding terrorists with their wiretapping actions.

mass surveillance of the entire population is logically plausible if NSA's domestic spying is not looking for terrorists, but looking for something else, something that is not so rare as terrorists. For example, the May 19 Fox News opinion poll of 900 registered voters found that 30% dislike the Bush administration so much they want him impeached. If NSA were monitoring email and phone calls to identify pro-impeachment people, and if the accuracy rate were .90 and the error rate were .01, then the probability that people are pro-impeachment given that NSA surveillance system identified them as such, would be p=.98, which is coming close to certainty (p_1.00). Mass surveillance by NSA of all Americans' phone calls and emails would be very effective for domestic political intelligence.

But finding a few terrorists by mass surveillance of the phone calls and email messages of 300 million Americans is mathematically impossible, and NSA certainly knows that. The Politics of Paranoia and Intimidation

Say what? Sounds similar to what the Bush administration via the NSA is doing only on a public level. For those who want to ramble on about privacy and abuse take note that just about every other week some company has lost their records, or someone has infiltrated their networks and gained access to records. If that's not enough to make you throw in the towel when it comes to protecting your privacy, never ever apply for a credit card, never sign a document, never reveal anything about yourself to anyone. What most fail to realize when complaining about these things is that hardly anyone takes the time to read the Terms of Service agreements. Whether its via purchasing something online, or paying your T-Mobile bill. If one did, one would take note at craftily worded crud a vendor created spelling out how they plan to share your information with others. So who is to blame when you bought something from Company A who sold your info to Company B and Company B loses your info or dishes it out. Or... Who will you blame when Company A who promised not to disclose your info is bought by Company B who made no promise to... As for privacy, get over it... Its diminishing slowly because you the people are allowing it.