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What can SV do for HS? Probably not much. Unless HS is serious about stopping terrorists which it appears they aren't: http://www.gregpalast.com/palast-charged-with-jour nalism-in-the-first-degree#more-1487 Boy I feel so much safer now that Exxon can call the department of Homeland Insecurity and have journalists arrested. Detective Pananepinto confirmed that, "Louisiana is still part of the United States," subject to the first amendment and he was therefore required to divulge my accuser. Not surprisingly, it was Exxon Corporation, one of a handful of companies not in love with my investigations: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=269 What a wonderful way to protect us from terrorists. Round up all the journalists at the behest of big corporations. Of course they won't do anything about the thousands of people walking into the USA over the open border with Mexico because no muslim terrorist would ever think of doing that. They are too busy eating pork, drinking booze, paying prostitutes for services and going to strip clubs when they aren't flunking flying lessons.

"all the irregularities" ... showing what they are

...which just might partly explain why the only attempted terrorist attacks since then have been by "homegrown" terrorists without solid operational ties to bin Laden, who already got what he wanted.

Bill Gates realizes that secrecy among scientists is slowing down aids research. As a condition for his funding of their aids research, he is insisting that they share their data ..

I agree. The oil companies and right-wing have poured millions for many years into discrediting global warming and environmentalists in general. This has been profusely documented.

What's surprising is if this can be linked directly to the Republican Party. After all, we know they worked many ways to undermine the last two national elections, but a direct link to dirty tricks like this would be hitting an all-new low. (As if cooking elections isn't low enough.)

http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/34

besides ignoring black votes, and hijacking the dumb christian heart lands, they totally faked the election result.

CHANEY admitted it pure and simple to the OIL BARRANS, ie ceos etc.. in russia.

http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/34

In Ohio, there were 153,237 ballots simply thrown away, more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was fives times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. In all, over three million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. The official number is bad enough-1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, reported to the federal government's Election's Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count. Correcting for the under-reporting of the undercount, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. And there are certainly more we couldn't locate to tote up.

http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/34

besides ignoring black votes, and hijacking the dumb christian heart lands, they totally faked the election result.

CHANEY admitted it pure and simple to the OIL BARRANS, ie ceos etc.. in russia.

http://www.gregpalast.com/madhouse/index.php/34

In Ohio, there were 153,237 ballots simply thrown away, more than the Bush "victory" margin. In New Mexico the uncounted vote was fives times the Bush alleged victory margin of 5,988. In Iowa, Bush's triumph of 13,498 was overwhelmed by 36,811 votes rejected. In all, over three million votes were cast but never counted in the 2004 presidential election. The official number is bad enough-1,855,827 ballots cast not counted, reported to the federal government's Election's Assistance Commission. But the feds are missing data from several cities and entire states too embarrassed to report the votes they failed to count. Correcting for the under-reporting of the undercount, the number of ballots cast but never counted goes to 3,600,380. And there are certainly more we couldn't locate to tote up.

Maybe the database is ChoicePoint. What Mr. Rambam is mentioning sounds suspiciously a lot like a couple of recent articles (here and here) by Greg Palast where he makes the case that ChoicePoint and companies like them have provided an outsourced service for the structure of a police state, where government oversight cannot go, and has gone so far as to call them "the private KGB".

Maybe the database is ChoicePoint. What Mr. Rambam is mentioning sounds suspiciously a lot like a couple of recent articles (here and here) by Greg Palast where he makes the case that ChoicePoint and companies like them have provided an outsourced service for the structure of a police state, where government oversight cannot go, and has gone so far as to call them "the private KGB".

"Gates' game is given away by the fact that his Foundation has invested $200 million in the very drug companies stopping the shipment of low-cost AIDS drugs to Africa.

"[He] says his plan is to reach one million people with medicine by the end of the decade. Another way to read it: he's locking in a trade system that will effectively block the delivery of medicine to over 20 million."

Killing Africans for profit and PR

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$.

It means that they knew about 9-11 before it happened. Mossad knew, and you can bet NSA was monitoring Mossad:

http://www.sundayherald.com/37707

They started monitoring domestic calls about the time Cheney had his oil task force meeting, about the time the planning of the Iraq invasion started (Jan 2001).

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=417&row =0

>The closest we have come to having no voting rights was the last predential ellection, where the liberal parts of Ohio had far too few voting booths

Closer than that: http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=385 . Pick a largely African-American district near a military base. Do a mass mailing there. Mark the envelopes "Do not forward". Collect the bounces from the addresses of African-Americans who are in Iraq. Build a spreadsheet of them. You now have the ability to walk into the election offices and say that everyone on the list doesn't really live at their registered address. If the would-be Democratic voter walks into a polling station, they can still fill out a provisional ballot. If still overseas, their absentee ballot will be treated as invalid and simply not counted.

You also have no voting rights if someone opaquely controls the counting of the votes.

When are they going to talk about their "mistake" in 2000 when they helped Bush steal the election in Florida by illegally removing blacks from the voting rolls? Or has everyone forgotten about that by now? It'd sure be nice to see some of these traitors to our country get their Constitutionally mandated punishment, vs. being interviewed in magazines.

http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=502&row=0

THE SPIES WHO SHAG US

  by Greg Palast

I know you're shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint. ...

****

It's worth reading, that and Choicepoint's responses. Palast (American with a BBC broadcast) has an entire chapter on the subject called "Double Cheese with Fear" in his book on the subject, "Armed Madhouse".

http://www.gregpalast.com/massacre-of-the-buffalo- soldiers#more-1418

"African-American Soldiers Scrubbed by Secret GOP Hit List"

"A confidential campaign directed by GOP party chiefs in October 2004 sought to challenge the ballots of tens of thousands of voters in the last presidential election, virtually all of them cast by residents of Black-majority precincts." ...

"Here's how the scheme worked: The RNC mailed these voters letters in envelopes marked, "Do not forward", to be returned to the sender. These letters were mailed to servicemen and women, some stationed overseas, to their US home addresses. The letters then returned to the Bush-Cheney campaign as "undeliverable."

"The lists of soldiers of "undeliverable" letters were transmitted from state headquarters, in this case Florida, to the RNC in Washington. The party could then challenge the voters' registration and thereby prevent their absentee ballots being counted." ....

"The BBC obtained several dozen confidential emails sent by the Republican's national Research Director and Deputy Communications chief, Tim Griffin to GOP Florida campaign chairman Brett Doster and other party leaders. Attached were spreadsheets marked, "Caging.xls." Each of these contained several hundred to a few thousand voters and their addresses.

"A check of the demographics of the addresses on the "caging lists," as the GOP leaders called them indicated that most were in African-American majority zip codes."

As this is my first post I'm not sure if this will be perceived as trolling, but anyway I am posting because I am astounded by the level of modded up posts either defending or pro Bill Gates and Microsoft especially as this is slashdot. Why the hell anyone would believe that Bill Gates is really just charitable and this is not him aggressively as ever, furthering the interests of himself and Microsoft with this foundation amazes me. Bill Gates is not leaving Microsoft, he has merely been delegated a greater role of furthering Microsoft in developing countries. In this BBC article he is quoted as saying there is a "common thread" between his work at Microsoft and the foundation. In undeveloped countries this common thread could refer to the influence his "charity" has on their governments to conform to TRIPS. For those of you who do not know what TRIPS is it basically ensures countries wanting to trade goods with the USA and other TRIPS countries respect the protection of intellectual property rights. Countries which do not conform can be disciplined with trade sanctions. And of course Microsoft's software is protected under TRIPS. An article written explicitly on the self serving nature of this 'charity' is located here. In developed countries this common thread also could refer the positive PR halo effect his "charity" has on Microsoft.

Another aspect of this is that from the gatesfoundation website roughly a third of money grants have been for education (over 2 billion). Ok cool, but we all know what operating system they are training teachers with, deploying in schools and setting up wider training facilities for. Basically Bill Gates and his foundation are planting the seeds of Microsoft in the people and their governments for future profit. You only have to look at the history of Microsoft and the types of people he surrounds himself with to know that this is just business as usual. Bill Gates has not gone soft, he's only 50, why would a such a ambitious guy stop doing what his does best now?

Bill Gates has made a twist to the saying "You have to spend money to make money" to "You have to give to 'charity' to make money".

This reminds me of U Po Kyin from Georg Orwell's "Burmese Days".

Of course, the gates foundation is about covering up mass deaths, not redeeming bad deeds.

Yes, Greg Palast certainly works for the BBC, as a simple search on the BBC's web site will reveal.
 
...pray tell why no major news reporting agency, eager to stick it to Bush especially if their main audience is outside the US...

Some of the CMM (corporate mass media) did report on Palast's (and others) findings. But there are two key factors at play here. One is how much coverage was done in the US, where the story mattered most. In the US the CMM took a "unifying stance" and went out of their way to "help heal" the country and to not discredit or undermine the "winner". In short, there was a deafening near-total silence on the issue of "election irregularities".

The other factor is the classic CMM tactic of "placement" and a failure to connect the dots, a failure to paint the big picture. The CMM often portrays stories as an isolated event, rather than to connect the story with other stories.

That tactic, combined with placing -- or "burying" -- the stories deep in the inside pages of a newspaper with the "dirty details" of the story in the middle or end paragraphs of the article are classic tactics to minimize the impact. This underreporting amounts to a de facto censorship even though the CMM can truthfully say they "covered" the story.

...why don't you just elect a president that doesn't suck next time, 'kay?

You're making the wild assumption that the American people actually elected Bush in 2000 and 2004. (How soon we forget!)

For simplicity's sake (!) we'll ignore US laws which bias our elections to favor only Republicans and Democrats. We'll also ignore that under the US Constitution the antiquated and undemocratic Electoral College selects the president and not the American people ('cause the American people clearly chose Gore in 2000). And, of course, we'll ignore that Corporate America funds our elections and politicians so effectively that corporations sometimes -- literally -- write laws that they then have their politicians enact.

As a Brit I don't expect you to be familiar with such dirty details like that.

But it was the BBC's own Greg Palast whose investigations proved that the 2000 and 2004 elections were blatantly rigged using a wide variety of techniques -- ground-breaking journalism confirmed by others much later.

I'd bet that those calls are being recorded, too. But so what? How do you know who is calling whom if the phone can't be traced? Perhaps they steal the cell from businessmen, use them for a few days and then abandon them. The NSA could track them back to their legitimate owner, but what about the insurgent that was actually using it?

Without a relational database filled with tons of other personal information, just intercepting a phone call isn't going to do squat. You need voiceprint software, you need street-level info on the caller. Is he a real threat? Where does he hang out? Which faction is he involved with? Simply intercepting a call tells you none of this, usually. And how many Arabic speakers does the NSA employ? If it's anything like the CIA, not nearly enough.

You know, maybe we wouldn't be losing this war so badly if the NSA concentrated on getting intel in Iraq instead of spying on Americans at home. It seems that they are doing a bang-up job of infringing on our rights, but they haven't actually achieved any meaningful successes when it comes to defeating terrorism.

Kinda makes you wonder if fighting terrorism is the real goal....

http://gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=502&row=0

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Greg Palast
May 12, 2006

THE SPIES WHO SHAG US
THE TIMES AND USA TODAY HAVE MISSED THE BIGGER STORY -- AGAIN

I know your shocked -- SHOCKED! -- that George Bush is listening in on all your phone calls. Without a warrant. That's nothing. And it's not news.

This is: the snooping into your phone bill is just the snout of the pig of a strange, lucrative link-up between the Administration's Homeland Security spy network and private companies operating beyond the reach of the laws meant to protect us from our government. You can call it the privatization of the FBI -- though it is better described as the creation of a private KGB.

The leader in the field of what is called "data mining," is a company, formed , called, "ChoicePoint, Inc," which has sucked up over a billion dollars in national security contracts.

Worried about Dick Cheney listening in Sunday on your call to Mom? That ain't nothing. You should be more concerned that they are linking this info to your medical records, your bill purchases and your entire personal profile including, not incidentally, your voting registration. Five years ago, I discovered that ChoicePoint had already gathered 16 billion data files on Americans -- and I know they've expanded their ops at an explosive rate.

They are paid to keep an eye on you -- because the FBI can't. For the government to collect this stuff is against the law unless you're suspected of a crime. (The law in question is the Constitution.) But ChoicePoint can collect it for "commercial" purchases -- and under the Bush Administration's suspect reading of the Patriot Act -- our domestic spying apparatchiks can then BUY the info from ChoicePoint.

Who ARE these guys selling George Bush a piece of you?

ChoicePoint's board has more Republicans than a Palm Beach country club. It was funded, and its board stocked, by such Republican sugar daddies as billionaires Bernie Marcus and Ken Langone -- even after Langone was charged by the Securities Exchange Commission with abuse of inside information.

I first ran across these guys in 2000 in Florida when our Guardian/BBC team discovered the list of 94,000 "felons" that Katherine Harris had ordered removed from Florida's voter rolls before the election. Virtually every voter purged was innocent of any crime except, in most cases, Voting While Black. Who came up with this electoral hit list that gave Bush the White House? ChoicePoint, Inc.

And worse, they KNEW the racially-tainted list of felons was bogus. And when we caught them, they lied about it. While they've since apologized to the NAACP, ChoicePoint's ethnic cleansing of voter rolls has been amply rewarded by the man the company elected.

And now ChoicePoint and George Bush want your blood. Forget your phone bill. ChoicePoint, a sickened executive of the company told us in confidence, "hope[s] to build a database of DNA samples from every person in the United States ...linked to all the other information held by CP [ChoicePoint]" from medical to voting records.

And ChoicePoint lied about that too. The company publicly denied they gave DNA to the Feds -- but then told our investigator, pretending to seek work, that ChoicePoint was "the number one" provider of DNA info to the FBI.

"And that scares the hell out of me," said the executive (who has since left the company), because ChoicePoint gets it WRONG so often. We are not contracting out our Homeland Security to James Bond here. It's more like Austin Powers, Inc. Besides the 97% error rate in finding Florida "felons," Illinois State Police fired the company after discovering ChoicePoint had produced test "results" on rape case evidence ... that didn't exist. And ChoicePoint just got hit with the largest fine in Federal Trade Commission history for letting identity thieves purchase 145,000 c

Hello. Sorry to hear about your trouble. I remembered some old news about ChoicePoint, found this on Google -> http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=55&row= 1 Looking at the events from a different angle, wouldn't it kinda give license to select which people's records were marked as potentially in unfriendly hands? Take care

Completely off-topic but there are ways of controling who votes and thus the outcome of the election. For example "scrubbing voter rolls"

Other methods include reducing number of polling stations available in a district, thus inducing long lines and discourging people from voting. Examples available here and here

And then there is the Stalin quote... "I don't care who counts the votes, as long as I decide who is on the ballot"

Why are the rich and powerful obsessed with fighting disease? I wonder why they don't feed these people rather than stick a syringe in their arms. I think all these foundations are probably just fronts for medical research groups with suspicious motives (race specific biological weapons, the choice of the new war generation). I know the IMF force female sterilisation programs in South America so countries can borrow from them and the IMF can "fix"(up :-) their economies. Ever wondered why the police in Brazil are quick to murder orphans? The IMF promotes and funds abortions in third world countries to again not cause major economic withdrawals.

If Bill is sincere then good luck to him, but feeding the third world should be of greater importance.

Check out Greg Palast's articles, he's been exposing the work of the IMF for years. Must be difficult being a legitimate journalist (who investigates and doesn't just read "news" off of a printer!!) at the BBC these days.
http://www.gregpalast.com/

Naturally occurring things can be patented just as easily as "constructed" ones. The article itself cites the commercial work of Craig Vetner who sequenced much of the human genome for commercial gain. His work allowed for things such as the human growth hormone to be patented. It is naturally occuring but still a patented item.

One primary example is Mr. John Moore who found out, after the fact, that his doctor had patented him without his knowledge. Moreover the courts ruled that he had no recourse save to sue his doctor for failing to inform him in advance that he was a hot property. The doctoer (or rather the large pharma company) still holds the patent. See here.

In the early 90's biotech companies engaged in a wave of patent-piracy wherin they sent people all over the world to snap up patents on naturally occuring but rare plants, seeds, animals, and yes, people. In some cases they then attempted to enforce their patents on the same groups they collected them from. Imagine being an indian farmer and being told that you suddently had to pay royalties to grow the exact same grain that you had always grown before because now monsanto owned it.

Moreover it isn't just the patents on the genes themselves, it is also the patents on their use. To take a related issue consider AZT. AZT was develioped by the U.S. government and then 'sold' under the Byah-Dole act. When it was discovered that the drug could be used to fight off HIV (Again U.S. Government work done at the NIH, and CDC, at Taxpayer expense) Glaxo filed a patent In Britain for their 'discovery' and then used that patent (via international IP agreements) to take control in the U.S. In a sense they performed a 'patent-elevation' attack to gain control of publicly funded discoveries in the U.S. via international agreements. Each new discovery made by anyone is patented to elevate their control still further until all anti-retrovirals infringe upon their territory. Thus it's not just the drug but, uses, dosages, etc. that they own. (see here).

Want to know why your insurance bills are high? It's not because of frivolous lawsuits against doctors. It's because of patents on medicines, uses, dosages, techniques, etc. Courtesy of IP your cold is now private.

They own DBT Online which royally screwed up in Florida during the 2000 election.

http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=122&row =1

I don't think I've ever heard anything about ADM price fixing.

here
here
here

does it matter? meh, probably not, but you didn't hear before, and now you have.

It is different - slightly.

In Russia, information is manufactured so that their kangaroo courts can convict slightly shady characters like Mikhail Khodorkovsky on different artificial trumped-up charges.

In the USA, Choicepoint is contracted to manufacture a suspiciously faulty system and a trumped up list of "felons" to be barred from voting in a critically contested election in a critically contested state.

But you are right: in both countries information is used to manufacture artificial felons for political and monetary gain.

What I was alluding to in another post is absolutely true. There is nothing unconstitutional about this law, it is completely permitted under the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution. It is absolutely legal that the government do this.

The following articles dicuss some related US Court rulings This article dicusses random monitoring by ISPs.

AbstractThis article takes the position that the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) does little to provide protection against internet service providers (ISPs) that randomly monitor e-mails for the purpose of turning over evidence of criminal activities to law enforcement officials. The article provides a background to the special privacy issues that arise in the context of computer technology and ISPs. An analysis of the Wiretap Act, as amended by the ECPA, reveals that an implicit statutory prohibition against random surveillance by ISPs for the purpose of assisting law enforcement does in fact exist. Further, remedies for violations of this provision are deficient because of many exceptions, and because criminal sanctions and the exclusionary rule are not included. Recent court decisions are analyzed which collectively suggest that the Fourth Amendment does not protect against evidence obtained from ISP surveillance. Finally, the article concludes by providing suggestions as to how the public's privacy interests against random ISP monitoring can and should be protected.

In Councilman v. United States, the court considered precisely when the Wiretap Act forbids the interception of e-mail. The statute and prior judicial decisions made clear that electronic communications -- unlike wire communications such as telephone calls -- were not protected once the communication was complete and the message was in storage. ... Councilman told the court to go further, ignoring whether a message was still in transit and asking only if it was obtained from computer memory or a hard drive.

Twice, the Americans have voted into office GW Bush, and such can only be interpreted as support for his policies. That he won by a significant margin in 2004 is proof that the majority of Americans believe in what he is selling.

The phrase "Democracy just means you get the government you deserve" might be more fitting than "a majority believe what he's selling"

When you get a chance give the following Greg Palast article a read: Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program

Additional articles related to questionable activities related to the 2000 & 2004 elections can be found at: Greg Palast columns

Also interesting is an article at Online Journal about Black Box Voting's finding of questionable code used in Diebold's optical scan voting machines.

What I was alluding to in another post is absolutely true. There is nothing unconstitutional about this law, it is completely permitted under the powers granted to Congress in the Constitution. It is absolutely legal that the government do this.

The following articles dicuss some related US Court rulings This article dicusses random monitoring by ISPs.

AbstractThis article takes the position that the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) does little to provide protection against internet service providers (ISPs) that randomly monitor e-mails for the purpose of turning over evidence of criminal activities to law enforcement officials. The article provides a background to the special privacy issues that arise in the context of computer technology and ISPs. An analysis of the Wiretap Act, as amended by the ECPA, reveals that an implicit statutory prohibition against random surveillance by ISPs for the purpose of assisting law enforcement does in fact exist. Further, remedies for violations of this provision are deficient because of many exceptions, and because criminal sanctions and the exclusionary rule are not included. Recent court decisions are analyzed which collectively suggest that the Fourth Amendment does not protect against evidence obtained from ISP surveillance. Finally, the article concludes by providing suggestions as to how the public's privacy interests against random ISP monitoring can and should be protected.

In Councilman v. United States, the court considered precisely when the Wiretap Act forbids the interception of e-mail. The statute and prior judicial decisions made clear that electronic communications -- unlike wire communications such as telephone calls -- were not protected once the communication was complete and the message was in storage. ... Councilman told the court to go further, ignoring whether a message was still in transit and asking only if it was obtained from computer memory or a hard drive.

Twice, the Americans have voted into office GW Bush, and such can only be interpreted as support for his policies. That he won by a significant margin in 2004 is proof that the majority of Americans believe in what he is selling.

The phrase "Democracy just means you get the government you deserve" might be more fitting than "a majority believe what he's selling"

When you get a chance give the following Greg Palast article a read: Florida's flawed "voter-cleansing" program

Additional articles related to questionable activities related to the 2000 & 2004 elections can be found at: Greg Palast columns

Also interesting is an article at Online Journal about Black Box Voting's finding of questionable code used in Diebold's optical scan voting machines.

From what I've read, it looks as though electronic voting machines would be rather beneficial compared to punch card machines for the screwed over (read: minority) districts that had an unreasonable level of vote spoilage due to bad machines in the last two elections (That said, there should be a paper trail).

Minority voters were 7 times as likely to have their votes not counted than whites (on the punchcard machines). Why? In a white district, if you make a mistake, it spits the card back at you and you start over. In a minority county, the machine is likely to take the card and silently discard it. In 2000, our brave and effective media told us that this disparity was due to the minorities being 7 times stupider than the rest of us.

In fact, this setting on the machines was *intentionally changed* in black districts in Florida in 2000. Similar things happened in several states, including Ohio in 2004.

Moral of the story? Electronic voting machines should be the least of our concerns. Our voting system is fundamentally flawed. Our elections are run by partisan members of the states' governments (Republican or Democratic), which is just asking for conflicts of interest. Guess what, we've got them.

For more info on the 2000 election, read: http://www.gregpalast.com/bestdemocracymoneycanbuy chapter1.pdf

You can already read how the elections were rigged.

http://www.gregpalast.com/

"The World Bank is for fighting poverty in third world nations."

I think you mean "The World Bank is fighting for poverty in third world nations," according to Greg Palast's investigative journalism.

AZT was invented by the U.S. govenrment, that is, the research was funded by the U.S. Govenrment. Subsequent research demonstrating that the drug could be used on live HIV was done at the expense of (and personal risk of) a U.S. govenrment researcher at the National Institute of Health Dr. Hiroaki Mitsuya.

Nevertheless Glaxo a U.S.-British drug company has been ating as if they have patents on the drug. They do, in Britain. After research by the NIH (funded by U.S. Taxpayers) Glaxo filed for a patent in Britain and has since used U.S.-British trade treaties to gfive that patent force in the U.S.

EU patents are no different.

See the article Here.

Madison County's elections supervisor, Linda Howell, had a peculiarly personal reason for distrusting the central voter file: She had received a letter saying that since she had committed a felony, she would not be allowed to vote.

• http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=327
• http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2001/08/ 04/florida/print.html
• http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20040517 &s=palast
• http://www.newtimesbpb.com/issues/2002-10-31/news/ news2.html

Lawsuit on same:

• http://www.naacp.org/news/2000/2000-11-28.html

What seems to be happening is that one of the Costa Rican government's cash cows, the internet (and communications, in general) seems to be threatened by this. As such, they are concerned that they won't have the budget to provide the services they currently do. Of course, I have no way of knowing specifically what their budgetary constraints are.

Personally, I think the banning of VoIP would be a bad thing considering the usual ethics of Costa Rica. (For example, they don't maintain a standing army). But I'm going to wait to hear from Willy Smith (hey Willy!), at the Linux Gazette since he lives there and probably has a much more informed opinion than myself.

What seems to be happening is that one of the Costa Rican government's cash cows, the internet (and communications, in general) seems to be threatened by this. As such, they are concerned that they won't have the budget to provide the services they currently do. Of course, I have no way of knowing specifically what their budgetary constraints are.

Personally, I think the banning of VoIP would be a bad thing considering the usual ethics of Costa Rica. (For example, they don't maintain a standing army). But I'm going to wait to hear from Willy Smith (hey Willy!), at the Linux Gazette since he lives there and probably has a much more informed opinion than myself.

That's because you haven't looked at the list. Mistake? 90% of their 57,000 voters wrongly disenfranchised is a "mistake"? Hank Asher, is that you?

Have a look at the actual disenfranchizing list (annotated fragment), and keep trying to let these scumbags off the hook.

In partnership with to Hank Asher, Floridian Iran/Contra coke pilot, ChoicePoint was founded by Derek Smith, whose DNA analysis company scored a multimillion dollar contract to identify victims from Ground Zero samples.

This ID theft fiasco is but the tip of the iceberg. ChoicePoint helped throw Florida voters off the registration lists in the infamous 2000 election, and made a pretty penny off 9-11. God knows what else they're up to. See http://www.gregpalast.com/ Quote: "For ChoicePoint, with its 15-billion-plus records on every living and dying being in the United States, Ground Zero would become a profit center lined with gold. Contracts would gush forth from War on Terror fever not hurt by the fact that ChoicePoint did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president." Full article at http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=356&row =0

This ID theft fiasco is but the tip of the iceberg. ChoicePoint helped throw Florida voters off the registration lists in the infamous 2000 election, and made a pretty penny off 9-11. God knows what else they're up to. See http://www.gregpalast.com/ Quote: "For ChoicePoint, with its 15-billion-plus records on every living and dying being in the United States, Ground Zero would become a profit center lined with gold. Contracts would gush forth from War on Terror fever not hurt by the fact that ChoicePoint did something for George W. Bush that the voters would not: select him as our president." Full article at http://www.gregpalast.com/detail.cfm?artid=356&row =0

Due to the high costs of prescription medicines and vaccines, a lot of developing countries are looking at the current patent regime as an oppressive blockade to their access to them. Eliminating patent protection for these products would allow them to become more available for these people.
Naturally, Bill doesn't want to see patent protection weakened in markets he sees as growth opportunities.
See also: BILL GATES: KILLING AFRICANS FOR PROFIT AND P.R.

Sorry. The story is fully documented in spite of the recently discovered and possibly forged memos (even the "independent" investigation didn't say they were forged). Bush's disappearance occurred the same month mandatory drug testing first went into effect for service personel in the national guard. Any record of Bush having taken the mandatory physical during his missing year of service does not exist. Years later Bush would be arrested and convicted of drunk driving. George W. Bush is the first person in history to have a criminal record before becoming the United States presidents. Boy, how standards have slipped. First, Nixon. Then Bush. The Republican party sure can pick them. Would you like some dirty tricks with your chips?

As ever, everyone ignores the core truths of the story: that George W. Bush is a draft-dodger, that his father's contacts got him into one of the cushiest jobs in the National Guard, and that he disappeared prematurely from his duty. You don't see anyone disputing any of these - at least, without trying to change the subject, as I mentioned above. CBS' Independent Review Panel wrote that Mary Mapes, producer of 60 Minutes, "ignored information that cast doubt on the story" - obviously false, since the story has been around for years without any attempt to debunk it.

Interestingly, the CBS panel consists of just two people, both of whom have deep and long-running ties to the Republican party. Dick Thornburgh, formerly George H. W. Bush's Attorney General, was the guy responsible for burying the Exxon Valdez story; while Louis Boccardi, formerly CEO of the Associated Press, was resposible for burying the story of Oliver North's dealing with Iran (a story that, coincidentally, originally surfaced from the AP itself). By now, the real issue here should make a lot of sense.

You don't give a damn about fair journalism, you just don't want anyone talking about views you don't agree with.

Links please to back up your opinion that Bush won 2000 after all votes were counted?

After all, there are many reports that indicate the opposite, the BBC and Guardian even produced a documentary about voting fraud in Florida 2000

Yes, but you are forgetting that the Governator "Groper" Schwarzenegger is the one who repealed the increased car registration fees in California which was put in place by Republicrat Gray Davis. The Governator himself is a *big* fan of those Humvees, and isn't about to eat the cost of maintaing the roads just because of a silly thing like fuel efficiency.

Oh yeah, and California would have a lot more money to spend on roads if Arnie wasn't settling the whole Enron court case that California had filed for cents on the dollar. Link Here

I can't belive people actually want to change the Constitution to allow this fuck to run for President.

And then there's the situation with the provisional ballots.

See Just count the ballots at the back of the bus.

According to Greg Palast's site, the spoilage rate is more like 3% for the entire US.