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We don't need literacy tests to bring back Jim Crow and clean thousands of Black people from the voter rolls. All we have to do is hire ChoicePoint and "Leave the Scrubbing to Us!(tm)"

Certainly post-mortem investigations showed that Bush probably did actually win the plurality of votes in Florida.

"Bush was elected because of how the political system here was designed, not because he 'cheated'."

BS. He is "president" for one reason only, because a buddy judge APPOINTED him. They tried cancel the re-counting of the votes and stuff, remember?

Check your facts. Please.

I'm not sure which is scarier, the idea that these databases are being opened to anyone who has a credit card and a willingness to snoop on their neighbors, or the idea that they should be restricted so that only "legitimate" businesses like telemarketers can get it.

Considering the recent actions of ChoicePoint, I find the latter far more scary than the former. At least with the former, I can log into their site and see what they say about me. I can't do that with ChoicePoint. Imagine how different things might be in our country right now if all the banned voters in Florida had been able to see that they were incorrectly on the list before the last Presidential election.

Here's some evidence for ya:
www.gregpalast.com

-S

The list was determined in this manner:

Most of the voters (such as "David Butler," a name that appears 77 times in Florida phone books) were selected because their name, gender, birthdate, and race matched--or nearly matched--one of the tens of millions of ex-felons in the United States. Neither DBT nor the state conducted any further research to verify the matches. DBT, which frequently is hired by the F.B.I. to conduct manhunts, originally proposed using address histories and financial records to confirm the names, but the state declined,the cross-checks. In Harris's elections-office files, next to DBT's sophisticated verification plan, there is a handwritten note: "DON'T NEED."

The US Civil Rights Commission report on the 2000 FL elections reported that unauthorized vehicle checkpoints took place near voting places: This was a minor impact compared to some of the other tactics which disenfranchised thousands. The NCAA lawsuit settlement resulted in sweeping changes to FL election laws. One of the most important exposes of FL election fraud was done by investigative reporter Greg Palast. Anyone who's unaware of the massive election fraud which put Shrub in office must be limiting their news sources to the censored, right wing US news media.

The 1998 Florida Election audit found a large number of unregistered and invalid votes cast. State Elections supervisor Ethel Baxter (a Democrat) ordered a list compiled containing names of registered voters who should not be allowed to vote. This list included deceased people who voted in 1998 as well as convicted felons, who are not allowed to vote in Florida.

This list was distributed to local county election officials, who had the option of using the list to ban people from voting. Many counties opted not to use the list.

Local county election officials notified everybody on the list at least 30 days before the election that they would not be allowed to vote, and gave procedures to dispute their inclusion on the list.

Only 5 people officially complained that they were incorrectly included on the list. When the Federal Election Commission held hearings on the matter, NOBODY came forward to claim they were denied the right to vote.

The NAACP sued and Florida settled out of court because the proceedure changes had already been implemented.

This was such a non-story that the only "journalist" who deemed this newsworthy was British reporter Greg Palast. 5 seconds on his web site completely removes any credibility he may have had as he appears to be dedicated to discrediting the Bush presidency. This is a non-story.

Sheep isn't a verb.

And when 50,000 largely black, largely Democrat voters are denied their legal right to vote because they were falsely accused of being felons by a computerized list that was inaccurate to begin with and encouraged to be more so by the Florida government, then saying an election was stolen isn't flamebait.

Well, it is, but who said the truth can't be flamebait?

And how about focusing some of this energy towards an increased awareness of our international activities? Ever wonder why we're being targeted by these people? Check out thisBBC journalist

-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.

"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast is available in the US and the UK.

The New US edition is the one to go for, since the New (and old) UK edition is censored because of the UK's oppressive libel laws and the Official Secrets Act (the latter, I believe is the case.)

UK people should order it from american sites, not UK ones if you want the uncensored version, and make sure you go for the "New US Edition."

"The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" by Greg Palast is available in the US and the UK.

The New US edition is the one to go for, since the New (and old) UK edition is censored because of the UK's oppressive libel laws and the Official Secrets Act (the latter, I believe is the case.)

UK people should order it from american sites, not UK ones if you want the uncensored version, and make sure you go for the "New US Edition."

Actually, the source of the story itself is investigative journalist Gregory Palast, who did an interview with Democracy Now radio. Now, the Register article may be based on the interview that Palast did with the radio station, but that doesn't change the fact that it was Palast who did the story - and not some radio host independently reporting it as news.

If the name Gregory Palast sounds familiar to anyone, it's probably because he wrote The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which is definitely interesting reading. The first two chapters are even freely available from his own website:

1. The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida
2. The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them

Actually, the source of the story itself is investigative journalist Gregory Palast, who did an interview with Democracy Now radio. Now, the Register article may be based on the interview that Palast did with the radio station, but that doesn't change the fact that it was Palast who did the story - and not some radio host independently reporting it as news.

If the name Gregory Palast sounds familiar to anyone, it's probably because he wrote The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, which is definitely interesting reading. The first two chapters are even freely available from his own website:

1. The Unreported Story of How They Fixed the Vote in Florida
2. The Bushes and the Billionaires Who Love Them

Here are some news stroies (Google is your friend):
* Palast, BBC journalist, says war is profit-maker for Bush allies
* Post-war carve-up to benefit CDMA standard, record industry
* Journalist says media is biased on war

I encourage you to check out Greg Palast's site. He is the BBC reporter that the original article mentions and the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Interesting read.

Here are some news stroies (Google is your friend):
* Palast, BBC journalist, says war is profit-maker for Bush allies
* Post-war carve-up to benefit CDMA standard, record industry
* Journalist says media is biased on war

I encourage you to check out Greg Palast's site. He is the BBC reporter that the original article mentions and the author of "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy". Interesting read.

Anyone concerned with electoral fraud in the US, the use of poisoned databases to cull legitimate voters from the electoral rolls, and the future of voting might want to read Chapter One - Jim Crow In Cyberspace [PDF] of the book.

Choice Quote -

"One can't sabotage democracy with felon lists alone. Balloteating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.
"Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology. Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems and Software of Omaha. On their Web site, there is a neat demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and successfully cast an "over-vote," a double vote for one candidate. Then the site crashed my laptop. But hey, the bugs will be worked out . . . or worked in.
"The question is, who else is touching the touch screen? In the case of the iVotronics, it's Sandra Mortham. Ring a bell? She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state, the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronics representative in Florida."

Anyone concerned with electoral fraud in the US, the use of poisoned databases to cull legitimate voters from the electoral rolls, and the future of voting might want to read Chapter One - Jim Crow In Cyberspace [PDF] of the book.

Choice Quote -

"One can't sabotage democracy with felon lists alone. Balloteating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.
"Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology. Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems and Software of Omaha. On their Web site, there is a neat demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and successfully cast an "over-vote," a double vote for one candidate. Then the site crashed my laptop. But hey, the bugs will be worked out . . . or worked in.
"The question is, who else is touching the touch screen? In the case of the iVotronics, it's Sandra Mortham. Ring a bell? She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state, the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronics representative in Florida."

Anyone concerned with electoral fraud in the US, the use of poisoned databases to cull legitimate voters from the electoral rolls, and the future of voting might want to read Chapter One - Jim Crow In Cyberspace [PDF] of the book.

Choice Quote -

"One can't sabotage democracy with felon lists alone. Balloteating machines worked well in Gadsden and other Black counties, but cyberspace offers even more opportunities for fun and games. This time, it's "touch screen" voting. No paper trail, no audit path, no fights over recounts: recounts are impossible.
"Florida is the first state to adopt this video-game voting technology. Secretary of State Harris immediately certified the reliability of one machine, the iVotronic, from Election Systems and Software of Omaha. On their Web site, there is a neat demo of their foolproof system you can try out. I did - and successfully cast an "over-vote," a double vote for one candidate. Then the site crashed my laptop. But hey, the bugs will be worked out . . . or worked in.
"The question is, who else is touching the touch screen? In the case of the iVotronics, it's Sandra Mortham. Ring a bell? She was Harris's Republican predecessor as secretary of state, the one who hired DBT. Now she's iVotronics representative in Florida."

To the tune of about 80,000 Democratic voters.

Have a look at this fella's stuff on the Bush election theft.

Greg Palast

The same company that brought you the Florida's presidential election fraud.
Does anybody read Greg Palast's articles or books?
(site currently down. Hmmm.....)

• In 1998, after it was discovered that there was widespread fraud in the Mayoral elections in 1997 (several dead people and convicted felons ended up voting), the Florida Legislature (not Katherine Harris or Jeb Bush) passed a statute designed to prevent that from happening again (that link might not work- looks like the server is down).
• The statute called for a statewide list of potential felons to be compiled. This list was passed to the election supervisors in every county.
• The county elections supervisors were not even required to use the list at all, but if they did decide to use it, they (the county supervisors, not Catherine Harris) were required to verify the names as actual felons before they were removed from the voter registration. Therefore, if somebody was incorrectly removed from the voter registration, it was the county supervisor's fault.
• If somebody was removed from the voter registration based on the list, they were given written notice months before the election with a procedure to dispute the removal

In 1998, Florida Division of Elections Director Ethel Baxter, a democrat, hired the firm Database Technologies to compile this list. The list had around 100,000 names on it.

One of these "supposed felons" was Linda Howell, elections supervisor of Madison County, Florida. The only way to get back on the roll was to agree to fingerprinting. Ie guilty until "proven" innocent.

Once again, nobody was required to use the list (several counties including Madison County didn't use it at all), but if they did use the list, they were required to independently verify the names before any action was taken. The fingerprinting was only required to dispute the removal if the person actually was "verified" by the county supervisor and removed from the voter registration- otherwise they probably never knew they were on the list. With all of his complaining, Mr Palast has only found about a half a dozen people that were incorrectly removed from voter registrations and forced to dispute the removal.
So it boils down to this:

• An unknown number of innocent people were put on the original list of 100,000 names
• Of that unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties that actually used the list
• Of that unknown number, an unknown number were actually removed from the voter registration lists by the county election supervisor
• Of that unknown number, an unknown number failed to dispute the removal
• and of that unknown number, less than 50% turned out to vote anyway (general voter turnout)

There is only anecdotal evidence that any legitimate voter was actually prevented from voting because of this list. Rep Corrine Brown, a democrat, claimed that she saw "2 or 3" black people get incorrectly turned away, but when the media pressed her, she was unable to give any details.
So were minority voters specifically targeted? The NAACP, who came in to represent these minorities, stated VERY plainly in this settlement that

An unknown number of innocent people were put on the original list of 100,000 names

Of that unknown number, an unknown number lived in counties that actually used the list

Of that unknown number, an unknown number were actually removed from the voter registration lists by the county election supervisor

Of that unknown number, an unknown number failed to dispute the removal

and of that unknown number, less than 50% turned out to vote anyway (general voter turnout)

Really- there is NOTHING to this story.

So were minority voters specifically targeted? The NAACP, who came in to represent these minorities, stated VERY plainly in this settlement that there is no allegation of discrimination or misconduct in regards to this voter list. They did file suit because of the sloppy implementation of the list, but they admitted that most of the changes that they were seeking were already implemented by the state of Florida by the time the suit was filed.

If innocent people were prevented from voting, that is a tragedy, but it is not the huge scandal that Mr Palast wants it to be. It also has nothing to do with the parent's claim about the US Supreme Court.

What about the people who couldn't vote because their name was blacklisted, because the company that Florida (run by Jeb Bush) hired to do the voters database was a Republican one, and got lists of convicts from other states (Texas for one) and when they see a Florida citizen's name which looks just slightly similar to a name in those lists, they blacklist this "citizen". And this task they focused on African-Americans who are more likely to vote Democrat. 90,000 votes would have been enough, Gore would have been president, September 11 would have not happened (look, the Republican Administration ignored the outgoing Democrat Admin's warning about the fucking terrorist threat, just because of that childlike rivalry they have. If the Democrats had stayed in White House, I am sure they would have prevented the attack), and the world would have been a better place and even so for the Americans , because they won't have an idiot president fucking up their country's reputation.

(4) Upon receiving the list from the division, the supervisor must attempt to verify the information provided. If the supervisor does not determine that the information provided by the division is incorrect, the supervisor must remove from the registration books by the next subsequent election the name of any person who is deceased, convicted of a felony, or adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting.

All of those facts can be found here, the writings of Greg Palast who supposidly broke this huge story.

Not so -- maybe in your state, but not everywhere.

The practice varies by state, as state law determined the right to vote within constitutional limits. According to this recent study 14 still permanently disenfranchise ex-felons. Forty-six disenfranchise inmates, and a slightly smaller number do so for those on parole/probation. According to the source, these add up to about 4 million people who cannot vote. The U.S. has one of highest imprisonment rates in the world, and certain groups are affected more than others (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, men, the poor). This practice may have given President Bush the edge in Florida, esp. if as alleged it was overapplied.

Vocab: Ex-felon is a kind of dated term for convicts who've done their time. I don't know of a better one offhand except the similar "ex-con."

There have been unsuccessful constitutional challenges to this practice. IMHO, having studied election law extensively, there is no sufficient justification: the right to vote is an essential democratic right -- and ex-cons get their other full civil rights restored on release -- and disenfranchisement is unlikely a serious deterrent from crime. Supposedly inmates and former criminals might "vote the wrong way," but that's as unproven as deterrent and the single worst reason because it excludes people from voting based on their imagined views.

To me it feels like Michael Moore is saying, part of the blame goes to the media companies, that love to show news about shooting deaths, armed-robbery, commited by, adult black males. Then in the middle of the news you have ads. The corporations wants to keep us stuck to our TVs, and then sell us their products, they want to keep us afraid, and consuming.

Frankly, I just found Greg Palast's site and I'm disillusioned at how the world is actually run: Bush a just middle manager working for the big corporations of the world, where the CEOs try to extract profit from, not only single customers, but whole countries and governments at the same time. And the media companies, news sources? They're just the PR department of this "corporation", all working together lying to us. Read especially his take on Globalization.

The sad thing is, it looks like the corporations are winning. Or is that what their PR department wants us to believe?

To me it feels like Michael Moore is saying, part of the blame goes to the media companies, that love to show news about shooting deaths, armed-robbery, commited by, adult black males. Then in the middle of the news you have ads. The corporations wants to keep us stuck to our TVs, and then sell us their products, they want to keep us afraid, and consuming.

Frankly, I just found Greg Palast's site and I'm disillusioned at how the world is actually run: Bush a just middle manager working for the big corporations of the world, where the CEOs try to extract profit from, not only single customers, but whole countries and governments at the same time. And the media companies, news sources? They're just the PR department of this "corporation", all working together lying to us. Read especially his take on Globalization.

The sad thing is, it looks like the corporations are winning. Or is that what their PR department wants us to believe?

No vote is thrown away.
Oh, really? You must have slept through Florida 2000, then.

Greg Palast is an investigative reporter that researches and goes deep into various issues (he broke the news on the Florida ballot cleaning in 2000). The book covers a number of interesting topics from Enron and its alliances to the government and how they got preferential treatment and how they used this in the US and abroad to their advantage.

A few months ago, someone told me `Remember: all governments lie', which I figured, seems pretty acurrate, but not much to debate over dinner in that topic. I think there is a tacit agreement that governments lie.

The shocking news came from reading Daniel Ellsberg's Secrets book in which he details how five consecutive adminisrtrations lied to congress, and lie to the american people about what they were doing in Vietnam. An interesting interview with Daniel Ellsberg in Salon (here) gives a quick overview of the book. For those who do not know, Daniel took some secret documents from the government in the 70's and got them published by the New York Times. The documents exposed the lies from the five administrations. Although the government tried to stop the publication of the documents (known from then on as "The Pentagon Papers", google found this which gives you some context, as well as the history around the event).

So anyways, the short story is that democracy needs to be revamped with new technology. Hundreds of years ago it was perfectly possible to elect a leader/representative, trust him to do what he promised on behalf of the voters and revisit the issue on an upcoming election.

But today's leader's loyalty is not to the voters, but to those who allow them to get the votes, people with enough funds to drive the agenda in any direction they please. Greg Palast's book points out that the current administration unlike previous administrations no longer has to deal with external lobbysts, the lobby now has got offices right in the White House (he goes on detail about the Enron's hand-picked policy makers and those who reverted Clinton's decisions regarding Enron's involvement in California).

With the technology available today, democracy could be referendum-based, through electronic voting on key issues.

Miguel.

Here's the original transcript of the story that Greg Palast broke over on the BBC about the Florida elections fraud.

No matter what information is released about anything, there will always be someone who will discredit it based upon their beliefs alone. Usually they will go on to make personal attacks on the messenger. You forgot the usual "Gore lost the election, get over it" and "Where's your tinfoil hat" comments, which will be reported to your jackbooted superiors. :)

Actually they are quite easy to tamper with. (As long as you have no respect for the law.)

On the whole though, I'd rather trust the old-ladies that generally run the precincts in Georgia than software that hasn't been verified by anyone besides the people who are selling it.

I've been Reading A Peace to End All Peace by David Fromkin, about the fall of the Ottoman Empire during WWI. Seven Pillars of Wisdom is T.E. Lawrence's account of the same events, but from quite a different perspective. Anyone know of good books about the Middle East from 1920 until the present?

I'm also reading Greg Palast's The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. I plan to read Naomi Klein's No Logo, and Everything You Know is Wrong by the good people at Disinfomation.

I'm going to see Gary Snyder & Tom Killion read from The High Sierra of California tonight in Santa Cruz; I'll read that.

Maybe I'll finish Snow Crash by Stephenson, and get on to The Design and Implementation of 4.4BSD.

. The problem with the last election was not a failure in the overall (macro) system, but a detail problem (micro) having to do with counting irregularities in one (or more) of the states. While post-election information indicates that at least one state's counting problems may have resulted in that state voting the wrong way, most of us will never truly know-- given the extremely close nature of the race in that state and the highly inaccurate methods used to tally the votes.

This is a frighteningly uninformed statement.
In the first place, we do *truly* know at this point. Bush lost in Florida, Gore won. This has been proven and certified. It isn't drilled into your head over and over on all the networks, but it has been reported.

The second and far more critical point is that this isn't even the real issue with the election.
The most sickening part of the election scam happened months before the election. Jeb Bush, brother of GW and governor of Florida stripped 10s of thousands of Florida voters of their most basic right as a citizen of a democracy (ignoring the whole "form of government" issue and just using the common parlance). The only reason he had for doing this is that they were largely black and *all* registered democrats. He did this in violation of Florida law and the US Constitution.
Information is available at www.gregpalast.com
among many other places.

Take this together with the fact that since in office Bush has raped the freedom of information act.
The few rights left to we the people under this act he has specifically ordered all government offices to fight to the best of their abilities.

Now I agree that we do not live under a "tyranny" per se, but neither do we live under the government described in the constitution.
When you have a member of a organized crime family who rigged an election and used the supreme court to gain a position where he could cement his power before the truth could come out as president, then it certainly isn't a democracy/republic or anything similar.

When the criminal thug proceeds to use his illegally attained office to strip our rights away in part to protect his father from criminal prosecution for his illegal actions while president, *allow* the single worst terrorist attack in the country's history so he could further strip our rights (patriot act etc.), and bomb the shit out of a stone age country because they wouldn't allow his oil company buddies to build a pipeline through their country, then it is much closer to a tyranny then you have the courage to allow yourself to see.

Here is some information regarding the black votes in Florida. The general complaint is that the elections commission did a very sloppy job of removing Felons from the voting lists. This denied literally thousands of people from voting.

http://www.onlinejournal.com/Special_Reports/Palas t061301/palast061301.html
lots of detail as to accuracy of the process and specific individuals affected.

another article by the same guy, cites many specific examples of legal voters removed from the voting rolls erroneously.

Both pieces, by the same author, definitely have an anti-Bush tone, but the information speaks for itself.

And you are absolutely right that the Democrats also played some "dirty pool" when they attempted (and failed) to exclude military ballots that were not postmarked or postmarked late. The difference was that Republicans controlled the process in Florida and had more sympathy on the Supreme Court.

Now back to the U.S. What can we do to get OUR government to pass a bill like this? Any suggestions? I'm thinking about sending a letter to congressmen informing them of how free software is starting to be used in other countries and maybe even sending them letters like these as supporting evidence.

A counterpoint, no more to the very 'over-simplified' statements above:

• Bush thwarting FBI investigation of Bin Laden family could have *contributed* to 9/11- BBC greg palast
• Terrorism in Iraq definitely should be in the news - BBC - HRW
• As for the Israeli attacks in the west bank, it's a sad situation, but to say that Israel is dealing with terrorism is like saying the holocaust was Germany's way of dealing with Jews not leaving the country when asked - ie an OTT reaction that flippantly disregards the history of the region - so you're happy invading Iraq over ignoring UN resolutions, but also happy to ignore Israel when they do the same?
• Ah the Saudi Regime - our favourite dictators! But that's OK, because they let US troops stay there. Dictators are only a problem if they can't be used to US advantage - I forgot. Good dictator, bad dictator.

Life is so much easier when everything is either Black or White, but I prefer a world of many colors - even if it is a bit harder to focus.

sigh

.02

cLive ;-)

This is globalization my friend: ENRON OWNS BUENOS AIRES' WATER SUPPLY.
Starting to get the picture?

Please read the interview with Joseph Stiglitz, former chief economist at the World Bank at The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold.
It's not the best interview imaginable (i would have done it completely differently) but BUT unlike you and your insanely optimistic friend above...
Joseph Stiglitz KNOWS WHAT THE FUCK HE IS TALKING ABOUT. He was a leading practioner of globalization[1} at the World Bank and as a member of Clinton's council of economic advisors in the 90s when globalization was being pursued in earnest. Read what he has to say about the subject before spouting nonsense about getting "globalization right". It's working EXACTLY as designed and part of the design has been from the start to exclude the possibility of "reforms" to its institutions and directions. You cannot reform this beast only kill it and start over. But as long as you persist in the fantasy that there is some kind of metaphysical inevitability (precisely the myth propagated by your "bad" globalists) you will be their fool, believing that somehow if only the "good" globalism could prevail. Pal, there is no globalism but their kind. They invented it, they own, it it's theirs.

TO think otherwise is like believing that if you, a fan of a certain sports team, like the Redsox think good thoughts about the Redsox and have many discussions with your friends about how your team can win, the Redsox will have a good season, or a better one than they otherwise would have had. It's "magical" thinking, linking you to a group of professional atheletes by a mysterious agency called fandom in which your identity appears to merge with theirs. But the sports team is unaffected by your goodwill. It does sort of work --in one direction that is: when they do well you feel good. But you have no power to influence their play by wishing that they will do well in the future. Likewise, the project of globalization has nothing to do with what you think is the grand unified marketplace you imagine the world to be and in which you imagine yourself acting in. That's another abstract relationship which is barely more real than your active fandom and the illusory effect it has on the team you back. In reality, there is no "globalization" or "globalism" there are only banks and companies striving for firesale prices on assets in the lands beyond their borders. There are only people (a relative handful in fact) acting in "globalization" and a multitude of disenfrachised ex-citizens of "obsolete" nations passively enduring the results of thise action. There is no grand unified world marketplace with a salutary division of labor that works out for the greater good of everyone.
That's the song, the jingle and the bullshit of globalizations' apologists. Look at the details globalizations' impact and you'll see countries driven into the depths of poverty by impassive banking officials in New York telling local national leaders to convert their whole country to producing only cash crops for export. Often the people used to feed themselves can neither buy enough food with the money we pay them for their exports nor
In the old days they had the honesty to at least call things by their right name: globalism = empire plain and simple.

[1] Not the air-fairy, imaginary globalism you and Cryptochrome are wanking off about but the globalization that has actually been taking place destroying economies, reducing formerly self-sufficient populations to penury, making some multinational corporations and the US Treasury wealthier at the expence of the rest of the world.

I don't agree with the point of mixing up these two: Globalization and 9/11 attack, I'll explain my view. For me, the attack MAY BE just "somebody doesn't like the things that the USA do out there", and I won't go into discussion about their licity although I would like to mention that I am in principle against any kind of violence and therefore neither I like the USA intrusism nor I like the attack.

Now for the globalization movement. I think that there are many different people with many different reasons to be against this "invention" out there. I am myself firmly against the globalization movement so I'll explain my reasons.

Ecological reasons:
It is stupid to ellaborate a biscuit in Spain (actually my home country) and sell it in Australia while ellaborating some other biscuits there in Australia to sell them in Spain, well understood that good conditions are given for the two countries to ellaborate their own biscuits using either cooking recipe. Full stop. Now a bit further. If doing this is convenient for many companies, as it is the case, then big warning: Something is wrong. And so we arrive to the next chapter, social reasons.

Social reasons:
(Or how these companies, the multinationals, do business.) So it is in fact convenient for many companies to manufacture their products far away, even spending much money in trasportation. It is simple to imagine (or perhaps not so simple) to what extent the worker is being exploited. The concept is so obvious that I won't explain it, I will just say that, at least in Europe, chances are that if you pick any article of clothing in a store and have a look, it has been manufactured in China or Korea. For a cup of rice. You may say: If we rejected to buy those, that people would die. No. If we did so, their corrupt governments could not take place and convenient social laws would be adopted, just in our privilleged countries.

Choice reasons:
We consumers lose our freedom of choice. You may say: If you prefer to pay more and avoid exploitation, well, you are free to do so and let people decide by their own instead of trying to ban globalization or anything. Wrong. If we haven't got the information, then it's impossible for us to know what is going on. It would be neccessary for every piece of product to have a hundred of stickers telling how, when and where it was manufactured, impossible, paranoid. The result would be pretty much the same as with the EULAs. To use the same example: WE THINK THAT "Write Your Own Damn Code" IS GOOD, BUT WE DON'T CARE ABOUT "Grow Your Own Vegetables". Or buy them to a near neighbour or at least NEAR, say in your home country. Not patriotism or anything, it is just that we know better what is going on AT HOME than far away.

Economical reasons:
Read this: World Bank Secret Documents Consumes Argentina

My opinions are just opinions, and I am even often changing my views. But my point is that these reasons, wrong or right, make sense, I am not a hippy or anarchist but a design engineer, I LIKE to think. Therefore I don't like this link between the 9/11 attack and globalization.

If you find this interesting, this link may be of interest to you: Znet (Zmag), specially here.

After the death of Carlo Giuliani (related to the mayor of New York city?) and the mass demonstration in Genoa the following day I had the same question: "What is globalization and why are so many people against it? Are they against free trade? Sounds strange to me."
These columns gave some insight in what globalization as defined by IMF and World Bank mean in real life. It's not really free trade. In many aspects it is the opposite and I don't think it's very healthy. This year's Nobel prize winner for economics, Joseph Stiglitz, seems to be of the same opinion.
Bas

Does the fact that I require more than a few unsubstantiated articles from rags of unknown (at least to me) biases to rattle my believe in minimal government make me a religious zealot?

"Rags", eh? You still haven't read the articles, have you? Here, let me help: one of them ran in the Observer (London), a highly respected mainstream British weekly, and was written by an author who has also appeared several times in the hardly-liberal Washington Post; the other ran in Canada's conservative National Post. Does that set your mind at ease about their "biases"?

There is far too much historical data showing economies [...] blossoming with minimal government for these articles to "threaten my faith", as you call it.

Except that the "evidence" presented in support of this position usually is Chile and New Zealand -- and as the articles demonstrate, the belief that those countries' experiences support that position is a matter of faith.

Perhaps you are confusing the scientific method with religion?

The scientific method is not generally taken to include dismissing a priori evidence that does not fit with one's desired result. That's more like the creationists' "scientific" method.

In any case, scratching them off my list merely indicates that I would not consider moving to them because of the direction of their government policies, no more no less.

Ah, a misunderstanding. I had interpreted "them" in "scratching them off my list" as referring to the articles (and/or the authors thereof) rather than the countries. We Apologize for the Confusion.(TM)

Very nice revisionist histories.

The petitioner is, of course, employing the libertarian definition of "revisionist": "at odds with my world view". Can you actually refute anything in these articles? For that matter, did you even read them?

Neither Chile nor New Zealand "neo-liberals" as you call them, got very far before their policies were reversed.

They got far enough to double the poverty rate, quadruple the unemployment rate, and drive the GDP down 19 percent and 30 percent, respectively. And that was after ten years of trying in Chile and fifteen in New Zealand; these could hardly be called short-term experiments interrupted early.

Just goes to prove the point of one of the articles, though:

But the myth of the free-market miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary Genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang, successful and shining.

In any case, I'll scratch them off of my short list.

A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that might threaten one's faith, after all.

Very nice revisionist histories.

The petitioner is, of course, employing the libertarian definition of "revisionist": "at odds with my world view". Can you actually refute anything in these articles? For that matter, did you even read them?

Neither Chile nor New Zealand "neo-liberals" as you call them, got very far before their policies were reversed.

They got far enough to double the poverty rate, quadruple the unemployment rate, and drive the GDP down 19 percent and 30 percent, respectively. And that was after ten years of trying in Chile and fifteen in New Zealand; these could hardly be called short-term experiments interrupted early.

Just goes to prove the point of one of the articles, though:

But the myth of the free-market miracle persists because it serves a quasi-religious function. Within the faith of the Reaganauts and Thatcherites, Chile provides the necessary Genesis fable, the ersatz Eden from which laissez-faire dogma sprang, successful and shining.

In any case, I'll scratch them off of my short list.

A very Watchtower-esque reaction -- must protect oneself from anything that might threaten one's faith, after all.

Well we can't leave the planet (yet), so what are the alternatives? New Zealand? Chile? I've heard they are just improved from their socialist past, but not quite the libertarian utopia or even close.

Oh, Arturo, prince of irony. The economies of Chile and New Zealand were both devastated by the application of neo-liberal economic policies; they both eventually had to resort to more "socialist" policies to drag their economies back from the brink of collapse.