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Tokyo was pretty bleak at the time the two big ones were dropped - it had been the target of incendiary bombing, and according to recently re-broadcast news clips, the death toll of that raid was 100k dead and a million families displaced.

The second bombing underscores the need for diplomatic communications. After Hiroshima, the Japanese sent us a message that was taken as a resolute stand to continue the fighting - later analysts questioned its poetic language and concluded that it might have been the overture hoped for to prevent further violence. We will never know.

There was a strong debate over the principle target - Hiroshima - and one option was as you said, an area where population loss would be minimal. AFAIR, the debate shied from that option because, incredibly, the Japanese would have had to have been warned in advance of the drop to ensure that they observed the effects and the option was discarded because it would have backfired if the US had warned them to look for something big and the first one turned out to be a dud.

Here's a collection of interesting background on the targetings and a few other things:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB162/index.htm

Most organisations that require data to be kept for long periods of time do not have problems with long term data storage. They have some expenses but they still have their data, and over time the expenses are really not very high. This was a solved problem in 1960 sumdumass!

Lol.. It was standard to rotate backup tapes at the white house until October 2003. This was done since 1960 something when the white house started making backups and didn't change until 2003. Here is a time line of the missing emails. Now the Office of Administration which was established in 1977 has put policies in place that stuck throughout presidential terms until they were actually changed in later administrations. So if they were rotating their backups until 2003, i doubt they had it solved in 1960. We are talking about the white house now.

That is what I assumed about yours, not being in the USA I really do not care however IMHO this event could only have occured by a deliberate managerial decision to not have backups or gross negligence on the part of several people - and since archiving is easy to do and mostly built into the IT mindest I would say it was a deliberate choice to make sure this data is not available to the court.

In that case, let me give you some information surrounding it.

And no, this could not have "only" occurred in the one way you want to make it out to be. Human error, that's right, simple mistakes made by people with no motivation behind it based on faulty knowledge or accidental missteps can very well be behind the entire event. Your also showing your inexperience here too. The procedure for archiving data today are not the same as they were in 1990 nor was it the same as in 2000 or 2003 or 2005. We discover things and find that the best practices weren't really good enough as well as new tech gets introduced that make things easier and more stable. For you to think everything was done like it is now back then is like saying cars have alwasy gotten 25 miles to the gallon.

Failed analogy. As noted in my other post, read this. Rife with incompetence, destroyed a working solution to rely on manual user intervention, et al.

That is embarrassingly incorrect.

The Office of Administration was extant for a couple of decades (1977), while the CIO sprang into existence June 4th, 2001. The OA has six directors, and is not a "political subdivision" of the CIO.

The National Archives, in fact, specifically chastised the Executive Office of the President (EOP) for not capturing them, and the EOP argued that the OA was not subject to FOIA inquiries (successfully, I might add, under the argument that they're an agency when the EOP feels like it [wherein they'd have to comply] and they're not when the EOP doesn't want stuff released). The procedure in place, after the Bush Administration migrated from Lotus to Exchange, was to run use VBScript on a per-workstation basis to archive the .PSTs, with virtually no security logging on the Exchange server, and no sort of audit on the mail. The National Archives brought this to them on multiple occassions because they were not getting any information.

It's not a matter of "improper configuration" or "database corrupt". Why you think a database would be used to hold a list of filenames, I have no idea, and they're certainly not using binary blobs in a database to store them. Databases can (and should be) backed up also, you know.

The earliest date on the tapes for email is October 2003. Tapes were reused by the administration before that (after they scrapped the Clinton Administration's system). However, the tapes only held once-daily snapshots of PSTs. The EOP admitted that they can't even track where the hard drives in the workstations may have gone (which is a flagrant violation of DoD requirements, along with other agencies, and White Knight clearance encompasses TS:SCI).

The tapes did go offsite, and were successfully subpoenaed in May 2008. However, zero records exist from the EOVP around the time of the Plame scandal. Fully 16% of the days Bush was in office, at least one of the offices subject to the recordkeeping act had zero messages.

Sure, the best practices are lax at times, but a 1/8 failure rate is ludicrously bad. Federal government != state government. They have more money, and anything dealing with classified information is strictly regulated.

This doesn't even touch the official emails that went through RNC servers, or anything that may have been on a platform which doesn't run VB or can skirt a program which just archives the PST off your workstation (laptops off the VPN, Blackberries)

You're talking out of your ass. A working system was in place. There was a campaign finance scandal with Gore in 2000 or so, and they successfully recovered the records (7,000 or so were all that were missing for a big Republican uproar, whereas the Bush admin is missing 5 MILLION).

How about this: go read about it. First result on Google (National Security Archives at George Washington University have been fighting this for a long time). When you have a grasp on it without applying your backwater personal experience to all of IT, come back.

That is embarrassingly incorrect.

The Office of Administration was extant for a couple of decades (1977), while the CIO sprang into existence June 4th, 2001. The OA has six directors, and is not a "political subdivision" of the CIO.

The National Archives, in fact, specifically chastised the Executive Office of the President (EOP) for not capturing them, and the EOP argued that the OA was not subject to FOIA inquiries (successfully, I might add, under the argument that they're an agency when the EOP feels like it [wherein they'd have to comply] and they're not when the EOP doesn't want stuff released). The procedure in place, after the Bush Administration migrated from Lotus to Exchange, was to run use VBScript on a per-workstation basis to archive the .PSTs, with virtually no security logging on the Exchange server, and no sort of audit on the mail. The National Archives brought this to them on multiple occassions because they were not getting any information.

It's not a matter of "improper configuration" or "database corrupt". Why you think a database would be used to hold a list of filenames, I have no idea, and they're certainly not using binary blobs in a database to store them. Databases can (and should be) backed up also, you know.

The earliest date on the tapes for email is October 2003. Tapes were reused by the administration before that (after they scrapped the Clinton Administration's system). However, the tapes only held once-daily snapshots of PSTs. The EOP admitted that they can't even track where the hard drives in the workstations may have gone (which is a flagrant violation of DoD requirements, along with other agencies, and White Knight clearance encompasses TS:SCI).

The tapes did go offsite, and were successfully subpoenaed in May 2008. However, zero records exist from the EOVP around the time of the Plame scandal. Fully 16% of the days Bush was in office, at least one of the offices subject to the recordkeeping act had zero messages.

Sure, the best practices are lax at times, but a 1/8 failure rate is ludicrously bad. Federal government != state government. They have more money, and anything dealing with classified information is strictly regulated.

This doesn't even touch the official emails that went through RNC servers, or anything that may have been on a platform which doesn't run VB or can skirt a program which just archives the PST off your workstation (laptops off the VPN, Blackberries)

You're talking out of your ass. A working system was in place. There was a campaign finance scandal with Gore in 2000 or so, and they successfully recovered the records (7,000 or so were all that were missing for a big Republican uproar, whereas the Bush admin is missing 5 MILLION).

How about this: go read about it. First result on Google (National Security Archives at George Washington University have been fighting this for a long time). When you have a grasp on it without applying your backwater personal experience to all of IT, come back.

In your first verdict, you admit that a complete count of absentee ballots might have changed the outcome of the popular vote -- then discard it as irrelevant and conjecture.

But, in your second verdict, you make the pronouncement that Al Gore would have won the popular vote, forgetting your admission in your first verdict. It also ignores the potential effect of entirely different campaign strategy to win the popular vote.

And would Gore have invaded Iraq? In his own words on 2002-01-12:

In 1991, I crossed party lines and supported the use of force against Saddam Hussein, but he was allowed to survive his defeat as the result of a calculation we all had reason to deeply regret for the ensuing decade. And we still do. So this time, if we resort to force, we must absolutely get it right. It must be an action set up carefully and on the basis of the most realistic concepts. Failure cannot be an option, which means that we must be prepared to go the limit. And wishful thinking based on best-case scenarios or excessively literal transfers of recent experience to different conditions would be a recipe for disaster.

In all fairness, by 2002-09-23, he had changed his tune somewhat:

I'm speaking today in an effort to recommend a specific course of action for our country which I believe would be preferable to the course recommended by President Bush. Specifically, I am deeply concerned that the policy we are presently following with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.

I'm not going to pretend to be able to read Gore's mind, especially under circumstances that never happened. But, I think it's foolish to be certain that there would have been a different outcome.

Is there a Manga Guide to Fortran, or whatever it is they are teaching kids these days?

For those too young to remember: The cover, at the author's web site.

Actually from Kennedy onward there was a practice in the white house of makeing tape recordings or other records of important calls. The most extreme example of this was Nixon who recorded everything. So you can at least get that info, a little late of course.

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB48/nixon.html

Much of this information ends up in Presidential Libraries where it remains hidden for some time before being made public under the Presidential Records act.

Congress on the other hand, thats different.

The government wants to promote fear in order to influence the public. Now, what do we call that? Yup, there are terrorists out there after all. And some of them are even hiding in bunkers!

I fear government more than any terrorists. Actually without government support terrorism wouldn't be the problem it is. For instance bin Laden and al qaeda. During the 1980s and early '90s progressive US administrations supported bin Laden and what became al qaeda and the Taliban against the Soviet Union. During the 1970s presidents Nixon and Ford supported coups against democratic governments, such as in Chile, and the invasion of the democratic nation of East Timor by Indonesia. Between 1975 and 1999 when East Timorese voted for independence 200,000 East Timorese, 1/3 of the population of Eat Timor, were massacred.

During the 1900s most human atrocities were done by government whether the Holocaust, the 20,000,000 Stalin and the 50,000,000 Mao had killed, the "estimated death toll of 750,000 to 1.7 million (approximately 26% of the population at that time)" caused by Pol Pot and the Kymer Rouge in Cambodia. or genocide in Rwanda.

Falcon

Orin Kerr, Professor of Law; George Washington University Law School, who is a supporter of John McCain, questions the legality of the indictment:

Here's the indictment. And here's the potential problem with the indictment. In order to charge the case as a felony rather than a misdemeanor, the government needed to claim that the intrusion was committed to further criminal or tortious activity. The statute, 18 U.S.C. 1030, states that the intrusion is a felony if the intrusion "was committed in furtherance of any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any State."

Oddly, though, the indictment doesn't exactly state what the crime or tort is that the intrusion was designed to further. It just states that the intrusion was "in furtherance of the commission of a criminal act in violation of the laws of the United States, including 18 U.S.C. Section 2701 and 18 U.S.C. Section lO30(a)(2)" But Section 2701 and Section 1030 are the intrusion statutes themselves! It makes no sense to allow a felony enhancement for a crime committed in furtherance of the crime itself; presumably the enhancement is only for intrusions committed in furtherance of some other crime. Otherwise the felony enhancement is meaningless, as every misdemeanor becomes a felony.

Orin Kerr, "Is the Palin E-Mail Hack Indictment Legally Flawed?, Volokh Conspiracy, October 8, 2008

So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!

Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.

Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.

I know; I was hoping to buy licensed tiles, but I can't find a source. Drat. Has anybody got a patent on the square, then?

So tempted to do my bathrooom in Penrose tiles!

Be careful, Roger Penrose will probably sue you for it.
Yes, the man did the unthinkable: he patented and asserted copyright on a mathematical construct.

If we're talking the NSA program to secretly mass-monitor electronic communications of US citizens **whether or not** they're guilty, and with no judicial oversight - this program was actually approved by Bush **right after he got into office in January 2001**.

http://www.truthout.org/article/jason-leopold-bush-authorized-domestic-spying-before-911

Declassified doc showing that's the case, here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB24/nsa25.pdf

This is an easy mistake to make - because whenever this program is mentioned, it's always deliberately mentioned in the context of 9/11, and mentions changes made after 9/11. But that is all spin.

It's a shame that we have to look that far into the details to find out when a program was started - but with this administration we apparently do.

And as a side note, it's important to know that this was started well before 9/11 - because it also proves it did nothing to stop the 9/11 attacks. This is more proof that this kind of mass warrantless eavesdropping with no oversight doesn't even make us safer from terrorists - it only puts us in more danger from our government.

Posting this note to the original article also.

This article has spurned an interesting discussion, and many of the issues are considered in this book called The Future of Reputation, which the author has released for free here.

As others previously posted, there is much more at stake here:
1. She has little understanding of the principles of security protocol and best practices by making it so easy to get into the Yahoo account.
2. It appears she is not using the account for official business beyond providing a cc: for emails that are official, so that she may check them remotely.
3. How does anyone really know what she's using the Yahoo account for, if she's been deleting mail that could cause her trouble, knowing that there had already been attention focused on her for this?
4. This has to stop. When government ceases to operate with accountability, it is no longer being run with the consent of the governed.

I guess you've never heard of Mena, Arkansas or Iran Contra

this paper is worth reading. (Here too.) ("I've Got Nothing To Hide" and other Misunderstandings of Privacy, by Daniel Solove).

history has shown me what happens when we just leave it to charities.

History has also shown people what happens when everything is left to government. Let's see, between 1930 and 1950 or so some 70.6 million people were killed by government. The NAZI's killed more than 600,000, Stalin 20 million, and Mao some 50 million. History shows governments are the largest terrorists there are. I don't recall now but how many did Pol Pot kill? How many were killed in Rwanda? And though it's died down in the Sudan, how many have been killed there? Between the invasion of East Timor in 1975 and it's independence in 1999 200,000 East Timorese, 1/3 the population, were massacred.

On the the other hand, I've researched Barr a bit more and like him more than I did.

I absolutely hated Barr's positions in the early 1990s.

Falcon

"You are a true moron if you think that all Iranians believe the west "satan". Honestly,"

Kind of a loaded statement since it is obviously true "all" Iranians don't believe that but a significant majority might and you have no clue how many do and don't. A LOT of older Iranians almost certainly believe that, enough of them believed it to stage a successful revolution to throw out the Shah, and the U.S. by proxy. The Shah had a powerful secret service apparatus designed to prevent rebellion so the fact they succeeded suggest there was a lot of popular support for Khomeni and against the Shah and the U.S.. I'm pretty sure a lot of older Iranians who suffered under the Shah believe the U.S. is the great Satan.

If you remember some history, the CIA ran a coup to topple a relatively moderate and popular, though somewhat Socialist leader, Mohammed Mossadegh. Reference TP-AJAX. Mossadegh made the mistake of nationalizing Britain's oilfields in Iran. Quick lesson in international relations, don't EVER mess with U.S. and British oil companies if you want to say in power. I'm kind of amazed Putin and Chavez have gotten away with it lately, I assume the U.S. is so preoccupied with Iraq it can't handle another coup attempt in Venezuela.

The Shah was a horrible ruler, so bad Khomeni apparently looked good by comparison to a lot of Iranians. Iran also has a lot of fundamentalist Shias to whom the Shah's secular, pro Western policies, did look positively satanic and heretical. The Iranian people rightly blamed the U.S. for every thing the Shah did which is why they coined the phrase "the great Satan" for the U.S. with some justification.

Now I wouldn't even hazard a guess at how the Iranian people view the U.S. today, especially the younger Iranians who didn't live under the Shah and now suffer under the petty tyrannies of the Revolutionary Guard. I doubt anyone really knows unless they live or have lived there which probably includes you. Depends on whether they believe the propaganda the Iranian government raises them on versus how much they hate and fear the Revolutionary Guard. Most people do believe what their government tells them during their formative years whether it be in Iran or the U.S. I wouldn't take it as a given that a majority in Iran, or elsewhere in the the Muslim world want a pro western, secular culture. Some people's religion runs really deep, especially when they are indoctrinated in it from birth, and they will in fact opt for a culture which is somewhat oppressive but which adheres to their religious principals.

Eastern Europe, Asia, Western Europe, Africa, would ALL be better off had the USSA (as you so lovingly put it) had left all your affairs alone 1900 to 1970, right?

While some places may of been worse if the US didn't do anything in other places people have suffered gravely because of the US. For instance President Ford and Henry Kissinger gave the green light to Indonesia's Suharto to invade East Timer, and supported the invasion with firearms despite a congressional ban. About 200,000 East Timorese were massacred after the invasion, that's 1/3 of the population of East Timor. Or take Iran, in the 1950s the US supported an overthrow of a democratically elected government and replaced it with the Shah. At the same tyme Ford supported Suharto he also supported General Pinochet's overthrow of Chile's elected president after which tens of thousands of people disappeared.

I'm not even American, but even I know that the other side were not exactly guiltless in cooperating with the Iraqi reigeme either.

America has been quite happy to support dictatorships (Iraq and Chile in the 1980s; Saudi Arabia, Uzbekistan, Egypt and many others in the present), to overthrow democratic governments (Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, Nicaragua in the 1980s)

Apologies to Slashdot readers if someone else already posted the following link(s) or material, but I looked for it and related keywords over the entire thread, finding nothing. Orin S. Kerr over at The Volokh Conspiracy (a legal blog with a cool name) has posted a useful quick analysis of the matter, which I believe is more important than might appear at first glimpse. It's well worth reading in its entirety, but I'll quote a short stretch of it:

[...]

This case involves a terrible tragedy; I think what Lori Drew did is truly despicable. But the government's legal theory, based entirely on the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, 18 U.S.C. 1030, is very weak. Legally speaking, the prosecution is a real stretch. In my view, the courts should dismiss the indictment. In this post, I'll explain why.

To understand this case, you need to understand the government's theory. The indictment is not charging Drew with harassment. Nor are they charging her with homicide. Rather, the government's theory in this case is that Drew criminally trespassed onto MySpace's server by using MySpace in a way that violated MySpace's Terms of Service (TOS).

Here's the idea. The TOS required Drew to provide accurate registration information, not to harass or harm other people, and not to promote conduct that was abusive. She didn't comply with these terms, the theory goes, so she was criminally trespassing onto MySpace's computer when she was logging into her account. The indictment turns this into a federal felony conspiracy charge by arguing that she did this in concert with others to obtain information and to further tortious conduct -- intentional infliction of emotional distress -- violating the felony provisions of 18 U.S.C. 1030(a)(2).

But these arguments are a real stretch for three reasons.

Problem One: The first major hurdle is a legal question that I wrote an article on in 2003: Is it a federal crime to violate contractual limitations on use of a computer? The federal statute, 18 U.S.C. 1030, generally prohibits accessing a computer "without authorization" or "exceeding authorized access." But what makes an access "without authorization"? If the computer owner says that you can only access the computer if you are left-handed, or if you agree to be nice, are you committing a crime if you use the computer and are nasty or you are right-handed? If you violate the Terms of Service, are you committing a crime?

In my article, Cybercrime's Scope: Interpreting "Access" and "Authorization" in Computer Misuse Statutes, 78 NYU L. Rev. 1596 (2003), I argue that the answer should be "no." I won't recite the legal arguments here, as you can just read the article itself. (You can imagine the basic idea, though: Since everyone who uses computers violates dozens of different TOS every day, the theory would make everyone who uses computers a felon.) However, I will point out that the MySpace case is to my knowledge the very first federal indictment that has tried to claim that violations of Terms of Service for an Internet account amounts to a crime under Section 1030. In fact, I wrote my NYU article in part because I figured it was only a matter of time before a sympathetic case came along and some aggressive prosecutor would try the argument and see if it flew. It looks like this is the test case.

[...]

(The original post has embedded links to relevant citations).

If I owned a business that could make a buck supporting a regime that wasn't anti-US, I'd do it no matter how "repressive" they were. That sort of ruthlessness helped win the Cold War, and there is no reason the shrink from it now.

So you would support the massacre of 200,000 people? That's what President Ford and Secretary of State Kissinger did when they supported the Indonesian dictator Suharto's invasion of East Timor. That 200,000 massacred was 1/3 of East Timor's population.

You have this FBI Posts Fake Hyperlinks To Trap Downloaders of Illegal Porn

And this Feds lie about link between software piracy and terrorism

And this Wikileaks shut down

And this Anonymous

And this Net Neutrality Blasted by MPAA Bosses

And this (note, this may be conspiracy theory BS, but I'm posting it anyway) Pentagon: The internet needs to be dealt with as if it were an enemy "weapons system".

It's going to take someone writing an essay to try to connect all the dots as to what may or may not be going on behind the scenes, but it seems obvious that a lot of people don't like the internet, or perhaps the internet is just too free and a lot of people want to stop the internet revolution and cable TV the net. I'm sure it has something to do with net-neutrality.

Actually, we are, which neatly demolishes that argument.

Actually, he's at George Washington Law (one of those other "George" schools):

http://www.law.gwu.edu/facweb/dsolove/

also, has a blog at:

http://www.concurringopinions.com/

The difference is that Thompson didn't campaign, and Guiliani thought he didn't need to campaign until Florida

Both Thompson and Giuliani spent more time in Iowa than Ron Paul "frantically" did:

http://www.gwu.edu/~action/2008/ia08/iavisits08r.html

The "not campaigning until Florida" decision wasn't some strategy that Giuliani had from the beginning, it was an attempt to lower expectations after it became obvious that he wasn't going to win Iowa no matter how much work he put in there. The only thing Giuliani's campaign thought was that conceding the Iowa race wouldn't look quite as bad as trying his hardest to win it and then losing anyway.

All of the money collected in the personal income tax goes to pay for interest on the national debt.

Wrong

This is far from strange. Once a nation is aligned with Pentagon interests, it usually becomes much more willing to do deals with US companies, and non-profits (who are otherwise highly suspect.) OLPC is a US initiative, started by a member of the US elite. Don't forget his father was a shipping magnate. His elder brother John continues to have an active role in implementing the psychotic policies of the US empire.

Fortunately there are differences of opinion amongst the elite which can open up interesting possibilities. Hopefully OLPC will survive.

I would love to see Cuba get a few hundred thousand of the laptops, or Venezuela, or China, or Iran.

I bought two with the G1G1 program, and once they arrive I'm going to start work on some educational games to help people figure why the world is organized the way it is.

Was it the Jewish neocon freemasons?

I don't know, and I don't care. I do know that you're only spewing such nonsense in an attempt to disparage opposing opinions as lunacy, as opposed to presenting an actual argument to make your point. Sorry, homey don't do that. You can play that game somewhere else. The only verifiable fact is that nobody has proven beyond reasonable doubt it was this Al Quaeda character, or who hired him. In my eyes that needs to be established before you start shooting at people, especially those who had nothing to do with it. A basic tenet of justice is to make sure you have the right guy. Otherwise your credibility goes right out the window. You appear to believe otherwise. I don't know why that is, but so be it. So please, show me some evidence, other than some scenes from "Wag the Dog". In the meantime you should be demanding an immediate end to these hostilities and violations of basic rights based on unproven preconceptions. And you should make at least a feeble effort to follow the money. I would wager you would find much of it comes from those who seek power. Which you are handing to them on the proverbial silver platter. Don't think for a second that it can't be domestic. I guess I should tell you that I saw all this 40 years ago, word for word, lie for lie. In fact, my fist post in this thread stated as much. It's why I said it. You are repeating history, all over again and again. So, please don't assume I'm just making it all up. It's been done before, at the cost of over 2 million lives, 4 million if you count the nearly immediate aftermath. And now, here we go again. In fact, it never really stopped. Same story with even some of the same actors. A remake of the same movie, if you will. But even more intense this time around. I can also assure you that none of the money you've taken away came out of the war budget. It simply gives the government an excuse to to cut back on needed domestic programs. I honestly believe that you should study a bit more history before you take a stab at philosophy. You need some foundation there to base it on. Otherwise it's like trying to build an airplane without knowledge of basic aerodynamics.

1) Music/movies (we outsell the rest of the World in these combined).

Other places like Bollywood are coming on strong.

2) Advanced weapons sales

You've got me there. However more weapons aren't needed.

3) Software of any sort

Software could be, and is, done all over the world. Take Microsoft, MS has opened campuses in both China and India. "Business Week" has an article on where US companies are send jobs to including programming jobs, Major Players in Outsourcing . Ubuntu has African roots.

4) Basic research and devt. (not readily marketable AND given for free to the rest of the world. We are the absolute leader in "pure" research investment, though starting to slow down for obvious reasons).

5) Applied research, design, and devt. (sattelites, pharmaceuticals, consumer electronics, you name it)

This is true now, but with both China and India graduating millions of engineering and other high tech majors, for how long will it last?

6) Agriculture (including the GM foods that EU farmers are scared of).

Go back to my post, where I said "other than food".

7) Exporting Democracy!

Yea, right. NOT!!! The US only ever exports democracy when it serves the administration's or businesses' objectives. The US has repeatedly supported coups against democratically elected governments, assassinations of leaders, and has even supported the invasion of one democratic nation by dictators of another, twice. In 1975 President Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger supported Indonesia's Suharto's invasion of East Timor. After the invasion some 200,000 East Timorese were killed, that's 1/3 of the population of East Timor. In the 1980s President Reagan and his VP Bush Sr supported Saddam Hussein's attack and invasion of Iran. Even as Saddam was using all of those Weapons of Mass Destruction against Iran as well as people in Iraq. Targeted were the Kurds and Marsh Arabs among others. It was only when Saddam invaded Kuwait, an emirate not a democracy, when the US's support of Saddam came to an end.

Back to agriculture. I ask what need there is for GMO food? There is no need for it is the answer.

I was (still am) irritated that companies in the west quite frequently make money by selling arms to dictatorships that use those arms to stay in power against the wishes of the people who live under their rule. Companies like BAe Systems make huge profits by selling to countries like Indonesia who have an appalling human rights record. I know you can always make the argument that if we don't someone else will but that still doesn't make it any less morally wrong.

I am especially against schemes like the Export Credit Guarantee Department which underwrite these sales so that if the people in said country manage to oust the dictator from power before payment has been made then British taxpayers money is used to pay the bill and then the cost (plus interest) is added to the countries national debt.

In this manner the people who get rid of the dictator end up paying for the weapons that were used to suppress them. I think that if a western company is willing to do business with a country that is on the brink of collapse it should do so at its own risk.

One example is various companies supplying Saddam Hussein with arms (and the Falluja 2 chemical weapons plant) shortly before he invaded Kuwait.

Here are some links:
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/51/040.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,908426,00.html

Although these links only mention British involvement President Reagan was also a supporter of Saddam when he was fighting Iran so American companies were also involved. Here is an interesting photo of Saddam and Reagan shaking hands, not that it proves anything by itself:

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/

Here are some other random links:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A52241-2002Dec29?language=printer
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=990CE0DC123DF936A35751C0A963958260
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/12/31/world/main534798.shtml

Search for "MDA908", the "Virginia Contracting Activity". Much more interesting items come up.

• Black Excursions.
  "The Virginia Contracting Activity on behalf of the Defense Intelligence Agency, request for quotations to purchase and install items listed on the RFQ (emergency response equipment) on black excursions."
• Buying missiles from Venezuelan general.
  A covert missile deal went bad, and the payment issue ended up in court. A good read.
• Video Grammar for Locating Named People
  One of many research papers associated with digesting audio and video content into useful forms.
• A Bayesian network for identifying suspicious visitors
  Published in 2004. A reasonable project to be working on at that point.

you missed the part where nazi germany invaded russia and set out to exterminate or subjugate its people. and yes, the allies did rebuild germany, by reinstalling former nazis and collaborators to power after nuremburg and helping high ranking nazis to escape in exchange for 'assistance' in the form of technological expertise and help against the soviets. in japan the allies were perfectly happy to exchange freedom from prosecution for information gleaned from experiments on allied servicemen and civilians

1. From 1907 to 1913

Panama Canal from the early 1900s to 1914 when the canal opened.

2. From 1920 to 1940

United States occupation of Nicaragua from 1909 to 1933

3. From 1954 to 1959

Second Indochina War, also called the Vietnam War, from 1954 to 1975.

From 1976 to 1982
From 1984 to 1988

Ford and Kissinger Gave Green Light to Indonesia's Invasion of East Timor, 1975 from 1975 to 1999.

Freedom to Fascism is full of the same nuttery that Griffin's book it. May I be blunt? You conspiracists are all nutbags. As in a burlap sack full of pecan halves. You have make Griffin, Russo and Banister high priests in your religion, a religion based on faith and half truths, rather than on facts, logic and rationalism. I've posted some debunking links up above, go read them if your religion allows you to.

Russo keep asking throughout his movie, "show me the law". I went looking for that law, and it took me all of five seconds to find it! Here it is: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/uscode26/usc_sup_01_26.html! Here's a link debunking Russo's film: http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/jsiegel/Personal/taxes/F2F.htm. An even better link debunking the tax deniers, from a solidly libertarian perspective, is this: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd0608b.asp.

If you notice my sig, you'll see that I support Ron Paul also. But please note that Ron Paul IS NOT a conspiracist. He IS NOT one of you. He is not a Truther, not a tax denier, and not a jekyllite. He wants to get rid of the IRS, NOT because it is an evil conspiracy, but simply because it is evil.

Now Slashdot has been invaded! Is there nowhere I can go to escape these conspiracist nutbags? I will make a feeble attempt to counteract this inane review of an inane book, with a list of various debunking links:

September 11th
http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/911myths/
http://www.debunking911.com/index.html
http://www.911myths.com/
http://wtc.nist.gov/

Income Tax and the Federal Reserve
http://docs.law.gwu.edu/facweb/jsiegel/Personal/taxes/IncomeTax.htm
http://www.publiceye.org/conspire/flaherty/Federal_Reserve.html

Other
http://www.debunker.com/conspiracy.html
http://www.ejectejecteject.com/archives/000140.html

General
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory
http://www.urban75.org/info/conspiraloons.html
http://www.csicop.org/si/9012/critical-thinking.html

"I'm sure most nations would prefer if the US just went back to their pre WWII isolationism"

OH RLY?

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/01/06/world/main665329.shtml
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB117/index.htm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/28/AR2006112801640.html
http://www.globalissues.org/TradeRelated/Debt/USAid.asp
http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/55a/008.html

"Right. You said it. Outside of politics. You still refuse to actually correlate Bush's crimes with Clinton's crimes. My point is specifically that at different points up and down the chain, people get treated differently. People tend to give the president much license because he's so high-profile."

No, inside of politics, it has nothing to do with your position on the "chain". Republicans hold themselves to high standards (too high, actually....what Craig did, for instance, was equivalent to getting busted for driving five over in a speed trap). Democrats can't even get rid of people for accepting bribes, let alone such petty crimes as sexual harrassment.

"People are allowed to have as much ass sex as they want, as long as they don't vote against it. Plus, it's telling that the kid turned 18 6 weeks before a recorded interchange.

Sounds quite legal to me. Being a hypocrit and creep are not against the law.

OK, Katrina: http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/02/fema.tapes/index.html

There is a statement in there that is false under some interpretations ("no one anticipated") but not false under the much more narrow context that Bush meant. What he was trying to say is that no one in the leadership of FEMA or in his admin came to him and said "Oh my God! We have to do something! There is a good chance the levees will break", not "No one in the history of the universe has ever complained about the quality of those levees". When questioned on the statement, Bush clarified it to the first, true, meaning. There was no particular intent to deceive and hence it was not a lie.

WMDs, and on my fear-as-manipulation claim: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o

Both sides use fear. Not news to me.

9/11: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm

Now you are suffering from a classic psychological trick called hindsight bias. It was not that Bush had NO warnings about AQ before 9/11. It was that he had 10,000 warnings about 10,000 different things before 9/11. Every idiot can see the needle in the haystack after the fact.

Well, then, this marks a change for the better now that the likes of Alberto Glz are caught. Let's hope the next Democrat who does it on such a major scale gets caught as well. Washington is a fucking cesspool.

Do you not understand that most presidents fire ALL of the people in that department and replace them ALL with their lackeys. This is the way it always has worked.

No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent.

"Dissent is important."

No, rational, well-thought, respectful dissent is important. The rest is garbage at best and dangerous at worst.

"People being able to speak without being threatened by the government is important."

Agreed, but who is being threatened for mere dissent?

It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.

"All false choices. I was asking your preference, but I see you use the NeoCon ignorance defense."

You don't understand the concept of a "false choice". It means asking someone X or Y and trying to force them to choose, when both X and Y or neither X or Y are options.

"First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is. Not in Iraq. I understand you're not a Humanist."

Actually, I am. Which is why I support the unseating of every dictator on earth. I have no idea why the left tolerates them so.

" And you're probably very white and have probably never left the country."

I have lived outside the US twice and travelled abroad many times.

"But the real world exists out there, too. And people are trying to live their lives like you live you

The distinction you wish for doesn't exist. Outside of politics, it you actually get held to higher standards as you move up the chain.
Right. You said it. Outside of politics. You still refuse to actually correlate Bush's crimes with Clinton's crimes. My point is specifically that at different points up and down the chain, people get treated differently. People tend to give the president much license because he's so high-profile.

[Foley] sorta indicated that he was sexually interested in a former employee of legal age. He was roundly condemned by his own party.
People are allowed to have as much ass sex as they want, as long as they don't vote against it. Plus, it's telling that the kid turned 18 6 weeks before a recorded interchange.

Grasp the difference yet?
I don't think you do. I don't know why I'm expected to do all the grasping around here.

Documentation, please. I have yet to find a liberal that can stand up to such a simple challenge.
OK, Katrina:
http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/03/02/fema.tapes/index.html
WMDs, and on my fear-as-manipulation claim:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYI7JXGqd0o
The war in Iraq:
http://www.downingstreetmemo.com/
9/11:
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB147/index.htm

Really, for lies directed at the American people, try any of his state of the union addresses.

[Falsified information and firing based on political beliefs] is normal. Most completely clean house as they enter office and put their own lackeys in place.
Well, then, this marks a change for the better now that the likes of Alberto Glz are caught. Let's hope the next Democrat who does it on such a major scale gets caught as well. Washington is a fucking cesspool.

And Democrats don't use fear with respect to Social Security, Health Care, and a host of other issues?
I think threatening people with death and destruction is worse than threatening them with bad healthcare. Really, I think the healthcare system is fucked up, but you, like Tom Delay (what a cocksucker, might I add), seem to think that pointing out a problem with the Democrats absolves the president of guilt for killing people.

Man, you reek of hypocrisy and are clearly blind to your own side's foibles.
Look, I'm not attacking you or claiming you are on their side. You are putting me on the Democrat's side because I'm attacking Republicans. Why don't I create two arbitrary sides here, and we'll call them Nathan (that's me) and fucking moron (that's you). See? I like that better.

No, just stupid, uninformed, illogical, childish dissent.
Dissent is important. People being able to speak without being threatened by the government is important. I bet you think that the government should get to decide what is stupid, uninformed, illogical, and childish, too. In Soviet Russia... Oh, wait... there's no punchline!

It isn't our fault that half the Democratic party falls under this category.
Right. And half of the Republican party falls into the category of man-who-sucks-on-the-moral-rod-of-truth. In other words, guys who take it up the ass, and talk out against taking it up the ass. Or, hypocrites.

All false choices.
I was asking your preference, but I see you use the NeoCon ignorance defense.

First, the odds of any of these things happening to me are trivial no matter who the president is.
Not in Iraq. I understand you're not a Humanist. And you're probably very white and have probably never left the country. But the real world exists out there, too. And people are trying to live their lives like yo

"We tracked them just fine, until they crashed into the two towers, and the ground. What's your point again? Say what? The first thing the Terrorists did on 9/11 was to turn off the IFF (Identify Friend or Foe) transponders, effectively blinding the FAA controllers. They don't rely on raw radar "paints" anymore for most Commercial stuff."

They don't seem particularly blind. Your claim is also addressed here as well. So at best you're telling half-truths. The FAA air traffic controllers were blind to attitude, but not location. The primary radar return is your "raw radar paints", although you are correct in implying that it's not solely depended upon in modern aviation.

You incorrectly stated that the Attorney General argues the Administration's cases before the Supreme Court; as a general matter, as I pointed out, that's not the job of the AG, but the Solicitor General.

As for integrity vs. political, it is certainly political and probably illegal when the Attorney General and his staff, in consultation with the President's political chief, direct U.S. Attorneys to bring cases of alleged corruption only against Democrats just before an election, and fire those who don't toe the party line. That doesn't even address the Administration's promotion of torture while Gonzales was White House counsel, and his own calling the Geneva Convention's protections "obsolete" and "quaint".

As an attorney, a law professor and a citizen, I was appalled at the selection of Gonzales as Attorney General, and appalled at how he has served in that role. I can only hope that, for the integrity of our justice system, his successor will be both more qualified and take his oath more seriously. {Prof. Jonathan}

No doubt he's a bright guy, but he has some huge blinders when it comes to politics. Unfortunately, his anger overwhelms his rationality.

A blinder many other Americans wear. For instance did you know the US is partially responsible for the massacre of some 200,000 East Timorese, 1/3 the population of East Timor? Then president Ford and Henry Kissinger supported Suharto's Indonesian invasion of East Timor after Portugal granted them their independence in 1975-76 which led to the death of these East Timorese. Ford and Kissinger also supported Gen Pinochet's overthrow of the democraticaly elected government in Chile. There tens of thousands simply "dissappeared" while many thousands more were tortured and or killed. Again all with the support of the US admin. And there are other examples of US support for the overthrow of governments and massacres of people.

Oh, lest you think I'm not American, not only am I one but I also served in the US Army. I'm not anti-American either, I oppose some of the actions the government has taken in the name of the USA.

Anyone else remember The Fortran Coloring Book by Dr. Roger Kaufman back in the '70s?

That was some entertaining documentation. Or rather, an entertaining tutorial.

This is old data, but I found it quickly. It should paint a pretty clear picture:

http://www.gwu.edu/~econ270/Taejoon.html#a.%20Urba n-rural

Here's a more recent article that shows the trend continuing: http://www.worldwatch.org/node/4469

Again I didnt take time to find "just the right data", because I dont care enough :)

I'm sure it has nothing at all to do with not funding a repressive totalitarian regime or anything... I'm as suspicious for corporate conspiracies as the next guy, but we should not send our capital to Fidel and his minions for any reason.

We traded with China and the Soviet Union, we certainly can trade with Cuba as well. One reason given for trade with China is that it would open up China, the same thing applies to Cuba.

As for totalitarian regimes the US has supported quite a few. Bush Jr took us to war against one, Saddam. However his dad Bush Sr as president and as VP with Reagan as president both supported Saddam. The Reagan and Bush Sr admins supported Saddam while he was using WMDs against not just Iran but also against Kurds and others in Iraq. Before Reagan and Bush Sr, Pres Ford and Henry Kissinger supported the dictator Gen Pinochet when he overthrew a democratically elected government. Both also supported the president of Indonesia General Suharto's invasion of the sovereign country of East Timor. After the invasion 200,000 East Timorese, one third of the population of East Timor, were massacred.

The US has supported dictators and atrocious human rights violaters and has no legs to stand on to support it's stance on Cuba. Hell the US supported the Cuban dictator Batista before Castro was able to overthrow him, if it hadn't been for the corrupt Batista Castro may of never gained power. This is not to excuse Castro but the US has plenty of blood on it's own hands.

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?