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Not to quibble over numbers, but $100M is like just the sunscreen budget. Government estimates for the war range from $20-200 billion.

"A well spoken liberal thesis is interesting to read, but a lot of the crap they were slinging was along the lines of "conservatives are so stupid", something I'm not willing to pay for."

Yes, you're right... Only Conservatives are willing to pay for mindless crap such as calling all liberals stupid.

From my POV (I am in the UK) all american news media is right wing.

From my point of view, all UKers fall somewhere between socialist and communist. Then again, sweeping generalizations like mine and yours are not very helpful.

Fox news is so right wing it is like a parody.

Oh, it can get much worse than the Fox news channel. Take, for example, WorldNet Daily or Newsmax.com, which make a point of headlining stories about Christian persecution and how Darwinism is being refuted. Hell, it can even get worse than that. Perhaps check out the Hal Turner Show.

For that reason I am always amazed to see some people claim CNN is "liberal".

CNN is pretty fair, though I've never heard them criticize a government program. Dan Rather is a much better example of Leftist bias in American media.

Can you US guys get Euronews (satellite news tv channel)? I wonder what you make of it in comparison to your home grown news channels.

Let me guess: "America is the source of all the world's problems. The Government is the solution to all the world's problems. Individality must be suppressed. The Government is the source of morality. Capitalism is evil. There is nothing wrong with communism; the problems have only been in its implementations." Did I get it right?

Beats me, but how do you know these people were terrorists?

Well, I feel a lot better about being so hard on you now that I know you have no pretense of intellectual honesty.

While Americans seem to want the rest of the world to worship them for being the 'protectors of good' that we all know and love the good ol' USofA for, eh?

No, we Americans want the rest of the world to not fly airplanes into our buildings and/or aid and abet those who do.

You enjoy your drinking water there, buddy ...

That's not very damn funny.

And I suppose, actually, that Australians have had nothing to do with this country's well-being, growth, or relative peacefulness.

Considering that Idaho farm boys fighting an almost hopeless battle on the island of Guadalcanal kept the phrase "The rape of Sydney" out of the history books, I feel some credit is due. I can put you in touch with some Nanking survivors if you disagree.

For companies that have government contracts and clearances, a credit check is done to make sure you are not in financial trouble and willing to sell US secrets to make loot.

The sad part is that this same progressive loss of liberty has already started elsewhere, including the US. Government works best with unobstructed power, and personal freedoms get in the way of that. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted.

I was making a milk shake when some uranium I had brought home from the lab fell into the blender. I had used the last of my milk, sugar and icecream on that milkshake, and all the stores were closed. So I drank it anyway. Damn, it was good.

When I awoke the next morning, my body was covered in green scales, even my pee pee. It looked pretty cool, so I jacked off a couple of times. The semen was a flourescent green that even glowed in the dark!

So anyway, as the day progressed, I noticed that I was growing. By sundown I was 20 feet tall, and by dawn I was 50 feet tall. All that growing made me hungry, so I ate the barrel-shaped Lucky Burger restaurant near my house. That was tasty, too.

Then I realized that with my new-found great powers come great responsibilities. So one by one, I tracked down and blasted the rogue LINUX programmers with my fire-breath. Then I ate them. They were okay, they needed a little pepper.

In retrospect, I'm glad this happened to me because now the world is free from those open-source, communist terrorists. Now decent, law-abiding Americans like the good people at Newsmax.com can continue the only way of life, the American way. God bless America! Remember 9-11!

data is useless by itself unless it can be used appropriately.

sort of like the list on conservative site NewsMax that finds that the vast majority of truly corrupt politicians in the past year were democrats. What a coincidence!

What are the odds of finding out more things like this, like at the office of Total information Awareness? Or the Transport Security Agencies list of people who cannot fly

I refer you to ex-KKK member Sen. Byrd.

Sens. Kerry, Byrd Refuse to Step Down

Sorry to say to this day the republican party continues to be a haven for white supremecists.
Ummm... who's harboring a white supremacist?
Depends on your definition of the word "is". Oh, wait, you probably thought that was blown out of proportion. But of course, a completely ambiguious statement (Lott's still an idiot) warrants all of the non-stop media attention.

Also, the "tolerant" Democrat party isn't tolerant to real (read: fewer voters) minorities.
Montana Republican Quits Senate Race After Gay Smear by Democrats

While we're at it: Al Gore
Gore Accused of Low 'Negro Tolerance' (talks about his Secert Service detail)

I refer you to ex-KKK member Sen. Byrd.

Sens. Kerry, Byrd Refuse to Step Down

Sorry to say to this day the republican party continues to be a haven for white supremecists.
Ummm... who's harboring a white supremacist?
Depends on your definition of the word "is". Oh, wait, you probably thought that was blown out of proportion. But of course, a completely ambiguious statement (Lott's still an idiot) warrants all of the non-stop media attention.

Also, the "tolerant" Democrat party isn't tolerant to real (read: fewer voters) minorities.
Montana Republican Quits Senate Race After Gay Smear by Democrats

While we're at it: Al Gore
Gore Accused of Low 'Negro Tolerance' (talks about his Secert Service detail)

I refer you to ex-KKK member Sen. Byrd.

Sens. Kerry, Byrd Refuse to Step Down

Sorry to say to this day the republican party continues to be a haven for white supremecists.
Ummm... who's harboring a white supremacist?
Depends on your definition of the word "is". Oh, wait, you probably thought that was blown out of proportion. But of course, a completely ambiguious statement (Lott's still an idiot) warrants all of the non-stop media attention.

Also, the "tolerant" Democrat party isn't tolerant to real (read: fewer voters) minorities.
Montana Republican Quits Senate Race After Gay Smear by Democrats

While we're at it: Al Gore
Gore Accused of Low 'Negro Tolerance' (talks about his Secert Service detail)

here is an interesting case of gun control (banning handguns) vs. gun ownership (basically requiring the ownership of a gun). It seems that both towns are small and both are suburbs, one near Chicago and one near Atlanta. It's not strictly fair to compare Kennesaw, GA to Washington, DC as I have done before because of racial factors and size of the town, though DC is the one with strict gun laws and is consistently the murder capital of America. This comparison, however, appears to be more fair.

You've got TransOrbital's TrailBlazer mission which will take photos of the landing sites. Followed a few years later by TransOrbital's Electra II which will drive rovers up to the landing sites. And within 15 years we'll have Chinese astronauts on the Moon (they say by 2010, but personally I think that's about 5 years too optimistic).

None of these things will convince the conspiracy nuts. Nothing would. But that's not the point. The point is to discredit them in the eyes of the public.

Yes, the Fed has us under such close watch that they renewed the visas of two of the now dead 9-11 attackers.

The only purpose of this is to kick money back to supporters of Bush and create jobs for political appointees.

Echelon has been violating our rights for a long time.

"This has been one of the greatest technological losses or our time."

Along with making nuclear weapons [I'm dead serious]. The Next Generation was showing us the adventures of Dr. Pulaski when the last nuclear weapon was made [newsmax.com]. Another foolish example of major organizations that ignore the "use it or lose it" principle.

I have a friend whose family lived in Kennesaw, GA for a few years, and they were legally required to own a gun in their house due to a law passed in 1982. The law was a backlash against Morton Grove, IL's law outlawing all handguns within city limits. Humorously, the law has enough loopholes to let people get out of it that no one could truly be forced to own one, and no one's ever been prosecuted for breaking it, but when his family moved in, the local law enforcement did actually check to make sure that they owned a gun. That's definitely an improvement over gun ownership being regulated through nepotism.

Kennesaw's violent crime rate dropped 89% in 1983 and has stayed that low while crime state-wide has only dropped 10%. If I recall correctly, Kennesaw has had 3 murders since 1982 despite the population doubling since then, and only one (in 1997) was done with a gun while the other two were stabbings.
There have been no incidents of children being killed in accidental discharges. As a result, the NRA loves Kennesaw. It's the best pro-gun example they could've ever dreamed of.

For a little more info on both towns, go here.

This report of a study is at least interesting, because (according to the article) the study authors expected to find results opposite of their actual findings. http://www.newsmax.com/articles/?a=2000/8/1/183258

According to the Chinese engineer, Cisco came through, developing a router device, integrator and firewall box specially designed for the government's telecom monopoly. Cisco also appears to have offered a significant initial discount in the price of the firewall boxes.

Cisco sells routers, firewalls, etc. The chinese government made the concious decision to block various routes in those routers, or sites in the firewalls. Cisco didn't do it for them (at least I don't see where it says they did).

Cisco did

The middle east, and much of the Mediterranean, is like a giant oil sump, the lowest point (plug, if you like) of which is Iraq, which is why there has been so much (US) interest in the past 20+ years in the 'stability' of the region. After the last Gulf war, Cheney's Haliburton (which was already quite involved in Iraq) were awarded the contract to rebuild the oil fields after the allies bombed them to smithereens. Talk about a job-creation scheme! Now France and Russian companies have developed oilfields in Iraq, but they're afraid they're going to lose out to the US should Iraq have a US-mandated regime-change.

Basically, you have to be pretty naiive to discount the probability that US companies won't be quids in if the current Iraqi regime is destroyed - which I'd love to see happen, by the way, but not by the current "Sink and you're innocent, float and you drown"/"If we find weapons, we bomb you, if not, you must be hiding them and we bomb you anyway" witchunt.

The stuff you browse on the web isn't exactly completely free of charge. There're bandwidth costs to be paid, servers... etc.

If they didn't want to pay bandwidth costs, they wouldn't have placed their site online. That is an assumed cost of operating.

Yes, we browse their sites for free, and it's perfectly within their rights to send us pop-up ads. But I agreed to no terms of service when I typed in their address.

If they're going to recoup their costs, they're going to have to do it smarter. Salon, for example, won't let you access their premium content unless you pay, and that's fair. They've implemented a system that doesn't make assumptions. It doesn't really work, but it's still fair.

...all they're asking in return is for you to do your part and look at those ads... is it that big of an inconvenience?

Whether or not it's a big inconvenience is a matter of opinion, a moot point, and not worth discussing. The issue is whether or not I'm allowed to block their pop-ups altogether.

Wait, scratch that. That's how they want us to think. The issue is whether or not they are allowed to force me to see what they want me to see.

I say no.

TIVO shares customer data
TIVO shares customer data
TIVO shares customer data
Or how about the US Govt. writing TIVO a letter admonishing them for their privacy policy tactics?
TIVO's response to getting slammed by some privacy group (which is cached on Google).
but mysteriously, I can't find it on their site.

Phiilips announces wquity investment in TIVO cached on Google.

To be perfectly clear, I like what TIVO can do, but not what they do.

Hell, I have a few complaints about ReplayTV:

• Latency with remote control can be infuriating. I wish there were 3rd party remote controls as my older model can't work without it and my wife has no concept of being gentle with it.
• Recently will not get as much advanced programming - only about a week now, when it used to do 2.5 weeks.
• New units charge programming fee, just like TIVO (the original reason I chose Replay over TIVO.
• Can't mod as easy as TIVO
• Tech support by 3rd party comany

At the end of the day though, I feel a lot more comfortable with Replay having my personal info than TIVO.

A year or so ago, I read an article on a guy who was monitoring the data that went from his TIVO out (used a computer as the go between) and found that they were transmitting more user specific data than they admited to. I'll try to find a link...

But with a margin that was so small that the result would have changed if Palm Beach voters had voted the way they intended to vote.

Your intent to vote is indicated by what you marked. If the voters of Pea Brain County are so mentally deficient that they can't figure out the difference between "Buchanan" and "Gore" on their ballots (designed by a Democrat, design signed off on by more Democrats), then they really have no business voting. (Given that these are the same people who can somehow keep track of 50 bingo cards at a time, though, I'm somewhat suspicious of their claims of confusion WRT a single ballot.)

What I found more disturbing about the 2000 election was Gore's attempt to throw out the military vote. There was indeed an attempt to steal the 2000 election...what the left-wing media (ABC/CBS/NBC/CNN/etc.) refuses to acknowledge is that it was Gore who tried to steal the election. Thankfully, he failed in his attempt.

Noam Chomsky is such an isolated example almost ignored completely by the mainstream press. The amount of dissent in the press and generally amoung the Americans I know seems very minimal to me (I am a NZer living in New York).

Well I think there are a number of candidates, but let me argue the case for Holland.

In terms of economic freedom it scores slightly higher than the US on the Heritage Foundation/Wall Street Journal 2002 Index of Economic Freedom guide to the world's economies. See also this link Freest Economy? It's Not the US. This is a rough measure of the amount of regulation and internal restrictions within each economy - (Note so do 7 other countries including New Zealand and Ireland).

In terms of personal freedoms the US has very liberal gun laws to the point of insanity, definitely freer than the tight gun laws in Holland. In other areas it is far less progressive than Holland. In particular in Holland has the much more liberal drug and prostition laws. Gay marriages are legally recognised in Holland and euthanasia is legal (both not true in the US). The legal age of consent for consenting make-female sex amoung adolescents is 12 years old (the lowest in Europe), lower than any state in the US. Hell in the US sodomy is still illegal many states - in Idaho it carries a possible life sentence in prison! Nude topless and nude sunbathing is a common sight on Dutch beaches, as is hardcore pornography on cable TV. In Holland abortions are freely available to anyone, syringes and methadone and contraceptives are also paid for by the Government..

In the US the legal drinking age is 21, whereas most other places it is from 16-18 (16 in Holland for beer 18 for spirits). Smoking age in the US in 18 to 21, 16 in Holland.

Holland (and most other Western countries) have freedom of speech, equality, freedom of association etc. protected by its constitution. There's nothing unique about the US in that regard.

The US isn't 'undoubtably' the freest country in the world by any stretch of the imagination.

However, it does seem unlikely that China would risk (conventional) war with the US over Taiwan; they may have over one billion people, but much of their military technology dates back to the fifties. In the case of invasion, the US would almost certainly come to Taiwan's aid, for better or for worse.

Perhaps you've fallen behind in recent arms trades... Muzi

Also, China's missiles don't seem to shabby... News Max

I'm sure there are other deals going on. Russia's willing to sell anything to make a buck. You might say that their technology is behind the times as well, but it's a funny thing. If you have the airpower, then there is a lot of things you can do with a billion people...

It's the economy stupid.

Ah yes, the campaign slogan of one William Jefferson Clinton. A great view, that resulted in thousands of dead Americans due to lack of foriegn policy. Under Clinton's astute economic watch, we had the first economic bubble in many years that was already bursting by 1999, which had to be covered up by an accounting fiasco that makes Enron look like a lemonade stand. Read some more about Clinton's true contribution to the American economy in the 1990s.

A quote:

A fair assessment of his legacy should therefore begin by asking what, if anything, the President had to do with the economic growth of the last nine and a half years. The answer is: well, nothing really.

Yeah, that slogan is something to be real proud of.

slashdot finally post this story on the fp...
i feel both gratified and worrying

the 16th All-Hands meeting of CCP will be held on 18th Nov at BeiJing, it will announce the fourth core-leader of the party (the first three is Mao, Deng, Jiang), the political battle just run in white hot. you can image how could this be, in a autarchy. currently, they are very sensitive about the public media, as well as the internet, this is so called "the very period", that's why google has been banned. it's quite understandable(not acceptable) from my point of view (No, i'm not brainwashed), google will be ok after this year.

my respect goes to google
for their disobedience

my useless indignation goes to Cisco and Yahoo!
for their "commercial operation"

god or someone else bless us...
free speech rulz

Thank Cisco. :)

Serious question: What if the first time you see a gun outside a museum and not in the possession of police/security is when you are looking down the barrel of one in the hand of a criminal? Do you think you'd wish your country had more gun control (which obviously didn't keep this gun away from a criminal) or less (so that you could have your own for self-defense)?

Hypothetical, but compelling.

• Gun crimes soaring despite ban brought in following Dunblane
• A world without guns is not a pretty picture
• Gun-toting Swiss see fewer crimes
• Too many guns?
• Handgun Ban Fails to Quell Surge in Gun Crimes Across Britain
• When guns are banned in England
• Ivy League research says Anti-gun Crackdown Didn't Lower Crime

I have more, but that's probably enough.

-ChristTrekker

Amendment 1

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press;

Amendment 1.B
Congress may make a law determining when free speech is permitted, or who may pay for it.

According to Chang, both countries crammed their banks full of bonds, created growth by playing money games and attracting foreign direct investment. "Argentina," he wrote, "deferred reforms by living on foreign capital, and China is playing this same game, too. ... When the flow of international capital tightens again, China's deteriorating fiscal and debt conditions will come under international scrutiny."

High expectations for the Chinese economy are "grossly exaggerated," he warned, explaining that China's economic growth is declining and its banking system is in "disarray, posing a threat of destabilization to the international economy."

Click here for the rest (from WSJ Asia via)

Yeah well... The Japanese economy is sad. Your future is uncertain; you are likely to be unemployed. The Japanese cost of living makes San Francisco look cheap (even New York) - $30 is probably a far greater percentage of your disposable income than mine. And judging on the last time there was an earthquake, your government acted completely defunct. Taxes are high and Japan is going through a cultural crisis. And most Japanese work on Saturday - but get less done (your GDP is lower ($36,200 USA vs. Japan $24,900) and we work 5 days a week). Your country lends money to countries who get better economic ratings than you. Japan's Economy: Now Rated Below Botswana Monday, July 8, 2002.

You know, there is a lot more to life than DSL. Unlike Japan, we have a *huge* country and a gigantic and fascinatingly well working infrastructure (in part due to Japanese Americans, Japanese engineering and equipment, credit is most certainly due).

You know, there are central offices here in the US that are 100s of miles from certain customers. In Japan, there is barely a square mile left that is undeveloped, so suffice to say, it should be rather easy to implement high speed internet cheaply. And speaking on environments, your fishermen are repeatedly caught killing near-extinct whale species, kill seals for their penises which are considered a delicacy, and have no renewable resources left on your Island of Japan. Looks like Nabunaga's ambition went a tad too far.

Think. The USA is not a poster child for how things should be run, but socialist tendencies (like DIRT! CHEAP! INTERNET! FOR! EVERYONE!) seem to far further from the ideal we all try to work towards.

US/Japan infrastructure:
US Telephones 194 million (1997) / Japan Telephones - 60.381 million (1997)
US Telephones cellular: 69.209 million (1998) / Japan Telephones - cellular: 63.88 million (2000)
US Radio stations: AM 4,762, FM 5,542 (1998) / Japan Radio stations: AM 190, FM 88 (1999)
US Highways: total: 6,370,031 km / Japan Highways: total: 1,152,207 km
US Waterways: 41,009 km / Japan Waterways: 1,770 km
US Airports - with paved runways: total: 5,174 / Japan Airports - with paved runways: total: 142
US Internet Service Providers (ISPs): 7,800 (2000 est.) / Japan ISPS 73 (2000)
US INTERNET USERS Internet users: 148 million (2000) / JAPAN INTERNET USERS Internet users: 27.06 million (2000)

So, I think the US has a slight idea about infrastructure, and how to provide every opportunity to do well for yourself and your business.. And most of the figures, even when divided by 2.1 or so to account for the population discrepancy, well, leaves Japan in the dust.
US Population: 278,058,881 (July 2001 est.) / Japan Population: 126,771,662 (July 2001 est.)

Go check out more interesting country facts here.

Quotes:

Japan's Ledger

By comparison, Japan's ledger sheet is not so simple or impressive. Japan's $4.2 trillion economy may be slowly shrugging off its third recession in a decade, but there are still fundamental issues.

Japan's total debt to GDP is triple the American level. That is the highest any major industrialized country has faced in the last half century.

Japan's economy shrunk by 1.3 percent last year. Meanwhile, the average age has crept up to 41, the highest in the world.

Japan has $5 trillion in primary government debt, $3.7 trillion of which is bonds.

Japanese companies continue to eliminate jobs, helping push the unemployment rate to a near-record 5.4 percent in May. With their jobs in jeopardy, Japanese are spending less on cars, homes and other expensive items.

Thirteen percent of Japan's general expenditures go to social security payments and a whopping 20 percent to debt service.

Is there something outside the marketability of political orientation that is a factor in this difference in success? Does political orientation give a business an advantage in a Capitalistic society? Or is it that Republicans are just looser with their wallets?

Even if you're right, "leftist liberal bullshit" hardly = "terrorist" (are any of us really that dumb? or scared?). But beyond that, how many outlets do you know of for "leftist liberal bullshit" that are both up to date and in depth? Sure, there are a few, but hardly as many as there are for mainstream bullshit, whether you consider it "liberal" or "conservative." And with none of the resources.

As an American I am grateful for and proud of the existence of right wing kook news sources like the Washington Times (Moonies) and newsmax (loonies) because they manifest both the power and price of democracy. Indymedia kicks both their asses, with none of the funding, you may not like them but if you can't respect their oppositional stance you either don't understand them or you don't understand democracy.

When was the last time you heard a pro-life argument on NPR? How about an opinion piece arguing against gun control? I have never heard either although I have heard many with the opposite views. Bill O'Reilly has said that he could not find one NPR station that would allow him to come on and promote his book. Now, I don't particularly care of O'Reilly, but he is a pretty popular figure. I guarantee NPR would be begging Dan Rather to come on and promote his book. I'm not the only one suggesting that NPR slants to the left. There was recently a debate in the House as to "whether the taxpayers should continue to subsidize NPR's left-wing propaganda".

It is my belief that most major television news channels, including the major networks, are slanted left. Bernard Goldberg recently explored this in his book. I think that FOX news is relatively unbiased. They always seem to attempt to present both sides of an issue. CNN has gotten much better also, they probably felt pressure by FOX's surge in the ratings.

I was making a milk shake when some uranium I had brought home from the lab fell into the blender. I had used the last of my milk, sugar and icecream on that milkshake, and all the stores were closed. So I drank it anyway. Damn, it was good.

When I awoke the next morning, my body was covered in green scales, even my pee pee. It looked pretty cool, so I jacked off a couple of times. The semen was a flourescent green that even glowed in the dark!

So anyway, as the day progressed, I noticed that I was growing. By sundown I was 20 feet tall, and by dawn I was 50 feet tall. All that growing made me hungry, so I ate the barrel-shaped Lucky Burger restaurant near my house. That was tasty, too.

Then I realized that with my new-found great powers come great responsibilities. So one by one, I tracked down and blasted the rogue LINUX programmers with my fire-breath. Then I ate them. They were okay, they needed a little pepper.

In retrospect, I'm glad this happened to me because now the world is free from those open-source, communist terrorists. Now decent, law-abiding Americans like the good people at Newsmax.com can continue the only way of life, the American way. God bless America! Remember 9-11!

That is. . .if they don't do something about you first.

Sleep tight, fascist. Your time is coming.

Lest we forget that China built a fiber communication network in afghanistan. That, with the latest intelligence debacle, well
IMHO, if tapping any communication medium will assist in the thwarting of terrorist activity, well we need something.
Noone would have considered this applicable 3 years ago.
Usually, with that size of budget, there are definately some dark ops. No wonder we (as in the U.S.) are developing methods to
Xray people as they wander through airports.

Someone to ask about the plans and what the impact will be is Secretary of the Navy Gordon England.
Understandably, I am sure he would not delve into the detailed tie-in and the way the Govt. is using 9/11 to move projects like thas ahead.
Crossing's Creditors' Committee press releases show how critical it was for the Govt to bail them out. With clients like
K.B. toys to sell their pipe to, it is amazing that they are not rolling in cash.
Stratgetically, there is concern because"For a very low price, someone is going to acquire a set of undersea fiber routes that crisscross the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and connect over 20 nations and perhaps resell or lease the network at a handsome profit to another party that could have its very own undersea communications network and training ground. The bankruptcy court had set April 23 as the deadline to receive proposals to take over the now-bankrupt GX.

Verisign uses equipment from Verint, which is formerly known as Comverse. We all know the story about the spy network, right? (http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/ 18/224826.shtml)

That's good and all when you can trust the people that are doing this. But we have seen through history and in recent weeks (FBI agents indicted on Insider Trading) What's next? What if the FBI sold your information to a competitor company (like the CIA telling Boeing about a secret deal that Airbus, Boeing's competitor, was discussing with Saudi Arabia, allowing Boeing to beat their offer)

But if you let them read your emails, you must surely be willing to allow them to listen to your phone calls. If that's the case, you must surely support the government putting camera's everwhere. Since, I mean, you have nothing to hide.

See the problem is not that you don't have anything to hide, but the American system is based on freedom for all individuals. In that, everyone should be treated innocent until proven guilty. That's the basis of this entire system.

Balanced reporting, and they often scoop the Big Players too.

• World Net Daily
• Drudge Report
• News Max
• Townhall
• Lucianne
• Jewish World Review
• Front Page Magazine
• Cybercast News Service

Fox has pretty good, balanced news, too.

China probably wouldn't take the US head on but China invading Taiwan while the United States is busy elsewhere is possible. The other possibillity is a proxy war. China is not shy about publishing agressive statements and is buddy buddy with quite a few nations in our sights. Probably not as extreme as the links above suggest but I wouldn't write off China as a threat.

I'm glad the CIA is thinking about it, better than being caught flat footed.

China probably wouldn't take the US head on but China invading Taiwan while the United States is busy elsewhere is possible. The other possibillity is a proxy war. China is not shy about publishing agressive statements and is buddy buddy with quite a few nations in our sights. Probably not as extreme as the links above suggest but I wouldn't write off China as a threat.

I'm glad the CIA is thinking about it, better than being caught flat footed.

This article and this one and this one too, (Google cache).

I'm not supporting our Chinese friends if this article is true, but it would seem to me that whats good for the goose is good for the gander, no?

What I have found particularly striking is the extensive effort made to suppress this story.

CARL CAMERON, FOX NEWS CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The company is Comverse Infosys, a subsidiary of an Israeli-run private telecommunications firm,with offices throughout the U.S. It provides wiretapping equipment for law enforcement. Here's how wiretapping works in the U.S.

Every time you make a call, it passes through the nation's elaborate network of switchers and routers run by the phone companies. Custom computers and software,made by companies like Comverse, are tied into that network to intercept, record and store the wiretapped calls, and at the same time transmit them to investigators.

The manufacturers have continuing access to the computers so they can service them and keep them free of glitches.

This process was authorized by the 1994 Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act, or CALEA.

Senior government officials have now told Fox News that while CALEA made wiretapping easier, it has led to a system that is seriously vulnerable to compromise,and may have undermined the whole wiretapping system. Indeed, Fox News has learned that Attorney General John Ashcroftand FBI Director Robert Mueller were both warned October 18th in a hand-delivered letter from 15 local, state and federal law enforcement officials, who complained that -quote - "law enforcement's current electronic surveillance capabilities are less effective today than they were at the time CALEA was enacted."

Congress insists the equipment it installs is secure. But the complaint about this system is that the wiretap computer programs made by Comverse have, in effect,a back door through which wiretaps themselves can be intercepted by unauthorized parties. Adding to the suspicions is the fact that in Israel,

Comverse works closely with the Israeli government, and under special programs,gets reimbursed for up to 50 percent of its research and development costs by the Israeli Ministry of Industry and Trade.

But investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying through Comverse is considered career suicide.

And sources say that while various F.B.I. inquiries into Comverse have been conducted over the years,they've been halted before the actual equipment has ever been thoroughly tested for leaks.

A 1999 F.C.C. document indicates several government agencies expressed deep concernsthat too many unauthorized non-law enforcement personnel can access the wiretap system.

I'm not sure how much of this story I believe, here are some other (mostly right-wing) sites that covered this:

• http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2001/12/1 8/224826.shtml
• http://www.mugu.com/pipermail/upstream-list/2001-D ecember/003993.html

I'm sure this guy is regreting it. I mean, his website is blackholed right now, a few days before the primary! And this guy was supposedly "net savy"....

From what I understand, his primary campaign isn't doing too well either. It's actually a distant third. Serves him right.

This is reprinted from NewsMax but it was also on the Cable networks last night. Hollings is going to be put out to pasture soon. Without Hollings, SSSCA will die.
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Hollings Blames Bush Administration for 9/11 Attacks

Apparently frustrated over his inability to gain any political traction on the Enron scandal, Democratic Party loose cannon Sen. Fritz Hollings charged Wednesday that the Bush administration's economic policies actually helped Osama bin Laden finance the Sept. 11 attacks that resulted in the deaths of over 3,000 Americans.

"In came the [Bush] administration with who? [Economic adviser] Larry Lindsey," Hollings told a Washington, D.C., press conference in somewhat slurred speech.

"Larry Lindsey was the $50,000-a-year consultant for Enron who was running around saying it was unconstitutional to try to close down these things [offshore tax shelters]. And so they immediately, this time last year, closed down the Larry Summers effort. And you had 9/11."

Summers was the Clinton administration treasury secretary who Hollings said wanted to close down offshore tax havens.

In fact, the FBI found that offshore tax havens had nothing to do with bin Laden's ability to finance the attacks, reported Fox News Channel, which made Hollings' outburst its lead story Wednesday night.

During the same press conference, the South Carolinia Democrat misidentified Attorney General John Ashcroft as "the secretary of energy" and erroneously charged that Army Secretary Thomas White pushed for deregulation that netted him a $100 million profit from an Enron investment.

"But as Army Secretary, White has never advocated deregulation and denies doing any favors for Enron," reported FNC's Carl Cameron.

Responding to Hollings' charges, the White House said, "It has begun to make him look less than serious, someone who should not be taken seriously."

Republicans on the Hill called Hollings' effort to blame Bush economic policies for the 9/11 attacks "pathetic."

In November New York Sen. Hillary Clinton made a similarly outrageous claim, suggesting that the Bush tax cut was to blame for the 9/11 attacks.

"If we hadn't passed the big tax cut last spring, that I believe undermined our fiscal responsibility and our ability to deal with this new threat of terrorism, we wouldn't be in the fix we're in today," Clinton told CNN on the two-month anniversary of the attacks.

The NSA exists to protect US national secrets.
and to perform industrial espionage on behalf of US corporations.

Are also arguments against absentee ballots. Perhaps we should get rid of those too- wonder who the president would be today.

When one considers that absentee ballots are the only way military personnel deployed overseas can vote, and that those personnel voted nearly 2-1 in favor of Bush, I think there's little doubt.

Do you advocate preventing our military volunteers from voting? It seems Bill Clinton's defense department agreed with you.

LOL. Slashdot is what is known as "yellow journalism". This site makes indymedia and NewsMax look unbiased.

Anyway, Drudge makes a pretty good news portal. He's got links to everything, and his site's way better than his rep. Plus, he's a little paranoid about everything, just like you seem to be. Peep it.