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Of course they're ignoring the French protest.

The French are the last people on earth who can lecture anyone on protecting privacy. The first time France organized a protest like this Le Monde reported that the French government was worse then the US on the next god-damn day. Literally. Only July 3rd the French protested US PRISM, and on the 4th Le Monde reported they were worse.

Here's a couple links because the October bitch-session has overwhelmed the July bitch-session in Google:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-lindorff/50398/public-support-grows-for-snowden-in-europe-germany-and-france-should-offer-nsa-whistleblower-asylum
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-23178284

Punish it for what it is: an attempted coup. Maybe this shouldn't count as "real voter fraud," but in general, democratic societies ought to punish organized voter fraud as a form of "attempting to overthrow the government." If the federal government were to hang a few people for attempting to systematically defraud the electorate, I think you'd see a lot fewer people willing to engage in the practice.

Here are a few:

How the GOP Rules America: Voter Suppression and Political Apartheid
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/yellow/36325/how-the-gop-rules-america-voter-suppression-and-political-apartheid

Patterns of Touch Screen Voting Machine Fraud Identified and Documented in Florida, Ohio, New Mexico and Elsewhere in 2004
http://www.flcv.com/fraudpat.html

Republican voter suppression: Maria’s Story
http://horsesass.org/?p=39248

New Requirements Under HB 2067 (Voter Suppression Law)
http://www.sunfloweract.org/hb2067new
(in short, birth certificate based voter ID tends to disenfranchise elderly voters who were born at a time when birth certificates were not routinely issued -- even Ronald Reagan's bitch certificate was created many years after the fact)

Map of voter ID requirements:
http://www.ncsl.org/?tabid=16602

You know you're a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/21289

Cross-reference both of those made-for-radio essays with Bob Cringely's latest article. It all leads me to believe that the best "solution" to apply to Net Neutrality at this point is more "benign neglect" -- and on top of that, my paranoia operates at such a hair-trigger that I wonder what other intrusive regulations are going to get slid in along with whatever legislation gets put forward and will certainly not be vetoed by the smirking chimp.

I read this site fairly regularly, as well as this one. I'm not really sure why I do...the entertainment factor mostly.

The thing that I often find truly painful when reading such sites however are the moronic adult children who somehow think they're going to change the world purely by submitting a story to a blog, so that their fellow adolescents can then bitch, whine, and post self-congratulatory leftist screeds in response. Another thing these same imbeciles do is insist on continuing in the delusion that the American system of government is still functional.

I'd be willing to bet good money that the "blogosphere" (even that word contains an overestimation of importance) by itself has done exactly jack shit when it has come to changing the actions of any government or corporation anywhere. How exactly is it *meant* to change anything by simply (completely on its' own) expressing your opinion?

I'm now going to probably cause people to label me a hypocrite here when I admit that I have a blog, which yes, I even update once every four months or so. The difference however is that I have no illusions whatsoever about it; I realise that my blog is completely devoid of any genuine relevance or importance...and so is everyone else's.

...I've been seeing this kind of thing popping up all over the Web in the last week or so, with one of the main proponents apparently being this guy, a particularly sophisticated crackpot who I remember having read about a few years back.

The online kook population seem to be going into a feeding frenzy with regards to Katrina, even moreso than usual. FEMA's recent screwups in New Orleans are also apparently being seen by the Lone Gunmen demographic as validation of the schizoid claims they've been making over the past 15 years, namely that FEMA have been busily carpeting the US with concentration camps, presumably for a time when Shrub will grow tired of all the criticism he's been receiving, throw some giant switch, and have said critics (and most of the rest of the population along with them, apparently) rounded up.

We can only hope they're wrong. ;-)

smirking chimp
what really happened
bartcop
atrios

Not just a chimp, but a smirking chimp.

Interesting timing, I just submitted to Slashdot an article about the fact that more than 60 scientists, including 20 Nobel laureates, issued a statement yesterday asserting that the Bush administration had systematically distorted scientific fact in the service of policy goals on the environment, health, biomedical research and nuclear weaponry at home and abroad.

I wouldn't be too surprised or disappointed if the article gets rejected, it is a bit too flamebaity, especially with the election coming up... environment and politics is a volatile mixture on Slashdot. Interesting read nonetheless.

NYTimes requires registration, but you can read a copy of the article at The Smirking Chimp instead if you prefer.

The organisation itself: Union of Concerned Scientists.

Neocon, your points on England, the Netherlands, and Denmark, compare civil penalties, restrictions, and impositions to criminal imprisonment. I agree that prior restraint, restrictions and impositions on the practice of journalism, and warrantless searches are bad, but who thinks that they are anywhere near as bad as the U.S. pandering to powerful prison guard unions resulting in mandatory minimum sentencing fiascos?

From the July 2000 report, Poor Prescription: The Costs of Imprisoning Drug Offenders in the United States:

Nearly one in four persons (23.7%) imprisoned in the United States is currently imprisoned for a drug offense. The number of persons behind bars for drug offenses (458,131) is roughly the same as the entire prison and jail population in 1980 (474,368).

From a utilitarian perspective, this situation is pointless because as far as I can tell, both prescription and illicit drugs are as available now as they were in 1980. And crime rates in general are within 20% of 1980 levels -- but we have four times as many people in prison! Does that trend lead you to believe that we are becoming more or less free?

For what reason do you suggest that prior restraint and the Official Secrets Act make people less free than mandatory minimum drug sentences? You can compare the two by simply determining whether the other nations in question have a greater proportion of people in prison for violations of the laws you cite. There is no greater loss of freedom experienced in the industrialized world than to be put in prison, save for execution (which, of those countries, is only practiced in the U.S., by the way.) To compare imprisonment to restrictions on freedom of speech resulting in civil penalties, or even warrantless searches, is simply absurd. I'll agree that we are more free in some ways, but nowhere near the most free overall.

DEMOCRACY:

``disqualification of voters'': this accusation ... is nothing more than FUD -- extensive investigations by a number of groups have failed to turn up any significant number of people who were disqualified from voting who were not, in fact felons.

Not according to:

• John Ashcroft's Justice Department
• The New York Times, contrary to your assertion
• The United States Civil Rights Commission -- excerpt:

  Estimates indicate that approximately 14.4 percent of Florida's black voters cast ballots that were rejected. This compares with approximately 1.6 percent of nonblack Florida voters who did not have their presidential votes counted.

• direct inspection of the database tables used

of the nations you name, only one, Australia, uses anything resembling preferential voting of any sort, as you can verify at the Center for Voting and Democracy. Other than them, only Ireland, Malta, and Nauru, in all the world, use any form of such voting. Secondly, this system does not, as you seem to think, necessarily result in a `more democratic' outcome.

While you are technically correct about Austrailia, the systems in use in Canada and Brazil, and parts of England, e.g., the metropolitan London area, and France, also serve to eliminate the spoiler effect. Without the spoiler effect, Ross Perot would not have kept G.H.W. Bush from being re-elected, so this cuts both ways. Any nation incompetent enough to eliminate the spoiler effect, so easily done, is centuries behind in democracy.

POVERTY:

As mentioned before, there is a distributed project called climateprediction.net
for those who want to participate themselves. It is run by the University of Oxford in the UK, it is not affiliated with . So far only a windows client, but a Linux one is in the works. It is very CPU intensive, so if you have less than an 800mhz processor you shouldn't bother, it would take months to finish a single unit of work.

Hey, do you find it suprising that the nation that knows the least about climate science is the one that is most skeptical about global warming?

"In little more than a decade, the United States has fallen significantly behind other countries in its ability to simulate and predict long-term shifts in climate, according to a wide range of scientists and recent federal studies."
"During the Clinton administration, the lack of American modeling leadership did not have a discernible impact on climate policy, various experts said. But it did prevent the United States from playing a more central role in writing critical sections of the Intergovernmental Panel's report -- particularly the part assessing the extent of human influence on the warming trend of recent decades.

In computing power, Dr. Sarachik said, "our top two centers together don't amount to one-fifth of the European effort."

In that article from the New York Times is from two years ago! It mentions the japanese plans to build the Earth Simulator.

Avi Ruben was probably a fool for not divesting or disclosing his interest in a pseudo-competitor, but why isn't anyone screaming about Senator Chuck Hagel's ownership of Diebold? here's a version of the story. But where are the mainstream media accounts of this in relation to Hagel's unprecedented win in Nebraska using election machines his own company sold! And then he apparently failed to disclose this for years.

Frankly, if voting is going to be electronic and this insecure, I'd prefer to vote via the web. Better yet, I'll go vote via Taco Bell.

I'm sure I'll get flamed by the libertarian free-market fanatics for posting this, but this is the truth and it needs to be heard.

Ernest Partridge: 'Dear CEO: Is this really what you want?'

By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers [crisispapers.org]

An open letter to the Chief Executive Officers of the Fortune 500 companies, and of the major commercial media.

Dear CEO,

Congratulations! You have won, decisively and overwhelmingly.

Your favored politicians and political party are now in control of all three branches of the United States government. Your political and economic ideologies, preached virtually without rebuttal in your media, have been enacted by law, executive order and judicial decree. And those ideologies are destined to be solidified as federal judges who endorse these ideologies come to dominate the federal judiciary.

As a result of your victory, the Congress of the United States now follows the dictates of its corporate "sponsors," and is thus no longer responsive to the wishes and interests of its constituents. The Federal regulatory agencies the EPA, the FCC, the SEC, the FDA, etc. have become the captives, and virtual subsidiaries, of the industries that they were intended to regulate.

Thanks to "your" Administration and Congress, and the unchallenged political message of "your" media, the fortunate wealthy few, like yourself, are the beneficiaries of "tax reform" legislation which accelerates the flow of national wealth from the vast majority of our population which produces that wealth, to those of you who own and control that wealth. That same tax policy is producing enormous deficits in the federal budget and an increase in the national debt that will likely bankrupt the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and burden our children and grandchildren essentially forever. But, of course, none of that directly affects you and yours.

All in all, you have received from the incumbent Administration and Congress, an overwhelmingly favorable return on your investment in campaign funds.

However, I must wonder if you have carefully assessed the larger return on this investment, the full consequences of your complete political victory.

If you do, I suspect that you may discover that yours has been a pyrrhic victory. You might, on reflection, decide that you do not really want the prize that you have won. You may in fact have reaped a whirlwind so dreadful that you may wish, while there is still time, to make corrections or even, dare I say, reparations.

One might urge you to reassess your "victory" and your continuing course of political action on grounds of morality, of religion, or of political tradition. Instead, I would ask you to assess the current political condition in the United States from the perspective of that central principle of the dominant economic theory: the principle of self-interest.

From the perspective of self-interest alone, I would submit that all that you have won may be much less than meets the eye, and that this accomplishment might even contains the seeds of its own destruction, and of your ruin.


The Economy: At the Democratic convention of 2000, Senator Joseph Lieberman, the finest Republican mind in the Democratic Party, quoted Harry Truman: "to live like a Republican, vote like a Democrat." This is more than a partisan slogan, it is history. Mark Hulbert reports, in CBS Market Watch [smirkingchimp.com] that "since 1901, the Dow Jones Industrial Averages average annual gain, after inflation, has been nearly twice as high when a Democrat has occupied the White House."

But if the history of the last century is unconvincing, just think back to the past decade. While its true that the Bush Administration and the Republican Congress have given you

slashdot.org
newsforge.com
theregister.co.uk
my university's daily newspaper (no link!)
fark.com
the smirking chimp
dr. fun
the daily vault (although i review there once in a while)
google news
daily rotten
lwn.net
crackmonkey archives
the dot
kde-look.org
corona's coming attractions
snopes' update page
doc's weblog

And I think that's about it for a daily basis.

Rather than restricting citizen's rights to ask questions, it's much better to choke off the seditious answers. With so many negative stories,, dangerous voices of dissent and defeatist rumourmongers creeping around the dangerous and unregulated Internet, it's high time we had a clampdown on traitors!

"Well it would leave us open to false accusations by rogue governments!" Well yeah, that's the justice system. Not perfect, but they wouldn't be able to do any harm without any evidence. Oh boy what I'd give to fly over to America, meet Dubya, and say "Hi! I don't recognise your legal system because someone might falsely accuse me of something!" And give him a quick bit of justice upside the head. [Well, the prezel obviously taught him nothing, if indeed it was a prezel. Wouldn't you go get help if you were choking? Hmmm... *strokes chin*]

I imagine I'd still have to be off the scene before you can say "Unocal" though.

Ali

Well, for instance here, or maybe here.

The government of the USA has fallen under the control of some Very Bad People, no doubt about it.

The only thing that is keeping the public complacent about it is the new role of the major news media as propaganda arms of the government. I know, I know, this is not news according to the likes of Chomsky et al, but there has been a **huge** sea change since 9-11 in how far they are even willing to pretend to go against the government line.

Personally I blame a lot of it on the changing nature of what a "reporter" is. Most of the people doing that job now are drooling for the chance to sit in Wolf Blitzer's chair and become high-paid celebrities. Edward R. Murrow they're not. Rock the boat? Not a chance, that would affect their chances for promotion.

Join la resistance!. The Smirking Chimp - news from the vast left-wing conspiracy.

You really need to start getting your news from somewhere other than CNN.

The USA is a torture state by policy now.

Nobody is sad to see the Taliban go, of course. They were assholes to the core. However, you cannot pretend that the USA is nation-building. This is directly contrary to stated Bush administration policy. Even peace-keeping is typically left to smaller countries, for whom the prospect of military casualties is more acceptable to the American public.

So, kids, the lesson we've learned today is...

Running roughshod over human rights and freedoms is okay (Yeah, I'm lookin' at you, China!), so long as you dont copy CD's.

China: Hey! The USA do it too! And others.
Me: So? They're quiet about it. And they own the news too. Tough.
China: *sulks*
Me: Quit it! At least you guys are mates now. You've got all your sanctions lifted, got the freakin Olympics, and you're still keeping your citizens as financial cattle, fed on concocted 'news'. Hell, loadsa stuff in the western world says "Made in China", even the USA's Presidential Jet!
China: Which we bugged.
Me: Only as a mark of respect. Now sit down and shut up.
Ukraine: *Kenny style muffled mumbling*
Me: I'm sorry Ukraine, you're just not rich or dangerous enough to have a voice on the world stage, let alone any media coverage. Now sit down and shut up.
Ali

Forget his physical age, he's obviously still a kid in his head, and his intelligence is/was a loaded gun. so expect to see him going down for a while, to make a good example to all terr^H^H^H^Hhackers that the United States Government will not tolerate this attack on the Freedom and way of life of its good, peaceful, law abiding, citizens. Erm... Yeah.

If this manages to hit mainstream news, I'd like to see how many references to 9-11 / terrorists this can draw. It's a tough one, sure, but The People don't need opinions, that's what mainstream news is for! And the more references to a BIG SIMPLE REDNECK COMPATABLE political notion it contains, the better.

Ali out. [ at london d0t c0m ]

One final note: 212.84.98.242 is driving my firewall mad, I'm a bit too lame/ill equipped atm to investigate.

Second... I perhaps wasn't clear... what I am refering to is his ignorance of domestic crisses for his domination on (non-existant) axis of evil and an obvious attempt to bankrupt the american economy. In other words... it aint going to get better folks.

Instead of saying "get a life moron"... perhaps you might want to check out the news articles (culled from leading rags world-wide) at smirking chimp.

I think your posting under "anonymous Coward" says it all buddy... ya know?

RIAA has paid enough to enough SC justices that they take the decision for granted. (Not likely: SC isn't that bribeable.)

Take a look at this. You won't be whistling the same tune by the time you're done.

It makes me retch. I had the utmost respect for them (hell, I'm not even American), but that's all but gone now.

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