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The Department of Homeland Security has a Privacy Assessment of this program. Guess what? It has no privacy implications.

• The information can only be shared with "...other agencies at the federal, state, local, foreign, or tribal level, who are lawfully engaged in collecting law enforcement information (whether civil or criminal) and national security intelligence information and/or who are investigating, prosecuting, enforcing, or implementing civil and/or criminal laws, related rules, regulations, or orders." "The Privacy Act SORNs for the systems on which US-VISIT draws provide notice as to the conditions of disclosure and routine uses for the information collected by US-VISIT. Any disclosure by DHS must be compatible with the purpose for which the information was collected."
• The tag only contains an unencrypted number, and only the very limited number of groups above would have access to the information.
• The tag can't be used to ID someone as a visitor because the DHS has contemplated this problem. Thus problem solved... "it is contemplated that the unencrypted RFID tag number will not be structured in such a way that it can be used to identify the individual as a non-immigrant."(pg 15)How exactly? Will everyone soon be carrying an RFID, so the visitor won't stand out?
• And of course it can't be used for surveillance, as "There is also a low risk that the RFID tag could be used to conduct surreptitious locational surveillance of an individual; i.e., to use the presence of the tag to follow an individual as he or she moves about in the U.S. However, ensuring that RFID tag numbers do not exhibit properties that can be readily attributed to US-VISIT and using a limited radio frequency range effectively mitigates this risk. The design process is also taking into account methods of reducing eavesdropping and skimming possibilities." (pg 15). Reducing the "possibilities" by sticking their fingers into their ears and singing "La la la" each time a new tech groups shows them ever longer read ranges.
• And most importantly it doesn't affect US Citizens, because the document doesn't mention them. Never mind that every traveler in the car must be identified in order to separate the residents and citizens from visitors (by definition). They'll now know who you're associating with as you travel.

I'm now going to "contemplate" that being asked for "your papers, please" and being tracked every time I enter and leave my country, that there is no more "If" in "If we have to live our lives weighing every action, every communication, every human contact, wondering what agents of the state might find out about it, analyze it, judge it, possibly misconstrue it, and somehow use it to our detriment, we are not truly free." doesn't change our rights (4th Amendment anyone? it says "Persons") in the US. Whooohoo, I'm ever so much safer! [btw, that's one of the best essays on why privacy is a necessary and fundamental right in a free society. He warns Canadians not to give up what the U.S. has already lost. Worth reading.]

It's definitely cool that children in developing nations are using computers to improve their prospects, but too often in these sorts of discussions the notion is advanced that computers (and the internet) are just what developing nations need, as regards technology.

In fact, a much better investment is in mobile phones and mobile networks. Even the cheapest handsets encourage kids to learn to read and write, not to mention gain proficiency in handling technology. At the same time, adults can use mobile phones to find employment, find affordable goods, negotiate deals, conduct business. Mobile phones integrate themselves into daily life much more easily than PCs, and their impact is thus felt much faster and wider. If the free flow of information enables a market to work efficiently, then what better technology to kickstart the economy than mobile phones?

Here are a few articles with the hard numbers pitting mobile phones against PCs.
http://news.mongabay.com/2005/0712-rhett_butler.ht ml
http://usinfo.state.gov/af/Archive/2005/May/17-488 286.html
http://www.economist.com/printedition/displaystory .cfm?Story_ID=3742817
http://www.economist.com/business/displayStory.cfm ?story_id=4157618

While it's certainly heartening that open source software is having a positive effect in poverty-stricken Africa, it's also important for aidgivers to note that dollar for dollar, computers aren't the best use of limited funds.

What assurance does any other U.S. citizen have that they may not be designated 'enemy combatants' and similarly 'disappeared'?

Most countries don't have our kind of immigration policies. Instead of posting your resume, why not a picture and traits that make you attractive to a Canadian? You may have better luck marrying into another country than working your way in.

Then again, it is wartime. You can always simply renounce your citizenship and let luck carry you where it will.

The Constitution doesn't grant rights; it recognizes them and proscribes limits to government actions accordingly. The Founding Fathers knew that they couldn't explicitly list every right that people have so they provided the Ninth Amendment, which states:

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

More info here.

I travel in the US with a GPS in my laptop bag (Garmin GPS V), but depending on where you travel in the world, you may want to insure it doesn't violate any local laws. For example in (don't mod me funny) Ex-Soviet Russia it is illegal in most cases to have GPS equipment. You can be thrown in jail and it may not be pleasant.

How do you mix landmines with AI? "Smart" landmines don't have any AI, they just have a timer or a radio frequency reciever so they can be safety disarmed after the war.

The US position on landmines was the first policy that came to mind to answer the question; what rules of engagement would the US government follow if the decision to kill were taken out of a human's hands. How careful would they be?

I would have explained it in more detail, but the other poster on this thread seemed like he was just looking for an argument (and was, apparently) and I didn't feel like getting into a conversation with him.

Are they deactivating mines now? It was recent memory that they were saying that kind of thing would be too expensive, that they just wouldn't do it, etc. That may have just been an excuse to inflict further damage on a country's civilian population. Automating a kill decision tends to absolve people of too much responsibility. Nobody ever says "The landmine you placed killed a civilian. We're holding you accountable."

Okay, a quick google search; I guess there was a policy shift about a year ago. They're phasing out persistant landmines by 2010.

I'd be fine with AI being used as a tool, with a human decisionmaker. It's when they take the decision to kill out of a human's hand that I get edgy, because people aren't held properly accountable if somthing goes wrong.

1. Swiss and Italian authorities made a request ot the USA under Mutual Legal Assisstance Treaties
2. The FBI issue a supoena to Rackspace (A US-based hosting company, who were hosting the Indymedia servers in their UK facility.)
3. Rackspace co-operate with the FBI, and hand over the servers

1. An anonymous author post this message, on 17th June:

   with the G8 on the horizon, we looked for a simple yet effective way to stick two fingers up to this oil-addicted society.we found one! a train that carries brand-new cars from portbury dock nr avonmouth through the avon gorge to ashton and bedminster to desperse at temple meads for the rest of the country. Some questions that came into our little minds were:is portbury dock fianancially-competative? [yes], who paid for the tracks and maintance from portbury to parson St bedminster?. has anyone ever seen a passenger train on this route?,and sitting on a hot coach because you can't afford hiked-up train fayres, you see yet more new cars you can't afford to buy being transported by rail,to consume more oil, that our enviroment can't take. So we did an oxygen-grab as a kind of work-out up to the summit.Lifting and then dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.[17/06/05] We are feeling fit now for the greedy-ate, we suggest others should take aim and practice. The forth-coming event around gleneagles will not automatically mean a head-on confrontation with the old-bill, they have more spiteful weapons than us, so let us side step them and unbalance them using our minds. good luck stay free, S.P. ray.

   (copy & paste from my Firefox cache.) This post was hidden within 24 hours, for violating Bristol Indymedia (BIM) policy. (I don't know exactly when it was hidden.)
2. An individual with a history of conflict and disagreement with BIM then contacted police about the post, since it hints that the poster threw rocks at trains, or the cargo on trains, or the train tracks ("dropping rocks onto useless pieces of metal.")
3. Police initally contacted BIM last monday, 20th June. BIM take legal advice.
4. Police request IP logs from a BIM member on 21th June.
5. Later on the 21st, BIM inform police via their solicitor that they will not voluntarily hand over and information. (NB: for non-Brits, a solicitor is a type of lawyer.) BIM also inform Indymedia UK at this point, and contact Liberty
6. Yesterday, 27th June, police visit the home of the BIM member who hosted the server with a search warrant, and seize the BIM server and the individual's own computer, and arrest the BIM member.

"correctly" these days tends to mean "in line with the intent of Congress"

Which, unfortunately, is their job

But right now I think it's mostly theoretical

ANY unconstitutional law which is allowed to stand weakens the Constitution and the protections it grants to the People.

The United States grants a one-year grace period from the time that an invention is disclosed to the public to the time that the patent application must be filed. In other words, as long as an application for a patent is filed not more than one year from the date the subject matter is publicly disclosed, the applicant may obtain a patent.

Guantanamo Bay is a POW camp, plain and simple.

Please read articles IX and X here: Bill of Rights.

Basically, the federal government is not allowed to pass laws that increase their power as those powers and freedoms are reserved to the states and the people. These ammendments are widely overlooked by most politicians, obviously.

To be perfectly pedantic, there are only 192 independant states, of which the United States of America is one, leaving only 191 "countries that are not the United States."

a right in the US. ref. 4th Amendment.
Also, http://usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/rightsof/pri vacy.htm
Of course, just because a right exists, doesn't mean it's honored by our government. Amazingly enough, the link given above points to an official US government site.

North Korea is a recognized terrorist state

Overview of State-Sponsored Terrorism

This page is over 4 years old but still seems to be official as it is still 'up' at the time of this post.

Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Sudan, and Syria are also on this list for various reasons. Read the page for more information if you want to.

P.S. Want to export crypto outside USA/Canada and are in the USA? Read this first!

Crypto is (ultimately?) math.

Why treat a reversible mathematical transformation as a 'dangerous weapon' just because it can be used to hide secrets?

The 'terrorists' are using strong crypto in defiance of any countries rules on the subject. Why hamstring e-commerce and computer programmers world wide because of it?

Well, as a last resort, there is always Chaffing and Winnowing: Confidentiality without Encryption Let's see governments worldwide outlaw that!

Though I agree with the sentiment of your assessment and would not normally leap to Newsweek's defense, the incident, details, and effects (riots in Afganistan) have been widely mis-reported.

Even before Nesweek's apparent vindication by the FBI report today (see http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/politics/26koran .html), reports from the New York Times, the Columbia Journalism Review, and the US State Department had made it clear that the Afghan riots were not tied to Newsweek's report on Quran mistreatment (see http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/Archive/2005/May/12 -273892.html?chanlid=washfile).

Your misinformation is understandable based on the pitiful fact that Reuters reiterated this error as recently as 6 hours ago. (In case you're still prone to believe that Newsweek's article prompted the riots, a quick Nexis search will reveal at least four stories similar to Newsweek's in major US and international periodicals since March 14, 2004 - all with no associated violence.)

I'm not suggesting that Newsweek was right to run with an apparently poorly-sourced story. But Newsweek does not "make us American's (sic) look stupid in the eyes of Muslims." Rather, our lying, corrupt administration and their lackeys who engage in torture and other crimes against humanity in the name of freedom make us look stupid, morally deficient, and hypocritical.

Further, as you suggest, the media's inability to report on meaningful topics is negligent and compounds the problem. (I would add the horrific situation in the Congo, Iran's nuclear program, Israeli-Palenstinian relations, and to turn to domestic issues, the spiraling debt and impending collapse of critical social programs to your list or stories that should be better covered.) Their failure to get their facts straight for those topics they do choose to cover is incompetent.

Where Cuba is different from many other dictatorships is that it was really close and backed by an Old World empire (Soviet Union). This flew directly in the face of the Monroe Doctrine, the oldest and most consistent U.S. foreign policy. You ought to have been aware of it, as it was initialy suggested to the U.S. by the UK when UK-US tensions were still very raw from a war less than a decade in the past. It was then backed by their warships for 100 years. The doctrine is of course now in tatters, but Cuba stepped squarely into it's course while there were still powerful adherents to the principle, and even today no American president will unilaterally change U.S. policy on Cuba, the doctrine is still that powerful. With congress tamed by the presidency and the courts interested only in domestic issues, there is no route out for Cuba other than the fall of Castro or the fall of the U.S. government. I doubt anyone expected Castro to endure this long (himself included). So the length of the embargo has made it far worse for Cuba than expected, but the only one who can fix it is Castro, by retiring. U.S. Presidents don't have that much power.

Looks like your right... evidently there is no international agreement at all regarding space weapons. Seems it has largely been a gentlemens agreement.

huh? you might want to read this

The only one that I'm aware of is the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. It prohibits the deployment of nuclear weapons in orbit, such as the fractional orbit bombardment systems (FOBS) that were viewed as the next step beyond the ICBM back in the 1960s.

There are a lot of people who are quick to claim that the United States ignores its treaty obligations. Would it be too much to ask for them to back up their assertions with some facts?

Newsweek reported that American Guantanamo guards, among other abuse and torture, threw a Koran in a toilet. That specific abuse has been reported many times over the past couple of years, including just recently, by witnesses released from the prison. After years of being held without cause. Newsweek confirmed those stories with Federal source, and the Pentagon had reviewed it days before publication, without contradicting the claim.

What kind of "proof" is Newsweek, or anyone, going to get? Investigate the inside of an overseas US torture prison, in Cuba, where even Congressional investigations have met with fraud? Even Newsweek's "retraction" is nominal - they don't admit they got the facts wrong, just that they regret the consequences of publishing it. Like pissing off the Bush administration, which they've been so careful to otherwise support. In fact, Newsweek is continuing to investigate the story, hardly a rejection of the report as "false".

The week the story was published, violent demonstrations in Afghanistan, where we run other torture prisons, and an ongoing, inconclusive war, kill many people. Which isn't unusual in our adminstration of Afghanistan. What is unusual is for Afghans to read Newsweek. Even Bush's Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers (Rumsfeld's right-hand man), blames Afghani "politics", not Newsweek. But since Rice's State Department blames Newsweek, rather than itself, it must be true, right? Especially since they've gotten the rest of the mass media to carry that story.

In fairness, I wonder: what do you think about the lies Newsweek published about WMD in Iraq, shepherding us to war, which came from the Pentagon? Which the Pentagon blames on the uncorroborated lies of one man, Chalabi, an Iranian agent?

6. Provide a Social Security Number
If you do not provide your Social Security Number, the Internal Revenue Service may impose a $500 penalty. If you have any questions please call your nearest IRS office.

The "legislation" that currently governs the territorial claims of extra-terrestrial objects is currently the "Moon Treaty". This specifically restricts the ability of governments of the Earth from claiming territory, however private individuals are excempted from this requirement. There are a number of legal consequences to this that will have an interesting effect on the future of mankind in outerspace.

Most importantly, you will have to actually go to the place you want to claim as your territory and physically occupy it, and use it before you can claim ownership, the Lunar Embassy not withstanding. Earth nations will retain, however, soverignty over the actual vehicles and any personnel sent up by that nation. That means criminal acts can be prosecuted under the laws of the country that owns and operates a given space colony... and especially applies to governance of artificial constructs like the ISS or an L-5 habitat.

What is not covered, however, is a method of resolving territorial disputes, or resolving the status of state-less persons in space (people who don't claim a nationality of any kind, or are not recognized by any "nation" on the Earth).

American citizens will soon be required to bear a passport to re-enter the country by 2007, regardless of where they're coming in from. Vide: Travel Document Requirements FAQ from regulations passed earlier this year. Yes, they can't keep US citizens out of the US by law. But they're now saying, 'A US Passport is the only document we're going to accept as proof of your citizenship in the US.' Don't have a US Passport, you're SOL.

Actually, I disagree with your analysis. The Supreme Court has jurisdiction over a wide range of cases (virtually all involving federal issues). See Article III, Section 2 ("The judicial power shall extend to...", followed by a nice list). In addition to the court's general jurisdiction, there are two sub-classes to the Supreme Court's jurisdiction, original and appellate jurisdiction. Orginial jursidiction requires that cases in this class must first be heard in the Supreme Court, and are indeed rare. That said, your characterization of the rareness is overstated, there have been several in recent times. The clause you refer to ("explicitly states that the") does allow Congress to restrict the Supreme Court's appellate jurisdiction as it sees fit. If it were completely removed, however, the Supreme Court would have the option of becoming the court of first instance for the case, exercising its general jurisdiction, and in essence exercising discretionary original jurisdiction. Naturally, the court could not do this for many cases, or be vastly overloaded, though the practice was more common in the early history of the United States. If the case was important enough though, it still could.

http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/brochures/broc hures_1229.html

PASSPORTS: U.S. citizens who travel to a country where a valid U.S. passport is not required will need documentary evidence of their U.S. citizenship and identity. Proof of U.S. citizenship includes an expired U.S. passport, a certified (original) birth certificate, Certificate of Naturalization, Certificate of Citizenship, or Report of Birth Abroad of a Citizen of the United States. To prove identity, a valid driver's license or government identification card are acceptable provided they identify you by physical description or photograph. However, for travel overseas and to facilitate reentry into the U.S., a valid U.S. passport is the best documentation available and unquestionably proves your U.S. citizenship.

Not strictly true. US Citizens can also use birth certificates and such, depending on where you're going. See http://travel.state.gov/travel/tips/brochures/broc hures_1229.html

Really? No, REALLY? Really, really, really??? Where did you get the 25% number?

Here.
"Though the United States held less than 5 percent of the world's population, it accounted for more than 25 percent of the world's economic output. Japan, the world's second largest economy, produced about half as much."

1. Take a look at USA trade deficite. That is by no means an indicator that we are dealing with a country that is manifacturing 1/4 of goods producing worldwide. It was what, something like ~60BN USD when I last took a look at it.

You make the assumption that all of those goods are produced for export. The fact that they are not does not mean that the US does not produce as much as it does - in fact, according to Bloomberg.com, the US is the largest manufacturieing economy in the world - manufacturing accounts for 13% of GDP.

2. Take a look at where the plants are located. Have any significant amount of manifacturing action in US? Ok, big, fuel thursty cards and overpriced medicaments, but anything else?

I'm not sure how relevant that is. Manufacturing is manufacturing, whether it's cars, refrigerators or pharmaceuticals. And I'm not sure that "medicaments" counts as manufacturing.

3. USA dollar is failing. And failing miserably - it already is about 0.75 it's worth it has 5-6 years ago. Currencies of manifacturing countries don't tend to fall - economics.

Well, that's just not true. Currencies fluctuate both in short and long terms. The US enjoyed a long period of explosive economic growth - when struck with a recession, it seems reasonable that the value of the currency would fall as well. Look at Japan. It's the second largest manufacturing economy in the world and it is having currency problems of its own.

4. With the ratio of 4% / 25% there is no fucking chage the above points wouldn't be true.

4% of what? Regardless, your points simply are not true.

There is a difference between manifacturing (that makes a lot-of-bling-bling goe round-and-round while leaving nice big pile-o-money in economy from trade surplus
and owning companies in other countries that leaves us with theoretically wealthiest country in the world where the majority of capital is invested outside of the country and often sithout supporting national currency.

You're comparing apples and oranges - the trade deficit and the size of the US manufacturing economy don't necessarily go hand in hand. It seems that what you're railing against is the amount of goods that the US consumes.

Capital is not fleeing the US - with the dollar low, investing in the US is a bargain - remember, buy low, sell high. The Chinese government certainly recognizes that which is why they've artificially held their currency low for years.

In fact, the US GDP, which includes the effects of capital invested in the US, is growing. The GDP also includes the effect of imports (a subtractor from GDP), so even though the trade deficit is growing, GDP is also growing (according to the US Bureau of Economic Analysis).

Yes, the trade deficit is high. But it doesn't mean that the US manufacturing economy has fallen to pieces. It's symptomatic of other problems.

-h-

If you give a bunch of people 6 billion dollars, well, many many millions WILL end up with Taliban. Heck, I've seen in various movies (documentries made by US gov't) showing the CIA with the fundamentalist freedom fighters. They even said how the US believes in their fight against the atheist soviets (emphesize atheist).

Of course, the CIA will deny funding bin Laden, but then, they probably didn't give money to him diretly anyway. It just went though a third party and ended up with bin Laden and the CIA knew that.

Here's the CIA's propaganda: http://usinfo.state.gov/media/Archive/2005/Jan/24- 318760.html

The CIA ignored the Russian story. Stories of suicide missions of the jihadists where they entered a camp, high on drugs so they don't feel pain, shooting everyone. Soldiers said that even when the enemy was leaking blood like a sieve he continued to shoot until killed or lost conciesness. And where did those people get american weapons, including state of the art (at the time) ground-to-air missles? 3rd party!!? LOL.

Also, you will not find much from gov't sources about CIA and drug smuggling, yet there is more than enough evidence of CIA's involvment in smuggling drugs, even into the US itself!

So, what about Iraq violating those UN resolutions made them more of a threat to our nation's safety than North Korea violating all of theirs? Of the 17 UN resolutions that we used as justification for war, 14 were about weapon inspectors. Two were from 1990-1991 about the invasion of Kuwait and one from 1991 demanded a stop to the oppression of the Iraqi people. The one about oppression applies to other more threatening enemies like Iran and North Korea, non-threatening enemies like Sudan (were genocide took place), and many of our allies like Saudi Arabia and the Israelis (with respect to the occupied territories). It also applied in Bosnia which most conservatives pilloried due to it being outside of our national interest. If WMDs don't matter, especially if you say that we knew they had nothing, then violated UN resolutions don't matter either.

Good Lord, though, if you don't think that our administration lying is a bad thing, I don't know what kind of American you can consider yourself to be. Our President is supposed to be a representative of what the people want and not the man responsible for duping them into what he thinks they should want. What is wrong with conservatives today that they no longer demand honesty of their leaders? If you can't convince the people of what you want with legitimate, truthful reasons, then you shouldn't get what you want. That's how an honest, healthy, democractic republic is supposed to work.

In contemplating the causes which may disturb our union it occurs as matter of serious concern that any ground should have been furnished for characterizing parties by geographical discriminations--Northern and Southern, Atlantic and Western -- whence designing men may endeavor to excite a belief that there is a real difference of local interests and views. One of the expedients of party to acquire influence within particular districts is to misrepresent the opinions and aims of other districts. You can not shield yourselves too much against the jealousies and heartburnings which spring from these misrepresentations; they tend to render alien to each other those who ought to be bound together by fraternal affection....[...]

I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but in those of the popular form it is seen in its greatest rankness and is truly their worst enemy....

It serves always to distract the public councils and enfeeble the public administration. It agitates the community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another; foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which finds a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passion. Thus the policy and the will of one country are subjected to the policy and will of another. [Hmm...sound familiar?]

There is an opinion that parties in free countries are useful checks upon the administration of the government, and serve to keep alive the spirit of liberty. This within certain limits is probably true; and in governments of a monarchical cast patriotism may look with indulgence, if not with favor, upon the spirit of party. But in those of the popular character, in governments purely elective, it is a spirit not to be encouraged. From their natural tendency it is certain there will always be enough of that spirit for every salutary purpose; and there being constant danger of excess, the effort ought to be by force of public opinion to mitigate and assuage it. A fire not to be quenched, it demands a uniform vigilance to prevent its bursting into a flame, lest, instead of warming, it should consume.

Ah yes, yet another patent-based racketeering scam.

The USPTO should be prosecuted under RICO.

What is the cost to society of creating a motivation not to use good ideas for x number of years...

[patent]. A grant by the federal government to an inventor of the right to exclude others from making, using, or selling his or her invention. There are three kinds of patents in the United States: a utility patent on the functional aspects of products and processes; a design patent on the ornamental design of useful objects; and a plant patent on a new variety of a living plant. Patents do not protect ideas, only structures and methods that apply technological concepts. Each type of patent confers the right to exclude others from a precisely defined scope of technology, industrial design
usinfo.state.gov/products/pubs/intelprp/glossary.h tm

People with patents do use their ideas, good or bad.

What about one great idea sparking another? How many truly great ideas just appear out of thin air? Contrast that with an idea out in the open, with open standards that only requires you to work with the patent holder to license his/her technology to use it.... If you come up with something they like, they might come to you to license your part of it. It's a give and take. True there are cases of corporations/people taking without giving, but they are the exception rather than the rule.

"Gringo" has a pejorative element to it. You know this as well as I do.

I'd say you're the one who's using "weasel words" here as a way to veil your hatred.

And if you don't feel like you can participate in civil discourse without bigoted terms, then you're the one who should leave

I'm sure Latino-nationalist hate sites like Voz De Aztlan or MEChA would love to hear from you.

Did you know that the US government actually will require biometric identifiers in passports of those visitors who want to enter the US without a visa (i.e. tourists and business travelers from western Europe, Japan, Australia etc. who come for up to 90 days). See the US department of state's press release extending the deadline for requiring biometric identifiers in passports.

It's not like the French thought of this all by themselves, some of the driver is actually US homeland security (although Germany's interior minister Schily was pushing for biometric passports as well).

Restaurant reviews was not a good analogy. It's more like the US Department of State's travel advisories , where they inform travelers of activity in a region. If it's activity you find undesireable, you might want to avoid the area.

They're not that expensive ($97), and they don't take that much effort. Birth certificate, driver's license, a six-page form that you only need to fill out two pages of, SSN, and two photos (that they can take on-site).

They're not that expensive ($97), and they don't take that much effort. Birth certificate, driver's license, a six-page form that you only need to fill out two pages of, SSN, and two photos (that they can take on-site).

They're not that expensive ($97), and they don't take that much effort. Birth certificate, driver's license, a six-page form that you only need to fill out two pages of, SSN, and two photos (that they can take on-site).

Well, I suppose the State Department http://www.state.gov/ is needing to boost their income. Interesting how terror has created new funding opportunities.

There are definitely Christian wackos out there, but they are nothing compared to Islamic wackos.

George W Bush is a Christian wacko, and he's murdered about 120,000 Iraqi civilians for a few oilfields.

According to the US State Department, the death toll from all the actions of all the Islamic (and other) wackos from 1980-1999 is 9,255. Add on another 10,000 (generous estimate) for Sept. 11 and other outrages and we have almost 20,000 for the last 20 years.

So we can see Bush is ahead by about 100,000. I'm sure, though that Osama bin Laden and his ilk would have killed more if they could.

Make no mistake: wacko fundamentalism is dangerous no matter what the excuse^H^H^Hreligion.

Section 349 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, as amended, states that U.S. citizens are subject to loss of citizenship if they perform certain acts voluntarily and with the intention to relinquish U.S. citizenship. Briefly stated, these acts include: ...

(3) entering or serving in the armed forces of a foreign state engaged in hostilities against the U.S. or serving as a commissioned or non-commissioned officer in the armed forces of a foreign state (Sec. 349 (a) (3) INA);

Thanks for your reply.

I have enjoyed your work and your sense of humor over the years. In every good mac the knife column there was always a point or two interspersed amongst the jokes and sometimes the jokes were the point. Half the fun was trying to deconstruct cryptic riddles for clues and the other half was trying to figure out if you had any real information or not.

And now my latest information in the form of an homage.

Wonder Twin Powers Activate

My faithful assistant Twinny, so named not because of sibling but because, depending on the day, she is literally two different girls, was reviewing the hours of messages she gets every day on her cell phone when she told me to check my messages because she had just forwarded something to me. Now I, being in between beverages as they say, was not in the mood to listen to another suitor/stalker embarrass the hell out of themselves as entertaining as it may be, but she said "This is real."

A tip. Finally a tip. But my cloudy enthusiasm quickly faded as I realized that although real it was a wrong number and this call had nothing to do with what I was currently searching for. I pass this information on only because Twinny's phone number seems to be one digit off from a large group of diverse and important people and her lack of message greeting seems to get people talking.

I will paraphrase the whole call in its entirety verbatim below:

The message seemed to be a reply from someone in the know who was replying to the question of why Bob Novack was not being threatened with jail time and did that mean he had burned his source to the prosecutor already.

The caller was offended by the original questioners logic. "You have it backward" he said and then explained that Miller and Cooper were much better suspects for burning their sources because they are jumping up and down making a big deal about this.

"That makes no sense." I yelled into the phone, fully expecting a reply. The caller on the other end predictably ignored me but after a pause he then continued.

"Look, the prosecutor doesn't want to make this a big case about journalist rights he just wants the name. The journalists don't want to make this a big case about journalist rights they just don't want their sources to think they will be burned. So we need an exit strategy."

"An exit strategy?" I intriguingly repeated back into the phone.

"An exit strategy" he repeated and then explained, "A deal is cut. Miller and Cooper burn their sources but jump up and down waving the first amendment and the prosecutor takes the names and builds a case around it. At the last minute, new developments are brought to light that make any journalistic testimony unnecessary and everyone is happy."

He then ended his call with some chit chat about dinner but in my haste to replay the message I hit delete instead. Like the Castle now all that remains are stories about messages of half conversations told by someone who is technically still drunk.

Guy Incognito
Journalist
Reason Covertly

The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

For a California Driver's License you need to provide proof of birth date and legal presense in the country. IIRC, Illinois and Florida were the same.

For a US passport you need proof of US citizenship (a birth certificate or SS card) and a photo ID or someone with a photo ID who is a citizen and is willing to confirm your identity.

For a Social Security card you need a photo ID.

So it sounds like if you hang on to your birth certificate, you've got all you need to get any ID you want. Which hopefully makes sense to everyone...

Me, I will stick with the USA and what we stand for.

As for Sudan, have they asked for help? Do you even know what you are talking about? Sudan has been in a 20-year civil war. It is not the US's job to police the world. The people of Sudan have been fighting back and it is the people who will have their way, just as the USA didn't need intervention during our _own_ civil war. Also,

The Government of Sudan and southern rebel forces signed a framework peace agreement in early June 2004

As for Zimbabwe, there has been a lot of humanitarian assistance, just search Google and see the tons of aid from the USA and the people of the USA.

You need some new history books.

India and China are using trade to defeat us.

If you look at the GDP of China, they are where we were in 1970! I certainly wouldn't call that "China defeating us", since they are over 35 years behind us. Oh, and the GDP of India doesn't even come close to that of the USA. Just because a few low-tech jobs are out-sourced to India, doesn't mean we are being "defeated". A simple bill passed by congress could stop India and China in their tracks. Congress just needs to pass a bill that charges all US companies an extra "heavy" tax for out-sourced labor or any imported goods from China. That would slow things down for China and India and US companies could still do the same trade with other nations like Taiwan. The USA still has _plenty_ of tricks up-her-sleeve to make sure that we don't lose that #1 spot.

So go on now and take your tree-planting-kit and move to Canada, eh!

actually... it depends on the country of launch.

See the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 which is international law.

Jurisdiction is the responsibility of the launching state, accordingly.

Amendment I :

Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; ....

Seems to me that the UTSA is in the same bucket as the CDA and various other pieces of unconstitutional trash.

And actually even the claim that Saddam gassed his own people in the 80s has been disputed.

Jude Wanniski (whose website you linked to), is quite alone in denying that Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons against Iraqi Kurds. Slate has a good article that discusses the issue. Besides, several of his claims are clearly false:

To begin with there were never any victims produced.

A quick Google image search for Halabja belies that claim. There are numerous photos of the immediate after-effects of the attack. More recently, there was a study to investigate the long term effects of the chemical exposure. The victims of the attack suffer from high rates of respiratory problems, cancer, birth defects, neurological disorders, and skin and eye problems. Maybe part of the reason he claims victims can't be found is because they're some of the 300,000 bodies discovered in mass graves.

The claim rests solely on testimony of the Kurds who had crossed the border into Turkey, where they were interviewed by staffers of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

The reports of the chemical bombing were not just from Kurds who crossed into Turkey. Some of the pictures linked above were from journalists flown in from Tehran the next day.

Wanniski even mentions the oft repeated myth: that at the very least our State Department gave a "green light" to Saddam Hussein to go into Kuwait in August 1990. According to this article from the Christian Science Monitor, that myth has been debunked by no less than Iraq's former Foreign Minister, Tariq Aziz.

It may well have been Iran, and in either case it happened on a battlefield.

It is highly doubtful Iran was behind the attack. In the first place, their troops and allies were the ones attacked (see here). Secondly, there is no evidence of Iranian use of the type of chemicals at Halabja (see here).

In addition, although chemical weapons were used multiple times in the Iran-Iraq war, the reason the Halabja attack sticks out is precisely because it was not a battlefield. At the time, Halabja was a city with a population of about 80,000 which had just recently came under control of Iran and their Kurdish allies. Many of the approximately 5000 victims of that particluar attack were civilians. Most of the published photos were of women and children killed, for the simple reason that news media thrives on sensationalism.

We've managed to kill 100,000 civilians with our advanced "smart" bombs - is it surprising that primitive mortars would kill 5,000?

First, the claim of 100,000 dead is based on an extrapolation from a survey. I'd take the 100,000 figure with a grain of salt until a more extensive survey is done. There is a Slate article that dissects their methodology. A reliable number of civilians deaths reported can be found at the Iraq Body Count (IBC) website. As of Feb 10, 2005, they count less than 18,000 civilians reported killed.

Second, most of the deaths are not from our precision guided munitions, the so-called "smart bombs." In fact, most of them

Israel? North Korea comes to mind, but the Resolutions were blocked by china AFAIK

BZZZT. There are no other countries that have UN resolutions passed under the 7th chapter of the UN charter. If you had any clue about the UN, you would know that Chapter 7 resolutions are the only kind that allow member states that are not party to the resolution to enforce with military or economic action.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-03-02 -un-wmd_x.htm

I see your link, and raise you one:

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd_2004/: Saddam Husayn so dominated the Iraqi Regime that its strategic intent was his alone. He wanted to end sanctions while preserving the capability to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction (WMD) when sanctions were lifted.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/200 3/david_kay_10022003.html: We have discovered dozens of WMD-related program activities and significant amounts of equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations during the inspections that began in late 2002. The discovery of these deliberate concealment efforts have come about both through the admissions of Iraqi scientists and officials concerning information they deliberately withheld and through physical evidence of equipment and activities that ISG has discovered that should have been declared to the UN.

http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Anthropology/pu blications/General_Powell.htm
think YOU are making a fool of yourself by claiming "well known facts" without backing

Without backing, huh? The only thing you have provided is an op-ed that directly contradicts your own claim. You said "Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented" and then "backed" that up with piece called "Al Qaeda-Iraq Connection Tenuous at Best". Which are you arguing? That there was no connection, or that there was a tenuous connection?

Here are some more sources:
Iraq-al Qaeda link comes in focus
Terrorist behind September 11 strike was trained by Saddam
The Clinton View of Iraq-al Qaeda Ties
Clinton first linked al Qaeda to Saddam
The proof that Saddam worked with bin Laden
US State Department Indictment
Not so long ago, the ties between Iraq and al Qaeda were conventional wisdom. The conventional wisdom was right
Saddam Hussein offered Bin Laden asylum
Saddam Possessed WMD, Had Extensive Terror Ties
UN envoy confirms terrorist meeting
Ansar al-Islam: Back in Iraq

Boy, you are uninformed.

12/07/02 - Iraq gives 12000 pages of documentation to UN. 12/13/02 - The US (NOT U.N.) claim "missing answers"

You seem to have forgotten about 1/27/03 - Hans Blix said: "On 7 December 2002, Iraq submitted a declaration of some 12,000 pages in response to paragraph 3 of resolution 1441 (2002) and within the time stipulated by the Security Council... Regrettably, the 12,000 page declaration, most of which is a reprint of earlier documents, does not seem to contain any new evidence that would eliminate the questions or reduce their number. Even Iraq's letter sent in response to our recent discussions in Baghdad to the President of the Security Council on 24 January does not lead us to the resolution of these issues."

Other countries fail to meet U.N. resolutions without being invaded

Yeah? Name one.

Wow, two things: 1. You admit he DIDN'T have a WMD program. 2. You say he wanted to build a WMD program, i assume you got that iformation via CNN.

If you ever bothered to read the ISG report regarding Iraq's WMD capabilities, you would know that 1. Iraq certainly did have WMD programs and 2. He retained equipment and intellectual capital that was in violation of the UN requirements and 3. He had clear intentions of mass producing WMD as soon as the UN sanctions were removed.

But my guess is that you never even bothered to read the report.

I call bullshit. Iraq had nothing to do with Al Qaeda. And THAT is well known and documented.

Don't be ignorant. There are clear and documented ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda that date back to the early 1990's. The Clinton Administration connected Al Qaeda and Iraq when they bombed the pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, and the Clinton State Department issued a clear indictment that Al Qaeda "reached an understanding with the Government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the Government of Iraq."

Zarqawi has been in Iraq since early 2002, and has a clear history with Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden. The Iraqi terrorist group Ansar Al-Islam also had a relationship with Al Qaeda.

More importantly, Iraq was on the list of State Sponsors of Terrorism for the better part of 2 decades.

Arguing that Iraq was not involved with terrorists only makes you look stupid and ignorant, but I think most people already knew that about you after reading some of your other idiotic posts.