Slashdot Mirror

Muslims aren't the only ones carrying out suicide attacks. Ever heard of the Tamil Tigers? They have a long history of it since the 1980's; in 1996 they rammed an explosives-laden truck into the Central Bank in Colombo, Sri Lanka, killing 90 civilians and injuring more than 1,400 others.

According to the US State department, South America is the leading Continent in terms of terrorist attacks. I wouldn't blame Christianity, the dominant religion there, for it.

There are the secret courts from the Foriegn Intellegence Surveillance Act and secret evidence in the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act. The US District Court for the Southern District of Florida has been known to hold them.

50% of USA still think Saddam and Al-Queda are connected so it shows psy-ops works

Of course Al-qaeda is active in Iraq now. We've let them in by smashing the police force that kept them out. It's a free for all in seizing the new Iraqi government and of course Al-qaeda wants a piece of it.

Were there a few Al-qaeda operatives in Iraq before Saddam fell? Maybe. It would be very dangerous for them (death-sentence if captured, even if they haven't comitted a crime yet), but there might have been a few. Not nearly as many as in the U.S. Should we bomb ourselves too?

The U.S. invasion of Iraq is the best thing Al-qaeda could have hoped for. They get a big new country to play around in. The pressure is taken off them (are we even looking for bin Laden any more?). Most importantly, arabs around the world are seeing that peaceful co-existance with the U.S. is impossible. If anyone is supporting Al-qaeda, it's Bush.

Now let me clarify that last sentence. I don't think Bush is actually in league with bin Laden. It is possible. The point is that any time you see evidence of someone having Al-qaeda ties, compare it to hat for Bush. If it's weaker, and you don't suspect Bush, then you can't fairly suspect the other person either.

United States Information Agency

04 November 1998

BIN LADEN, ATEF INDICTED IN U.S. FEDERAL COURT FOR AFRICAN BOMBINGS

(Terrorists will be tracked down, officials say) (920)

By Judy Aita
USIA Staff Writer

New York -- Usama bin Laden and Muhammad Atef were indicted November 4 in Manhattan federal court for the August 7 bombings of the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and for conspiring to kill Americans outside the United States. ...

According to the indictment, bin Laden and al Qaeda forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in Sudan and with representatives of the Government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezballah with the goal of working together against their common enemies in the West, particularly the United States.

"In addition, 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," the indictment said. ...

hmm.. interesting....

from the article:

"Only the Dominican Republic, New Zealand and Finland
have higher crime rates than England and Wales."

and now from the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Consular Affairs web page:

"Although the crime rate in Finland is low compared to the U.S. and most European countries, it has increased in recent years. However, Finland remains a relatively safe environment. "
" Street crimes, such as muggings and pickpocketing, remain relatively uncommon, but do occur. "

And this is all true?

US Political Prisoners do exist, in case you forgot.

Let's just keep some things in perspective here, any nation-state government will attempt to make other's human rights records seem abhorrent to make their own look good.

US foreign aid is about 10 billion and less than 1% of the GDP Source and the debt is being kept low by the Chinese and Japanese buying up Uncle Sam's bonds.

In the UK, Lindows would also be in trouble under the doctrine of passing off. Canada seems to have that too, but not the US.

Aright. One sarin filled shell found (applause).

Now they just need to come up with the other several hundred tons and this administration might start to have some credibility.

Oh yeah, and those mobile chem weapons factories in trucks and train cars.

They may end up invalidating all older passports before they were due to expire, but in the USA it only costs $85 to renew a passport. I'd wager that's not a "big wad of cash " to most Yankees who can afford to travel abroad these days, so I say:

If your US passport is going to expire soon anyway, and you care about your privacy, then maybe it's time to lose/sell ;) it (the passport!) and get a new one ASAP. While you're waiting for the new one to arrive, contact your House and Senate representatives and tell them you think your elected government's getting a little too nosy for its own good.

Actually there is a list that consists of mostly european countries whos citizens don't require a visa for visit, however do require a machine readable passport.
The list at the top of this page

As several other posters have pointed out, the physics of orbiting the Earth pretty much makes this a idea no-go. There was some talk about this in the pre-Sputnik days, and the US was quite worried about how to handle the resulting jurisdictional mess. Luckily for them the USSR launched Sputnik, which then provided a precedent for orbital space being managed differently than airspace, and we ended up with the current system.

As I was writing in my blog, as it is now, space seems a bit like the wild west - noone cares who they fly over, or what's orbiting above them, or whatever.

This is fundamentally untrue. For starters, the geostationary belt (aka Clarke orbit, or 35,786 km), which is the only orbit that can be reasonably tied to geographical location, is very tightly managed. Different countries have assigned "slots" in GEO, and can use them or sell them as they see fit. Missions in other orbits require a certain amount of coordination in order to ensure that collisions don't take place, and the RF transmission don't interfere with each other.

Or better yet put them all under the total control of the UN, as things too big for one nation to claim for itself.

Which is in fact roughly what was done. You may want to look at the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and then remove your foot from your mouth.

but just because the US is powerful right now doesn't mean it should have total rights to everything it finds in space

It doesn't. See above.

Personally I wish there were more collaborative space exploration. Instead of 3 countries/consortiums sending a probe each to Mars, we could have a probe to Mars, one to Europa, and one to Venus.

The recent Mars Exploration Rover carried a German (IIRC) spectrometer. It was also going to be doing some communications via the European Mars Express mission (don't know if it actually did or not). Also, note that MER, Mars Express, and the Japanese Mars mission were all carrying different instruments and had different goals. In that sense, they were all performing part of a collaborative exploration of the planet Mars.

Terrorist attacks took place throughout 2003 in every region in the world, but there is some good news as well. Last year, we saw unprecedented collaboration between the United States and foreign partners to defeat terrorism. We also saw the lowest number of international terrorist attacks since 1969. That's a 34-year low.

I'm so glad you mentioned Cuba, WMDs and so forth. We made invasion noises at Cuba immediately after Castro showed up, very similar to how we've been making invasion noises at Iraq for some time. Of course Saddam was looking for some way to deter us from invading his country.

The UNSEC unanimously voted 17 times under chapter VII of the UN resolution that Iraq needed to be disarmed. The same can not (and could not) be said about Cuba.

Now, I'm not trying to take Saddam's side in this, I just don't think Bush should've gone in there so soon.

So soon? It took 12 freakin years! We also waited 14 months after President Bush included them in the "Axis of Evil". At any point during that time Iraq could have started to cooperate, but they never did. How long to you think we should wait???

we have already lost the war against terror

What? In 2003, terrorism was at its lowest level since 1969. I'd call that some progress in the war against terror.

The story is so silly it's almost unbelievable.

Its a freaking rumor. It probably has little truth behind it.

But then Powell used a Graduate Student's Thesis to justify a war against Iraq in front of the entire world.

No he didn't. Here is the text of Powell's UN address. He didn't mention anything from the UK dossier.

I wondered a few years ago wy the US is against the International Criminal Court, and "trying to ensure that US nationals are exempt from ICC jurisdiction over genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes". This is the court that Saddam Husein should stand trial at. But it could also be the court that American Officers guilty of crimes against humanity may also be guilty of.
Maybe the US is against the ICC because their soldiers might be called in front of it for such actions they are responsible for, as are currently happening in Iraq, and they know that such actions may lead to facing the ICC.

Article II

Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

I think this was an incredibly shortsighted viewpoint on the part of the U.S. government back in 1967 (when the treaty was signed and ratified by the U.S. Senate), but at the time most of Congress felt that we would never get even to the moon, much less be able to build any resonable space colonies, the Apollo program not withstanding.

Private ownership of extraterrestial bodies is not expressly forbidden, but the mechanism for being able to grant that ownership and the legal machinery to even file for ownership is simply not in place. There are a few people who are still trying, even without formal sanction.

Two sites do come to mind though:

http://www.planetaryinvestments.com/

and

http://www.lunarembassy.com/

Personally, I think both are total scam artists along the lines of people buying stars to name after friends and relatives. Still, this is more or less harmless fun regardless of these so-called land claims. If the USA doesn't have soverign claim to the moon, there is no way that the Lunar Embassy could possibly have legal claim through the land office of the U.S. government at San Francisco (the Lunar Embassy's claim to fame in this case).

What is going to have to happen is some legal machinery to decide what laws apply to events that happen on these planetary bodies. For example, if you kill somebody on the moon, can you be convicted in the U.S. court system? Don't be too hasty here, because remember, soverign authority doesn't apply anymore.

What about copyright laws? Do they apply in space as well? (Recording contracts are now starting to cover extraterrestial distribution rights due to a recording company executive worried about who owned distribution rights to music the Astronauts in the Apollo program were playing.)

So far these issues haven't been dealt with because for now all places except for the Apollo missions have been built on the Earth, and soverignty claims can be resolved. If you kill somebody on the ISS, it would matter what module you killed them in, then it would be either Russian, U.S.A., or E.U. courts that would be authorized to prosecute based on what module the crime happened in. That would still be a big mess, legally speaking (not to mention the physical mess on the ISS itself).

I'm using murder here because that is a crime that would not be lightly brushed under the table if it were to happen in space. Lesser crimes like tax evasion (like what happened during the flight of Apollo XIII when John Swigert forgot to file his income taxes before he left) would probabally wait or could be sorted out without a big international incident.

I think this also solves rather nicely who or what would be able to enforce land rights on a place like the moon. If they can lock you up in jail and confiscate your personal property, they can also grant you real estate rights.

I would personally hate giving this power to the U.N., but at least that is an international organization that could in theory be able to establish these property rights. Just imagine though that the U.N. would also be able to pass civil laws for ordinary people and levy taxes. That's why I wouldn't want them trying to decide what would happen on the future homestead for my grandkids.

The only real legitimate route at this point is going to be the creation of a wholly new soverign entity that has no relationship to any of the signatory members of the Moon Treaty.

The United States spends about 20-30% of GDP on military spending, compared with a really small % in Japan.

According to a State Department report I found on Google, the US spends 3-4% of GDP on defence, while Japan spends about 1% and the UK and France about 2.5% -- and if those countries did not have US security guarantees they'd surely spend significantly more.

I don't think the US has spent more than 20% of GDP on war except during WW II, and current relative budget levels are certainly much lower than during the Cold War. Since the US is so huge and rich, the weight of a million man army is relatively light.

Meanwhile, the Japanese governments reckless spending on useless construction projects, bad loans and other things has saddled the country with an absolutley staggering debt load while only very slowly making real reforms to the financal system and government regulations which caused the "lost decade" of the 90's.

> Actually, the US does have vast streches of forests (that are growing, not shrinking), though I wouldn't call them secret.

Over the last century the US has almost exactly 300 million hectar of forests. The US claimed in 2000 that their forests absorbs 310 million metric tons of CO2. In 1996, the US emitted 5.000 million metric tons of CO2. Hardly a net minus.

> One of the things the US wanted in Kyoto, but didn't get, was credit for CO2 absorbtion.

The Kyoto Protocol Article 3.3 gives credit for "afforestation, reforestation and deforestation since 1990".
And the fact that a (non-growing) forest absorbs CO2 seems to be a temporary effect. They can only puffer an additional amount of CO2.

I have here a list of the names of 207 jews
Rumsfeld
Wolfowitz

I have here a list of the names of 207 negroes
Colin Powell
Condi Rice

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumericans
Bush
US Constitution

I have here a list of the names of 207 scumerican opinions
support for nazi-style invasion

Amendment I
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; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
versus
Censorship
more Censorship

Amendment II
A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.
versus
Murder
Gangster justice

Maybe the Iraqis are merely exercising their "Right to bear Arms" in their own country against a foreign invader.

More evidence that Europeans are a more civilized in their driving?

These drivers have interesting habits also. Turkish Drivers

Don't subject the rest of the Slashdot crowd to the talking out of your ass. Employment visas for India are available to Americans as well. It's the companies who don't want to employ Americans in India because they sure as hell will end up raising the wages in India and reducing the cost advantage of offshoring jobs.

Full text of Treaty

Throw this back at you: "
Does it feel good pretending you know lots about me? :)"

It's just a word, get over it. The only people who take that seriously are the activists on both sides. You don't have much room to talk considering Sweden had a state churhc as late as 1999. I keep telling you, you haven't been here and you don't know what Americans are actually like. According to you, America is nothing but right wing religious fanatics bent on killing each other and everybody else and we're all racist, right? The actual truth about crime in Europe and America might surprise you Would you like a link or two about the rising hate crimes in Europe?

Sure:
http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ho/time/dr/17741.htm

I am really surprised in some ways, and not at all in others that there are groups of people who want to leave the rest of the universe in pristine condition as it currently is.

Of course, I also believe that those same people would prefer a mass genocide of all of mankind (excepting themselves and a very small group of like-minded people). Some even plan for it and hope the rest of us kill each other.

I would have to agree that ownership of the territory is going to be a huge issue. There are folks that I consider to be on par with the name-a-star-after-your-loved-ones who are selling square mile parcels on planetary bodies throughout the solar system. That is at least the first wave of ownership that is currently happening.

Ownership of any rock that is outside of the earth is still up for debate. I think D. Delos Harriman (from Heinlein's "The Man Who Sold the Moon") probabally has the best approach if it really needs to come down to it, by trying to buy the property rights for celestial bodies from all nations that lie below the orbit of the planets (or the moon) but this is something that is going to get ugly before it gets better. Try to park a geosync satellite above Equador and find out just how valuable celestial real estate really is. Equador claims that spot directly above their country as soverign territory (really, look it up).

A pro-active approach from the UN might help in trying to distribute celestial territory, but their current efforts are more along the lines of the Moon Treaty and the Outer Space Treaty are, IMHO examples of those UN member nations who don't have spaceflight capability from legally keeping those who have it from doing anything with spaceflight. That and they are also diplomats and lobbiest who endorse mass genocide of most of mankind at heart. They really don't want anybody to go anywhere else beside staying on the earth. Oh, maybe send a few robots to check out some cool places, and keep the scientist in their ivory towers to keep writing cool proposals and professional research publications. Keep the teeming hoards of ordinary people from ever getting to the rest of those places.

If the UN get into the business of realistically dealing with outer space, it would have to be more along the lines of the Homestead Act and the Northwest Territories Ordinance passed by the United States congress, which specifically acknowledged that the new territories are going to be settled, provided a way for individuals to get involved in the process, and established governing principles for the creation of new governments for the people going into those territories. It would be cool to see the UN coming up with a plan that would allow sections of the Moon, for instance, be able to achieve the status as a UN member nation in the General Assembly.

(BTW, the Northwest of the Northwest Ordinance was the northwestern portion of the USA after the Revolution: Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and a part of Minnesota. This was one of the only comprehensive pieces of legislation passed under the U.S. Articles of Confederation before the current U.S. Constitution. This also established the pattern for making most of the western USA as well, in addition to current governing principles for American territory that is not currently in a state. I'm sure this would apply to soverign American territory in space as well.)

I seriously doubt that will ever happen.

Instead, I think what is probabally going to happen is a reenactment of the territory grab for the Americas (and most of the rest of the world as well) that happened between the 15th and 18th Centuries. That the players are going to be a little bit different (Europe will be a united voice, but India, China, and Japan w

The bottom line is this was an un-declared war directed by a puppet president and never approved by Congress.

Gosh, I wonder what this is then.

Libel is a legal term that describes a written form of defamation, which the dictionary defines as a "false or unjustified injury to someone's good reputation." Sometimes the word slander is used in the same breath as libel. ...

For the United States, the laws that control libel and slander first began to take shape even before the colonies gained their independence from Britain. One of the most famous American cases involved New York publisher John Peter Zenger, who was imprisoned in 1734 for printing political attacks against the colonial governor of New York. Zenger's lawyer established a legal precedent by arguing successfully that truth is an absolute defense in libel cases.

Since the Zenger case, however, someone can sue successfully for libel only if the defamatory information is proven to be false. ...

in 1964 when the Supreme Court issued a ruling that revolutionized libel law in the United States. The famous decision in New York Times Co. v. Sullivan once and for all created a national rule that squared more fully with the free press guarantees of the First Amendment. In its ruling, the Court decided that public officials no longer could sue successfully for libel unless reporters or editors were guilty of "actual malice" when publishing false statements about them.

... just what is malice when it comes to proving libel? Retired Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., who wrote the Sullivan decision, defined it as "knowledge that the [published information] was false" or that it was published "with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not." In other words, public officials no longer could sue for libel simply by proving that something that had been broadcast or printed about them was false Now they would have to prove that a journalist had knowingly printed false information while making little, if any, attempt to distinguish truth from lies.

... The Supreme Court later extended its so-called Sullivan rule to cover "public figures," meaning individuals who are not in public office but who are still newsworthy because of their prominence in the public eye. Over the years, American courts have ruled that this category includes celebrities in the entertainment field, well-known writers, athletes, and others who often attract attention in the media.

...

Besides making distinctions between public and private figures, American courts also have ruled that various kinds of published information are generally immune from libel charges. For example, it is almost impossible for a writer to be found guilty of libel if the writing deals with opinions rather than facts. "Under the First Amendment, there is no such thing as a false idea," the Supreme Court said in a 1974 libel ruling.

...

... the owner of a restaurant in New Orleans sued a food critic for writing unflattering things about his eating establishment. Too bad, the Louisiana Supreme Court told the restaurant owner, before sending him back to his kitchen empty-handed.

... ...

In other cases, principles have all but disappeared under an avalanche of legal tactics that sometimes turn libel trials into expensive battles that leave no clear winners.

It's unclear whether any of the persons extradited were US citizens.

here's one reference

"So in order to protect our citizens, we are in the process of negotiating bilateral agreements with the largest possible number of states, including non-Parties. These Article 98 agreements, as they are called, provide American citizens with essential protection against the Court's purported jurisdiction claims, and allow us to remain engaged internationally with our friends and allies. To date, 14 countries have signed Article 98 agreements with us."

Miranda v. Arizona (1963) built upon the Gideon decision and established that the Fifth Amendment's privilege against self-incrimination requires, among other things, that a suspect be advised of his right to remain silent and his right to receive legal counsel.

At this point in the game, I am honestly surprised that we haven't heard of violence resulting from spam affliction.

Text: White House Explains Steel Import Relief Decision So fucking what?

"These days, presidents don't seem to declare war on things that can possibly be ended by a peace treat (drugs, poverty, terror, etc). Tell me, Mr Bush, is the war on terror going to be over before or after the war on drugs?"

Absolutely.

"The suspension of due process indefinitely is an abomination to liberty, which I could've sworn was what we were fighting for in the first place."

I would argue that suspension at all is an abomination to liberty.

As for the rest of your comment, I must take issue with a number of things. First of all, you're definitely not a southerner, else you'd be calling it the War of Northern Aggression, which better illustrates the illegal nature of the war. There is nothing in the Consitution telling the Federal government that it had the power to stop secession of one or more states. Thus, as per the 9th and 10th amendments, the right to secede from the union remained with the states and those within those states. The North invaded, conquered, and ultimately burned to the ground a foreign nation because it was unable to survive, economically speaking, without it. But I digress.

You use the 'Civil War' (not getting into a semantecs debate) as one example of a time when citizens were imprisoned without due process. Luckily, we've had a court ruling on the matter, entitled Ex Parte Milligan, in which the imprisonment of a citizen under martial law was reversed, and in which the Supreme Court held that the very declaration of martial law was, itself, unconstitutional. From the court's decision:

----------

"Martial law cannot arise from a threatened invasion. The necessity must be actual and present; the invasion real, such as effectually closes the courts and deposes the civil administration."[Emph mine]

"If, in foreign invasion or civil war, the courts are actually closed, and it is impossible to administer criminal justice according to law, then, on the theatre of active military operations, where war really prevails, there is a necessity to furnish a substitute for the civil authority, thus overthrown, to preserve the safety of the army and society; and as no power is left but the military, it is allowed to govern by martial rule until the laws can have their free course. As necessity creates the rule, so it limits its duration; for, if this government is continued after the courts are reinstated, it is a gross usurpation of power."

And most importantly:

"Martial rule can never exist where the courts are open, and in the proper and unobstructed exercise of their jurisdiction. It is also confined to the locality of actual war."

My personal favorite part of the decision:

"But, it is insisted that the safety of the country in time of war demands that this broad claim for martial law shall be sustained. If this were true, it could be well said that a country, preserved at the sacrifice of all the cardinal principles of liberty, is not worth the cost of preservation. Happily, it is not so."[Emph mine]

---------------

Ergo, example 1 was shown to be illegal. Shall we look further at example 2?

In World War 2, President Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which called for all the 'japs' to be rounded up and put into internment camps. This already looks pretty bad, doesn't it? In Korematsu V. United States, the Supreme Court gave the 'thumbs up' to the internment camps, rolling over like trained puppies for the popular wartime President. However... Over time, people actually got their heads on straight and took a good look at what had happened. In 1976, President Ford issued Proclamation 4417 which terminated Executive Order 9066. It was called "An American Promise", and it promised that such an action would never again be taken, while acknowledging that it was wrong in the first place. In 1983, a Federal district court ruled the detention

My wife worked for the U.N. in Africa for 5 years and saw first hand the corruption.

Corruption is a huge problem all over Africa. It is a common phenomena in under-developed nations were business laws are weak. It is even found on a large scale in some very developed countries (France and Italy are good examples, while USA has its fair share). Corruption comes in many disguises, from money under the table, to advanced lawyer set up money schemes.

Now, what did your "wife" see? And this corruption she saw, was it UN staff taking money illegally? If she has some good example or even proofs of this, I am sure many neo-cons wants to hear about it. The UN is one of the more scrutinized organizations in the world and any proof of misconduct will be used against it.

You sound like a true astro-turfer to me and I doubt you or your family have worked inside the UN. Remember that the U.N.s Oil for Food program was set up by the USA after the first Gulf war and the UN did the best it could with the rules for the program set down. And it seems to have worked pretty well in the way that Saddam was not able to get new or maintain his old WMD. It was so successful that Saddam spend all his energy trying to undermind the program. Now, show some proof instead of neo-con hate speech that the Oil for food program was a UN and France conspiracy. And please, add some more substance to your FUD about UN in Africa. I am sure your "wife" can give some concrete examples.

If I had to pick which space program to fund, I would choose planning for war in space before I would put a man on Mars. Mars is a big dead rock. It may have held life at some point, maybe not. We can put a robot up there today to help take a peek, 10 years from now, they'll probably be shipping samples back to earth. Having someone bypass our ground/shore weapons and detection systems, by shooting at us from outer space, seems to be a lot more likely than finding someone to talk to on Mars.

This gets Insightful?

Just who is going to be out there attacking us from space? Just how do you expect that these hypothetical attackers can test their space systems without being observed by any of our intelligence satellites? Who has the money and the motivation to launch such a massive undertaking?

Due to the economics, the U.S. has a great deal more to fear in the way of small, disgruntled terrorists who may construct biological, chemical or radioactive bombs. All the space based defenses in the universe won't keep you safe from those people.

The weaponisation of space is a very poor idea. The so called Outer Space treaty signed by the United States bans the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in orbit. This agreement was signed by the U.S., the U.S.S.R, and China, along with many other nations. While weapons of a more limited scope are not directly prohibited by this treaty, developing a significant capability to deliever weapons systems of a more conventional nature into space will undoubtably be viewed rather dimly by other nations, since it is clear that such technology and capacity could be quickly retargeted towards other uses.

Recent administrations have viewed these and other non-proliferation treaties as insignificant and not binding. It's a tragic failure of our foreign policy, and enormously short sighted.

• Since when has there been a country called "Grenwich"?

• GMT is ... an internationally decided standard.

• GMT seemed a good choice (the size of the British Empire had something to do with it, I'm sure, but that still doesn't make your comment the slightest bit relevent).

• Of course, we could also get into the America!=USA debate, but I'd rather not bother.

Thanks for playing! We have some lovely parting gifts for you right through that door, bye!

Okay, I'll grant you that it is impossible to stop 100%. Okay, how about start off with a simple rule, all districts must ALWAYS be simply connected; AND concave where possible. Second, demand that the electoral commissions at least pretend to be fair and if they aren't, complain.

The idea of an independent public service is part of the Westminster tradition. It doesn't work perfectly (and the public service in Australia is getting politicised), but works better than expecting that your public service are corrupted from the start.

In response to your other (wrong) points:

Your contention that you don't need a visa to work in the US is just complete bollocks. If so, why is there an illegal immigrant problem in the US if they don't need visas? Are you lying and did I call your bluff?

Ah crap, you've caught me. No wait, I mean I've got proof. Sigh, I was neither lying nor bluffing. Australia as a "friendly" country, can have its citizens stay in the US for business or pleasure for up to 90 days without a visa, unless you're travelling on government or media business. Of course, can't trust that Matt Welch or National Post, they could be pesky commies (I don't have any evidence, just a gut feeling). Is the American embassy good enough?

Skipping racist stuffs...talk about how bad the country is that i live in.

Oh yeah, I forgot, you refuse to listen to bad news even if they're justified with evidence. And especially if they come from people who look different. THAT'S why you believe that the US is the most democratic country in the whole wide world.

Yes it's perfectly reasonable to deny felons the right to vote in my opinion, and I'm sure public opinion would agree with me.

Yes, it perfectly reasonable to deny women/blacks the right to vote in my opinion and I'm sure public opinion would agree with me. Sorry, trolling again.

As for Saddam and 9/11....believing it in your gut isn't completely unreasonable.

As for Christians, Jews and the targetting of Islam..believing in your gut isn't completely unreasonable.

Whoops, did I just troll again? Your government made a claim without evidence. Lots of people and governments asked for more information. The little evidence that the US government did provide was not convincing and some shown to be false. Your mainstream media, of course, probably never reported it, don't want to be unpatiotic would we? And the American public believed it. And you call me naive! When will you learn, governments lie and they have a history of lying. The classical example is the Gulf of Tonkin that lead to the Vietnam War. The other is the Iran-Contra affair. The first casualty of war is the truth. If you're going to embark on an offensive war, you demand proof beyond reasonable doubt.

why the big quote from the U.S. Constitution? . . . Can't you quote someting Australian? :-)

No, sorry. Can't quote anything Australian on the issue of freedom of speech or the press. Australia has no constitutional clause or bill of rights on this topic. These issues seem to be decided by Australia's High Court, which since 1992 has said that there is an implied right in the Australian constitution to freedom of expression of public political topics, but not on much else.

What the Australian constitution does say is, "Chapter I. Sec. 51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: ... (xviii.) Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks." This is a great deal simpler than the version found in the U.S. Constitution: "Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". The actual Australian Copyright Law of 1968 makes for pretty dense reading.

IANA Australian (in fact, IAA American), but it seems that Australia lacks a rallying cry to match that part of the U.S. constitution that the *IAA keeps trying to monopolize for themselves: Amendment I. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .

None of this should be taken as a disparagement of Australia, of course. For instance, the U.S. copyright laws are at least as dense and a good deal more restrictive besides. It just seems that prohibiting the ownership and use of presses (e.g. CD burners) in the U.S. would involve slightly more hypocrisy than doing so in Australia. It is an equally bad idea in both places.

why the big quote from the U.S. Constitution? . . . Can't you quote someting Australian? :-)

No, sorry. Can't quote anything Australian on the issue of freedom of speech or the press. Australia has no constitutional clause or bill of rights on this topic. These issues seem to be decided by Australia's High Court, which since 1992 has said that there is an implied right in the Australian constitution to freedom of expression of public political topics, but not on much else.

What the Australian constitution does say is, "Chapter I. Sec. 51.The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: ... (xviii.) Copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks." This is a great deal simpler than the version found in the U.S. Constitution: "Article I. Section 8. The Congress shall have power . . . To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries". The actual Australian Copyright Law of 1968 makes for pretty dense reading.

IANA Australian (in fact, IAA American), but it seems that Australia lacks a rallying cry to match that part of the U.S. constitution that the *IAA keeps trying to monopolize for themselves: Amendment I. Congress shall make no law . . . abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press. . . .

None of this should be taken as a disparagement of Australia, of course. For instance, the U.S. copyright laws are at least as dense and a good deal more restrictive besides. It just seems that prohibiting the ownership and use of presses (e.g. CD burners) in the U.S. would involve slightly more hypocrisy than doing so in Australia. It is an equally bad idea in both places.

We've never lived in a Democracy. We've always lived in a Constitutional Republic. Until the 1930's* or so, war department training manuals listed democracy as a form of governemnt that failed due to sortsightedness and greed.

The will of the people is not absolute. The idea the founders had is that there are certain things that you can't make a man do, and there are certain things you cannot prevent a man from doing. They called these things rights. Then they codifed this in the constitution. The Supreme Court took on the right to declare laws contrary to this constitution, thereby void, in the Marbury v. Madison court case in the late 18th century.

The Mass. ruling on gay marriage is actually based on their constitution. Their constitution states its not possible have a law that will create "second-class citizens". The justices said that a law preventing gay's to only gain some of the benefits of marriage was creating a second-class citizenry, disallowing them from many parts of marriage, thereby contravening the Mass. State Constitution. The also mumbled a bit about "Separate but Equal" questions. These mumblings throw doubt on whether a law that gives gay marriages every right/privelidge/responsibility of straight marriage, yet calls it a civil marriage, is even constitutional, if that law is ever tested, it may be impossible to deny full marriage to gays in mass.

Now you sir, who appear to think gays should not be able to do the same thing you or I could, should be happy if that happens.

You see, the US constitution says that states must give "full faith and credit" to the laws of other states. If gay marriage was a Mass. law, a challenge of the federal law that states gay marriages need not be recognized would be EASILY declared unconstitutional via the "full faith and credit" clause of the US Constitution.

However, if its shown that due to the "second-class citzen" clause of the Mass. Constitution that gays have always had the right to marry in Mass, gays can marry there, but other states do NOT have to recognize those marriages according to the "full faith and credit" clause.

The federal law stating "a marriage is between a man and a woman" probably will stand if the Mass Constitution is ruled to allow gay marriage.

*http://www.notademocracy.org/

The US government & media is trying to convince everyone that there are ever increasing hordes of bloodthirsty terrorists that want to destroy Western civilisation. While terrorism is definitely a problem, it has been blown totally out of proportion by obsessive media coverage... According to this analysis by the US stater department 2002 saw the lowest incidence of international terrorist attacks (that is with 9/11 factored in, but IMO 9/11 was a catalyst staged by an alliance of certain energy- and weapons industry concerns, the Bush family and their close friends in the Saudi Royal family).

Now you may start modding me down, crying conspiracy theory and regurgitate the FUD that you have been fed...

How TF did this get modded as insightful? The Patriot Act, specifically the provisions that were found unconstitutional, allow for "secret detentions" where lawyers could not consult for those who were "terrorists" (in this case Mr. Arar). Well, that's great, but if a prisoner can't see the charges against him and neither can he obtain a lawyer, he's screwed... and that's what happened to Mr. Arar.

Arar's 10-day detention and deportation to Syria had nothing to do with Patriot Act. The Clinton administration used this same kind of "extraordinary rendition"--as the CIA calls it--after the African embassy bombings, and well before the Patriot Act was dreamed of.

People blame lots of abuses on the Patriot Act that are unrelated--e.g. Maher Arar, Jose Padilla

I just remember Watergate. .... Guys like Agnew got nailed for things completely unrelated, but without the scandal, they never would have been investigated. If this blows up, watch for a lot of other things (Haliburton?) to suddenly show up on the law-enforcement agendas.

Didja know that Rumsfeld was a member of Nixon's cabinet?

"Director of the Office of Economic Opportunity, Assistant to the President, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1969-1970); and, as Counsellor to the President, Director of the Economic Stabilization Program, and a member of the President's Cabinet (1971-1972)."
- Source

The Rumsfeld-Cheney-Nixon connection is also interesting:

"When President Richard M. Nixon selected Rumsfeld as White House counselor in 1970, Cheney joined him as his deputy. In August 1974, Gerald Ford assumed the presidency and asked Rumsfeld to be his chief of staff. Rumsfeld immediately sought out Cheney."
- Source

Rumsfeld never got press as a major Watergate player. But this is interesting:

"Rumsfeld was not entirely divorced from Nixon's political operations. There is no sign that he was involved in any of the illegalities of Watergate, but he was willing to offer Nixon other help of a not particularly exalted nature--some dirt on political enemies, some covert ties with a prominent pollster. The Nixon tapes reveal that Rumsfeld often worked with and was a special favorite of John Mitchell and Charles Colson, Nixon's roughest political operators, who viewed Rumsfeld as savvier than other White House aides."
- Source

Mitchell was an obstructor of justice, and Colson was a hatchet man. Rummy was close with those guys? Must be sweet to have a resume like that -- fits right in with the Bush administration.

-kgj

Would this be a bad time to mention Shuttle's based in Taiwan? Or that official estimates are that about 24% of Taiwanese are Buddhists?

Good idea, except the "private entrepreneurs" don't have the funds [...]

Yes they do. Check out the X-Prize.

[...] we will find a situation like the AT&T monopoly -- huge prices, bad service, unfair competition, etc.

The AT&T monopoly was a terrible example of privitization, I agree, but in those rare instances when such things happen, the Monopolies Commission steps in and makes sure that there is a competitive environment. And look at the phone companies now: there is so much pressure and so much competition from cell phones that land line prices are dropping like the proverbial stones! They're even offering unlimited long distance plans, unheard of only five years ago.

[...] science is better off today because of commercial research and the applications of that research, but after a while it stagnates. Think about the gasoline engine. We could have much better engines, but it is profitable to the auto makers and gasoline companies to make them less fuel efficient and require more maintenance. I don't want to see a plateau like this in space travel.

I wouldn't want to see that stagnation happen, either. But even now, car companies are starting to produce cars that have lower emissions, are covered by warrantees to 100,000 miles, and even run on hybrid engines. Why did this happen? Because the customers started to want it, and the companies needed to follow their customers' wants/needs or they would die in a competitive environment. Thus the private sector continues to innovate because the force behind their existence (customers' wallets) asked for it.

Besides, NASA has been stagnating in human space endeavors for 35 years. Congress doesn't seem too fired up about it, so we look to alternatives for exploring space: entrepreneurs with passion. The megacorps won't do it, because there's no return on their investment yet. The technology is still very much in the prototype stage. If every airline had to invent, design, test, and build their own airplane, there wouldn't be very many companies jumping at the chance. But since they can buy one from Boeing for a few hundred million, which they know they will easily make back, it's a sound investment. The airline industry didn't really take off (pardon the pun) until a full two decades of airplane research and development, both by the military and by barnstormers, had been completed. Since we know military development of space is out of the question (thanks to the Outer Space Treaty of 1967) we have to look to the barnstormers (spacestormers?) to further that development.

"armed military across the country would protect americans rights and keep the country safe from the jihad."

Someone actually modded this insightful? You've got to be joking. Many of the founding fathers saw a standing military, in and of itself, as a major threat to liberty. Standing armies have historically been used to oppress the population in both times of war and peace. This nation, in an attempt to protect the people from a corrupt regime using the military as a weapon against the people, enacted the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. It restricts the military from engaging in any law enforcement, except where provided for by act of Congress or the US Constitution. This followed the Supreme Court decision of Ex Parte Milligan(1866), which stated that Martial rule (military law) cannot exist or be enforced within the borders of the United States except where it is necessitated by a situation (such as rebellion) in which the courts cease to function, and thus, civilian authority no longer exists. The Supreme Court, like just about everyone else who's ever taken 10 seconds to look at a history book, recognized military forces policing civilians as a grave and dire threat to the liberties guaranteed by our Constitution.

The threat posed by the military to the liberties of the American people has been recognized since this country was formed. To say that we should now reverse more than 200 years of historically-based common fucking sense is absolutely insane.

What part of this did someone find "insightful"?

I searched for quite some time before posting, and could find nothing. After another few searches I found this. I stand corrected, but the 2 visits he has made have been to conferences held in Canada, and were not "state visits" to discuss issues one on one with the Prime Minister, and he has never been to our capital. That's a pretty poor effort.

The guy was a student on a student's visa. If he's such a computer guru, I'm sure he was able to find this, and this, and maybe even this.

Gee, that took me 2 minutes. I bet after an hour I could find _all_ the immigration forms I need.

"Boo hoo, I traveled to a country and I broke their laws"

Sorry, I have very little sympathy for someone who says that when they knowingly do something illegal.

28 countries are exempt only because the United States could not diplomatically get away with insulting these exempt countries this way.
I think the EU is only exempt, because they will have passports with the fingerprints stored on it in the near future. Hence they will comply with the new requirements of the Visa Waiver Program.