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A recent development separate from the 2004 election could also place a pair of Ohio churches under IRS scrutiny.

In January, more than 30 ministers in Ohio affiliated with moderate and liberal churches petitioned the IRS to revoke the tax-exempt status of two conservative evangelical churches. The signers indicated that they were not speaking for their churches.

Looks like the IRS is trying to be even-handed, so I don't understand your point.

But the IRS seems to be pretty much blowing off the petitioning in Ohio, apparently letting the conservatives there endorse to their hearts' contents. They actually took action in the cases of the liberal ones.

Note that your linked story is dated Feb. 28; googling without "California" (or a second "churches") in the terms brings up this much more recent article, they're still waiting for the IRS to do anything there, even after a second complaint. And the Ohio case involves much more direct campaign help, such as letting the campaign use their facilities and holding "political activities" in the church, assuming the clergy aren't wrong about that bit. The California church just preached a sermon about whether Jesus would endorse pre-emptive war, and how the candidates view the matter.

The cases are not equivalent.

This will likely be an unpopular opinion here, but there's a few things that irk me about the above reference. 1. Benjamin Franklin never said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.", It was written by Richard Jackson. Benjamin Franklin himself denied writing this phrase in a letter to David Hume dated a year after the book that attributed the phrase to him. Franklin's nearest quote to the same effect holds quite a different meaning: "Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor Liberty to purchase power" [1] 2. "This is the same apathy we see every year with laughingly low voter turnouts" - This statement is patently absurd [2] 3. People who frequently pen, "The majority of people in America are too stupid..." are typically intellectually insecure, obnoxiously arrogant, or both. In either regard, they presume to perform with superior judgement to the common sense, which is the antithesis of democracy. 4. "Many Americans sadly enough have no clue the NSA has been spying on Americans." There's 2.2 million webpages on the internet dedicated to reporting the NSA spying efforts. I don't have access to Lexis Nexis anymore or I would happily tell you how many front pages the story has made. The idea that people are 'unaware' of this is stupid. Unlike you, they understand the need to obtain valid intelligence information to fight a war. [3] 5. The Clinton administration claims that it can bypass the warrant clause for "national security" purposes. In July 1994 Deputy Attorney General Jamie S. Gorelick told the House Select Committee on Intelligence that the president "has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence purposes." [4] What I would rather argue, is which of security or privacy are a more essential liberty, and in fact, is privacy even essential. The Constitution requires reasonable privacy, not absolute. Privacy is not essential for freedom, other than the fact it requires accountability. so you are no longer free to be unaccountable for your actions, given the times, would it be reasonable or even prudent to allow this? There's a big difference between the NSA spying, and say, Bill Clinton using illegal wiretaps to spy on Senators. How many people survived the Rose Law firm scandal by the way?

Found: 1,000 radioactive materials--ideal for radioactive dirty bombs

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced yesterday that almost two tons of low-enriched uranium and about 1,000 radioactive samples used for research had been removed from Iraq's Tuwaitha Nuclear Center and brought to the United States for security reasons.
[...]
The International Atomic Energy Agency, which in the prewar period had kept the Tuwaitha uranium under seal, was told in advance of the U.S. removal, as were Iraqi officials.
[...]
Tuwaitha was once the center of Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons effort, but its equipment was dismantled at the direction of U.N. inspectors in the early 1990s as part of the agreement following Iraq's surrender in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

Rather good question, that. What's your answer, actually?

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/02/09/AR2006020901415.html

Last paragraph:

"The president should have all the tools he needs to fight terrorism," Specter said, "but we also want to maintain our civil liberties." Now there is a perfect expression of patriotic, post-Sept. 11 thinking."

Since this statement surprised me a bit I thought a source might be nice:
Sarin, Mustard Gas Discovered Separately in Iraq
Deadly Nerve Agent Sarin Is Found in Roadside Bomb

Finally, a credible writeup as to why this particular piece of evidence shouldn't be viewed as the smoking gun:
Iraq sarin shell is not part of a secret cache

From these descriptions I can't take this as evidence of a stockpile of WMDs. It would take more, even, than an unused crate of these shells since one has to leave the possibility of beaurocratic screwups open. It was known that chemical weapons had been used by this regime in the past, but the stockpiles had theoretically been destroyed. This was not the justification for us going to war.

From Washington Post: "Over the next 90 days, executives will identify underperforming business groups and cost inefficiencies but will not wait until the end of the review to start implementing changes, Otellini said." wp online
That is the end of the Itanic as I see it...

just inside this article, i found this link:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A366 85-2005Jan25.html

avril, you're a fuck-up

It was on digg. The link: http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/04 /microsoft_expands_antipiracy_p.html

YAMSIS Yet Anoither MicroSoft Inane Solution ??YAMSIS submitted to slash-dot but rejected (Cmdr Taco got it in first)

Bretheren of the tech, YAMSIS is among us again. Yet Anoither MicroSoft Inane Solution
Once again, instead of implementing repairs to its patch ridden world dominating OS, MS has instituted a sneaky attack on users in the name of "protecting" itself. Hope you don't have Automatic Updates turned on.

It must be too much to expect them to protect us, fix a few holes, stop monopolizing, or correct the mistakes made by their programers. {btw has anyone kept track of how many of the "flaws" are related to failures to "validate" inputs? Isn't that something that is taught on the first day in the first hour of programer school?}

Hats off to the GRC poster "RETIRED" for bringing attention this last nite, in his/her post Subject: MS Expands Anti-Piracy Program, Reissues Patch in GRC.privacy newsgroup at news.grc.com. And to Cmdr Taco who beat me to the line in posting about this. The reference links=
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/04 /microsoft_expands_antipiracy_p.html
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/200 6/04/22/microsoft-is-taking-wga-to-the-next-level/
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/200 6/04/21/almost-20-of-windows-fail-to-validate-wga/
http://www.aviransplace.com/index.php/archives/200 5/08/19/why-microsoft-introduced-wga-now/

MS is now sneakily downloading onto users machines a bit of code that will regularly evaulate whether your Windows is legitimate. To the average "joe or Jane" this may sound OK. But is it really what we paid for when we bought our OS? NO !!!! The last thing we need is another TSR calling home! Why do we need another headache. Now we have to tell users to turn off Automatic updates. Not exactly what we need for the "average home user" is it? And What is next?

Given that MS thinks that you should buy a new OS everytime you replace components in your PC, this is scary. What's next? The possibilites are endless and pretty scary. IF MS can force users or trick them into accepting the "license" for this new "addition" which they only show in that tiny box (bifocals hate that), they can give you anything they want. So heaven help us, let alone the small company tech, who has to replace a motherboard that died. Soon MS will have to give their permission first. At least none of us use this software for anything critical like work, do we?

Well it's not "no big deal". It is YAMSIS !!!
Acc7

According to this article here http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/04 /microsoft_expands_antipiracy_p.html the update cannot be uninstalled.

I'm not opposed to showing ID to board a plane. I don't, however, like the thought of my email, phone calls, and other communications being secretly monitored because I might be 'a person of interest', said monitoring being approved by a secret court.

I'm not anti-military and I'm not anti-government. I just feel that the provisions of the constitution regarding things like freedom of speech and unreasonable search and seizure are there for a reason. Many people have died so that we could have these rights and we're giving them up quietly, one by one, in bits and pieces.

Fact is, reagan did NOT bankrupt them. He played no real role in all this. They were bankrupted in the 70's. Reagan kept them alive by removing the grain embargo and restoring much of the trade that Nixon and Carter took off. BTW, I did not give near enough credit to another who took down the USSR; Gorby, himself. Many within russia "blame" him for losing the war. In the end, he simply opened up the books and that was enough to bring it down.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/04/20/AR2006042001786.html/

(Sorry, free registration required)

Gonzales speaking at the National Center for Missing/Exploited Children:

"I have seen pictures of older men forcing naked young girls to have anal sex. There are videos on the Internet of very young daughters forced to have intercourse and oral sex with their fathers. Viewing this was shocking, and it makes my stomach turn," said Gonzales, who was accompanied by his wife, Rebecca.

Either AG Gonzales believes everything he reads or he's even more cynical than I thought. But, of course, since he is in charge of the FBI, he no doubt had the individuals in the pictures investigated as to thei family relationships. Sheesh.

did it ever occur to you that she feels that way because she does not have to live under the Chinese government?

It's all the same to her:
1) she isn't being persecuted by the U.S. gov.
2) she isn't being persecuted by the Chinese gov.

Of course, 2 is only because she (and her family) had the money to leave.

In China things are certainly different. There is a large (and growing) number of people who are upset with their government:

Number of mass protests in China:
2004: 74,000
2005: 80,000

And these are official numbers.. released by the Chinese government. Feel free to lookup numbers for the past several years.. you'll see the number of protests are growing each year.

So who are the protesters? Almost all of them are Peasants. Those who are the poorest, also happen to have the fewest rights.

So ask yourself: when was the last time you saw that many protests in the U.S.? When was the last time you saw the poor protesting because of their treatment?

Yeah, it's all the same to her..... as long as she doesn't have to live there.

did it ever occur to you that she feels that way because she does not have to live under the Chinese government?

It's all the same to her:
1) she isn't being persecuted by the U.S. gov.
2) she isn't being persecuted by the Chinese gov.

Of course, 2 is only because she (and her family) had the money to leave.

In China things are certainly different. There is a large (and growing) number of people who are upset with their government:

Number of mass protests in China:
2004: 74,000
2005: 80,000

And these are official numbers.. released by the Chinese government. Feel free to lookup numbers for the past several years.. you'll see the number of protests are growing each year.

So who are the protesters? Almost all of them are Peasants. Those who are the poorest, also happen to have the fewest rights.

So ask yourself: when was the last time you saw that many protests in the U.S.? When was the last time you saw the poor protesting because of their treatment?

Yeah, it's all the same to her..... as long as she doesn't have to live there.

In a private email message, Vint Cerf told me that it was true that Al Gore was instrumental in the development of the Internet. Before Mr. Gore's involvement, it was a semi-private utility known as ArpaNet and NSFNet. Mr. Gore championed the development of the private network as a public utility. This was years before Bill Gates, for example, recognized its importance.

Patrick Moore (co-founder of Greenpeace) editorial in the Washington Post about Nuclear.

They're known as Internet evangelists -- the people who have unwavering faith in the democratizing power of the Internet. It's a term coined by James Mulvenon, deputy director at the Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis, to describe those who cling to the belief that the Internet "leads to 'tulip' and 'orange' and every other possible color and flower of revolutions around the world."

Then there's China.

The Chinese Communist Party, long expected to be a victim of economic modernization and the transformative powers of technology, has instead been learning how to use those powers to its own ends. This isn't merely a matter of the widely publicized blocking of the Internet; the CCP has been learning how to use the Internet as a tool for surveillance.

"China is a clear example of how an authoritarian state can use modern information technologies to sustain itself in power," says Mulvenon, an expert on China and on information technology. They have been using technology to "create both low-tech Leninism -- seizures, arrests, informers -- and an environment of self-censorship and self-deterrence so they don't have to actively enforce."

This helps to explain why, nearly 17 years after the bloody crackdown in Tiananmen Square, there is still no person or movement strong enough to challenge Communist rule. When Chinese President Hu Jintao arrives in Washington this week, he will come as the leader of a party that has defied predictions of its demise because it has always been effective at disrupting its critics. An element of grumbling is accepted, but get together and form a group, whether to conduct soul-soothing exercises in the park or talk political reform, and the party is apt to pay some unwanted attention.

How can China's security apparatus keep track of people in a country as vast as China? By using much the same methods that the United States uses to track terrorist cells. Although the National Security Agency's eavesdropping program has attracted a lot of attention here, in China listening-in is an old habit. It's the way the NSA most likely identified the thousands of people it chose to listen in on -- through a program called Novel Intelligence from Massive Data -- that is the source of real hope for China's communist mandarins.

And that's a story about sifting through data, picking out potential threats by finding unusual patterns in apparently normal behavior. The more modern the economy becomes, the more data people leave behind. As my colleague Robert O'Harrow puts it in his recent book, we are all like comets, leaving bright trails of credit card charges, Web sites we view, traffic cameras we pass, telephone calls we make. For anyone looking for a pattern -- or changes in the pattern -- the more data the better.

So, far from threatening party control, the modern technological economy in China can make traditional surveillance more efficient. People's University in Beijing has a "data mining center" that says it "helps businesses improve the profitability of financial, telecom, biological and medical areas." A joint meeting of the Chinese Society of Probability and Statistics and the Institute of Mathematical Statistics in 2005 had several sessions on data mining, including one on "mining massive text data and developing robust tracking statistics." Delivered by a Rutgers University researcher, the presentation discussed techniques used by the Federal Aviation Administration for tracking performance or detecting risk indicators. The abstract noted that the framework "applies to many other domains, including, for example, mining freestyle medical reports for tracking possible disease outbreaks."

Conversations with American military officers and policymakers

"if you get a new product from Microsoft, you have a predictable experience of that printer being able to print out of it".

"for the most part the glitches result from problems with some Hewlett-Packard software products, including any HP DeskJet printer that includes a card reader, HP scanners, some HP CD-DVD players/burners, and HP cameras".

Soon you can ask anyone from Brooklyn, too.

So to disprove my position that French prisons are some of the worst in the civilized world, you point to a BBC article about abuses at a US prison? What's your next trick; disprove that guns are deadly weapons by giving me the statictics for knife related deaths?

As for prozac, you may want to look into getting yourself a prescription, you seem to need it much more than anyone else that in this thread so far.

I believe this old article may also help you to face reality. And for that matter, even though you don't appear to be an American, the results from these two studies may also help you deal with your anger issues. You know, the first step towards getting better is admitting you have a problem.

And just FYI, I'm not American nor do I believe that American prisons are necessarily the greatest places on Earth to serve one's incarceration, but I'm sure neither of those points will really mean much to you (see links above).

Introducing grammer/spelling to an argument is generally a sign of a very weak case, even when it is done by the original author as a strawman to try and draw the attention away from his complete lack of debating skills.

As to your P.S. I wouldn't have to be Derren Brown to have figured that out.

"And just how many people in China do you think have ANY idea what 'Back Dorm Boys' is?"

"... Chinese society is NOT opening in any significant way, nor is the government adopting ANY liberalization policies."

"The unlawful detention of "enemy combatants" ": We follow the requirements of treaties regulating POWs, etc. These enemy combatants didn't follow the rules of war - hence no protection.

How do you know that? What assurances do we have that these men are combatants of any sort? None! If these men are in fact combatants, why have 167 of them been sent home? If everything in guantanamo is hunky dory, why won't the US let the UN talk to the prisoners? Even China didn't refuse that!

Can you name even one person who has been "shipped off sans due process to an offshore prison camp" who wasn't captured in a war zone under arms while not wearing a uniform?

Well, there were the 38 detainess who were released in March 2005 because the US government decided that they were not enemy combatants. None of these people received compensation for unjust imprisonment, and none of them have ever been told why they were arrested.

Or how about "Adel" - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/11/13/AR2005111301061.html

Or how about the five Chinese detainees who have been found not to be enemy combatants, but are still sitting in Guantanamo? http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/0213/p03s03-usju.htm l

The United States has chosen to put those people into jail rather than execute them. That is a favor that the US is doing out of the kindness of its heart. Your welcome.

"Kindness of its heart"? Fuck off. Guantanamo is a fucking embarassment to the USA, and you should be ashamed of yourself for trying to defend it.

At Guantanamo, the prisoners don't have any rights to a trial or access to the American Justice system -- until the US Supreme Court decides that it is not Constitutional for the Executive branch to accuse, convict and execute the sentence on a person with no trial. I figure he'd be there for about 20 years with no trial until this Supreme Court wakes up.

What he ought to fear is an overseas detention compound as this is where one British releasee suffered torture, not at Gitmo.

While I agree this is a ploy by his lawyer to try this case in the Court of Public Opinion (at least in England where Guantanamo is not very popular), the US apparently doesn't torture prisoners there. They torture them elsewhere because Guantanamo is under too much public scrutiny

From the Washington Post in Nov.

"The relative importance of the foreign component of Iraq's two-year-old insurgency, estimated at between 4 and 10 percent of all guerrillas."

"Both Iraqis and coalition people often exaggerate the role of foreign infiltrators and downplay the role of Iraqi resentment in the insurgency," said Anthony H. Cordesman, a former Pentagon official now at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, who is writing a book about the Iraqi insurgency.

They do this so that every patch on the release board gets the full testing cycle it deserves.

Over the past year, Mozilla averaged about 21 days before it issued fixes for flaws in Firefox, compared with the 135 days it took for Microsoft to address problems.

Microsoft rarely releases patches off-schedule now.

Maybe the conclusion of :

Al-Qaeda Operations, how may I direct your call?, may have
been more appropriate for the white collar criminals.

Have a nice day.

Patriotically,
KIlgore Trout

[quote] The $272 seems to be working so far. Look ma! No planes hitting buildings![/quote]

You're right! Terrorism is way down.

sarcasm This is just old-fashioned pork barrel politics. Except, now they're not even pretending: instead of saying a $2,000,000,000 "bridge to nowhere" serves an actual purpose they are just going to outright spend $73,000,000 with the explicit purpose of making a pile of debris on the moon. I bet they name it after Senator Ted Stevens(R-Alaska) or Bill Frist(R-Tenn). At least Bill Frist has some experience on conducting science at a distance. "Frist Water-Seeking Mission to the Moon" sounds kind of catchy. Kind of. Maybe? Ok, no. /sarcasm

The so-called lobbying reform bill that just passed the House won't fix anything. If anything, it will reduce the influence of those who don't support big business. It's a whitewash created by those who the system benefits the most. The Business Software Alliance spends tons of money wining and dining members of Congress, and they have much more influence than any individual voter.

Until more of us read a newspaper, educate ourselves, and show up to vote, the system isn't going to change. Those with money have more influence than voters. Of course, if more states deploy electronic voting, our votes won't count any more.

In the meantime, you can fight back by giving money to those that support ODF, like EFF and EPIC. (I have no affiliation with either except to give them a little money now and then.)

Oh, did I say "companies like"? Oops, no, just eLottery. They seem to have some patents "broadly covering Internet retailing of state lottery tickets". In other words, software patents, or actually business model patents (legalized monopolies) disguised as them. Of course, those patents let them raise capital from investors eager to profit from that legalized monopoly. Where did that capital go? Right into lobbyists' pockets.

"it takes, on average, 10 years and 1 billion dollars to get a new drug approved in the U.S. ..."

This is simply incorrect. It is likely that this statistic is referring to the time it takes for a drug company to develop and gain approval for a new drug. According to Washington Monthly in May 2000, at that time the FDA approval process was taking about a year, and had decreased from about 2.5 years after so-called "fast track" procedures were implemented in the 90s: (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2000/00 05.pomper.html)

"If you are arguing that the FDA plays down risks in order to allow buisnesses to sell dangerous products, that is just not true."

I am, and I am by no means alone. For evidence and opinions on this side of the question, you might want to check out:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6520630/

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/pres cription/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A313 5-2004Dec15.html

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1126/p02s01-uspo.htm l

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/ a/2004/11/23/MNGSPA04NI1.DTL

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20050205/bob10 .asp

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/02/15/60II/mai n674293.shtml

Nuclear regulatory Commission has slipped from a B+ in 2004 to D- in 2005. Is it being managed by Homer?

Naw. Couldn't happen!

The internal AT&T documents and portions of the supporting declarations have been submitted to the Court under a tentative seal, a procedure that allows AT&T five court days to explain to the Court why the information should be kept from the public.

Yes, there is. The telcos have stated repeatedly that their agenda is to collect an extra toll for simply providing the same service they are already selling to their end-user customers.

All they want, right now, is a business model that allows them to get revenues from both content providers and consumers.

In other words, they want to double-dip and charge twice for providing the same service.

Right now, they have to claw back pretty much all revenues from consumers.

Businesses need to get their revenue from their customers? What a shockingly outre concept!

It's not that I object to the principle that, if the user pays for a service of quality X, they should get X across the board

Well, then your argument isn't with me; it's with the AT&T, Verizon, etc executives who do object to the notion that they are obligated to provide X even though they've only been paid for it once, not twice.

Agreed on the spend,spend,spend part. However:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/06/09/AR2005060902283_pf.html

Personally, I like the pay-for-play model so I donate to both NPR and PBS every year. Programming like Cartalk for me and Arthur/Cyberchase for my kid are well worth the dollars. If Congress succeeds in shutting down funding then I'll double the donation and hope that there are enough other people in my financial situation to do the same.

Unfortunately for surrounding major cities, crime is up.

I think that while it is a nice period for the working New Orleans, there is no guarantee once the city is back on track that it will stay free from freeloaders. Part of this is the bigger issue of people living on welfare that could work, but that's another discussion entirely. The wifi will be good to have for the working residents, but how long until the speeds drop, the networks deteriorate, and maintinence is not handled correctly?

I live in an area of New Orleans that didn't flood and have no real use for the city's free wifi.

Acting like a spoiled brat, BellSouth withdrew their offer to donate a building to the city after the free wifi plan was announced.

Washington Post article - registration probably needed...

Freepress version.

GM is certainly cutting back amid collapsing SUV sales due largely to increased gas prices. While I'm in favor of an energy tax that reflects the energy source's impact on the environment (driving us to cleaner, efficient sources), gas taxes are simply not popular and unlikely to stick around. Ask California. If we can't increase gas taxes, what's the point of an energy tax? Our best hope today really is that the gov't gets out of the way and stops propping up artificially low energy prices either through subsidies or foreign policy.

Maybe they should think about securing their own servers so that when the counter-hack-attack comes back they won't be owned. Oh I forgot, they are probably already owned. What a joke!

Washington Post: Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/04/01/AR2006040100004.html?sub=AR

Ok, where do I go to buy a majority share in a Chinese company?

Oh wait, I can't.

...and before someone tries to rebut this with the example of the Unocal bid that was shot down, allow me to point out that in China, foreign ownership or controlling interest must abide by a strict set of constraints. Furthermore, foreigners may only invest in a special category of shares. These restrictions hardly comprise a free market.

By comparison, in the United States foreign ownership restrictions are generally only found in transportation, telecommunications, energy, healthcare, and defense industries; outside of those industries it is pretty much completely open. Before we all sing the praises of the U.S. business environment's openness however, allow me to explain why many other nations operate more closed business environments.

The open environment allows companies like Espire Infolabs headquartered in another nation for example, to establish a corporate presence in the U.S. (see their old contact pages showing their now-defunct branches in the U.S.). These can be nothing more than branches that funnel funds back to headquarters. They can also close up, declare bankruptcy, and break contracts, with no recourse to pursue them for making you whole back at the headquarters in the home nation unless you start talking seven to eight figures at stake. Completely legal. I know all this because I'm one of the creditors in their bankruptcy case. Expensive mistakes like these are the cost of doing business in the U.S.

However, nations like China are concerned about these types of outcomes that they consider predatory if they open up their business environment like the U.S. has opened up. If their politicians believe their business culture is not as sophisticated and prone to predation, then they will put in restrictions like we see today. In a more closed environment where only native citizens are allowed to retain controlling interest for example, outcomes like I described generally depend upon the creditors' willingness to get nasty in the court system with those citizens. It is not all doom and gloom if a nation opens up, however. For example, information and communications technology lets me quickly and easily verify that Espire Infolabs doesn't open another presence in the U.S. based upon that brand. If they use that brand in the U.S. again, I'll go after them for the funds they owe, plus interest, plus attorney and court fees. They can open up under a different name and throw away the enormous marketing and sales investment they have made into that brand, of course; I check for that less frequently because I can't automate that. On the balance, even after getting reamed because the environment allows such dynamics, I believe the U.S. is a stronger nation for it. Wasn't a fatal incident for my business, and I'm still around, at least.

The situation will only get better in the future, I believe. Eventually trusted reputation systems will get established, and not just the reputation of a company but of the management individuals at the helm can be tracked. Credit scoring is simply a primitive reputation system, and the demand exists to extend its reach. And the calculus of business etiquette will start to eventually change in favor of better practices.

I think more devices like this and others are coming out of the woodwork because psychiatric organizations, big pharma and government facilitators have lost credibility. Pharmaceutical "treatments" for psychological problems have never worked as advertised, and the cat is well out-of-the-bag. The new trend is now "devices".

Even the brain imaging techniques hyped over the last years are being called into question ( "Can Brian Scans See Depression" from the New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/health/psycholog y/18imag.html?ex=1143867600&en=9d110b78060d7e34&ei =5070 )

Now in the last few months we have had news about "vagus nerve stimulators" to shock people suffering depression (Washington Post)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/20/AR2006032001192.html

Then there was also the new GED device(Graduated Electronic Decelerator) which is a new FDA approved device used for "aversion therapy" used to shock retarded people and individuals who can't "control" aggressive or self injurious behaviors (New York Newsday) http://www.newsday.com/news/local/longisland/ny-li shok194670358mar21,0,7313668.story?coll=ny-linews- headlines

I think as the pharmaceutical modality continues to get exposed for the sham it is, there will be more "devices" coming down the pike. I expect they will be described as useful for some "extreme" condition such as retardation, autism etc. but then they will be shown "to have promise" for an expanding group of victims. Most "news" about psychology these days is just marketing.

The "mental health" field is a mess and many of its administrators are not to be trusted.

Keep in mind all this is in addition to what in the US we call The New Freedom Initiative" that allows for programs like Teen Screen; a so-called suicide prevention program concocted at Columbia University. To get all their federal funding schools will have to screen kids (even preteens despite the name)for suicidal tendencies via a short list of questions. Being depressed for more than 2 weeks is one sign and one of the signs of depression is not liking school (if you can imagine that).

Of course the drug companies lobbied for this, and the corrupt and psycho-politically motivated psychiatric associations are in full support. Sadly the Bush administration is also behind this and its based on a program from Texas. Of course there is little in the media about all this.

The bats are trully in the belfry and it is the inmates running the asylum and I feel bad for kids who have to grow up under this sort of crap.

"...The U.S. could fear concerns that as China possesses U.S. debt, that could give China the ability to influence the U.S. financial situation."

So not only is the US being buried in debt, it's becoming more reliant on money on a potential strategic competitor. The problems of having Lenovo put in stuff to spy on the innards of the US govt is nothing compared to what could happen if they really wanted to screw us over.

it is? it seems like mostly what the 'intelligence' community does in the united states these days is spy on unarmed, constitutionally-protected demonstrators. like these cases, for instance:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11751418/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2006/03/14/AR2006031401520_pf.html
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/media/paper410/new s/2006/03/24/TopStories/Students.Fbi.Lecture.Displ ays.Watch.List-1716066.shtml?norewrite200603281210 &sourcedomain=www.dailytexanonline.com
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/artic le_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001995631
http://www.upi.com/SecurityTerrorism/view.php?Stor yID=20060214-053955-9494r
http://www.tbo.com/news/metro/MGBTP976FJE.html

Yes.
Here's one Syrian who has managed to not have his head chopped off, despite being in the tiny minority of Syrians who say they do not believe in God.

Here are some numbers on atheism in the Middle East:

According to a 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC, 15% of those in Israel do not believe in God. According to Yuchtman-Ya'ar (2003), 54% of Israelis identify themselves as "secular." According to Dashefsky et al (2003), 41% of Israelis identify themselves as "not religious." According to Kedem (1995), 31% of Israelis do not believe in God, with an additional 6% choosing "don't know," for a total of 37% being atheist or agnostic.
A 2004 survey commissioned by the BBC found that less than 3% of those in Lebanon do not believe in God.
  According to Moaddel and Azadarmaki (2003), less than 5% of those in Jordan and Egypt do not believe in God. According to Inglehart et al (2004), less than 1% of those in Jordan and Egypt do not believe in God.
According to Barret et al (2001) less than 1% of those in Syria, Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen are secular. According to Johnstone (1993), less than 2% of Jordan, Lebanon, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen, and Kuwait is nonreligious. According to Johnstone (1993), less than 1% of those in Iraq are nonreligious.

So, my point here is that while atheism is less popular in the Middle East, it does exist, even in places like Syria.

Last time I was in Syria, which was Easter of 1995, I did not feel threatened at all because of my lack of religion. People there were a lot like the masses anywhere I've been--- they have homes, they work, they raise kids, they complain about the economy, they gossip. Granted, Syria was probably the creepiest place I had (and have) ever visited, with Assad peering down at me from every corner, and the secret police generally being a nuisance. But that's not anything to do with religion--- that's just a good old fashioned dictatorship.

But what struck me the most about Syria was when the news broke about the Oklahoma City bombing. The initial suspects were of course said to be Islamic militants. At first I panicked, thinking I was somehow behind enemy lines or something. But wherever I would go, groups of men would approach me apologizing for the Muslims who bombed Oklahoma, asking me to see beyond the acts of a few madmen and to consider all the good people of Islam.

I left the country the next day, so I never got to see their faces when they found out the real news.

Scientists in Germany said yesterday that they had retrieved easily obtained cells from the testes of male mice and transformed them into what appear to be embryonic stem cells, the versatile and medically promising biological building blocks that can morph into all kinds of living tissues...And the cells passed every gold-standard test used today to prove their equivalence to embryonic stem cells...German scientists have great incentive to find alternatives to human embryonic stem cells, because government restrictions on human embryo cell research in Germany are even more severe than they are in the United States, where federally funded scientists are banned from working on embryonic stem cell colonies created after August 2001.