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Hackers Take Aim at Republicans
An anonymous reader writes "Wired reports-- Online protests targeting GOP websites could turn out to be more than symbolic during this month's Republican National Convention, possibly blocking a critical communications tool for the party... "We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in," said CrimethInc, a member of the so-called Black Hat Hackers Bloc. It's one of several groups planning to distribute software tools to reload Republican sites over and over again."
Republicans = RICH
Rich = BIG POWERFUL SERVERS with LOTS OF BANDWIDTH!
Apologies, but in my opinion massive page reloading to deny service is hardly "hacking". It's not even "cracking". What about reloading a page is innovative, clever, or technical?
"tolerance" and "open-mindedness"
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
Posting links to the GOP websites on /.
Genius.... Targetting Republican websites... someone want to tell these hackers that it's the Republicans that have been pushing mandatory sentencing guidelines in federal, pound-me-in-the-ass prison.
One group's voices are being silenced because another group disagrees with them. Now that's respect for freedom of speech!
sig: sauer
I'd better hear the same hue and cry in here as if a group of right-wing extremists were gleefully planning to shut down the DNC, or Nader, or any other such group.
That's just plain wrong. If you don't like someone, then debate them - don't try to shut them up.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
This is quite possibly the most rediculous way of expressing your disagreement with someone, ever.
Preventing them from saying what they are allowed to say by blasting them off the internet, rather than engaging in proper debate?
*slaps forehead*
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
....I believe they have a right to speak. I believe that we should listen to everyone's ideas. I believe blocking them will only serve to infuriate people which will only help them in November.
No ifs, ands or buts. Denying others their free speech rights via DDOS - these guys are making all of us and our anti DRM, "info wants to be free", OSS support look like fools. I hope the FBI throws every one of them in jail.
BC
... Personally, while I'm going to probably be voting the same way as these hackers come election day, I don't think this is at all the right way to go about things. If you disagree with someone or some groups actions/beliefs etc, the correct way to beat them is through logic, presenting better arguments, getting a higher listing on google... what these people are doing is much closer to censorship. "We disagree with these people so we aren't going to let them speak" It's also a mistake to believe that every person that's going there is going to be convinced. I know that I have in the past gone to a political candidates website and after reading their beliefs found that I don't match up as closely to them as I previously thought... To me this is just a bunch of script kiddies trying to get attention, and going at something with as little thought as they're used to giving to their actions.
WANNAWIKI Wannawiki WannaWiki WANNAWIKI!
Honestly, though...not to troll, but what are we accomplishing here? As Democrats, or Bush-opponents or whatever, what do they expect to gain? It just seems desperate to need to gag a website to self-serve your own agenda. Why not post a different site with information on why NOT to vote Republican if thats what you believe? Too easy and civil I guess?
Freedom of speech is a Republican ideal? Because that's what these skript kiddies seem to be against here. Just because you don't agree with someone's viewpoint doesn't give you the right to impede their ability to present it.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
Just a second... How is "reloading a page" illegal?
Unless they would intend to break into their servers, this doesn't seem illegal...
Unethical, yes, but not illegal... Is it?
I see massive spin by the Bush camp. Just like there is the conspiracy theorist in me who thinks the Bush camp is hoping for a terrorist event (or the capture of Bin Landen the week before the election)(Which makes you think.. does the Bush camp already have Bin Laden, and they are just holding him quietly until it's closer to the election?) Anywho.. .The terrorist event would (in their eyes) unite the nation behind the leader again. This makes me worried. Put that into prespective with this website DDOSing and then you have think that they will use this as an example of people they are fighting and how they are trying to hinder free speech, and the great nations form of polictal will. They will turn it as a favaorable thing for themselves... and any thing that helps Bush makes me sick :(
Seconded. If one believes that Party X is wrong, wouldn't one wish for as many as possible to be able to view Party X's site and see the wrongness for themselves? This action just reflects discredit on the attackers, who come off as being people who want to hide their *own* wrongness.
Please remember, being anti-Bush does not make one a Democrat, and let's not let the actions of a few unsavory individuals tarnish the reputation of everyone who wants Bush out of office.
This is just like when the media focused on the SCO/spam worms and claimed that linux evangelists were out to destroy the company.
You're right.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'll be over here with my eyepatch, petting my Persian cat and building my GOP approved super death beam to hold all of the world governments hostage to further the shadow government which really pulls all the strings.
Then I will tell John Kerry all my secret plans right before I chop him in half with a laser.
Mwhahahaaha
That statement, right there, is why the two groups can't get along. To Conservatives, "liberal and fair" is an oxymoron, but to Liberals, it makes perfect sense. It's like arguing about whether the GPL or BSD license is "more free". Stating one position as unarguable fact only marks you as a partisan, and not insightful.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Meanwhile, these "hacktivist" morons manage to be complete failures on both political and technical counts. Remember a few years ago when they tried to DDOS the World Bank and an admin there bounced their packets and flooded them off, instead? How much of a loser do you need to be to get 0wn3d by the World Bank?
And DOSing the Republican website affects the convention how? I suppose doing anything more sophisticated than a page reloading script is beyond them...
This is going to be widely reported if this "acutally" happens and it is just going to be a detrament to the republican opponents. Because this does look like political terrorism, and who will they associate with this. I will tell you who the Democratic Party, and the DNC and Kerry will come out looking like terrorist that can't actually win on the issues. Instead they have to resort to gorrilla war-fare inorder to win, just like many of the dictatorships around the world. (That last part was just a statement to prove a point I don't actually think these people are associated with Kerry or the DNC, but it is going to be very bad for Kerry in the election if this actually does happen.)
Wouldn't eliminating the Republican's "free speech" on the web via DDOS attacks basically amount to cyber-terrorism?
Of course, anything to have a story with the word terrorism in it.
From the article: But some activists are condemning the planned attacks, saying they violate the principles of free speech that protesters rely on for their demonstrations.
The free speech zones might be good enough for those people but I assume the hackers want Bush to be in the front seat when he sees what they hate about him.
I disagree with the tactics myself as they are nothing more than an annoyance and fodder for Bush's team to say "look! we have terrorists right here trying to end your freedoms!"
Sounds like a bunch of '1337 haX0rs to me. Or a bunch of 14 year olds in someone's attic. Seriously, would a real hacker a) reveal his plans, or b) draw attention to himself using 5kr1pt k1dd13s to DDOS a Republican website? The real hackers are the ones who, right now, are stealing your credit card number, and turning poorly maintained servers into warez servers.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
"They think we're just a bunch of anarchistic, anti free speech, long hair freaks, who have nothing good to say. They think that we can't win on the merits of our own platform. They think that all we're interested in is making a scene, rather than coming up with constructive, workable ideas.
Let's prove it to 'em!"
The question is just, whether that will be in a couple of months, or in 4 years and a couple of months...
While I hope his re-election campaign will fail (badly), I am not convinced it will.
All the guy needs to do is to occasionally raise (and then silently drop) terror alert levels again to create enough fear in the population to go for his kind of hard-liner politics...
LOL!!!
wow, could you be any more indoctrinated or what?
Yeah, those evil republicans! I know, lets just stop taking half measures and just commit random acts of violence against them... yeah, i mean, they aren't even human right? So it won't matter... yeah, next republican you see, bash her/him over the head with a brick. They have it coming to them, subhumans that they are.
You are a liberal, its your duty! To stand up against the inhuman unfairness of a republican.
This little "stunt" is about as pathetic as anything I've ever heard of... and is just a glowing indication of the inability of the left to engage in the political process in any meaningful way.
And yes, you with the mod points, sucked into the slashbot group-think, I fully expect you to mod this down as troll, flamebait... or wait... use the ULTIMATE cop-out... overrated!
sad robot making broken music
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If memory serves, this was the asshat who got escorted out of a panel he was giving at Defcon once his talk started to descend into advocating violent action against the RNC.
Where does the school board find them and why do they keep sending them to ME?
Once again the 'noble' hacker is committing crime - my hero!!!
Intentions aside, people like these need to be removed from society, for they are no better than the ill they wish to remove.
If you want to change a wrong, campaign (marketing) for the change, and VOTE!! Don't commit crimes and then say it was all in the name of justice.
This is like the 'peace' protestors that assault the police or destroy other's property, or the abortion activist murdering a doctor or pro-choicer.
It's time to start skimming the gene pool...
I've seen the increasing drumbeat of anti-GOP protestors everywhere, clearly building towards a childish orgy of vandalism and street violence. It is monumentally naive.
The GOP occupation of NYC is not just designed to exploit 9/11. It is a careful and deliberate attempt to provoke protest. Preferably large, frightening, unruly protest. The more masturbatory rage they can stir up in the city, the louder they'll be laughing on their way back to the white house.
This election will be won with moderates and swing voters. Those are people like your parents. They will not identify with "CrimethInc" and "scruffy, unattractive" street protestors. They will see this event covered from inside the convention looking out.
Every act of violence, provocation, and unruly or disorderly behavior will scare those moderates right into the GOP's arms. Whether it be showing up on 6th Ave. with a mask and a shield, or DDOS'ing a GOP website, this kind of bad conduct is exactly what Republican strategists urgently want. And it will hand them the election on a silver platter.
Don't be a goddamn lemming. Save your "violence" for the voting booth!
Want to Know How to Cheat the GPL? Read On!
Think GOP's going to subscribe to some Click for Cash program...
"linux" is a very common word and was not included in your search.
Arent' these Reloading apps similar to DOS apps? Written with the purpose of bringing websites down??
Aren't using DOS apps to bring a webserver down illegal?
This is the most ridiculous thing I've heard. If someone wants to impact the upcoming election, they should go door to door convincing people locally to vote for Kerry (or Nader), contribute to campaigns or volunteer to actually work with other human beings in a campaign office. Slamming a web site (which is just plain silly anyway, and not "hacking") amounts to childs play that wouldn't impact anything in the scheme of things, but is more akin to childish vandalism.
And not all "hackers" are anti-Bush btw.
In which reality were weapons of mass destrcution found? The Fox News dimension? Even Bush has given up on this and started talking invading Iraq because Saddam Hussein might have the capability to build WMD.
Reloading a page isn't illegal.
Bogging a site down due to page loads isn't illegal. If it were, we wouldn't be having this discussion because Slashdot wouldn't exist...
Now, if they try to crack into the servers and, for example, download the donor databases and start using those credit card numbers to purchase insanely large amounts of Kraft marshmallows to throw at Bush on the campaign trail, then that would be illegal (except for the part about purchasing marshmallows... if they used their own money, that is).
Conspiracy to commit distributed Denial of Service attacks probably falls under something illegal. Doesn't matter whether reloading the page itself is illegal.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
The fact that it's illegal, immature, and not at all conducive to proper political discussion is why people don't understand why anyone would think this is a good idea. Of course, the very fact that you used the word "regime" indicates to me that you are probably too far divorced from fairness and thinking for yourself to understand this.
Here's an anecdote: this is roughly akin to nailing two-by-fours across every door and window in my house so that you can prevent me from coming out and using my freedom of speech because you don't like the views I espouse. If you disagree with what I say, the appropriate response is to write, speak, and make your views known. It is not to simply silence the opposition by preventing them from being heard.
The US doesn't have a big problem with pro-neo-Nazi sentiment in our population. Why? It's not because we ban them from speaking or promoting their views, like in Germany. It's because every time they do speak, they get so thoroughly discredited by the opposition that everyone simply ignores them.
I would urge all people who do not agree with the White House to _write_ them, whether it's by email or snail mail. Call them, even! But I would urge everyone, both in America and elsewhere, to NOT participate in a childish act like DDOS'ing the RNC's website. The politics in this country are awful enough without resorting to a new low.
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
I think you have Republicans confused with neocon/theocons. Real Republicans are all about individual rights. Look it up. Some of us Republicans are a bit annoyed with the hijacking of the party, though I am not about to become a Democrat over it.
Isn't it funny, not ha-ha, how some of those who wrap themselves in the First Amendment, and who claim to be the most open minded and tolerant, are the ones who would attack a group whose political affiliation is different?
Tolerance n. The capacity for or the practice of recognizing and respecting the beliefs or practices of others.
Tolerance, Politically Correct n. The capacity to slander, libel, ridicule, belittle, attack, or otherwise marginalize anyone who adheres to moral, religious, or political views which are not Politically Correct. See also: hypocrisy
will take this opportunity to show that this is a dastardly plot by Dick Chaney and Haliburton to try and discredit the free-speech loving Democrats.
Where 100million tinfoil hat script kiddies can see it and get ready for the big day.
The story IS obviously tech oriented (much more so than F 9/11), but is this the necesarily moral thing to do? I know Taco dislikes bush, but this is enabeling script kiddies to do damage to an electoral canidate in an ilegal way.
Besides all you would have to do to shut down the GOP website would be to link it from the front page with the phrase "Microsoft buys up SCO". What nerds survive the initial heart attack will then
I would rather be ashes than dust!
Marching in Washington is absolutely not a comparison that can be made. The equivalent on the Internet would be a web site that you create that promotes your views. The idea is not to interfere with the message of those who don't agree with everything you say, that is prohibiting free speech.
If there is a march in your town supporting let's say new roads, and you didn't agree with that march, would you prevent the other group from marching? NO! You would organize your OWN march. Or if these folks had their way they would prevent the New Roads Fascists from even voicing their opinion!
One, the march was to get the GOVERNMENT's attention. These are not government websites.
Two, the march was NOT ILLEGAL. Denial of service attacks are.
Three, it was their only avenue to get their message out to so many people. On the internet, anyone can set up their own website to get their message out.
No matter whether your're a Democrat or Republican,trying to inturrupt the Democratic Process becuase you don't agree with your opponent is just plain WRONG
1) It shows a lack of faith in the strength of one's point of view, since valid arguments can stand well enough on their own merits.
2) It serves the opponent by allowing them to claim the moral high ground
3) It debases the cause you beleive in by allowing your opponents to show how many zealots exist on "your" side.
4) It hampers/impairs free speech, which is the FOUNDATION OF DEMOCRACY
5) It reduces the ability have a tone of civility in debate as a whole (and don't get me started on who was rude first, that cry-baby crap doesnt show responsible adult behavior - change begins with ME - and you.)
Set a positive exmaple. Denounce this irresponsible behavior. If you know someone who is doing this or supports it, change their mind.
.
uR iGn0ranc3, Their Power
I'm sorry - I happen to be German, and I followed the German news in the run-up to war.
The BND (the German CIA counterpart) stated they don't have evidence supporting this - they didn't have proof of non-existense of the alleged weapons either - but that's beside the point. Based on exactly THOSE issues, Germany did take its anti-war stance. There were (almost) no protests against the Afghan war, since people were convinced that the Taliban were in cahoots with Al Qaeda, but in the Iraq case, I have yet to meet a single compatriot that thought this war was justified...
Hint: Just because the republican Iraq war examination white-wash said "the Germans also said Iraq HAD WMD" doesn't neccessarily make it so.
The Germans happened to say, we ca NOT prove Saddam has NO weapons. But that's about the extend of it.
Germans don't like terror either - and there are people worried Germany might become a target for Al Qaeda terror cells as well. And as such, Germany would certainly support a war against any country openly supporting terrorism (or at least, a country that is proven to be supporting terrorism); but that doesn't mean to blindly follow Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld.
The worst part about something like this is that the neo-left needs to be a group that places evidence and facts before ideology.
Listening to Bush speak and extracting information - he supports pre-emptive war, he doesn't support scientific research on most stemcells, his education and domestic policy are faltering - this type of information is what should drive the left to vote for another candidate. The "he's wrong before I've even heard his views" stance is the *worst* way to go about creating a democracy, in fact, it's the best way to silence one.
Democracy is dependant on everyone getting the facts. Interpretations of the facts are tricky, but creating your own set of facts is downright wrong. Silencing speech, in any way, is the first step towards the ideological mess that the "faith-based" Republican party finds themselves in right now: creating facts to fit beliefs about misguided assumptions.
"If you disagree with someone or some group's actions/beliefs"... first requires that you listen to that group's actions or beliefs. I hope - *hope* - that we can get this message across.
Plus every time some genius comes along and commits a crime in the name of a progressive cause, we have to deal with a dozen media pundits saying, "See? Look what Liberals will do. Will Kerry supporters stop at nothing? Oh, these immoral people."
Then we have to deal with average people joining the Republican party just because it offers a sane choice compared to the nutjob left wingers. Hell, even crazies like Anne Coulter seem sane compared to hacker groups actively working to break the law in the name of democracy.
For years I was afraid to even admit I was a liberal. Not because I was embarrassed to care about progressive goals, but because I had to deal with being associated with misguided wierdos like these. I wish there was a t-shirt..."I'm against Bush but I don't want to kill him or take down his server or rage about how he's a filthy liar. I just want people not to vote for him because he hasn't done a very good job."
Hey freaks: now you're ju
This is one of the sickest and most disgusting things I have read in a while. I am socially liberal, and fiscally conservative. I've voted both Liberterian and Republican in the past, and rarely Democratic. I grew up in an Eastern European country (Romania); my political viewpoint has been heavily influenced by my memories of the past.
I am just disgusted that a group of 12 year old children, self-proclaimed "defenders of freedom", would even think about doing this; are they not receiving any education from their parents these days? This is not only against any moral standards, it's outright against everything this country stands for - that is, if it still stands for anything. So now I can't share my viewpoint anymore because some immature person might not like what I have to say and DOS me? Come to my house and kill me? So much for upholding those great American values of "Democracy".
This story doesn't even merit making the Slashdot front page. I was under the impression that all of us here (even if we disagree with the policy of the current presidency) are smart and intelligent enough not support such actions.
I am disgusted by you CmdrTaco. This "news" is not even worthy of trash. "Hackers"? I "hacked"; and I sure as hell do not remember DOSing people because their viewpoints were not my own. I grew up in a country where that was case; and no, there you wouldn't get DOS'd for sharing a non-acceptable viewpoint. You'd get picked up by the secret police, beaten, totured, and maybe make it back to your family and freedom. No, when I was "hacking", I was educating myself - reading up on as much as I could computer related, I wrote my own shell code, did assembly on 4 processors, wrote C/C++/JAVA/... and a lot of other languages, worked on three emulators, and loved taking things apart, seeing how they worked, learning something new, getting some kind of new information - and all of this before I ever turned 18. Do NOT associate the actions of these immature people with hacking. It's revolting.
Shame on you CmdrTaco.
Marius
Yes, "some people say" as such. What's funny is using the words "fact" and "Fox (News)" in the same sentance without some type of negation.....
While many people have pointed out that hackers may be shooting themselves in the foot and inviting retaliation by attacking the GOP, I see this somewhat differently. The GOP has been attacking us for a long time now. They've been attacking our basic freedoms and rights, they've been attacking other countries on whims, and they've been attacking the very moral fiber of the world. What's wrong with a little civil disobedience to strike back? While I am not in favor of stifling their free speech or actually causing damage, I am wholly in favor of making their lives more difficult, because that's exactly what they've done to me, and all of you, too, whether you want to admit it or not. While this is definitely not the method that our founding fathers held in mind in the formative years of our country, it is in keeping with the same ideals. In the face of tyranny, we must assert our rights, however possible, and make every attempt to bring about justice and liberty, two words that the GOP seems to have forgotten.
This sig has been stolen. Return it to its original user for a reward.
How do you defeat the modern Republican party? Not by shouting them down; if you shout them down, their ideals and agenda remain obscured. Let them talk themselves out of office. Let Cheney make stupid remarks about "sensitivity" so we can juxtapose them with the President's sensible remarks on the same subject. Let the President speak, so everyone can hear that he can't even figure out basic subject/verb agreement in a sentence. Let Ashcroft speak, so folks can see just how scarily totalitarian some of his ideas are. Let Rumsfeld speak, so everyone can hear just how egomaniacal and lacking in honest awareness of his own failings he really is. The best enemy of the US Republican Party is its own leadership ... let them speak.
From the ultra-conservative MSNBC
BBC
That's the episode he's referring to. Surprised that someone who obviously gets their news from the "better" news sources wouldn't have seen this.
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
I suppose this is a concept that is hardly difficult for a thinking person to unearth, but as no one above my threshold has yet commented upon it, I'll take the soapbox.
This sort of hacktivism is nothing more then the digital analogue of a violent protest. While I most certainly do not agree with the platform and politics of the GOP, I believe that it is these hackers that pose a greater danger to my 'free speech.' While the Republicans have paid to host a web site and run a server in order to communicate their vision to the world, this wonderful group of people has decided not to fight back with cogent argumentation and stunning logic, but rather with a wildly underwhelming attempt to flood the server.
This sort of free campaign fodder offered to the Republicans can only harm Kerry's cause (though he is no prize pig himself...). Just wait for the War on Terrorism to go electronic: I can't wait for a digital reprisal of Ari Fleisher's 2001 declaration that "People have to watch what they say and watch what they do."
It's time people began to think. I honestly believe that a logical policy analysis reveals the truth. Left to themselves, people reading campaign literature from either side should be able to discern the better candidate. Even card-carrying GOP members that plan to vote a straight ticket deserve to learn what their party stands for and believes.
Now flip the coin. Suppose it were Republicans DDOS'ing progressive web sites such as Salon.com, Kuro5hin, or (heaven forbid) Slashdot. Shouldn't we all have the right to publish in peace? Attack my logic and my political views if you'd like. I'm not here to argue today, but it seems to me that this is obviously a "bad idea."
Yesterday, a wonderful article was published in Salon regarding planned protests of the GOP convention. Article summary: "If militants violently disrupt the GOP convention, it could be Chicago 1968 redux -- and Christmas in August for the Bush campaign." There is nothing like a free victory in a battle not fought.
We recognize the right to free speech, but I personally believe in the right of anyone to be heard. By my personal moral code, the correct way to respond to a man shouting wildly on the street is not to toss a brick his way, but rather to engage in conversation.
So please, think. It might work.
-Scott
I suppose doing anything more sophisticated than a page reloading script is beyond them...
Just post it on Slashdot, same effect.
What about reloading a page is innovative, clever, or technical?
Well, if it was a typical web page, then I'd say the innovative part is to drive up hits so that the high apparent traffic would enable the site maintainers to charge their sponsors more money.
But in this case, the GOP already has fully-functional mechanisms for getting their sponsors to contribute money; now there are Super Rangers if you round up an extra US$300K.
If you're a less wealthy Republican and can't raise that kind of money you can help out the cause by garnering signatures to help get Ralph Nader on the ballot, particularly in swing states.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Excellent reference to one of the finest moments in Slashdot history *sniff*
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I am hoping that we have as much guts as the Spanish who had the guts to throw out a government that kept lying to them...
You know, America, home of the brave?
It's more petty than anything else.
Why not just go out and stand in front of the RNC's headquarters and block people from entering?
What they should be doing is going out and doing something positive, like getting involed with the political party they feel the most affinity for.
Personally, I think it's just a media ploy by a bunch of lowball egonauts.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Yes, they found a couple of pre-1991 shells that the UN had mistakenly not destroyed. Not the WMD that georgie was talking about. He was talking about Iraq making new WMDs, not this.
Interesting and unfortunate view.
Historically trying to forcibly kill a cultural viewpoint has done nothing of the sort. Take Northern Ireland as an example - whilst the British government were cracking down on the Irish they were queuing to join the IRA. Once the Good Friday agreement had been signed and most of the causes for the problems had been removed then the support began to dry up.
Likewise in the middle east every attempt to control terrorism by blowing up towns, farms and houses (often of people unrelated to the problem) has caused nothing but an escalation of violence. This is why so many people world wide think the approach of the US is doomed to failure and if anything will lead to even more entrenched and violent Islamic radicalism that will last for centuries.
It would be much better to understand and remove the causes for these problems but tackling poverty and lack of education is much more dificult then dropping a few bombs and doesn't give you neo-cons such a stiffy.
Nice troll there, young fellow. Perhaps you should sometimes let reality slightly modify your worldview, won't you? Iraq was the only solidly secular state in the region. That for sure has changed now. Nice work there.
This comment does not exist.
Actually, most hackers are libertarians, which is a sort of odd combination of right-wing economics and left-wing social values; most crackers are anarchists, an odd combination of shall we say skewed economics (sharing some extremely right wing elements with some extremely left wing elements) and extremely left-wing social values. This makes them (us) a rather non-typical political niche.
If you're still going to vote for Bush, then you're supporting all of the neocon/theocons, whether or not you agree with them.
And remember...
...And now he is miscalculating America's response to his continued deceit and his consistent grasp for weapons of mass destruction. That is why the world, through the United Nations Security Council, has spoken with one voice, demanding that Iraq disclose its weapons programs and disarm. So the threat of Saddam Hussein with weapons of mass destruction is real, but it is not new. It has been with us since the end of the Persian Gulf War." - John Kerry, 1/23/03
"We need to disarm Saddam Hussein. He is a brutal, murderous dictator, leading an oppressive regime. We all know the litany of his offenses. He presents a particularly grievous threat because he is so consistently prone to miscalculation.
Other Kerry quotes of interest...
I'm sorry didn't realise one shell containing a small amount of Sarin counted as a weapon of mass destruction.
RTFA - "However, a senior coalition source has told the BBC the round does not signal the discovery of weapons of mass destruction or the escalation of insurgent activity."
much of a loser do you need to be to get 0wn3d by the World Bank
Ask Argentina
Germany KNOWS that Saddam did have WMD at one point, without a doubt. It also knows that Saddam was never fully cooperative with inspectors. The weapons inspectors could not verify that Iraq had complied, and in fact believed they hadn't, in 1998.
Are we to believe that in the interim period, Iraq secretly destroyed all of its remaining weapons, on its own, with no supervision or involvement of outside monitors, all with no proof or records, all the while Saddam Hussein himself thought he was increasing his investment in WMD?
It's mind-numbingly clear that Iraq had WMD. But the war in Iraq wasn't about WMD - it was a political reason chosen in the hopes of rallying UN support, and the support of the people of the US. The war in Iraq was about a multi-faceted effort to begin exerting influence, forcibly when necessary, in the middle east, in the hopes of stopping Panislamic radicalism in a generation or two rather than in a century or two. There are MANY aspects to this strategy: it's not just about bombing people into oblivion; it's about encouraging free government with a free flow of information, and some beginnings of open economies and markets to attempt to give the young people something to do, something to strive for, as well as full, unfettered access to news, information, and education, instead of focusing their energies on hatred of the West and the Infidel as taught by some segments of radical Islam. It's also, in case you haven't noticed, about the economic well-being of not only the US, but by extension, most of the civilized world.
So yes; in effect, this is a "war for oil". But it's not a war for oil so that greedy, fat Americans can drive Chevy Suburbans. It's a war to ensure the continued prosperity of the Western world, and thus the lives and happiness of hundreds of millions of people. What about the people of Iraq, you say? WE WANT TO HELP THEM, TOO. We don't want to indiscriminately kill innocent people, though the loss of innocent life is a tragic side effect of any military action.
People think that the US just wants to arrogantly steamroll people and kill all the brownskins for oil (while installing a Starbucks and McDonalds on every street corner in Baghdad). It's a fuck of a lot more complicated than that. It's also a fuck of a lot more complicated than simplistic "you're either with us or against us"-type rhetoric. Any thinking person, of any political stripe, would realize that.
Two things here:
a) a page reloading script certainly shouldn't all that a hacker is capable of - but since they want people to voluntarily take part in this, they can't resort to illegal things. And page reloading can hardly be deemed illegal.
b) If you DO want to personally criticise someone (and I think "You yourself are an idiot" easily qualifies for that), then at least don't hide behind an "Anonymous Coward" mask.
"I'm against Bush but I don't want to kill him or take down his server or rage about how he's a filthy liar. I just want people not to vote for him because he hasn't done a very good job."
:)) direction, and will re-shape themselves into a better party.
If there were more people like you, I wouldn't be so anti-Democrat. I haven't been very impressed with Bush, but all the "ANYBODY BUT BUSH/NO BLOOD FOR OIL/OMGWTFBUSHSUX0RS" 'liberals' have completely driven me away from that side as well. While I will most likely be voting for a third-party candidate, at this point I'd rather see Bush win than Kerry, mainly because the Democrat side seems so horrible now. Then again, if Bush loses, the Republicans may realize that they're been moving in the wrong (IMO, of course
Bah. As the Aliens vs Predator trailer says: Whoever wins, we lose.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Libertarians, at least the mainstream ones that live on lp.org, are worried about excesses of power and inefficiency in government, and want to pare down the powers of government as much as possible. They also believe in what they call an "unfettered free market" and their opponents call "no checks on the excesses of large corporations."
Hacker types tend toward Libertarianism in the sense that they want the government to have less power ("What do you care if I smoke weed in my own house? Fuck off!"), but they also want large corporations to have less power. Rather than portraying the conflict as government-against-private and coming down on the side of private (people and corporations), the hacker types see it as big-guys-vs.-little-guys, and support the little guys. It doesn't matter WHO the big guy with all the power is--they oppose it.
The Democrats may be just as big-government as the Republicans, but they support less power for big corporations.
Specifically, the big-governmental roles that hacker types object to are generally moral and ethical rather than financial. They oppose government interference in what they consider to be private matters more than they oppose higher taxes.[1]
Conventional wisdom says that the Republicans want more of this sort of control than Democrats: they are the party that wants to ban abortions, write the heterosexuality of marriage into the constitution, is more vehement in attacking drug use, and so on.
So, the GOP has lost with the hackers on two counts: favor to large corporations, and moralistic interference in private life. The Dems still want a large role for government, but their idea of large government isn't as oppressive to hacker types.
[1] The Republicans generally portray themselves as the party that will tax Americans less; whether this is true or not is beyond the scope of this post.
and the GOP (at least what the modern GOP has become... theocrats, neocons and corporate apologists) but this sort of disruption is just wrong on so many levels. Now its true that most of what Bush has to say is nothing more than lies, fear-mongering and propaganda... OK EVERYTHING he says falls into one of those categories, but even a fraud like like Bush has a right to say it. We should counter his lies, fear-mongering and propaganda with web sites of our own telling the "other" side of the story, not acting like the GOP thugs who intimidate anyone who critizes their Great Leader.
If we think we are better than this bunch of crooks & liars we ought to behave as if we are better then them, as true (small d) democrats, not just another set of absolutest goons.
ON a more practicle side this sort of thing (and any disruption of the RNC in NYC) is in danger of being counter productive. There are precious few undecided voters this election, and although it appears that Kerry is doing better than Bush amongst those voters, it won't take much to turn them off.
So I urge everyone who understands just how important it is to get rid of Bush and the neocon crazies in his administration not to try to disrupt the GOP's web sites or convention, but to channel the energy into a positive message.
Who would have thought that the a couple of extreme leftist would do such a thing? I hope someone from the democratic party will come out and say that they do not condone this. This whole election year has really made me sick. Both sides have taken tons of cheap shots and has only served to divide the country more. I don't think there is anyway way to undivide the country and anyone that says they can have quite the lofty goal because I think it will be impossible. Look at Bush.. after 9/11 his approval rating was huge and we had a very united country. Now that election has come around the left decided that they needed to divide the country with as much propaganda and lies as possible. I'm sorry I have many friends serving in Iraq and it is really sad how much the media portrays as what we are doing there as evil. One of my friends was given a doll by a small Iraqi girl as a thank you for what he was doing. It was all she had and he tried to give it back be she refused.
I don't care if we do not find WMD's. Sadaam had plenty of time to destroy/hide them. We know he had them in the past and that he would use them. He needed to go (as well as many other dictators in this world too that i'm ashamed we havn't dealt with yet).
This moderate is voting right this year. I'm not going to betray people that we said we would free.
(don't pull the well Bush betrayed the US B.S. I've heard it a thousand times and I've seen Mr. Moore's 'movie' "which made me even more upset with the left")
The more grotesque, destructive and hate-filled RNC protests turn out to be, the more votes that get swung to Bush. We'll see how it plays out.
I think the actions of the radical Left groups are actually going to turn off a lot of support for Senator Kerry if the Democratic National Committee doesn't distance themselves from them. Does anyone remember the riots in Chicago during the 1968 Democratic National Convention and the protest that turned very ugly during the 1999 World Trade Organization conference in Seattle? These ugly scenes played right into the hands of the people who want law and order, and probably contributed a bit to the Presidential wins of Richard Nixon in 1968 and President Bush in 2000.
These "hacktivists" are going to be grouped among the anarchists, which will defeat their aims.
To all of you DOSers out there -- in case it's not already obvious... Denial of Service attacks earn you no respect, it demonstrates no skills. It's like child molestation: it's so easy, anyone could do it. But why would you want to?
Kind of interest how it is the Democrats are lacking morals and are doing this. Did Rebulicans do the same a little while ago? Not to my knowledge. It seems like something a 12 year old kid would do, but they can't even vote. Hmmm....
Pardon my ignorance (I'm Canadian, you see) but I thought the entire 'right to bear arms' and 'no standing army' provisions of the constitution were designed to allow the citizenry to overthrow the government, if they so chose? Didn't Jefferson himself actually think that the government SHOULD be overthrown every few years, just to keep it honest or something?
I'd just like to point out that Kerry has made it clear that the war in Iraq was the right thing to do, if we had had the support of the world to do it. We did not. I think people don't remember that the US is a member of the world, and no longer a Superpower. We need to work with the rest of the world to solve our problems and theirs, not against the world.
The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness.
Sometimes, I think people are so bent on the whole "one nation, under god" in the Pledge of Alliegance that they forget that the Pledge ends "with liberty and justice for all"
--You will rephrase your request for me to go to hell. Goto statements are not acceptable programming constructs
1. is a diabolical, cunning Fascist.
2. is a drooling, incompetent idiot.
NOTE: It's perfectly OK to use BOTH of these arguments in reference to the same person - even in the same debate. Trust me, no one will ever notice the contradiction!
HINT: Free speech means everyone gets to express their ideas, not just you.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Fringe elements from either side of the political spectrum often resort to unethical and even illegal tactics to try to give their side more of an advantage. Consider the veteran's group that recently ran those TV ads flat-out accuse Kerry of lying about his service in Nam. While they GOP had nothing to do with this group neither the GOP nor th e White House denounced their slanderous attacks on the presidential challenger. John McCain did, but that's no suprise (last honest republican left in the Senate whos head is either in a hole or up a butt). I certainly wouldnt endorse wholesale hacking of republican sites. It's unethical, illegal, and shouldnt be done, but if it happens i'll certainly not lose sleep over it or have a whole lot of pitty for those running the sites. What's good for the goose...
How the actions of such "activists" differ from the efforts of government, RIAA, MPAA, etc. to restrict our access to information and the truth is left as an exercise for the reader.
Because everyone on slashdot thinks and believes the exact same things, right?
Mind you, I'm against it personally, but I do not believe when I became a slashdot reader I was copy and pasted from the main slashdot template to fit in. I think you are a hypocrite for pushing down free speech of others(to say they support it, etc..)
the Republicans have all the money in the universe (or soon will) so they'll just buy more servers and ride it out, no?
Why does this myth perpetuate so much that the Republicans are the fat cats? Consider:
o The Democratic bankroller, George Soros, is a multi-billionaire. He's the funder behind MoveOn.org and one of the world's wealthiest persons.
o Warren Buffet, multi-billionaire and depending on the list, the second richest man in the US (behind Bill Gates, who donates to both parties) is exclusively pro-Democrat.
o Most of Hollywood's rich are Democrats and despise Republicans.
o Most of the Fortune 500 CEOs are either pro-Democrat or contribute to both parties.
o Enron's CEO and CFO were very close friends to Kerry's wife, and the CEO was on one of her boards.
o Global Crossing did sweetheart deals (invest a couple hundred grand, get $16 million back, while the common folk get screwed) for the DNC head.
o When research has been done on who donates to the parties, the Republican party's donations consisted of mostly numerous small donations by the non-wealthy with some large fat cat donations, while the Democrat donations were the other way (mostly rich folks with large donations). Here's a clue to help you validate this fact: look at what geographic regions vote Republican (aka fly over country, or the "Red states" which the elitists aka Democrats point out are rural schmucks not worth their time). Ever wonder why elitists are almost always Democrats too? Ever wonder why the media elitists hate humble people (i.e. George Bush, Ronald Reagan) and make fun of them as idiots because they don't understand complexities (that's code for relativism)?
Seriously, you've gotta get off the plantation and quit buying into the master's propeganda. Yes, both parties listen to money, but quit buying this rich fat cat propeganda that the Democrats are for small folk, pro minorities (look at which party fought for slavery and even ran a candidate against President Lincoln that promised to end the civil war and let the south keep the slaves).
Please... read your history. Check the facts yourself. The only thing sadder than living life blindly as a house negro is a house negro who conducts terroristic acts against his liberator, as these DoS efforts represent.
They won't need to. You should have been in Philadelphia in 2000. The PD there was the best anyone could have asked for. Like many protests, it started out peaceful and ended up violent or stupid. The fact of the matter is republican or democrat doesn't matter much in a mob; getting that many agitated people who tend to be younger and probably easily impressionable and it's a magnet for trouble.
It is, perhaps, a stereotype that most protests are filled with people between the ages of 18 to 25, but from what I've seen it's largely true, with older people leading them. It makes sense though, that's the group of people who have the time to leave their lives for a couple weeks, go accross the country, and protest. They are also the ones willing to live in the streets for a bit and have the energy to keep up that kind of passion. They are also the least likely to actually vote, and the most likely to make an uninformed decision without listening to the rationale on both sides.
Whether or not you agree with me, it's these perceptions developed largely by actually being forced to live in an area where protests were supposed to be "sticking up for me" that automatically makes me label protestors as idiots, no matter what they are out protesting. Republican, Democrat, Antiabortion, prochoice, environmentalist, antiwar, -- all of it is better served by discussion, not screaming. There are few instances I can think of where a protest would do more good than a well written letter.
Never confuse volume with power.
Your analogy about the gun thing is short-sighted. It would work if owning a gun was illegal. You see, Saddam wasn't going to use those weapons (even if he had them). The US went at him because he HAD those weapons, which the US sold him. So, you see, the US attacked him for something the US specifically did, not because the US sold him something he later mis-used. Remember the story for going to Iraq (after the "he's gonna kill us in the next 10 seconds" excuse) was his ownership of WMDs.
Your ideas about weapons inspectors in '98 is half-baked, relying on heresay as to what Saddam was thinking, and his probable actions. You don't go to war for that. You go to war when you're in imminent danger, or someone you care about is in imminent danger.
You say the reason the Europeans are against the war is because of money, yet you never address the point that it might not be the case at all. You assume something, and run it into the ground, saying "look at this evidence! isn't it compelling!".
You mention breaking UN security resolutions. You know the best way to not break those? Be able to veto them. The US has vetoed more resolutions than Iraq has ever broken. Resolutions like "abide by international law" etc. Blaming Iraq for not having the veto the US has is ridiculous. It's a vapid argument.
Then, you say it's not about WMD. Isn't that what Bush told us it was about? Which is it - Bush was lying and it's about Islamic fundamentalism, or Bush was telling the truth and it IS about WMDs that aren't there. Well?
Panislamic radicalism. That's a great one. How about we just give the US administration a catchy name like that and throw the exact same argument back at you?
So Iraq does have ties to Al Qaida? Wow. Where did you get that little gem from? Can you cite some sources for us? Let me spare you the time - you can't. That is a claim the Bush administration has been trying to spread around for months. It's been debunked by every media outlet there is (excluding Fox, of course). If you still believe that, you obviously have no idea what's going on in the world.
Why did the US pick Iraq? It was the least dangerous country in the middle east. So safe, in fact, that even Kuwait wasn't scared by it. I mean, if the US wanted to really take a stance against "panislamic radicalism", they would have gone for a hotbed of radicals, not a country ruled by a moderate, whisky-drinking Arab with a not-exclusively-muslim government. It just doesn't make sense. That's the whole point about all of this - if you actually think about it, using your own brain, using your own sources of information, you can quickly see that the Bush administration has changed their story SO MANY TIMES they clearly have something to hide. If they came out straight away and said about panislamic radicalism, then there would be more credibility to their stance. As it is, they didn't, and now look like they're pulling excuses out of their asses.
You seem to think that Islamic countries have an in-built hatred for the US. That's not true. Osama Bin Laden is pissed off with the states for something the states did to him and his country. If the US stopped running around pissing off every country it could find, there wouldn't be anyone parking airliners in your sky scrapers. By your logic, there would have been bombs all over Canada and every conceivable part of Europe by now. As you can see, there haven't been. Doesn't that show you that it isn't "Islam vs. The West", but "Pissed off people vs. America"
Your excuses for not going after other countries is stupid. Iraq was a "pre-emptive war" (which it
How does this get a 4?
It's mind-numbingly clear that Iraq had WMD
To who?
Where are they?
How come only half the US believe this and most of the rest of the world don't?
It's more clear as time goes on that the premise for the war was shaky at best, due to either incompetent leadership or incompetent intelligence agencies. Saddam HAD weapons of mass destruction but that was a long time ago. As we drew up to war it seemed that he might have some still, but there was certainly no definite evidence. Now it appears there really were non, as we can't find any.
I remember advocating two simultaneous reactions to 9/11:
It's not "girly" or "unpatriotic" to think about how one's actions affect others.
W.R.T. right vs left: It would be great if people thought about efficiency and effectiveness and responsibility once in a while instead of constantly going on about rights all the damn time. I am tired of laziness, intellectual and otherwise, substituting for getting together to get the job done (whatever the job is at any given time).
Genuine thinking is difficult and takes discipline. But worst of all, taking the time to actually consider one's approach is being labeled by both sides as unpatriotic/wrong/girly/wonkish/etc. I guess it's not exciting enough.
I guess you're not familiar with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Imperial Japan, then...
Likewise in the middle east every attempt to control terrorism by blowing up towns, farms and houses (often of people unrelated to the problem) has caused nothing but an escalation of violence.
Actually, from what I've seen in Isreal, blowing up Hamas and Islamic Jihad leadership seems to be pretty effective at shrinking (though, no eliminating) the violence. You're right if your point is that we can't just blow up the terrorists and hope they go away. That's why we didn't just carpet bomb Iraq and most of the middle east. Instead, we're trying to eliminate terrorists where we can AS WELL as set up a free state in the middle of the region to act as a beacon to bring liberty and peace to the rest of the region.
Is this going to work overnight? Hell no! It took half a decade (and in some cases longer) to pacify post-WWII Germany and Japan, and even longer than that for them to become viable world powers. Likewise, it will take us just as long if not longer to achieve the same in Iraq. However, assuming we don't cut and run, it will be achieved.
Read the articles of 1946 in magazines such as Time... They sound eerily familiar with headlines such as "America Won the War; May Lose the Peace"... Funny in light of the situation of today, where two of our 'occupied' countries both are on friendly terms with us and compete with us economically.
Maxim: People cannot follow directions.
Increases in truth directly with the length of time spent explaining them
Are they going to claim that DDOS is freedom of speech?
Im not a huge George W. fan, I dont like his views on immigration, IMO he isn't a true reagan conservative which is what we need.
Kerry on the other hand is either a liar or a war criminal- "I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that," Kerry said. "However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions in which the houses of noncombatants were burned to the ground. And all of these acts, I find out later on, are contrary to the Hague and Geneva conventions and to the laws of warfare. So in that sense, anybody who took part in those, if you carry out the application of the Nuremberg Principles, is in fact guilty." - John Kerry Source Included,I hate facts pulled from no where
Did he do those things? I dont know. But either he did and he is a war criminal, or he didnt and he's a liar. It's one or the other. Living in rhode island with a fiance in MA, I see what Kerry is like up close. He doesnt do much. I just wouldnt trust him with the keys to the country.
Perhaps if Bush had simply said that to begin with instead of towing the WMD line, people might have generally gone along with him. Perhaps we all could have an honest, adult discussion about the issue and what might be the best way to deal with it.
I still think war in Iraq was really not the best way to start combatting Islamic fundamentalism/radicalism, but perhaps I didn't have all the info. I certainly wasn't given the chance to change my mind or think about it, I was just told Iraq had WMDs and was linked to Osama, both of which turned out not to be true (and Osama's name hasn't been mentioned by the President more than 6-7 times in the past year - apparently not much of a concern for him).
I believe war can be just and necessary from time to time. I agree that fundamentalism of all kinds, especially the kind that tends towards militarism, is the biggest problem we need to be dealing with in the 21st century. Unfortunately Bush picked the wrong target, misled everyone and now we're in a mess that seems to be making things worse than better.
Just to beat the rush...
In Soviet Russia, it gets YOU!
IANA Spaniard, but I thought most Spanish voters were pissed that the government immediately blamed those Basque people when their own intel sources were saying it was Al Qaeda.
i.e., the election was not about "caving" or "standing up" to the terrorists; it was about standing up to a government that was putting ideology ahead of solid intel.
Hmmm... why does that sound familiar?...
All's true that is mistrusted
I don't support Bush even if I tend to agree with Republicans. But even I can see a con job and a grab for oil for what it is.
However that doesn't make a DDOS attack right. If Bush's message is so bad then why shouldn't it be heard. All this does is drive up sympathy and plays in to the terrorist fear mindset that is the cornerstone of the Bush agenda.
Slashdot, home of supporters of free software, free music, and free speech.Except for Moderators that disagree with you.
Sure a page reloading can be ilegal. If you use a product normaly and somethign happens then no. constantly reloading a page or pages faster then you can view it is at the minumum criminal mischief. With the complexities of the DMCA, it could even be considered a felony if it denys certain "protected" services they are running. Of course the DMCA part might be a stretch but they are using the patriot act to prosectue drug dealers now, so it isn't too far of a stretch. What happens when they claim someone was injured because of this and now everyone involve is facing life in prison? ohh you don't think there is a record of who's ip hit what even after anouncing the plan to the world?
I see what you are saying and it definatly does look harmless and almost like a prank. The problem really lies within the intent of the action wich can easily elevate it into somethign else. Reloading a page is inocent, reloading a page so fast you are trying to disrup services is not. Reloading a page so fast as to disrupt services in concert with others to make sure you achive your goal really sounds like criminal intent.
What is going to be funny is when everyone that participated wakes up next month to find thier credit cards have been use to buy somethign in russia. Or thier ISP telles them to stop sending spam, or even better their anti virus all the sudden decides to report viruses that were installed because the reload script downloaded trojans or somethign durring the flood.
Wouldn't this be really funny if this is just a trick to get alot of people to install a spam relay and the reload script has a vulnerability in it allowing mass conections and owner ship of the computer being run on? After this day, your internet conection would be nothign more then a spam rellay or some owned node in a hacking or kiddy porn hosting job. I wonder if the reload script is open source?
I totally agree. The only way to tackle problems like that are with money. Now, where's the money gonna come from. The U.S. can't give "pay off" every third-world country to keep impoverished and ill-educated people from forming terroristic type societies. The arab world itself has shown no interest in spending the trillions of dollars that it has in trying to help. So, what solution?
Personally, I feel that the old "give a man a fish/teach a man to fish" saw applies. That means a capitalist society, and that will, unfortunately mean a regime change in a lot of places.
The current situation sucks, but I'm hopeful that something good will come out of Iraq. Like this could be the first domino that knocks over the whole region.
It's not that the arab culture should be destroyed and made "westernized", but that it should at least be "modernized". (For those that find this arrogant, please notice that I say that in the least arrogant way possible. Keeping your women uneducated is an example of a backward element of arab culture. There are many others.)
My $0.02
Huh? What's with the idea of bringing liberals into this discussion? We're talking extremists here. Extremists on both sides of political idealogy are against liberty. Extremists are the ones who want to shut up (or lock up) their opponents. This has nothing to do with liberals or conservatives, both of whom hate actions such as this (or such as the White House neo-cons have been doing). Extremists are the problem, not conservatives or liberals.
Please, someone propose a better protest then.
So far, here's what we have:
- Street protests: Yeah, that'll make a big difference. Oh, another mass of people protesting in a major city? What good did the hundreds of thousands in multiple protests last year in Manhattan, or the millions in cities across Europe accomplish?
- Voting: Yeah, that'll make a big difference. That huge political gulf (sarcasm) between Bush and Kerry notwithstanding, there's very little to hold either to their election day promises, as many a President has shown.
To paraphrase Peter Lamborn Wilson, where did we cross the line where we forgot that protesting about the possibility of political consequences is not the same as political consequences? Voting for the RDNC will not solve our predicament. There has been a concerted effort between the parties to dig us into this hole for 50 years, and surprise, surprise, people are starting to lose faith in the system.
This is a big vote, indeed. But the likely outcome, a Bush/Kerry win, will only change the rate at which new suckage spews forth from the headlines.
What is one to do as this nation, and many of it allies, decends into war?
If you give a real alternative protest with real political consequences, these petty hackers will listen.
If you don't, you're probably part of what they're protesting.
BTW, the Spanish are cowards for caving to terrorists.
I am Spanish. What's funny about this is that the Spanish people reacted not out of fear but anger. Ask any Spaniard you meet - did you vote because you were afraid of another attack? (Kiss Bush's)Assnar served only George Bush's agenda, and put Spanish troops in Iraq despite over 90% of the population opposing the war. The fact is that he made our country less safe by allowing the Spanish military to be led by GWB, and we were tired of a president who acted the way the president of the US wanted, not the people of Spain.
And if you're a marine, aren't you concerned about the fact that GWB never served his country?
The republicans own the media.
They won't let peaceful protesters within blocks of the President or in view of a camera taping the President.
The debate process blocks anyone with a differing view.
This is just about the only way people have left to voice their views. They aren't hurting anyone and they may very well make themselves look stupid. It is simply peaceful, but unlawful, protest.
To quote Cris Rock, "I'm not saying that its right, but I understand."
If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. - James Madison
They didn't cave. They threw out a Gvt. that lied to them. The new Gvt. was against the war from the outset.
Check out my PHP Url Validator
Your pretty close to what Jefferson had in mind. The threat of instability causes stability (Yin Yang). Like you said, a well armed militia (in his days militia was the common folk) forces that a government be righteous in the decision and if these decisions become atrocious, beyond anything written in the powers of the constitution, then said militia should rebel because that is no longer ruling under the original constitution. This causes both the people and the government to accept a status quo in a peaceful existence. In addition, to make a note: it has worked quite well for 200 some odd years. The government stays in line, there is not need for a bloody rebellion, and the people seem somewhat agreeable with the governing body.
http://globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/iraq/
This is somewhat similar to today's free speech zones; although somewhat less severe.
Photos.
So in the same vein, if you vote for Kerry, you're supporting all the wacko Greenpeace, tree-huggin, anti-capitalist, anti-trade communists, whether or not you agree with them. :)
I'd guess it's the theory that one side is a little closer to what you believe than the other...
lessor? where were you when they were teaching spulling? Or has Bush cut education spending that far already.
Anyway. Let's see, Bush has: sent American troops to die in an illegal war and after lying to the country about the reasons. He's presided over a regime that's successively stripped away your rights and freedoms. He's had out billions in tax breaks and dodgy contracts to his cronies (Halliburton): to such an extent that he's turned a massive budget surplus under the Democrats into a truly awe-inspiring defecit.
And what has Kelly done?
Clinton only lied about who was sucking his dick (and how is that anyone else's business anyway). Bush lied and got thousands of people killed, *increased* terrorism and reduced your freedoms (including the freedom to learn how to spell it seems).
And Kelly has done what exactly that even begins to compare with Bush's fundamental corruption? Hmm let's see.... Nope, nothing is still the answer. Let's face it, in many ways Saddam Hussein would be the lesser of two evils when put up against Dubyah: at least he's honest about how he came to power.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
All of the roots of the current Iraq fiasco involve the NATO powers and the Muslim world.
During the Cold War, our strategy was to oppose Soviet incursions (direct or indirect) by supporting and arming those who we believed opposed our enemy. While the strategy worked in some ways, it had other very nasty side effects, among them the fact that these West-hating fundamentalists and other Arab equivalents of black-helicopter militias have easier access to weapons than they might otherwise have had. The fact that Iraq is ready to disintegrate into its component ethnic enclaves goes right back to its creation as a state in 1921. As you correctly say, al-Qaeda owes its existence to deep-pocketed Saudi oil barons funded by the world's love of cheap energy.
As for your charges that the was some great corruption scandal in the UN oil-for-food program, note that these charges are based on documents held by Ahmed Chalabi (who is wanted by both Jordan and the Iraqi provisional government for various kinds of fraud). Chalabi has refused to show these documents to any outsiders, including the press. They're about as reliable as the pictures of mobile bioweapons labs shown to the UN.
Something else that
follows right along with this. The threat that Iraq or al-Qaeda would be able to launch ICBM attacks or drop a Fat Man type weapon on the US or Europe is vanishingly small. Technically what politicians are calling "mass destruction" means 1000-5000 people dead and a lot of mayhem and fear. The real, on-the-ground threat was that Saddam armed with regional-scale nukes could well have launched a regional war that would have brought world oil production to a screeching halt. This is a serious threat, but it's hard to see how knocking out Saddam without a clear plan towards stability made any progress towards mitigating that risk.
We should be taking a variety of measures to stop threats from terrorists (including a lot more work securing ports and the electrical grid), but the notion that baddies can build a nuke in their basement is pretty ridiculous.
Have you met many Americans? Do they know what totalitarian means? Do they admit their own failings? Can they make sentences w/ subject/verb agreement?
I'm not trying to say that Americans are slobbering idiots that deserve the crap leaders they get, but advocating silence and letting the GOP self-destruct just doesn't seem to acknowledge the apathy/lack of critical thinking that's so prevalent in America. I don't know the solution to the problem, but counting on analytical, intelligent voters is not it.
"I must not fear. Fear is the mind killer." -Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear
If you Read The Article you would have realized that they were not only advocating page reload *programs* and distributing them (for the express purpose of DoS), but also "mischief and mayhem" by hacking and defacing websites.
I would wager to guess that the "organizers" of this DoS could be charged with something, but no I don't think it is currently *expressly* illegal, but it is at minimum disturbing the Cyber-Peace, which could be translated from current laws.
There are over 740 tons of Sarin alone unaccounted for...
Okay, let's do some math here. How do you transport 740 tons of Sarin out of the country without being noticed? Remember, we can track individual trucks by satellite. So:
Sarin is a gas. But let's ignore that, and suppose that it's a liquid and can be easily transported in drums. A military truck could load perhaps 2 tons of barrels.
740 / 2 = 370 truck loads would have had to cross the Iraqi border in order for Saddam to have completely eliminated his Sarin stash before the war.
How is it that we picked up individual "chemical weapon lab" trucks on satellite, but missed the 370 trucks moving across the border? If they were spaced only 150 feet apart, the convoy would have stretched for more than ten miles! How did we miss that?
But Sarin is not a liquid. As a gas, its density is far lower than that of liquid, and to put 2 tons of gas in compressed cylinders on a military truck would be quite a feat. Even if the weight of the delivery vehicle (shell, bomb, etc...) was included in those 740 tons, it's still iffy. 740 tons of 100 lb artillery shells is 14,800 rounds. At 100 rounds/truck, you're still looking at 148 vehicles.
How did we miss that?
Or, maybe he really didn't have any "WMD".
Saddam Hussein may certainly have been very evil. But his "crime" was not his oppression of people, but rather that he tried too hard to be like the U.S. - a sovereign nation possessing weapons of strategic deterrence.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Under the previous 12 years of sanctions, groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have estimated that approximately 50,000 Iraqis have died each year. When queried about realistic options on how to deal with Iraq, pre-war, the anti-war position unanimously chanted "continue sanctions".
Funny how, pre-Iraq-war, virtually the same crowd of people was vehemently opposed to sanctions in Iraq, due to its detrimental effect on the people of Iraq, while having virtually no effect on the leadership; indeed, effectively strengthening Hussein's power.
So now, what of these 600,000-some dead Iraqi people under sanctions? That approximately 50,000 a year, the number we were always bombarded with during the tired "no blood for oil" protest of the 90s?
Well, here's some numbers for you:
Since March of 2003, *including* the 10000-15000 Iraqis US and coalition forces are estimated to have killed during the invasion, there has actually been a NET PRESERVATION of Iraqi lives, on the order of the thousands. A statistically significant PRESERVATION of Iraqi lives, all from the relatively minimal infrastructure and services improvements made by coalition forces since March 2003. That's how little Saddam cared for his own people, without regard to sanctions. No matter your position on the Iraq war, our direct action has saved, and will continue to save, THOUSANDS of lives of innocent Iraqis. Remember: the only alternative course of action was continuing sanctions. Even the radical idea of lifting sanctions wouldn't have changed Saddam's focus from only concentrating services and resources on Baghdad, leaving over 50% of the population to suffer and fend for itself, not to mention that France, Germany, and Russia would never have allowed the lifting of sanctions, short of military action (which we took). Think about that: exclusively because of US action, statistically, thousands of Iraqis have lived, who otherwise wouldn't have. Countless thousands of others will enjoy this same future, to say nothing of access to basic amenities of life previously not available to rural areas.
This of course, ignores the whole concept that sometimes it's necessary to take lives to save far more. Sometimes I wonder if the US is the same country that effectively fought WWII...
I have two cases for you to help you ponder your hypocrisy:
Al-Jazeera
Yellow Times
Censorship is wrong. A liberal would not be in favor of censorship. These guys are more accurately described as anarchists.
- Hail to our fearless misleader! Fool speed ahead!
HINT: Free speech means everyone gets to express their ideas, not just you.
It's amazing how slashdoters can be so fickle. Free speech is OK as long as it doesn't come from a republican.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Problem is, the hacktivists don't see it that way. They probably don't even LIKE Kerry...many voters don't consider him progressive enough for their tastes and the anti-war folks can't like that he's a decorated veteran even considering his later protests.
They see themselves as being anti-Bush...a separate option from pro-Kerry. But many conservatives don't break it down so granularly...anybody on the other side is on the Other Side, and so we moderates voting Democrat this year are in the same boat as the draft dodging hippies and punk subversives.
In fact, one of the major problems I have with the modern Republican party is that they treat nearly everything as a binary issue. You're either for it or against it, you can't be ambivalent or vote to control the amount of something. In a way, this inflexibility makes the Republican party even more idealistic than the Democrats, and institutes a lot of what the Democrats claim is hypocrisy. How can you have a party that believes that parents should have the right to choose what school their children go to but that they're not bright not moral enough to choose whether or not to keep their child? Easy...each of these issues is broken down differently on that polar scale, and abortion falls cleanly into the "no fucking way" bin. Pragmatic decisions like keeping abortion legal, but dumping money into support and pro-child advertising campaigns to reassure scared young mothers that they don't have to kill their child, are seen as wishy washy liberalism -- even if such programs are met with greater success -- because they do not accept the artifical polarity forced onto the issue by idealistic conservatives. Yes, in a perfect world nobody would choose abortion and everybody would have a father and one parent would be able to be a primary caregiver. But these are cultural problems...and they are impossible to legislate.
Hey freaks: now you're ju
Sorry, which part of the article said they were aligning themselves with the Democrats? Maybe Anarchy just hates Republicans. Nader claims to be against the Republicans, but he's not with the Democrats. It's not an either/or question.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
This comment is so rich. I can only spend a little time on it, but here's a shot:
First, let's talk about references. When I say something like x is due to y, I like to back it up with something like according to z(www.z.com), you get the picture.
Now the "Germany KNOWS that Saddam did have WMD" statement sounds a little overstated - I would assume you are referring to international findings of that nature and not the Germans in particular?
On that note, almost every country has WMD right now. I think that makes the WMD case for war a bit daft, but that's just a personal opinion.
I'm at a bit of a loss on this statement:
"Are we to believe that in the interim period, Iraq secretly destroyed all of its remaining weapons, on its own, with no supervision or involvement of outside monitors, all with no proof or records"
Let's try CNN on this one. Looks like they were destroying them right up to the war.
Here's another idea I take issue with:
"it's not just about bombing people into oblivion; it's about encouraging free government with a free flow of information"
The question I have here is why, after over a year, have we still seen none of this come to fruition? Sure, we handed over power, but to an unelected government that we selected. Also, how did we contribute to the free flow of information by banning newspapers?
You go on to insist that this was somehow was positive for "most of the civilized world", but offer no rational for that logic. I think it's much safer to assume that the real winners here are defence contractors tied to the Whitehouse
"People think that the US just wants to arrogantly steamroll people..." Please don't talk about the actions of the state as the actions of the US. I'm a part of this great country, and like many others, I consider this war a shameful crime against humanity.
Then we have to deal with average people joining the Republican party just because it offers a sane choice compared to the nutjob left wingers. Hell, even crazies like Anne Coulter seem sane compared to hacker groups actively working to break the law in the name of democracy.
I'm sorry, but how can you honestly claim that these people, with the maturity level of 12 year olds, are somehow politically related to Clinton, Kerry, Cleland, Obama or anyone else who is taken seriously by Democratic Party? Janet Reno would have prosecuted these losers just as quickly as any other criminal. If you are willing to associate these idiots with the Democratic Party, then you also have to associate McVeigh, the KKK and the majority of right wing nuts listed by the Southern Poverty Law Center with the GOP. Besides, these little kids might be misguided about democracy, but the right just cares about power, which concerns me a lot more.
Personally, I'd rather be associated with script kiddies, who just need to be taken out behind the woodshed once to straighten them out, than racist wacko nutjob terrorists like the KKK and it's spinoffs. Who's worse, vandals or terrorists?
I'm a liberal because the Founding Fathers were liberals. I'm a liberal because this country is a liberal secular democratic republic. I'm a liberal because I believe in the American Revolution. I don't really give a rat's ass if someone else has managed to confuse their culture or religion with the business of the government of the US, it doesn't make their ideas valid. I'm a liberal because I believe that a political system of ideas must be internally logically consistent. Everytime I go applying scientific analysis to the historical record, to the original writings that formed the ideology behind the American Revolution, I come out looking liberal. I can logically and rationally defend my political positions and can do so consistently. That's why I'm a liberal, and anyone can try and criticize me for it all they want, but they still haven't beaten me in a debate. I'm a liberal, because intellectual conservatism is dead.
<troll>Oh, and I also think that Ayn Rand was an idiot and libertarians are, for the most part, the most politically naive group I've ever run across. They're much more fun when they're drunk and trying to defend their ideology, cause when they're sober, it's just sad</troll>
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
This is what happens when you block phone lines so Democrats can't get rides to the polls.
Wait though, the whole Alien hive mentality is fairly similar to conservative right-wing corporate America. And it appeared that the Predators had a somewhat progressive agenda, even giving up on a thousands year old tradition for the sake of the common good.
Crap, you've got my mind all wondering which side fits in with my own agenda, being a part of a crack team of Antarctict archeologists and all.
From the WFB:
Argentina purchasing power parity - $432.7 billion (2003 est.), external debt $142 billion (2002 est.)
USA purchasing power parity - $10.98 trillion (2003 est.), external debt $1.4 trillion (2001 est.)
I'd say that pretty much sums it up...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
These proposed acts say volumes about the Far Left. Continually crying about their rights being suppressed, they take every opportunity to suppress the rights of others. It obvious that they have no more love of Free Speech (or Democracy) than the Taliban, Bin Laden, and other terrorists.
Illegal? What war is legal or illegal? He DID enforce the UN's last resolution on describing punishment if Iraq didn't start complying with the mandates of the UN (not to mention the terms of its surrender) that it hadn't done for about 12 years...if saddam had opened things up, verified destruction of old WMD (which he has had and used), and complied fully with UN requirements...he'd unfortunately still be in full power. Bush lying? Have you listened lately to the 9/11 and other commisions' findings? They said there was bad intelligence, but, it was the SAME intelligence th e rest of the world powers had and believed. If I were president, and my intelligence told me that someone was going to nuke me tomorrow...and I had Russia, Great Britan and a few others tell me the exact same thing...I'd definitely hit them before they hit me. This is an analogy of course, but, the same situation. Shit happens...and it did in this case. But, out of it...many good possibilities may come of it. Getting saddam out...giving democracy a real chance to happen in a Arab nation. But, lying? C'mon...if you're acting on the best intelligence that you believe to be true...no lies. Clinton? Yup...he lied...and was caught at it lying to a court. In this land, no matter who you are...you cannot do this. If Bush had been found to be lying for some reason, I'd be up in arms too, but, nothing points to him doing so.
"He's presided over a regime that's successively stripped away your rights and freedoms."
Gotta agree with you on this...the Rep's used to be more for individual rights, privacy, and fiscal responsibility, and they have none of this now. Trouble is...I don't see any of this on the Dem's side either...sigh
"And what has Kelly done?"
Who the hell is this 'Kelly'...and what is he running for?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Ah, but what is he lying about? I think you've been listening to the propaganda too long if you think Kerry is the 'ultimate traitor'; he has differeing views to be sure, but that hardly makes him a traitor. Can you point out why you think he's a traitor?
IMNSHO you guys need to tone down the rhetoric down there. You end up with right-wing liars and left-wing liars, and for some reason you think you have to swear allegiance to one of them...
Which is, of course, why you should go with Instant Runoff Voting. Have more than two REAL candidates! Never waste another vote! Wanna vote for Buchanan but would rather get Bush then Kerry? You can EXPRESS THAT!
Disclosure: I don't like Kerry, but I think Bush is a well-meaning but incompetent president, controlled by a group of vile sons of bitches. So feel free to call me a pinko commie Liberal and all that if you like, but there's no need to post it.
Anyway, I'm sure I've sown enough seeds of sedition here...
A vast majority of Spain's population was against the war to begin with. Of course they were going to vote out the government that didn't listen to anything they said. Not fighting a war that has nothing to do with you and is supported by shaky, constantly changing rationales is not "cowering in fear". It's sensible.
My good looks paid for that pool, and my talent filled it with water.
Things are going from bad to worse at the moment, what makes you think they're going to take a turn for the better?
And how much do you honestly know about the situation that isn't from some form of mass-media? I have friends in Iraq currently and some that have served and returned. What they tell me is vastly different from what is being reported on the news. But that's why it's news. They can't report that everything is going smoothly in 90% of the country because that's not news. That is the ordinary.
Not everything is analogous to cars. Car analogies rarely work.
Because Republicans are fascists? (That's only half joking.)
Seriously, though, Bush's attitude is "my way or the highway." This even has some Republicans bristling. Take John McCain for istance. The Democrats are trying to position themselves as the party of inclusion, a party big enough and strong enough for a variety of viewpoints. Most of this is because they had to field a candidate and the Republicans' role is now to march in lock-step with whatever Bush (by which I mean Karl Rove) trots out.
A LOT of Republicans are wondering what happened to fiscal repsonsibility. But you don't hear much about it. It's much safer to attack the external target -- the Democrats than to question the policies of our Great Leader, or the internal workings of your own party.
Sarin is a gas. But let's ignore that, and suppose that it's a liquid and can be easily transported in drums.
Actually, Sarin is a liquid that vaporizes at room temperature. So it is a liquid, and CAN be easily transported in drums.
No comment.
I have some student loans left that amount to a few $K, however, I make a decent salary. Relative to my salary, my indebtedness is quite low. That's why I get offers for 0% rate credit cards all the time (I don't use credit cards and have no other debt). There are plenty of people in the world for whom a debt of a few hundred dollars would be overwhelming because of its relative size to its income.
The USA does have the biggest debt of any nation, however, relative to its GDP it isn't bad. Sweden for example, has a much, much greater debt to GDP ratio.
Not that I'm making excuses for the US debt, but it is misleading to claim the World Bank or IMF are being unfair to Argentina.
--- There are two kinds of people, those who accept dogmas and know it, and those who accept dogmas and don't know it
Here's an anecdote: this is roughly akin to nailing two-by-fours across every door and window in my house so that you can prevent me from coming out and using my freedom of speech because you don't like the views I espouse. If you disagree with what I say, the appropriate response is to write, speak, and make your views known. It is not to simply silence the opposition by preventing them from being heard.
/. for that matter. Why, because being able to communicate is recognized as important to those two orgs. Why not the republicans? /. might like a link ;-]
Bad anology. Better, this is akin to going to a Presidential address in Ohio and speaking and making your views heard. Which DID get someone arrested DURING this administration.
If the republican party is incapable of handling bandwidth they should do something about it. In my opinion this is a legitimate form (though in bad taste because it does evoke free speech issues) of protest. I guarantee the democrats couldn't take down MS or hell
BTW, which site are they going to do this to. Some of us on
If you throw out one government that lies to you, it will only be replaced by... guess what? ANOTHER government that lies to you. If you throw out one government that makes some mistakes, it will be replaced by... you got it... ANOTHER goverment that makes mistakes.
What we should be asking our candidates is not so much "how many mistakes have you made in your life", but "what exactly is it that you stand for?".
On the one hand, we have Bush; a guy who (most of the time) has a clear agenda, strong beliefs, and tends to stick to them (whether we like them or not). The end result is that he may do some things that we don't like, simply because he believes in them.
On the other hand, we have Kerry, a man who has demonstrated again and again that he will say or do anything, and take nearly any side of any issue to appeal to as many people as possible in order to get elected.
While this may seem like the perfect man for the job ("Finally! A president who will do what the PEOPLE want him to!"), this is also the epidomy of wishy-washiness.
Let's say you're leading a group of 5 people, and you're lost in the woods. Each one of them wants you to go in each of the 4 cardinal directions. "Go East!" says one. "No! Go North!" says another, and so on. Would you rather be led by someone who will make a decision, accepting the risk that goes along with that, or would you rather be led by someone who is so bent on appeasing all 4 people that he'll just stand there with his thumb up his butt and go NOWHERE?
A truly brave man is not afraid to take a stand in spite of what some people might think of him.
But God demonstrates his love for us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us - (Romans 5:8)
When the hell are these stupid children (however old they may be) going to realize that pulling juvenile stunts like this is NOT the way to make your point. Nor is it a way to "win".
It merely points out (with glowing, thousand meter-tall indicators) exactly how stupid, petty, and childish you are. As well as aggravating your candidate when he realizes what a group of morons he has in his constituency and how badly they reflect on him and his political views and backers.
You want to effect REAL change?
SOCIAL ENGINEERING!
Script-kiddie bullshit like this only inhibits it.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
This is utterly disgraceful to use the word 'hacker' this way. My views mirror those of most hackers and are quite well known. This is low. Hacktivists are nothing more than mouse clickers on low bandwidth connections. This is lower than script kiddies.
I am 100% against Bush, as are a sizable majority of Europeans. It is nice to see Americans turn against him and he'll do himself in without the help of hacktivists and violent protesters. There are simply better ways to replace George W. Bush!
Is this the new liberal idea of free speech and choice? Block people from seeing Republican websites, and block them from entering Republican headquarters?
I know it's not all liberals/Democrats, but some of them are completely insane. If they're not actively blocking Ralph Nader from being on the ballot (after all, nobody should have any choices), they're funding smear books and movies. I constantly hear about this "Republican attack machine," but honestly all I ever see is a liberal attack machine.
Okay, so this is off-topic.
A lot of these anti-bush people don't even know what they are talking about. They let the media tell them how to vote. Bush is a bad public speaker, I'll give you guys that, but he is no idiot. I didn't know idiots get degrees and MBAs from Havard and Yale. Go figure.
f ormation About Moore
I also find it funny that Democrates don't even know what Kerry stands for (kind of like he doesn't even know what he stands for) but they again let the media tell them what to do. These are probably the same people who think Michale Moore is a genious, although he doesn't even make documentaries, since documentaries by definition are TRUE.
http://www.larryelder.com/911/debunking911.htmlIn
Some white hat hacker - please take the above site down - it will provide Bush with proof to invade all these countries.
Why not just go out and stand in front of the RNC's headquarters and block people from entering? Because you can't. Ever heard of "free-speech zones"? Protestors are fenced in (see: DNC 2004 or, at the very least, fenced off into areas where visibility is low. This has been happening ever since Bush took office. Wherever he travels, protestors are limited to these free speech zones, where Secret Service agents line the perimeter and arrest anyone who leaves the area (charging them with federal trespassing). Even before 9/11. I've been there, I've seen it happen in very low-profile towns/situations.
Complete and utter bullshit.
Exports to Iraq 1st half of 2002: 220 milion.
Total german annual exports: >$700 BILLION.
Tell me, does that look like enough money to raise a stink with a major ally? Answer: no. Also you're not making any sense. If it was about money Germany would have taken part in the war. Contracts to be gained were certainly greater than those pre-war peanuts.
Saddam and or his sons would have eventually gained WMD and used them against the U.S.A. and or Isreal.
That doesn't make any sense, he would have been wiped out by the retaliation.
Why do so? If you agree with the RNC, then because you agree with them. If you don't, then thinking along the lines of, "I don't agree with what you say, but I'll defend your right to say it," would be the impetus.
Would the RNC accept help from fair minded netizens (yeah, I still like that word)? Would /.ers offer?
But fine, if we want to play that game...
The wack jobs that bomb abortion clinics are a glowing indication of the inability of the right to address problems without resorting to bombs!
Pinging a server isn't illegal either, but it becomes so when you do it in such a way (volume and repitiion) to disrupt traffic
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
"Better to have never served at all, than to quit like a coward after four months."
The truth is that hundreds of civilians and many a soldier from Spain have died because we supported the US, however not a single US solider has ever died for supporting Spain. And with "thankful" comments like the ones uttered by the previous poster, I sincerelly hope not a single drop of Spanish blood is ever wasted for America ever again.
For a preson coming from a country than one hundred years ago declared war on us, and than fifty years ago decided to starve us to death you certainly have some brass balls asking our soldiers to die for your comfy little behind.
Next time you go and pick up the gun and you get your butt over there... is this what the "land of the brave, home of the free" has de-evolved into? "better to have never served at all" LOL!
I was in France when the Spain held the elections. The terror plot worked (turned the elections), but not in the way the terrorists had planned.
I listened fully to the coverage on BBC Radio and France Info, and I found that it was the media, not the government who suggested ETA (Basque) links. The government higher-ups stayed quiet while the pundits decryed ETA's tactics. Of course, it doesn't take a terrorist expert to realize that ETA always claims responsibility, and did not in this case.
Also, my firend in Syria told me that at that time (while the investigation was unpublished), the Arab media was pointing their fingers saying, "See, it's not always Islamic extremists..."
When the report was finally published, the opposition was *very* quick to accuse the government of hiding the Al Qaeda ties, thus deceiving the people concerning the risks of participating in Iraq. Without time to properly challenge the accusation, the people voted the opposition into office.
Now, if the government had meant to blame ETA to keep the heat off them concerning Iraq, why did they release the info a couple of days before the elections? They could have kept it hidden for another day or two, no? Also, as I said before, the media was largely responsible for the accusation of ETA, and then for the accustation that the government had tried to keep the truth form the public.
In the end, the terroists succeeded, but only through the media and the oppositon party. I think this is a small-scale preview of what could happen in the US.
Large, competitive media, more concerned about ratings/profits than truth? Check.
Partisian warfare? Check.
What is truely scarry is that someone could be so politically spiteful of another party that they would help people inciting violence acheive their goals, if it hurt the other party.
The more time goes by, the less I like partisian politics.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
What a baseless crap statement. Which party is more tolerant in regards to flag-burning?* Which party lead a coordinated effort to jam the phone lines of the other party during "get out the vote" calling efforts on election day 2002? Which party helped back a massive campaign to force theater owners into not showing F9/11? Yeah, thought so.
* I proudly served as a United States Marine and nothing breaks my heart like seeing the United States flag burned, but I also understand that giving others the right to burn the flag is what makes this nation so great.
-- jimmycarter
Sorry I can refute that - I did not believe that Saadam has WMD neither did Hans Blix.
So although you might think you are correct you are wrong.
Just saying it like it are.
From the WFB:
Argentina purchasing power parity - $432.7 billion (2003 est.), external debt $142 billion (2002 est.)
USA purchasing power parity - $10.98 trillion (2003 est.), external debt $1.4 trillion (2001 est.)
I agree with all your figures apart from the USA external debt (the national debt value quoted in the WFB is for 1995 -- where did your value of $1.4 trillion come from?). Consider the following report:
That paints a rather different picture, doesn't it? Based on these figures, the USA appears to be more overextended than Argentina, not less.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Give it up with this "liberal media" bullshit. Good lord. The "liberal media" acted so liberal in the run-up to war that the liberal editors of the two most liberal of the liberal papers, the NYTimes and the Washington Post, felt the need to publically apologize in recent months for not doing their jobs, and instead acting like pseudo-patriotic parrots of administration propoganda - and doing so very willfully. There was a great study showing that during the war anti-war pundits on all networks together (including PBS) got one-twenty-fifth the air time of pro-war pundits. That would be 1:25, not 8:1. Real "liberal" there.
If you could see past that log in your eye, you'd realize there's nothing liberal about the media anymore. Virtual all media in this country is owned by a handful of large corporations. They look out for #1. CNN viewers may have been slightly less misinformed than FNC viewers, but CNN still beat the war drum just as hard, and have been just as soft in criticizing the administration since.
That guy went into a rant on the Defcon stage and got pulled off for the same comments. He must really be angry- but angry and dumb is no way to go through life. A FBI gun at your head hurts more than a packet.
He should keep his mouth closed if he's gonna do this stuff. It's a felony now in this crappy country. And having it run by Democrats won't make it less of a felony. Or less of a country of crappy laws.
In effect, they are trying to recreate the /. effect. Does this mean /. is illegal?
That links shows how much they've raised in campaign donations. It is indeed true that Bush has raised more in campaign donations. What the previous poster was saying, however, is that Kerry's personal wealth is much greater than Bush's personal wealth.
Some ballpark figures for assets, drawn partly from here:
Kerry (incl. wife): $500 to $600 million
Cheney: $17 to $85 million
Edwards: ~$19 million
Bush: $6 to $14 million
So as you can see, even if those numbers are off by a lot, Kerry is still the richest by far, and Bush is the poorest of the four.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
I guess you're not familiar with Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, or Imperial Japan, then...
The difference is that these were national governments (same as Iraq). It doesn't work the same way with Islamic Radicalism, the IRA or any other terrorist group. This doesn't mean that a military strategy to fight Al Qaeda is ineffective, but I doubt whether that alone will do the job.
It took half a decade (and in some cases longer) to pacify post-WWII Germany and Japan
Really? There was fighting in post-WWII Germany (i.e. in the 50s)? Strange, my parents don't seem to remember anything like that and they were there after all...
Likewise, it will take us just as long if not longer to achieve the same in Iraq. However, assuming we don't cut and run, it will be achieved.
While I agree that to cut and run is not an option, don't be too sure that it will be achieved. Things can play out either way (Germany vs. Vietnam). History tends to defy good intentions.
This is one of the stupidest reasons I've ever heard for wanting Bush to win. Does this mean you prefer the theocrat "Bush is a moral man" or "The rich are the only ones who innovate and create jobs" type idiots who are voting for Bush? Maybe you support the Neil Boortz "we should turn Najaf into a glass parking lot" type of idiots that support Bush.
If you make political choices based on the fringes of the political parties, you should be voting Democrat, they at least know how to marginalize their loonies, the GOP let's em run the asylum. And how is this opinion Insightful? I'd rather see Kerry win because 9 out of 10 KKK members support Bush? You vote based on ignorant Bubba's in white robes? Maybe the GOP will learn when Bush loses? These aren't serious political strategies, they're akin to stoner dorm room conversations.
This is why the GOP fails to impress me, I've yet to see a serious person with real ideas or any grasp of reality claim that Bush is a good president. This buffoon is quite literally, the absolute worst Presidential Administration this country has ever had. This guy is worse than Nixon, worse than Jackson, worse than Grant or Hoover. He makes Wilson look like a saint. I want this whole crowd of incompetent fools gone. They aren't worth the tax dollars wasted on them.
Every problem that has arisen from Bush policies has been predicted. No result that the Bush Administration claimed would come from their policy has actually happened. More often than not, the results their critics have predicted have come to pass. These idiots are seemingly incapable of rational thought or any grasp of reality. Their tax policies have failed to create jobs. Their energy policies haven't done shit for foreign dependence or better energy markets. We have no coherent strategy for dealing with terrorism. "YeeHaw" is not a foreign policy. Wages are falling, jobs are leaving and there are no new industries or markets replacing what's disappearing. We are going further into debt as a nation. This administration has been squandering every great resource we've given it access to. They've squandered our reputation internationally. They've squandered our wealth, and they squander our environment.
These people are cultural bigots who don't grasp anything outside their own limited experience. They believe they have some sort of monopoly on truth and are willing to do anything to gain power. Our system was set up so that the people would have the ability to stop individuals just like this. The Bush Administration advocates for every scenario our Founding Fathers warned would destroy the Revolution. The Bush policies encourage concentration of wealth, mingling of culture and religion with government, and they can't keep state secrets, SECRET.
Between the Valerie Plame incident and that Khan computer guy, who was a freaking Pakistani mole, these guys might as well give Osama a swipe card for the Pentagon. They are incompetent, screw em, I'll take any marginalizable loonies over these nut jobs with power any day.
Arrogance is Confidence which lacks integrity. -- me
I wonder if portions of the Patriot Act would make this act an act of terrorisim. I'm not sure if I feel that would be a valid use of the Patriot Act or not however, I do feel that attempting to limit someone's freedom of speech is morally, ethically, and legally wrong. Probably doubly so when it comes to limiting the political process. I am not a member of either major party but I do recognize their role in society and government.
I also know that the two groups in this country that have done the most to limit political speech in this country are the Republican and Democrat parties. Their respective politcal machines hoard the publicity and raise money and as a result they are able to out-shout all the other voices that deserve to be heard. There are other political parties out there that have valid agendas and good ideas (the Greens and the Libritarians come to mind immediately). But the reality is that the two party system that has evolved in this country has served more to divide us than unite us. Most people are members of one party or another based on their feelings about a single issue that they feel strongly about (abortion for instance). They go along with the other planks in their party's platform simply because they agree with the one issue.
In some ways, I'm pretty far to one side and in other ways I'm pretty far to the other. In general my leanings I feel are based on some core values that I got from my parents and my church others from values that I found for myself. Because of these things, I can't be a member of either major party, I run hot or cold, not lukewarm and I'm sorry but I will not comprimise my feelings just to play on one of the big teams.
Unfortunately for me, this means that I do not have much of a voice in Washington D.C.
He got honorably discharged from the military. Deserters do not get honorably discharged. There are only three months unaccounted for, I dont know what happened during those three months, or what deal he struck with the National Guard. From the sounds of This report, he completed enough training the previous year to cover the three months. I dont know how the national guard works and i dont pretend to, but i do know the military doesnt just give out honorable discharges.
Interesting that in 1992 it wasnt important to John Kerry that Bill Clinton didnt serve in vietnam, saying "we all served in many different ways".
Also, Bush is not a liar. I can only pressume you are talking about the WMD in iraq. Please note, if Bush lied when he said that Iraq had WMD's, then you are also saying that Saddam Hussain, Kofi Annon, Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Madylin Albright and more lied about it as well. You cant play a game of pin the tail on the incumbant here. There is also an AP News story about "things" being trucked into Syria.
I just am not a fan of rhetoric. The summation of arguments agaist Bush is... He is stupid, He is a Liar, and HALIBURTON!. Oh yeah, and he's AWOL. While it is hard to find evidence about one's intelligence, he did graduate from Yale and is the President. Most stupid people dont accomplish that. I already cited sufficiently, I believe, why Bush is not a liar. As for HALLIBURTON!, I can only say it is a big american company that helps our military in certain situations. It has been used by Bush 1, Clinton, and Bush 2. Maybe people dont like they idea of such a big company, but... there arent exactly Mom and Pop small-buisnesses that can provide high octane fuel to bases in Basra.
Just my 2, well, maybe 3 cents.
They don't believe it because hackers are part of a demographic that's notoriously anti-organized-religion.
:)
With folks like Ashcroft at the helm of one of the more frightening departments of the government, people associate Republicans with money, power, and religion.
What I think most people fail to realize is that right now, neither party really sticks to their core values. The Democrats want to restrict freedoms under the guise of social and economic reform. The Republicans want to restrict freedom under the guise of security and religous appeal.
Which of these looks more dangerous to the typical hacker's social sensibilities? It doesn't matter if in the end, the core of the US is totally ruined and discarded. All people see right now is the road to get there.
Of course, beware the gross generalizations.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
I really,REALLY doubt that anyone anti-Republican with an operational brain cell left would pull such a useless, inflamatory stunt such as this.
It makes the 'pubs look like victims, and gives juice to the 'wingers and other "security" crazies in vogue, juice that will inevitably be used to set up a police state presence on the internet.
It reminds me vividly of the few "anarchists" at the WTO protests in Seattle a few years back. A few dozen really violent bastards ran out from nowhere and trashed the city, of the thousands of peaceful people assembled. The news networks ran the pictures incessantly, and the American public were convinced that protests were not worth the free assembly rights we used to have. Now you need to get a permit, and IF you get that, you are herded past a gauntlet of shoulder-to shoulder armored and overarmed black monsters, into a small enclosure surrounded by barbed wire, with cameras trained onto your face, in some remote hellhole. You may be arrested at will. As recent reports indicate, the FBI is now visiting people's homes on the premise that they MIGHT someday protest, leaving the message that They Are Being Watched.
Throwing out the obvious thought: the "anarchists" at the WTO protest were agents provocateurs, and the government security apparatchiks have used that "riot" to institute the present police state in the U.S. and Europe.
And I am thinking that these "protestors" against the Republican web sites are about as authentic as the "anarchist rioters" in Seattle.
Wait for it people: this DOS attack against the 'pubs will be used as publicity fodder to create a new internet police force. If it doesn't work this time, a few "anarchist" attacks in the future should convince the public that such a force is needed.
And the FBI/CIA/HS police will be asking for your papers when you criticize someone in power. Count on it.
I'm surprised that more people from the left aren't absolutely ashamed of what's going on over there. All the talk of anarchy, black powder on your clothes to confuse the dogs, volunteering for the convention and then not showing up, trying to DoS their website, etc.
God forbid any of these people would go out and campaign for their candidate on the issues. Go door to door asking people to vote for him and telling them why they should. Contribute money to your candidate's campaign. Go to the local campaign headquarters and ask what you can do to help your candidate -- something you can tell your grandchildren about with pride.
The problem with the left is that they're so desperate to defeat Bush that they'll do absolutely anything sort of breaking the law. And I'm sure some won't stop there. Remember, it doesn't have to be a felony or a misdemeanor for something to be wrong or unscrupulous. DoS'ing the GOP's website is going to do absolutely nothing to help your candidate. And neither is causing chaos at the convention.
I, for one, am completely in favor of very strict criminal penalties for anybody who intentionally distrupts the security personnel or infrastructure at the convention or at any high profile event. Send these morons to the city jail for some serious amount of time -- like 90 days. If there's no room for them in the jail, build a tent city outside of town and keep them there.
Protesting is one thing, and you have every right to do that, despite what you and your friends might say about the GOP wanting to silence you. Nobody's going to stop you from protesting, as long as you obey the law. And yes, they might have rules about where you can be. That's not an infringement of free expression. It's a way of attempt to control a potential mob and keep them from intentionally disrupting a location that really does require a lot of security.
Bottom line -- grow up and let the democratic process work. If you really want to help this election, you can get to work educating voters how to vote properly, so we don't have the fiasco we had last time in Florida. Thanks to that lunacy, we unfortunately had to take the whole thing to the courts, which obviously isn't the way a lot of people like to see an election decided.
RP
He doesn't need to. He does, however, have a one-point plan for better America.
:)
I make a reasonable middle-class wage by going to work and not spamming blogs with scams.
If you want to help fix the political systmem in America, GET INVOLVED. We are in the boat we are in because we have record low numbers of americans actually voting and electing our leadership. Actually THINKING about the issues and MAKING AN INFORMED VOTE would be a big improvement. Get involed in a political party (not even one of the 'big two' - I bet a lot of slashdotters would like the libertarian party, for instance)
Doing this kind of vandalism is going to do nothing to engender anyone to any cause it might be supporting. It might even polarize people AGAINST the cause it might be supporting. Remember how linux developers were recently criticized for windows virii?
DO they think this will win votes for Kerry? If anything, it will just tick people off more that you are doing some hacker attack to push the democratic agenda instead of honestly discussing the issues. There are so many people that say they are voting for Kerry because they hate Bush, but they have yet to come up with a single positive reason to vote for Kerry...except that they hate Bush. Vote FOR something not against someone else. It will get more done.
Gorkman
On behalf of a loser country, I'd like to thank you guys for lending us the money and saving us from the Nazis and the red menace.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
Maybe so, but only because we give our cash to practically every other country in the world as 'aid'
As a percentage of GDP given as foreign aid, the USA rates as one of the meanest countries in the developed world. Add to that the strings attached to the meagre aid they do give, such as the withdrawl by the Bush adminstration of funding for NGOs which advocate the use of condoms to prevent the spread of AIDS.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Wealthy people exist on both sides of the political isle. However, it's the republicans who, time and time again, give tax breaks / incentives / corporate welfare to the rich. The democrats, more consistently, try to push the wealth / services to the poor. Just because you're rich doesn't mean you can't support the poor. Just like you don't have to be homeless to run a homeless shelter.
As to the Humble people, I have yet to see a humble person, although, I think a lot of politicans on both sides of the isle should take an example of the current Jimmy Carter.. Serving people, not being served. He's done a better job out of the white house than in it.
As to the President Lincoln argument, take a break and look at what Lincoln wanted to do with the freed slaves: ship them out of the country!!! (Don't take my word for it, look in his memoirs.. I had a class on Abe Lincoln).
Here's one for you: What side of the firehoses were the conservatives on, in the 60's?
It's ridiculous that any entity would do this to another on this level. Look at all the child rapists in the world. Go DDOS them instead. Do something worthwhile. DDOSing politicians when there are better targets is like a cop driving down the street, seeing 20 people shot, and instead of going after the murderers, he pulls over a guy that has a tail light out. Seriously! Go make life difficult for the ones who really need it. While I understand that politicians can be crooked, they're not more crooked than most, they just happen to be better at it and in the spotlight. And, not all politicians are crooked so DDOSing this group will be making things difficult for the good guys who will now be lured to the dark side because of your actions. Way to go, hippies!
When Hussein accused UN weapons inspectors of being US spies in 1998...
Um...they actually were spies.
But all this stuff misses the main point about Iraq. Saddam was contained by the sanctions. He wasn't particularly punished by them (he didn't miss any meals) but look at hii options post-9/11, pre-war:
- Attack one or more of his Islamic neighbors.
- Attack Israel, either conventionally or with WMD.
- Attack the United States, either conventionally or with WMD.
- Give, say, Al-Quaeda WMDs.
- Maintain the status quo.
Saddam's a vicious, evil SOB. But he's not stupid, and he could see the above as well as anyone. If you can come up with another alternative path for him to take, I'd love to hear it.Result: Gulf War II with full international support.
Result: War. Quite possibly a glowing crater where Bagdhad once was.
Result: it is to laugh. Iraq is stomped even worse than it actually was. Perhaps even a glowing crater. (If he actually posed any real military threat to us, the war might conceivably have been justified... but nobody thought that.)
The only real terrorism Saddam has been tied to, the stipends for families of suicide bombers in Israel, was very public... because he was doing it for publicity. He doesn't gain a lot from attacking the U.S. by proxy, and if it's ever traced back to him (a significant probability, though far from a sure thing), we're back to a full-on military onslaught with widespread international support.
Result: pretty good for Saddam. He's still in charge of the county, livin' large, and he can tweak around oil prices and hurt the U.S. a bit by saber-rattling from time to time.
If we really wanted to supress "Panislamic radicalism", screw Saudi Arabia or China or whatever, we could have done it better in Afghanistan. We had international support and clear moral grounding, a populace that actually didn't like the ruling regime and really did mostly welcome us, etc. If we'd spent the kind of dough and deployed the kind of troops there that we're currently throwing at Iraq, we might actually have been able to do some real nation-building.
Just think, a democratic Islamic state. Nothing better to scare the thugocracies of the Middle East, and perhaps even inspire their people. Yes, it would have attracted the same foreign insurgents there that Iraq has, but the native populace didn't get introduced to us by infrastructure bombing. The Soviets did that, and we helped the Afghanis against them.
How much money did Bush allocate for Afghanistan in the 2004 budget? Nothing. Not a damn thing. They forgot about it.
PHEM - party like it's 1997-2003!
Low voter turnout shows the world that we don't really care about how our country is run... GET OFF YOUR LAZY ASSES & VOTE... FOR SOMEONE YOU BELIEVE IN!!!
It seems pretty obvious to me that the 'hactivists' are exactly what they profess the desire to overthrow. They are deciding that its bes tfor people not to see these websites, and therefore not decide for themselves. Some freedom fighters... If they really belived in the opposing force here, in this case the Democrats, they would be confident that their (the Dems) message, weighed against the Repub's message, would be enough for people to make a valid and respectable choice. But to say, "ets silence one of their outlets of expression, so only one side can be heard' is exactly the kind of oppression that these morons think they are fighting. What a bunch of fools.
On Topic, programmers are getting beat to death like the auto workers and steel workers in the 80's. By dimantling the middle class one industry sector at a time, the rest of the middle class ignores it. Unfo. for the elitists there's a snapback effect once a critical mass is reached. Perhaps they think by extending the process over 50 years the effect will not occur? I theorized while studying Western Cic. in HS that about 18% of the people have to get really pissed and then they start protests and then the snapback snowballs. When you see people actively attacking the elitist governemnt, then you are seeing that people are pissed. :-)
,Budget Surplus or Deficit (-) as % GDP,Cyclical Surplus or Deficit (-) as % GDP,Other Adjustments as % GDP,Surplus or Deficit (-) as % GDP,Revenues as % GDP,Outlays as % GDP,Debt (100B),Debt as % of GDP,Debt as % of Tax Income (x100),GDP (100T),Debt,Tax Income (100B),Tax Income (B),Tax Income as % of GDP (x100)
1962,-1.2,-0.4,0.1,-0.7,17.3,18,,,,,,0.5,46.5,
1963,-0.8,-0.3,-0.1,-0.6,17.5,18.1,,,,,,0.5,49.1,
1964,-0.9,0.3,0.2,-1,17,18,,,,,,0.5,46,
1965,-0.2,0.8,0.2,-0.8,16.2,17,,,,,,0.5,51.1,
1966,-0.5,1.9,0.4,-2.1,15.9,18,,,,,,0.6,58.6,
1967,-1.1,1.7,*,-2.8,16.9,19.7,,,,,,0.6,64.4,
1968,-3,1.4,0.6,-3.7,16.5,20.3,4,,4.7%,, $358.00 ,0.8,76.4,
1969,0.4,1.6,*,-1.2,17.7,18.9,4,,4.0%,, $368.00 ,0.9,91.7,
1970,-0.3,0.6,0.2,-0.6,17.8,18.4,4,,4.4%,, $389.00 ,0.9,88.9,
1971,-2.1,-0.3,0.9,-0.9,17.1,18.1,4,,4.9%,, $424.00 ,0.9,85.8,
1972,-2,*,0.3,-1.7,16.9,18.6,4,,4.2%,, $429.00 ,1.0,102.8,
1973,-1.2,1.2,0.6,-1.7,16.7,18.4,5,,4.3%,, $469.00 ,1.1,109.6,
1974,-0.4,0.7,1.3,0.1,17.7,17.6,5,0.3%,3.9%,1.5, $492.00 ,1.3,126.5,8.4%
1975,-3.3,-1.4,2,0.1,18.5,18.4,6,0.4%,4.8%,1.6, $576.00 ,1.2,120.7,7.5%
1976,-4.1,-1.4,0.8,-2,17.3,19.3,7,0.4%,4.6%,1.8, $653.00 ,1.4,141.2,7.8%
1977,-2.7,-0.6,1,-1.1,17.8,18.9,7,0.4%,4.4%,2, $718.00 ,1.6,162.2,8.1%
1978,-2.7,0.1,1.3,-1.5,17.5,19.1,8,0.3%,4.2%,2.3, $789.00 ,1.9,188.9,8.2%
1979,-1.6,0.5,1.4,-0.7,17.9,18.6,8,0.3%,3.8%,2.6, $845.00 ,2.2,224.6,8.6%
1980,-2.7,-0.7,1.6,-0.4,18.8,19.2,9,0.3%,3.7%,2.8, $930.00 ,2.5,250,8.9%
1981,-2.5,-0.9,1.2,-0.4,19.5,19.9,10,0.3%,3.5%,3.1 ," $1,028.00 ",2.9,290.6,9.4%
1982,-3.7,-2,0.7,-1.1,19.2,20.3,12,0.4%,4.1%,3.3," $1,197.00 "
National Debt (well, basically embezzlement by the politicians and their cronies) is just one reason. Take a look at the last page of this link and see pure embezzlement from our government: embezzlement?. Who's stupid enough to vote for an incumbant? Bush and Kerry are both incumbants. They should both tear their clothes, gnash their teeth, and ask the American people to pray for a better government. They don't.
I was looking at the debt before and got some numbers from various US gov. web sites. Amazingly the dis-information campaign has not shut these down. Funny thing is that it has increased ever since like 1962 but Democrats claim Clinton had a Balanced Budget. This FALSE accounting is nonsense. Ask a kid in school if spending more than you take in is a Balanced Budget. That said, the administration prior to this one did do alot better. The USA cannot afford another Republican government if you believe that relates to the debt trendline. We will be bankrupted and forced into servitude to a world government/bank. "Don't cry for me Argentina...."
First look at the situation for UK and Canada. UK
Canada
These can be graphed in Excel... I did not find a good site with the chart on the web.
Expect Freedom.
But what about
Do these guys have no shame. This is supposed to be a democracy, and they're talking about attacking a public communications channel of one of the main parties during the runup to the election. Deliberately targetting their ability to campaign during that election.
If I'm not mistaken /. ran a previous story about him getting tossed from DefCon. http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/0 8/03/1617215&tid=156&tid=172&tid=95&tid=21 8
1 426209
The report from newsforge is under Hacktivism.
http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=04/08/02/
I swear this sounds like a guy whose site I used to work on. I saw someone had posted a code snippet from their supposed DoS tool. The code looks like their caliber, shoddy. They are nothing more than an army of spotty faced kids who grew up in suburban areas, and are pissed because mommy and daddy didn't buy them a pony for their 5th birthday.
If I do find it is the same guy, I will post the URL to the Slashdot community, and you guys can sound off on their forums about what you think of their politics.
I am Bennett Haselton! I am Bennett Haselton!
"we can track individual trucks by satellite."
Satellites by definition have to obey Kepler's laws, which means where they are when is very predictable. This is why we still have spy planes.
Also, being able to track a truck has little (if anything) to do with knowing its contents. Those transporting sarin tend not to write "WMD" in big letters on top of the trailer. If anything, they're more likely to put a red crescent on the truck than anything else. This is why we need more human intelligence.
And finally, tracking something and being able to intercept it are two very different things. About the only thing US troops can do to effectively project force anywhere in Iraq right now is through airstrikes, which present new problems. Too little explosive and you have a lethal cloud of sarin wafting through the countryside. But if you use enough explosive to incinerate all the sarin, all anybody will find is a scorched piece of sheet metal with the aforementioned red crecent, which will be all over the news and convince well-intentioned locals to take up arms against the US. This is something that needs to be intercepted on the ground.
"How is it that we picked up individual "chemical weapon lab" trucks on satellite,"
Because ground intelligence was able to verify the contents of the truck beforehand, red-flagging the truck for special attention the the Reconnaisance Office.
"but missed the 370 trucks moving across the border? If they were spaced only 150 feet apart, the convoy would have stretched for more than ten miles! How did we miss that?"
Again, they tend not to write "WMD" on their trucks. Sarin is obviously not Iraq's only potential export, and it's easy enough to imagine a few "special" barrels of "oil" being shipped out here and there both in accordance with and against the Oil for Food program.
"But Sarin is not a liquid."
A weapon is all but useless if it isn't portable. Pretty much as a rule, chemical weapons are transported in liquid form and become a gas only upon use.
"and to put 2 tons of gas in compressed cylinders on a military truck would be quite a feat."
You're forgetting one of your gas laws. Why compress when you can chill?
And they wouldn't use military trucks.
"740 tons of 100 lb artillery shells is 14,800 rounds."
And you're assuming that 14,800 artillery shells is a non-negligible number of artillery shells for the former Iraqi army to have on hand.
"At 100 rounds/truck, you're still looking at 148 vehicles.
How did we miss that?"
Sit at any given point on a highway and count the number of trucks that pass by you during the course of any given day and you might have an idea.
" but rather that he tried too hard to be like the U.S. - a sovereign nation possessing weapons of strategic deterrence."
Except that the US doesn't have a consistent history of using such weapons both internationally and domesticly, doesn't have numerous UN resolutions against it, didn't have a statutory requirment to dispose of said weapons in a verifiable manor, etc.
Comparing Iraq and the US in that manner is like saying "Everybody else in the US can own a gun, why can't a convicted felon?"
In a revealing sidelight, the report quotes Richard C. Clarke -- yes, the former counterterrorism chief who has been claiming Osama bin Laden had no connection with Saddam's regime.
Yet Mr. Clarke opposed a U-2 flight to track down Osama in Afghanistan because the Pakistanis would need to be apprised of it and they, in turn, might let Osama know the Americans were about to bomb him. "Armed with that knowledge," Mr. Clarke warned, "old wily Osama will likely boogie to Baghdad." Once there, warned Clarke, he would put his terrorist network at Saddam's service, and it would be "virtually impossible" to track him down. It's all there on Page 134 of the commission's report. (Osama's actual meeting with one of Saddam Hussein's senior intelligence officers in late 1994 or early 1995 is mentioned earlier, on Page 61.)
If that's not enough to establish a Saddam-Osama connection, Mrs. Lincoln could take up the matter with Lee Hamilton, vice chairman of the September 11 Commission.
"I don't think it's selfish, to eat defenseless shellfish." -NOFX
Maybe by then some of the nations will be kind enough to absolve us of some debt like we have done to countless other nations, specifically those in Europe.
And, along the same lines, you will be kind enough to absolve many developing nations from their debts, which in their cases mean a majority of their population living in crippling, often-fatal poverty?
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
By the way, the parent's numbers seem to come from the CIA World Factbook.
Arent' these Reloading apps similar to DOS apps?
I know that you really mean DoS apps. Seriously, you call them DOS apps and idiots will think you are talking about fscking MS-DOS.
Hacking the republican website: morally fine with me, legally not so much. At least they aren't SPAMMERS: I had to halt service at our free email server http://friscomail.org because of a Nigerian Scammer/Spammer. (Help me stop this guy - all the info is on the front page.) Personally I'd rather see the authorities go after these type of people instead of the blackhats mentioned in this article. Honestly though, is shutting down the Rep. site really going to do much other than cause inconvenience? It's the DieBold machines that need to be "taken care of"...
Yeah, but who is going to call in our debts? Given our military supremacy, actually having to caugh up that 6 tril isn't going to be an immediate problem.
The real financial problem for the US is not the debt itself, but related to the debt.
For the past several decades, the US could get out of financial troubles by simply printing more money. Since we had the only currency that was universally accepted as a unit of international monetary excange, this seldom caused the kind of inflation it should have. Now that the Euro is challenging the Dollar as the international currency of choice, and east Asia is talking about a unified currency, it's unlikely that we'll be able to continue this strategy.
For a long time now, money has been growing on trees for the federal government, and that's stopping fast. This could spell real danger for the US economy.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
I think that "We want to bombard (the Republican sites) with so much traffic that nobody can get in" says it all. Intent is not hard to get when they announce it.
Erm, not really. The neocons are in firm control of the GOP. The greens are not anywhere near in control of the Democratic Party. While there has been a resurgence in the liberal/progressive wing of the party, there are still a lot of moderates in the leadership. If you vote for Bush, you're voting for a neocon agenda. If you vote for Kerry, you're voting for a moderate liberal agenda.
Perhaps you should also wake the fuck up and realize that this whole mideast strategy IS NOT ABOUT WMD IN IRAQ. It's about forcibly killing Panislamic radicalism over the next several decades, perhaps in a generation, without letting it run its natural course over the next 2 to 3 centuries.
.. I don't know what that is called. fascist?
Wait... first you were talking about the justification to invade Iraq, and now you are alluding to some higher strategy.
Why not just tell the TRUTH? Why does the Bush administration need to LIE about the reasons for going to war. This is a democracy, not a fascist state, and the people must be trusted to make the right choices democratically. To believe that the government may/should take unilateral action in spite of the electorate is well...
Why have 9/11 and "Iraq" been discussed in the same context? Not because, as some liberals mindlessly drone that Bush and his "cronies" wanted to "fool" the American people into thinking that Iraq was directly involved in 9/11 (and no one in the administration has EVER said anything of the sort;
So 70% of the american people simply decided to believe that connection for no reason. SOMEONE was putting the thought into the minds of the public.
additionally, Iraq does have proven ties with al-Qaeda, even while NOT having been involved in 9/11 - but that ridiculously misses the point!);
And the point was stated that "Saddam Hussein is an iminent threat".... Saddam Hussein was a secular leader, and while he was a brutal dictator and an asshole, he was also helping to prevent the spread of islamic fundamentalism. Which is the reason America supported Saddam until the time he stepped out of line and invaded another dictatorship known as Kuwait.
rather, they're talked about in the same breath because 9/11 is but a mere taste of what the US and Western Europe can expect if the problems in the mideast at large aren't dealt with preemptively. (Oops, is that a dirty word?)
Dealing with a problem in such a self aggrandizing , unilateral and dishonest way, just throws fuel onto the fire. You honestly think, kicking the shit out of Saddam Hussein has weakened radical islam? And now to follow it up, with some farce of a show trial... this only weakens the bonds between democratic nations on earth and gives the enemy more opportunities for attack.
Hussein should be handed over to the Hague.
"pre-emption" is not a dirty word when applied to a bona fide iminent threat, but it is a polite way to say "war of aggression" when applied pointlessly to a non-threat (some 12 or so years late), and results in self-aggrandizement (i.e. restricting reconstruction contracts to coalition member based companies only, does not help Iraq, it lessens competition, raises the cost of reconstruction, and rewards coalition members).
Democracies go to war because of what is right and good. Not in order to earn cash prizes. It is morally offensive.
And certain multi-national corporations with very close ties to the Bush administration benefited splendidly from the war in Iraq. It is a conflict of interest. It smells like corruption. And it is certain to weaken the unity of democracies around the world, and give the enemy the chance to strike.
9/11 CHANGED the threshold for dealing with things that could potentially execute devastating blows to the US, and to our economy with which our prosperity and our very lives are so dependent.
I dont see how 9/11 did that at all. Military strategists knew of the posibility for such an attack. Everyone knew of such possibilities.
9/11 changed the threshold for censorship and removing civil liberties and silencing dissent among all those who have differing opinions. And I'm not talking about the opinions of terrorists. I'm talking about the opinions of law abiding citizens who aren't morons, and when you claim to have proof, expect to see proof.
So
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
Well when you owe that much money there isn't much they can do to you because if you default on it they quite possibly could go out of business.
It is said that if you owe a million dollars you have a big problem, but if you owe 100 million dollars the bank has a big problem.
Scale that up to ~6 trillion dollars and draw your own conclusion.
One group of wackos doesn't mind sacrificing me to advance their cause. The other group might make me poorer, and my ecnomy less efficient, but at least I will be alive and able to enjoy my life of poverty...
Together, we will drive the rats from the tundra.
I hold no brief for Kerry, he's not my kind of politician, he doesn't appear to share my values, and he hasn't been tough enough against the current administration. But I'm absolutely amazed at the level of lies and distortions the right is willing to entertain to try to discredit him.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
I'm not trying to criticize you here, but I think I should post a correction: your post is only really meaningful if one does two things:
1. Count only governmental aid. The U.S. is different from most other Western countries in that we are not a centralized, government-controlled society (although admittedly we become more so every year). The percentage of private vs. government aid is much higher for the U.S. that it is for most other countries.
2. Ignore perhaps the most colossal subsidy of all: Defense. For 50 years, the only thing preventing the Red Army from pouring through the Fulda Gap and into Western Europe, or the North Koreans from smashing through the DMZ into South Korea, was the U.S. military. Same situation vis-a-vis China and Taiwan. Freed from the colossal burden of defense spending, those countries used their resources instead to develop stable polities, healthy economies and the freedom to bitch about the U.S. everytime something goes wrong.
- Alaska Jack
After reading the posts on this particular topic, I'm amazed at how quickly the /. community retreats to the rhetorical (albeit slightly better researched and intelligent) arguments on both sides of the Bush vs. Kerry argument.
I'm not going to advocate either candidate here as I don't really think it really matters. Both men have questionable service records during the Vietnam war. I know that service speakes to the character of each man, but just how relevant is a three decades old cold-war conflict to the modern world with regard to the completely different "war on terror"?
The grim reality we need to face is that Bush and Kerry are actually two sides to the same damn coin. Is your real tax burden really going to go down under either administration? Is the government going to be less intrusive under either administration? John Kerry hasn't met a tax increase or bigger governmental progam he didn't like. George W. Bush signed on one of the largest entitlements in over 30 years. While Bush did manage to get tax cuts handed out, how many of us felt a real impact? How many of us really believe that the cause of liberty (which I differentiate from freedom to include a measure of responsibility) will be championed by either man?
Bottom line is with either man, your taxes will go up (if you live here anyway), the government will increase its size, scope, and intrusiveness, and neither man will work toward true liberty for the citizens of the US.
Sure, John Kerry will not appoint someone as scary as Ashcroft as Attorney General, but he will appoint an equally scary Janet Reno clone. Political Correctness will be the blinders Mr. Kerry will strap on each of us to blind us from the harsh realities he doesn't believe we're capable of handeling.
On the other hand, George W. Bush won't hasten the demise of free speech via PC activism, but will use national security to the same end the blinders Mr. Kerry would see implemented. Neither man believes we the people are capable of managing our own lives and protection.
Sure GWB lowered taxes and I've heard the various arguments for and against them (left: only the rich get tax cuts, right: the rich pay the bulk of the taxes so who else should get the cuts) ad nauseum, ad infinitum. Kerry has said he'd repeal the Bush tax cuts, he's raised taxes every times he's been asked, so I believe he'll do it again. Bush tells us that the he wants the tax cuts to be permanent, but increases entitlement spending. Neither candidate is interested in really reducing the tax burden on most families. That would mean cutting too deeply into pet projects of our various congresscritters.
Why is there even a debate here about taxes? What governmental agency has gotten anything right in the past 30 years? We dump more and more money into social problems only to find them getting worse. Why not try a different approach? Oh yeah, beacuase both parties have a vested interest in getting people addicted to the heroine that is government assistance. Neither party wants to see Americans independant, able to successfully function on their own, and provide for their families needs. Republicans want us to need them for personal protection and to be good little consumers, and Democrats want us to need them for everything else.
Under either candidate's adminstrations we'll still have to deal with Ridges Retards poking around our personal possessions at airports. Under either candidate, the war on terror will take a surprisingly similar look and feel as the war on drugs. Color coded alert levels are now a permanent fixture of life here in the USA. Neither candidate will lift a finger to attempt to discredit the animating ideas that inflames those who would do us harm. While Kerry would capitulate to world opinion before acting and allow terrorists the exclusive right to the use of force, Bush's approach tends to feed fuel to the fire.
A vote for Kerry means higher taxes, a PC system designed to inhibit thoughtful int
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
Page 61 of the report says:
Using your definition of "contact" and "connection" Donald Rumsfeld himself is clearly in on the putative al Qaeda-Iraq network formed from these "contacts" and "connections".
If you met with someone who slept with my wife and perhaps even discussed infidelity, would I have have cause to attack you because of the "connection" between you and the adulterer?
Not that I think that there weren't legitimate reasons for a well-planned attack on Saddam, but I hate this use of vague language to avoid having to a call a spade a spade: we attacked Saddam Hussein because we didn't like what he was doing in Iraq. It didn't have the slightest bit to do with any realistic threats to the US.
>>Aren't you forgetting about that little skirmish called World War II in which the Americans liberated Spain?
Aren't you forgetting that little skirmish called the Spanish Civil War which kept Spain out of that little skirmish called World War II?
"If you vote for Kerry, you're voting for a moderate liberal agenda."
Moderate liberal agenda? From the guy with the most liberal voting record in the Senate? Even farther left than Teddy "nutjob" Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton.
The media can't harp on how invading Afghanistan was a bad idea, that's why. They would if they could, but there would be viewer outrage.
I don't know if you noticed, but the media like to simplify everything. Much like how they boil down the Iraq question to "WMD or not" -- not even touching on WMD intent.
Osama is in Pakistan, more than likely.
Actually, most opposers of the war in Iraq have been against it since before day one -- well before any reconstruction efforts.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
What is funny is that in all the discussion groups, newsgroups, etc. I frequent the liberals, notice I did not say democrats, constantly blame bush for everything....even for their irregularity. They blame republicans for using Nazi tactics, censorship and hundreds of other things that they do not do. It sounds like the paranoid ramblings of the John Birch society of the 50' & 60's.
When Sandy Berger was caught with his hands in the cookie jar, so to speak, even liberal democrat came out and dodged any questions about it being right or wrong and blamed bush for anything that would get the reporters off the subject.
What is worse is they always talk of freedom of speech but then in the same post say that republicans should not be allowed to talk or use their free speech. They state that republicans are Nazis and should have to wear patches to indicate in public that they are, that no one should do business with republican owned business and that republican should be kicked out of America so it will be the land of the free. Some radicals even talk of killing all republicans. I guess these liberals are unsure of the meaning of the word Nazi.
Wake up democrats! The liberals are going to make sure Kerry loses in November. I guarantee that if the liberals remain in control of the party they will insure a Bush win. Take your party back from these people or Bush will be here another 4 years.
While it is fashionable to claim to support free speech, only a tiny minority of people actually support free speech. Some people want campaign finance reform (esentially limiting how much people can donate to a party, so that only the two big parties can get enough money to advertize), some people want to ban advertizements against products they feel are bad (cigarettes, for example). Some people want to ban "hate speech". Left wing people and right wing people want to ban pornography, either because it "exploits women", or "is against the bible".
And now there are people on the left who are so angry about the Iraq War and The Patriot Act that they are willing to abandon the principle of free speech to win votes for... well... to win votes for someone else who wholeheartedly supported the Iraq War and Patriot Act.
When are people going to learn that it isn't some secret cabal of evil facists who are destroying free speech? It is people like your typical Slashdot reader who thinks they are enlightened and opened minded and support free speech, but who are willing to make exceptions for whatever speech they want to ban. YOU, the person reading this right now, more likely than not does not support freedom of speech.
As a Libertarian sitting on the sideline, I find it very amusing that democrats/liberals that always tout how 'tolerant' they are are always the ones that are so intollerant of their opponent's viewpoint.
Case in point, the idiot quoted in this article.
The SBLfB are at odds with people who actually served with Kerry, official US Navy records, their own past statements, and cold hard reality.
A systematic take-down of Swift Boat Liars. They don't even past the laugh test.
As "Insightful" as the parent post might be, it doesn't answer a few obvious questions:
Here are a few small-minded, sound-bite-friendly answers, planted deliberately to provoke small-minded, sound-bite-friendly hatred:
Attack its weak point for massive damage!
You could use similar logic to that of the Republican who penned the original diatribe to argue that miscellananeous politician you don't like voted to abolish the military, or voted to abolish schools, simply by finding an omnibus bill that includes, amongst other things, funding for either that the politician voted against. The probable reason the Repug who penned the thing cut and pasted earlier didn't is because it would be even more obviously bogus.
Finally, Snopes is not attacking the Republicans at the end, it's pointing out that the diatribe it's debunking doesn't add up. It's somewhat absurd for any party to accuse the other of trying to sink some weapon system, when that other party has never, in practice, done anything of the sort, and when the party making the accusation has actually made a conscious decision to abolish these things.
If you've read Snopes for any length of time, you'll note any bias tends to be to the right, not left, blindly republishing gushing glurge about Bush with a truth sticker despite a lack of any reason why anyone would want to find out the "truth" about it. In this case though, they've found the facts don't fit the accusation.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.