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Bush Website Blocked Outside N. America
acey72 writes "The BBC News are
reporting that George W Bush's re-election website (don't bother if you aren't in the USA) is blocked to people accessing it from outside the USA. Netcraft spotted the change on Monday, and have a report on the matter. Oh well, at least John Kerry's site still works for us outlanders." At least some Canadians can access the Bush campaign site, but Europeans cannot (without going through a U.S. proxy).
Does it have a forum, or a feedback system? It could be that they were getting a lot of, ahem, abusive messages from non-US citizens and decided this was the best way to curb them. Has anyone actually asked the admins?
Either way BFD. Political websites are almost entirely content or truth free. Why bother reading them?
Given the previous attacks by Cyber-Terroists (eg: those few odd groups protesting the RNC) I'm not surprised. If they limit the connections to US only it'll be alot easier to track them down.
Your hair look like poop, Bob! - Wanker.
Well, at least they didnt block the voter registration sites too. Oh wait...
So its not a routing table thing then, they are actually doing it from the web server. Crazy.
It makes me wonder, how are they doing it and if they got all the IP blocks for non-us countries, or if they just went by "blocking APNIC and RIPE blocks"
I have a theory this has to do with people defacing the site in the last week of the campaign. It's probably nothing personal, and besides, to be blunt the world has no say in the American president so this really isn't an issue. People shouldn't take offense to this, because if some 17 year old kid defaces the site in the last days of the election it is going to be broadcast around the world and make W look bad.
By limiting access you are only allow 1/24 (300,000,000/6,000,000,000) of the world to see the site and thus limiting the chance of attack by 23/24.
This doesn't surprise me since most of Europe has let it be known that they don't like W.
... though it's a little off-message.
.co.uk site: http://www.georgewbush.co.uk/
:-)
So's the
Seems that Dubya's put on a bit of weight, too.
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
I'm in Indianapolis, but I work for a Swedish company so my net traffic looks like it's coming from Sweden. "Access Denied"!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
When setting up a site on Akamai you have to set the origin (I've done many of these!).
This still works, ripe for a DDOS... origin.georgewbush.com
If they haven't blocked it at the router, and they webserver is configured to to accept the connection and serve up an "access denied" page, then no, they have not done this to prevent DOS attacks.
Actually, it is possible that their sys admin is incredibly incompetent, and thinks he's doing this to prevent DOS attacks.
Besides, I'm not being told not to interfere in elections by the people who installed Pinochet, OK?
That would be Charlie Brooker, comedian, right? You're aware of the concept of humour, right? OK, this isn't very funny, but it is clearly a joke.
Incidentally, About 15 years ago Ben Elton did *precisely* this joke about Margaret Thatcher. On national television, while dressed as Guy Fawkes (a terrorist, albeit a 17th century one, who attempted to blow up Parliament). Nobody cared, because we are not a nation of humorless retards, and we can detect a joke, and react appropriately.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Right now it's heavily debated. Unless, of course, you watch Fox "News" and think Iraq orchestrated 9/11 (sadly, there are plenty of people who believe this). Also, I'm pretty sure we were still committing genocide on the Native Americans after 1812. And then there's the various covert ops the US has conducted, specifically the cases where the US has assassinated democratically elected leaders and installed America-friendly dictators.
Take off the blinders.
It seems like some of the Bush campaign staffers have accidentally sent emails to colleagues at name@georgewbush.ORG instead of the correct name@georgewbush.COM. Fortunately, the georgewbush.org mailserver had a "catch-all" mailbox in place, and you can read the contents of this "Dead Letter Office". There are some gems in there, like memos intended for Karl Rove, a weekly report from "Pennsylvania Evangelical Outreach", and even apparent evidence of illegal suppression of black votes (check out Caging1.xls).
Interesting ... very interesting.
So this web site nonsense is probably more of the same. "Non Americans? Who needs 'em!"
This could backfire. There is something like 3 million or more americans eligible to vote living overseas. Normally the vote turnout is low (30% or lower) due to the extra trouble of having to do an absentee ballot, and heavily slanted towards the republicans due to the large number of military personal that are stationed overseas. Interestingly there has been a massive upswing in voter registration and requests for absentee ballots for overseas voters due to how close the last election was, and how important overseas votes became (http://msnbc.msn.com/id/6342710/). Expect a large increase in overseas voting this election, and so a need by the candidates to attract that vote. So it isn't really smart to actively snub those voters by blocking them from your website.
From then article: "the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam"
Words fail me.
Anyone care to guess how many "temporary proxies" will go up between now and election day so people overseas can see what Bush is really up to?
This may have been a good financial decision, but it's a lousy political one. It just invites "what do you have to hide" backlash.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
You'd be right if they were using the sort of setup you are describing, but they aren't. The Fine Article says they're using Akamai, which means there is no "they [sic] webserver."
On they chance you don't know, Akamai uses a world-wide mesh of webservers to serve up their client's sites. And since the site is full of video and such, one would expect this move to greatly reduce bandwidth expenses.
Regarding competence; glass houses, stones, etc.
-Peter
What about the American Citizens who live outside of the United States? Why should they not be allowed to view Bush's campaign site? What about the soldiers in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Korea?
More votes for the opponents, I guess . . .
"Falacious" has too positive a sounding word for the content of your statements here, so I'll stick with the ever reliable "bullshit."
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A) Late term abortion isn't promoted by anyone except for the reason of the mother's health. There aren't any abortion advocates really trying to argue about things after the third trimester. This issue is a total red herring, and it's intended effect is to make the entire issue of abortion about killing babies as opposed to flushing a non-viable bundle of cells.
"The CDC estimates that 58 percent of legal abortions occur within the first eight weeks of gestation, and 88 percent are performed within the first 12 weeks. Only 1.5 percent occur after 20 weeks (CDC, 2003)."
(Feel free to argue the bias of the source, I'll find another: http://www.plannedparenthood.org/library/facts/ab
STATISTICALLY INSIGNIFICANT, but propaganda-wise it's a goldmine. Your graphic description is just an emotional ploy, totally unrelated to the actual facts of the debate. However, this seems to be a successful trend with the current administration, so I can't fault you for jumping on the rhetorical bandwagon.
Let's face it, the fundamental issue is when someone becomes a person. Since there is a fair percentage of us who don't buy the bible's explanation, and some others who don't buy the doctor's explanation ('cause you know, they're only doctors), we have to discuss it in the middle. The plan that the anti-abortion team has is to get anything they can into law that talks about the life of the fetus near the edge of the current grey area so that they have a beachhead to argue from. Same argument as killing a pregnant mother counting as a double murder. Certainly not supported by current abortion law, but they figure if they can sneak it into criminal law they can work it around eventually.
Personally, I think you should be able to abort until the end of potty training.
B) Ok, the Kerry thing has to be just trolling but I'll bite.
First, no one can deny that the situation in Iraq after the invasion is totally borked, most especially the total lack of international support.
Second, no one can deny that John Kerry's military service, whatever it is, is orders of magnitude more real than George Bush's, whatever it is. The guy actually carried a gun and shot people he could see. I'm pretty certain that gives a person important perspective on the concept of war.
The current administration is so full of chickenhawks they had to build a database to hold them. http://www.nhgazette.com/cgi-bin/NHGstore.cgi?use
C) Here's the most important thing you're missing. Iraq and abortion aren't that important issues in my mind. A president who consistently lies to the American public about important issues (jizz in the oval office being a not-important issue, for instance), and who surrounds himself with people who do the same, is not qualified for the job. People support Kerry not because he's pro-abortion but because he seems like less of a liar than the current guy.
Hey, this is my first angry slashdot post! Now where's my ribbon?
dea9
This mornings WSJ, Wall Street Journal, had an article about how large numbers of American's living over-seas have not recieved their absentee ballots, also I just stumbled across this story about how even people living localy haven't recieved ballots.
My Magic Eight Ball says "outlook not good", 60,000 missing absentee ballots, in one county. Imagine what it must be like nationaly?
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
You might be ineterested to hear what the magazine American Conservative has to say on it. http://www.amconmag.com/12_15_03/feature.html
No, but you sure can blame Bush for the failed coup in Venezuela on April 11th, 2002. The motive seems to have been the same as the one in Iran.
Well if you're looking at one of the other candidates, let me counter your parents' view of Kerry.
c ci/
He was a well-respected prosecutor in Boston for a number of years and won some big cases against organized crime figures.
When he entered the Senate in the mid-80's, he was instrumental in the investigations that became Iran-contra. Oliver North hates Kerry with a passion, but without Kerry, North would probably be just another retired Marine.
He exposed and almost single-handedly brought down BCCI, which was a Jordan-based bank that was not much more than a front for money laundering for terrorist groups and drug dealers. The bank had influence with powerful people on both sides of the aisle in Congress and the Reagan/Bush administrations, and Kerry was repeatedly stonewalled in his investigation. Kerry persevered, and eventually the bank was shut down. The people involved with this bank are some names you might recognize: Manuel Noriega, Oliver North, Henry Kissingere and Osama bin Laden.
The bank also made a $25 million investment to bail out George Bush's Harken Energy.
Some more material on Kerry and BCCI:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/1992_rpt/b
http://www.alternet.org/election04/20268/
Kerry also was instrumental in restoring relations between the US and Vietnam, and he and John McCain helped settle the POW/MIA issue. McCain initially disliked Kerry for his anti-war past, but the two are now good friends.
Kerry does not have his name on much legislation, but from the above you can see that he is more of an 'investigative' senator than a 'legislative' one. You can take that as a plus or a minus, but he has shown the following that Bush obviously lacks;
1. He has the intellectual stamina to get to the bottom of extremely complex issues, and does not gloss over the details like Bush.
2. Despite what the Bush camp says, he will not be intimidated and will never back down from a cause he feels to be right. Kerry is truly resolute; Bush is just stubborn.
3. Kerry will not save someone's ass just because they are a Democrat. Prominent Democrats urged him to drop his BCCI probe, but he would not.
4. Kerry will (and has, with BCCI) go after terrorists orginazations with more than an M-1 tank. Bush's approach has no historical precedent for victory; no terrorist organization has ever been defeated by military force alone. Ask the British why the couldn't eradicate the IRA, and ask the Israelis how they are doing agains Hamas. You can only succeed if you're prepared to slaughter the entire population that is sympathetic to them.
My opinion is that Kerry will make an exemplary president given the chance. He's not perfect, but I'm not going to list his faults here - the Bush campaign is listing some of them, and making up others.