Slashdot Mirror
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).
though it's a little off-message.
From the article:
On 21 October, the George W Bush website began using the services of a company called Akamai to ensure that the pages, videos and other content on its site reaches visitors.
Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision was taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.
He said the site may see no reason to distribute content to people who will not be voting next week.
Managing traffic could also be a good way to ensure that the site stays working in the closing days of the election campaign.
And:
However, simply blocking non-US visitors also means that Americans overseas are barred too.
Ok, yeah, that's the ONE thing that might be pertinent, and might be arguable.
Otherwise, there's always this, and this, and this, and, um, the whole rest of the internet and every other available source of information in print, television, radio, and so on, on Earth.
This is a political campaign site with political campaign propaganda. And since there are still an extremely wide variety of ways to get at its content and information from outside the US, it's obviously not some kind of "international censorship". (C'mon, slashdot! I know you can come up with some crazy shit!) Even the Netcraft guy realizes that. It's not like the New York Times, or critical news information, is suddenly blocked. Hell, within the last week, they had to start using Akamai! That alone should prove to a normal person that there are clearly traffic concerns at play. They have little to no obligation to serve anyone outside of the US, with the statistically negligible exception of US citizens outside the US.
Ok, slashdot, let's see who can come up with the best off-the-wall looney conspiracy theories to twist this around as a malicious, underhanded tactic, and some kind of "proof" that Bush is evil incarnate! While you're at it, explain to me how it's right for the Guardian to encourage its UK readers, i.e., not US citizens, to start a letter writing and email campaign to Ohioans encouraging them to vote for John Kerry, or, better yet, calling for the assassination of the sitting US president! (Even as a "joke".)
In a regular column in The Guardian newspaper's Saturday TV listings magazine, Charlie Brooker described Bush in scathing terms, and concluded: "John Wilkes Booth, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley Jr., where are you now that we need you?"
3... 2... 1...
Go!
How much of a solid foreign policy this guy has.
Let's get one thing perfectly clear, I did not vote for George W Bush, and I do not endorse what he does or says.
"
Works from Montreal, Canada... Are we considered the 51st state? Can we vote? :)
Remember the year 2000? They promised us flying cars. They delivered the PT Cruiser...
Now he can safely discuss security issues!
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
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.
Does anyone see this as anything other than stupid? I mean, he's blocking all overseas absentee voters, and he's not exactly making himself look good to the rest of the world. Of course, come to think about it, he really hasn't done that in the past either. ;^)
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
For those of us with non-US IPs, and who still have some hankering to actually visit the site, then Proxify will let you view. Be warned though, it shows NSFW text ads as well.
Then he's going to get blocked on my site in reply.
What's George W. Bush's IP? Anyone know?
Blearf. Blearf, I say.
people actually read the lies on any politicians re-election or election web page? i'm a bush fan, but i've taken a look at both bush's and kerry's web pages, and they are both so full of crap it's unreal. so honestly, who cares if you can't read lies? go on a search (google) for the truth, and make up your own mind on what you believe to be true, not what you are told is truth.
President Bush Supporter
Geez, at least put up a sensible message like "To reduce traffic load non-US visitors will see blah blah blah". Despite the fact that non-Americans aren't voting you should at least have some half decent PR.
But how will Tony Blair know what to do next?
I bet that the Saudis still have access to the site. I mean, he has to get campaign contributions somehow, right?
Isn't this like a textbook example of institutional racism?
There's been a spat of vandalism on
Bush campaign offices. The folks who
run the campaign are probably calculating
that a DoS attack on the web site is likely,
and mostly like to originate from foreign
countries where Bush is very unpopular.
Not having the web site available for the next
few days could be devastating.
Though I've never felt the need to visit Bush's re-election website, it seems to be quite available through Coral even for us europeans. Dog slow, though.
Quality, performance, value; you get only two, and you don't always get to pick.
Well, at least they didnt block the voter registration sites too. Oh wait...
I live in Guam, and I can't access the site either. It's a US territory, so the citizens aren't allowed to vote in presidential elections, but it's still part of the US and, as it happens, I'm from VA so I'm eligible to vote. Although by absentee ballot wouldn't be counted until after the results are tallied anyway, so what's the point.
Not that I'd vote for Bush. Or Kerry. May they both Rot in Peace.
In some way it makes financial sense, by cutting bandwidth costs. They're mostly excluding people that can't vote for you anyway. On the other hand, they're excluding American voters overseas, maybe not such a smart thing. And it's bound to generate bad publicity. Maybe not such a bright idea as they originally thought.
Well, the hackers will never think of using this one https://georgewbush.com/
perl -e 'print $i=pack(c5, (41*2), sqrt(7056), (unpack(c,H)-2), oct(115), 10);'
So what?
There are already enough anti-Bush people that will take ANY change as some sort of big fuck-the-world gesture from the Bush camp. And of course despite that fact that nobody knows for sure WHY this has been implemented there will 1000 conspiracy theories posted, and dozens of pro-Kerry propaganda garbage as well.
Until there is enough information to actually discuss the topic with facts I'm not really interested...
-This sig intentionally left blank
Mike Prettejohn, president of Netcraft, speculated that the blocking decision was taken to cut costs, and traffic, in the run-up to the election on 2 November.
Sadly, a link was then posted to Slashdot, increasing costs and traffic.
Bush uses Microsoft IIS + ASP and only recently has switched to Akamai
...
...
Kerry uses LAMP and has been on Akamai for sometime now
We already know which IT dept has won
Sunny Dubey
If you're referring to military personel, they route through domestic (US) networks and wouldn't be affected.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
... why not visit this list, which includes country of operation.
Unlike the hoodwinked American public, I think the Saudis know quite well what they're buying.
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.
It's not like any of them visit the site. And why should anyone outside the U.S. care for the same reason. It's not like they are using Bush's site as a reference. They should be more concerned if Moore's or Soro's site is blocked.
They're actually only blocking georgewbush.com, not the IP 65.172.163.222 which the domainname points to.
So http://65.172.163.222 works fine abroad.
Silly ISP.
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
Is there a chance that this is accidental? I mean I'm living in Helsinki, and both Bush and Kerry posters are appearing at bus-stops, probably for expats who are eligible to vote...
Seems silly to spend money on an poster campaign, and then block your website...
There are no votes in Leipzig
And most expats will vote for John Kerry anyway
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
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
The REAL George Dubya Bush was blocked from the rest of the world.. we'd be fine!
I am the maverick of Slashdot
That citizens of the US living overseas can file absentee ballots. (Although it may be too late for that now, not sure.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
Google cache and Archive.org
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
First: I get spam on a regular basis from georgewbush.com, and it's *not forged*. Dubya's a spammer.
Now this.
Way to alienate users, Dubya.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I haven't probed the details of the 'site block' but it seems extremely stupid. If the intention is to block """terrorists""" from attacking the website, it's very lame. It's probably a combo of dumb ideas that further demonstrate their "ostrich head in the sand" mentality. foriegn countries might refute the lies on the website and report it, although I think we got a pretty good handle on that. they probably don't want foreign people laughing too hard at the bullshit being fed to half the country (while they happily eat it and ask for more). but of course, all one needs to do is check out google cache or find a SIMPLE proxy server inside the USA. It's kinda like how Ashlee Simpson asked on her website "Ok you people know the internet, I'm going to get rid of all these videos posted on other websites, how do i delete them?". kinda the same thing, except the fate of planet earth is a hanging chad...
I know I'm going to be modded up on this
You think the world was wrong to remove the Taliban from power in Afghanistan?
Saving bandwidth? The Bush campaign has raised hundreds of millions of dollars--who cares about a couple hundred or thousand more a month spent on bandwidth when you're buying in multi-gb blocks anyway?
I'm living in the UK and have been for years. It would be nice to be able to view his site, if only because he has a chance (against my vote and wishes) of becoming president so it is important I know about his views, and I be able to see, for example, copies of the ads that I cannot view because I do not get US TV.
If I was undecided, like some of my collegues, I as a NJ resident are entitled to waive my secret ballot and vote by fax up until election day (some states allow this). If you are living abroad I encourage you to do this asap by going to http://www.fvap.gov/pubs/onlinefpca.pdf and following the instructions on the form. As long as the fax is received by 2 Nov, and the real ballot is received no more than I think 1 week later, that vote is valid and will be counted (well, possibly, given past experience). The fact that actual voters both civilians and potentially military personel (even if all on-base traffic went through US proxies, which is dubius, as people might feel more comfortable using the net at a cafe or otherwise off base) will be denied valuable information that is needed to make an informed electoral decision. Given that US citizens via taxes and other means provide matching funds for those candidates, what this essentially means is that we can't see the fruits of something we helped, however indirectly, fund, and by extension, create(georgewbush.com).
Also, we need to understand that whomever is elected US President has a great deal of influence not only on Americans--so it would be a positive move, in the spirit of liberty and transparency, for those abroad to be able to view the information surrounding someone's candidacy, even if those persons cannot vote.
The bottom line is that actively seeking to prevent the dissemination of information about candidates for an election as important as the US Presidential election, when we know that cost is not an issue for the campaigns, speaks volumes about the candidate and his views. It is in keeping with the tradition of the Patriot act, fingerprinting and photographing even those US vistors from countries that do not require a visa to enter the US.
I don't know why the Campaign is doing this; it's an idiot decision that can only produce severely negative PR outside the US (as if more of this was needed--we're not the most popular team in town even in the UK) and probably within the US as well. Perhaps the reason is that Bush is writing off the expatriate vote anyway (military aside, it's overwhelmingly democratic / liberal) and feels that his views are providing too much ammunition to anti-us views abroad. Blocking access, though, is a childish, counter-productive, and heavy handed solution.
But from George W.--who would expect any less?They think Kerry is terrible, that he has never done a single useful thing in his political career, which he built entirely on 4 months of military service, etc.
That's funny, especially since Kerry enlisted in the Navy in 1966 and wasn't discharged until 1970. He spent four months in Vietnam, from 11/68 to 4/69 as part of that duty.
Here's a simplified timeline if you're interested in more.
You're special forces then? That's great! I just love your olympics!
There are websites outside the US? huh...ya learn something new everyday.
Save money!?
Either you haven't thought about it, or you're deranged or you're on the best crack I've ever seen.
SAVE MONEY?
These are the folks who with two weeks to go had something in excess of 50 MILLION dollars in the bank? The hosting costs are so trivial, they equate to the cost of a sandwitch bag for the average person. Not a cost one would even think about.
Even if the hosting cost added up to an additional 100K for 10 days, which I can't even imagine, I'll bet GWB could pay that out of his own pocket without any undue hardship.
===
The 2004 Republican National Convention cost almost $154 million dollars to stage, according to a detailed report filed with the Federal Election Commission. Most of the $58 million spent by the city on police and other services will be reimbursed by the federal government. Expenses included $301,460 in limousine services, $207,000 on the balloon drop finale, and $7, 000 on coffee and donuts for host committee staff and police officers. The bulk of the cost has been covered by private donations with the largest single contributor emerging as New York City's own Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, donating $5 million in cash and $2 million in legal and accounting fees. Other contributors include Goldman Sachs ($1.2 million) and Merrill Lynch ($1.1 million). The mayor stated, "The numbers will basically show that it's good news for the city. We raised all the money privately."
===
So, they can spend $207,000 on the balloon drop, but hosting the website for the whole world would cost too much.
Uh, right...
Sheesh,
Greg
And why should anyone outside the U.S. care for the same reason.
This is just a wild guess, but maybe they want to learn more about Bush's policies?
You don't need to be a Bush-worshipper to want to look at his website. In fact, those who believe that Bush is God have very little need to do any research at all. But those who have an open mind tend to want to make decisions for themselves.
That entire post was completely irrelevant and the attitude you displayed in making it is a prime example of the reason more rational people are afraid of the generally clueless, incoherent, and ignorant folks who are voting for Bush next week.
Regardless of whether the Iraqis are happier, angrier, sadder, or just completely disinterested is irrelevant. You would have to be a singularly brainless individual to argue that the U.S. election is not affecting them, which is where the grandparent post's point starts and ends despite your rather sad attempt at turning it into a giant partisan pissing match.
You need to be modded offtopic for that post at which point I'm sure you will whine that you are being "repressed" by "evil liberals" on slashdot.
The rurmor was started by Declan McCullagh of Wired Magazine.
http://www.sethf.com/gore/
Hollow words will burn and hollow men will burn.
That's your flash player : either uninstall this crap (preferred method) or update it!
And I suspect that even if Jesus Christ came out of the sky escorted by angels playing harps and trumpets, and said "I support John Kerry", 50% of republicans would still say "bah, liberal messiah bias" and vote Bush anyway.
Seriously... "Blessed are the Peacemakers" ring any bells? No? Okay, then let's bomb the only country in the middle east that isn't in bed with al Qaeda. Check? wow, we don't have enough jobs, but we're leading the world in screwing ourselves. Great, great.
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
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.
> and wasn't discharged until 1970
And by all appearances wasn't HONORABLY discharged until President Carter's general amensty in 1977. Of course we can't be sure since Kerry still refuses to sign the release for his military records to be made public.
Democrat delenda est
Those Iraqis?
How about these Iraqis? Is their life better since being "liberated"? Do they count?
Speak truth to power.
Unipeak proxy link
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I know domestic companies that blackhole traffic from overseas IP spaces for security reasons. Not "security" as in "we don't want you reading our page", but as in "quit trying to login to our ssh daemons and run http://../scripts/cmd.exe 200 times a night from .kr and .ca and .jp". Folks, this is not news. If anything, they're safeguarding the site against intrusions. I'm surprised people overseas can even PING it.
.ru can't get off of a dozen other places on the web. There's nothing a foreign visitor needs from the website a week before the election. The five undecided American citizens who are overseas can get to a proxy or an embassy to read the site, and they've all voted absentee from both Florida and New York, anyway. Let it go. This is a technically and financially sound decision. Has nothing to do with the election.
Anything the GWB campaign wants to be public can be distributed in 10 minutes through other sources. George can say it, and John can say what a catastrophic error in judgement it was. My Yahoo! page headline will update (with Kerry's quote and "Bush optimistic"), and it'll be out there. There's nothing at the campaign HQ page that someone in
-j
This is pretty interesting. Just last week President Bush said the U.S. would "not have an all volunteer Army."
Of course he restated himself a few moments later, but it's not what he meant that's important. It's what he said that matters, right?
I guess that makes him a flip-flopper.
Nothing fades as fast as the future,
Nothing clings like the past.
They went to all this effort, maybe to lower traffic bills, who cares what the real reason was... but now the site will get Slashdotted so any money saved on avoiding international viewers, is pooched. :)
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.
NBC News
And that guy Bin Laden. It turns out that Bush isn't really that concerned about him.
LA Times story on Yahoo
That's how you get tough on terrorism, Bush-style.
1) The Iraqis that died during the sanctions died due to a lack of medical care, the collapse of the sanitation system, war debris scattered across the country, etc. Well, guess what? The situation on those fronts hasn't changed; the US has shipped in a lot of medical supplies, but some hospitals were completely stripped during the looting (and a couple burned to the ground), and the continuous fighting has had doctors publicly complaining about how thin their resources are. The postwar violence "brain drain" has also had a catastrophic effect on the quality of medical service in the country.
- 28 -poll-cover_x.htm
/ us atoday/20041021/ts_usatoday/pollmoreiraqisdoubtnat ionsdirection
2) Net electricity production is *down* - not just in the cities, but overall. The cities are in especially bad shape because they've had the net loss of power combined with the power re-routing to rural areas.
3) Polls in poor or devastated countries are notoriously bad. For example, any non-door-to-door poll in such a place is little more than propaganda right off the bat, because the poor and those in damaged neighborhoods have little/no phone service.
However, if you want polls, let me toss you one:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/iraq/2004-04
"BAGHDAD - Only a third of the Iraqi people now believe that the American-led occupation of their country is doing more good than harm, and a solid majority support an immediate military pullout even though they fear that could put them in greater danger, according to a new USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup Poll.
The nationwide survey, the most comprehensive look at Iraqi attitudes toward the occupation, was conducted in late March and early April. It reached nearly 3,500 Iraqis of every religious and ethnic group."
Want a recent poll?
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=
A couple of excerpts:
"Wrong direction: Forty-five percent of Iraqis said the country is headed in the wrong direction compared with 39% when the United States transferred political power to a caretaker Iraqi government in June. Sixty-three percent blamed "poor security" as the reason. "
"Concerns: Asked to name the most important issues to them, every Iraqi surveyed named security; 80% said the economy; 58% said quality of life; and 38% said politics. When asked to rank specific issues, they listed unemployment, crime and infrastructure in the top three. More people singled out crime as their first concern"
"Violence. Seventy-eight percent said their households had not suffered a loss of a family member or major economic damage since Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was toppled; 22% said they had."
These numbers, if you want to believe polls i Iraq, are staggering. 1 in 5 people in Iraq have suffered a loss of a family member or major economic damage since Saddam Hussein was toppled? That's insane! Of course, those numbers are backed up by what you get from the Iraqi bloggers; Riverbend's cousin had her husband kidnapped, and had to pay a huge ransom. Faiza Jarrar (the mother of Raed, of "Dear Raed" fame) was carjacked a month or two ago, and had a bomb explode on her street last week (blowing out their windows and damaging their door).
These poll numbers are made all the more dramatic when you consider the fact that the Kurdish region was (and still is somewhat) autonomous and pro-US, which skews the statistics in favor of optimism.
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.
hmmm I wonder what that means?
"I'm invested with a divine mission: to promote the biblical world view in the policy carried out by the USA". - George W. Bush
:)
Maybe God told him to make his website unavailable for foreigners
Who would Jesus Torture?
Although some "Christians" might argue the following logic:
God allowed Jesus to be tortured.
God = Jesus.
Therefore, Jesus allowed Jesus to be tortured.
Golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
Jesus says: Do unto others as I (God) would do unto (others) Jesus.
Therefore, Torture others, coz Jesus says it's okay.
When leaders in the Pentagon and Justice Department failed to take the high road and walked away from the Geneva Convention at Abu Gharib and Guantanemo Bay, they began walking the morally dubious path.
Bush's moral certainty excuses immoral activity. Some could compare it to bin Laden's moral certainty that calls for innocent slaughter. Committing crimes in the name of God doesn't make it less wrong.
From then article: "the administration feared destroying the terrorist camp in Iraq could undercut its case for war against Saddam"
Words fail me.
That US politics is moving toward world politics. Bush can't win international support for the US presidency, but the fact that there is a general world opinion about him means that the position of the US president is becoming an international position.
/. - sonow I would like to know how we move toward a reasonable international body. I know the UN is out there, but I'm guessing their 'marketing' and such are not so well developed, as I have met few who had anything more than a curcory understanding of it.
I can see both sides of the arguements made here on
.
-shpoffo
Here's some stuff about the opium trade:
a /184018 2.stm
i cle_3209_i t.htm
9 ,1365252,0 0.html
BBC Article from 2002:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asi
"According to the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) Afghanistan produced more than 70% of the world's opium in 2000"
"In July 2000 the leader of Afghanistan's former Taleban government, Mullah Omar, declared a nationwide ban on opium cultivation for one year.
The United Nations Drugs Control Program (UNDCP) believes the ban was a success, and production plunged to negligible levels during 2001. "
" But with the demise of the Taleban, there are fears Afghanistan will quickly reclaim its status as the world's largest producer of illicit opium."
And surprise surprise, 2003 figures:
http://europa-eu-un.org/articles/it/art
"in 2003 Afghanistan produced three-quarters of the world's illicit opium"
This trade is now supporting the Taliban:
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/episode/0,156
Gamers Europe - Gaming News. Reviews.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
That last one really get me. How can you even watch Fox News and come up with that?
Oh yeah, there's an interview at the end of "To the Point" with the director, Steve Kull.
"One man can change the world with a bullet in the right place."
- Mick Travis, "If..."
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.
http://65.172.163.222/
summoning the daemons of slashdot...
I wonder how'd you feel if the Chinese now decided to 'free' the US. Your religion is not correct, by their views. Your democracy is not correct, by their views. Your set of freedoms is also not correct, by their views.
Bush supporters (and Bush himself) don't realize the greatest error in the Iraq war was this one. The US could have built a post-cold war international law effort (as father Bush and Clinton were doing), and instead behaved like any dictator: Made up an excuse and invaded.
If at first you don't succeed, skydiving is not for you
And don't forget the genocide! That's the real lesson. To become like the US, find a large territory of land with abundant resources inhabited by a civilization with a large technological disadvantage, and murder them.
Hey, several weren't secret at all. Take, for instance, Salvador Allende. We replaced him with Pinochet.
Link. If you claim this is simply tinfoil-hattery, I'm done talking to you.
I have my hands over my ears and I'm screaming. I can't hear you I can't hear you I can't hear you
Troll? Ok - I guess others can quote bumper stickers without any issues.
But I go ahead and quote my open source stickers and get flagged as a troll.
Sigh.
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 . . .
What about freedom of speech? Press? Religion?
You do know that a fair number of Bush's so-called base (to which he panders constantly) want to knock down the barrier between church and state? This isn't just some whack-job...it's the Texas GOP platform, which includes other goodies, such as invading Panama to retake the canal (because it seems that 6 years ago, a Chinese firm was interested in a management contract, though this was turned down), abolishing the teaching of any kind of evolutionary theory in public schools, and much, much more.
I'd honestly prefer the following freedoms:
The freedom to get the health care I need at a reasonable cost
The freedom to retire
The freedom from having to worry about paying through the nose for a good education for my children (good private schools are the exception, not the rule--I don't want to send my kids to school to be taught about Jesus...I'll send them to church for that)
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
You may not realize this, or you may just be using your "faith" to ignore painful realities. But a vote for Bush is a vote for another 9-11. It's a vote for strengthening alQaeda, and for making us less safe.
Why do you support alQaeda, moronikos? Does it have something to do with your poorly chosen but totally apt moniker?
"A witty saying proves nothing." ~Voltaire
"d'Oh!" ~Homer
The funniest instance I've found of this phenomenon is the website for the Denver, Colorado city government.
Instead of the no-brainer www.denver.gov they use www.denvergov.com and www.denvergov.org.
No, really.
It is simply the right to life. Or does the right to life stop after birth?
Do I think it should be the government's responsibility to pay for my retirement? No, but I do expect them to make sure that it's possible for me to retire. Social Security is dead, I'll admit that. It was okay for the Depression, but it's a dinosaur now. However, Medicare is still quite needed, as most HMOs don't cater to individuals when trying to get insurance, because there's no profit in individual contracts, especially for the elderly, who have a limited income and high health care bills. It goes back to my right to life argument.
Re: Education: Vouchers will draw funding from public schools, unless the money comes from some other source. As for freedom of choice, my recommendation would be an Iowa-like system, where you can choose which school district you wish to send your child to, as long as you provide the transportation if it's not the one that you live in. That would foster the same competition, yet not drain money from public schools.
Haec merda tauri est. Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
Show me one case where any freedom of speech, press, or religion was denied in the U.S.
The Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798.
Perhaps you could have phrased your question better?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
Mexico 1846
Spain 1898
The C20th has been reasonably clear insofar as yer actual shooting wars go, but there have been numerous jaunts Down South that could have triggered a war if anyone other than the hemispheric superpower had been behind them.
Just because the biggest MoFo on the block doesn't get in many fights, it doesn't make him a man of peace.
Regards
Luke
#include witty_one_liner.h
I'm guessing it's a paranoid move to prevent any possible DDOS attacks from ... well anywhere outside the US.
There's been a reasonable amount of US election coverage in the UK so far, hence why the BBC have picked this up already.
Show me one case where any freedom of speech, press, or religion was denied in the U.S.
Well, American and foreign prisioners are being held at Guantanamo bay without charge or trial. The press are being granted only very limited access to the goings-on there. And one of the persuasion methods being employed there is to prevent detainees from practicing their normal religious duties.
Depending on the outcome, they will describe it as the moment America joined the ranks of ordinary nations; or they will describe it as the moment the prodigal sons and daughters of the greatest generation accepted their burden as caretakers of the City on the Hill.
Sounds somewhat like the Nazis with their "arien superrace", if you ask me... what happened to "all are equal" as beeing the base of democracy?
Look, this thing is totally safe! Built it myself, you know. You just press that button like this and then turn that lev
The U.N. knew the location of, and was keeping tabs on, those hundreds of tons of high explosives. The knew right where they were, and exactly how much, and had pictures of them. Ditto the WMD manufacturing precursors ("dual use") that were reported several weeks back.
The U.S. invasion led directly to such chaos that all of this stuff was able to be trucked out. As you say, moving this stuff requires a massive effort. It's amazing the amount of incompetence and understaffing that had to be going on that this could happen. Even with full knowledge of the exact location and inventory of all sensitive materials before the invasion had even begun, they still couldn't keep the bad guys from hauling off truck after truck full of stuff. Hell, in the case of the WMD manufacturing, they even dismantled and took off with the buildings!
Before the invasion: a very bad guy had lots of conventional explosives, and was wishing for WMDs but probably wouldn't have been able to get them unless the sanctions were lifted (per the inspection group). He was an egomaniacal dictator, hated in the region, and jealously guarded what he had. It is not apparent that he would have sold his stuff to others. He was a bad guy, but was not a direct or apparently indirect threat to the U.S.
After the invasion: it's almost certain that a large chunk of the stuff we went to war so that Saddam wouldn't sell it to the terrorists is, well, in the hands of the terrorists.
I personally believe that this is NOT the fault of the troops, who did the best they could; it was the fault of the administration only seeing what they wanted to see, ignoring intelligence, estimates and requests they didn't like, and George W. "we're not going to have any casualties" Bush trying to do the job on the cheap because he thought he could get away with it.
Thus, as a direct result of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, there are now hundreds of tons of high explosives, plus entire buildings full of specialized WMD manufacturing machinery and tools in the hands of we know not who.
Feel safer?
"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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r _action=list&category=%20NEWS%3B%20Chickenhawk s
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
I went to the website you link to and I saw no proof for terrorism link to Irak. Lie.
Human rights violation ? Ok, the US violates the human rights too with the Guantanamo camp. W should invade the US too.
The 350 tons of explosives didn't disappeared under the UN's nose but under the US's nose. They disappeared in April 2003. Check it now.
You are too stupid to admit that there are simply no WMDs in Irak despite that even GWB himself and his administration admitted this fact. I believe you are definitely lost.
Iraq: war to save the U
I look at Bush & Cheney and see the epitome of the 'good-ol-boy' network. Back door deals, friends of Enron, Halliburton, & Suadi Arabia.
I find it hard to ignore that the 2 times we've been at war with Iraq, it's been with a Bush in office. The cost is still rising, another 70 billion just been asked for. With this kind of money, we could have searched every inch of Afganistan twice.
As far as taxes go, I have NEVER had a problem paying my taxes when the economy is great, and my paychecks roll in. There are more taxes to COLLECT when more people are working and spending.
Bush should have kept my $300 check. It pales in comparison to the bonus check we get on good years. The year I got a $300 check from Bush, not only did I get no bonus, we had to fire 100 people. It could have been me.
I'm not going to be able to change your mind. So I'll just point out again that I think people see what they want to see. I know during the debates, I sure did. Talked to some Republicans the next day who loved Bush's performance. !!?
Why are there only 19 people folding@home for slashdot?
Those tons of weapons went missing right out from under the Bush Administration's nose, you moron! In case you forgot, we left the UN out of our little obsession with invading Iraq. And that dreamops site you link is a great source of selective information filtered for the dittohead, but get real; there was no Iraq-alQaeda connection, there were no WMDs, and there was no threat to the US. Saddam was an evil thug who the world should be glad to be rid of, but the war has made al Qaeda stronger and the US more vulnerable. That is what we should be concerned with, not still gloating about the sight of a miserable old man climbing out of a hole in the ground.
Don't even get me started on the Iraq war. John Kerry should be thrown in jail for aiding the enemy.
This "insightful" comment is the reason I distrust Republicans and won't vote for Bush. Too many seem to equate reasonable dissent and constructive criticism with treason.
Every time I ask self-proclaimed democrats why they support abortion, they say they believe in a womans right to choose...
There are many here in the US without the hubris to proclaim that they know the mind of God and who do not wish to force their religous beliefs down the throats of others. Abortion is a difficult personal choice that only a woman and her own conscience can make. I find it particularly disturbing that the religious zelots on the right would outlaw late term abortions with no provision for protecting the life of the mother. By doing so, they will surely kill some women whose pregnancy has developed serious life threatening complications. It must truly feel rightous to have such moral clarity that you know that the fetus's life is always more important than the mother's.
FreeSpeech.org
If you really understand how interconnected the world has become, you wouldn't have that attitude.
The US is an economic powerhouse, one that is tied with trillions of dollars of international trade and debt. What's bad for the US economy is bad for the world economy. If the US debt keeps going up, and the US has problems paying it, a whole lot of foreigners are out of a lot of money. If the US imposes tariffs on trade, it's not just American workers who suffer, but workers in countries that trade with the US suffer.
So from the point of view of a foreigner, it makes perfect sense to keep abreast of American politics. This is something many people due, because it has a direct impact on their lives. Even as an American, I make it a point to keep abreast of politics in Europe and Canada. These regions are important strategic allies, and important partners in trade. In the future, the EU also looks like it will become an important competitor economically. As a result, I would be foolish not to keep informed of their politics, because they have a direct impact on my country's economy.
A deep unwavering belief is a sure sign you're missing something...
Clinton? attacked Iraq first on the very same premise of WMDs.
After this line, I just couldn't believe another word. The first Persian Gulf War was started by George H. W. Bush back in 1990 and '91, not by Clinton, and the reason was Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.
Learn your history. I mean, I know I was alive and socially aware at this time (I was in like 4th grade or something), so unless you're like eight years old, you have no right to be unaware of this history: you lived through it!
The previous sig has been removed due to
There aren't any abortion advocates really trying to argue about things after the third trimester.
;-).
Um, so what's so different about the fetus's personhood 1 day before the third trimester?
I don't think grossing people out is necessary in the abortion debate. I just don't get how there can be such a disconnect for people between something in the womb and something that just came out if it. Even if it's a stinkin' embryo, thousands of years of observation STRONGLY suggests that, left unharmed, it's going to become a human being. If somebody has an abortion, simple logic dictates that they effectively prevented a human from existing, even if they don't think its a human at that point.
I was totally incensed this past April or whenever when CNN had the Pro Choice march on. All these woman would come up to speak about the virtue of a Woman's Right to Choose(tm) and then they bring up their daughters and tell them how they're doing all this for THEM!!!! If given the microphone for a moment, most of them just said something along the lines of "go pro-choice!", I was waiting for one to say, "I'm glad mommy didn't abort me!".
Seriously, it's a self-defeating argument- they're trying to protect their daughters, yet some of those potential daughters won't be around to enjoy that protection.
Personally, I think you should be able to abort until the end of potty training.
As long as it's legal, I'd have to say it should be okay until they move out
Insightful: 76, Off-Topic: 379, Flamebait: 24, Funny: 152, Interesting: 201, Underrated: 55, Troll: 9, Total: 896
I have three pillars for you too..
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, and the Truth is a Lie.
Why is it religious zealots all the time? I'm not a religious zealot - I don't need god to tell me taking an innocent life is wrong.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
I can see you've been completely brainwashed by Karl Rove and Fox News. Your above statement is an outright, vicious, republican lie.
They do not drill a hole in the baby's skull. They insert a pair of scissors, then open it to enlarge the hole.
I hope this will teach you not to swallow wingnut propaganda in the future!
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
OK... if you're after stupid, emotive arguments, here's a nice example of the opposite kind for you:
Summary: She's 19 weeks pregnant. She discovers her baby is dead. Very dead. She's bleeding. The baby's skin is starting to slough off inside the womb, its skull might be collapsing. The corpse needs removal. The safest way for the mother is to remove it in pieces.
But the years of angry debate (this means you!), restrictive state laws and violence targeting physicians have left very few institutions willing to do the job - meaning that she is advised to go through delivery. Comparatively unsafe and traumatic. So she chooses to look for a doctor willing to do the procedure, phones around, and finally finds someone after a long hunt. But he's busy. She spends days in a motel room feeling her dead baby inside her and watching herself bleed, until finally, someone condescends to remove it.
The moral of this story, in case you didn't know, is that for every bleeding-heart emotive story you can contrive, there's a counterexample. I don't really care how you feel about Kerry, but you do want to watch that tendancy to sensationalise.
Some of the people held in Guantanamo Bay are American. Although there have been attempts by the US government to render the constitution unenforceable because Guantanamo base is located in Cuba, an inital ruling in favour of the government was overturned by the US Supreme Court.
The legal concept of a "foriegn(sic) combatant" is largely fiction. Prisioners taken on a battlefield are classified as "Prisioners of War" and have rights under the Geneva Convention -- which the US, despite being signatories of the Convention, are not respecting.
Prisioners taken in a foreign country *outside* of a state of war outside of normal extradition channels are called "hostages".
Strawman argument. I never said they were being censored, merely given very limited (read: zero) access to the base and its occupants.
- "[moving the explosives was] a major undertaking" (i.e. more noticeable, easier to disrupt than minor looting)
- "[we had the capability to] bomb...anything on the roads" (which seems to imply the U.S. had the capability to stop the "10-30 trailers worth of explosives" in transit)
Yet, your tone implies that you disagree. Sir, I must then ask you, what is your point?Um, so what's so different about the fetus's personhood 1 day before the third trimester?
It's not viable, even with serious equipment.
Now the intersting thing is that "serious equipment" is a moving target. But the basic argument is that it can't develop outside the womb if it were, for instance, born that prematurely.
I think this is the definition of viability for fetuses, but I'm getting a little murky on the terms. Of course that's a grey area too, which is why doctor's have to consult with women to determine that a fetus is not viable before a regular abortion takes place. Please disagree with this if I'm wrong.
However, I do agree with your point that it is the snuffing out of a potential human life. It just doesn't bother me, what with the overpopulation and AIDS killing a zillion people a day.
Shit, starving people all over the world who have kids are basically sentencing a certain percentage of them to death. Where's the outrage about that? At least abortion is a well reasoned choice, where you take responsibility for your own action when it matters: before you make a mistake that leads to years of easy-to-measure human suffering.
To really clear the air, I'd even let you say life began with conception, and that abortion was actually killing a real live person. I just wouldn't call it murder, with all the punishment attached. If we're gonna have penicillin, clearly a human invented way of choosing which people to keep alive, I can't see the moral dilemma in choosing which people to prevent from being alive. The same could be said about distribution of food and medicine on a world wide scale. The Catholics are at least consistent on this one, they're pro-life for everything.
Interesting point about the not-aborted daughters, but I totally disagree. Certainly some of those girls are happy and have an excellent life and relationship with their mothers because they were born at the right time. How many too-young unwed mothers produce children that will go with them to political rallys? So I think their sentiment does make sense, choosing to end a pregnancy through abortion allows you to provide the best life for your eventual child.
"I had a dream the other night that all the babies prevented by the pill came back.
They were pissed."
- Steven Wright
dea9: Visualize your mailing lists to actually SEE trolls!
I vote Republican for one big reason - Democrats are big cry babies.
So, let me get this straight. You vote Republican because when Democrats see something seriously wrong, they challenge it? It's better than sitting idly while your freedoms, liberties, and livelihood is challenged.
They proved that with the 2000 election.
Gore won that election, even in Florida. I was a Republican, but crossed over to the Democratic party after watching the Republican party steal the presidency. Bush is president only by title. Even this election, several republicans funded by the GOP have been caught disposing of tens of thousands of valid democrat voter registrations in swing states, and rarely vice versa, probably a fraction of the total fraud going on.
Don't hate me because I think John Kerry is a douche bag
But I'm voting for him anyway
A non-American's opinion in the 2004 presidential election is pretty much as irrelevant as it gets.
Quite to the contrary: what international investors believe about US politics is vitally important to the US. Should they lose confidence in the US, they'll pull out their money and the US economy will collapse.
Actually is quite well know that Saddam didn't fund or train terrorist, especially not Al-Quada since they were direct enemies.
Syria is another arabic country, a good place to sell stuff if you need some cash to make an escape with.
Technical Update Although overseas visitors to www.georgewbush.com are blocked https://georgewbush.com or http://65.172.163.222 still work. http://65.172.163.222 resolves as GeorgeWBush.com which illustrates how cak-handed the blocking is. From "The Register" website.
Your CPU is not doing anything else, at least do something.
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
As the original submitter of this story, I'm gratified by the amount of debate it's spawned :-)
However, a few points in reply to various comments in the thread (I'm sorry they're not posted appropriately)
For whatever reason, it's undeniably a PR disaster.
Which raises an interesting point - are the various terrorist organisations threatening the US/West/CIS just taking up the vacuum left by the collapse of the USSR as a superpower. Newton's 3rd law applied to geopolitics?
Oh well, all interesting stuff - let's see what happens next week!
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.