Slashdot Mirror
Election Officials And Crackers Challenge Diebold
Rick Zeman writes "The Washington Post is reporting that election officials in Florida have manipulated election results in controlled tests. From the article: 'Four times over the past year Sancho told computer specialists to break in to his voting system. And on all four occasions they did, changing results with what the specialists described as relatively unsophisticated hacking techniques. To Sancho, the results showed the vulnerability of voting equipment manufactured by Ohio-based Diebold Election Systems, which is used by Leon County and many other jurisdictions around the country.'"
You said, "The bin Laden family is HUGE, with a large number of brothers, of which Osama is a black sheep who has hardly had any contact with anyone."
I have personal experiences that influence my opinions concerning this. For several years I would go to a gym at night and work out, perhaps 2 or 3 times a week, for at least an hour and a half and often 3 hours.
I met sons of very wealthy Saudi families at the gym. Working out is very boring, and people sometimes take a break and talk. Often we would have extensive conversations. This was long before 9/11/2001. I wasn't involved with a woman friend at the time, and the Saudis, who had been sent by their families to study at the university here, were never very well accepted in the U.S. culture. So, we both had plenty of time to talk. I talked with other gym regulars, of course, not just Saudis. (I've never known anyone with the name bin Laden.)
It is true that Osama bin Laden is just one of 53 children of his father, and the only one who is publicly a terrorist. However at the gym I developed a sense of how Saudis feel, although they were always polite and, being Arabs, never stated their feelings in a completely open way.
My sense is that Arabs don't like to see other Arabs killed. The U.S. government has been in the business of killing, or paying to kill, Arabs for decades. Remember, that is one of Osama bin Laden's major complaints. (The other is that he didn't like U.S. government weapons in Saudi Arabia.) Most U.S. citizens have very little awareness of the violent actions of their government, I've discovered, and would be surprised to learn how much of their money has gone to kill Arabs, or help kill Arabs, even long before the first U.S. government-Iraq war.
I never met a Saudi who was anti-American. Obviously, if they existed, I probably wouldn't. However, it seemed that Saudis were often against the habitually violent policies of the U.S. government.
Remember, 15 of the 19 people who attacked on 9/11 were Saudis. Although the U.S. media often tries to trivialize this fact, those Saudis gave their lives for their beliefs.
The Bush family believes they are friends with Saudis, particularly the man who calls himself Prince Bandar, and whom the Bush family calls "Bandar Bush". For reasons too complicated for a Slashdot comment, it is extremely unlikely that Bandar likes George W. Bush, or even George H.W. Bush. In spite of the fact that Bandar acts friendly with the Bush family, and holds hands with George W. Bush while being filmed by national media, I think that Bandar is not actually deeply friendly. He is only pretending to be friendly to advance his own agenda, a tactic that has worked extremely well.
The point of this is that Saudis often have feelings which seem sensible to them but which may seem unreasonable to U.S. citizens. Several members of bin Laden's family, not just Osama, gave money to causes that they considered pro-Arab. Those causes were sometimes anti-U.S. government. In general, people who seem to know about these things have said that there has been considerable sympathy inside the bin Laden family for Osama's actions.
I'm resolutely against violence. I'm resolutely against any government acting in secret. I love the United States intensely. However, I recognize that many people will agree with the sick logic that says that, if the U.S. government kills Arabs, Arabs can attack the United States.