(p) DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION RELATING TO EXPLOSIVES, DESTRUCTIVE DEVICES, AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.-- (1) DEFINITIONS.--In this subsection-- (A) the term 'destructive device' has the same meaning as in section 921(a)(4); (B) the term 'explosive' has the same meaning as in section 844(j); and (C) the term 'weapon of mass destruction' has the same meaning as in section 2332a(c)(2). (2) PROHIBITION.--It shall be unlawful for any person-- (A) to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence; or (B) to teach or demonstrate to any person the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute to any person, by any means, information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, knowing that such person intends to use the teaching, demonstration, or information for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence.
Not that I really agree with the sentiment but what he was talking about was a bill to outlaw hosting bomb-making tutorials after Colombine. It passed like a decade ago. Does someone feel like re-litigating that, or is this a bunch of crazed, paranoid noise?
As for Saudi investing in Texas oil companies this makes sense. They get their money from oil, why not use this to get involved in oil and energy worldwide. This way no matter what happens to their Saudi oil, they benefit. If there is a massive uprising in Saudi Arabia, they get money from oil in other countries. They're just hedging their bets.
You are totally missing the point. Arbusto never dug anything but dry holes. It was a money pit. What the Saudi's were getting for their money was the fact that Bush's daddy was the president and they could call in favors. There are plenty of people who they could have invested in that can actually find oil in Texas but only one that pays political dividends.
If a person has to support the troops' mission no matter what...were the citizens of Germany just supposed to support Hitler no matter what? Were they supposed to be "patriotic" and support the troops as they rounded up the Jews?
Right? By that logic if GW Bush sent the marines out to slaughter every newborn male and you didn't think that was right you are a seditious traitor.
Iraq wasn't unique in the annals of foriegn policy in being based on a pack of lies to disguise the real intents but I do believe it has to go down in history as one of the most cynical and the one which showed the most contempt for the intelligence of the American people in it's outrageous, open, mendacity.
Unfortunately, Islamic terror is hitting a lot closer to home for Europeans. The last time they chose appeasement, in 1938, it didn't work out so well. I keep wondering if they're willing to stop being mad at the US and face the reality of what they've been nurturing, both at home and abroad, or if the King of England will need to send forth crusaders to defend Europe again.
If lives are saved and people are freed, do the ends justify the means?
Who the hell got free? You know what's going down at Abu Ghoryab? They have a CIA torture center there that is no different than anything Saddam built. Now it's just Paul Bremer in charge instead of Saddam.
The people they have released mostly say their crimes were things like arguing with troops. For which they got dumped in a torture center for months where they were beaten and spent their days locked into excrutiating positions with good ole Red, White, and Blue american piss-soaked bags over their heads.
I read all the Iraqi bloggers I can and one of the last holdouts that still held any hope for the US occupation finally left the camp after US soldiers threw his nephew over a dam.
This whole thing is fucked and all the tactical simulation on the planet isn't going to fix anything.
Not unless you can hook it up matrix style to everyone in America and program all the Iraqi's to love Americans and have the big political fight turn into whether they want to subscribe to the neoliberal New Republic or the neoconservative National Review and whether they want UN approval to help us invade Syria or just join the new coalition of the willing.
Wouldn't be a bad PR move for the election season.
The Education Department could offer a futures market where people could bet on the drop-out rate for different ethnic groups or income levels as school funding continues to be cut, allowing school boards across the country to slash staffing and classroom space in advance of declining enrolments.
For the life of me I cannot figure out what happened to Slashdot. I barely come in anymore because I can't take it. I remember in the old days the place was pretty much a hangout for people with strong libertarian views (libertarian in the social sence, fierce debate in the economic sense)
Nowadays, I wind up thinking I made a wrong turn and wound up at freerepublic.com
If you've read Adam Smith's "Wealth of a Nation" you have read 95% of Karl Marx. I am not a Marxist but China has nothing in common with Communist ideology. It has decended from a Communist totalitarian state to a Fascist totalitarian state.
Oh yeah, Fascism is the logical conclusion of Capitalism and don't bother flaming me.
Re:It means the US has taken over the world
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Defining Globalism
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rule #3 Don't elect leaders we don't like or we will arm terrorists to tear apart your country (see most of South and Central America)
rule #4 Don't have anyone in power we don't like or the CIA will come over and "elect" someone for you (see alot of South and Central America and the M.E.
rule #5 If the CIA thug gets lippy after we install him we will have to come back and bomb the fuck out of you again,our bad, but what can you do? (See Noriega)
rule #6 Sometimes we go off for absolutely no reason anyone in hell can make sense of (see Grenada)
We do some great things, see UNICEF, Peace Corps, etc.. It's just too bad that we have to send them in to clean up after the CIA and the Pentagon.
Taking a critical look at our history of the 20th century does not make you a bad person.
So we are just going to skip the trial part? Dear God, have you lost your mind? Remember when we kept getting told this whole thing was a struggle between civilization and barbarism? Well, holding prisoners indefinately and denying them attorney/client privelege takes us back about to the dark ages.
If this their answer, the terrorists can stay home from now on. We took care of that whole civilization thing.
I fail entirely to see what you expect the US government or other first world governments to do about this. If you want to force labor protection laws in these countries, the correct vehicle would have to be a world-wide governmental organization, a UN with vastly expanded powers. The thing is that NONE of these third world countries want that. Like I said, if what you say is true, it's the responsibility of those people or their government
The organization that can trump local law is the WTO, if they did make laws against it someone would sue them to take them off the books.
Unfortunately you can't sue a country for being a horrible repressive piece of shit. If you want to throw in some conditions like that, I'd get behind it. It would never happen because no country would agree to it.
Let me give you two examples of third world "citizens"
India does not "play fair" they ignore IP copywrites. They have bad ole socialist type tarriffs. They are progressing. Largest democracy in the world.
Pakistan "plays fair", they wound up having to close the public school system and fell back on the religious schools where the kids learn nothing but rote memorization of the Koran. In case you haven't figured it out, the well being of the third world has become a direct threat to your life.
I can't believe anyone isn't ashamed of the first world running something that resembles so closely one of those paycheck loan places that litter the landscape.
Can someone please explain why this is acceptable behavior?
Re:Actually...
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Globalization
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Enjoy waving the bloody shirt...
That propaganda technique will soon lose effectiveness. When the food trucks do not roll in in a few weeks because of U.S. bombing expect most of the country to die of starvation.
That is called genocide. I won't be proud of that. I hope you won't.
I don't understand you people. Do you think that if bin Laden dies everything will be OK? His life or death means absolutely nothing as far as future terrorism.
We will play lets pretend and imagine that we have cowed every nation in the world into coughing up any person that is anti-american in their country.
What do you do when terrorism continues?
It comes from just where it came from last time...Florida.
You will wind up figuring out that it is alot easier to pull a couple bases out of Saudi and telling Israel to get it's act together and make nice than dealing with the fallout.
I have no idea even where to start with how messed up our logic is. I understand, I'm an American, I am pissed as hell but I have yet to hear one good argument for attacking Afghanistan. I know it feels like we have to attack someone, but in this case there is nowhere worth attacking.
I'm the last person to apologize for the Taliban but they are what is there. Believe it or not they are a fairly popular government despite the fact that they are monsters. They put an end to 20 years of civil war. How do you replace that? A new government will be constantly under attack by the majority of the population who see whatever comes in as a U.S. puppet.
Those bad ole pinko commie liberals, always trying to link games to violence.
Well guess what? I caught one of those bad ole commies myself. He goes by the name Pat Buchanan.
This is what that silly liberal fool had to say:
"If some polluter were putting poison and filth into a river, the president would lacerate that industry. This president ought to do the same to those folks in the entertainment industry who pollute our culture from which everyone has to drink. The fundamental problem is the poisoning of the culture and, secondly, that God and the Ten Commandments and Christian instruction and all moral teaching have been removed from these public schools. And into that vacuum has gone the law of Satan."
Being a moral watchdog has people on both sides of the Aisle and I (as a bad ole commie liberal) have about as much use for Joe Lieberman as I do Pat Buchanan but don't fool yourself that the conservative elements in this country are defenders of freedom of expression.
Whenever issues like this come up for debate it's never party vs. party. It's liberal "We can all live in a little nerf world where no one can hurt" and conservative "I'll legislate morality" elements that work together against the decent people on both side of the political spectrum.
Then I traded it to "I'll work for a case of beer" just so I wouldn't feel like a jerk charging them going rates.
Then it got worse because they felt like they had actually paid for something and when they broke it again they would get mad at me because "obviously" it was me fixing what broke last time that cause the new thing breaking to happen.
I've just gone to $50/hr 1 hr. minimum now. They don't call as much and I feel alot better about it.
Re:Riaa to fight hackers on own terms...
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RIAA to DoS Pirates?
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Shut up and sit down. Didn't you hear Ari Fleisher "Be careful what you say"? You are the silly stuffed shirt tory cunt. Bet you just can't wait for Daddy to come get someone who dares speak ill of him.
Grow a spine and maybe look up to people who are willing to dissent under the most repressive laws since the anti-sedition acts of the 18th century. They have a set of cajones unlike anything you've ever known.
P.S. for the first "patriotic" idiot to mod me down I could give a damn, I'll still be posting at 2 for the next 10 years
The Consortium of media organizations that has delayed announcing the results of the Florida presidential election ballot study contends that it had absolutely no idea who was going to win that recount. The Consortium further contends that the ballots have not yet been tabulated, making it impossible for anyone to know the outcome. It also states that the results of the ballot study would have been released to the American people if not for the terrorist attack on September 11.
The Consortium is engaging in sophistry. It is deliberately seeking to deceive the public with incomplete and misleading information. This dishonesty is entirely consistent with the mainstream media's pattern of lying that recurred throughout the presidential campaign.
Part two in this series deals with the Consortium's lack of candor as it has sought to advance its own financial interests by concealing Al Gore's clear victory in Florida and refusing to acknowledge that he was the rightful winner in the 2000 presidential election.
It is important to emphasize that we do not allege the conglomerates that control the American mainstream media have engaged in a conspiracy, only that they have damaged American democracy by conducting themselves with unpatriotic self interest and all consuming greed.
On January 9, 2001, eight media organizations announced their intention to form the Consortium that would examine and classify the votes in the Florida presidential election. The eight news organizations were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones and Company (The Wall Street Journal), the Associated Press, The Tribune Company (The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, among others), The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN (which later dropped out).
The Consortium sought to gain credibility for the integrity of its recount by hiring the not-for-profit National Opinion Research Center to perform the actual ballot handling tasks and to compile the relevant information. NORC was assigned to provide the raw data to each of the members of the Consortium. It would then be up to the individual media outlets to decide how they would interpret and report the data to the American people.
All of this was to be completed by April, 2001.
At the time that the Consortium announced its plans to categorize the votes, some national public opinion polls showed that over a third of Americans considered George W. Bush to be an illegitimate president. Several prominent syndicated columnists had written that Gore was fortunate to "lose", because the poisonous atmosphere in the aftermath of the controversial election guaranteed that the new president was destined to one term of bitterness and gridlock.
The perception of the mainstream political and media analysts was that there were only three possible outcomes of the ballot study:
Bush could win in a photo finish, as he had in each previous recount.
It could turn out to be a dead heat.
Gore could win in a photo finish.
Two thirds of Americans surveyed said that they were ready to move on. They believed that it was basically an even election; they might never be completely sure who actually won, but someone had to be president, and Bush won the recounts and the Supreme Court verdict. For most Americans, regardless of who literally won an election that was too close to call, it was time to get on with life.
Against this backdrop, any of the three results of the ballot study that were considered possible would not be harmful to Bush. If the ballot study showed he won, then that would confirm he was the legitimate president. If it were a tie, then he would be no worse off than before the study was released. If Gore won a squeaker, then the most diehard of the Democrats might challenge the legitimacy of a Bush administration, but the GOP had prepared for that possibility by assigning party activists to every Florida county for the specific purpose of screaming fraud. Another very close vote accompanied by frenzied controversy would make the Consortium ballot study just a tiresome repeat of the soap opera that most of election-weary America had already seen and turned off.
If the establishment deep thinkers were right, then the only possible results from the Consortium study could help legitimize Bush, but could not harm his legitimacy among those Americans who had "gotten over it".
There was, however, a potential complication that had been discounted by the corporations that were financing this venture:
What would happen if the Consortium recount revealed that Gore had won decisively?
The NORC's examination of the ballots began in February. MakeThemAccountable has spoken with several participants who were in the NORC coding rooms where the ballots of the Florida presidential election were reviewed. These people did not know each other and were in different counties within Florida. Each of them independently stated that, based on their personal observation, Al Gore was winning at least two thirds of those disputed ballots that NORC coders were recording. These were ballots that had not been included in previous recounts.
The Consortium has stated that it cannot possibly have known the outcome of the ballot coding because NORC did not generate a final tabulation. The Consortium even contends that, because the ballots were not delivered to the media organizations until mid-September, and because those organizations have been completely preoccupied with covering the war against terrorism, the result of the recount is still a complete mystery to them.
The Consortium is lying about this, as well as other things.
Our sources within the recount made a commitment of confidentiality to NORC, pledging that they would not go public with what they saw during the process. This pact was faithfully honored until after September 11, when some participants became alarmed that the Consortium was going to violate its commitment to inform the American public about the truth of the actual results.
The ballot examination process, or coding process, had teams consisting of an NORC employee supervising three coders. It was the job of the coders to identify the characteristics of any expression of voter intent on the ballots. Their observations were entered into a computer database so that the media organizations comprising the Consortium could later evaluate the data to determine the winner. The ballots showed only numbers and not the names of candidates, so NORC assumed that those who were evaluating the ballots did not know which candidate was getting which votes. . The supervisors were responsible for comparing the pattern of vote tabulation by each coder, to further insure that bias would not enter the process.
In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, NORC Public Information Officer Julie Antelman confirmed that, if someone knew which number applied to which candidate, then they could tell if there was a trend.
To those who were carefully observing the coding, and who had enough knowledge of Florida county ballot configurations and precinct voting patterns to figure out which number represented Bush and which represented Gore, it was clear exactly how the vote categorization was going. Specifically, they saw the inclusion of many disputed ballots that had been successfully excluded from previous recounts because of pressure tactics by the Bush campaign. In the objective, professional setting of the NORC coding process, the winner of the overwhelming number of previously disputed ballots was Al Gore.
From the first day of the NORC process, there was a visible presence of pro-Bush demonstrators outside the coding rooms. What has not been widely reported is that there was also a constant Bush presence inside the coding rooms. The NORC had a policy that allowed for a representative of either party to observe the process. In counties like Hernando, observers could pay in order to actually sit at the coding tables. The observer was not allowed to comment, intrude, or interact with the coders, or in any way seek to influence the ballot study.
There is no evidence that the partisan observers corrupted the process of coding ballots, but their presence certainly destroys the myth of an "unknowable" result. Inside the rooms of the NORC coding process, politically experienced G.O.P. operatives carefully watched for trends.
They saw bad news for Bush. For example, in Republican Lake County, election officials had disqualified six hundred ballots because voters put a pencil mark in the circle by a candidate's name and also wrote the same candidate's name on another part of the ballot. According to the G.O.P., this made it impossible to discern the voters' intent.
The coders perceived that someone who checked a candidate's name and also wrote in the same candidate's name probably meant to vote for that candidate.
The Republicans screamed that no one could possibly know for certain which candidate the voter meant to choose in these instances "unless they were psychic". They decried the NORC's "pathetic attempts at mind reading".
The G.O.P.'s high decibel cries of persecution had successfully intimidated officials at the previous Florida recounts, but the rules of the NORC coding session prohibited observers from emoting inside the rooms. The indignant Republicans had to go outside to vent. The net result was a gain of one hundred thirty votes for Gore using previously uncounted ballots in just one Republican county.
George W. Bush had a widespread presence of people actively looking after his interests. There were Republican protesters outside the coding rooms and Republican observers inside the coding rooms in every county.
The Gore organization had already disbanded.
As during the election and the recounts, the Republicans were fighting as hard as they could -- no holds barred -- while the Democrats defaulted.
Even so, during the Consortium ballot study the coders just found too many Gore votes for the G.O.P. to be able to "win" again by invoking invisible crimes and decrying nonexistent conspiracies.
It is simply false for the Consortium to claim people were unaware that the results were developing in a way that would be highly embarrassing, at best, for George W. Bush. The Republican observers saw the strong pro-Gore trend and responded with typical aplomb. A G.O.P. activist accused one NORC coder of being drunk on the job, a lie that was later disproven. Even so, Republican operatives reportedly pressured another coder to confirm the phony allegation. The Republicans yelled about the quality of the coders, screamed about the treachery of the process, and threw temper tantrums about the unfairness of it all. Of course, they offered no proof of their slanderous charges. Though the G.O.P. observers were publicly panicking as the trend continued strongly against them, the Consortium observers in the very same rooms claim to be completely unaware of who was winning.
The members of the Consortium have a sufficient interest in this matter that they collectively have paid millions of dollars to subsidize the ballot study. The media organizations that comprise the Consortium employ hundreds of experienced journalists who possess expertise in gathering information. A number of their most able journalists were eyewitnesses to what was happening in the coding rooms. And yet, the Consortium pleads total ignorance of who was gaining votes during the NORC coding process.
Dan Keating was the Washington Post on-site editor for the ballot study. In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, he said, "We intentionally blinded ourselves to the information."
Some coders knew enough about Florida county ballot configuration to be able to tell which numerical code represented Bush and which identified Gore. The same was true of supervisors, private citizens who viewed the study, and the increasingly hysterical Republican observers. Non-Consortium journalists were not exactly clueless, either:
The media are finding more ballots meant for Gore. In election-speak: Even though final statewide results aren't in, early returns favor Gore.
Think about democracy real hard..
I'm scared to death of my fellow citizens.
If on Sept 12 (or maybe even today) someone threw an item on the agenda for a vote like "Should we glass Afghanistan and the entire Middle East" you think that wouldn't have passed?
I think this system sucks to, the founding fathers should have found ways to keep corporate interests from buying out the politicians but they didn't. I think giving the public a chance to do anything it wants to is silly to.
Hmmm, I knew that but my rep has never said anything. My rep lives in my home town so I mail it his office here. I wonder if it's a federally funded office or if he just doesn't care:)
Put in a check for $20 or so.
I'm serious makes all the difference between the auto-responce and a real letter, probably written by an aide but at least someone knows you care about the issue.
All depends on the quality of the conversation site. So far as I know my personal political site has been pretty damn accurate. A lot of crap posted that gets investigated then shot to hell if it isn't able to be backed up by another source or the source is untrustworthy (ie, has an agenda to put forward)
Lots of stuff that has gone under the radar on the major news outlets does come out though. There was a sonic boom over Chicago when fighters scrambled to intercept a plane where a passenger had gone a little nutty. We didn't know what had happened at the time but we pieced it together through WLS. We were all over it as soon as it happened. WGN never covered it even though the news was on. CNN never touched it.
I find I trust my conversation sites much more than the media companys
Slashdot Mirror
(p) DISTRIBUTION OF INFORMATION RELATING TO EXPLOSIVES, DESTRUCTIVE DEVICES, AND WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION.--
(1) DEFINITIONS.--In this subsection--
(A) the term 'destructive device' has the same meaning as in section 921(a)(4);
(B) the term 'explosive' has the same meaning as in section 844(j); and
(C) the term 'weapon of mass destruction' has the same meaning as in section 2332a(c)(2).
(2) PROHIBITION.--It shall be unlawful for any person--
(A) to teach or demonstrate the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute by any means information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, with the intent that the teaching, demonstration, or information be used for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence; or
(B) to teach or demonstrate to any person the making or use of an explosive, a destructive device, or a weapon of mass destruction, or to distribute to any person, by any means, information pertaining to, in whole or in part, the manufacture or use of an explosive, destructive device, or weapon of mass destruction, knowing that such person intends to use the teaching, demonstration, or information for, or in furtherance of, an activity that constitutes a Federal crime of violence.
Not that I really agree with the sentiment but what he was talking about was a bill to outlaw hosting bomb-making tutorials after Colombine. It passed like a decade ago. Does someone feel like re-litigating that, or is this a bunch of crazed, paranoid noise?
Yes, and Obama is a nerd who likes net neutrality.
As for Saudi investing in Texas oil companies this makes sense. They get their money from oil, why not use this to get involved in oil and energy worldwide. This way no matter what happens to their Saudi oil, they benefit.
If there is a massive uprising in Saudi Arabia, they get money from oil in other countries. They're just hedging their bets.
You are totally missing the point. Arbusto never dug anything but dry holes. It was a money pit. What the Saudi's were getting for their money was the fact that Bush's daddy was the president and they could call in favors. There are plenty of people who they could have invested in that can actually find oil in Texas but only one that pays political dividends.
If a person has to support the troops' mission no matter what...were the citizens of Germany just supposed to support Hitler no matter what? Were they supposed to be "patriotic" and support the troops as they rounded up the Jews?
Right? By that logic if GW Bush sent the marines out to slaughter every newborn male and you didn't think that was right you are a seditious traitor.
Iraq wasn't unique in the annals of foriegn policy in being based on a pack of lies to disguise the real intents but I do believe it has to go down in history as one of the most cynical and the one which showed the most contempt for the intelligence of the American people in it's outrageous, open, mendacity.
Unfortunately, Islamic terror is hitting a lot closer to home for Europeans. The last time they chose appeasement, in 1938, it didn't work out so well. I keep wondering if they're willing to stop being mad at the US and face the reality of what they've been nurturing, both at home and abroad, or if the King of England will need to send forth crusaders to defend Europe again.
Is that a joke?
If lives are saved and people are freed, do the ends justify the means?
Who the hell got free? You know what's going down at Abu Ghoryab? They have a CIA torture center there that is no different than anything Saddam built. Now it's just Paul Bremer in charge instead of Saddam.
The people they have released mostly say their crimes were things like arguing with troops. For which they got dumped in a torture center for months where they were beaten and spent their days locked into excrutiating positions with good ole Red, White, and Blue american piss-soaked bags over their heads.
I read all the Iraqi bloggers I can and one of the last holdouts that still held any hope for the US occupation finally left the camp after US soldiers threw his nephew over a dam.
This whole thing is fucked and all the tactical simulation on the planet isn't going to fix anything.
Not unless you can hook it up matrix style to everyone in America and program all the Iraqi's to love Americans and have the big political fight turn into whether they want to subscribe to the neoliberal New Republic or the neoconservative National Review and whether they want UN approval to help us invade Syria or just join the new coalition of the willing.
Wouldn't be a bad PR move for the election season.
There should be some sort of Nobel Prize for digging around in the pile of horseshit under the Christmas tree and looking for the Pony.
Everything is great! You can move to Calcutta and live like a KING just like those lucky bastards over there!
How stupid exactly have we gotten?
of course!
The Education Department could offer a futures market where people could bet on the drop-out rate for different ethnic groups or income levels as school funding continues to be cut, allowing school boards across the country to slash staffing and classroom space in advance of declining enrolments.
ingenious!
I've noticed this also.
For the life of me I cannot figure out what happened to Slashdot. I barely come in anymore because I can't take it. I remember in the old days the place was pretty much a hangout for people with strong libertarian views (libertarian in the social sence, fierce debate in the economic sense)
Nowadays, I wind up thinking I made a wrong turn and wound up at freerepublic.com
If you've read Adam Smith's "Wealth of a Nation" you have read 95% of Karl Marx. I am not a Marxist but China has nothing in common with Communist ideology. It has decended from a Communist totalitarian state to a Fascist totalitarian state.
Oh yeah, Fascism is the logical conclusion of Capitalism and don't bother flaming me.
rule #3 Don't elect leaders we don't like or we will arm terrorists to tear apart your country (see most of South and Central America)
rule #4 Don't have anyone in power we don't like or the CIA will come over and "elect" someone for you (see alot of South and Central America and the M.E.
rule #5 If the CIA thug gets lippy after we install him we will have to come back and bomb the fuck out of you again,our bad, but what can you do? (See Noriega)
rule #6 Sometimes we go off for absolutely no reason anyone in hell can make sense of (see Grenada)
We do some great things, see UNICEF, Peace Corps, etc.. It's just too bad that we have to send them in to clean up after the CIA and the Pentagon.
Taking a critical look at our history of the 20th century does not make you a bad person.
So we are just going to skip the trial part? Dear God, have you lost your mind? Remember when we kept getting told this whole thing was a struggle between civilization and barbarism? Well, holding prisoners indefinately and denying them attorney/client privelege takes us back about to the dark ages.
If this their answer, the terrorists can stay home from now on. We took care of that whole civilization thing.
I fail entirely to see what you expect the US government or other first world governments to do about this. If you want to force labor protection laws in these countries, the correct vehicle would have to be a world-wide governmental organization, a UN with vastly expanded powers. The thing is that NONE of these third world countries want that. Like I said, if what you say is true, it's the responsibility of those people or their government
The organization that can trump local law is the WTO, if they did make laws against it someone would sue them to take them off the books.
Unfortunately you can't sue a country for being a horrible repressive piece of shit. If you want to throw in some conditions like that, I'd get behind it. It would never happen because no country would agree to it.
hey, lake county....
how did you like that re-districting..
BAHAHAHAHAHAH
Let me give you two examples of third world "citizens"
India does not "play fair" they ignore IP copywrites. They have bad ole socialist type tarriffs. They are progressing. Largest democracy in the world.
Pakistan "plays fair", they wound up having to close the public school system and fell back on the religious schools where the kids learn nothing but rote memorization of the Koran. In case you haven't figured it out, the well being of the third world has become a direct threat to your life.
I can't believe anyone isn't ashamed of the first world running something that resembles so closely one of those paycheck loan places that litter the landscape.
Can someone please explain why this is acceptable behavior?
Enjoy waving the bloody shirt...
That propaganda technique will soon lose effectiveness. When the food trucks do not roll in in a few weeks because of U.S. bombing expect most of the country to die of starvation.
That is called genocide. I won't be proud of that. I hope you won't.
I don't understand you people. Do you think that if bin Laden dies everything will be OK? His life or death means absolutely nothing as far as future terrorism.
We will play lets pretend and imagine that we have cowed every nation in the world into coughing up any person that is anti-american in their country.
What do you do when terrorism continues?
It comes from just where it came from last time...Florida.
You will wind up figuring out that it is alot easier to pull a couple bases out of Saudi and telling Israel to get it's act together and make nice than dealing with the fallout.
I have no idea even where to start with how messed up our logic is. I understand, I'm an American, I am pissed as hell but I have yet to hear one good argument for attacking Afghanistan. I know it feels like we have to attack someone, but in this case there is nowhere worth attacking.
I'm the last person to apologize for the Taliban but they are what is there. Believe it or not they are a fairly popular government despite the fact that they are monsters. They put an end to 20 years of civil war. How do you replace that? A new government will be constantly under attack by the majority of the population who see whatever comes in as a U.S. puppet.
Those bad ole pinko commie liberals, always trying to link games to violence.
Well guess what? I caught one of those bad ole commies myself. He goes by the name Pat Buchanan.
This is what that silly liberal fool had to say:
"If some polluter were putting poison and filth into a river, the president would lacerate that industry. This president ought to do the same to those folks in the entertainment industry who pollute our culture from which everyone has to drink. The fundamental problem is the poisoning of the culture and, secondly, that God and the Ten Commandments and Christian instruction and all moral teaching have been removed from these public schools. And into that vacuum has gone the law of Satan."
Being a moral watchdog has people on both sides of the Aisle and I (as a bad ole commie liberal) have about as much use for Joe Lieberman as I do Pat Buchanan but don't fool yourself that the conservative elements in this country are defenders of freedom of expression.
Whenever issues like this come up for debate it's never party vs. party. It's liberal "We can all live in a little nerf world where no one can hurt" and conservative "I'll legislate morality" elements that work together against the decent people on both side of the political spectrum.
Then I traded it to "I'll work for a case of beer" just so I wouldn't feel like a jerk charging them going rates.
Then it got worse because they felt like they had actually paid for something and when they broke it again they would get mad at me because "obviously" it was me fixing what broke last time that cause the new thing breaking to happen.
I've just gone to $50/hr 1 hr. minimum now. They don't call as much and I feel alot better about it.
Shut up and sit down. Didn't you hear Ari Fleisher "Be careful what you say"? You are the silly stuffed shirt tory cunt. Bet you just can't wait for Daddy to come get someone who dares speak ill of him.
Grow a spine and maybe look up to people who are willing to dissent under the most repressive laws since the anti-sedition acts of the 18th century. They have a set of cajones unlike anything you've ever known.
P.S. for the first "patriotic" idiot to mod me down I could give a damn, I'll still be posting at 2 for the next 10 years
no idea what you are talking about..
The Consortium of media organizations that has delayed announcing the results of the Florida presidential election ballot study contends that it had absolutely no idea who was going to win that recount. The Consortium further contends that the ballots have not yet been tabulated, making it impossible for anyone to know the outcome. It also states that the results of the ballot study would have been released to the American people if not for the terrorist attack on September 11.
The Consortium is engaging in sophistry. It is deliberately seeking to deceive the public with incomplete and misleading information. This dishonesty is entirely consistent with the mainstream media's pattern of lying that recurred throughout the presidential campaign.
Part two in this series deals with the Consortium's lack of candor as it has sought to advance its own financial interests by concealing Al Gore's clear victory in Florida and refusing to acknowledge that he was the rightful winner in the 2000 presidential election.
It is important to emphasize that we do not allege the conglomerates that control the American mainstream media have engaged in a conspiracy, only that they have damaged American democracy by conducting themselves with unpatriotic self interest and all consuming greed.
On January 9, 2001, eight media organizations announced their intention to form the Consortium that would examine and classify the votes in the Florida presidential election. The eight news organizations were The New York Times, The Washington Post, Dow Jones and Company (The Wall Street Journal), the Associated Press, The Tribune Company (The Los Angeles Times and The Chicago Tribune, among others), The Palm Beach Post, The St. Petersburg Times, and CNN (which later dropped out).
The Consortium sought to gain credibility for the integrity of its recount by hiring the not-for-profit National Opinion Research Center to perform the actual ballot handling tasks and to compile the relevant information. NORC was assigned to provide the raw data to each of the members of the Consortium. It would then be up to the individual media outlets to decide how they would interpret and report the data to the American people.
All of this was to be completed by April, 2001.
At the time that the Consortium announced its plans to categorize the votes, some national public opinion polls showed that over a third of Americans considered George W. Bush to be an illegitimate president. Several prominent syndicated columnists had written that Gore was fortunate to "lose", because the poisonous atmosphere in the aftermath of the controversial election guaranteed that the new president was destined to one term of bitterness and gridlock.
The perception of the mainstream political and media analysts was that there were only three possible outcomes of the ballot study:
Bush could win in a photo finish, as he had in each previous recount.
It could turn out to be a dead heat.
Gore could win in a photo finish.
Two thirds of Americans surveyed said that they were ready to move on. They believed that it was basically an even election; they might never be completely sure who actually won, but someone had to be president, and Bush won the recounts and the Supreme Court verdict. For most Americans, regardless of who literally won an election that was too close to call, it was time to get on with life.
Against this backdrop, any of the three results of the ballot study that were considered possible would not be harmful to Bush. If the ballot study showed he won, then that would confirm he was the legitimate president. If it were a tie, then he would be no worse off than before the study was released. If Gore won a squeaker, then the most diehard of the Democrats might challenge the legitimacy of a Bush administration, but the GOP had prepared for that possibility by assigning party activists to every Florida county for the specific purpose of screaming fraud. Another very close vote accompanied by frenzied controversy would make the Consortium ballot study just a tiresome repeat of the soap opera that most of election-weary America had already seen and turned off.
If the establishment deep thinkers were right, then the only possible results from the Consortium study could help legitimize Bush, but could not harm his legitimacy among those Americans who had "gotten over it".
There was, however, a potential complication that had been discounted by the corporations that were financing this venture:
What would happen if the Consortium recount revealed that Gore had won decisively?
The NORC's examination of the ballots began in February. MakeThemAccountable has spoken with several participants who were in the NORC coding rooms where the ballots of the Florida presidential election were reviewed. These people did not know each other and were in different counties within Florida. Each of them independently stated that, based on their personal observation, Al Gore was winning at least two thirds of those disputed ballots that NORC coders were recording. These were ballots that had not been included in previous recounts.
The Consortium has stated that it cannot possibly have known the outcome of the ballot coding because NORC did not generate a final tabulation. The Consortium even contends that, because the ballots were not delivered to the media organizations until mid-September, and because those organizations have been completely preoccupied with covering the war against terrorism, the result of the recount is still a complete mystery to them.
The Consortium is lying about this, as well as other things.
Our sources within the recount made a commitment of confidentiality to NORC, pledging that they would not go public with what they saw during the process. This pact was faithfully honored until after September 11, when some participants became alarmed that the Consortium was going to violate its commitment to inform the American public about the truth of the actual results.
The ballot examination process, or coding process, had teams consisting of an NORC employee supervising three coders. It was the job of the coders to identify the characteristics of any expression of voter intent on the ballots. Their observations were entered into a computer database so that the media organizations comprising the Consortium could later evaluate the data to determine the winner. The ballots showed only numbers and not the names of candidates, so NORC assumed that those who were evaluating the ballots did not know which candidate was getting which votes. . The supervisors were responsible for comparing the pattern of vote tabulation by each coder, to further insure that bias would not enter the process.
In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, NORC Public Information Officer Julie Antelman confirmed that, if someone knew which number applied to which candidate, then they could tell if there was a trend.
To those who were carefully observing the coding, and who had enough knowledge of Florida county ballot configurations and precinct voting patterns to figure out which number represented Bush and which represented Gore, it was clear exactly how the vote categorization was going. Specifically, they saw the inclusion of many disputed ballots that had been successfully excluded from previous recounts because of pressure tactics by the Bush campaign. In the objective, professional setting of the NORC coding process, the winner of the overwhelming number of previously disputed ballots was Al Gore.
From the first day of the NORC process, there was a visible presence of pro-Bush demonstrators outside the coding rooms. What has not been widely reported is that there was also a constant Bush presence inside the coding rooms. The NORC had a policy that allowed for a representative of either party to observe the process. In counties like Hernando, observers could pay in order to actually sit at the coding tables. The observer was not allowed to comment, intrude, or interact with the coders, or in any way seek to influence the ballot study.
There is no evidence that the partisan observers corrupted the process of coding ballots, but their presence certainly destroys the myth of an "unknowable" result. Inside the rooms of the NORC coding process, politically experienced G.O.P. operatives carefully watched for trends.
They saw bad news for Bush. For example, in Republican Lake County, election officials had disqualified six hundred ballots because voters put a pencil mark in the circle by a candidate's name and also wrote the same candidate's name on another part of the ballot. According to the G.O.P., this made it impossible to discern the voters' intent.
The coders perceived that someone who checked a candidate's name and also wrote in the same candidate's name probably meant to vote for that candidate.
The Republicans screamed that no one could possibly know for certain which candidate the voter meant to choose in these instances "unless they were psychic". They decried the NORC's "pathetic attempts at mind reading".
The G.O.P.'s high decibel cries of persecution had successfully intimidated officials at the previous Florida recounts, but the rules of the NORC coding session prohibited observers from emoting inside the rooms. The indignant Republicans had to go outside to vent. The net result was a gain of one hundred thirty votes for Gore using previously uncounted ballots in just one Republican county.
George W. Bush had a widespread presence of people actively looking after his interests. There were Republican protesters outside the coding rooms and Republican observers inside the coding rooms in every county.
The Gore organization had already disbanded.
As during the election and the recounts, the Republicans were fighting as hard as they could -- no holds barred -- while the Democrats defaulted.
Even so, during the Consortium ballot study the coders just found too many Gore votes for the G.O.P. to be able to "win" again by invoking invisible crimes and decrying nonexistent conspiracies.
It is simply false for the Consortium to claim people were unaware that the results were developing in a way that would be highly embarrassing, at best, for George W. Bush. The Republican observers saw the strong pro-Gore trend and responded with typical aplomb. A G.O.P. activist accused one NORC coder of being drunk on the job, a lie that was later disproven. Even so, Republican operatives reportedly pressured another coder to confirm the phony allegation. The Republicans yelled about the quality of the coders, screamed about the treachery of the process, and threw temper tantrums about the unfairness of it all. Of course, they offered no proof of their slanderous charges. Though the G.O.P. observers were publicly panicking as the trend continued strongly against them, the Consortium observers in the very same rooms claim to be completely unaware of who was winning.
The members of the Consortium have a sufficient interest in this matter that they collectively have paid millions of dollars to subsidize the ballot study. The media organizations that comprise the Consortium employ hundreds of experienced journalists who possess expertise in gathering information. A number of their most able journalists were eyewitnesses to what was happening in the coding rooms. And yet, the Consortium pleads total ignorance of who was gaining votes during the NORC coding process.
Dan Keating was the Washington Post on-site editor for the ballot study. In an interview with MakeThemAccountable, he said, "We intentionally blinded ourselves to the information."
Some coders knew enough about Florida county ballot configuration to be able to tell which numerical code represented Bush and which identified Gore. The same was true of supervisors, private citizens who viewed the study, and the increasingly hysterical Republican observers. Non-Consortium journalists were not exactly clueless, either:
The media are finding more ballots meant for Gore. In election-speak: Even though final statewide results aren't in, early returns favor Gore.
Think about democracy real hard..
I'm scared to death of my fellow citizens.
If on Sept 12 (or maybe even today) someone threw an item on the agenda for a vote like "Should we glass Afghanistan and the entire Middle East" you think that wouldn't have passed?
I think this system sucks to, the founding fathers should have found ways to keep corporate interests from buying out the politicians but they didn't. I think giving the public a chance to do anything it wants to is silly to.
Hmmm, I knew that but my rep has never said anything. My rep lives in my home town so I mail it his office here. I wonder if it's a federally funded office or if he just doesn't care :)
Put in a check for $20 or so.
I'm serious makes all the difference between the auto-responce and a real letter, probably written by an aide but at least someone knows you care about the issue.
All depends on the quality of the conversation site. So far as I know my personal political site has been pretty damn accurate. A lot of crap posted that gets investigated then shot to hell if it isn't able to be backed up by another source or the source is untrustworthy (ie, has an agenda to put forward)
Lots of stuff that has gone under the radar on the major news outlets does come out though. There was a sonic boom over Chicago when fighters scrambled to intercept a plane where a passenger had gone a little nutty. We didn't know what had happened at the time but we pieced it together through WLS. We were all over it as soon as it happened. WGN never covered it even though the news was on. CNN never touched it.
I find I trust my conversation sites much more than the media companys