Category: Politics

Morons Who Get Elected:EU Edition

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Well, it looks like the US hasn’t cornered the market on stupid.

EC wants to suppress internet bomb-making guides
By Lewis Page
Published Wednesday 4th July 2007 13:49 GMT

The European Commission (EC) has announced plans to frustrate terrorism by suppressing online guides on bomb-making.

“It should simply not be possible to leave people free to instruct other people on the internet on how to make a bomb – that has nothing to do with freedom of expression,” EC vice president Franco Frattini said yesterday.
Mr Frattini is “responsible for Freedom, Security and Justice.”

If this guy were responsible for generating electricity from George Orwell spinning in his grave, he’d be doing his job well.

His current job? …. Not so much.

When asked how the EC planned to suppress web bomb manufacture instructions hosted outside EU borders, it appeared that officials planned to act at the level of ISPs in Europe.

The Times quoted a commission spokesman as saying: “You always need a provider here that gives you access to websites. They can decide technically which websites to allow. Otherwise, how would China block internet sites? There are no technological obstacles, only legal ones.”
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Holding up China as a model of internet access????? Puhleeze.

FTC abandons net neutrality

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This should surprise no one, the Bush admin will always make the wrong choice, particularly when it.

Contact your congresscritters about this, and help get a network neutrality bill passed.

FTC abandons net neutrality
End of the internet as we know it
Iain Thomson, vnunet.com 02 Jul 2007
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The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has decided to abandon net neutrality and allow telecoms companies to charge websites for access.

The FTC said in a report that, despite popular support for net neutrality, it was minded to let the market sort out the issue.

This means that the organisation will not stand in the way of companies using differential pricing to make sure that some websites can be viewed more quickly than others. The report also counsels against net neutrality legislation.

“This report recommends that policy makers proceed with caution in the evolving dynamic industry of broadband internet access, which is generally moving towards more, not less, competition,” FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras wrote.

“In the absence of significant market failure, or demonstrated consumer harm, policy makers should be particularly hesitant to enact new regulation in this area.”

The report has caused outrage in the online community. Many are worried that any abandonment of net neutrality will harm competition, since it will allow big companies to outspend start-ups.
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UN Finds No WMDs in Iraq, Closes Up Shop.

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We’ve known that Iraq had no WMDs since before the invasion.

Took the UN 4 years to acknowledge this, though.

UN Closes Iraq Weapons Inspection Unit

UNITED NATIONS: The U.N. Security Council has closed down the agency charged with monitoring Saddam Hussein’s illicit weapons programs.

Fourteen of the 15 Security Council members voted to immediately abolish the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Committee, known as UNMOVIC. The 15th member, Russia, abstained.

Russia’s U.N. ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, objected that the inspectors had not fulfilled their mandate of officially certifying that Iraq, at present, has no weapons of mass destruction. But he said Russia is willing to accepts that UNMOVIC serves no further purpose.

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Obstruction of Public Access: UK Edition

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This is really about covering up pork, and outrageous uses of expense accounts by MPs.

UK gov fights public spending website
By Kablenet
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 09:27 GMT

The government is obstructing a bill aimed at establishing a new website for information on public sector spending.

The bill, which originated in the House of Lords, is now being led by Conservative MP David Gauke. It would require the Treasury to create a government expenditure website, as well as giving the government the power to extend it to other public sector bodies, but the government believes it would cost too much.

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Other Countries Now Throwing Economic Weight Around

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US unilateralism will be increasingly untenable as time goes on. This is one such example.

Free trade is generally sold as a series of restrictions on other governments, but the requirements of the current regime require compromises that strike at the heart of law enforcement, consumer safety, and worker protections.

The “soft economic power” (blaackmail) that the US uses to influence domestic policies of other nations, up to and including elections, will increasingly be directed back toward the US.

Banks want data pulled from US

By Mark Ballard
Published Tuesday 3rd July 2007 09:53 GMT

The central banks of China and Russia have joined private companies in calling on Swift, the international financial intermediary, to pull all non-US data from America, The Register has learned.

SWIFT has found itself caught between a rock and a hard place. The organisation secretly handed over personal data to comply with demands from the US to aid the country’s investigation into terrorist finances after the September 11 attacks. By doing so, it broke the data protection laws of many EU countries.

The move raises questions about the perceived security of commercial data held in the US. Swift conducts its own privacy audits of US counter-terrorism subpoenas on financial transactions it manages for the banking industry.

The EU also struck an agreement with the US last week to establish its own oversight of the US operation. SWIFT has also applied for Safe Harbor protection of its data in the US, yet is still taking pressure to withdraw from the US seriously.

“There are other countries that would like to see data situated in the EU rather than the US,” said a well-placed source.

China and Russia were “notable” among countries whose central banks had expressed their concerns to Swift. The European Central Bank, which also used Swift’s services, has been criticised by EU authorities for letting the EU look at European financial data in secret.

Swift is trying to break into the domestic banking markets in China and Russia and is keen to get off on the right foot with local authorities. In India, where Swift is also trying to make a splash, the banks are said to be investigating alternatives.

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US Air Force General Guarantees Sweet Retirement Deal with Lockheed

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There are alternatives that work in Europe today. They should just cancel this, but some General is planning his retirement years at Lockheed..

US Air Force proposes reliability plan for Lockheed missile
By Stephen Trimble

The US Air Force has proposed a reliability improvement plan for Lockheed Martin’s AGM-158 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, but has not yet followed through on a threat to cancel the troubled programme.

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Liberals Don’t Get It, Women are Property

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This is a repulsive thing. It is about the idea that wives are property.

Stealing another’s man’s wife costs $4,802
CHICAGO, Illinois (AP) — Stealing someone’s heart can cost you: Just ask German Blinov.

A Cook County jury ordered Blinov to shell out $4,802 last week after he was sued by a husband from a Chicago suburb for stealing the affections of the man’s wife.

Arthur Friedman used a little-known state law to mount the legal attack against Blinov. The alienation of affection law, one of eight across the country, lets spouses seek damages for the loss of love.

But Natalie Friedman, the woman at the center of it all, claims her husband asked her to have sex with other men and women — including Blinov — to spice up their relationship.

She supposedly began having feelings for Blinov, prompting her husband to file the lawsuit.

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What Atrios Said

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Here:

Inevitably, the subject of Marc Rich comes up every time presidential pardons come up. Without going into all of the issues, can we just remind the world that… Marc Rich’s lawyer was Scooter Libby.

As I’ve said before, and will say again, this is why Duncan Black is an A-list blogger, and I am a Z-list blogger.

Common Ground for Hunters and Environmentalists

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Christina Larson, Blogging for Kevin Drum makes a very good point about hunters and other sportsmen.

Specifically, if they are allowed reasonable access in an environmentally friendly way, they are great allies in protecting critical habitats.

I don’t hunt myself. I keep Kosher at home out of respect for my wife, and anything that you would shoot would be treif, and so we could not eat them, but I’ve taken my kids fishing, and only my astonishing ineptitude has prevented us from taking fish home to cook.

Here we have roadless land where hunters can walk in to hunt, and they, who are not what one could call reflexively anti-military, are screaming bloody murder.

Hunting is essential in much of rural PA, because the deer have gotten completely out of hand, because the wolves have been eliminated.

I’d like to see wolves reintroduced, if just because they are more efficient, and tend to go after the old and infirm animals, but for the foreseeable future, hunting is an indispensable part of the ecosystem.

Land Conservationists Take on the National Guard – New York Times

By SEAN D. HAMILL

FORT INDIANTOWN GAP, Pa., June 27 — There are few better vantage points than Hawk Watch to see both sides of the debate between the Pennsylvania National Guard and local conservationists.

Hawk Watch, a 30-yard-wide clearing named for its grand view of soaring raptors, is on the ridge of Second Mountain, about 12 miles northeast of Harrisburg and part of the Appalachian range.

“This is Stony Creek Valley,” said Larry Herr, pointing north to 44,000 acres of state-protected wilderness that is home to a nearly unaltered green carpet of hemlock, maple and oak trees going down the hillside to the valley 1,000 feet below.

Then, walking to the other side of Hawk Watch and looking south onto a 17,000-acre base operated by the Pennsylvania National Guard, Mr. Herr said with contempt: “And this is the Gap. Notice the difference.”

Amid large swaths of a similar tree canopy are pockets where the valley and hillside have been carved up for guard training areas, the trees removed and roads, buildings and ranges put in their place.

“That’s why we don’t want them over here,” said Mr. Herr, 67, a hunter who is part of the Stony Creek Valley Coalition fighting the guard’s request to use about 900 acres as a buffer for a new target range for Abrams M-1 tanks and Bradley fighting vehicles. “We don’t trust them.”

In a series of public meetings, charges have flown back and forth about a lack of concern for the public and past environmental abuses by the Guard — charges the Guard denies — and accusations that sportsmen regularly trespass on Guard land.

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Emphasis mine.

Republicans: Who Cares About Safety? We Need to Diss a Union!

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The FAA maintains that it was a pay increase, not a pay cut, but it looks like going back to the old contract would require $20m in back pay.

The FAA refused to negotiate in good faith with the union.

Controller Amendment Could Scuttle FAA Bill, Mica Says (Subscription Required)
Aviation Week & Space Technology
07/02/2007, page 37

Adrian Schofield
Washington

Republicans say controller amendment could be ‘showstopper’ for FAA bill

Printed headline: Veto Bait

The juggernaut that is the FAA reauthorization effort has rolled past another congressional milestone, but in doing so it picked up a controversial amendment that threatens to draw a White House veto.

The House version of the FAA reauthorization bill was introduced June 27 –after many false starts–and was supported by both Republican and Democratic leaders from the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee. However, this accord was short-lived: Just a day later Republicans vehemently opposed an amendment that would reopen an air traffic controller contract imposed by the FAA last year.

The amendment and the bill itself were eventually approved during a June 28 markup hearing, and are now headed for further debate on the House floor. The Senate passed its own version in May.

Rep. John Mica (Fla.), ranking Republican on the committee, stressed the controller clause will likely result in a presidential veto. This amendment is a “showstopper” and “a poison pill that could kill FAA reauthorization,” he said. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters later confirmed the veto threat.

The controller amendment–offered by aviation subcommittee Chairman Jerry Costello (D-Ill.)–would turn the clock back to before the FAA declared an impasse in negotiations with the controllers union. Under existing law, the impasse allowed the agency to impose its last contract proposal. The Costello amendment would send the FAA and the National Air Traffic Controllers Assn. (Natca) back to the bargaining table, and would require binding arbitration if no agreement is reached within 45 days.

Both sides agree the contract negotiation process needs to be changed in the future, but they differ over reopening the existing contract. Costello proposes reversing new pay and work rules imposed by the FAA last year, and awarding up to $20 million in back pay to controllers. However, he noted the amendment would be void if the FAA and Natca manage to reach a settlement before the reauthorization bill reaches the President.

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Starting World War III By Mistake

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Let’s see the problems here:

  • This makes a conventional attack indistinguishable from a nuclear one, increasing the possibility of a nuclear response.

  • It makes arms control agreements next to impossible to enforce, though that might be the goal of Bush and his evil minions™, they have always opposed arms control agreements.

Navy, Air Force Explore Conventional Strike Options (Subscription Required)

Aviation Week & Space Technology
07/02/2007, page 32

Amy Butler
Los Angeles and Sunnyvale, Calif.

The Pentagon is looking for non-nuclear strike options, prompting new demos

Printed headline: Hardly Conventional

The U.S. Air Force and Navy are preparing different approaches to solving a gap in the nation’s ability to deliver a conventional payload to strike any target on the globe within one hour of a go-ahead.

The Navy is looking to its Trident II D5 submarine-launched missile, while the Air Force is considering a land-based design using decommissioned Peacekeeper and Minuteman rocket motors on a Minotaur launch vehicle tipped with a conventional munition.

U.S. Strategic Command chief, Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright–the White House’s pick for the next vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff–says he needs this capability to react to a variety of threats without having to rely on basing rights or nuclear weapons. The target set could include anything from activities deserving of a preemptive strike–such as an anti-satellite threat–or a reaction to real-time intelligence on terrorist elements.

And this makes it even worse:

The Navy notionally plans to dedicate two of 24 tubes in each of 14 Ohio-class submarines to the conventional Trident mission. The remaining tubes would continue to carry the nuclear-armed versions.

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There is a sub launched ballistic missile headed toward you. You have nukes. Is it targeting you, or someone else? Is it conventional or nuclear?

You have 5 minutes to choose a response.

No One Must Distract the Emperor

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Bush and his evil minions™ really do hate America.

Not for Nothing – Reporter sanctioned for approaching Bush
WPRI-TV, Channel 12 reporter Jarrod Holbrook had his White House press pass snatched after he shouted “Mr. President!” twice as President Bush greeted Air and Army National Guardsmen gathered on the tarmac at the Air National Guard base in Quonset.

A member of the president’s entourage pointed at Holbrook after he first tried to get Mr. Bush’s attention. The man then ripped the pass from Holbrook’s belt after he shouted again to the president, who was about 10 feet away.

Holbrook said afterward that he just wanted to ask Mr. Bush how he enjoyed his visit to Rhode Island. Members of the media were not told they could not ask the president questions.
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What’s Wrong With the Media

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Undercover, under fire – Los Angeles Times
By Ken Silverstein
KEN SILVERSTEIN, a former Times staff writer, is the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine.

June 30, 2007

EARLIER THIS YEAR, I put on a brand-new tailored suit, picked up a sleek leather briefcase and headed to downtown Washington for meetings with some of the city’s most prominent lobbyists. I had contacted their firms several weeks earlier, pretending to be the representative of a London-based energy company with business interests in Turkmenistan. I told them I wanted to hire the services of a firm to burnish that country’s image.

I didn’t mention that Turkmenistan is run by an ugly, neo-Stalinist regime. They surely knew that, and besides, they didn’t care. As I explained in this month’s issue of Harper’s Magazine, the lobbyists I met at Cassidy & Associates and APCO were more than eager to help out. In exchange for fees of up to $1.5 million a year, they offered to send congressional delegations to Turkmenistan and write and plant opinion pieces in newspapers under the names of academics and think-tank experts they would recruit. They even offered to set up supposedly “independent” media events in Washington that would promote Turkmenistan (the agenda and speakers would actually be determined by the lobbyists).

All this, Cassidy and APCO promised, could be done quietly and unobtrusively, because the law that regulates foreign lobbyists is so flimsy that the firms would be required to reveal little information in their public disclosure forms.

Now, in a fabulous bit of irony, my article about the unethical behavior of lobbying firms has become, for some in the media, a story about my ethics in reporting the story. The lobbyists have attacked the story and me personally, saying that it was unethical of me to misrepresent myself when I went to speak to them.

That kind of reaction is to be expected from the lobbyists exposed in my article. But what I found more disappointing is that their concerns were then mirrored by Washington Post media columnist Howard Kurtz, who was apparently far less concerned by the lobbyists’ ability to manipulate public and political opinion than by my use of undercover journalism.

“No matter how good the story,” he wrote, “lying to get it raises as many questions about journalists as their subjects.”

I can’t say I was utterly surprised by Kurtz’s criticism. Some major media organizations allow, in principle, undercover journalism — assuming the story in question is deemed vital to the public interest and could not have been obtained through more conventional means — but very few practice it anymore. And that’s unfortunate, because there’s a long tradition of sting operations in American journalism, dating back at least to the 1880s, when Nellie Bly pretended to be insane in order to reveal the atrocious treatment of inmates at the Women’s Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell’s Island in New York City.

Kurtz’s wife is a Republican apparatchik, and as such, he has a vested interest in the comfortable transmission of lies that is today’s journalism.

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The decline of undercover reporting — and of investigative reporting in general — also reflects, in part, the increasing conservatism and cautiousness of the media, especially the smug, high-end Washington press corps. As reporters have grown more socially prominent during the last several decades, they’ve become part of the very power structure that they’re supposed to be tracking and scrutinizing.

Chuck Lewis, a former “60 Minutes” producer and founder of the Center for Public Integrity, once told me: “The values of the news media are the same as those of the elite, and they badly want to be viewed by the elites as acceptable.”

This is why Journalism school, and the Journalism school academe is so damaging to real journalism. It takes work, and makes it a profession, and those professionals are timid, and see themselves as the same as the people that they cover.

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Yes, undercover reporting should be used sparingly, and there are legitimate arguments to be had about when it is fair or appropriate. But I’m confident my use of it in this case was legitimate. There was a significant public interest involved, particularly given Congress’ as-yet-unfulfilled promise to crack down on lobbyists in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff scandal.

Could I have extracted the same information and insight with more conventional journalistic methods? Impossible.

Based on the number of interview requests I’ve had, and the steady stream of positive e-mails I’ve received, I’d wager that the general public is decidedly more supportive of undercover reporting than the Washington media establishment. One person who heard me talking about the story in a TV interview wrote to urge that I never apologize for “misrepresenting yourself to a pack of thugs … especially when misrepresentation is their own stock in trade!”

I’m willing to debate the merits of my piece, but the carping from the Washington press corps is hard to stomach. This is the group that attended the White House correspondents dinner and clapped for a rapping Karl Rove. As a class, they honor politeness over honesty and believe that being “balanced” means giving the same weight to a lie as you give to the truth.

I’ll take Nellie Bly any day.

Orwell rolls in his grave

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It appears that in addition to bad orthodonture, the British share a fetish for surveillance cameras. Blah

Orwell rolls in his grave: Britain’s endemic surveillance cameras talk back
05/30/2007 @ 10:56 am
Filed by Will Byrne

Observed by over 4.2 million closed circuit – or CCTV – cameras across the country, Britain is already the most surveilled industrialized state in the Western world. It was recently estimated that the average Briton is captured by electronic eyes more than 300 times on a typical workday.
a
Yet the country’s surveillance network, which boasts one camera for every fourteen citizens, is no longer merely facilitating observance: It has now begun talking back. In a scene eerily reminiscent of Orwell’s dystopian vision of 1984, loudspeakers in one small-town center in northern Britain scold anyone they catch engaged in “anti-social behaviour,” including littering, drunkenness, or fighting.

Observing a bank of monitors in the council “control centre,” Middlesbrough town officials use the technology to broadcast warnings to deviants in real-time. The crime-fighting strategy behind the “speaker cam” draws upon the humiliation of being rebuked in public. A representative explained its function to the BBC in April as being to “embarrass” misbehavers into following the rules. Reports of wrongful chiding have been plentiful.

In one case, a young mother named Marie Brewster was falsely reprimanded for littering. She recounted her experience for The Guardian. “We were in the town centre and I’d got some chips at McDonald’s for my daughter Ellie, but they were hot so I tipped them into a box and crumpled the packet up. I put it on the bottom of Ellie’s pram to take home but then heard this voice say: ‘Please place the rubbish in the bin provided.’” She filed her complaint when she saw footage of the event in a televised news piece advocating the effectiveness of the new innovation in combating crime.
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And Another One Bites the Dust

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Yep, another corrupt Justice Department political appointee leaves.

When a Dem gets in, we need to run all the crooks to ground.

In her case, I think that suborning perjury by Supreme Court nominees is one of her crimes. Roberts and Alito were clearly coached to lie.

Seventh official quits Justice Departmen

Fri Jun 29, 2007 7:29PM EDT

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An assistant attorney general at the Justice Department announced her resignation on Friday, becoming the seventh official to quit the department since the Democratic-led Congress launched an investigation in March into the firing of nine federal prosecutors.

Rachel Brand, assistant attorney general for legal policy, said she would step down on July 9. No reason was given.

Brand was nominated to her position on March 29, 2005, and confirmed by the Senate four months later.

She was responsible for preparing Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito for their confirmation hearings and helped in the reauthorization in 2006 of the USA Patriot Act, an anti-terrorism law that Congress approved after the September 11 attacks.

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Just When I Thought That They Could Not Get Any Stupider

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Un-Dirtyword-believable.

This is so stupid, it shocks me, and I though I had become inured to stupidity flowing from Shrub’s mouth.

Bush cites Israel as model for Iraq

By JENNIFER LOVEN, Associated Press Writer1 hour, 3 minutes ago

President Bush held up Israel as a model for defining success in Iraq Thursday, saying the U.S. goal there is not to eliminate attacks but to enable a democracy that can function despite violence.

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Still, he laid out in some of his plainest terms yet how to define when the U.S. presence in Iraq has achieved its goals.

“Our success in Iraq must not be measured by the enemy’s ability to get a car bombing in the evening news,” he said. “No matter how good the security, terrorists will always be able to explode a bomb on a crowded street.”

He suggested Israel as a model.

There, Bush said, “Terrorists have taken innocent human life for years in suicide attacks. The difference is that Israel is a functioning democracy and it’s not prevented from carrying out its responsibilities. And that’s a good indicator of success that we’re looking for in Iraq.”

It was likely to be controversial — and possibly even explosive — for Bush to set out Israel as a model for a Muslim Middle Eastern nation. Israel has been locked for decades in an intractable dispute with Palestinians in the neighboring occupied territories, a conflict that is viewed as a major recruiting tool for Islamic extremist groups like al-Qaida.

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ES&S Gives Up Source Code In California

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These machines are expensive, slow, and not trusted. Just dump them.

E-voting vendor succumbs to California source code demands

By Dan Goodin in San Francisco
Published Thursday 28th June 2007 01:50 GMT

Electronic voting machines vendor Election Systems & Software Inc. has finally given in to demands by California’s Secretary of State office that it submit the source code used in one of its products. But it made it abundantly clear it is unhappy about the requirement.

ES&S complied with the demand in an overnight package that was received yesterday by the office of Secretary of State (SOS) Debra Bowen, about three months past due date. Of the four e-voting firms selling products to California counties, only ES&S failed to meet the deadline.

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