William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
Did the most powerful Republicans in America have the computer capacity, software skills and electronic infrastructure in place on Election Night 2004 to tamper with the Ohio results to ensure George W. Bush's re-election?
The answer appears to be yes. There is more than ample documentation to show that on Election Night 2004, Ohio's "official" Secretary of State website -- which gave the world the presidential election results -- was redirected from an Ohio government server to a group of servers that contain scores of Republican web sites, including the secret White House e-mail accounts that have emerged in the scandal surrounding Attorney General Alberto Gonzales's firing of eight federal prosecutors.
This is troubling. Comments on Slashdot are informative. Its not really clear there is a problem here beyond the fact that Ohio (like many states) has a partisan appointee running their elections commission and they picked the same outsourcing partner. I think elections in the US should be operated by the federal government. Basically, the propriety of Ohio's elections impacts who my President is, and so I ought to have a say in how they operate their election.
Angry lawyers scuffled with police as protests erupted across Pakistan Wednesday over the removal of nation's top judge, intensifying a crisis that threatens President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's grip on power.
Lawyers, in suits, in the street, with rocks, "scuffling" with police. Seriously. They should have had a section about that in the book of revelations.
RSOE HAVARIA Emergency and Disaster Information Service
Topic: Current Events
4:18 am EST, Jan 30, 2007
National Association of Radio-Distress Signalling and Infocommunications Havaria Emergency and Disaster Information Services Budapest Hungary
Well, here is one for your bookmark list. A website in Hungary that keeps an up to date map of the biggest disasters currently occuring everywhere on the planet. Its a death and destruction information console!
Economics, French-style - Europe - International Herald Tribune
Topic: Current Events
11:14 pm EDT, Apr 9, 2006
"The question of how economics is taught in France, both at the bottom and at the top of the educational pyramid, is at the heart of the current crisis," said Jean-Pierre Boisivon, director of the Enterprise Institute, a company-financed institute that sponsors the internship program for economics teachers that Scache took part in.
This is the most intelligent analysis of the protests in France that I've seen thus far. The students are doing exactly what they have been taught to do.
Beijing Casts Net of Silence Over Protest - New York Times
Topic: Current Events
10:56 pm EST, Dec 14, 2005
Until Tuesday, Web users who turned to search engines like Google and typed in the word Shanwei, the city with jurisdiction over the village where the demonstration was put down, would find nothing about the protests against power plant construction there, or about the crackdown. Users who continued to search found their browsers freezing. By Tuesday, links to foreign news sources appeared but were invariably inoperative.
But controls like these have spurred a lively commentary among China's fast-growing blogging community. "The domestic news blocking system is really interesting," wrote one blogger. "I heard something happened in Shanwei and wanted to find out whether it was true or just the invention of a few people. So I started searching with Baidu, and Baidu went out of service at once. I could open their site, but couldn't do any searches." Baidu is one of the country's leading search engines.
If you remove the "hl=zh-CN" from that Google news search above you get VERY different results. There are some relevent links in the Chineese web search results right now, but the results seem odd given the amount of press coverage. This news search has relevent information, but its mostly coming from a handful of protesty news sources (peacehall & epoch times), same ones that show up in the google search, and not mainstream media. Its possible that these are approved dissenters. (Although VOA also shows up.) More totally unreliable information here. Stratfor has coverage here.
Richard Pryor, the caustic yet perceptive actor-comedian who lived dangerously close to the edge both on stage and off, died Saturday. He was 65.
Pryor died shortly before 8 a.m. of a heart attack after being taken to a hospital from his home in the San Fernando Valley, said his business manager, Karen Finch. He had been ill for years with multiple sclerosis, a degenerative disease of the nervous system.
The 6th Amendment right to legal representation did not afford everyone "the most resourceful defense attorneys with bountiful investigative support."
"The 6th Amendment is satisfied when [defense] counsel's conduct falls within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance, thereby ensuring that criminal defendants receive a fair trial," he said.
This case is interesting... Muddy... IMHO If the state is going to kill you it ought to consider all of the evidence. The idea that it need not seems ignorant of the finality of death.
The Observer | Armed and dangerous - Flipper the firing dolphin let loose by Katrina
Topic: Current Events
3:10 pm EDT, Sep 26, 2005
Usually dolphins were controlled via signals transmitted through a neck harness. 'The question is, were these dolphins made secure before Katrina struck?' said Sheridan.
This is really interesting, but one suspects wildly inaccurate. Dolphins that are trained to shoot people? Really? Even if its true I find it hard to believe that the Navy would have left them armed as the storm approached. They tend to have fairly careful security proceedures.
The news this past week has been unusually surreal. Between attack dolphins and weather machines, its getting a little hard to take anything seriously. Ok, so I wasn't taking the weather machine thing seriously. Maybe I took the SuicideGirls thing a little two seriously... But in the face of killer dolphins, I think I have some leeway to work with. I love these moments in time when everything sounds a little closer to fiction then reality. Somewhere between weather machines and killer dolphins, I hope to find the balance.
Update: The Navy denies trailing dolphins to attack humans or deliver bombs to ships. That means no suicide bomber dolphins.
