:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::

:: 6.28.2006 ::

:: NET NEUTRALITY ::

TIME TO ACT
from remhq.com

The Net Neutrality issue is still alive, with the United States Senate poised to vote as early as (tomorrow) Tuesday on the Snowe-Dorgan amendment to the House Bill that passed last week.

This is an issue with a lot of information (and disinformation) flying around cyberspace, and we urge you to read up on the ramifications of the tiered pricing being advocated by the telecomms and their lobbyists. Certainly the fundamental premise that all internet content be treated equally is one of the underpinnings of the internet and its explosive growth as an all-important medium for communications and commerce.

For some excellent resources on the importance of Net Neutrality in our laws, please see the following sites:

democraticmedia.org

cdt.org

wikipedia

and for an excellent film on the subject, check this out:

youtube

finally, for some lighter-hearted takes on the subject (but still making serious points in their own way) try these:

rocketboom.com

youtube

Anyway, please read, reflect, then email or call your senator (in support the of Snowe/Dorgan amendment (S. 2917))...

here's how

posted by me

:: 9:47:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Space ..." ::

Man must conquer other planets to survive, says Hawking
Daily Mail - UK

We're used to seeing them as stars in the sky, but planets could soon be home to humans if Stephen Hawking has his way.

The world-renowned scientist believes humans must colonise planets elsewhere in the universe because of the risk a disaster will destroy the Earth.

Astrophysicist Professor Hawking insists the survival of the human race depends on it finding new homes on other planets. He believes global warming, nuclear war or a genetically engineered virus could wipe out the earth.

Speaking at a news conference in Hong Kong the 64-year-old scientist said humans could have a permanent base on the moon in 20 years and colony on Mars in the next 40 years.

He said: "We won't find anywhere as nice as Earth unless we go to another star system. It is important for the human race to spread out into space for the survival of the species.

"Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global warming, nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of."

The author of the global best seller "A Brief History of Time" added if humans can avoid killing themselves in the next 100 years, they should have space settlements that can continue without support from Earth.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 10:43:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Domestic Eavesdropping ::

Judge defers decision on US wiretap suit
Computerworld

June 12, 2006 (Reuters) -- DETROIT -- A federal judge today deferred making an immediate decision on a request that the Bush administration's domestic eavesdropping program be halted as a violation of law.

The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit in January, asked U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor to stop the National Security Agency from intercepting international phone calls and e-mails without a warrant in its fight against terrorism, saying it violates Americans' free speech and privacy rights.

But the government responded that the program is key to helping protect U.S. security.

Taylor deferred any ruling. Another hearing is scheduled for July 10.

"Our clients have suffered concrete harm," Ann Beeson, the ACLU's associate legal director, told the court, saying lawyers now have to travel overseas to gather information they would have previously received on the phone and that journalists are beginning to lose sources.

"The framers [of the U.S. Constitution] never intended to give the president the power to ignore the laws of Congress even during wartime and emergencies," she said.

The case was filed in Detroit because the area is home to one of the largest Arab populations outside the Middle East.


Read more here.

posted by me

:: 9:11:00 PM [+] ::
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:: RE Net Neutrality ::

Senate negotiations continue over Net neutrality
From ZDNet

WASHINGTON--Key senators who are planning to overhaul the nation's communications laws remain at odds on the controversial topic of Net neutrality.

At a briefing for reporters Monday, Republican aides to the Senate Commerce Committee released a revised version of a sweeping telecommunications bill--but said the portions related to Net neutrality would not be available until later this week. An earlier version of the bill includes no Net neutrality regulations, reflecting the position supported by broadband providers such as Verizon Communications and AT&T.

Aides to Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska Republican who serves as chairman of the committee, and Hawaii Sen. Daniel Inouye, the committee's senior Democrat, are still negotiating new language about whether broadband providers should be allowed to give special treatment to certain types of content or Internet sites, the aides said.

"Does Congress want to get into regulating how much Google pays to Verizon or what deals it makes with Yahoo?...(Stevens') view is that's a matter better left to these multibillion-dollar companies and Congress should focus on protecting the consumer," said Lisa Sutherland, the committee's Republican staff director.

Last Thursday, the House of Representatives approved its own communications bill but rejected a Democratic-sponsored amendment--backed by companies like eBay, Amazon.com and Google--that would have enacted detailed prohibitions against blocking, impairing, degrading or prioritizing content. The final version authorizes the Federal Communications Commission to police violations of its broadband use principles (click here for PDF) and to levy fines if appropriate, but it bars the regulators from making new rules.

In an interview with CNET News.com published Monday, Verizon lobbyist Thomas Tauke said: "It's fair to say that Stevens is committed to moving a bill. He'll probably have a new draft in the next few days. He seems anxious to have the committee move in the next few weeks and have it to the (Senate) floor in July."

Net neutrality, which has emerged as one of the most contentious issues as Congress attempts to rewrite the nation's telecommunications laws, is the idea that network operators should not be allowed to prioritize Internet content and services that travel across their pipes or to make deals with companies seeking special treatment. The concept has received backing from some of the largest Internet companies, a wide array of consumer groups, and entertainers like Moby and Alyssa Milano.

Also on Monday, The Washington Post published an editorial opposing Net neutrality mandated by the federal government. It said that the dangers cited by proponents of Net neutrality "are speculative" and the government "should not burden the Internet with pre-emptive regulation."

Read more here.

The Internet's Future
Congress should stay out of cyberspace.
An editorial from The Washington Post

Deal on Net neutrality in US Senate elusive -aides
Reuters

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee so far has been unable to reach a compromise on Internet network neutrality, a week before the panel is supposed to vote on it as part of a broader communications reform bill, Senate aides said on Monday.

ALSO
From MoveOn.org

Save the Internet

Congress is now pushing a law that would end the free and open Internet as we know it. Internet providers like AT&T and Verizon are lobbying Congress hard to gut Network Neutrality, the Internet's First Amendment and the key to Internet freedom. Net Neutrality prevents AT&T from choosing which websites open most easily for you based on which site pays AT&T more. So Amazon doesn't have to outbid Barnes & Noble for the right to work more properly on your computer.

Many members of Congress take campaign contributions from these companies, and they don't think the public are paying attention to this issue. Let's show them we care - please sign this petition today.

posted by me

:: 8:55:00 PM [+] ::
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:: "UNREPORTED: THE ZARQAWI INVITATION" ::

From an e-newsletter
by Greg Palast

They got him -- the big, bad, beheading berserker in Iraq. But, something's gone unreported in all the glee over getting Zarqawi … who invited him into Iraq in the first place?

If you prefer your fairy tales unsoiled by facts, read no further. If you want the uncomfortable truth, begin with this: A phone call to Baghdad to Saddam's Palace on the night of April 21, 2003. It was Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld on a secure line from Washington to General Jay Garner.

The General had arrives in Baghdad just hours before to take charge of the newly occupied nation. The message from Rumsfeld was not a heartwarming welcome. Rummy told Garner, Don't unpack, Jack -- you're fired.

What had Garner done? The many-starred general had been sent by the President himself to take charge of a deeply dangerous mission. Iraq was tense but relatively peaceful. Garner's job was to keep the peace and bring democracy.

Unfortunately for the general, he took the President at his word. But the general was wrong. "Peace" and "Democracy" were the slogans.

"My preference," Garner told me in his understated manner, "was to put the Iraqis in charge as soon as we can and do it in some form of elections."

But elections were not in The Plan.

The Plan was a 101-page document to guide the long-term future of the land we'd just conquered. There was nothing in it about democracy or elections or safety. There was, rather, a detailed schedule for selling off "all [Iraq's] state assets" -- and Iraq, that's just about everything -- "especially," said The Plan, "the oil and supporting industries." Especially the oil.

There was more than oil to sell off. The Plan included the sale of Iraq's banks, and weirdly, changing it's copyright laws and other odd items that made the plan look less like a program for Iraq to get on its feet than a program for corporate looting of the nation's assets. (And indeed, we discovered at BBC, behind many of the odder elements -- copyright and tax code changes -- was the hand of lobbyist Jack Abramoff's associate Grover Norquist.)

But Garner didn't think much of The Plan, he told me when we met a year later in Washington. He had other things on his mind. "You prevent epidemics, you start the food distribution program to prevent famine."

Seizing title and ownership of Iraq's oil fields was not on Garner's must-do list. He let that be known to Washington. "I don't think [Iraqis] need to go by the U.S. plan, I think that what we need to do is set an Iraqi government that represents the freely elected will of the people." He added, "It's their country … their oil."

Apparently, the Secretary of Defense disagreed. So did lobbyist Norquist. And Garner incurred their fury by getting carried away with the "democracy" idea: he called for quick elections -- within 90 days of the taking of Baghdad.

But Garner's 90-days-to-elections commitment ran straight into the oil sell-off program. Annex D of the plan indicated that would take at least 270 days -- at least 9 months.

Worse, Garner was brokering a truce between Sunnis, Shias and Kurds. They were about to begin what Garner called a "Big Tent" meeting to hammer out the details and set the election date. He figured he had 90 days to get it done before the factions started slitting each other's throats.

But a quick election would mean the end of the state-asset sell-off plan: An Iraqi-controlled government would never go along with what would certainly amount to foreign corporations swallowing their entire economy. Especially the oil. Garner had spent years in Iraq, in charge of the Northern Kurdish zone and knew Iraqis well. He was certain that an asset-and-oil grab, "privatizations," would cause a sensitive population to take up the gun. "That's just one fight you don't want to take on right now."

But that's just the fight the neo-cons at Defense wanted. And in Rumsfeld's replacement for Garner, they had a man itching for the fight. Paul Bremer III had no experience on the ground in Iraq, but he had one unbeatable credential that Garner lacked: Bremer had served as Managing Director of Kissinger and Associates.

In April 2003, Bremer instituted democracy Bush style: he canceled elections and appointed the entire government himself. Two months later, Bremer ordered a halt to all municipal elections including the crucial vote to Shia seeking to select a mayor in the city of Najaf. The front-runner, moderate Shia Asad Sultan Abu Gilal warned, "If they don't give us freedom, what will we do? We have patience, but not for long." Local Shias formed the "Mahdi Army," and within a year, provoked by Bremer's shutting their paper, attacked and killed 21 U.S. soldiers.

The insurgency had begun. But Bremer's job was hardly over. There were Sunnis to go after. He issued "Order Number One: De-Ba'athification." In effect, this became "De-Sunni-fication."

Saddam's generals, mostly Sunnis, who had, we learned, secretly collaborated with the US invasion and now expected their reward found themselves hunted and arrested. Falah Aljibury, an Iraqi-born US resident who helped with the pre-invasion brokering, told me, "U.S. forces imprisoned all those we named as political leaders," who stopped Iraq's army from firing on U.S. troops.

Aljibury's main concern was that busting Iraqi collaborators and Ba'athist big shots was a gift "to the Wahabis," by which he meant the foreign insurgents, who now gained experienced military commanders, Sunnis, who now had no choice but to fight the US-installed regime or face arrest, ruin or death. They would soon link up with the Sunni-defending Wahabi, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who was committed to destroying "Shia snakes."

And the oil fields? It was, Aljibury noted, when word got out about the plans to sell off the oil fields (thanks to loose lips of the US-appointed oil minister) that pipelines began to blow. Although he had been at the center of planning for invasion, Aljibury now saw the greed-crazed grab for the oil fields as the fuel for a civil war that would rip his country to pieces:

"Insurgents," he said, "and those who wanted to destabilize a new Iraq have used this as means of saying, 'Look, you're losing your country. You’re losing your leadership. You're losing all of your resources to a bunch of wealthy people. A bunch of billionaires in the world want to take you over and make your life miserable.' And we saw an increase in the bombing of oil facilities, pipelines, of course, built on -- built on the premise that privatization [of oil] is coming."

General Garner, watching the insurgency unfold from the occupation authority's provocations, told me, in his understated manner, "I'm a believer that you don't want to end the day with more enemies than you started with."

But you can't have a war president without a war. And you can't have a war without enemies. "Bring 'em on," our Commander-in-Chief said. And Zarqawi answered the call.

**********

posted by me

:: 9:36:00 AM [+] ::
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:: RE Rendition ::

14 Nations Aided CIA in Abductions, Report Says
Los Angeles Times

PARIS — Fourteen European countries appear to have helped the CIA operate a global "spider's web" of abductions, clandestine flights and secret detention facilities targeting suspected Islamic extremists, the head of a European inquiry alleged Wednesday.

Presenting the findings of an eight-month inquiry, Swiss Sen. Dick Marty accused European governments of collaborating with or accepting "systematic human rights violations" on their soil as teams of U.S. spies in black ski masks allegedly spirited suspects onto planes that flew them to grueling interrogations in countries such as Morocco, Syria and Egypt.

Marty singled out Romania and Poland, saying European government flight data and circumstantial evidence support accusations that they allowed secret CIA detention facilities to operate in their countries.

Read more here.

ALSO

We need to act against rendition
Britain should not be silent about the CIA's abduction of terror suspects.r
An opinion piece from the Guardian Unlimited, UK

As another report (pdf) is published making accusations of rendition and secret prisons in Europe, Tony Blair is complaining that it adds nothing new. Calls for the allegations to be backed up by solid evidence are growing stronger. But it's not more evidence that we need, it's more open discussion.

posted by me

:: 10:10:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "Heed the Signs" ::

The Omen (remake)
A review from horror.com

Directors of remakes have pretty thankless jobs. If they make to-the-letter reproductions of beloved fright films (ala Gus Van Sant's Psycho), they are blasted for having no imagination. If they veer totally off the page and do their own thing (like Jaume Collet-Serra's House of Wax), they're taken to task for being irreverent hacks.

I've said it before and I'm saying it again: The Omen (1976) didn't need to be remade. It's a solid movie with nothing missing. It's not dated. The story is still relevant. Damien is an indelible character. But the reality is these "old" movies, according to the studios that own the rights, all need dollars-and-cents resuscitation. You can give a little mouth-to-mouth with an anniversary re-release like they did with The Exorcist, but that barely registers a pulse. The thing that really gets studio suits' hearts racing are remakes. Better yet, reimaginings!

So if it's inevitable, then at least director John Moore should get a pat on the back for walking the fine line between faithfulness to the source material and a nod to the new guard of horror fans who demand a little extra in their Rated-R entertainment.

The Omen, which follows the original screenplay by David Seltzer (and indeed credits him), takes us through the early childhood of Damien Thorn (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), who was switched at birth in Rome with the murdered infant of an esteemed American diplomat. Robert Thorn (Liev Schreiber), believing his baby died of natural causes, decides to conceal the truth from his wife, Kathy (Julia Stiles), letting her believe that Damien is her own flesh and blood. They move to England, and look forward to a life of privilege.

The tide turns when, during Damien's ostentatious fifth birthday, his nanny (Amy Huck), commits suicide in plain view of all the party guests. This opens the floodgates for evil, and the revelation that Damien, who was born on June 6, at 6 a.m., is the Antichrist.

Read more here.

ALSO
The Omen Vs. The Omen
A side-by-side comparison of the two movies, the original and the remake, released 30 years apart.

posted by me

:: 1:18:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "GNU Radio Opens an Unseen World" ::

Matt Ettus has the sly smile of someone who sees the invisible. His hands fly over the boards of his Universal Software Radio Peripheral, or USRP, snapping them together with an antenna like Lego bricks. Then he plugs in the naked boards to a USB 2 cable snaking to his Linux laptop.

After few minutes of normal Linux messing around ("Takes forever to boot.... Haven't got the sound driver working yet....") he turns the laptop around to reveal a set of vibrating lines in humps and dips across the screen, like a wildly shaking wireframe mountain range. "Here," he explains, "I'm grabbing FM."

"All of it?" I ask.

"All of it," he says. I'm suddenly glad the soundcard isn't working.

Radio is that bit of the electromagnetic spectrum that sits between brain waves and daylight. It's made of the same stuff that composes light, color, electrical hums, gamma radiation from atom bombs, the microwaves that reheat your pizza.

From our perspective, radio devices behave very differently -- a global positioning system gadget doesn't look like a TV doesn't look like a CB set, even if they are all radios. They are single-purpose machines that use small bits of radio spectrum to do very specific tasks -- about as far from the general-purpose personal computer as you can get. But there's no reason they have to be.

Most of the required components of a radio are the same and can be generalized. And with Moore's law making processors fast enough, much of a radio's function can be done with software.

Read more here.

posted by me

:: 1:12:00 AM [+] ::
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:: Palast: News Flash from the Asylum::

Today is the 50th anniversary of the publication of Allen Ginsberg's poem "Howl".
From an e-newsletter
By Greg Palast

You know:

"I see the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness."

Just before his death, and into my third or fourth midlife crisis, I decided to become a writer. Couldn't decide between poetry and investigative journalism. Ginsberg read my poetry. He suggested journalism. And then he said, "You know, Greg, I'm an investigative reporter, too."

Yes, he was. In 1956, Ginsberg sat at a kitchen table in San Francisco and wrote that his friends were going crazy. They could still hear the voice of Joe McCarthy ranting and, out the window, count the Pentagon contractors polishing new war heads. In an America gone mad, insanity was the best defense.

"The soul," he reported, "should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse."

And that's still the news.

***

posted by me

:: 2:08:00 AM [+] ::
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:: "How They Stole Ohio" ::

And the GOP 4-step Recipe to 'Blackwell' the USA in 2008
Abracadabra: Three million votes vanish
From an e-newsletter
A Buzzflash Exclusive
By Greg Palast

[Heads up! Catch Robert Kennedy Jr., Mike Papantonio and Greg Palast this Saturday on Air America's 'Ring of Fire' on the shoplifting of the last election … and the next one.]

This is a fact: On November 2, 2004, in the State of Ohio, 239,127 votes for President of the United States were dumped, rejected, blocked, lost and left to rot uncounted.

And not just anyone's vote. Dive into the electoral dumpster and these "spoiled" votes have a very dark color indeed.

In another life, I taught statistics. And these statistics stank: the raw data tells us that if you are a Black voter, the chance of you losing your vote to technical errors in voting machinery is 900% higher than if you were a white voter.

Any guesses as to whom those African-Americans chose for president on those junked ballots? Check Ohio's racial demographics, do the numbers, and there it is: Kerry won Ohio. And that, too, is a fact. A fact that could not get reported in the USA.

But the shoplifting of those votes in Ohio was just the tip of the theft-berg. November 2, 2004 was a national ballot-box bonfire. In total, over three million votes (3,600,380 to be exact) were cast -- marked, punched, pulled -- YET NEVER COUNTED. I'm not talking about the Ukraine or Uganda. I'm talking about the United States of America "with liberty and justice for all."

Well, not "all." The nine-to-one Black-to-White ballot spoilage rate is a national statistic -- not just an Ohio trick. Last year, I flew to New Mexico to investigate the 33,981 cast but not counted ballots of that state in the 2004 race. George Bush "won" New Mexico by 5,988 votes. Or did he? I calculated that, of the all the ballots rejected and "spoiled," 89% were cast by voters of color. Who won New Mexico? Kerry won -- or he would have, if they had counted the ballots.

But they didn't count them. And that was deliberate. It's in the plan. It's the program. And the program for 2008 is simple. Two million ballots were cast but not counted in the 2000 race. (Over half, 54%, were cast by African-American.) In 2004, the GOP kicked it up to THREE million. Get ready, these guys aim high: "four in '06" and "five in '08" looks to be their game plan.

How will they pile up five million un-voters in 2008? Let's start with the three million "disappeared" of 2004:

Step 1: "Spoiling" ballots -- 1,389,231 of them. In the vote-count game, these are called "undervotes" and "overvotes." You can recognize these lost ballots by their hanging chads, punch cards without punches (an Ohio specialty), paper ballots eaten by scanners, and touch screens that didn't know you touched them.

Step 2: Rejecting "provisional ballots"-- 1,090,729 in this pile. Voters finding themselves at the "wrong" precinct, or wrongly "scrubbed" from voter rolls get these back-of-the-bus ballots first inaugurated in 2002. In '04, provisional ballots were passed out like candy to voters in the poorest precincts. They handed them out -- then threw them away -- one million dumped in all. In Ohio, Republican Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell changed state rules, allowing him to toss out the ballots of legal voters who cast ballots in the wrong precinct although these citizens were told their vote would count after confirming their registration.

Step 3: Not counting absentee ballots -- 526,420 of them. At least, that's what we figure from official stats. But it's anyone's guess how many mailed-in votes were dumped. (However, in one case, in Palm Beach, Florida, Jeb Bush's candidate for Elections Supervisor, Theresa LaPore, counted more absentee votes than absentee ballots mailed in. Not the brightest bulb in the vote-fix biz, that Theresa.)

Step 4: Scrub'm, Purge'm, Block'm. These are the voters who never got to vote at all. This group includes those who found their registrations were never entered on the voter rolls. In Ohio, about one-fourth of those registered by Jesse Jackson's 2004 voter drive, found their registrations delayed beyond the election date or lost.

Add to this un-voter group, those who were wrongly "scrubbed" from registries as "felons." For example, there was Bernice Kines, purged in Florida in 2004 because she was convicted of a felony on July 31, 2009. I repeat: 2009. There was something especially odd about the Ohio felon purge: ex-cons are ALLOWED to vote in that state, Mr. Blackwell.

How many lost their chance to vote by scrubbing, purging and blocking? That's anyone's guess, but one million would not be an unfair estimate -- and that's not included in the 3.6 million tally of ballots uncounted.

Was it deliberate? Oh my God, yes. I'd like you to take a look at the "caging" lists the Republican National Committee concocted to challenge voters with "suspect" addresses. It included page after page of African-American soldiers, like one Randall Prausa, shipped overseas. Mission accomplished, Mr. President?

And there's some new tricks for these old dogs. For the 2006 and 2008, the GOP is pushing new Voter ID requirements. Your signature won't be good enough anymore.

What's wrong with the new ID laws? This: in the 2004 election, 300,000 voters were turned away from the polls for "wrong" ID. For example, in the "Little Texas" counties in New Mexico, if your voter registration included a middle initial but your driver's license had none, you were kicked out of the polling station. Funny, but they only seemed to ask Hispanic voters. We should see the number of voters rejected for ID to quintuple by 2008 based on the new "voting reform" laws recently passed in several states.

Also, coming to a polling station near you: more caging lists, scrub lists, ID challenge lists and more. Exactly why do you think they are compiling those "War on Terror" and War on Immigration databases? Behind the 2000 felon purge lists and behind the 2004 caging lists were databases from the same companies that now have those homeland security contracts. Are they saving us from Osama -- or from Democrats?

I wish I could give you a book on a page, because information is our weapon: Turn on the lights and the cockroaches scatter. That's why I'm asking you to read RFK's article on the Theft of Ohio -- and GET ANGRY. Then read, "Armed Madhouse: … The Scheme to Steal '08' -- AND GET READY.

**********
BBC investigative reporter Greg Palast is author of ARMED MADHOUSE: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, The Scheme to Steal 'O8, No Child's Behind Left and other Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Class War -- out Tuesday. (You can order it here.

Also, check Bradblog.com and AirAmericaRadio.com for the audio of Janeane Garofalo, Brad Friedman and Randi Rhodes reading "Kerry Won" and other sections of Armed Madhouse.

posted by me

:: 10:55:00 PM [+] ::
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