politics: November 2007 Archives

Bush's entourage, in graphic form.

There is some doubt as to this graphic being made by Reuters, but the numbers are accurate.

Via BoingBoing.

The recent Australian elections, which ousted conservative Prime Minister John Howard, and brought in Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, have led Rudd to pledge that Australia will ratify the Kyoto Protocol. Australia is the only other major developed nation besides the US to not ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

A UN committee of experts has declared that tasers are a deadly form of torture:

The UN committee made its comments in recommendations to Portugal, which has bought the newest Taser X26 stun gun for use by police.

Portugal "should consider giving up the use of the Taser X26,'' as its use can have a grave physical and mental impact on those targeted, which violates the UN's Convention against Torture, the experts said.

Via: Engadget.

Speaking of Election 2008, you may have heard of the debacle Barack Obama caused when he refused to wear a flag pin. Well, Lost Brain brings us the proper etiquette on wearing your own flag pin, so that you aren't "pegged as a terrorist."

The New York Times' Ward Sutton has a gallery dissecting the current and past campaign logos of presidential candidates. Some good design comments and snarky critiques.

The MPAA comments on the previously reported bill now in Congress that would threaten federal financial aid to a college if they did not police copyrighted works for the MPAA and the RIAA:

"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright,"

Oh great, it's that stupid argument: "They have the fast Internets! They must be using it solely to infringe on our copyrights!"

Again, please tell your local Congressman to vote against this bill.

I knew there was a reason I didn't like NYU students, besides the horrible experiences I had with them in Union Square:

Two-thirds say they'll do it for a year's tuition. And for a few, even an iPod touch will do.

That's what NYU students said they'd take in exchange for their right to vote in the next presidential election, a recent survey by an NYU journalism class found.

Imagine these water guns today and how much panic they'd induce:

"The look! The feel! The sound! So real!"

Solar Power Rocks brings us an unabridged bar graph comparing the cost of the War in Iraq versus energy R&D investments in 2007.

Tallest. Bar Graph. Ever.

If you've been following the news, you know the White House has been pushing to add immunity for the telecommunications companies that complied with the NSA's illegal wiretapping program to the FISA bills currently in Congress.

Good news! The House, and the Senate's Judiciary Committee have both passed versions of the FISA Bill that do not provide immunity to the telcos. Bravo!

Now we just need the Senate to pass it sans-immunity, and Congress to override Bush's veto (which I predict might happen.) Thankfully, Congress is certainly more willing to override him these days.

Congress Keeps Telecoms on the Hook for Illegal Spying [EFF]

Senate Judiciary Committee Passes Surveillance Bill Without Telecom Amnesty [EFF]

As a follow up to yesterday's The Daily Show writers post, today we have writers from The Colbert Report chiming in:

Wil Wheaton has brought a wonderful and funny video, made by one of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart writers, explaning the writer's strike in the style of The Daily Show:

With guest appearance by John Oliver.

Wired reports on the leaked Guantánamo Bay manual that showed up on Wikileaks.org last week:

A never-before-seen military manual detailing the day-to-day operations of the U.S. military's Guantánamo Bay detention facility has been leaked to the web, affording a rare inside glimpse into the institution where the United States has imprisoned hundreds of suspected terrorists since 2002.

The 238-page document, "Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures," is dated March 28, 2003. It is unclassified, but designated "For Official Use Only."

The really heinous part of the manual? A section detailing a tagging system for the prisoners, with each category dictating how much access the Red Cross would have to each inmate:

The manual shows how the military coded each prisoner according to the level of access the Red Cross would have. The four levels are:

• * No Access
• * Visual Access -- ICRC can only look at a prisoner's physical condition.
• * Restricted Access -- ICRC representatives can only ask short questions about the prisoner's health.
• * Unrestricted Access

Even more evidence that the government wilfully denied access to detainees for the purposes of precluding oversight, in order to cover up human rights abuses.

The full document can be found on Wikileaks.

In case you missed the news all over the Internet regarding the ridiculous bill introduced by House Democrats on Friday, CNET News has a recap of the idiocy:

New federal legislation says universities must agree to provide not just deterrents but also "alternatives" to peer-to-peer piracy, such as paying monthly subscription fees to the music industry for their students, on penalty of losing all financial aid for their students.

The U.S. House of Representatives bill, which was introduced late Friday by top Democratic politicians, could give the movie and music industries a new revenue stream by pressuring schools into signing up for monthly subscription services such as Ruckus and Napster. Ruckus is advertising-supported, and Napster charges a monthly fee per student.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) applauded the proposal, which is embedded in a 747-page spending and financial aid bill. "We very much support the language in the bill, which requires universities to provide evidence that they have a plan for implementing a technology to address illegal file sharing," said Angela Martinez, a spokeswoman for the MPAA.

If colleges don't comply by testing "technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity," they risk losing all federal financial aid. Not only that, but they're forced to provide alternatives to downloading, basically making all colleges sign up for music services. What kind of demented lobbying happened to put that in? No wonder the MPAA loves the bill.

Please tell your local representative this bill is a stupid idea that is just meant to divert money from education and into the music and movie companies' hands.

The full text of the bill can be found here.

The precipitous fall of the US Dollar in the world currency market is no secret, and with the current administration and its policies, I see no end in sight. The Financial Times brings us a chart from Sempra Metals that details just how bad the situation has become (click to enlarge):

• The US dollar has now lost more than a third of its value (-35%) against a basket of major currencies since Feb 2002.
• The decline is accelerating. The USD has shed -12.5% of its value in the last year, -3.5% in the last month, and -1.5% in the last week alone.

This is scary data. Made even scarier by the fact that the US Dollar would be even lower if foreign countries like China were not buying our debt. This exacerbates the problem by making us beholden to countries, like China, with bad human rights records and incompatible moral outlooks.

Combine this with the real estate market crash in the US, the ongoing and expensive conflict in Iraq (to say nothing of the Bush Administration's inflamatory actions towards Iran as of late, and possibly hinting at their want for armed conflict with Iran), and the terribly botched foreign policy decisions of this administration (most recently the monetary support and other aid given to Musharraf, military dictator of Pakistan, who recently declared martial law and has squashed any hope of democracy for now in Pakistan), and its hard to see any way for the US to avoid an economic depression.

Even US culture is reflecting an awareness that US economic might is no longer top dog.

The first signs? Exhibit A: the new Jay-Z (a popular rap artist in the US) music video "Blue Magic" features the rapper no longer brandishing large denomination, (mostly) green US Dollar bills as a symbol of wealth - he's now brandishing large denomination Euro bills. Even American rappers get it.

When will this administration get it? When will they change their economic and foreign policies to steer this Titanic away from her iceberg?

I hope soon, and if not, I hope the next administration has enough time to repair the damage.

CQ Politics brings word that the FBI once attempted to find terrorists by tracking spikes in sales of falafel in San Francisco grocery stores:

Like Hansel and Gretel hoping to follow their bread crumbs out of the forest, the FBI sifted through customer data collected by San Francisco-area grocery stores in 2005 and 2006, hoping that sales records of Middle Eastern food would lead to Iranian terrorists.

The idea was that a spike in, say, falafel sales, combined with other data, would lead to Iranian secret agents in the south San Francisco-San Jose area.

With the amount of (delicious) falafel I go through, I'd probably shine like a great big beacon of Middle Eastern terrorism on that list. Ridiculous.

An independent, government commissioned study in Canada has found out what many of us who keep up with technology know intuitively - people who share and download music using P2P services are more likely to buy CDs than the general public:

When assessing the P2P downloading population, there was "a strong positive relationship between P2P file sharing and CD purchasing. That is, among Canadians actually engaged in it, P2P file sharing increases CD purchases." The study estimates that one additional P2P download per month increases music purchasing by 0.44 CDs per year.

Jack Kapica provides a more in depth analysis of the government report, including this statement, which is obvious to anyone in the P2P scene, but it's nice to have an independent study confirm:

The study concluded that about half of all P2P tracks were downloaded because individuals wanted to hear songs before buying them or because they wanted to avoid purchasing the whole bundle of songs on the associated CDs. Another quarter were downloaded because they were just not available in music stores.

I'll be the first to admit that some of the music I look for, most recently some Tegan and Sara albums, are very rare and not found either in iTunes or in record stores. There's no other recourse but downloading their music via P2P services. Via boingboing.

CNN reports on General Musharraf declaring martial law in Pakistan:

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he declared a state of emergency and martial law Saturday because Pakistan is at a "critical and dangerous juncture."

The nation is going through "some very rapid changes," Musharraf said in a televised address to the nation after declaring martial law.

Pakistan's Supreme Court declared Musharraf's actions illegal, which prompted Musharraf to relieve Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry of his job for the second time in his career. He was reinstated the last time after massive protests calling for his return ensued in Pakistan. Currently, Musharraf has the Supreme Court and the judges' homes surrounded with troops.

What effects this will have on the January 15 elections is yet to be seen, but it's not looking good.

Stephen Colbert's bid to appear on the Democratic presidential ballot in South Carolina, as shown on The Colbert Report on Wednesday, was denied by the executive committee of the Democratic Party of South Carolina:

So much for being South Carolina's favorite son: Despite polling ahead of at least three of the candidates who've been stumping hard in South Carolina, Comedy Central faux conservative Stephen Colbert's bid to get on the ballot for the upcoming Democratic primary in his home state was shot down on Thursday (November 1) by the executive committee of the South Carolina Democratic Party. Colbert's bid was voted down 13-3.

... the executive committee of the state's party denied Colbert's bid when it voted not to certify the candidacy, according to Keiana Page, a communications assistant in the state Democratic Committee's office. Using criteria such as whether the candidate was recognized in the national news media as a legitimate candidate and whether they'd actively campaigned in the state, the committee put the kibosh on the Colbert bid.

My, how the times have changed:

[In] 1947, the United States charged a Japanese officer, Yukio Asano, with war crimes for carrying out another form of waterboarding on a U.S. civilian. The subject was strapped on a stretcher that was tilted so that his feet were in the air and head near the floor, and small amounts of water were poured over his face, leaving him gasping for air until he agreed to talk.

“Asano was sentenced to 15 years of hard labor,” Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) told his colleagues last Thursday during the debate on military commissions legislation. “We punished people with 15 years of hard labor when waterboarding was used against Americans in World War II,” he said.