Category Archives: Politics

Politics

Military Commissions (Torture) Act Destined to Become Law

From http://www.bordc.org/threats/s3930.php

Rogue Regime Rides Roughshod over Human Rights

Military Commissions Bill (S. 3930)

The Senate voted 65-34 in favor of S. 3930 on Thursday evening, September 28. Vote on the measure followed the defeat of five amendments. The Senate bill will go to the House for a final vote, to replace a nearly identical bill, H.R. 6166, which the House approved Wednesday by a vote of 253 -168. The House is certain to approve the Senate bill in order to avoid the need for a House-Senate conference.

In the Senate, only 34 Senators voted against the White House-crafted Military Commissions bill that

  • re-establishes President Bush’s military tribunals, which were rejected by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional,
  • legalizes U.S. war crimes committed before December 30, 2005,
  • disallows any person harmed by the U.S., in violation of the Geneva Conventions, from filing a claim in U.S. court,
  • strips legal residents of the U.S. of their right to challenge their detention in court if they’re accused of being enemy combatants,
  • abolishes the right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their detention, which in effect pre-judges all of them as guilty,
  • approves the CIA program that allows waterboarding and other forms of torture,
  • and names any individual, including citizens, as an unlawful enemy combatant if they provide material support to those engaged in hostilities against the U.S.

What’s next Generalissimo Bush–Dictator for life?! Why not, he, and his cronies are already wiping their asses with the constitution.

Get your Enemy Combatant T-shirts here

Art, General, Politics

Robert Anton Wilson

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. In an evolving universe, who stands still moves backwards.

RAW

These words seem appropriate for our times, don’t they? Brought to us by a man of wit and intelligence, and brought back to me by a visit to his website, after reading news of his present difficulties.

I learned a lot from Mr. Wilson, and his writings (The Illuminatus Trilogy, etal., Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising, etc.), and was saddened to hear that not only is he ill, but couldn’t even pay his rent for the few months he has left (he can now, thanks to the generosity of his fans), and thought I’d post this to get it out a little more. (It even hit /. I see, but that’s the usual troll/moron fest that /. seems to have become lately). If you’d like to contribute checkout the BoingBoing posts above, they tell you how.

Peace out.

General, Politics, Tech

From the “Do No Evil” Dept.

Can I just say that Google sucks
To bad they’ve forgotten point #6 of their philosophy.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

..and, no, I won’t link to them, and I use Jeeves as my default search engine.
I really can’t believe that they think that this is a good move for their stockholders/business. Is the business they do in China enough so that all the flack they’ll get from this is worth it? Can you really trust any search you do using Google? (Can you trust searches you do from any other search engine?) This is a whole giant can of worms on trusting that results of searches are not censored, or compromised in any way. Google thinks of themselves as gatekeepers of the flow of information (or, atleast to “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.”) on the internet–who watches the gatekeepers?

General, Politics

From the Ben Franklin lives department

Hurrah!!! for students at Georgetown Univesity who turned their backs on Alberto Gonzales (*affectionately* known as the Inquistitor around here) and holding up a banner quoting Ben Franklin, to protest his speech defending the President’s domestic spying program.

GU Protest

Mainstream news sources are reporting “more” than a dozen protestors (looks like most reports came from the same wire service report.), some didn’t even mention it. Non-mainstream sources (Hammeroftruth) report up to 26 (including the 4 in black hoods holding the banner). I say any amount is good–the more the merrier.
It’s good to see that some law students remember what the Constitution is.

General, Politics

Redistributing wealth upwards?

I didn’t link to Wil Wheaton’s first post in this saga, because nothing interested me out of the ordinary. But this post did interest me because of one sentence/quote:

W: So redistribution of wealth downward is bad, but redistribution of wealth upward is good?

My question is, “How do you redistribute wealth upwards“?
The easy answer is that you can’t. There are other answers though, like corporate welfare.
I’d like to go on record as saying that both forms of “welfare” are wrong. Morally wrong–let’s call it what it is. Theft. At the point of a gun. It doesn’t matter who you take the money from–rich or poor–if that person has earned that money, you are stealing it from them, taking their money to do what someone else deems to be “important”. If I did that as an individual, I’d be thrown in jail, why does it make it right if a collective does it?

As an addendum, this here post of mine doesn’t really have anything to do with what Wil is talking about in his posts, and I apologize for that, and hope that everyone reads Wil’s posts in their entirety.

Politics

Time to Impeach Pres. Bush?

That’s really not question. I think that it really is time, with the NSA domestic spying news, and the president admitting to ordering the felonious acts.
Domestic spying against US citizens, wiretaps without warrants is illegal–a felony.
With the president admitting to this, and, also, saying that he will continue to do it, I’d say it’s time to show him that he’s not above the law, and to impeach him. (They impeached Clinton for sexual hanky-panky, don’t you think that this is more serious, than that?)
More facts on this can be seen here: http://cryptome.org/small-call.htm
If we don’t bring this president to task for this, and show him that no person in the US is above the law, then we will surely become a dictatorship, sooner than later.