Beginning today, we have the honor of the presence of Dan Wallach and David Allen, experts on the computer vote rigging controversy, as subscribers to Newsroom-l, the news and issues list for professional journalists. I invited them to join the list to answer any questions you might have about this very controversial and vitally important topic.
In order to make it easier for non-subscribers to see the discussion and make comments, I will publish the pertinent results on the Newsroom-l blog . Folks who are receiving this on other lists can also subscribe to the newsroom-l email discussion list at http://www.newsroom-l.net/.
Our experts:
Dan Wallach is an assistant professor of computer science at Rice
University, specializing in the security of mobile code, distributed and
peer-to-peer systems. When opportunities present themselves, Wallach
has been involved in several "debunking" efforts. Before the Diebold
analysis, Wallach was part of a team that found flaws in the music
industry's secure digital music initiative (SDMI). Earlier still,
Wallach was part of a team that found flaws in the "sandbox" security of
Sun's Java system. He looks forward to your questions.
David Allen is the owner of Plan Nine Publishing, which he describes as
"the most unlikely publisher for a book like" Black Box Voting. For six
years he's specialized in turning funny electrons into funny books, i.e. web
comics into books. Before his foray into publishing, he worked for 16 years
as a systems engineer, installing, fixing, and teaching about computers. He
is accredited by Microsoft (MCSE), Compaq (ASE) CompTIA (A+ Tech) and a
number of other folks. He has also have freelanced writing articles and
columns for various computer publications.
FBI questions man for reading Hal Crowther article
Marc Schultz
"The FBI is here," Mom tells me over the phone. Immediately I can see my mom with her back to a couple of Matrix-like figures in black suits and opaque sunglasses, her hand covering the mouthpiece like Grace Kelly in Dial M for Murder. This must be a joke, I think. But it's not, because Mom isn't that funny.
"Coin Of Empire" Too Costly For Israelis, Palestinians, and U.S. Taxpayers
By Conn Hallinan
"The coin of empire is always bought dear" was an expression that emerged from the great Irish Tithe War of the 1830s, when the British taxed the Catholic Irish to support the Church of England. After three years of opposition, bloodshed, and financial chaos, one colonial officer glumly pointed out that it was costing the Crown, "a shilling to collect tuppence."
That is a lesson the government of Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon might heed as it continues to occupy the West Bank and Gaza at a cost that threatens to destroy the Israeli economy, impoverishing both occupiers and occupied. The moral of the story also might encourage U.S. President George W. Bush's administration to influence Israel's economic policies.
For the second year in a row, Israel's GDP has contracted. Unemployment overall is 10.8%; it is more than double that rate in Israeli Arab towns. Over 300,000 Israelis are jobless. According to government reports, 1.2 million Israelis--one-fifth of the population--now live in poverty. The official poverty line income is $934 a month for families with two children. The number of poor families has risen 30% in the past 14 years and the number of children in poverty 50%. Some 27% of Israel's children are officially designated poor.
While poverty is growing among Israelis, it is definitive among the Palestinians. Over 50% of the West Bank and Gaza populations are jobless, and 75% of Gaza's residents live on less than $2 a day. The U.S. Agency for International Development found that 13.2% of Gaza's children and 4.3% in the West Bank suffer from what it called "body wasting" or inadequate nutrition. Almost one in five children has moderate anemia.
The settlements are a massive drain on the Israeli budget. Aside from the cost of deploying the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to guard the settlements, a vast network of special roads labeled for "settlers only" has been constructed, along with an enormous water and electrical power infrastructure. Tel Aviv also subsidizes the 220,000 settlers (plus the 200,000 in East Jerusalem). Mortgage rates in the occupied territories are one quarter of those in Israel, education is subsidized, and settlers receive a 10% break on their income taxes plus a 7% discount on their social security.
According to Peace Now, the occupation costs the Israeli government about $1.4 billion a year, a figure that will surely rise with the continued expansion of the settlements. According to the Associated Press, Sharon told his Cabinet ministers June 22 that despite the directives of the multilateral Road Map for Middle East Peace, construction would continue "quietly."
The cost of occupation is partly borne by U.S. loan guarantees and outright grants. U.S. aid to Israel--the bulk of it military--amounts to some $3 billion a year. Several months ago the Sharon government asked for more, figuring the White House owed it for Israel's staunch support of the Bush administration's war on Iraq. Washington agreed to pony up $9 billion in loan guarantees and $1 billion in military aid, but with a catch: Israel must cut taxes, welfare, and public service jobs. In short, it must adopt a U.S.-style economic system.
It was that demand that put 700,000 public sector workers into the streets in April and sparked a scathing editorial in the daily newspaper Ha'aretz accusing the Bush administration of trying to force "a neo-liberal order in Israel." The Sharon government's response has been to try to limit the trade unions' right to strike. Shortly after a bitter exchange between Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel's labor organization, the Histadrut, Likud Party leader Ruhama Avraham introduced legislation restricting the right of public employees to strike.
The quid pro quo for U.S. aid has stirred up considerable debate in Israel, although the controversy has yet to show up in the mainstream of U.S. media.
[Editor's Note: Excerpted from a new global affairs commentary available in full at http://www.fpif.org/commentary/2003/0307coin.html. Conn Hallinan
JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) -- Young people at two Mississippi reform schools were hogtied, shackled and forced to eat their own vomit, according to a U.S. Justice Department report.
Young people aged 10-17 are sent to the training schools, overseen by DHS, after facing repeated charges for property crimes or mostly low-level offenses.
The report released Monday said suicidal girls at Columbia were sometimes stripped naked and put in isolation in a poorly ventilated "dark room" with only a hole in the floor for a toilet.
The report said boys were forced to run around tables for hours with mattresses on their backs.
"Girls are punished in the military field by being forced to run with automobile tires around their bodies or carrying logs," the report said. "Girls reported being forced to eat their own vomit if they throw up from exercising in the hot sun."
Thanks to Tammera Halphen for this news tip!
Catia TVe, Venezuela's leading alternative community TV broadcaster, was raided by Caracas authorities and dismantled, apparently on the pretext that it was illegal for a TV studio to be located in a hospital.
I heard Catia TVe's founder and director Blanca Ekhout speak in Isla Mujeres earlier this year and I was impressed by what she and her associates had accomplished. In addition to the raid, there have been some incidents of violence against Catia TVe reporters and other media people associated with them. The situation is not entirely clear, but I think that it is well worth your attention.
Venezuela’s Catia TV Illegally Raided & Shut Down
The Year's Most Serious Attack Against Press Freedom
By Alex Contreras Baspineiro
http://www.narconews.com/Issue30/article808.html
Special to The Narco News Bulletin
July 14, 2003
Catia TV in Caracas, a community television station that is not merely at the service of the community but, rather, is directed by the local people, has just been closed in a maneuver more often seen under the old military dictatorships: The orders came from the current Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas, Venezuela (and an ex-"journalist"): Alfredo Peña, supporter of the attempted coup d’etat of April 2002 that Catia TV, among others, defeated.
Catia TV brings a very different form of television to (and from) the public than that of the Commercial stations. The programs, interviews, the operation of the equipment, the editing, and the organization of this Community Media outlet – that broadcasts from the poor neighborhoods in East Caracas – is constructed by the men, women, elders, and children. who live there... all the people, mobilizing daily. That’s why it was shut down: to silence the voices that Catia TV made strong. The transmitter and other equipment have been seized.
Monday, July 14, 2003
By: Patrick J. O'Donoghue
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=9557
Chavez Frias defends Catia TV and warns against dictatorial opposition
President Hugo Chavez Frias has come out in support of community and alternative Catia TV calling Metropolitan Mayor Alfredo Pena's decision to close the TV channel's studio in Lidice Hospital "dictatorial" and "proper to fascism."
Speaking during his Sunday radio address, Chavez Frias says he agrees with the analysis of Las Ultimas Noticias tabloid editor, Eleazar Diaz Rangel, who asks what would have been the reaction if the government had done the same against a private TV channel and what the reaction would have been internationally ... "would we have seen an Organization of American States (OAS) commission in Venezuela?"
Steve Fox, Director of Government Relations, Marijuana Policy Project
reports:
On Wednesday, the U.S. House Judiciary
Committee considered the Office of National Drug Control Policy
(ONDCP) Reauthorization Act of 2003. The Democrats on the committee
did not rubberstamp this bill; instead, they used the hearing as an
opportunity to attack not only the Bush administration's medical
marijuana policy, but also the war on drugs in its entirety.
U.S. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY) pressed the medical marijuana issue.
First, he proposed an amendment that would have ended the drug czar's
practice of interfering in state efforts to pass medical marijuana
legislation. Then, he proposed another amendment that would have
prevented the drug czar from approving the budget of any agency that
used funds to arrest medical marijuana patients. All Democrats in
attendance supported the latter amendment. (There was not a roll call
vote on the first amendment.)
More surprising was the vehemence with which the Democrats denounced
the war on drugs. The spark that lit the fuse for this explosion was
an amendment proposed by U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA), which would
have deleted the entire reauthorization bill. Saying that the bill was
"not worth the paper it is printed on," Rep. Waters declared that
ONDCP is "wasteful, ineffective and unworthy." U.S. Rep. Melvin Watt
(D-NC) called the war on drugs a "dismal failure" and said that there
is nothing he is more embarrassed about than the federal government's
drug policy.
Nadler and U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee (D-TX) also had harsh words
for the war on drugs, while the committee's ranking member, U.S. Rep.
John Conyers (D-MI), decried the growing number of prisoners in this
country serving time for nonviolent drug offenses. In the end, 10 of
11 Democrats in attendance voted in favor of deleting the entire bill.
The momentum for marijuana policy reform is clearly building. You can
almost feel the once-seemingly impenetrable wall of the war on drugs
starting to crumble. MPP is excited to be involved in this fight and
looks forward to keeping you posted about future developments.
Sincerely,
Steve Fox
Director of Government Relations
Marijuana Policy Project
Washington, D.C.
from News of the Weird 804, by Chuck Shepherd, July 6, 2003
* Update: Illinois became the latest state to propose a ban on having one's
tongue aesthetically split, reptile-like (unless done by a doctor or
dentist). But the move is unpopular among devotees.
"When I first saw it, I thought tongue-splitting was the most beautiful
thing I've seen in my life," said satisfied splittee James Keen, who spoke
to an Associated Press reporter, who observed that Keen "now speaks with a
slight lisp."
Said another splitee, who said he could now do party tricks like picking up
a pencil with the two halves, "It's done to better yourself."
Weekly Highlights from News of the Weird is a free service of
http://www.NewsoftheWeird.com. To subscribe, send an e-mail (no subject necessary)
from the address at which you want to receive your copies, to
WeeklyWeird-request@lists.elistx.com with the single-word message Subscribe.
News tips to WeirdNews@earthlink.net.