Home › Archive for Honesty › Page 4

Honesty

Why don’t the Americans riot against Bush

Posted on by — 5 Comments ↓

If the Hungarians can riot about a government that lies to win an election as here:

The violence erupted at the state TV building following a largely peaceful rally calling on Mr Gyurcsany to quit.

In a leaked tape, Mr Gyurcsany admitted his government had lied to the public.

His comments, which were recorded just after a general election in April, have prompted calls for his resignation from opposition parties.


Why won’t the American’s riot against Bush, a master at lying to the americans? Mr. Gyurcsany only lied about the economy, Bush has been caught flatfooted in more lies than you can count. Why is he still in power, because the truth in the U.S. died a long time ago, that’s why. And the press have failed in their responsibility to report the facts to the american people.

The truth the press fails to publish

Posted on by — 3 Comments ↓

When the press complain about bloggers, they always claim that bloggers do no research, and fail to verify their information before publishing. In recent Pew research 58% of bloggers do, research. Witness the alternative, that ‘professional’ journalist do research, and verify their data, then do not publish the truth, to support corrupt politicians. New York Times’ Eavesdropping Story Wasn’t The Only One Squashed For Bush During 2004 Campaign

Make’s you wonder who to trust, bloggers who publish information when they find it, or professional journalist who suppress the truth for political gain?

Not a very hard decision, is it!

Cuba, and Bush’s Democracy

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

In a world where Bush calls the U.S. Constitution “a goddamned piece of paper!”. When Bush calls for democracy in Cuba and assumes that any constitution is worthless, doesn’t he just define the Cuban government? Isn’t he wishful that he too, wants to be the autocrat of the world? Emperor George the first? Isn’t it amazing when Rice broadcast dismissed by Cuba is taken with surprise. While the Cubans are hardly free, or in many cases well informed. They are still aware of the nature of Bush regime, and believe they are better off where they are.

The Bush Democratic machine is a sham when they claim to support democracy, then withdraw support when Hamas wins an election, when one democracy, attacks another democracy in the the form of Lebanon vs Israel. When they support Egyptians voting for a one party candidate and call it democracy, but condemn it when the same vote happened for Saddam before they attacked them.

Bush and is followers do not have any concept of democracy, freedom or liberty, and never will. They continue to twist the meaning to one that supports them, and only them in power.

Meaningless words do not make a democracy. A constitution, made of laws which apply to everyone, and a government that is held to those laws which protect the rights of citizens of that country makes a democracy. And when Bush is finally held accountable for those violations of the U.S. Constitution, then we will have democracy.

Scholarly lost logic on Hamdan case

Posted on by

Sometimes when you read a long and detailed train of thought from a Scholarly writer often the pure dazzle of the dialog can conceal elements that on first pass seem reasonable. Let me illustrate, this example attempts to defend the creation of a special class of ‘detainees’ as in the case in Guantanamo.


The law should permit the targeting of individuals who are actively engaged in terrorist planning and actions, so long as it is highly likely that the target is an actual terrorist, that the number of likely civilian deaths is proportional to the likely civilian deaths that would have been caused by the targeted terrorists, and that there is no other alternative – such as arrest – that is feasible under the circumstances.

Lost in the equation of U.S. law are elements like, “innocent until proven Guilty” and the right “to face their accusers”. More fundamental is the lack of a vital element, ‘Subject Identification’, ‘Quality and source of Intelligence’, ‘qualification of identified terrorist target.’ and more important “Who is doing the definition and interpretation of the targeted terrorist. “. These are know as ‘Evidence’ and a trial by jury based upon evidence and the rule of law.

And while the “anachronistic laws” that this article seeks to repeal are mentioned, not once is it described why such laws exist in the first place. The laws that this professor Dershowitz would have you repeal are the ones that were put in place to prevent the burning of witches at the stake. They were to qualify the identification of witches and hence terrorists as well. The reduction of anyone to be identified into special classes goes to the heart of U.S. law.

The author goes on;

Anne Fitzgerald of Amnesty recently compared the alleged terrorists being detained by the US and its allies to the “disappeared” in Argentina during the Junta. The comparison is obscene. The disappeared in Argentina were mostly political opponents of the Junta, many of whom were tortured to death and dropped into the ocean from aircraft.

But then he does not defend the fact that ‘terrorist’ is an arbitrary label, and in it’s nature IS political! Anyone can be called a terrorist. With no evidence, how is this any different to what the Argentina government did?

And again about terrorist;

They cannot be held as POWs until the end of the war, because this is a war that will never end.

The real question is one he doesn’t ask, is this a real war? Mind you it’s being advertised as one, but other countries have been targets of terrorists before, and have never classified them as wars like the U.S. has. It wasn’t a war when Timothy McVeigh blew-up the federal building in Oklahoma, it was a terrorist act, but not a war. But further he does not mention the POW in relationship with evidence of a crime, or if they really were terrorist, in his own words ” A few wore ersatz uniforms; most did not. Some were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. ” So where is the evidence! This goes to the heart of the supreme court decision on Hamdan, that they cannot be denied a trial!

if Professor Dershowitz is really “America’s leading liberal lawyer” he needs to get his credientials renewed.

GOP does not understand the Geneva Convention

Posted on by

But what else is new, they don’t even understand the U.S. Constitution, let alone the Foreign laws, like international Law.

You can’t be accused of war crimes if you don’t commit any! Now GOP congressmen are afraid that;

“means that American servicemen potentially could be accused of war crimes. I think Congress is going to want to deal with that,”

Isn’t that why they passed an anti torture law? A law that the president chooses to ignore?

The Geneva convention was established to protect American soldiers, not to attack them. If the U.S. held themselves up to the Geneva Accords there is nothing to worry about.


prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever with respect to the above-mentioned persons:

(a) Violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture;

(b) Taking of hostages;

(c) Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment;

(d) The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.

Honest American values!

From under what rock did these Congressmen crawl?

“WWIII Started in 1979”, paranoia

Posted on by

I can usually usually judge the level of paranoia flowing through the GOP, NeoCons and the far right, from the propaganda email forwarded from my brother in the central United States. These usually follow some talking point or another that the White House would be proud of, but are cloaked in “personalization’s” like ‘joe’ told me, or a “friend of mine” something, to allude to a personal first person truth. Often, as in the last one, titled “WWIII Started in 1979” it resorts to paranoid delusion and vastly over simplified history and the motivations of the depicted (read spun) events. In this case many unrelated events are painted in a ‘pro-war with the Arabs’ fashion using little more commonality than of race. An enemy easily identified as Muslim, those “vicious anti-west, infidel killing religious fanatics”.

You get the picture anyway.

This brings me back to the point, that this represents another attempt to deflect attention from the GOP corruption, lawbreaking and embezzlement of the public trust. and an attempt to elevate paranoia, and create fear of “The ENEMY them, those people, that sleeper cell down the street that behaves strangely.

The real question, do we really question anymore? When do we stop believing in the ‘Bush who cried wolf”. When are we going to require real accountability for improving the security we really desire? When, if ever, are we going believe which “Terror Alerts” are real?

Why would anyone give up their freedoms, liberties and privacy, the very things that have made us great for the illusion of security being offered by the NeoCon GOP. Why would you believe any politician, for that matter.

People must believe in themselves, trust to the good elements of our chosen society, represent them, educate with them, and work to prevent the hate, paranoia and fear from blinding us to the truth that we are all human. And that the rights which we have fought for over the years must be applied to all equally.

Ok I’ll get off the soapbox.

You have to love the Irony

Posted on by

You have to love the Irony that when you attempt to prevent the distortion of the news by requiring the identification of source of the Advertising and fake news VNC’s, a form of advertising propaganda, That you get the propagandist who is Confronted with Disclosure Demands, Fake News Moguls Cry “Censorship!”.

This all makes sense when Fox news can now distort the news legally as in this case in florida. Where the FCC’s rules on news distortion (read lies here) was ignored

…the reporters accused the station (WTVT-TV, a subsidiary of Fox Television) of attempting to distort the story to favor the manufacturer of BGH…It is undisputed that the FCC’s news distortion policy has never been “adopted” as defined by section 120.54, Florida Statutes…Because the FCC’s news distortion policy is not a “law, rule, or regulation” under section 448.102, … we reverse the judgment in her favor and remand for entry of a judgment in favor of WTVT

This is roughly the same as the cockroach complaining because you turned over the rock he was hiding under.

Iran nuclear bomb ‘in 10 years’

Posted on by

Iran nuclear bomb ‘in 10 years’

I could build a nuclear bomb in 10 years, this is like saying that they haven’t made any progress. But I’ll bet the Bush and company will make this out to be a great threat to ‘Freedom and Liberty’ and I see another axis of evil speech coming.

Any, and I do mean ANY physics student at any university could make a nuclear bomb in less than 10 years. And if you are interested, let me know, and I’ll post you some clear instructions.

The Usurpation of Honor, the roots of Tyranny

Posted on by

A few days ago I stumbled on an article (an article I can’t find now) that detailed a subtle change in the oath of secrecy that is rendered at the CIA and NSA. The article went something like this. The original oath;

I swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that I will obey the lawful orders of the President of the United States

had been changed to;

I swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States, and that I will obey the lawful orders of the President of the United States

Now this is very subtle, and makes the assumption that the President is issuing legal orders. But is it strikes at the heart of the oath. The uses of the word ‘lawful’ removes the honor that is required of the oath taker. That he or she is required to understand the meaning of lawful, with regards to the Constitution of the United States. It also strikes blow a for tyranny in that it is tantamount to an oath of loyalty to the President and not to the laws of the United States. An oath of fealty to President Bush.

In my search to find the original article I came upon this as further evidence that I was not misplaced in my fear that something was amiss in the subtle change

…the oath represented more than a simple, ceremonial formality; rather, it provided overarching guidance and a standard of moral conduct, as opposed to dictating specific, limited criteria.

And the limited criteria represented with this change was to relinquish the responsibility of the individual to interpret the legality of orders from the president and place into presidential control all liability for the interpretation.

It’s roughly the equivalent of a soldier saying “I was only following orders” at the Nuremberg trials.

And then I stumble upon this article Sworn fealty to the president as the answer to everything and realized that this subtle change was exactly what Bush requires from his staff, his ‘serfs’. Loyalty, not to the constitution, or the truth, or to the American people. But loyalty to GW Bush. The same loyalty that would be due any tyrant, by that tyrant.

It also goes far in explaining the purge at the CIA. All the previous staff having sworn using the old oath, the one requiring the oath taker to interpret legality, are being purged and replaced with personnel sworn to fealty to Bush.

That should scare everyone. We are not worried about a dictator in the U.S. we already have one.

NSA domestic Spying and data mining

Posted on by

There has been a lot of talk about the NSA domestic spying. The fact that AT&T Sprint, and others have been sending internet traffic, and phone calls to the NAS is not in Doubt. The issue is what they are doing with the data and phone calls.

Data mining is problematic, and probably always will be. The problem has to do with reducibility of content, and decisive targeting of probable results sets. In business, data mining focuses on business issues that can be, more or less, narrowed down. Discovering the percentage of persons with blue eyes who purchase your product might be interesting, but probably not useful unless you can link this data to an artifact that Blue eyed individuals purchase more of your product. Discussing terror takes on subtle difference wither you take it from the context of the “the grandchildren terrorizing their grandparents”, or the “we will be terrorizing the Capitol building” . Both word elements will trigger an automated scan, either vocal, or digital, but neither will be useful until connected with pertinent relevant data and reduced to comply with in the context of the target required.
What is the percentage of usage of the word terror in current conversations, and text? And how much reduction does it take to get to something useful? Does your filtration, remove valuable information.

You could simplify this issue by considering the general issues of the IT world. The distilling of facts into information.

I used to work in the Telecom world, and we had a cell phone fraud unit that, in order to catch fraud established a phone pattern recognition system. Not unlike the NSA’s own requirement. But unlike the NSA it’s target was focused on fraud. A requirement the telco applied to good customer service. But unlike the NSA privacy was not an issue. The design of the data mining system dissociated personal identification from phone numbers. The system only established a cell phone calling pattern for each phone number in the system. There was nothing to connect the user of the phone to the number at all. What was being detected was, change.

For everyone, there can be an associated pattern, a group of familiar phone numbers, a common event.
Calling your wife on your way home from work is a pattern. And can, over time, establish a rhythm, a pattern to the phone usage. And should that phone suddenly start calling Brazil, the call no longer fits the established pattern, and would trip a warning, which would be forwarded to a fraud investigator.

This is mealy an example, and evidence that the NSA did not need to acquire the amount and types of data that they requested in order to look for terrorist. They were spying, and listening in on Americans, and for that matter everyone else on the internet.

Time to dig out that old PGP encryption key.

Washington Post singles out Democrat on corruption

Posted on by

Rep. William J. Jefferson (D-La.) seems to be singularly blessed and cursed. While I’m sure there are corrupt politicians in both parties, Jefferson has been singled out as a counterbalance to the dozens of Republicans currently indicted. And the right wing is having a field day showing everyone an example of a corrupt Democrat.

They should remember that people in glass houses, shouldn’t throw stones.

Aer Lingus and representative government

Posted on by

I was listening to a discussion of the privatizing of Aer Lingus last night. I was struck with a comment made by some ‘expert’ on the matter of privatization. The comment went something like this.

Some ministers were blocking the privatization efforts because there are no votes in it.

 


and I was gob smacked. He had put is finger on why no one is happy with the government. The public is only now recovering from the Eircom fiasco when the government gave away the phone company to the banks, and other profiteers, screwing the citizens of Ireland who had invested in eircom, only to be ripped off by corrupt politicians, the same politicians that are engineering this rip-off of the Irish airline.
 
But this points to another more serious problem, representative. This ‘expert’ knew that the general public, the voters of Ireland, do not approve of this privatization effort. They know full well that no good will come of it. But the politicans have so little regard  for the voters that put them into office that they will completely ignore their constituents, and operate only in the best interests of the profiteers and banks. It’s no wonder that this government has extended the length of the freedom of information act so far into the future, they can all be safely in the Bahamas when the facts come out.
 
I will now predict that within 2 years of this privatization, there will be no Aer Lingus. And the Irish flying public and many of the airports in Ireland will no longer have any air services available.