Bob Morris @ 20:00 Category: Unfiled;
Hey Colin, shouldn’t we stop corruption HERE first??
Powell Says Investors Must Demand High Standards in Dealings Abroad.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell has called on US investors in Africa to help African countries root out corruption, which he called corrosive.
Bob Morris @ 19:44 Category: Unfiled;
BT is hoping the living habits of bacteria will bring order to future communication networks.
Researchers working for the company are studying bacterial colonies to help develop communication networks that will self-organise and self-configure.
They believe that soon many people will be carrying around or using so many small, smart devices that they will not have the time to do their own configuration. [Smart Mobs]
Articles like this generally leave me a bit bemused. While they describe way cool cutting edge stuff, I’m real sure I never want to carry so many electronic gizmos that they need to configure themselves because I don’t have the time to do it myself. Not to mention the complete lack of privacy such networked gadgets imply.
Bob Morris @ 15:12 Category: Unfiled;
Voting reform
Clearly, our voting system is not effective. It is cumbersome, error-prone (either deliberately or accidentally), and most important, doesn’t give fair representation.
So, we have a new page on voting reform!
Our first article is an Op-Ed by William Pietz, co-chair of the California Instant Runoff Voting Coalition .
He details why Instant Runoff Voting (IRV) is a good idea, since among other benefits, it eliminates the need for primaries and negates the spoiler effect.
We will be adding information on proportional representation and touchscreen voting soon.
Bob Morris @ 14:10 Category: Unfiled;
Al Qaeda admits Bali blasts on Web
Islamic militant group al Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bomb attack on a Bali nightclub in which more than 180 people died.
The group said it had targeted “nightclubs and whorehouses in Indonesia” in a Web site message which also boasted of its aim to hit inside Arab and Islamic countries which are part of a “Jewish-Crusader” alliance.
The Web site has been used in the past by al Qaeda to claim responsibility for attacks, including the synagogue fire in Tunisia in which mainly German tourists died, and strikes on two ships in Yemen.
Bob Morris @ 12:39 Category: Unfiled;
Touchscreen voting
A reader responds to our postings about voting touchscreen in LA this election. LA has started phasing in touchscreen and had 20 such voting stations this time. By law, all LA precincts must have touchscreen voting by 2005.
His comments are based on hardcore computer geek analysis of the risks involved. As a computer programmer myself, I am quite aware of the dangers. Polizeros will be running more articles on touchscreen and Instant Runoff Voting in the next few days.
I’ve been reading your blog, and I’ve noticed a total lack of skepticism regarding electronic voting. Personally, I’m very disturbed by this trend: done right, there are small advantages, but done badly, it casts a shadow over the result of an election at best, or leaves the system open to attack at worst.
Bear in mind that it is a proven fact that you cannot guarantee a system against being subverted. The following speech is the classic
example:
http://www.acm.org/classics/sep95
If you’re still interested, check out the following links:
a summary:
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.34.html#subj2
discussions suggesting electronic voting isn’t ready yet: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.34.html#subj1
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.33.html#subj4
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.24.html#subj1
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.26.html#subj1
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.27.html#subj5
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/22.27.html#subj6
Among the attacks that I can think of in the course of writing this email:
Damaging enough machines at the start of polling day. (How does anyone vote)
Stuffing the ballot box (where is the audit trail)
Buying the election by buying the machine company
Subtly damaging the machine so that it doesn’t record votes, while apparently working.
Programming a block list of people whose vote to ignore
Recording who votes for who
Simply spreading a rumour that Bill Gates/the Russians/the Carlisle group owns the machine company, and has already done one of the above
Spreading a rumour whenever a machine breaks down (and they will!) that “the other side” broke it to stop our votes being registered.
Kieran Barry
Bob Morris @ 00:13 Category: Unfiled;
Why the Democrats got stomped on Tuesday
Two solid reasons why it happened.
1) The Wellstone/Torricelli debacles
A nationwide survey conducted by Public Opinion Strategies, a GOP firm, found a “late surge to Republicans,” much as was the case in the GOP landslide year of 1994.
Interviews showed that “the handling of Senator Wellstone’s memorial service and the way the ballot situation was handled in New Jersey was clearly a factor in helping drive Republican intensity this election,” the firm said.
Republicans were justifiably furious at the sleazy way Torricelli dropped out of the race, allowing Lautenberg to run. And in Minnesota, remember that Governor Jesse Ventura walked out of the Wellstone memorial service because he was so disgusted by the blatant political posturing.
The events surrounding Wellstone’s death changed the entire equation, nationwide; and it was through the mass media, especially rightwing radio and cable news that the issue was used to motivate Republican leaning voters against the Democrats.
Democrats, when they see Republicans use patriotism or warmongering for political purposes react cynically, but it doesn’t make them mad. Republicans, when they see Democrats acting partisan at non-partisan events, become morally indignant, extremely agitated, caustic, and utterly activist.
In Minnesota, it turned a 5-10% Wellstone victory into a 2% Mondale loss, and it happened due to massive turnout, above Presidential levels in Minnesota; and it resulted in a large enough Republican surge in the states of MO and GA to oust Carnahan and Cleland.
2) The party’s over
From Sam Smith at Progressive Review (excerpts)
What happened on November 5, 2002 was the culmination of a hostile takeover of the Democratic Party that began more than a decade ago under the leadership of a group of conservatives, corporadoes, and con men who convinced their political colleagues that the salvation of the party lay in destroying its purpose.
Called “moving to the center,” the recipe had certain similarities to a Saturday Night Live sketch in which an actor pretends to be George Bush or Trent Lott, but unlike the sketch, it was neither funny nor convincing. It was conceived by the “Democratic Leadership Council,” a group whose underlying message was not leadership but abandon ship and which chose as its agent a conservative governor of Arkansas of salesman-like charm and conviction.
No Democratic president since the 19th century suffered such an electoral disintegration of his party as did Clinton.
In the full article Sam Smith details precisely how bad Clinton was for Democrats and how the number of elected Democrats dropped drastically during his eight years. Not to mention the continual lurch to the Right that Clinton engineered.
This unreported truth helps to explain why the Democrats didn’t do better in 2002. The Republicans merely continued their successful assault on a party that had become hopelessly weakened by an exploitive, ungrounded, self-indulgent elite that had swept through Democratic politics.
For the party to recover, it must divorce itself from the con men who have done it so much damage. It must find its way back to the gutbucket, pragmatic populism that gave this country Social Security, a minimum wage, veterans’ programs, the FHA, civil rights, and the war on poverty. It must jettison its self-defeating snobbism towards Americans who go to church or own a gun. It needs to be as useful to the voter in the cubicle as it once was to the voter on the assembly line. It must find a soul, a passion, and a sense of itself. Most of all, it must get rid of those false prophets and phony friends who have not only done it so much damage but have left the country fully in the hands of the cruel, the selfish, the violent, the dumb, and the anti-democratic.
Bob Morris @ 00:05 Category: Unfiled;
Big Brother IS watching you
FBI has bugged public libraries
Some reports say the FBI is snooping in the libraries. Is that really happening?
Yes. I have uncovered information that persuades me that the Federal Bureau of Investigation has bugged the computers at the Hartford Public Library. And it’s probable that other libraries around the state have also been bugged.
The FBI system apparently involves the installation of special software on the computers that lets the FBI copy a person’s use of the Internet and their e-mail messages.
I know my librarian, and I believe she would tell me if the government were tracking my computer use at the library. Don’t you agree? No way. There’s a gag order.
Does this mean that when I use the library’s computer to do research for college papers on Saudi Arabia or Islam, the FBI could be following my steps on the Internet?
Very possible.
Bob Morris @ 00:03 Category: Unfiled;
Indonesians Say They Suspect C.I.A. in Bali Blast.
The American ambassador here, Ralph L. Boyce, does not have to venture far from his heavily fortified embassy to be challenged about who was responsible for the Bali bombings that killed more than 180 people.
Bob Morris @ 00:01 Category: Unfiled;
Eek, there’s a commie in the peace movement.
There’s been Alarmed Concern of late about how organizers of some peace groups are commies. Well, it’s a non-issue. Let me explain….
I posted the above on the excellent Stand Down, the No War Blog, (a collaboration of Left, Right, and Libertarian blogs opposed to the coming war).
Then, through the miracles of modern XML, that posting automatically got trackback pinged and published on Political Wire Blogscan. Five minutes later, using the News Aggregator function of this Radio 8 blog - where I subscribe to about 40 newsfeeds - that same posting got bounced back to me and I published it here with one click.
An instructive example of how powerful weblog software is becoming. Instant access to multiple news sources with ability to publish and add comments to any news item.
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