Extremist rabbi in Hebron says annihilation of non-Jews acceptable

A prominent Israeli rabbi with thousands of followers said during a Sabbath homily in the settlement in Kiryat Arba’a Saturday that halacha, or Jewish religious law, “essentially supported the annihilation of non-Jews in Israel.”

The rabbi is affiliated with the messianic Jewish movement known as Gush Emunim (and here) which is represented in the Israeli Knesset by seven Knesset members.

Some background on the group:

According to Gush Emunim, “Jews are not and cannot be a normal people”, because “their eternal uniqueness” is “the result of the covenant God made with them at Mount Sinai”. Therefore, according to Rabbi Shlomo Aviner, one of their leaders, “while God requires other normal nations to abide by abstract codes of ‘justice and righteousness’, such laws do not apply to Jews“.

Harkabi quotes Rabbi Israel Ariel, who says that “a Jew who kills a non-Jew is exempt from human judgement, and has not violated the prohibition of murder”.

Charming. And not unlike the thought process of extreme Christians who shoot abortion doctors or extreme right wingers who blow up federal buildings in Oklahoma or extreme Islamists who fly planes into buildings. Anyone opposed to your thought process is a blasphemer and there are no non-combatants.

Hmm, let’s put extremist Christians, Muslims, Jews, and Hindus on their own island, and give them the opportunity to fight to the death for their lunacies. Possibly allowing the rest of us to live in peace.

A thought: I’m not aware of extremist Buddhists or Taoists. Are there any?

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Atmosphere tense in Venezuela

Takeover of Caracas Police Sparks New Venezuela Row.
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s government on Saturday took control of the Caracas city police from the capital’s anti-Chavez mayor in a move opponents condemned as an illegal abuse of power.

Maybe Chavez is afraid the police will go against him, or that the insurgents will take control of them?

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Computer voting chip gives victory to losing candidate

A defective computer chip in the county’s optical scanner misread ballots Tuesday night and incorrectly tallied a landslide victory for Republicans. Democrats actually won by wide margins.

So, these systems have no double-checking, no redundancy? That is scary. This error was only caught because the results were so obviously incorrect. How many other such errors have not been discovered? And can this be done deliberately?

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Democratic insiders think Gore shouldn’t run in 2004

As the Democratic Party regroups from the disappointing midterm elections and begins searching for a presidential nominee, a Los Angeles Times Poll shows that nearly half of party insiders believe former Vice President Al Gore should sit out the 2004 race.

Given how these same insiders blew the 2002 election, wouldn’t it be best for them to resign, and be replaced with people demonstrating discernable competency?

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New Evidence of Fraud in Power Crisis

Taped phone conversations show that plant shutdowns were deliberately done to force electricity prices up

New evidence has emerged that AES Corp. and Williams Cos. conspired to squeeze electricity supplies to California in early 2000, drawing an angry response Friday from state officials and bolstering contentions that the enormously expensive energy crisis was at least partly a fraud.

There had better be criminal prosecutions on this.

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ACLU of Washington: Take Action

We are definitely living in unusual times…  

Have you been barred from flying because of your political views?  The ACLU wants to hear from you.

Federal Officials have given airlines a blacklist of people to prevent from flying because they are deemed suspicious.  Sure, terrorists shouldn’t fly, but government has to be accountable for the fairness of the list.  Already there are reports of people being stopped at airports because of their lawful political activity.  The ACLU wants to hear from anyone who has been barred from flying because of their political views.

Fill in this No Fly List Complaint Form form and it will be automatically submitted to the ACLU of Washington. [Privacy Digest]

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How secure are electronic voting machines?

As a computer programmer, I can see how voting machine software could be tweaked to do whatever you might want done. Combine that with super secret voting machine companies and their refusal to make their code or procedures public… Well, it seems the system could easily be gamed. Open source software could be a solution.

“People have jumped on the electronic voting bandwagon, thinking that will solve the problems,” said Avi Rubin, a technology security expert and researcher at AT&T Labs in New Jersey. “But these systems are largely untested.”

The problem, say critics, is that the software which runs the machines is proprietary, and therefore not open to public scrutiny. Without scientists being able to freely analyze the systems, election officials may be leaving themselves open to the possibility of hacking, vote tampering or incorrect calculations. <Or  having traps and tricks in the programming itself>

Rubin believes some of that money would be well-spent on new, more robust systems that could be developed if the 20 or so electronic voting vendors are mandated to share data. By adopting “open source” standards, the software could be fortified against hackers and malfunctions, Rubin said.

“The philosophy of open source is that it’s more likely to expose whatever problems there are,” he said. “If you keep it closed, an attacker may find a vulnerability and you won’t have the opportunity to detect.”

But manufacturers disagree, saying that making their code public will make their systems more prone to hacking <Not so. If that were true then open source Linux would be less secure than Windows, which is proprietary. In fact, Linux is vastly more secure than Windows>

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Rattled Czechs hand security over to the Pentagon

This is truly unusual, a soveriegn country turning their security over, however temporarily, to another country.

The Czech President, Vaclav Havel, has signed into law a bill handing responsibility for his country’s security to the Pentagon during the two-day NATO summit next week, amid mounting fears of terrorist attack and street violence.

The unprecedented surrender of responsibility to a foreign power comes as normally circumspect European intelligence and law enforcement officials have issued a wave of stark warnings echoing United States fears that another terrorist attack may be on the way, including the possibility that al-Qaeda could employ chemical or other weapons of mass destruction against European targets.

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Fierce Montenegrins ready for union - maybe

Yugoslavia will soon formally become “Serbia and Montenegro” — if all goes according to plan. But the fierce independence and machismo of towering “hillbilly Serbs” means anything can happen in a region of hard-bitten survivors.

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White House yields on  9/11 Inquiry

And just why has Shrub been so opposed to a 9/11 inquiry?

Yielding to intense pressure from families of Sept. 11 victims, the White House agreed last night to a Congressional compromise that would create an independent commission to investigate the terrorist attacks. The House immediately approved a bill to establish the commission on a 366-to-3 vote before adjourning for the year early this morning. The Senate was expected to pass it later today.

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