friday news dump

7 Comments

1. 

   dada on December 7, 2007 at 1:09 pm

   containing the remains of the 4th amendment. in october we saw the odious HR1955 pass the house in a 404 – 6 vote, and this week they’ve just passed another doozy called the Securing Adolescents From Exploitation-Online Act, or SAFE Act, by a margin of 409 – 2. every democrat present voted aye, with republicans ron paul [tx] and paul brown [ga] the only 2 nays.

   however, protecting children from the nasty internet is not the only thing it accomplished…

   House vote on illegal images sweeps in Wi-Fi, Web sites

   The U.S. House of Representatives on Wednesday overwhelmingly approved a bill saying that anyone offering an open Wi-Fi connection to the public must report illegal images including “obscene” cartoons and drawings–or face fines of up to $300,000.

   That broad definition would cover individuals, coffee shops, libraries, hotels, and even some government agencies that provide Wi-Fi. It also sweeps in social-networking sites, domain name registrars, Internet service providers, and e-mail service providers such as Hotmail and Gmail, and it may require that the complete contents of the user’s account be retained for subsequent police inspection.

   […]

   There are two more points worth noting. First, the vote on the SAFE Act seems unusually rushed. It’s not entirely clear that the House Democratic leadership really meant this legislation to slap new restrictions on hundreds of thousands of Americans and small businesses who offer public wireless connections. But they’ll nevertheless have to abide by the new rules if senators go along with this idea (and it’s been a popular one in the Senate).

   The second point is that Internet providers already are required by another federal law to report child pornography sightings to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which is in turn charged with forwarding that report to the appropriate police agency. So there’s hardly an emergency, which makes the Democrats’ rush for a vote more inexplicable than usual.

   link

2. 

   dada on December 7, 2007 at 1:11 pm

   every where you look, there are huge gaps in unaccounted $’s for just about everything.  but BushCo™ seems to have a predilection for losing arms:

   $1B In Military Equipment Missing In Iraq
   Exclusive: Report Shows Vehicles, Machine Guns And More Meant For Iraqi Forces Unaccounted For

   Tractor trailers, tank recovery vehicles, crates of machine guns and rocket propelled grenades are just a sampling of more than $1 billion in unaccounted for military equipment and services provided to the Iraqi security forces, according to a new report issued today by the Pentagon Inspector General and obtained exclusively by the CBS News investigative unit. Auditors for the Inspector General reviewed equipment contracts totaling $643 million but could only find an audit trail for $83 million.

   […]

   link

   if one takes into account the previous lost armaments, iraq must be by now, one of the most heavily armed places in the world on a per capita basis.

   • 

     infidelpig on December 8, 2007 at 7:08 am

     in the lyrics of Dylan: ” ther’s a hard rain gonna fall”
     it does’nt matter to them what color the water is.

3. 

   dada on December 7, 2007 at 1:13 pm

   you thought maybe their recent problems were going to be their undoing? you couldn’t be more wrong, as jeremy scahill explains:

   Blackwater’s Bu$ine$$

   …With a new scandal breaking practically every day, one would think Blackwater security would be on the ropes, facing a corporate meltdown or even a total wipeout. But it seems that business for the company has never been better, as it continues to pull in major federal contracts. And its public demeanor grows bolder and cockier by the day.

   […]

   Meanwhile, Blackwater is deep in the camp of GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney. Cofer Black is Romney’s senior adviser on counterterrorism. At the recent CNN/YouTube debate, when Romney refused to call waterboarding torture, he said, “I’m not going to specify the specific means of what is and what is not torture so that the people that we capture will know what things we’re able to do and what things we’re not able to do. And I get that advice from Cofer Black, who is a person who was responsible for counterterrorism in the CIA for some thirty-five years.” That was an exaggeration of Black’s career at the CIA (he was there twenty-eight years and head of counterterrorism for only three), but a Romney presidency could make Blackwater’s business under Bush look like a church bake sale.

   In short, Blackwater is moving ahead at full steam. Individual scandals clearly aren’t enough to slow it down. The company’s critics in the Democratic-controlled Congress must confront the root of the problem: the government is in the midst of its most radical privatization in history, and companies like Blackwater are becoming ever more deeply embedded in the war apparatus. Until this system is brought down, the world’s the limit for Blackwater Worldwide–and as its rebranding campaign shows, Blackwater knows it.

   the nation

   might be time for a three margarita lunch.

   later

   • 

     infidelpig on December 8, 2007 at 7:09 am

     oops, that was meant for the above news….LOL

     I need more coffee…er..maybe not ; )

4. 

   ask on December 7, 2007 at 4:37 pm

   Keep pounding those drums…

   Israel considering strike on Iran despite US intelligence report

   Senior Israeli officials warned today they were still considering the option of a military strike against Iran, despite a fresh US intelligence report that concluded Tehran was no longer developing nuclear weapons.

   Although Israel argues that it wants to see strong diplomatic pressure put on Iran, it is reluctant to rule out the threat of a unilateral military attack. Matan Vilnai, Israel’s deputy defence minister, told Army Radio today: “No option needs to be off the table.”

   Avigdor Lieberman, the hard-right deputy prime minister, said Israel should be ready to act if sanctions did not work. “If they don’t, we will sit and decide whatever we have to decide,” he told the Jerusalem Post in an interview today.

   Several of Israel’s Iran experts say the American rethink on the threat posed by Iran had ruled out a US military strike and probably an Israeli strike too, at least for now. However, Israel’s political hawks continue to keep the threat of action alive.

5. 

   KNUCKLEHEAD on December 8, 2007 at 3:02 pm

   dada,
   Just went thru the dump.
   I forgot the rat rifle tho.
    Good place to locate all the rats that need to be brought down.
   One of the nicer dumps in that it seems to only smell worse as time goes on.