The St. Louis Pledge
On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Jason wrote: Republican Lists http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=RPCcycle=2004 http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=RNCcycle=2004 http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=NRCCcycle=2004 http://www.opensecrets.org/parties/contrib.asp?Cmte=NRSCcycle=2004 For those of you familiar with the Boulder Pledge against spam (see http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml), I submit the St. Louis Pledge Against Fascism: Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered by a contributor to George Bush's campaign. This is my contribution to the survival of freedom in the United States. -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Received: from 24.90.217.26 by by24fd.bay24.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; JAT wrote... This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. A...I need a cigarette. Was it as good for you as it was for me? :-) But I suspect it's far more likely that some large batch of USA-ians will end up having a surprise meeting with Allah as the result of a big ole stinky dirty bomb. And with Iraq II we'll have an endless supply of suicide bombers ready to deliver. The only drawback is that there's a solid chance it'll be set off a few hundred feet from where I work. Manhattan, eh? Received: from 24.90.217.26 by by24fd.bay24.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Yeah, you'll probably be one of the first. Bummer. Ah well. Dems da breaks. We had a good run. 200 years is about average actually, at least as far as imperialist empires go. -TD -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: Well, every people deserve the government they get, and these hillbillies are no exception. Bush will dominate them, take away their rights, make them poor and scared, and they'll deserve every bit of it. (Where's a Tim May rant when you need one?) This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. -TD ;-) -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
-- Peter Gutmann wrote: Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a we'll turn a blind eye notification to his troops. The english army was well disciplined, and in battle did what it what it was told. About half way through the battle of Agincourt, King Henry decided he could not afford so many troops guarding so many prisoners, and told them kill-em-all. Nobility had nothing to do with it. It did not matter who took you prisoner. --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG QwzmnNSSaHhQhQItWATHwnWB7cLchcXDK+wV1pDP 4p0FRureqYrveRbFxz5h7VDonlv9au7JlTFdp/2BL
Re: Tom Wolfe: 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'
What is characteristic of all these Bush-winning stories is that the writers uniformly seem surprised it happened. More surpised than the Democrats. Their post-election commentary conveys that it is hard to believe by most Americans that Bush seems to have won, if you read the winners and losers accounts carefully. Wolfe's piece shows the common feature of dumbfoundness, as if not quite clear how it happened, despite all the cliches being bruited, especially the one about the Bush campaign reaching all those millions who liked him and what he is doing. There a nervousness in the winners' stories, an unsureness that there was a legitimate win, that something might be discovered to invalidate it, so its best to push the good news before it evaporates or is transformed into bad news so closely associated with the Bush administration. The Bush-win proponents sound like they are whistling in the dark. And their whistling keeps getting louder and more persistent and more hysterical, if you bother to read the anxious urgings Herr Dr. Heidegger is posting here. Your Nazi-Commie-Faith-Based Code-Whistler
Re: The St. Louis Pledge
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004 21:40:22 -0600 (CST), J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: St. Louis Pledge Against Fascism: Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered by a contributor to George Bush's campaign. This is my contribution to the survival of freedom in the United States. I guess this is your last Internet usage, then, as Cisco is a major GWB contributor, as well as a contributor to his inaugural fund(s). -- Pete Capelli [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.capelli.org PGP Key ID:0x829263B6 Those who would give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety - Benjamin Franklin, 1759
Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. --- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We.re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here.s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an .Independent Testing Authority. (ITA). What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn.t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State.s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the .penetration analysis.. This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. .Not applicable,. wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. .Did not test.. Shawn Southworth .tested. whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth.s report says .not reviewed.. Ciber .tested.whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says .not applicable.. Ciber .tested. whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of .minus. votes, he said he didn.t mention that in his report because .the vendors don.t like him to put anything negative. in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Shawn Southworth didn.t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: .Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.. Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the .penetration analysis. was again marked .not applicable. and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. TIPS: The password for the vote database is .password. and you should place it in the .LocalDB. directory in the GEMS folder, which you.ll find in .program files.. Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff. You.ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to retire, and the whole NASED voting systems board is becoming somewhat defunct, but these are the people responsible for today's shoddy voting systems. If the security of the U.S. electoral system depends on you to certify a voting system, and you get a report that plainly states that security was .not tested. and .not applicable. -- what would you do? Perhaps we should ask them. Go ahead. Let's hold them
RE: The Values-Vote Myth
From: J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 6, 2004 5:07 PM To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: The Values-Vote Myth On Sat, 6 Nov 2004, Tyler Durden wrote: .. So: A 'moral values' question for Cypherpunks. Does this election indict the American people as being complicit in the crime known as Operation Freedom? (I notice everyone forgot about that name.) Complicit? Thats *technically* correct, but not nearly strong enough. Similarly, if I hold some stock in Exxon, am I complicit in every crime done by the management of Exxon? How does this change if I'm a child whose trust fund contains the stock? Or if I hold a mutual fund I inherited with a little Exxon stock, which can be sold off only if I'm willing to move thousands of miles from my home, learn a new language, uproot my family, etc.? Is there any outcome of the election that would have made it immoral to attack Americans? (Certainly not electing Kerry, who planned to continue holding down Iraq for the forseeable future, though he correctly stated that invading it was a mistake in the first place.) And if we accept this kind of collective guilt logic, why is, say, flattening Fallujah to make an example for the rest of Iraq, wrong? -TD J.A. Terranson --John
Re: Supreme Court Issues
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, Justin wrote: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/07/politics/07court.html?partner=ALTAVISTA1pagewanted=print We're going to get some extremist anti-abortion, pro-internment, anti-1A, anti-4A, anti-5A, anti-14A, right-wing wacko. You mean Shrub is going to elevate Clarence Thomas? Did we bring a new secretary for him to harrass? Imagine Ashcroft as Chief Justice. Oh. My. God. Don't even *think* of such a thing. Seriously, I don't believe he could make it through confirmation, although he would likely (a) be a recess appointment, and (b) serve till the filibuster ended in 2006 :-( -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
J.A. Terranson schrieb: This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. Wow! A Tim May copycat! (Both the 'useless eaters' and the 'chimney'!)
Faith in democracy, not government
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/11/07/EDGQQ9M33Q1.DTLtype=printable The San Francisco Chronicle Election Fallout Faith in democracy, not government - Victor Davis Hanson Sunday, November 7, 2004 Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton were the only two Democrats to be elected president since 1976. Both were Southerners. Apparently, the only assurance that the electorate has had that a Democrat was serious about national security or social sobriety was his drawl. More disturbing still for liberal Democrats is that George W. Bush is the first Republican Southerner ever elected to the presidency, another indicator that a majority of the citizenry no longer finds conservatism and Texas such a scary mix. The fate of third-party candidates was also instructive in the election. Left-wing alternatives like Ralph Nader go nowhere. Conservative populists, on the other hand, can capture 10 percent or more of the electorate, as Ross Perot did in 1992 and almost again in 1996. Indeed, Perot's initial run probably accounts for Clinton's first election, and helped his second as well. In short, Kerry's 3.5 million shortfall in the popular vote underestimates the degree to which the country has drifted to the right. Over a decade ago, it took a third-party candidate, political consultant Dick Morris' savvy triangulation and Bill Clinton's masterful political skills to stave off the complete loss of Democratic legislative, executive and judicial power of the sort that we witnessed last week. Something else is going on in the country that has been little remarked upon. It is not just that an endorsement of a Michael Moore does not translate into votes or that Rathergate loses viewers for CBS. It has become perhaps far worse: A Hollywood soiree with a foul-mouthed Whoopee Goldberg or a Tim Robbins rant can turn toxic for liberal candidates. We are nearly reaching the point where approval from the New York Times or a CBS puff-piece hurts a candidate or cause, as do the billions in contributions from a George Soros. Television commentators Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers, Andy Rooney or Ted Koppel have morphed from their once sober and judicious personas into highly partisan figures that now carry political weight among most Americans only to the degree that they harm any cause or candidate with whom they are associated. Readers do not just disagree with spirited columns by a Molly Ivins, Paul Krugman or Maureen Dowd, but rather are turned off when they revert to hysterics and condescension. To the degree that the messages, proposals or endorsements of a delinquent like Ben Affleck, an incoherent Bruce Springsteen, or a reprobate like Eminem were comprehensible, John Kerry should have run from them all. This election also involved perceived hypocrisy. No one in Bakersfield or Fresno thinks that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld espouses views at odds with the privileged lives that they live; they, of course, unabashedly celebrate and benefit from free enterprise and corporate capitalism. In contrast, Teresa Heinz Kerry and John Kerry, George Soros or John Edwards even more so enjoy the fruits of the very system they at times seem to question. Thus, concern for two Americas is not discernable in John Edwards' multimillion-dollar legal fees, the Kerry jet, or Soros Inc.'s global financial speculation. It is easy for a Noam Chomsky or Michael Moore to trash Halliburton, but Red America wonders about the source of university contracts that subsidize privileged professors' sermons or why corporate recording, cinema and advertising conglomerates that enrich celebrities are exempt from Hollywood's Pavlovian censure of big business. That the man who nearly destroyed the small depositors of Great Britain also fueled MoveOn.org seemed to say it all. Where does this leave us? After landmark legislation of the last 40 years to ensure equality of opportunity, the public has reached its limit in using government to press on to enforce an equality of result. In terms of national security, the Republicans, more so than the Democrats after the Cold War -- in Panama, Afghanistan and Iraq -- oddly are now the party of democratic change, while liberals are more likely to shrug about the disturbing status quo abroad. Conservatives have also made the argument that poverty is evolving into a different phenomenon from what it was decades ago when outhouses, cold showers and no breakfasts were commonplace and we were all not awash in cheap Chinese-imported sneakers, cell phones and televisions. Like it or not, the public believes that choices resulting in breaking of the law, drug use, illegitimate births, illiteracy and victimhood can induce poverty as much as exploitation, racism or sexism can. After trillions of dollars of entitlement programs, most voters are unsure that the answers lie with bureaucrats and social programs, especially when the elite architects of such polices rarely
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
-- J.A. Terranson wrote: The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Inaction is not good enough. Voting is not a solution. Voting only encourages them. If you vote for a candidate, and he wins, he will then proceed to commit various crimes, and you, by voting, have given him a mandate for those crimes. Further, suppose you think, as I think, that candidate A is a lesser evil than candidate B, but the difference is not much. If you vote for the lesser evil, you will start to rationalize and excuse all the crimes he commits, identifying with him, and his actions. Nor is Kerry a solution. I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. You vote for Kerry because you think he is a liar? --digsig James A. Donald 6YeGpsZR+nOTh/cGwvITnSR3TdzclVpR0+pr3YYQdkG EDbRclDc5acD10EGJi0ScHZfE2IslIbsawTQvj54 4jjneZ53XniQe2NYlNlFO5PGLTN5vTyDLI5okTjKv
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
JAT wrote... This election *proves* that at least half the electorate, about 60 million people, are just Useless Eaters, who should be eagerly awaiting their Trip Up The Chimneys. A...I need a cigarette. But I suspect it's far more likely that some large batch of USA-ians will end up having a surprise meeting with Allah as the result of a big ole stinky dirty bomb. And with Iraq II we'll have an endless supply of suicide bombers ready to deliver. The only drawback is that there's a solid chance it'll be set off a few hundred feet from where I work. Ah well. Dems da breaks. We had a good run. -TD _ On the road to retirement? Check out MSN Life Events for advice on how to get there! http://lifeevents.msn.com/category.aspx?cid=Retirement
Re: In a Sky Dark With Arrows, Death Rained Down
James A. Donald [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: I find this very hard to believe. Post links, or give citations. Normally I'd dig up various refs, but since this topic has been beaten to death repeatedly in places like soc.history.medieval, and the debate could well go on endlessly in the manner of the standard What would have happened if the North/South had done X?, I'll just handwave and invite you to dig up whatever sources you feel like yourself. (There were other problems as well, e.g. the unusually high death toll and removal of ancient aristocratic lineages was caused by English commoners who weren't aware of the tradition of capturing opposing nobles and having them ransomed back, rather than hacking them to pieces on the spot. Wrong French nobles were taken prisoner in the usual fashion, but executed because the English King commanded them executed. Nobles expected to surrender to other nobles and be ransomed. Commoners didn't respect this, and almost never took prisoners. Henry's orders didn't make that much difference, at best they were a we'll turn a blind eye notification to his troops. When you have English commoner men-at-arms (front row) meeting French nobles (front row, hoping to nab Henry and other for- ransom nobles, and to some extent because it was unseemly to let the commoners do the fighting, although they should have learned their lesson for that at Courtrai) there's going to be a bloodbath no matter what your leader orders. For the peasants it's get him before he gets me, not a chivalric jousting match for the landed gentry. In addition the enemy nobles had weapons and armour that was worth something, while a ransom was useless to a non-noble (if Bob the Archer did manage to captured Sir Fromage, his lord would grab him, collect the ransom, and perhaps throw Bob a penny for his troubles). (There's a lot more to it than that, but I really don't want to get into an endless debate over this. Take it to soc.history if you must, and if anyone's still interested in debating this there). Peter.
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
Holy Crap! Am I on crack? I think I agree with everything here! However... (James Donald wrote...) I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. That's basically why Kerry lost. He didn't seem to challenge anything Bush did, only the way he carried things out. That means the republicans successfully caused any debate to happen on their terms. Kerry's willingness to kowtow to the idea of a benevolent invasion of Iraq just made him seem like a scumbag to me, no matter what he actually believed. However, there are some things that Bush did that, symbolically at least, he should have been drummed out for. The fact that he won and with large voter turnout is more or less a vindication of his crimes. It means that Bush won't be afraid of doing even more, and then the countless mountains of hillbillies out there will watch his back and take the inevitable bullet or two for him. Well, every people deserve the government they get, and these hillbillies are no exception. Bush will dominate them, take away their rights, make them poor and scared, and they'll deserve every bit of it. (Where's a Tim May rant when you need one?) -TD _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Tom Wolfe: 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'
My mother's family's name is Sanders. It's Scots-Irish. Apparently, I like to have my rock fights on the net... :-). Cheers, RAH --- http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-524-1347653-524,00.html The Times of London November 07, 2004 Focus: US Election Special 'Talk to someone in Cincinnati? Are you crazy?'. . . and so the Democrats blew it Tom Wolfe on the elite that got lost in middle America Over the past few days I've talked to lots of journalists and literary types in New York. I've grown used to the sound of crushed, hushed voices on the end of the phone. The weight of George Bush's victory seems almost too much. But what did they expect, I ask myself. They don't like the war and the way the war is going, they don't like Bush and they don't like what this election says about America. But where's their sense of reality? The liberal elite showed it was way out of touch even before the election. I was at a dinner party in New York and when everyone was wondering what to do about Bush I suggested they might do like me and vote for him. There was silence around the table, as if I'd said by the way, I haven't mentioned this before but I'm a child molester. Now, like Chicken Licken after an acorn fell on his head, they think the sky is falling. I have to laugh. It reminds me of Pauline Kael, the film critic, who said, I don't know how Reagan won - I don't know a soul who voted for him. That was a classic and reflects the reaction of New York intellectuals now. Note my definition of intellectual here is what you often find in this city: not people of intellectual attainment but more like car salesmen, who take in shipments of ideas and sell them on. I think the results in Ohio, the key state this time, tell us everything we need to know. Overall, the picture of Republican red and Democratic blue across the country remained almost unchanged since last time. The millions of dollars spent and miles travelled on the Bush and Kerry campaigns made no difference at all. But look at Ohio and the different voting patterns in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Cleveland, in the north of the state, is cosmopolitan, what we would think of as an eastern city, and Kerry won by two votes to one. Cincinnati, in the southeast corner of Ohio, is a long way away both geographically and culturally. It's Midwestern and that automatically means hicksville to New York intellectuals. There Bush won by a margin of 150,000 votes and it was southern Ohio as a whole that sent him back to the White House. The truth is that my pals, my fellow journos and literary types, would feel more comfortable going to Baghdad than to Cincinnati. Most couldn't tell you what state Cincinnati is in and going there would be like being assigned to a tumbleweed county in Mexico. They can talk to sheikhs in Lebanon and esoteric radical groups in Uzbekistan, but talk to someone in Cincinnati . . . are you crazy? They have no concept of what America is made of and even now they won't see that. So who are the people who voted for Bush? I think the most cogent person on this is James Webb, the most decorated marine to come out of Vietnam. Like John Kerry he won the Silver Star, but also the Navy Cross, the equivalent of our highest honour, the Congressional Medal. He served briefly under Reagan as secretary for the navy, but he has since become a writer. His latest book, Born Fighting, is the most important piece of ethnography in this country for a long time. It's about that huge but invisible group, the Scots-Irish. They're all over the Appalachian mountains and places like southern Ohio and Tennessee. Their theme song is country music and when people talk about rednecks, this is the group they're talking about: this is the group that voted for Bush. Though they've had successes, the Scots-Irish generally haven't done well economically. They're individualistic, they're stubborn and they value their way of life more then their financial situation. If a politician comes out for gun control they take it personally. It's not about guns, really: if you're against the National Rifle Association you're against them as a people. They take Protestantism seriously. It tickles me when people talk about the Christian right. These people aren't right wing, they're just religious. If you're religious, of course, you're against gay marriage and abortion. You're against a lot of things that have become part of the intellectual liberal liturgy. Everyone who joins the military here thinks, Where did all these Southerners come from? These people love to fight. During the French and Indian wars, before there was a United States, recruiters would turn up in the Carolinas and in the Appalachians and say, Anyone want to go and fight Indians? There was a bunch of boys who were always up for it and they haven't lost that love of battle. My family wasn't Scots-Irish but my father was from the Shenendoah Valley, in the Blue Ridge mountains
Re: Your source code, for sale
Tyler Durden wrote: What if I block the outbound release the money message after I unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t--infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem to the first order, with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party?
Re: This Memorable Day
From: Peter Gutmann [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 6, 2004 2:10 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: This Memorable Day The figure that's usually quoted is that 80% of German's military force was directed against Russia. Of the remaining 20%, a lot had already been engaged by France, the UK (via the BEF, the RAF, North Africa), Greece, etc etc before the US got involved in Europe. So the Russians should get most of the credit. Yep. I think to a first approximation, the US defeated Japan and the USSR defeated Germany. My impression is that a lot of the push to do the D-Day invasion was to make sure the USSR didn't end up in possession of all of Europe at the end of the war. (Given how things developed, this was a pretty sensible concern.) Peter. --John
RE: [Full-Disclosure] Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004
See also. http://www.commondreams.org/headlines04/1106-30.htm -Original Message- From: J.A. Terranson [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, 8 November 2004 9:09 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [Full-Disclosure] Blackbox: Elections fraud in 2004 http://www.blackboxvoting.org/ BREAKING -- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: Freedom of Information requests at http://www.blackboxvoting.org have unearthed two Ciber certification reports indicating that security and tamperability was NOT TESTED and that several state elections directors, a secretary of state, and computer consultant Dr. Britain Williams signed off on the report anyway, certifying it. Black Box Voting has taken the position that fraud took place in the 2004 election through electronic voting machines. We base this on hard evidence, documents obtained in public records requests, inside information, and other data indicative of manipulation of electronic voting systems. What we do not know is the specific scope of the fraud. We are working now to compile the proof, based not on soft evidence -- red flags, exit polls -- but core documents obtained by Black Box Voting in the most massive Freedom of Information action in history. --- SUNDAY Nov. 7 2004: We.re awaiting independent analysis on some pretty crooked-looking elections. In the mean time, here.s something to chew on. Your local elections officials trusted a group called NASED -- the National Association of State Election Directors -- to certify that your voting system is safe. This trust was breached. NASED certified the systems based on the recommendation of an .Independent Testing Authority. (ITA). What no one told local officials was that the ITA did not test for security (and NASED didn.t seem to mind). The ITA reports are considered so secret that even the California Secretary of State.s office had trouble getting its hands on one. The ITA refused to answer any questions about what it does. Imagine our surprise when, due to Freedom of Information requests, a couple of them showed up in our mailbox. The most important test on the ITA report is called the .penetration analysis.. This test is supposed to tell us whether anyone can break into the system to tamper with the votes. .Not applicable,. wrote Shawn Southworth, of Ciber Labs, the ITA that tested the Diebold GEMS central tabulator software. .Did not test.. Shawn Southworth .tested. whether every candidate on the ballot has a name. But we were shocked to find out that, when asked the most important question -- about vulnerable entry points -- Southworth.s report says .not reviewed.. Ciber .tested.whether the manual gives a description of the voting system. But when asked to identify methods of attack (which we think the American voter would consider pretty important), the top-secret report says .not applicable.. Ciber .tested. whether ballots comply with local regulations, but when Bev Harris asked Shawn Southworth what he thinks about Diebold tabulators accepting large numbers of .minus. votes, he said he didn.t mention that in his report because .the vendors don.t like him to put anything negative. in his report. After all, he said, he is paid by the vendors. Shawn Southworth didn.t do the penetration analysis, but check out what he wrote: .Ciber recommends to the NASED committee that GEMS software version 1.18.15 be certified and assigned NASED certification number N03060011815.. Was this just a one-time oversight? Nope. It appears to be more like a habit. Here is the same Ciber certification section for VoteHere; as you can see, the critical security test, the .penetration analysis. was again marked .not applicable. and was not done. Maybe another ITA did the penetration analysis? Apparently not. We discovered an even more bizarre Wyle Laboratories report. In it, the lab admits the Sequoia voting system has problems, but says that since they were not corrected earlier, Sequoia could continue with the same flaws. At one point the Wyle report omits its testing altogether, hoping the vendor will do the test. Computer Guys: Be your own ITA certifier. Here is a copy of the full Ciber report (part 1, 2, 3, 4) on GEMS 1.18.15. Here is a zip file download for the GEMS 1.18.15 program. Here is a real live Diebold vote database. Compare your findings against the official testing lab and see if you agree with what Ciber says. E-mail us your findings. TIPS: The password for the vote database is .password. and you should place it in the .LocalDB. directory in the GEMS folder, which you.ll find in .program files.. Who the heck is NASED? They are the people who certified this stuff. You.ve gotta ask yourself: Are they nuts? Some of them are computer experts. Well, it seems that several of these people suddenly want to
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, James A. Donald wrote: J.A. Terranson wrote: The fact is that those who did not vote effectively voted for Shrub. You are either part of the solution or you are part of the problem. Inaction is not good enough. Voting is not a solution. Voting only encourages them. If you vote for a candidate, and he wins, he will then proceed to commit various crimes, and you, by voting, have given him a mandate for those crimes. This is the position I maintained, word for word, since Carter. However, where as you may have mandated the crimes you voted for, you have also mandated the crimes you failed to prevent, since you KNEW those crimes would be committed. Further, suppose you think, as I think, that candidate A is a lesser evil than candidate B, but the difference is not much. If you vote for the lesser evil, you will start to rationalize and excuse all the crimes he commits, identifying with him, and his actions. Bullshit. That may be *you*, but that does not cover all of us. Nor is Kerry a solution. Agreed. I cannot understand why you Bush haters are so excited about this election when on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Kerry promised to continue all Bush's policies only more effectually. This was the reason the vote was (a) so close amongst voters, and (b) likely decided for Shrub. You vote for Kerry because you think he is a liar? No. I voted for Kerry because unlike George, he has at least two brain cells - so there's a *chance* (remote, I grant you), that he can be made to see reason. Bush however, (a) has no brain whatsoever, (b) *enjoys* fucking things up and praying that his good buddy Jesus will fix his fuckups, and (c) seeing people needlessly suffer. This is why people are so upset that he was finally elected: nobody wants a sadist in a position where he can deliberately and with impunity hurt whoever he turns his sick little gaze to. --digsig James A. Donald -- Yours, J.A. Terranson [EMAIL PROTECTED] 0xBD4A95BF An ill wind is stalking while evil stars whir and all the gold apples go bad to the core S. Plath, Temper of Time
Re: Your source code, for sale
Oh, I assumed that this verification 'layer' was disjoint from the e$ layer. In other words, you might have a 3rd party e$ issuer, but after that they shouldn't be necessaryor, there's a different 3rd party for the verification process. I think that's reasonable, but of course one could argue what's the point if you already need a 3rd party for the e$. But I think that's a disjoint set of issues. -TD From: Ben Laurie [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: Tyler Durden [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale Date: Mon, 08 Nov 2004 11:50:28 + Tyler Durden wrote: What if I block the outbound release the money message after I unbundle the images. Sure, I've already committed my money, but you can't get to it. In effect I've just ripped you off, because I have usable product and you don't have usable money. Well, yes, but this would be a very significant step forward from the current situation. As t--infinity the vast majority of non-payments are going to be for the purpose of greed. If the payment is already 'gone', then you need a whole different set of motives for wanting to screw somebody even if you get nothing out of it. So in other words, you have at least solved the payment problem to the first order, with no 3rd party. With fancier mechanisms I would think you can solve it to 2nd order too. How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? _ Express yourself instantly with MSN Messenger! Download today - it's FREE! http://messenger.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200471ave/direct/01/
Re: Your source code, for sale
Well, I guess once you need a 3rd party for the e$, it's only going to make sense that the issuer offer a value added service like you're talking about. A 3rd party verifier is probably going to be too costly. But I'm not 100% convinced that you HAVE TO have a 3rd party verifier, but it's looking like that's what's going to make sense 99% of the time anyway. -TD From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Hal Finney) To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Your source code, for sale Date: Mon, 8 Nov 2004 10:51:24 -0800 (PST) Ben Laurie writes: How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and the seller. This way the payment is already gone from the POV of the buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less incentive to cheat him. In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid to get it signed) is already gone. He can prove to the seller that he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) be able to deposit. Hal _ Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search! http://search.msn.click-url.com/go/onm00200636ave/direct/01/
Re: Faith in democracy, not government
On Sun, 7 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: % SNIP % More disturbing still for liberal Democrats is that George W. Bush is the first Republican Southerner ever elected to the presidency, another indicator that a majority of the citizenry no longer finds conservatism and Texas such a scary mix. *SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was born and educated in Massachusetts? John F. Kerry is more southerner than Bush. -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. - FDR
Re: Your source code, for sale
Ben Laurie writes: How do you make the payment already gone without using a third party? Of course there has to be a third party in the form of the currency issuer. If it is someone like e-gold, they could do as I suggested and add a feature where the buyer could transfer funds irrevocably into an escrow account which would be jointly controlled by the buyer and the seller. This way the payment is already gone from the POV of the buyer and if the seller completes the transaction, the buyer has less incentive to cheat him. In the case of an ecash mint, a simple method would be for the seller to give the buyer a proto-coin, that is, the value to be signed at the mint, but in blinded form. The buyer could take this to the mint and pay to get it signed. The resulting value is no good to the buyer because he doesn't know the blinding factors, so from his POV the money (he paid to get it signed) is already gone. He can prove to the seller that he did it by using the Guillou-Quisquater protocol to prove in ZK that he knows the mint's signature on the value the seller gave him. The seller thereby knows that the buyer's costs are sunk, and so the seller is motivated to complete the transaction. The buyer has nothing to lose and might as well pay the seller by giving him the signed value from the mint, which the seller can unblind and (provably, verifiably) be able to deposit. Hal
Re: The Values-Vote Myth
From: Eric Cordian [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Nov 6, 2004 5:57 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: The Values-Vote Myth .. Also, voting is in some sense political manipulation to blame the population for the actions of their government. Everyone who votes is a co-conspirator, and the argument is made that those who don't vote have no right to dissent. Yep, I always get a kick out of this line. Alice says if you don't vote, you have no right to complain about the outcome. Bob says if you don't volunteer for a campaign, man the phone banks, go door to door, and give till it hurts, you have no right to complain about the outcome. Carol says If you don't stockpile weapons, organize into cells, and run a campaign of terror bombing and assassination, you have no right to complain about the outcome. Why is one of these people more obviously right than the others? [I know you weren't agreeing with the quoted statement either.] In practice, Alice's strategy has almost no impact on the result--nothing I did as a Maryland voter could have given Bush fewer electoral votes than he already got, and that's true almost everywhere for an individual voter. This is especially true if you're an individual voter whose major issues are just not very important to most other voters. Kerry spent essentially no time talking about the creepy implications of the Jose Padilla case (isn't he still being held incommunicado, pending filing in the right district?), or the US government's use of torture in the war on terror despite treaties and the basic obligations of civilized people not to do that crap. I see little indication that Kerry would have disclaimed the power to do those things, had the vote swung a couple percentage points the other way. Bob's strategy has more going for it, but it comes down to a tradeoff between alternate uses of your time. You could devote your time to the Bush or Kerry or Badnarik campaigns, or you could improve your ability to survive whatever ugliness may come in other ways--maybe by making more money and banking it against future problems, or improving your standing in your field, so you're likely to be employable even in a massive post-terror-attack recession. Maybe just spending quality time with your wife and kids, on the theory that the bad guys may manage to vaporize you tomorrow whichever clown gets elected Bozo-in-Chief. Carol's strategy seems doomed to fail to me--look how much damage has been done to the pro-life movement by the very small number of wackos willing to shoot abortion doctors and bomb clinics. I'm always amazed at the revolutionary talk from people on this list, as though libertarian/anarchocapitalist ideas weren't an almost invisibly small minority in the US, as though some kind of unrest leading to a civil war would lead anywhere any of us would like. (Is it the secular police state that comes out on top, or the religious police state?) Eric Michael Cordian 0+ --John
Re: Faith in democracy, not government
On Mon, 8 Nov 2004, R.A. Hettinga wrote: At 9:41 AM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: *SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was born and educated in Massachusetts? Give me a child until the age of 7, cet. 'er huh? Which he spent in Midland, TX. Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his bidness honestly, as far as I'm concerned. I think a little line noise crept in here somewhere. Care to clarify? -Chuck -- http://www.quantumlinux.com Quantum Linux Laboratories, LLC. ACCELERATING Business with Open Technology The measure of the restoration lies in the extent to which we apply social values more noble than mere monetary profit. - FDR
Re: Faith in democracy, not government
At 9:41 AM -0800 11/8/04, Chuck Wolber wrote: *SIGH* Is it really so hard for people to remember that George W. Bush was born and educated in Massachusetts? Give me a child until the age of 7, cet. Which he spent in Midland, TX. Being the son of a family of West-Texans myself, he comes by his bidness honestly, as far as I'm concerned. Cheers, RAH -- - R. A. Hettinga mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation http://www.ibuc.com/ 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA ... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience. -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
