On April 27, the US Department of Justice indighted the founders of e-gold for
one count of conspiracy to launder monetary instruments, one count of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business, one count of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business under federal law and one count of money transmission without a license under […]
According to ABC, the CIA and Dick Cheney have been secretly supporting Jundullah (”Soldiers of God”), a Al-Qaeda affiliated terrorist organization that claims to have killed hundreds of people in Eastern Iran over the past few years. For example, they blew up an army bus on February 14. According to ABC, America has been providing […]
Cartoon Network places LED boards with ATHF characters in various cities around the country, as part of a marketing campaign. Some crazy paranoid Bostonian thinks the blinking ad might be a ter’rist threat and calls the cops. So the bomb squad comes in and defuses the blinking lights, while the internets laugh. At this point, […]
McCain introduced a bill that would require sex offenders to register all their email addresses and screen names with the Federal government (or face 10 years in prison). Any social networking site will be forced to scan it userbase for these screen names and emails, and remove any posts by a sex offender. So if […]
Вот никогда не подумал бы, что чекисты-коммунисты станут себя представлять, как демократическая оппозиция. Но сие свершилось. Некий ветеран внешней разведки Павел Басанец выступил на встрече бывших офицеров разведки прямо в Лубянке (!), раскритиковал современную политическую систему России как несправедливую и недемократическую, и предложил ветеранам-чекистам вступать в оппозицию и бороться с Путиным. Зал проапплодировал… Конечно, у […]
The BBC just did a survey on global attitudes to the use of torture.
country
No torture:
Some torture is OK:
USA
58%
36%
Britain
72%
24%
Russia
43%
37%
I thought that we had all concluded that torture was a fundamental evil back in the 18th century, right around the time we invented human rights and modern science. Yet here in the 2006, in the […]
These events transpired two months ago, but I only heard of them today.
On May 13, 2006, Josh Kelly and Llara Brook — a young white couple from Virginia — went to see the Orioles play in Baltimore. On the way back, they got lost (I don’t blame them, the city has a rather insane street […]
The Supreme Court has ruled that the Guantanamo Bay military tribunals are unconstitutional. Interestingly, the court decided that even though the military commissions violated the Geneva Conventions and the US Code of Military Justice, they were not illegal per se; what was illegal was the fact that Bush set them up by executive order, without […]
Today in the morning, three Guantanamo Bay inmates — two Saudis and a Yemeni — were found dead in their cells. They had committed suicide by hanging themselves with bedsheets.
If you are held in a solitary chainlink pen for years without trial or evidence, and with no hope of release, I imagine you would also […]
The Guantanamo Bay facility and the rest of CIA’s secret jails are mostly outside of any normal Western judicial system. There are no juries, no judges, no lawyers, no witnesses, no appeals. There is only a (hardly impartial) military commission which may hear your case years after you are detained or kidnapped. Yet some people […]
On July 22nd, Jean Charles de Menezes, an innocent Brazilian electrician living in London, put on a light denim jacker, left his flat, entered the Stockwell Underground station, bought a newspaper, and calmly descended the escalator to the platform. Apparently, Mr. Menezes looked similar to a terrorist suspect who lived in the same apartment building. […]
Many websites allow visitors to write posts and leave comments. Sometimes the visitors are assholes, and leave comments that are (in the relevant jurisdiction) illegal speech — warez, libels, plans for a terrorist attack, that sort of thing. At which point someone (typically a company that is losing money due to the forum post) will […]
(there are almost no English-language resources on this — only an incredibly inane /. discussion — please disseminate this information)
DADVSI (Droit d’Auteur et les Droits Voisins dans la Société de l’Information) is a French bill that was intended to destroy fair use. Think of it as DMCA on steroids. Can’t make or distribute a program […]
Diebold is a large manufacturer of ATMs and other (supposedly) secure electronic equipment. In 2002, Diebold acquired a smaller company that manufactured computerized voting machines, and created the Diebold Election Systems subsidiary, which has been mired in scandal ever since. Some reasons include:
Bob Urosevich, the president of Diebold Election Systems, as well as Walden […]
Finally, a piece of good news on “anti-terror” laws: the proposed British law that would have allowed detaining terrorist suspects for 90 days has been defeated in the British Parliament. Notably, 49 Labour MP’s voted against Blair’s bill, despite intense pressure from the Labour party’s leadership. The Parliament instead passed an alternative bill to allow […]
(Via Ars) René Weber of Michigan State University, Klaus Mathiak of RWTH Aachen, and Ute Ritterfeld of University of Southern California claimed to have found a “causal link” between a violent video game and brain activity indicating aggression. Their study has not yet been published. However, the press release indicates that the researchers performed fMRI […]
(Via a Machall rant) On September 11, 2005, there was a march from the Pentagon to the Mall, sponsored by the Department of Defense, to show support for victims of the 2001 terrorist attacks and for the US soldiers currently fighting in Iraq. The march had extraordinarily restrictive security — quoth the Washington Post […]
A fascinating article in the Guardian (May 5, 2005; Now that’s what I call democracy) about the difference between American and British elections. The anglophile author convincingly argues that while American election campaigns are cheezy, carefully and artificially orchestrated affairs, British ones are calmer and more honest. British politicians are willing to handle tough questions […]
A few days ago, a character of the Diesel Sweeties webcomic couldn’t figure out how Michigan sucks. Had he waited a few days, he would have had no such difficulties: today, Jennifer Granholm, the (Democratic) governor of Michigan, has announced that she will sign a new bill regulating video games. The bill will make selling […]
The US administration is proposing a policy of first nuclear strike against enemies — both states and non-states — that are “intending to use WMD” against US or allied targets. Besides the immorality of such a policy, the fact is that the current administration has consistently misled the US public about other nations’ WMD capabilities. […]