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Let’s start with vocabulary. Let’s stop describing these tax-funded establishments as faith schools. They are superstition schools, for that is what they teach. Alongside hard facts, innocent children are hoodwinked into accepting as real the mythology of virgin births, gods who regard women with bare heads as wicked harlots, that Noah’s Ark was real and that Darwin was wrong. It’s clear that, given the rising tide of superstition sweeping our country, no politician will help end this state-funded child abuse, and so it is time to try and fight back. The difficulty with people who think as I do is that we are always described in the negative as atheists. The word, although it simply means not believing in a deity, is mostly used in the pejorative to imply a lack of belief in anything, when nothing could be further from the truth. We are not a group who are seen as a “community�?, who are organised in our desires, or who can bring political pressure to bear on our government in the way herds of men in frocks seem to do with the sweep of a cassock or twitch of a beard.

So let’s get organised. Someone tried a group called “The Brights�?, but the name is so smug and pretentious that it’s not surprising it was a damp squib. Why not take instead The Enlightenment as the inspiration? Enlightenmentists is a bit of a mouthful, so let’s try Enlightenists. I know. I just made it up. It’s the best I can do, but we’re going to need a label if we are hoping to get things like our own schools.

Here’s what I believe as an Enlightenist. Atheism is not a driving concern, since belief in God is of little consequence. After all, if there is an interventionist God then there would be continuing demonstrable evidence of such, which there most certainly is not, and if there is a creator God who is non-interventionist then he neither requires nor merits worship, and if there is no God at all then so be it. Therefore you could happily suspect that there might be a non-interventionist God of sorts that could eventually be discovered scientifically and still be an Enlightenist. Since no action needs to be taken until such an unlikely discovery, it doesn’t matter. Now let’s move on.

Enlightenists believe in the awe-inspiring, wonder, beauty and complexity of the universe, and aspire to unpick its mysteries by reason, constant questioning, observation, experiment, and analysis of evidence. The bedrock of our morality is empathy, from which logically springs love, forgiveness, tolerance and a profound desire to make a just, egalitarian society and reduce suffering. The more knowledge a person has, the more they question and understand the real world, and the more they are required to analyse what is true then the greater the increase in empathy. Enlightenists care and wish to do good not because a vengeful God tells them to, but because intelligence suggests it is the only and the right thing to do.

So there we have it then, that’s the belief manifesto. Now, where the hell are my bloody state-funded schools? We’re always told about the high performance of superstition schools verses non-denominational ones, but we know that’s because any parent willing to pretend to be religious to get their child in is a parent interested in their child’s education, and involved parents equal successful children. Can you imagine the unseemly scramble for places if we were to be granted a state-funded Enlightenist school? Children would be welcome from any religious or ideological background, with the parents only having to fulfil the brief of allowing their children to be taught in the Enlightenist manner.

This would mean they could still be Catholics, Muslims, Protestants, Satanist, Druids, whatever they like, but their children would be taught to question the whole matching set of baggage. Sit back and watch the superstition schools empty.

Sidney Dyer with her mother, Jodi, at Mr. Dyer’s burial. Mr. Dyer, 38, of Cocoa Beach, Fla., was killed in Afghanistan.

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Burials at Arlington National Cemetery took on a grim regularity in October, when at least 103 American troops were killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Iraq, the toll had reached 99 by Saturday, making October the deadliest month since January 2005.

Military officials attributed the high number of deaths to a spike in violence during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which began in late September and ended last week. They also pointed to a three-month campaign to win control of Baghdad from death squads that led to increased attacks on American troops.

But such explanations were little comfort to a 6-year-old girl weeping at the grave of her father, a mother clutching the flag from her son’s coffin, or a widow walking slowly through the rain behind her husband’s honor guard.

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De stemmachines in 35 gemeentes zijn afgekeurd omdat bij deze apparaten makkelijk is te achterhalen wat iemand heeft gestemd. Amsterdam moet weer met potlood gaan stemmen, andere gemeentes kunnen hier ook voor kiezen of andere stemmachines inschakelen. Dat heeft minister Atzo Nicolaï (Bestuurlijke Vernieuwing) maandag bekendgemaakt.

Het gaat om de bijna 1200 stemmachines van producent Sdu, tien procent van het totale aantal stemmachines in Nederland. Na Amsterdam zijn Eindhoven en Tilburg de grootste gemeentes die op zoek moeten naar een alternatief voor de Sdu-machines.

Uit onderzoek van de inlichtingendienst AIVD is gebleken dat de radiosignalen waarmee deze computers de stemresultaten doorgeven tot op enkele tientallen meters zo goed zijn te onderscheppen dat gezien kan worden wat iemand heeft gestemd. “Dit vormt een te groot risico voor het stemgeheim,” zei Nicolaï. “Daarom heb ik de vergunning voor de stemmachines ingetrokken.”

A better link for those who couldn’t see the video I posted on the starbucks story…

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In its assessment of Iraqi weaponry, the inspector general concluded that of the 505,093 weapons that have been given to the Ministries of Interior and Defense over the last several years, serial numbers for only 12,128 were properly recorded. The weapons include rocket-propelled grenade launchers, assault rifles, machine guns, shotguns, semiautomatic pistols and sniper rifles.

Of those weapons, 370,000 were purchased with American taxpayer money under what is called the Iraq Relief and Reconstruction Fund, or I.R.R.F., and therefore fell within the inspector general’s mandate.

Despite the potential risks from losing track of those weapons — involving 19 different contracts and 142 delivery orders — the United States recorded serial numbers for no more than a few thousand, the inspector general said.

There are standard regulations for registering military weaponry in that way, governed by the Department of Defense small-arms serialization program. The inspector general’s report said that when asked why so many weapons went to Iraq with no record of serial numbers, American military officials in Baghdad replied that they did not believe the regulations applied to them.

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The commissioner of internal revenue has ordered his agency to delay collecting back taxes from Hurricane Katrina victims until after the Nov. 7 elections and the holiday season, saying he did so in part to avoid negative publicity.

The commissioner, Mark W. Everson, who has close ties to the White House, said in an interview that postponing collections until after the midterm elections, along with postponing notices to people who failed to file tax returns, was a routine effort to avoid casting the Internal Revenue Service in a bad light.

“We are very sensitive to political perceptions,�? Mr. Everson said Wednesday, adding that he regularly discussed with his senior staff members when to take actions and make announcements in light of whether they would annoy a powerful member of Congress or get lost in the flow of news.

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The Government would have measures in place to ensure religious extremists did not try to indoctrinate children under its under its plan to post chaplains in the nation’s schools, Prime Minister John Howard said today.

Under the $90 million initiative, all schools will be able to apply for subsidies of up to $20,000 a year to employ a chaplain.

The chaplains will not be expected to have a religious background but will be required to provide spiritual guidance to students.

If only there was a specific place, not funded by public money, where people could seek religious counseling… You know, a place where people could meet with clergy, pray, all that religious stuff. If only such a venue existed.

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After a week of early voting, a handful of glitches with electronic voting machines have drawn the ire of voters, reassurances from elections supervisors — and a caution against the careless casting of ballots.

Several South Florida voters say the choices they touched on the electronic screens were not the ones that appeared on the review screen — the final voting step.

Election officials say they aren’t aware of any serious voting issues. But in Broward County, for example, they don’t know how widespread the machine problems are because there’s no process for poll workers to quickly report minor issues and no central database of machine problems.

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Starbucks Corp.’s recently announced goal of having 40,000 stores worldwide isn’t just about spreading green awnings through middle America, the Middle East and other areas of the world not yet tempted by easy access to mocha Frappuccinos and pumpkin spice lattes.

The coffee chain’s aggressive growth also hinges on what the company calls “infill” — adding stores in cities where its mermaid logo is already commonplace. In some cases, that means putting a Starbucks within a block of an existing store, if not closer.

While Starbucks knows there’s plenty to lure people into their stores, they also recognize that many people can’t be bothered to walk very far — or wait very long — for an optional and pricey treat.

I could make many jokes about it – but why bother when Lewis Black did a perfect job of it already.

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A think-tank has called for outdated copyright laws to be rewritten to take account of new ways people listen to music, watch films and read books.

The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) is calling for a “private right to copy”.

It would decriminalise millions of Britons who break the law each year by copying their CDs onto music players.

Making copies of CDs and DVDs for personal use would have little impact on copyright holders, the IPPR argues.

Copyright issues have, in the past, been steered too much by the music industry, the report said.

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One way or another the various long-shot exit scenarios being debated in the capital will be sorted out: federalism and partition; reaching out somehow for help from Iran and Syria; replacing Mr. Maliki with a Saddam-lite strongman. There will be some kind of timeline, or whatever you want to call it, with enforced benchmarks, or whatever you want to call them, for phased withdrawal. (Read “Out of Iraq: A Practical Plan for Withdrawal Now” by George McGovern and William R. Polk for a particularly persuasive blueprint.) In any event, the timeline will end no later than Inauguration Day 2009.

[..]

The ultimate chutzpah is that Mr. Bush, the man who sold us Saddam’s imminent mushroom clouds and “Mission Accomplished,” is trivializing the chaos in Iraq as propaganda. The enemy’s “sophisticated” strategy, he said in last weekend’s radio address, is to distribute “images of violence” to television networks, Web sites and journalists to “demoralize our country.”
This is a morally repugnant argument. The “images of violence” from Iraq are not fake ­ like, say, the fiction our government manufactured about the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman or the upbeat news stories the Pentagon spends millions of dollars planting in Iraqi newspapers today. These images of violence are real. Americans really are dying at the fastest pace in at least a year, and Iraqis in the greatest numbers to date. To imply that this carnage is magnified by the news media, whether the American press or Al Jazeera, is to belittle the gravity of the escalated bloodshed and to duck accountability for the mismanagement of the war. Mr. Bush’s logic is reminiscent of Jeffrey Skilling’s obtuse view of his innocence in the Enron scandal, though at least Mr. Skilling has been held accountable for the wreckage of lives on his watch.
[..]

That’s why it seemed particularly absurd when, in his interview with Mr. Stephanopoulos last weekend, Mr. Bush said that “the fundamental question” Americans must answer is “should we stay?” They’ve been answering that question loud and clear for more than a year now.

What we should be thinking about instead are our obligations to those who are doing the staying. Kevin Tillman, who served with his brother in Iraq and Afghanistan, observed in an angry online essay this month: “Somehow back at home, support for the soldiers meant having a 5-year-old kindergartener scribble a picture with crayons and send it overseas, or slapping stickers on cars, or lobbying Congress for an extra pad in a helmet.”

If we really support the troops, we’ll move past Mr. Bush’s “fundamental question” to one from 1971 posed by a 27-year-old Vietnam veteran, John Kerry, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”

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The federal government is investigating the takeover last year of a leading American manufacturer of electronic voting systems by a small software company that has been linked to the leftist Venezuelan government of President Hugo Chávez.

The inquiry is focusing on the Venezuelan owners of the software company, the Smartmatic Corporation, and is trying to determine whether the government in Caracas has any control or influence over the firm’s operations, government officials and others familiar with the investigation said.

So it doesn’t matter these machines allow elections to be stolen, as long it isn’t done by Chávez?

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Frustrated with laws and regulations that have made companies and accounting firms more open to lawsuits from investors and the government, corporate America — with the encouragement of the Bush administration — is preparing to fight back.

Now that corruption cases like Enron and WorldCom are falling out of the news, two influential industry groups with close ties to administration officials are hoping to swing the regulatory pendulum in the opposite direction. The groups are drafting proposals to provide broad new protections to corporations and accounting firms from criminal cases brought by federal and state prosecutors as well as a stronger shield against civil lawsuits from investors.

Although the details are still being worked out, the groups’ proposals aim to limit the liability of accounting firms for the work they do on behalf of clients, to force prosecutors to target individual wrongdoers rather than entire companies, and to scale back shareholder lawsuits.

The groups hope to reduce what they see as some burdens imposed by the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, landmark post-Enron legislation adopted in 2002. The law, which placed significant new auditing and governance requirements on companies, gave broad discretion for interpretation to the Securities and Exchange Commission. The groups are also interested in rolling back rules and policies that have been on the books for decades.

And since legislation is pretty much for sale in the USA, they’ll probably get what they want…

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There are a number of important implications in the concept of absolute power which we must be familiar with if we are to recognize it when we see it. Absolute power is, for example, accountable only to itself — and sometimes not even to that. There are no outside, independent institutions, beliefs, systems, or ideologies upon which absolute power is founded or to which absolute power is accountable. Absolute power is also independent of the many public rituals or symbols we normally associate with institutions or offices that exercise power over us. Police officers wear a badge as a symbol of their power; we stand when the judge enters the courtroom in a ritual to recognize their power. Absolute power has no need for such trappings, however, because there is no one to impress and no mediating traditions required.

Some of this was made evident recently by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld when he presumptuously told critics of the administration’s failed war in Iraq: “You ought to just back off, take a look at it, relax, understand that it’s complicated, it’s difficult. Honorable people are working on these things together.�? So, should the American people just trust the administration to get everything right and not raise complaints, criticisms, or suggestions? What in the administration’s record on anything, much less Iraq, should inspire such trust and complacency?

I think that what we are seeing is a denial that officials in the administration are really accountable to the American people whom they are supposed to be serving. Whatever rhetorical gestures they might make in the general direction of accountability, I see little hard evidence that the concept is taken seriously and enforced by this administration. On the contrary, I see instead a constant struggle to free the president and his minions from what few constraints his sycophantic Congress might try to impose.

I think that there is also more going on here between the lines. Rumsfeld’s statement, “Back off,�? isn’t just an expression of his attitudes but also a command: he’s giving an order to the media and to critics to step away, stop criticizing, and go back to reporting on other, less weighty, matters. How this is related to the question of absolute power is explained by Wolfgang Sofsky in his seminal book The Order of Terror: The Concentration Camp:

“Third, absolute power is graduated power. It sets up a cleverly devised system of collaboration by turning some victims into accomplices, outfitting the functionary elite with substantial authority. One of the pillars holding up the camp system was an auxiliary force of Kapos (prisoner-functionaries who supervised prisoner work squads, or Kommados) and “scribes�? (Schreiber, record-keepers) who helped maintain everyday routines and relieved the burden on the SS personnel. Through their agency, absolute power became omnipresent. It filled almost every cranny, every niche in the camp. Without that delegation of power, the system of discipline would quickly have collapsed. The attendant rivalry for positions in supervision, administration, and supply provided the SS with a welcome opportunity to play the various factions among the prisoners’ elite against one another, keeping them dependent.�?

I think that we can find many ways in which the media elite have been all too eager to serve as Bush’s Willing Kapos. NBC, for example, has apparently refused to air ads for the Dixie Chicks’ movie because it is “disparaging to President Bush.�? Airing material critical of our political leadership is in the public interest which, in turn, is an obligation media companies have in exchange for access to the broadcast spectrum. The fact that these same corporations stand to make a lot of money from favorable regulation decisions and favorable laws made by the same political leadership they refuse to be critical of indicates that they are instead putting their corporate interests ahead of the public interest.

Many individual reporters and commentators go to great lengths to describe the actions of both Republicans and Democrats as if they were “equivalent�? even when there is no truth to such a perspective. Thus both parties are described as engaging in widespread negative campaign advertising even when the Democrats are doing almost none. Reporters are forced to just make things up, like describing the Michael J. Fox ad on stem cells as “negative.�? Much the same happens in reports about scandals — the fact that almost all involve Republicans is glossed over in an effort to create “balance�? where none exists. The fact that same reporters and commentators rely heavily on the good will of the people in power for access to information, “leaks,�? and invitations to good parties where the rich and powerful pretend to accept them as equals for an evening, suggests that they are putting their personal interests ahead of the public interests.

One consequence of all this dumbing-down of political reporting might be to turn us into something like the “proles�? of George Orwell’s book 1984. This Wikipedia summary of who and what the proles were should explain how they fit in here:

“[P]roles were not considered to be human beings. They did not have the intellectual power to understand that they are exploited by the Party (as a source of cheap labor) and were unable to organize resistance. Their functions were simple: work and breed. They did not care much about anything else than taking care of home and family, quarreling with neighbors, watching some films and football, drinking beer, and above all buying the lottery tickets. They were not required to express their support to the Party. They were only required to show primitive patriotism. The Party created special meaningless songs, novels, even pornography for the proles.�?

A similar disdain for “inferiors�? is often exhibited by Christian Nationalists in America. Despite the many injunctions in the New Testament that followers of Jesus should serve rather than rule, there appears to be a prevalent attitude that Christians “contain the wisdom and grace and love and creativity of Jesus�? and therefore should naturally rule by setting the laws. Parallels to this attitude existed in Nazi Germany and were expressed via the concept “Volksgenossen.�? This can be translated as “national comrade,�? but that hardly does the term justice and there is no exact translation.

It may be easiest to explain through example: Aryan Germans were Volksgenossen; Jews, Slavs, and other Untermenschen were not. Greater Germany, of course, was to be limited exclusively to Volksgenossen. In modern America, it might be possible to say that white conservative Christians are Volksgenossen; godless liberals and other traitors are not. I think that there was always the expectation among the Nazis that the categories of Party members and Volksgenossen would become indistinguishable. I suspect that there is an expectation among Christian Nationalists today that a similar process should occur: Republican Party members and American Volksgenossen should become one, which of course leaves everyone else out in the cold.

Or perhaps on the other side of that new fence they want to build.

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Christopher Soghoian’s stated intent with the “Boarding Pass Generator” website was to illustrate a well-documented airline security weakness that airlines and government failed to address — not to commit fraud or help terrorists. IANAL, but people who are lawyers are no doubt examining the laws that may apply to his case, now that he has been visited by FBI agents bearing a search warrant, his computer and other belongings seized.

[..]

Doesn’t it seem like the FBI is coming down on this guy with all the power of a fully-operational space station to make an example of him, and thereby silence anyone else who may get some crazy ideas like speaking freely about how ineffective the Department of Homeland Security is?

The problem was well-known for over year, but now that it has publicity it is suddenly urgent enough to get a search warrant and ransack his home at 2 AM?

And if you want a Delta boarding pass instead of NW, just go here.

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What happens when a film studio and a fanbase get into bed? Fans of Joss Whedon’s Firefly, and the movie by Universal Studios — Serenity — are not amused. After being encouraged to viral market Serenity, the studio has started legal action against fans (demanding $9000 in retroactive licensing fees in one case and demanding fan promotion stop), and going after Cafepress. The fans response? Retroactively invoice Universal for their services

Quixtar is a multilevel marketing setup like amway. MLM is disgusting enough, but when you start creating vomit-inducing crap like this ad you know it is only a matter of time before it is spoofed. Here’s a parody calling Quixtar a pimp that whores dreams. It even includes a message for future generations: “Our god is money, and he treats us very well. You will join our land someday, and then you will understand the frozen smiles.”

You would think after the Brownie debacle during Katrina last year the President would be eager to appoint someone with qualifications exceeding Arabian horse show judge to lead the nations emergency response efforts. Sadly, no.

“Davis hopes the White House isn’t saying they don’t understand the need for minimal qualifications, or that they might bypass them. If indeed they are, then we haven’t come very far from the days of ‘Heck of a job, Brownie,’ ” Davis spokesman David Marin said, in a reference to Bush’s early praise for Brown. “Good luck getting someone confirmed who doesn’t meet these standards.”

David, ever heard of recess appointments?

Also seePAPA’S GOT A BRAND NEW BAGHDAD and NSA SURPRISE

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The CIA tried to persuade Germany to silence EU protests about the human rights record of one of America’s key allies in its clandestine torture flights programme, the Guardian can reveal.

According to a secret intelligence report, the CIA offered to let Germany have access to one of its citizens, an al-Qaida suspect being held in a Moroccan cell. But the US secret agents demanded that in return, Berlin should cooperate and “avert pressure from EU” over human rights abuses in the north African country. The report describes Morocco as a “valuable partner in the fight against terrorism”.

The classified documents prepared for the German parliament last February make clear that Berlin did eventually get to see the detained suspect, who was arrested in Morocco in 2002 as an alleged organiser of the September 11 strikes.

He was flown from Morocco to Syria on another rendition flight. Syria offered access to the prisoner on the condition that charges were dropped against Syrian intelligence agents in Germany accused of threatening Syrian dissidents. Germany dropped the charges, but denied any link.

Life is complex.

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So on Tuesday I joined about 1,000 citizens and members of the local and regional media in the Windsor High School Auditorium to hear the debate and try to get an answer to my question from Congresswoman Musgrave.

About twenty minutes before the debate started and after speaking to several reporters about how Musgrave had voted to transform her values into our laws, I took a seat in the front row. As it turned out, I was seated next to the timekeeper who held up yellow and red cards to signal time to the candidates.

But just minutes after taking my seat, I noticed a flurry of activity around my seat including about four uniformed police officers who were – I would learn later – called in by Musgrave staffers and asked to remove me from the building.

At this point, I had made no speeches, I had no signs, had made no attempt to disrupt or cause any commotion. I only came into the auditorium, spoke to a dozen or so reporters and took a seat.

To their credit, the police refused the Musgrave campaign’s appeal to have me removed.

There’s more to come, but I still can’t get over even that part. A sitting member of Congress asked the police to remove me – a taxpaying citizen – from a public debate. Obviously, I misunderstand the concept of a political debate. I thought a debate was a place to share ideas, answer questions, defend your record and tell citizens what you’ve done and what you will do. Marilyn Musgrave believes, I have to gather, that debates are places to have the police remove people who don’t agree with you.

After the police talked with obviously irritated Musgrave staffers and the debate organizer, the Musgrave campaign complained that my seat, next to the timekeeper, was inappropriate because – get this – Marilyn Musgrave would have to look at me. In an effort to appease the Musgrave camp, the debate organizers moved the timekeeper to the other side of the stage – about 15 seats away.

If you need to re-read that again, it’s okay. A member of Congress who took to the floor of our Congress to speak about my wife, my family and my values made the debate timekeeper move so she wouldn’t have to look at me. Just amazing.

[..]

As if the evening weren’t already strange enough, as the clock wound down on the debate I noticed about half a dozen Musgrave staffers and supporters gathering near the stairs to the stage. They were whispering and forming a line. It stuck me as odd but I soon discovered why they were there.

As soon as the moderator wrapped-up the evening, they rushed in front of me forming a human shield for Congresswoman Musgrave – trying to keep me from speaking to her.

I called out, “Marilyn, why won’t you answer my question?” and “It’s just one question.” But, like before, she ignored me. And as I approached the stage with other debate watchers, Musgrave staffers surrounded me trying their best to shout over me silly things like, “We love you Marilyn” and “Way to Go! Marilyn!”

It was really lame.

And, no kidding, within seconds of the debate ending, three or four other Musgrave staffers ran on stage, took the Congresswoman by the arms and whisked her through a side door and into a waiting car. She not only avoided my question, she didn’t take a single comment from a single voter or shake a single hand.

I will give her credit, though, Marilyn Musgrave may have been the first member of Congress with the courage to actually demonstrate for all of us what “cut and run” really looks like.

[Quote:]

Former Hong Kong governor politician Chris Patten has said that a fundamental lack of understanding in government is to blame for a rash of ill-thought-out technology projects and related legislation in recent years.

Lord Patten of Barnes was especially critical of the government’s ID card scheme, which is heavily reliant on technology. Speaking at the RSA Conference Europe on Wednesday, Patten said the scheme would not achieve one of its possible objectives of making borders more secure.

[..]

“Politicians have no sound grasp of technology issues — but politicians don’t necessarily have a profound grasp of any issue. They rely on advisors for information on how to implement their broad intentions,” Patten told ZDNet UK after the press conference. “You have to hope they’re well advised.”

Aw, come on, Chris! I know that America’s Fearless Leader has been using the google on the internets for years. I hear he looks up maps. And Republican Congressmen seem to be able to use instant messenger quite well.