links for 2009-05-26

• NUKES: Rumsfeld was on ABB board during deal with North Korea, Clinton Administration helped too
  Yup. While we're busy attacking countries that had little or nothing to do with 911, we've been helping North Korea to have nukes. Both the Clinton Administration Democrats, and the Bush Administration cronies.

  BOTH PARTIES and the people in them == FAIL.

  (tags: politics NorthKorea nuclearProliferation nukes DonaldRumsfeld BushAdministration ClintonAdministration ABB corporations SwissInfo news articles WolframEberhardt plausibleDeniability BNFL)
• COPYRIGHT: Canada's Conference Board Found Plagiarizing Copyright Report
  Yup. Thousands of dollars were spent by the Canadien government to come up with a report on copyright — so they simply plagiarized U.S. copyright lobby group documents.
  Talk about a FAIL!
  (tags: politics copyright Canada US copyrightLobby irony YourTaxDollarsAtWork FAIL Slashdot news articles)
• DEMOCRATS: Senate Votes to Block Release of torture Photos for 5 Years, strip funds to close Guanatanmo – only 3 votes against
  Obama's all about change, right? But he's still part of a political party: A group that says "conform to our group, or don't be part of it". Both political parties have been big failures when it comes to freedom and transparency.

  You really thought if you voted for the lesser of 2 evils, that our government would suddenly become good? Stop deluding yourself.

  This is the Democrats doing. You can't blame this on Bush, or the Republicans. Those of you who won the 2008 election are the ones responsible this time.

  And don't say "A republican sponsored this", because in a filibuster-proof Democratic-controlled Senate, the Democrats are ultimately responsible for what goes through. There were only 3 votes against this in the entire senate. Funds to close Guanatanmo were stripped to.

  (tags: politics Democrats senate censorship media pictures AbuseOfAuthority torture prisoners mistreatment GuantanamoBay Afghanistan Iraq FreedomOfPress 1stAmendment FirstAmendment government wra transprancy change? hope? ObamaAdministration)
• ISRAEL: Israel Sends Soldiers to Try to Shut Down Literature Festival
  Nice freedom over there, huh? And people wonder why Palestinians are pissed? Imagine 60 yrs of this shit, with 40 yrs of it including illegal borders not recognized by international law (including America).
  (tags: politics Israel Palestine Palestinians Jews Arabs FreedomOfSpeech FreedomOfPress speech press liteature festivals literatureFestivals AbuseOfAuthority fascism)
• RELIGION: Protestant Soccer mob beats Catholic man to death in front of his wife in N. Ireland
  Mixing *two* groups of people who are generally fucking idiots: Religious people, and alcoholic sports fans.

  Christian on Christian violence? This is as stupid as Sunni Vs. Shia.

  Where are all the atheists beating people for their religious beliefs? Huh? I thought being religious guided people into doing good? You sure that's working? After 2,000 yrs of wars thanks to Christ, and 1400 yrs of violence thanks to Mohamed? Or how about all those dead Africans thanks to The Pope and Catholics saying "don't use condoms"?

  Yeah. Sure. Keep telling yourself religion guides people to do good. The implication seems to be that without religion, people would do all kinds of terrible things. But we have religion, and they still do, so I don't think it's working.

  (tags: politics religion Christians Christianity Catholisc Catholocism Protestants Ireland sports soccer beatings murders deaths violence Dublin GlasgowRangers KevinMcDaid DamienFleming arrests Presbyterians UlsterDefenceAssocation)
• WAR ON DRUGS: Cocaine Test Prompts Red Bull Removal In Germany
  How ridiculous. And here is the perfect comment, from slashdot:

  "Pure cocaine sells for, let's say, $30,000 per kg. To get a kilogram of cocaine from RedBull would take 2.5 billion liters, or roughly 7 billion 12 oz cans. A 24-case of Red Bull seems to cost about $34.80, or $1.45 per can. In other words, to get 1 kg of cocaine from Red Bull would cost $10 billion, not to mention the enormous expense of purification. And all this would only be worth $30,000. It would cost 340,000 times more for the Red Bull than the cocaine would be worth."
  ^^^ http://news.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1244773&cid=28088619

  I couldn't have said it so well had I tried. But I didn't try, because I'm not drinkin' Red Bull.

  (tags: politics WarOnDrugs drinks RedBull drugs cocaine Germany overreactions)
• TECHNOLOGY: The Singularity: The Sum of All Fears
  My half-uncle talks about how stupid it is to deny the Singularity.
  I have been eagerly awaiting the singularity for quite some time.

  In 30 seconds, while I'm asleep, I often download more than the entire
  size of my harddrive 20 years ago. And I have 273,084 times the storage
  space that I had 20 years ago as well. I also connect to the world at
  1,310 times the speed I did 100 yrs ago (multiply that by 8X for the 300bps
  Commodore 64 BBSes I called, but I was at 2400bps).

  The tide is hard to ignore.

  (tags: technology science singularity TheSingularity RayKurzweil progress SeanProphet blog articless)
• ABUSE OF AUTHORITY: L.A. police union pressuring newspaper to fire journalists
  This is one of many reasons why a newspaper bailout is a bad bad idea. Government-funded media means government-influenced media. Mainstream media is already really terrible about posting any kind of anti-establishment news; imagine how it would be if it were funded by the very government it's supposed to be reporting on?
  (tags: politics AbuseOfAuthority police Influence newspapers journalists pressure firings CarlosMiller news articles California PlatinumEquity pensions LosAngeles firefighters LosAngelesTimes SanDiego mayors JerrySanders)