SAN FRANCISCO, March 21 (Reuters) - Some California voters and activist groups sued the state's top election official on Tuesday in an effort to reverse the certification of certain electronic voting machines made by Diebold Inc. (DBD.N: Quote, Profile, Research).

The suit, filed in Superior Court in San Francisco, is the latest salvo in an ongoing dispute about the security of Diebold electronic voting machines, focused on Diebold's TSX touch-screen system.

¶ Wednesday, March 22, 2006 0 Comments

USA-Dollar-Iran / Confirmation of Global Systemic Crisis end of March 2006
Nine indicators prove that the crisis is unfolding

Nine indicators enable LEAP/E2020 to confirm the beginning of a global systemic crisis by the end of March 2006. These indicators are described in this month’s GlobalEurope Anticipation Bulletin- coordinated by Franck Biancheri – and 5 of them are presented in this public communication. Recent international trends affecting the international financial system in particular, as well as preoccupying trends in the US, namely as concerns the reliability of statistics on the US economy[1], have brought our research team to conclude that this global systemic crisis is already unfolding.

¶ Tuesday, March 21, 2006 0 Comments

U.S. Initiates Legal Processes Against Christian Group that Marched to Guantánamo

Seven individuals from Witness Against Torture, a group protesting the denial of rights to prisoners at the U.S. Naval Base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were served papers by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last week. The group of twenty-four U.S. Christians marched over 60 miles to the Naval Base in an attempt to practice the Christian act of prisoner visitation. The group camped and fasted for four days at the gate of the militarized zone while awaiting access to the base. [..]
As the U.S. prohibits travel to Cuba, Witness Against Torture members risk a maxiumum of 10 years in prison or a $250,00 fine for their actions to bring attention to U.S. practices in Guantánamo.
On the Blagblagblag

In Amsterdam yesterday there was a manifestation against censorship and the rising number of political prisoners in the Cuba outside Guantánamo. The manifestation remembered 75 writers, journalists and unionists, imprisoned 3 years ago. Amnesty International in the meantime mentions torture in Cuban prisons.

Ahh, well, it's all just Rice'nBeans!

¶ Sunday, March 19, 2006 0 Comments

-- Berlusconi is the most dangerous political phenomenon in Europe. He represents the most serious threat to democracy in western Europe since 1945. It might be argued that the far right as represented by such openly racist and xenophobic figures as Jean-Marie Le Pen and Jörg Haider poses a more serious danger, but such figures remain relative outsiders in the European political scene. Berlusconi does not. During his two spells as prime minister there has been a very serious erosion of the quality of Italian democracy and the tone of public life.

Democracy depends upon the separation of political, economic, cultural and judicial power. Berlusconi's ownership of the major television channels - and his control of the state-owned network, Rai, during his premiership - together with his willingness to use this media power for his own naked political ambitions, has undermined democracy. Further, he has changed the laws of the land at will - using his majority in parliament - to protect his personal interests and save himself from the courts.

¶ Saturday, March 18, 2006 0 Comments

Don't be silenced by extremists
A plea from 11 Canadian Muslim academics and activists:
Feb. 28, 2006. 10:37 AM 

-- For too long the media have created an image that portrays  
communities from the Muslim world as a monolith entity, best 
represented by extremists.

The media have created a false dichotomy that pits these Muslim 
extremists against the West. The fact is that in all Muslim 
countries, progressive citizens are trying to break loose from the 
tyranny of the autocrats and clerics and wish to develop a civil 
society where citizenship is based not on inherited race or religion, 
but the equality of all, irrespective of faith, race, sexuality or 
gender.

In Tehran today, the city's bus drivers are on strike. Thousands have 
been arrested; entire families have disappeared. Yet, this has not 
made a blip in the western media.

If the same bus drivers were burning books or embassies, this would 
certainly be on the evening news. This is an appalling example that 
only outrageous, violent expressions of faith by Muslim extremists 
are taken as the aspirations of people from Islamic societies. -- 

-- at Nettime --

¶ Saturday, March 11, 2006 0 Comments

Nettime - from Franco Berardi Bifo, Marco Jacquemet and Giancarlo Vitali, 
authors of the book TELESTREET: A Non-Regulated Imaginative Machine 

In June 2002, in Bologna (Italy), OrfeoTV was born and in the following months 
in various Italian cities street televisions were disseminated, giving life to 
the Telestreet network. 

On March 8, 2006, in the city of Padua, where the book was printed for its Italian 
edition, the authors must appear before a judge in order to respond to the 
accusation of defamation leveled by Federico Confalonieri.
As the head of Mediaset, feeling himself defamed by the book and thinking the 
interests of his business gravely wounded (interests that, in the stock market, 
will have supposedly suffered moral and material damage as a
result of the book), Confalonieri asked that the authors of said book be prosecuted 
both criminally and civilly.

The owners of Mediaset and the government, who for years have accused their 
adversaries of using the legal system against them, now turn to the same system 
to ask it to prosecute the freedom of expression. Those who for decades have daily 
gathered together millions of people in front of their uninterrupted emission of 
brain-clogging electronic signals, bring to the courts the authors of a book that 
speaks only of non-regulated imagination. [..]

¶ Thursday, March 02, 2006 2 Comments