Recently in politics Category

BBC NEWS | Americas | Rare stamp 'used on US post vote'

A rare stamp worth as much as $200,000 may be on an envelope sealed in a ballot box after the US mid-term elections, poll officials say.

The original stamps bear a picture of a Curtiss JN-4 plane, known as a Jenny, which was used for training pilots in World War I and later became an airmail plane.

I can only imagine that any and all philatelists (stamp collectors) in Florida are rushing to their collections to see if their stamp is missing. Well, if they had one in the first place:

Four "Inverted Jenny" stamps sold for almost $3m last year

SSRN-Fuck by Christopher Fairman

This Article is as simple and provocative as its title suggests: it explores the legal implications of the word fuck.

I haven't had time to read it yet, but it looks like it will be quite interesting.

The Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act (COPE) Act is supposed to be a good thing. Turns out that it's been hacked quite a bit by various people (aka special interest groups) to allow them to disregard the network neutrality agreements. What is network neutrality? Check out the wikipedia link (new window) for more info.

Basically, the way things are worded now, if the bill becomes a law, then your ISP will be able to "tax" websites for access to their customers. If, say, Google doesn't pay the fee, then an ISP could slow customer access to the website, or block it entirely. They could even, theoretically, make it so that when you go to Google, you end up at their own search engine. And blogs that are critical of the ISP? Oh darn, you no longer have access to that site - it's now on the black list.

It would also allow companies to do whatever they wanted on their own networks - in the mid-90's, Cox Cable blocked the common ports used for VPN access - "forcing the state of Washington, for example, to contract with telecommunications providers to be sure its employees had access to unimpeded broadband for telecommuting applications." (Wikipedia).

If you enjoy the internet the way it is now - where you can access a wide variety of information in a timely manner (based on the level of your internet access, of course), then you need to take action.

You can:
Contact your Congressperson (via the House website, or MoveOn.org)

Sign the Save the Internet Petition

Spread the word.

Daily Kos: The President Speaks, Americans Demand Answers

It would seem that while Bush is talking about how the nations intelligence activities are being targeted at "al-Qaida and their affiliates", the new nominee for CIA Director is saying that "we cemented a deal with another corporate giant to jointly develop a system to mine data that helps us learn about our targets" - aka everyone in the country.

Add to that the fact that the NSA Knows Who You've Called and you have a nice comfy feeling in the gut of Joe American, who hasn't done anything wrong but has Big Brother breathing down his neck....