Friday, June 6, 2003

Iraq, Voter Fraud & The Boyz In The House QUOTE  OF THE DAY "Courage is not, in itself, a moral virtue. Vicious scoundrels, murderers, terrorists may be brave. To describe courage as a virtue, we need an adjective: we speak of "moral courage" because there is such a thing as amoral courage, too." - - Susan Sontag MAY 29 IN HISTORY: 1916 -- Founding of National Women's Party. In 1923 the National Women's Party pushes an Equal Rights Amendment in Congress. But many women's groups, especially those tied to the labor movement, oppose the effort. The amendment sparks a dispute that rages among feminists even in the 1990s. Some say the sexes are very similar &, therefore, women deserve equal treatment. Others oppose it because, they say, women are superior in many ways. By the 1960s, the party's membership shrinks to just a few hundred -- mostly veterans of the suffrage movement who have endured jail terms & force-feedings during hunger strikes. A new generation of feminists label them "little old ladies in tennis shoes." RHINO HERE: The Pentagon is trying to mop up the Wolfowitz mess from yesterday saying his comments were mistranslated by the Germans and therefore erroneously quoted by the Guardian. Having passed on that translation as my Quote Of The Day,  I guess I should  print a retraction. Okay, Wolfowitz didn't actually say the war on Iraq was about Oil (I wondered if he was that stupid anyway).  You'll remember the quote was: "Let's look at it simply. The most important difference between North Korea and Iraq is that economically, we just had no choice in Iraq. The country swims on a sea of oil." What he actually said as per the Pentagon's correction is: "Look, the primarily difference -- to put it a little too simply -- between North Korea and Iraq is that we had virtually no economic options with Iraq because the country floats on a sea of oil. In the case of North Korea, the country is teetering on the edge of economic collapse and that, I believe, is a major point of leverage, whereas the military picture with North Korea is very different from that with Iraq. The problems in both cases have some similarities but the solutions have got to be tailored to the circumstances, which are very different." And from that we deduce that the Bush family's appetite for crude (oil that is) had nothing to do with the decision to go to war.   Those damn Europeans screwing things up again! Speaking of war on Iraq, the infamous Baghdad Blogger, Salam Pax has finally been identified. Iraq's Internet mystery man steps into the light One of the greatest mysteries of the war in Iraq has been solved. Salam Pax.  He's real. The hip and irreverent Iraqi, whose poignant online tirades skewered Saddam Hussein and George Bush in equal measure, riveted thousands of Internet users before and during the war. His Web diary, or "blog" - a daily missive perched on the knife's edge between anxiety and hope - was an overnight sensation. But in his thousands of words depicting daily life in Baghdad, Salam Pax - the second word is "peace" in Arabic and Latin - never revealed his real name or enough personal details to prove that he was more than the perpetrator of an elaborate hoax. It turns out that the 29-year-old gay architect - who became the digital voice of Iraqis torn between the grimness of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship and fear of U.S. bombs - worked as a translator for freelance journalist and author Peter Maass. Maass verified Salam's existence in a column posted Tuesday on Slate, the online magazine. Source: Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-sci-salampax4jun04.story Here are 2 stories following up on the voter fraud issue & suggested action of yesterday: Rush Holt (D-NJ) Introduces Legislation to Require All Voting Machines to Produce a Voter-Verified Paper Trail "Rep. Rush Holt [last week] responded to the growing chorus of concern from election reform specialists and computer security experts about the integrity of future elections by introducing reform legislation, The Voter Confidence and Increased Accessibility Act of 2003. The measure would require all voting machines to produce an actual paper record by 2004 that voters can view to check the accuracy of their votes and that election officials can use to verify votes in the event of a computer malfunction, hacking, or other irregularity. Experts often refer to this paper record as a 'voter-verified paper trail. ''We cannot afford nor can we permit another major assault on the integrity of the American electoral process,' said Rep. Rush Holt." Tell your Congressperson to support this crucial legislation! House switchboard: (202)224-3121. http://holt.house.gov/issues2.cfm?id=5996 Two Courageous Children Spoke at San Diego Hearings on Election Voting Systems "My name is Alex and I am 14 years old.  I represent Democrats.com, the largest online community of Democrats, with 70,000 members. In one hour my dad wrote a vote-rigging program for a demonstration before the Democratic Central Committee of Orange County last week.  This program contained security, testing and voter verification of the participant's votes so as to appear to be accurate and trustworthy.  However when the votes were counted, all the participating members had voted for legalized child slave labor and for Osama Bin Laden for Governor.  At least the computer said they did.  Without a voter verifiable paper audit trail, no one could prove otherwise.  The code contained less than 300 lines. There is no need for 200,000 lines of code unless a software company is planning to hide lines of rigging and this intent to rig should be assumed unless the code is short and the public can fully inspect the source code." http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AQuestionOfValues/message/72 RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE concerns the bill that The Boyz In The House  passed this week banning abortion procedures which are meant to protect the life of the mother. Dennis Kucinich, the presidential candidate whose weak spot, some people say, is his relatively recent change of heart on the abortion issue, spoke out loud and clear against the bill as detailed in the press release below. Another press release issued by NARAL quotes Pro-Choice America President Kate Michelman  stating:  "Bush will be the first [Chief Executive] in the nation's history to criminalize safe abortion procedures. American women will not tolerate this threat to their health and their rights. 'Anti-choice leaders should be very careful for what they wish for because when this bill is signed into law, the sleeping giant that is pro-choice America will awaken" http://www.naral.com/mediaresources/press/2003/pr060403_bans.html 6:53:48 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - KUCINICH STANDS UP FOR CHOICE, PRIVACY AND EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE KUCINICH STANDS UP FOR CHOICE, PRIVACY AND EQUAL RIGHTS FOR WOMEN On Wednesday, Congressman Dennis J. Kucinich took to the House floor to strongly oppose a ban on so-called "partial-birth abortions": "Let's all be clear -- the bill before us is unconstitutional because it does not contain an exemption for the health of the woman who seeks to exercise her reproductive rights. There is no doubt about that. This is because the US Supreme Court has already ruled on very similar legislation in Stenberg v. Carhart. Opponents of the right to reproductive choice should know that. "This bill likely will not prevent a single abortion. But it does defeat the rights of women. ..I believe that equal protection under the law and the right to privacy should be freedoms enjoyed by women as well as men. But women will not be equal to men if this constitutionally protected right is denied. This bill infringes on those rights for women, and that is why I will oppose it. "Throughout my career, I have tried to work to reduce the need for abortions by preventing unwanted pregnancies through comprehensive sex education, birth control, and increased access to health care. I think that all of my colleagues would agree that we should work to prevent unwanted pregnancies that lead to abortions. I will continue those efforts, but the bill that is before us today is the wrong way to do that. "Advocates of this bill who say they stand in defense of life would be more believable if they worked to support families, with adequate child care funding, child tax credit relief for vulnerable families, and peace. For some, this debate is only about politics. The fact that other abortion legislation, the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, has been advanced on the publicity of the Laci Peterson tragedy shows the unfortunate politicization of this debate. "I do know, however, that many are sincere in their desire to reduce the need for abortions. In leading the nation toward this goal, we must preserve Constitutional rights. We must respect the freedom and equality of women. The best path for our country is not to escalate the divisiveness and political nature of this debate. Rather, it is to remember the principles of this nation and refrain from undermining the freedom of choice. We must respect the basic human dignity of women to make personal decisions." "RHINO'S BLOG" is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. (rhino@kifaru.com) Feedback, and requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. SEARCH BLOG ARCHIVES / SURF RHINO'S LINKS, AT: http://www.rhinosblog.info RHINO'S OTHER WEB SITES: http://www.dreamcatchers.org (INDIGENOUS ASSISTANCE & INTERCULTURAL DIALOG) http://www.kifaru.com (NATIVE AMERICAN RELATIONS VIDEO DOCUMENTARIES) Articles are reprinted under Fair Use Doctrine of international copyright law. http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html All copyrights belong to original publisher. 6:17:29 AM    comment

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