Monday, October 18, 2004

Hearts & Minds FEATURED ARTICLES - Block the Vote, By Paul Krugman, NY Times - Why I Will Vote for John Kerry for President, By John Eisenhower - Data Miner Free From U.S. Law, Washington Post QUOTE OF THE DAY "We have to put our hearts and minds together and vote this administration out. No "ifs" "ands" or "buts" about that. We can do it. We have to coalesce and not get into any spitting matches between ourselves, put our agendas aside and get somebody else in there. I think we can all agree that another four years of this administration is unthinkable. The opportunity is there. The administration is vulnerable in many, many areas." - - Chief Oren Lyons (at the 2003 Bioneers Conference) Faithkeeper of the Haudenosaunee (People of the Long House), aka "Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy" http://fraktali.849pm.com/text/lyons/oren4.html KNOW YOUR HISTORY - October 18th 1972 -- The U.S. Congress passes the Clean Water Act over Dick M Nixon's veto. 2001 -- Two new cases of anthrax reported in New Jersey. The FBI & Postal Service announce a 1 million dollar reward for info leading to the arrest of the anthrax mailings. Rhino guesses it's still uncollected. RHINO HERE: As we approach the all important Presidential election, The Rhino introduces a new feature to his blog. In tribute to the clearer thinking Republicans who've concluded that George Dubya is not a real Republican & in fact has directed the country's policies 180 degrees away from many traditional Republican values, each Rhino's Blog 'till the election will feature an essay written by a prominent Republican. Today's featured Republican is John Eisenhower, the son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, and a life long Republican, until now. This one is a perfect choice to send to Republican friends & relatives. Today's RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE looks at government-business revolving door as it regards your privacy. Remember the John Poindexter helmed nightmare known as Total Information Awareness (TIA), the database designed to keep all the info about your life that Poindexter & his cronies could gather, everything from who you speak to on the phone, to what you buy, what you read, what you watch on TV & of course what web sites you visit. After much protest by thousands of Americans whose memory still served them enough to remember how morally & ethically challenged Mr. Poindexter & his ilk were back in the Reagan Administration, the Congress supposedly pulled the funding for TIA. But there's a cousin system to TIA, designed to assist authorities in catching suspected terrorists before they board commercial aircraft. It's called "Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening Program", or CAPPS. That program has also run into stalls by concerned citizens & legislators, so an entrepreneurial ex government employee is now taking that system private. It's called "Secure Flight" and if you dislike the Patriot Act, you're really gone hate this one. But first, Rhino believes the coming U.S. Presidential election is so important to the future of life not just in the U.S., but throughout the world, & anyone paying attention these daze knows that many people currently calling themselves Republicans are not only willing, but actually in full gear to cheat to win any way they can muster, that I hereby amplify an important Paul Krugman update & summary of the types of election fraud to look for come November 2. I'll offer later in the week, resources for reacting to election day fraud. Block the Vote By Paul Krugman, NY Times, October 15, 2004 Earlier this week former employees of Sproul & Associates (operating under the name Voters Outreach of America), a firm hired by the Republican National Committee to register voters, told a Nevada TV station that their supervisors systematically tore up Democratic registrations. The accusations are backed by physical evidence and appear credible. Officials have begun a criminal investigation into reports of similar actions by Sproul in Oregon. Republicans claim, of course, that they did nothing wrong - and that besides, Democrats do it, too. But there haven't been any comparably credible accusations against Democratic voter-registration organizations. And there is a pattern of Republican efforts to disenfranchise Democrats, by any means possible. Some of these, like the actions reported in Nevada, involve dirty tricks. For example, in 2002 the Republican Party in New Hampshire hired an Idaho company to paralyze Democratic get-out-the-vote efforts by jamming the party's phone banks. But many efforts involve the abuse of power. For example... MORE AT: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/15/opinion/15krugman.html?oref=login&th "SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!" RHINO'S FEATURED REPUBLICAN Why I Will Vote for John Kerry for President By John Eisenhower, The Manchester Union Leader, October 11, 2004 The Presidential election to be held this coming Nov. 2 will be one of extraordinary importance to the future of our nation. The outcome will determine whether this country will continue on the same path it has followed for the last 3¸ years or whether it will return to a set of core domestic and foreign policy values that have been at the heart of what has made this country great. Now more than ever, we voters will have to make cool judgments, unencumbered by habits of the past. Experts tell us that we tend to vote as our parents did or as we always have. We remained loyal to party labels. We cannot afford that luxury in the election of 2004. There are times when we must break with the past, and I believe this is one of them. As son of a Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, it is automatically expected by many that I am a Republican. For 50 years, through the election of 2000, I was. With the current administration's decision to invade Iraq unilaterally, however, I changed my voter registration to independent, and barring some utterly unforeseen development, I intend to vote for the Democratic Presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry... MORE: Vote for Kerry 9:21:11 AM    comment

RHINO'S BOTTOM LINE - Data Miner Free From U.S. Law "SEND THIS ARTICLE TO A REPUBLICAN!" Data Miner Free From U.S. Law By Robert O'Harrow Jr., Washington Post, Oct 16, 2004 It began as one of the Bush administration's most ambitious homeland security efforts, a passenger screening program designed to use commercial records, terrorist watch lists and computer software to assess millions of travelers and target those who might pose a threat. The system has cost almost $100 million. But it has not been turned on because it sparked protests from lawmakers and civil liberties advocates, who said it intruded too deeply into the lives of ordinary Americans. The Bush administration put off testing until after the election. Now the choreographer of that program, a former intelligence official named Ben H. Bell III, is taking his ideas to a private company offshore, where he and his colleagues plan to use some of the same concepts, technology and contractors to assess people for risk, outside the reach of U.S. regulators, according to documents and interviews. Bell's new employer, the Bahamas-based Global Information Group Ltd., intends to amass large databases of international records and analyze them in the coming years for corporations, government agencies and other information services. One of the first customers is information giant LexisNexis Group, one of the main contractors on the government system that was known until recently as the second generation of the Computer Assisted Passenger Pre-screening Program, or CAPPS II. The program is now known as Secure Flight... ...Legal and privacy specialists said the company raises troubling new questions about the ability of computers -- in both the government and private sectors -- to collect and analyze personal information for homeland security. These critics said Global's initiative echoes the aims of the troubled government passenger-screening system, as well as another controversial program at the Defense Department that was shut down by Congress called Total Information Awareness. An important difference from those programs, these critics said, is that Global operates in private hands, offshore and beyond the oversight that stymied the government programs. "As a business matter, there are layers of legal protections and public relations protections they can get by going offshore," Peter P. Swire, a law professor at Ohio State University and privacy counselor in the Clinton administration. "It might meet business interests, but not necessarily the public interest."... READ THE REST: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&;cid04&e=1&u=/washpost/a36853_2004oct15 Rhino's Blog is the responsibility of Gary Rhine. Feedback & requests to be added or deleted from the list are encouraged. (rhino@kifaru.com) Search the Rhino's Blog Archives, The Daily Rhino Photo, and lots of 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. Tell a friend about Rhino's Blog 8:27:16 AM    comment

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