May 11, 2004
American Beheaded - Video Surfaced
The video, titled "Abu Musab al-Zarqawi shown slaughtering an American", shows five men in ski masks and headscarves standing behind a bound man wearing an orange jumpsuit.
- video here.
Conspiracy theory: Nick Berg might have been killed before the decapitation shown in the video [link].
Please note: If it isn't obvious enough, let me tell you: I do NOT support the act portrayed by the video.
April 27, 2004
Don't Trust Online Voting
Don't ever give in to online voting. It should be banned until our current internet infrastructure is upgraded significantly.
Evidence:
Here a website that supports direct online voting with a live system for you to poke around with.
http://directdemocraticgov.us/
No-one Else Did It, So We Did It. . . . Its not all that complex.
Well, it's kinda funny how the site exposes its database login and password so plainly:
http://directdemocraticgov.us/globals.inc
$connection = "localhost";
$dbLogin = "dirdemus";
$dbPass = "justicex";
$db = "dirdemus_Master";
It's almost like the guy made it to make online voting look bad. Horrible!
Look at this guy's image collections:
http://directdemocraticgov.us/images/
Don't mingle politics with religion, that's for sure.
April 26, 2004
LATimes Covers eSlate's Ass by Stripping It Away From Article's Title and Content
LATimes published an article on how the electronic voting machine, eSlate, selected by the Orange Country Registrar of Voters, glitched in the March 2nd election.
Voters cast votes prematurely, were given the wrong ballots electronically or were unable to use machines that froze or showed error messages.
It seems like LATimes has modified that article with all mentioning of the eSlate system stripped away.
cache of news.google.com (click to verify me):
OC Still Favors eSlate Voting
Los Angeles Times (subscription), CA - Apr 15, 2004
... Orange County used a system developed by Hart Intercivic of Texas that allowed voters to cast ballots on an eSlate machine, on which they spun a wheel to make ...
modified version on latimes.com (free reg. req.):
Secretary of State Gets Voting Plea
Orange County, which had glitches with electronic balloting in March, wants to keep the system. Many such counties will soon be told whether they can.
Some sort of censoring I suppose...
Is this a common practice?
Update:
Apparently similar incident was published in a book (titled Black Box Voting) too, just that my discovery was more recent:
To this end, it is interesting that Hart Intercivic, which helped organize this meeting, was one of the first beneficiaries of such a strategy. Let's take a moment to see "Deliverable #5" in action. Ellen Thiesen, a voting activist, noticed that a news story damaging to Hart Intercivic somehow got a midday rewrite.
Go to the source here.
April 25, 2004
April 16, 2004
Japanese Hostages Released
Nahoko Takato, Noriaki Imai, and Soichiro Koriyama was released by their captors, as promised earlier.
"Right now I'm tired and I have had a lot of shocks, but I will not hate the Iraqi people," she said.
-via BBC News
I'm quite puzzled. How come she explicitly say she will not hate the Iraqi people? The article didn't say anything about it. I would like to know, but too lazy to go find it.
April 10, 2004
Iraqi group says they will release hostages within 24 hours.
UPDATE: Iraqi group says they will release the 3 Japanese hostages within 24 hours.
"They will release them in 24 hours in response to a call from the Muslim Clerics Association," Al Jazeera said, referring to a body of Iraqi religious scholars.Source: Router.
3 Japanese Captives Will Be Burnt Alive If Japan Don't Withdraw Troops
Iraqi Insurgents held 3 Japanese civilians as captives and declared that they be burnt alive if Japan don't withdraw their troops from Iraq by THIS SUNDAY (that's TOMORROW!!!).
Source: CNN.
March 24, 2004
Taiwan SAR?
"The Basic Law [of China] stipulates that the Hong Kong SAR [Special Administrative Region] is a local administrative region under the central government. Its high degree of autonomy stems from the authorization of the central government. Under this principle, the chief executive and major officials of the Hong Kong SAR should be appointed by the central government. Any revision on the method for electing the chief executive and legislative council must be approved by the central government, the article said."
If, one day, Taiwan and China decides to unify, with China being the ruling body and Taiwan being a SAR (Special Administrative Region), how can China's appointment of chief executive and major officials ever be fair to the people of Taiwan?
In this situation, unlike the US government, people who wish to be elected will appeal to central government rather than to the people of Taiwan. If so, how would public interest be answered? This downward distribution of power seems faulty.
Updated: According to Tommy Lau
Yes Hong Kong cannot directly elect its Chief Executive, but under British rule it was the same so its not any worse right now. There are partial elections for legislators and the basic law also aims for universal sufferage (yes there are many debates as to when this will take place in HK right now).That's interesting...
March 20, 2004
Razor Thin Vote Count Difference of 0.2%
Wow
"The Central Election Commission declared that President Chen had 29,518 more votes than Lien Chan, the leader of the National Party, out of 13.25 million ballots cast..."
29518 / 13250000 = 0.002227... !!?!
Supporters of opposition candidate Lien Chan "stormed into a courthouse in central Taichung early Sunday to protest against his wafer-thin defeat in a presidential election. ... They are demanding recount and had given the court a deadline of 3:10 a.m. (1910 GMT) to respond to their grievances or they would storm the building, broadcaster ETTV reported."
Taiwanese President Chen Shui-bian RE-ELECTED!
Wild celebrations greeted Mr Chen's dramatic victory
The victor and running mate Annette Lu
March 19, 2004
Taiwan President & VP SHOT Today (1 Day Before Taiwanese Presidential Election)!
Not dead. Read on.
"President Chen Shui-bian and Vice President Annette Hsiu-lien Lu were shot today at approximately 1:45 p.m. while campaigning in Tainan City. At a Presidential Office press conference, Secretary-General to the President Chiou I-jen said that the president was wounded in the belly and that the vice president was hit in the right knee. The injuries are not life-threatening, and both candidates are fully conscious. They were taken to Tainan's Cimei Hospital for treatment."
Source: Immediate press release from the Office of the President of the Republic of China
So far, no suspects have been identified. However, according to press, two different bullet shells were found at the scene. So potentially, this act was comitted by two or more people.
According to AM 1600 (a local Chinese radio station in LA), speculations of the motive behind this act have been divided into the following 6 categories:
- Act of opposing party
Obvious? - Act of China
China considers Chen a radical and opposes his believe in Taiwan independence. - Act of United States
Bush Administration want Taiwan to maintain status quo. Chen's recent proposal of popular referendum troubles the Bush Administration. - Act of party holding interest in Chen's winning
These non-fatal injury might gain more vote in this close election. Thus, giving interest to people who support the direction he's pushing Taiwan towards. - Act of Japan [This has to be confirmed, I didn't hear very well at that moment]
Japan's power in Asia is influenced by the Taiwan's status. I suppose, if Taiwan "reunifies" with China, ... well, just think of it like monopolies and anti-trust laws... - Act of Chen himself
Some people suspect this is all but an act to gain votes, since today is the day before the Taiwanese presidential election. Of the people who believe in this case, they questioned why the President and Vice president was taken to a smaller hospital at further location than the biggest closes one to the scene. In addition, people question why, if the motive was to kill him, would shoot him at the stomach as oppose to the upper part of the body. In addition, rumor has it that in the morning before the act was comitted, the hospital was notified in advance that "something big is going to happen today." Furthermore, a caller to AM 1600 pointed out that it's odd to not have strip President Chen naked for the wound inspection. (I have to add, they are both conscious, they probably know exactly where they were shot. So there's no need for such extra step.)
I may have presented more information on the 6th point, but that's because it was mentioned on the radio to clear up the rumors. It was also mentioned that the use of communication (text messaging, television, internet, and phone) will be a all-time high in the next two days.
Do not quote me on this. I'm may be completely wrong. Please go google research it yourself.
Once again, do not quote me!
February 25, 2004
Constitution Gurantees Freedom of Speech
 Defend the Sanctity of the Constitution. |
It's ironic how the person who created this meme censored my comments to his blog entry for calling it a meme.