Olbermann rips into Bush on occasion of his pardon of Lewis Libby, puts him well below Nixon, calls him a peril to democracy and ask him to resign. I’m surprised Olbermann hasn’t had a terrible shower accident yet.
The video is cut off a few words before it ends. Transcript can be found here.
Keith Olbermann points out how much of a hypocritical, uninformed gasbag Bill O’Reilly is. Not that you didn’t know.
I was reading the news today about Costa Rican congresswoman Evita Arguedas, who was elected for the increasingly more inappropriately-named Movimiento Libertario. It seems she’s been ostracized by party leadership because she voted against what they thought. Now, I’m no fan of Evita, but I still think the whole business is hilarious. Luis Barrantes, a congressman from Alajuela, went as far as accusing her of:
She stood apart, made a decision different from the rest of us.
Cue green tea coming out of my nose.
Here’s the full news bit for those who read Spanish.
PS: At least Otto Guevara seems to have stopped using the word libertarian altogether and now just refers to their politics as liberal.
A delightful podcast with John Allison, chairman of BB&T, about why self-interest is good and how it can help you run a better company. From the EconTalk description:
John Allison, CEO of BB&T Bank, lays out his business philosophy arguing for the virtues of profits, self-interest and production. His definition of justice, one of the core values of his firm, is that those who produce more, get more. He argues that Bill Gates would do more for the world improving Microsoft than running his foundation and giving away money. Allison praises Atlas Shrugged and refuses to let his bank make loans to companies that use eminent domain to acquire property. Is this any way to run a company? Does Allison really run his company this way? How does he deal with the gap between his philosophy and our popular culture’s view of business and profits? Listen as Allison and host Russ Roberts discuss BB&T’s unusual business strategy.
Overall the EconTalk podcasts are both entertaining and enlightening, but so far this one is my favorite.
PS: This is the one I mentioned, Jorge.
Linden Research runs Second Life, a virtual world that I’ve mentioned before. They’re currently enmeshed in a legal situation because they denied access to a person, who then filed a lawsuit because they unlawfully confiscated his virtual property. The situation has been complicated for Linden Research by something that reads like they had an excessive Terms of Service agreement, but one thing caught my eye: according to the judge reviewing the case, Second Life has an unfair hold over the client because
[...] there were no reasonable available market alternatives to Second Life. Of all the virtual worlds out there, only Second Life granted its users property rights in virtual land.
So nevermind that Second Life is a private business that should be able to deny service to whomever they want, it turns out now that since they’re doing something before anybody else, and they’re doing it in an unique fashion, they somehow owe people the right to access their site.
Grrrr.
Hugo Chávez has effectively closed down RCTV, a TV station that had been critical of him, by denying to renew their license. BoingBoing has a link to the last broadcast they made, where TV station personnel appeared with their mouths taped shut. As people protested the closing on the station, National Guard troops fired tear gas and rubber bullets at protesters.
As in other tyrannies, democracy is used as the excuse – Chávez claims to be democratizing the airwaves by turning the network’s signal over to public use. Public use meaning in this case people that will literally sing his praises.
Not only this clearly showcases the great dangers with state-issued permits (if they don’t like what someone is doing, they need just yank their license to legally do it), but is a textbook case of a government becoming more and more despotic. Like Jorge mentioned in one of our recent conversations, the one of the first things they do is silence the press.
Seems that people in Venezuela still cared about what the opposition had to say, and that made them dangerous.
I was just listening to a Bush press conference and while answering a question about China and the trade deficit, I could swear he listed among other fixes that could help to change their economy from one of savers to one of consumers. With a straight face.
“This guy is saying something is true, and they’re treating him like a crazy person”.
Christopher Hitchens opinions on Jerry Falwell. He is articulate, so his rabid approach on the interview will probably do more to discredit atheism than any speech Falwell could have made.
The Guardian reports that Russia is accused of unleashing a cyberwar against Estonia, with the intention of disabling financial, media and government sites.
While Russia and Estonia are embroiled in their worst dispute since the collapse of the Soviet Union, a row that erupted at the end of last month over the Estonians’ removal of the Bronze Soldier Soviet war memorial in central Tallinn, the country has been subjected to a barrage of cyber warfare, disabling the websites of government ministries, political parties, newspapers, banks, and companies.
[...]
If it were established that Russia is behind the attacks, it would be the first known case of one state targeting another by cyber-warfare.
While Putin’s government practices have been under scrutiny, a Slashdot post comparing it to the aftermath of the Hainan Island Incident might be more along the right tracks.
what happened for a few tense weeks was a lot of nationalistic chest thumping by chinese and american hackers: chinese hackers defacing poorly patched american servers, everything from small businesses to government systems, and american hackers defacing chinese servers: schools and government (i remember this well as i had a box that was hacked: my home page was replaced with a chinese flag and a “fuck usa”, heh)
the point is, it’s probably not official, it’s probably by an independent group of weakly organized russian hackers upset due to nationalistic pride
Even if this is not the first documented case of cyber-warfare, I’m sure that will not be far behind. In past wars planes have dropped leaflets attempting to dissuade the enemy to fight, and even when not officially at war radio stations have been targeted at countries such as Cuba. On this day, where most things depend on internet access, disabling a countries’ digital institutions and using their own websites for propaganda sounds like just an evolution of past practices.
Found via Slashdot.