Clippings for September 17

Click on titles to read complete articles.

Palin: The Opposite of Progress
Cynthia Boaz writes for Truthout: "Is it possible that voters have, once again, been duped by the Rovian rhetoric machine? Are we really as gullible as the GOP seems to think? Apparently so."

Gas Underlies the Bolivian Crisis (English translation)
Laurent Tourneux writes for the French paper Liberation: "Between the energy interests of some and others' opposition to the 'Yankee' enemy, Bolivia enjoys the 'unanimous' support of Latin American countries." For original French click here.

Is the U.S. Losing Its Edge in Tech
Arik Hesseldahl writes in Business Week that the United States still has the world's most competitive information technology industry, but its lead is slipping, according to a new study conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit for the Business Software Alliance.

Will the Media Show Real Spine?
Edward Wasserman writes for the Miami Hearld that since the nominating conventions, we've entered a period of casual smears that have only the remotest bearing on the problems the electorate faces. And the news media, instead of acting as proxies for the public, have become enablers of a discourse that seems destined to grow evermore destructive.

Evaluating the Security of Electronic Voting Systems: Are Your Votes Really Counted?
The the Security Group of Univ. Calif. at Santa Barbara made a movie that shows how the virus-like attack would be carried out, and exemplifies the different scenarios that our malicious firmware would exploit.

The video shows how one can use a simple USB key to infect the laptop used to prepare the cards that initialize the various voting devices. As a result, the cards are loaded with a malicious software component.

Later, when the terminal is used by the voters to cast their votes, the firmware uses a number of different techniques to modify the contents of the ballots being cast.

The movie also shows that the physical security measures being used to limit access to essential parts of the voting systems are ineffective.

Part 1.



Part 2


The Corporate Control of Water Takes an Unexpected Twist
Jon Keesecker writes for Alternet: "During an otherwise unexceptional State of the City address in February 2008, Mayor Donald Plusquellic put before the residents of Akron, Ohio, a proposal to sell the city's sewer system. The still-nascent plan, news even to some in the mayor's administration, involved handing over the city's system to a private company in return to for a roughly $200 million fee."