In Japan it is now illegal for candidates to create new websites or update existing web pages between now and election day, 29 July.
Instead there are, of all things, vans with speakers on top with the candidates sitting in them, wearing white gloves, and waving to potential voters.
There is a limit on how many leaflets or posters a candidate may distribute… We could use that one in this country.
And there are the same TV discussion shows that have been on for the last 30 or so years.

A student, Kentaro Shimano says:
“I believe that internet resources are not very official.”.
“YouTube is more casual; you watch music videos or funny videos on it, but if the government or any politicians are on the web it doesn’t feel right.”

Another student says:
“Japanese politics is something really serious.”
“Young people shouldn’t be involved, I guess because they’re not serious enough or they don’t have the education.”

Too many people.. in too small an area.. for too many years.
These people have created a rigidly structured society.. they fear anything that might upset the status quo.

A woman, who says her name is Sara Williams and comes from Burkina Faso, was stranded in the airport in San Pedro Sula, Honduras after being robbed of her travel documents.
She has been living in the airport for over a month.
The problem is that no one can find any record of her arrival, not a single airline shows her as ever having been a passenger.
In spite of knowing her country of origin, they can’t deport her…. because she hasn’t got her papers in order.

This is not as unusual as it sounds. Periodically the authorities find someone who has become stranded and has set up housekeeping.
The most famous of these was Merhan Karimi Nasseri, who was a refugee from the Shah’s Iran, who’s briefcase was stolen along with his papers showing his refugee status.
Nasseri boarded a plane for London anyway, but when officials at Heathrow Airport found he had no passport, they sent him back to Charles de Gaulle. At first, the French police arrested him for illegal entry. But as Nasseri had no documents, there was no country of origin to which he could be deported.
In 1992, a French court ruled that Nasseri had entered the airport legally as a refugee and could not be expelled from it.
But the French bureaucracy would not let him out into the rest of the country.
This lunacy became a movie starring Tom Hanks.

The moral of this story boys and girls is:
If you ever become homeless, buy a plane ticket to someplace with lots of bureaucrats, lose your papers, and change your name slightly so they can’t trace you.
Those ever so nice pencil pushers, will then arrange for you to live in a wonderful air conditioned building, where.. if you ask nicely.. people will give you money, so that you might eat at the coffee shop every day, eliminating the need to cook, or do dishes, ever again.

An advertisement on the US government’s Federal Business Opportunities website is inviting applications for someone to develop an “original comic book series”.
“In order to achieve long-term peace and stability in the Middle East, the youth need to be reached,” the ad says.

This will be produced by the Madison Avenue ad men of the United States military… The army’s 4th Psychological Operations Group.
This group have recently been deployed during conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan dropping leaflets and cartoons urging surrender.

I am intimately familiar with their… Work?
I find that they provide little else but toilet paper to places that can’t buy Charmin.

A spokesman at Fort Bragg told BBC News website that the initiative for the comic-book project came from the US Department of Defense’s Central Command.
According to the advertisement, the successful applicant will ideally need to have experience of law enforcement and “small unit military operations” - along with a knowledge of Arab language and cultures.
The aim is to involve the ministries of interior of some of Middle East countries.
Ah, yes.. The perfect qualifications for a future Stan Lee… the inclusion of some pet bureaucrats and petty politics rounds out the project nicely.

Only Psy-ops in combination with those geniuses in Central Command… could possibly… under any circumstances.. think that this is a viable idea.

A guess as to the theme of the premiere issue:
The US Military lands in large numbers.. liberating the country without a single civilian casualty.. the entire population then rushes out into the street, throwing flowers, and volunteering to join the good fight.. for truth.. justice.. and the American way.
What other theme could they use?…… It worked so well in real life.

I leave you with a line from the movie Air America:
Rob, I wish you wouldn’t use the words American Intelligence to describe what it is you do.

In Canada, a woman by the name of Melanie Boivin has arranged to have her eggs frozen so her daughter, who will probably be infertile, might have children.
The daughter, Flavie Boivin, cannot have children naturally because of a chromosomal condition called Turner syndrome.
Turner Syndrome:
A genetic condition that causes impaired growth and learning difficulties, destroys eggs, leading to an unusually early menopause.

If the daughter should decide to use the eggs will the child be Melanie Boivin’s child or grandchild and will it be Flavie’s child or sibling.
Assuming for the moment that the source of the sperm isn’t Flavie’s father she would be giving birth to her own half brother/sister.

Since this is a genetic condition, does it follow the male or female line?
Since the daughter already has it, won’t the use of her mother’s eggs increase the likelihood that her child may have it?

There exists in psychiatry a condition referred to as genealogical bewilderment, and any child born of this combination would definitely be the poster child.

I won a wager of sorts, no money changed hands, as it was merely my contention that, at this point in time, politics would generate more comments than religion.
Ron Paul is the sort of candidate that elicits a strong emotional response, so when, by his own admission, his camp started a spam campaign I could not avoid commenting.

I did not intend an attack, but honest criticism.
While I may agree with a great deal of his message, the method of delivery and the presentation will not gain many converts.

One comment stated that the web was the new media, and I wholeheartedly agree, but every form of media has it’s rules.
Spam has become the bane of webmasters and IT administrators everywhere. It will gain him no friends, in fact, most will get automatically discarded with the porn and cialis spam.

This site, which has a handful of posts, receives more spam everyday than the total number of posts that have been made.
Other small sites I am familiar with, receive, literally hundreds of comment spams every day, and had someone not chosen this particular site to attack, the only way I would ever have found Ron Paul’s spam is to go through all of the other, electronic junk mail, rather than let the filters automatically delete it after a set amount of time.
With this in mind, think what the sites that receive thousands of comments a day are going to do.
It takes time and manpower to sort through the spam in order to find anything that might be mislabeled. Why would they care about off-topic, political spam?

I cannot tell you how to run this grassroots campaign in this new media, but I can tell you some things not to do.
Do not make enemies of the webmasters, to a great degree they control this media.
Do not spam. It is seen by most webmasters as just another attack.
Do not deliver a tirade in lieu of an articulate, carefully thought out position statement.
Do not appear to be less well educated than your potential constituents. People want a President that is more knowledgeable than themselves. (W is the exception to that rule)

I find it most difficult to believe that Ron Paul thinks for a moment that he will win this election.
Regardless of the enthusiasm or heartfelt conviction of his camp, new media or not, the next election will still be won in the mainstream press.
Even those who get their news online are most likely to read it in the New York Times or the Miami Herald Tribune.

This movement, assuming for the moment that it doesn’t burn out, is a beginning, not a revolution.
Change is rarely radical, for most of us it will always be more gradual adaptation, than epiphany.

Final advice:
Post on topic comments to political blogs. Make single point comments with simple, feasible solutions.
Offer to write for these same blogs, applying the same rule.
Start your own blog, applying this same rule.
If you can find nothing to say except that the powers that be are taking our rights, and that Dick Chaney is the Emperor, and W is Darth Vader.
You will find very few people willing to take your message seriously, as most of them do not react well when you mess with their complacency.