Reminds me of an excellent interview with Arthur Miller I’ve read recently. He says Bush stole the election by accusing Gore to have stolen the election. Gore had the largest popular vote win since FDR.
The November 2000 election gave all of us here in Europe a nice opportunity to laugh; many indeed enjoyed it.
A draft for the report submitted to the European Parliament can be found at the following link in all of the EU’s eleven official languages: http://www.europarl.eu.int/tempcom/echelon/prechelon_en.htm
This text also includes investigation on in how far European companies suffered damage through Echelon, especially in the Saudi-Arabian Airlines case.
(I am not sure whether this is the draft finally adopted by the Parliament, but I suppose it is.)
Thank you for the link.
I think may people misunderstood or misintrepreted the information in this report. While it is true that Echelon could be used for industrial espionage, that was never the system’s intent.
The CIA formerly denies using echelon for industrial espionage.
Of course the word of the CIA is automatically cast into grave doubt by many. Yet for European nations to accuse the US of such actions without solid evidence while themselves are pursuing similar actions is, how did you put it earlier? Cleaning the wrong doorstep?
Echelon was used however, as part of a criminal investigation into the use of bribes by Airbus in the Saudi Arabian contract. Losses decribed by Airbus in this case should be taken with a grain of salt as Airbus was in fact involved in criminal activity.
That’s very curious. NATO is a joint partnership. The US is equally able to remove itself, as is any European partner.
I disagree. The United States is one of a handful of nations which has refused to sign a treaty abolishing the death penalty, the balance being Sudan, Libya, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Israel, China and one or two others (which do not spring to mind). That’s not exactly fine company. Any country which chooses to execute its own citizens can be classed as a rogue state, in terms of capital punishment.
The Chinese judicial system is not “secretive” - it is ordinarily quite open. It unfortunately is often composed of judges who are not professional lawyers, but are retired military officers or professional judges. Politics does play a big part in Chinese judicial decisions, but the Chinese judical system is capable of handing down fair and rational decisions.
Because of the unimportance of human rights and individualism to Chinese culture, the Chinese judicial system is not geared towards providing the extensive due process that the US system provides its prisoners.
I’m not being an apologist for the problems with the Chinese judicial system, but I think your statement over- simplified things for the sake of drawing a bigger distinction than what actually exists.
No one requires the US to be perfect - but before the US pursues with missionary zeal the role of human rights advocate, it should get its own house in order first.
Dave,
I miss your point entirely. My point was that European governments want US involvement.
Though I do find it odd that other nations decry the US for being too zealous, missionary and meddlesome in its dealings with other nations, but none of these nations take a moment of hesitation to clamber up upon the pedestal of righteousness and condemn the internal affairs of the US.
The reason Gore won the majority or the popular vote was because he won in places like Los Angelos, Chicago, New York City. Those huge cities were all he got and that was all he needed to win the popular vote. If you look at a map of the election by counties (or by states), you will see that Gore won only in counties around Los Angelos, Chicago, New York City. Bush won the rest.
Not a cite, just some bizzare reasoning. A ‘majority’ of the voters elected Mr Gore. Mr Bush became the President, therefore a majority believes that Mr Bush stole the election.
Does this matter? It’s the population that counts, not the area. Of course, if you counted the square miles on which Bush won, OK, he’d be rightful prez. But that’s not the way democracy goes.
The US uses the electoral college so that high popularity regions don’t dominate the entire election. Under the rules of the election, Bush did indeed win. If we don’t like the way the electoral works, we can change it. But it’s unfair to accuse Bush of not being rightfully in office simply because we don’t like the way the rules worked out.
If we were an evil empire, we would have selected our leader in a bloody coupe.
You’re right. IIRC, the USA is a Democratic Republic. And “the majority think Bush stole the election” is quite the hyperbole, don’t you think?
Sorry, should have quoted Schnitte directly.
>> It’s the population that counts, not the area. Of course, if you counted the square miles on which Bush won, OK, he’d be rightful prez. But that’s not the way democracy goes.
Schnitte, the constitution of the US says what counts, not what you think. You might want to visit this thread where this issue is discussed and where I point out that in the European Union votes are not directly proportional to population nor in the UN. I do not know much about Germany but I am guessing that, as a federal republic, votes in some institutions will not be proportional to population.
>> A ‘majority’ of the voters elected Mr Gore. Mr Bush became the President, therefore a majority believes that Mr Bush stole the election.
Sorry lawoot, it does not follow unless it is also true a majority of the people think following the laws and the constitution is “stealing”. It is nicely explained in the thread I just mentioned. In any case, your assertion is a non sequitur. One does not follow the other.
I’d never dare criticize the Electoral College 
Read L Faster’s post again: It tries to argue that Gore did not even win the popular vote because he only won the big cities. Now the word “popular vote” implies the population counts, nothing else, so Gore DID win the popular vote, as opposed to what L Faster writes. The fact that the popular vote does not count in the result is not at all connected to the question whether Gore won the popular vote or not. He did. Whether this makes him President or not is a question on its own.
(The word “rightful” in my post does contain my personal opinion about Bush’s victory, but that’s not the main thing I wanted to get over.)
you said “It’s the population that counts, not the area” and I am telling you that is not the case. The Constitution is the law of the land and says what counts and how. The population counts but so does the distribution of that population.
Schnitte – Just wanted to say that regardless of whether I agree with you or not, you argue well and have excellent English grammar. Good going!
I really wish i’d been in on this debate from the beginning, as it’s been a good one. I’ve been through all the posts and there have been some really smart and some pretty inane comments, but i don’t have time to go back over the whole thing so i’ll restrict myself to the more recent posts about voting, population, electoral college etc. that started with L Faster and his/her comments about Gore only winning in a few big cities.
True enough, but both before and after every US election there is considerable discussion over the relative proportions in the electoral college vote and the popular vote. The fact that the popular vote doesn’t decide the president does not mean that it isn’t a relevant topic for debate or for determining whether in fact the majority of American support the person in the White House.
Sailor is also correct in pointing out that directly proportional representation is not only absent in the US, but most other places too. The difference is that in many other countries there is at least an attempt to ensure that representaton is roughly equal between areas of similar population. For example, in Australia each electorate has roughly 80,000 people, so while it is entirely possible for a party to win government with a minorty of the popular vote (although far less likely than in the US Presidential election) at least each regional victory represents roughly the same amount of people.
Compare this to the electoral college system which, as i’m sure you’re all aware, allocates votes to each state based on the number of Representatives and the number of Senators. It’s the Senators that create the problem, as each state is allocated Representatives based on population, but every state has two Senators no matter how big or small. Here are a few examples of how this works out when Presidential election time comes around (follow closely, as this can get confusing):
There are seven states with 3 electoral college votes each. They are Alaska, Wyoming, Montana, N. Dakota, S. Dakota, Delaware, and Vermont (call this Group A). The total population of these seven states (1998) is 4.6 million. So here we have 4.6m people controlling 21 electoral college votes. Ohio also has 21 electoral college votes and a population of 11.2m, so each voter in those small state has about 2.4x the power of an Ohio voter come election time.
Continuing on, the next 6 states have 4 electoral college votes each(Idaho, Nevada, Maine, Mew Hampshire, Rhode I., and Hawaii - Group B) and a total population of 7.6m. Add these to the states with 3 votes (Group A) and you have a total of 45 electoral college votes controlled by 12.2m people. Now the states of New York and Indiana betwen them also control 45 votes, but have a combined population of 24m; 45 votes and 24m also applies to a combination of Pennsylvania and Illinois. So people in the 13 smallest states have about twice the voting power as citizens of NY, IN, PA, or IL.
If we take the states with 5 votes (Utah, Nebraska, Mew Mexico, and West Virginia - Group C) and add their votes and their populations to Groups A and B, we get a total of 65 votes and 19.5 million people. California and Wisconsin combined also control 65 votes, as do a combination of Texas, Florida and Connecticut, but each of these combinations has a total population of about 38m people.
I’m not debating the legality of this arrangement - it is exactly what is provided for in the constitution (see Article I, Sections 2 and 3; Article II, Section 1). I’m just pointing out the way that it partially disenfranchises large sections of the population come election time. I’m also somewhat intrigued by the arguments of the ‘strict constructionist’ constitutionalists who are quite willing to point out American progress and adaptability in so many areas but are unwilling to conceive of their own Constitution as a living document that needs to be interpreted and, yes, even adapted to changing needs. I truly believe that the framers of this document would laugh (or maybe cry) if the saw the unwillingness to adapt manifested by so many narrow-minded legislators, jurists, and citizens.
And on the subject of stealing the election, if people read some of the links provided by helpful posters earlier, they would see that the issue of a stolen election should not be based on:
a) whether Gore won the popular vote - we have already established that becoming President without winning the popular vote is perfectly legal.
b) whether Gore or Bush would have won a full hand recount in Florida.
The issue rests on the way in which the Supreme Court overstretched its authority, as outlined convincingly by Vincent Bugliosi in this article. It also has to do with the mob tactics of Republican supporters in preventing court-sanctioned recounts in Florida. And it is also related to the outrageous (and illegal) disenfranchisement of minority (especially black) voters in Florida and many other parts of the country. And no, i’m not talking about ex-felons, but ordinary citizens denied the right to vote in scenes reminiscent of the late nineteenth century. The NAACP has some useful information on this issue here, here, here, here, and here.
I understand that Americans hold on to their constitution very firmly due to tradition, much more than Germans do - the German Basic Law has been amended more than 40 times since its ratification in 1949. Maybe this belief in the constitution, which appears uncommonly strong to us, even makes Americans accept an election result that was unanimously reported to be unacceptable in the German media, which entirely judged it as completely obsolete. What we heard about it, it was drafted as a necessary but not optimal solution in a time when a central nationwide election was not feasible while being hopelessly outdated today. The German media did in fact call very vehemently for a change in the election rules, and they were altogether very much pro Gore.
Maybe the reason for that difference in the understanding of the political system lies in the fact that the American state is much older than ours is, I don’t know.
And London_Calling: Thank you very much for that compliment!
I did not say that Gore did not win the popular vote. I said that “he won the majority or the popular vote” (I meant “the majority of the popular vote.”
Many people have been arguing that Gore should have one - he won the popular vote, but it doesn’t matter who wins the popular vote (some have said this too). What matters is who wins the electorial college. This was set up so a Presidential Candidate could not go to the major cities and campaign there; they could not give tax relief or some other benefit to those who voted for them. If the electorial college was not in use, then that is what a candidate could do in order to win the Presidency. All it takes is roughly Los Angelos, Chicago, New York City, and possibly Philadelphia, to win the popular vote. In that case, the whole rest of the United States does not matter.
Trust the Election process. It was thought up by the most brilliant men of our country - our founding fathers. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams - they knew what they were doing. They knew how to make things work. It was only until the Democrats became involved in the government that things were fouled up. Remember that these guys were not the ones who brought on Income Tax or Social Security. You know who passed those into laws? That’s right - the Democrats. Woodrow Wilson created the Federal Income Tax and put it through Congress, making it an Amendment in 1913, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt put Social Security and heavier taxes through Congress in 1935. That is just the kind of idiocy the Democrats, today, are pursuing by attempting to get rid of the electoral college.
Our founding fathers did not create the electoral college for nothing.
So, you argue that if the electoral college were abandoned, New York, Chicago, LA and Philly would rule and the rest of the country would be forgotten. Given the fact that i’ve already demonstrated that each inhabitant of these cities and their states has about half the voting power in Presidential election that each inhabitant of the small states has (see above), who exactly is being forgotten under the current system?
Also, it’s interesting the way it’s only Democrats who are being blamed for wanting the electoral (not electorial, by the way) college scrapped. Before last year’s election there was a very real fear among some Republicans that Gore in fact would win the Presidency and Bush would win the popular vote.
For example, on November 3 last year, just before the election, this appeared as part of a Boston Herald article (p.5) on the potential for such a scenario:
On the same day the San Diego Union-Tribune said (pp. B9, B11):
And, in an absolutely beautiful example of what i’m talking about, the November 2 Denver Post, forecasting a Gore vistory, was horrified, and said (p. B1):
So it seems that where you stand on the electoral college is largely defined, for many people, by whether or not it gets your guy into the White House. Well, i was against it before the election, i’m against it now, and even if pigs were to fly and my candidate, Ralph Nader were to become president on the strength of the electoral college, i would still be against it as an outdated and unfair system.
(All citations for this post were found doing a Lexis/Nexis search using the search terms election electoral college gore bush popular. I can’t provide links because my access to L/N is restricted to people with a Johns Hopkins University internet account. But you can do the search yourself if you have access, or you can go to the library and look up the papers. By the way, the quotes i have put here are only the tip of the iceberg - do the search and you’ll find heaps more)
Gore put his interest above the country’s in his pursuit of the Presidency. His excuse was even more feeble than the usual, “They all do it.”
His excuse was, “Bush would have done it, according to an anonymous source.”
Pathetic.