This US Army War College article points out that the Arab world does not have a monopoly on Islam, and offers much more reasonable suggestions for US engagement with the Muslim world than you'll find on the typical warblog.
"While I was recently in Indonesia, Miss Spears got far more air-time than Osama did, which made me wonder whether Mr. bin Laden doesn’t have a point concerning the cultural brutality of the West. Now, hard-headed politicos may dismiss the Cult of Britney (and of bare-midriff blondes in general, for whom one cannot help feeling a certain admiration), but a society in which the girls and women have been watching Christina Aguilera’s displays of life-affirming exuberance on video is unlikely ever to sign up for the whole fundamentalist package. Indeed, when confronted with the word “fundamentalist,” the young women of Indonesia tend to concentrate on the first three letters."
Thanks to non-partisan federal funding, the Hare Krishnas and Food Not Bombs will be able to buy as much food for their free meals as their volunteers can manage to prepare. Maybe we'll replace fast food chains in urban areas with Hindu-style free prasadam lunches someday ...
"They also gave me a wedding dress before a cleric asked me if I wanted to convert to Islam and that was scary. All I can say is that some man in Afghanistan has had a pretty lucky escape!"
"Well, if I was to leave my husband now, I would be unable to support my daughters even with child support and alimony. There would be no other choice for me than to apply for public assistance. Your tax dollars would end up going to me anyway."
This impressive blogroll of Israeli links lists some rather surprising candidates under
"Organizations that are actively fighting against the existence of Israel and the survival of the Jewish people."
Military options, pros and cons of attack, anti-war sites, government, diplomatic, NGO links, military policy, breaking news, military targets, Iraq weather.
"Zinni said an Iraqi war would be expensive and would draw down the armed forces' manpower, which is already "stretched too tight all over the world." Worst of all, Zinni said, a war against Iraq would antagonize America's friends in the Middle East. "We need to quit making enemies that we don't need to make enemies out of," he said."
"Whether the CIA can rebuild co-operation on security between Arafat's people and Israel remains highly questionable – not least because Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon seems determined to destroy what is left of the Palestinian security force the CIA helped build because he considers it part of the "terrorist infrastructure".
In the meantime, the agency finds itself caught between its mandate for intelligence-gathering, analysis and covert operations and its unusual role as peacemaker and arbiter between the Israelis and the Palestinians."
Chechen tactics inspire new unity - As the rebels' confidence grows and the Russian soldiers lose control, Rob Parsons in Chechnya wonders who President Putin will listen to now.
White House statement sides with Georgia - AP
"We call again urgently for a political settlement to the conflict in Chechnya, which would contribute to stability in both Russia and Georgia, and advance our efforts to fight terrorism and establish peace in the Caucasus," Fleischer said."
"But Russia's attempts to quash Chechnya's bids for independence have been a catastrophe for Chechnya.
Tens of thousands of Chechen civilians have died, and there have been reports of widespread torture, brutality and imprisonment.
Many have spoken of a slow, creeping genocide to describe Russia's policy in Chechnya."
"But the central reason that the agency cannot get a handle on the Middle East is its myopic internal security screening, a process that winnows out the most talented candidates or humiliates them so profoundly they no longer want anything to do with the intelligence community.
Common sense suggests that the most coveted employees in an intelligence service would be those who speak languages such as Arabic, Farsi, Dari and Urdu; those who have lived for many years in the countries where those languages are spoken; and those who therefore have a rich and profound knowledge of the target countries’ culture. But it is precisely these employees who cannot pass the agency’s security gauntlet."
Comments on the retired general who was restrained from using his unconventional techniques that sink most of the Blue (US) fleet.
'Van Riper’s single-mindedness can sometimes rub other experiment participants the wrong way, said a retired Army officer who has played in several war games with the Marine.
“What he’s done is he’s made himself an expert in playing Red, and he’s real obnoxious about it,” the retired officer said. “He will insist on being able to play Red as freely as possible and as imaginatively and creatively within the bounds of the framework of the game and the technology horizons and all that as possible.
He can be a real pain in the ass, but that’s good. But a lot of people don’t like to sign up for that sort of agitation. But he’s a great guy, and he’s a great patriot and he’s doing all those things for the right reasons.”
"The groups are concerned the Bush administration may be trampling the rights of innocent Americans under the aegis of conducting the war on terrorism. The request asks for government data in 14 categories of agency records, including "sneak and peak" searches of private residences without prior consent, searches of public library and bookstore records and authorizations for wiretaps of phone calls and electronic mail."
For those not familiar with "sneak and peak" searches, Section 213 of the newly enacted Patriot Act allows the police to enter and search a home without telling anyone they have done so, seriously undermining the Fourth Amendment and one’s ability to mount a fourth amendment challenge to the search or any other kind of defense. - Talk Left
For the first time in human history, most children are born into homes where most of the stories do not come from the parents, schools, churches, communities, and in many places even from their native countries, but from a handful of conglomerates who have something to sell.
Saadeddin Ibrahim, a sociology professor at the American University of Cairo, worked for democratic change in Egypt, supporting voter education and registration campaigns as well as the monitoring of the fairness of national elections.
"But when we're alone, or when I'm talking to her on the phone as I do most weekends, it's usually okay to realize that we are currently somewhere in the 1950s. After all, my not being around during the 1950s in no way impedes Grandmother's ability to involve me in them."
"Interestingly, Mr. Ritter noted that though his rule is no doubt despotic, Saddam Hussein has been harsher toward Islamic fundamentalism than any other Arab regime. He added that any U.S. invasion to remove Saddam from power would likely open the door to an anti-American fundamentalist Islamic regime in Iraq. That can hardly be viewed in a positive light here in the United States. Is a policy that replaces a bad regime with a worse regime the wisest course to follow?"
"There's no invisible hand in foreign affairs. There are no equilibrating mechanisms or feedback loops in the Hobbesian chaos of state-to-state relations that give us any assurance that, if the United States were only to stand aside, things would go as well for us in the world as they possibly could."
STATE COLLEGE, August 20, 2002 (ENS) - A Penn State engineering graduate class has found solutions to many of the barriers preventing development of a hybrid fuel cell automobile using hydrogen fuel cells and battery storage.
Update: "The secretive federal court that approves spying on terror suspects in the United States has refused to give the Justice Department broad new powers, saying the government had misused the law and misled the court dozens of times, according to an extraordinary legal ruling released yesterday.
"It's the need for rapid formation of people across coalitions and geos, consuming sensor data, taking action, and then disbanding to fight yet another fight with someone else ..."
A very readable historical essay on how to devise a military strategy for the US, with links to the Bush speech to West Point grads, 4th generation warfare, etc.
A. No.
Being prepared for what it takes to confront Saddam Hussein's WMD options is called "being responsible."
Being prepared involves making it crystal clear to all involved that the US is ready to move very quickly if the situation deteriorates: hence the rhetoric and logistical groundwork.
Prevailing long term doesn't necessarily mean war has to happen immediately.
While people such as Eric and myself would be well within mainstream political discourse in Israel (I support Meretz, Israel's fourth-largest party with 10 seats in the 120 member Knesset), here in America we regularly are referred to as "anti-semites" and "Nazis". After sending a letter to the Boston Jewish Advocate about personal attacks on dissenters, I was even referred to as an "international jihad savage". All this, and I'm still a Zionist ..." - Judah Ariel
(Hit control-F to search for more on McKinney on this page). Max Speaks notes "there is no lack of material linking Republicans to the same potentially possibly supposedly maybe dangerous Arabs."
"A Portlander who is vice president and general manager of the U.S. arm of General Arabian Medical & Allied Services rails against criticism of Saudi Arabia." - Inappropriate Response
The Death Convoy of Afghanistan
"Witness reports and the probing of a mass grave point to war crimes. Does the United States have any responsibility for the atrocities of its allies? A NEWSWEEK investigation"
"Here are a few basic facts and ideas that I think should be thought of in any kind of discussion about the Israeli – Palestinian conflict ..." - Israeli Guy
An international politics blog, originally focused on France. Considerably calmer than you might guess from the title, with detailed commentary on European affairs.
Counterblogging in the warblogger tradition. Cites and links all your favorite warbloggers, with a Muslim perspective on Islam and politics.
"Brian, out of some masochistic impulse, has signed up for a mailing list called Ar-Rahman (The Beneficient). As far as I can tell (from his reports), it's populated by teens whose Cool Identity Thing is Islam instead of skateboarding or the Confederate Flag or any other similar substitute for their self-esteem. One of these young earnest types posted his Revelation of the Week: ..."
The politics and philosophy of planetary self-improvement. Addresses topics like the environment, democracy, WMD with brief, literate comments and links. From South Africa.
"The US military drafted plans to terrorize American cities to provoke war with Cuba."
As a wargames exercise for counterterrorism purposes, perhaps, but as a serious proposal rejected by the civillian leadership? From the book, Body of Secrets.
"Controversially, Prof Foster says the killer is likely to be highly patriotic individual who wanted to demonstrate that the US was badly prepared for an act of biological terrorism."
Three or four one-hour presentations for educators that "Use the treatment of citizens of Japanese and German ancestry during World War II--looking specifically at media portrayals of these groups and internment camps--as historical examples of ethnic conflict during times of trial; explore the problems inherent in assigning blame to populations or nations of people."
Rough calculations suggest that some 13m Americans — 7 percent of the adult population and nearly 12 percent of the men have been found guilty of a serious crime.
MR. KRAUTHAMMER: "If we win the war, we are in control of Iraq, it is the single largest source of oil in the world, it's got huge reserves, which have been suppressed because of Iraq's actions, and Saddam's. We will have a bonanza, a financial one, at the other end, if the war is successful."
If the wargamers role-playing the "bad guys" are discouraged from using unconventional warfighting techniques that work, how much are these war games worth?
Military action against Iraq is already in progress. What constitutes irresponsible escalation, and what are the bottom line objectives that replacement of Saddam Hussein's government was supposed to achieve anyway?
We at Clothespins for the Revolution are looking for a few good bloggers who can make a commitment to scouring the web for anti-consumerist, anti-exploitation information ... If you would like to join us in our effort to create an online collective united against consumer culture, please send us a note.
Clothespins for the Revolution is a collaborative webzine that features works of writing and art that focus on simplicity and mindfulness. Our name is derived from the concept of a simple object that effectively does the work of a more complex, more wasteful machine. We seek to publish works that have been underexposed ..."
"We have everything in terms of fast food, Taco Bell, Church's, White Castle," said Redmond as she drove along row after row of franchises. "But you can't get a fresh tomato, at least not one you would want to eat."
Complaints about poor-quality food and being gouged at midsize groceries and convenience stores resounds here and across the nation in inner-city communities that have watched major grocery chains leave for more affluent areas.
Jim Donovan of Rusted Root is on to something with music, trance and hypnosis-- his drumming session for beginners lasted 3 hours, and I thought I'd been sitting there for only 20 minutes.
Some right bloggers like to build up straw men.
Then they brag that they have knocked 'em down.
Daring lefts to parry,
They'll say, "No, man."
"Your reasoning is flawed and you're a clown."
Later on, they'll conspire,
Plannin' posts packed with ire.
They face unafraid
The rantin', the raves.
Surfin' in a weblog wonderland.
USS Clueless has finally found a word for what bugs him ... The International Transnational Progressivist Movement.
Max Speaks responds with twoposts:
"SDB is a smart guy who undoubtedly knows a lot about what he gets paid to do. His ignorance in this case applies to his topic – the Left. There’s enough wrong in the first post to require a monograph of criticism ...
We are hateful, dangerous, seditious, authoritarian, and elitist. And best of all, we are not “us.” We’re some other dudes, some kind of alien body in the real America, like all those Al Queda sleeper cells.
I could think of no better rationale for an authoritarian state enforcing an unregulated, amoral capitalism."
Judge skewers US curbs on detainee
"Line by line, a federal judge today dissected the government's reasoning for holding Yaser Esam Hamdi incommunicado in a Navy brig here and indicated that he didn't think prosecutors provided enough facts for him to decide whether Hamdi should have access to a lawyer."
"In Washington yesterday, officials confirmed that U.S. intelligence agencies detected signs that Iraq may be moving material or equipment out of a suspected biological-weapons facility near Baghdad. Some intelligence analysts believe this indicates Saddam wants to disperse the items before American strikes, the officials said."
"Clandestine radio is a field encompassing journalism, diplomacy, and war. Created to disseminate propaganda, clandestine radio has played a major role in every conflict around the world. ClandestineRadio.com keeps the pulse on these fascinating radio stations and the groups who sponsor them."
Dayton, Ohio blogger Kim Denmark has vowed to walk around the nation seeking support for those who have fallen victim to what she calls the nation's "failed" welfare system.
"The United Nations has launched a global review on disaster reduction initiatives, calling for a world in which natural disasters do not shake economies."
"Living With Risk is a 400-page study of the lessons learned by experts and communities in response to hazards presented by natural forces (volcanoes, fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, landslides and tornadoes), technological accidents and environmental degradation."
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) - Women in miniskirts gyrate in all-night discotheques, where designer drugs circulate as freely as alcohol. Friday, the Islamic sabbath, is a regular work day. Pork is widely available in restaurants and supermarkets.
"In an interview last week, Hatch quoted U-2 rock star Bono as telling him after reading some of his lyrics, "These are beautiful, but the brothers will never sing them because of who you are."
I could learn to love being hated, resented and verbally abused too ... but I rather prefer some of the self-defense techniques out of the excellent book, "The Verbally Abusive Relationship."
"We were always looking to catch the big rats" in terror financing, he said. "But in looking for rats, thousands of ants got by."
Assassination squads under consideration - "The US government is considering plans to send elite military units on missions to assassinate al-Qaida leaders in countries around the world, without necessarily informing the governments involved, it was reported yesterday."
C-Net makes the very sensible case that the most certain way for geeks to prevail is by making an end run around the politicians with a freshly coded, new technological fait accompli.
"In the Guardian, Brian Whitaker questions the ever useful MEMRI bascially because it's run by Israelis who don't translate enough Pro-Arab pieces. In response, I wrote the following letter ..."
An information site for furthering eGovernment collaboration and the sharing of news, ideas and initiatives involving Middle-Eastern and Gulf countries
dangerousmeta's experience: "building with tires has some problems, principally off-gassing [we hear a lot about this, having a colony of earthships up around taos]. tires are vulcanized with sulfur and nitrogen compounds, that continue to off-gas for years. some people are highly allergic, and some seem to become sensitized over time. if you have enough space, i've had the theory that stacking and stuccoing old freon-emptied refrigerators might work, given a roof support framework ... certainly they'd have a great r- coefficient ... though some people prefer to use them for smokehouses."
"Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Those Who Threaten It."
This blog doesn't display well on my small monitor. However, I spot a few phrases suggesting that the plan is to go after the US in the International Criminal Court for denying others the "right to food" ...
"I'm reading the comments attached to the /. poll on Living off the Grid. There's some good stuff in there.The thread revolving around one person's (incorrect) calculations is very interesting. The corrections are very informative. Also good are the threads on hydroelectric, wind, nuclear, ac-dc hacking, solar howtos etc. It's also just fun reading about people's setups. Related: Wireless Internet In An Off-Grid House, Renewable Entergy Policy Project, Home Power: The Hands-on Jounal of Home-made Power, Maine Solar House
"The inmates - 50 men and 50 women serving time for drug offenses at a prison in provincial Thailand - participated in a program in which they practiced meditation at 4:30 a.m., ate vegetarian meals and listened to tapes of chanting. "We found that it changed the behavior of the prisoners, it made them aware of right and wrong," said Surang Ekkachote of Thailand's Office of Correctional Inspectors."
"High Power Microwave (HPM) devices are designed to destroy electronic equipment in command, control, communications and computer targets and are available to the US military. They produce an electromagnetic field of such intensity that their effect can be far more devastating than a lighting strike."
"This invention is absolutely amazing. After 30 million bucks in R&D Elwood Norris has cooked up a gizmo with the ability to literally beam soundwaves through the air so that only the intended target can hear them." - via Fulton Chain Design
"If you are a bartender or a waiter or waitress and work in an establishment where there is smoking, in an eight-hour day it's the equivalent of you smoking half a pack of cigarettes yourself."
"The State Department has asked a federal court to dismiss a human rights lawsuit by Indonesian villagers against Exxon Mobil ... Villagers allege that Indonesian soldiers protecting an Exxon plant in the province of Aceh tortured and murdered civilians. Exxon denies being involved in wrongdoing."
"Romanian witches are threatening to cast spells to prevent their country's entry into NATO or the European Union unless a government ban on the promotion of sorcery is lifted."
"A Taiwanese MP enlisted the services of a Taoist priest to break a spell which caused him to have an extra-marital affair."
- The Pagan Prattle
"The Magician does not always have to win in order to win; the Magician just has to play things right. For him, life is a game. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose, whether you have a full set of teeth or not."
"Mancini and fellow commissioners Peter J. Murphy and Robert A. Palmer passed a resolution Friday that calls attention to township laws that ban playing games on streets during the summer. The ban specifically mentions football, hockey, and any organized or unorganized game such as kickball or basketball." - via The Bloviator
"People who were 25 couldn't imagine when they would be in a position to have children or get married, or for some it was about being able to move out of their parents home. They couldn't imagine this without secure income; they couldn't see an end to this."
"By the time the conversation on Vietnam got to this level, it was way too late. The boys were already coming home in boxes, and the villages were already being burned to the ground in the name of saving the inhabitants from Uncle Ho. Let us never again be done in by that level of misinformation and unquestioned assumptions. Let us never again get to that point before the debate begins."
They order violations of press freedom and have others do the deed. They might be president, cabinet minister, army chief, Guide of the Revolution or leader of an armed group. All have the power to jail, kidnap, torture and even kill journalists. Because they have faces, we should learn to recognise these predators the better to denounce them.
"I did 43 years of research on that system -- the osmoregulatory system. That system is so precise and so fast that I find it impossible to believe that evolution left us with a chronic water deficit," Valtin said.
"Since when do humiliated people become more tractable?" Possibly I'm just projecting from my own personal experience of the world, but I've never found that humiliating others helps me get anywhere in the long run, nor have I found that being humiliated made me inclined to admit defeat or accept the agenda my humiliator wanted to foist on me. Even the dedicated submissives I know respond poorly to humiliation outside fairly controlled circumstances.
It's not like I think that militant Islamist dreams are obtainable or desirable if they were obtainable. I agree with those who say there's a clash of cultures going on, and feel that it's both necessary and moral to take a lot of action to ensure that nothing like the events of last 9/11 happen again. But if I read history correctly, an important part of really successful long-term response to aggressive tyranny and barbarism is genuine concern for the peoples involved. I don't see that folks who are driven by a desire to humiliate their enemies are likely to come up with the appropriate equivalent of a Marshall Plan, or to think clearly enough to avoid the kind of ill-considered thinking that leads to a Gallipoli or a Market-Garden ...
"We can't let industry merely belong to others. We can't let our ability to produce and control basic goods disappear. We can be masters of our 3-D world as easily as we are masters of services and time management."
I think that there is tragedy on more sides than just one, and it's things like this that keep me from being able to say with a clear heart "these people definitely have the right of it and those don't".
One irony was obvious. As the evening news showed images of veiled Afghan women studying secretly in illegal schoolrooms, a mighty new bomb was taking shape in the United States built largely by American women with degrees in chemistry and engineering.
"Just think of all those women in Afghanistan who were shut off from their society and not even allowed to learn," said Burrows. "It's another example of what makes this country so great. Here, we've been given an education and the opportunity to learn whatever we choose. We were ready and prepared to do this. And so we win."
Magic liberal eightball. "Now, I suppose I qualify as being a little left of center, but I have always been amazed at what extemists on either side of the fence say in response to questions and problems. This eightball provides answers from the liberal camp. I suppose a "conservative eightball" would say things like, "I blame that rap music" and "Homocidal Xenophobia is a perfectly normal and acceptable response to strange and different peoples and worldviews." and "Quick! Kill them and steal their oil supply." or "Everyone knows that people do drugs at raves that's why we have to ban them. I'm going to the bar."
But more seriously, everyone acknowledges that being constantly in touch with the rest of the swarm is changing their sense of time, place, obligations and presence -- indeed, their lives.
On Wednesday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) will begin awarding contracts for the design and implementation of a Total Information Awareness (TIA) system.
"It sounds heretical coming from a psychiatrist, but a little depression probably was good for her art, even if the personal cost was too high. In the end, she opted for happiness ..."
Wheaties boxes, Alpha Beta grocery bags and Sears catalogs dating back as many as 25 years were among six tons of garbage neighbors sorted through at the home of 67-year-old Dorothy Westfall on Saturday.
"There's so much trash inside the house that she slept on a chair in the back yard under a tree," said Anaheim Police Sgt. Rick Martinez.
May this be a warning to us all! Thanks to Shelli at Painfully Cool
How a tribunal vindicated an investigator who blew whistle on workers in Bosnia.
A damning dossier sent by Kathryn Bolkovac to her employers, detailing UN workers’ involvement in the sex trade in Bosnia, cost the American her job with the international police force.
The Common-Forum is a new mass deliberation system currently in its first stages of development. The goal of the project is to build an ideal technology for civil discussion and democratic discourse.
"The rolls of protective razor wire were erected around her house a few days ago by soldiers from the U.S.-led military coalition in Kabul. "They suggested it because they had a lot of evidence of real threats and intimidation against me," Dr. Samar said in an interview."
"DUBAI - The American and Israeli governments' failure to work out a solution to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, despite considerable public opinion that favours peace, is fueling doubts about the utility of democracy in resolving crises, say experts in the region ..."
"The result is a sort of emotional welfare state, one where students become so dependent on an atmosphere of controlled belief that they cannot cope with difference. Within the rigid conceptual uniformity of the "diversity" project difference of opinion is often experienced as cognitive dissonance (those who think differently-- devout Christians, orthodox Jews, Republicans, and so on-- are incomprehensible and thus demonized) or even as a threat (those who think differently are dangerous, and must be stopped). The idea that dissent and debate are forms of aggression--that words can "wound"--is embedded within campus speech codes and harassment policies, which attempt to protect fragile sensibilities by policing words, looks, jokes, and even gestures.
Such codes are the logical corollary of university administrations' attempts to plan, implement, and control a collective conscience. Collectivizing conscience--particularly in an environment that is also in the business of eroding individual accountability--is a mechanism of disempowering individuals while at the same time empowering the groups that are formed by like individuals ..."
"After the hearings, which aired many of the concerns and considerations regarding the administration's plans to try to depose Saddam, The Capital Times sent a reporter out to ask Wisconsinites the question: Is it more dangerous to our safety to try to remove Saddam Hussein from power or leave him alone?
Every person he asked - from computer programmers to office workers to mechanics to student interns - questioned the wisdom of launching a war with the purpose of removing Saddam."
Informed but opinionated commentary and analysis on urban transportation topics from the Secret World Wide Transit Cabal. E-mail: cabalmaster -AT- transitcabal.org
"There are countless forums available that offer scintillating debate and embrace diversity. This isn't one of them ... Okay, I feel better. Back to our regularly scheduled spewing of ill-concieved elitist babble."
(Actually, I'm just waiting until I move to Movable Type ... but there's a TagBoard at the bottom of the page.)
Expected price: $1,599.
"The PowerMate is an all-in-one PC that comes with a 15-inch flat-panel screen, a 900MHz Transmeta Crusoe processor and 256MB of memory. As with IBM's discontinued NetVista X, the "guts" of the computer are located behind the screen."
"A briefing given last month to a top Pentagon advisory board described Saudi Arabia as an enemy of the United States, and recommended that U.S. officials give it an ultimatum to stop backing terrorism or face seizure of its oil fields and its financial assets invested in the United States."
"I've been meaning to link to bookslut for a while now, despite my dislike of the name-- is this a generational thing, I wonder? Coming from a teenagehood where "slut" was a genuinely poisonous insult, I can't quite get this particular reclaiming/empowerment thing when it's applied to such vocabulary (whore, slave, etc.). I understand the intention, but still shy away from the language in actual usage; the emotional shadows are too strong. But I very much like the site itself-- I highly recommend it. It's all about books-- what's not to like?" - Ecologues
"This piece says a lot about why the left needs organizations like The Commonweal Institute to counteract the web or right-wing organizations. The article is about the far-right National Journalism Center, training lots of busy-bee right-wing so-called journalists. It's remarkable how far to the right the prespective of the piece's auther is, even though it's in the supposedly respected The Christian Science Monitor." - See the Forest
"American pilots in Afghanistan, blamed for a series of "friendly fire" incidents and devastating erroneous attacks on innocent civilians, were routinely provided with amphetamines to tackle fatigue and help them fly longer hours. Pilots were allowed to "self-regulate" their own doses and kept the drugs in their cockpits."
"Jim was radicalized in medical school in the sixties. While at the University of Chicago, where he received his medical degree in 1970, Jim gave medical treatment to protesters beaten in the street at the 1968 Chicago Democratic National Convention. At Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973, where Native American activists were under siege by the FBI, Jim organized medical aid and set up a clinic. His internship at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx of New York City in the early seventies reinforced his passionate determination to change the unjust economic, political, and social institutions that damage people's health. Jim became part of the Lincoln Health Collective, a group of medical workers and professionals struggling for decent health care for the people in the South Bronx ..."
When I casually refer to him as a mercenary, Bowman laughs, then quickly turns serious: ''I'm a tactics adviser, mate. I'm training park rangers in arrest procedure, ambush techniques and night patrol.'' ... Men like Bowman ... transform this ragtag bunch, some of them former Khmer Rouge infantry, into an effective wildlife-patrol team ...
Members of the Muslim American community are providing extensive support for Rep. Cynthia McKinney (D-Ga.), defending the five-term incumbent against a challenge financed in part by Jewish leaders critical of her stand on Israel.
Why we need to protect our public resources from private encroachment, by David Bollier
Thanks, Random Walks! I want to print this out and re-read it several times too.
What unites these highly disparate commons—from natural resources to public domain to gift economies—is their legal and moral ownership by the American people. The commons comprises not just marketable assets, but social institutions and cultural traditions that help define our common life as Americans. In virtually every case, the market price for a resource does not begin to capture its actual value to the larger community. But generally we have no rigorous way to speak about such shared assets, or about the costs of enclosing them."
"Welcome to BlogTree.com, the blog genealogy site. You can register your blogs and record which blogs inspired their creation. You can also search for existing blogs and view which blogs they in turn inspired."
Kat said Defcon is a single woman's "dream holiday" and insisted that with a flash of flesh she could have anything she wanted or needed. "I don't pay for food, my room, T-shirts, anything," she said complacently. "The guys just give me stuff."
"It's nice for the youngsters that these highly enthusiastic girls are here," a New Mexico programmer named "Quiet" said. "But at this point in my life, I'm looking for a real woman who can debug software and troubleshoot a network." ...
"Frankly, I find it refreshing to be in a place where men get truly and totally turned on by how I think."
A speech made by Yitzhak Frankenthal, Chairman of the Families Forum, at a rally in Jerusalem on Saturday, July 27, 2002, outside the Prime Minister’s residence.
"It is time for Mr. Bush to level with the nation about his intentions and to talk candidly about why he feels military action against Iraq may soon be necessary, and what the goals, costs and potential consequences of a war would be."
"If long-dormant volcanoes near the prospective high-level nuclear waste dump sprang back to life, molten rock moving at up to 600 mph could fill the repository deep beneath the Nevada desert within hours, said an article in the July issue of Geophysical Research Letters ... Intense heat and pressure could cause some canisters of spent nuclear fuel that are to be buried at Yucca Mountain to rupture and allow radioactive material to flow toward the surface."
"So which is it? Are they unmitigated evil or are they worth negotiating with? I'd liked to say that you can't have it both ways, but the War on Terror has demonstrated very clearly that you can. It's a war!...unless you're looking to invoke the Geneva Convention on POWs or what-have-you, in which case it's not."
A power-pole mounted camera in Watts is designed to snap a picture of - and audibly warn - anyone spotted loitering in a junk-filled alley, police said Wednesday.
The steel-encased camera, designed to withstand a bullet, plays a recorded warning that police hope will act as a deterrent: "Stop! This is the LAPD," the recording says. "We have just taken your photograph. We will use this photograph to prosecute you. Leave now."
"I'll see your weapons inspectors and raise you one Prague meeting."
"Wednesday, 7/31/02:
Senate hearings begin on Iraq war scenarios. Witnesses disagree on urgency of move.
Thursday, 8/1/02:
Iraq invited U.N. weapons inspectors Thursday to Baghdad to resume weapons talks.
The Iraqi mission to the United Nations delivered a letter from Iraqi Foreign
Minister Naji Sabri to chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix that welcomed
Blix and his experts.
Friday, 8/2/02:
If the Prague, Czech Republic, meeting occurred, it would be a possible
indication that Saddam Hussein's regime was involved in the attacks.
In an interview, a senior Bush administration official said evidence of
the long-disputed meeting "holds up."
"We're going to talk more about this case," he said.
The Future:
The US State Department has listed Australia as a known country where al-Qaeda has operated. Senate hearings begin on Australia war scenarios."
"Sixty percent of American embassies and consulates are designated hardship posts for reasons including security threats, poor hospitals and schools, and oppressive weather."
"Would the world be better off without Saddam Hussein? Absolutely. But is going to war with Iraq really a good idea? We’re far from convinced. Could such a conflict grow dangerously out of control? Possibly. Would we face years of dangerous and deadly after-effects such as escalated terrorism here and abroad? We think so.
Presumably the right people in the administration are analyzing the matter far more thoroughly than we -- or Podhoretz -- could ever hope to. On it’s face, that’s a good thing. But this administration is populated with far too many people that share the Podhoretz mindset (he calls the prospect of war “delicious”) that we are inclined to believe the internal debate about this impending conflict is dangerously one-sided.
"The cash-strapped agency, which spent billions on cold war?era satellites, hired no new employees for "an extended period of time" before Sept. 11. That was a big mistake, the subcommittee believes, because the NSA was already chronically short of computer scientists, engineers and foreign-language experts. The NSA even established incentive programs to entice more employees to take early retirement. What's worse, the agency's overworked linguists and analysts were allowed to continue taking advantage of the early-retirement program — even after Sept. 11."
"President George Bush has told US troops to be ready for 'pre-emptive military action' against Iraq, as security sources warned that a massive assault against President Saddam Hussein could be likely at 'short notice'."
"The Neturei Karta - which means 'guardians of the holy city' in Aramaic - are the minority charged with keeping the faith. The movement was established in Jerusalem in the 30s. Its supporters, living in the Holy Land since the 18th century, had always opposed a Jewish state and were concerned about the growing pressure to establish a Jewish homeland. Domb insists that its tenets go back to the origins of Jewish identity. ...
Neturei Karta's objection to Israel rests on theological rather than political grounds. 'The very existence of the Jewish state is diametrically opposed to Judaism,' he says. 'But as it happens, the Arabs have suffered, and it is our duty to say to them: "It is morally wrong, it is illegal from the worldly point of view, and we are not part of it. So don't blame all the Jewish people for the sufferings which you have had."
"But the hundreds of emails recently sent to Neturei Karta from all over the world suggest that their stand resonates with a wider, less-aligned audience. 'May Allah bless you! I sat down and cried with happiness,' writes one correspondent after discovering them. 'Thank you, O people of the book,' says another. 'Are you for real?' asks a third."
"It is the voiceless people of the planet who really have in their memories the 90,000 years of human life and wisdom," he once said. "I've devoted my entire life to an obsessive collecting together of the evidence." - NYT
"Some areas for future expansion of the role of nonviolent action include replacing military defence, technological design, challenging capitalism, bureaucratic politics, information struggles and interpersonal behaviour."
Sunday, July 21, 2002 02:32 p.m.
"Sometimes you just have to decimate a 'people'." Ain't that grand! I presume he means we ought to kill women and children, too, as that's part of decimation. But this advocate of violence against an entire people is on the good side, so it's okay." - Anil Dash
Sunday, July 21, 2002 12:52 p.m.
"I'm trying to figure out a way to confront, in a non-hostile way, the Manichean dehumanization I see in some of the more virulent warblogs ..." - personal comment by Dan Hartung of Lake Effect
"I think Mr Sharon is waiting for the day when he can throw out all the Palestinians. It is not so very difficult. I think these attacks are playing straight into his hands," he said. "I think he wants to escalate the situation because he feels there is no way Israel can make peace with the Palestinians, and he is just waiting for the opportunity to throw them all out."
Are Americans being suckers to advocate peaceful co-existence, if this outcome would be unacceptable for Israel's democratically elected leader?
Howcome all these kids should have to die on both sides, just because their parents are being jerks?
I keep seeing signs that there are plenty of average people in Israel and Palestine who still have the inner strength to aspire to forgiveness, peace, and co-existence with their neighbors on the other side. How do we give these people the support they need to prevail?
ONA sounds like a great idea. Wonder if individual civillians or local officials will eventually get some benefit out of this innovative implementation of networked computing to help *us* size up what's going on in the world too?
"The agency has already notified vendors, contractors and consultants that it needs to be prepared to handle the logistics of aiding millions of displaced Americans who will flee from urban areas that may be attacked. The agency plans to create emergency, makeshift cities that could house hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who may have to flee their urban homes if their cities are attacked.
Ominously, FEMA has been given a deadline of having the cities ready to go by January 2003 – in about six months.
A source familiar with the deadline believes the effort is related to making the U.S. prepared for counterattacks if the U.S. invades Iraq sometime next year."
Certainly the intelligence people are supposed to be reading this kind of material all the time, but how the average person is supposed to be able to come up with a reasonable assessment of the situation given the "leaked" nature of these facts is not clear to me.
"The capture of notorious criminals is often accompanied by a sense of disbelief at the average Joe nature of those caught. For nearly three decades, the killers of 17 November had been elevated to the status of "phantoms," highly skilled "professionals" with an uncanny capability of successfully stalking their unsuspecting victims. The arrests of the first three alleged members of the group though have again re-affirmed the "average Joe" principle. The Xyros brothers, one with a beer belly, the other with a pony tail, both confessed killers as of today, look pathetically "average." Their family and individual lives appear unremarkable, even depressed. Initial reports speak of neither being particularly "intelligent" or with any special criminal skills, although they have both confessed to numerous bomb and rocket attacks, requiring considerable technical talents, aside from the cold-blooded killings."
Don't forget the best revolution of all, The Kuna Revolution - indigenous people rising up in opposition to participation in civilization, on general principle!
"Well, not me, really, but someone in Washington DC found a computer disk lying on the ground in a park (or maybe a street, I've heard both) and wouldn't you know it but the disc contained a Power Point presentation by White House Chief Political Adviser Karl Rove on Republican Electoral Strategy for the 2002 elections ...
Check out slide 19, Democratic strategies: Use Budget, Tax Cuts and Enron for Class Warfare. Yes, bringing up the fact that a low income family might actually need a tax break more than a multimillionaire does, that's class warfare all right ...
And, as if to definitively illustrate that fact, PBS Frontline last night aired a very good expose on the events leading up to the Enron scandal, including the deep complicity by Congress in removing regulatory barriers and enabling these sheisters to basically make up profits out of thin air. It's amazing the lengths some legislators will go to to make sure that the rich never have to do any actual work."
"Awad hopes to train and educate more people in methods of non-violent resistance. Two new programs planned for this year include an after school program and special non-violence resistance training. He hopes to develop, from one small group at a time, a Palestinian movement based on non-violence that will eventually be joined by the leadership of the Palestinian Authority."
"Congress has supplied a special instrument to combat large, conspiratorial organizations; the government should try to sell it to jurors. At the very least it would be preferable to indefinite detentions or secret tribunals."
"The gardens have a definite Japanese theme about them, with rocks and stones placed in feng shui positions. Many cats that come to us are in a frozen animation state and elect to do nothing."
"Every generation of tired, cranky middle-aged nay-sayers feels it necessary to wage an unspoken war against their youngers, their future replacements. I can only assume its out of envy and an illogical fear of the vigor of youth ..."
- The aptly named Letter Never Sent
"The two researchers and their teams are trying to determine how Israeli and Palestinian youngsters perceive each other, how willing they are to compromise, and how much they hate one another."
Not surprisingly, more religious individuals appear to be angrier and less willing to compromise.
From a speech by the former US weapons inspector to the Great Britain Iraq Society, in central London, 18 July 2002
"You don't allow a friend to drive drunk. We have now got a drunk at the wheel of America; Britain needs to take the keys away from him.
What George W Bush is proposing, taking military action against Iraq to eliminate Saddam Hussein, will effectively mean that Osama bin Laden will have won.
Whatever the faults of Saddam Hussein, and he is a brutal dictator, his regime is also secular. If Saddam does indeed fall, which Bush and Blair want, it is highly likely that an Islamist regime will take over after US troops leave, as they will sooner or later."
The personable and musically inclined jonmc at View from the Counter blogrolls links to some of his favorite MeFiosi, and the inscrutable iconomy adds a few more.
The trackback system that Matt's just put in looks pretty exciting! I'd like to move to Movable Type myself eventually to try it out.
Meanwhile, "Larry Ellison, chief executive of Oracle Corp. ORCL.O on Friday renewed his campaign for a government-initiated database of U.S. medical and criminal records, the kind of sweeping and controversial project the No. 2 software vendor has offered to undertake before ..."
Rod Probst of The Journal of Homeland Security contrasts the old-fashioned left-wing terrorists with the more modern, networked terrorist organizations. Handy comparison charts.
"Story telling, change detection, and truth maintenance" is us!
"This low-intensity/low-density form of warfare has an information signature, albeit not one that our intelligence infrastructure and other government agencies are optimized to detect. In all cases, terrorists have left detectable clues that are generally found after an attack ..."
"A farmer kneels down to inspect his crops. A storm is brewing in the background. Weather is integral to our existence and success. Even though we cannot control Mother Nature, we pray for her cooperation." In Mitchell, SD, the tradition of Chicomecoatl lives on.
"Thoughts on environmental issues, risk management and decision analysis"
Commentary and links on Yucca Mountain, July 15, 2002:
"I want contingency plans. I want to know how they will detect if the containers start to leak and what they will do to respond. I want something that doesn't base anything on 10,000 years. I want something comprehensible."
How do we enforce this sort of accountability without divulging operational information to the wrong people? It's going to be an interesting sleighride the next few years. Keep asking questions, because the Yucca Mountain project isn't the only huge technological question mark that impacts national security.
"A single Foreign Service Officer in the Jeddah consulate issued 10 of the visas to the Saudi hijackers. Yet GAO investigators told House staffers that no one from State ever interviewed that officer after 9/11 to learn what might have gone wrong.
We've also had a scandal about foreign nationals working in the U.S. Embassy in Qatar, who sold at least 71 visas, including three to people with al Qaeda connections. To accomplish this, they either had to have the assistance of a Foreign Service Officer (i.e., an American) or access to his code. Either way it's a serious security breach."
Get this: it's "The Reducing Americans' Vulnerability to Ecstasy Act of 2002 -- or the RAVE Act"
"Biden's staff has been surprised, too -- by the sudden outcry. "We thought this would be an innocuous bill that everybody would rally in support of," said Alan Hoffman, Biden's chief of staff."
"Media groups and civil libertarians worry that a policy of total secrecy will give companies an incentive to dump all kinds of troublesome information into the maw, potentially removing it from public scrutiny even if it otherwise might be made public by another agency.
Administration officials say that's not their intention. If so, the White House should work in good faith with its critics and Congress to craft language that accommodates the need for both openness and secrecy.
But given a choice between the two - whether by withholding the papers of past presidents, the records of meetings with energy industry officials or the files on 30 year-old botched FBI mob investigations - Bush has invariably opted to keep the public in the dark. Congress must help him resist the impulse."
"It is true that leftists talking about Israel seldom are as critical of Palestinian acts as they are of Israeli acts. But a pretty powerful critique of the Palestinians has been written into American policy: consistent diplomatic support for Israel, plus billions of dollars of aid. Functionally, when you talk about Israel you are talking about keeping American support the same, or else reducing it or increasing it. The leftist proposal will always be to reduce the support or at least make it more conditional.
One thing that I have never seen even the most hard core leftist propose is to cut off aid to Israel and give the same amount of aid to the Palestinians instead. It's unimaginable even as a joke. The worst proposals I have seen involved cutting off all aid to Israel and Egypt and letting the chips fall, and these proposals usually come from rightwing nationalists and isolationists tinged with anti-Semitism.
So in short. Leftists fill a need. To the media, they represent the anti-Israel /anti-US point of view -- regardless of how nuanced our positions are. In our own minds, what we are trying to do is move US policy in a certain direction, and we tend to direct out energies that way."
"One of the best-kept secrets in Israel is that most Israelis are fed up with the occupation, and just want to get out.
According to June's findings by Mina Zemach, Israel's foremost pollster, 63% of Israelis are in favor of "unilateral withdrawal." In fact, 69% call for the evacuation of "all" or "most of" the settlements."
" I've arranged for my friend Tom Walker to step in as Guest Blogger. Walker's ideology is unclassifiable. I think of him as a non-violent Ted Kaczynski, albeit of sound mind and clean underwear. Anybody interesting is loony about something. For me it's the Federal deficit debate and the Peoples Party. For Tom it's the length of the working day. Over the years he's sold me on his view as well, which is why I link to him on my web site. He may stop in a few times but he will introduce himself and begin in earnest Monday. I'll be around until then."
TESTING, ONE KACZYNSKI, TWO KUCZYNSKI... Hello out there in MaxSpeak land! Can you hear me? Or should I type louder? It's me, Max's friend, Tom Walker, aka the Sandwichman. I'm going to fill in for Max while he is away, beginning Monday, July 22. See COMING ATTRACTIONS.
I think of myself more as a non-linear Jürgen Kuczynski than a non-violent Ted. Jürgen was the German revolutionary statistician who infiltrated the American Federation of Labor in the 1920s and developed, on strictly marxian principles, the measure of labor productivity used to this day by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
I can confirm, however that my underwear was clean - last time I checked.
It's true I used to be loony about the length of the working day. That was until I read Bergson's Time and Free Will. Now I realize that the problem is the length of the day, period. More about that in due time. Speaking of loonies, I live in Canada where the currency is affectionately known as the loonie.
Getting back to the working side of the length of the day, my current looniness is about what is vulgarly known as the "work ethic." I am researching a cure. Please send me your dimes. (But wait until Monday, please!) To paraphrase Tina Turner, "what's ethics got to do it?"
"Jiang ain't Mao. I still remember in breathtaking detail the moment I was listening to radio news, in New Haven, living with a Yalie, in late '78, when the Chinese announced that the long-time classic Marxist slogan of the Chinese Communist Party was "From each according to their ability, to each according to their work. And I literally fell off my chair." - Amygdala, July 17, 2002
A teen blogger in the UK trying to live by the best of Islam on a daily basis.
"I look at these people with such cynasim because these people cry out that they will die for Islam because they love it dearly when they do not even practice it. They do not even pray, they do not fast, they do not pay zakat nor they do not help the poverty stricken.
I love my culture but I hate it too. I hate it for the evils people do in the name of protecting it. Islam has no barriers. We are one nation, one tribe and one people. Nothing and no one should divide us. We should be one single united body. Brotherhood is so very important in this religion of ours. An agression to one person is an agression to all.
We must wake up. One person is all it takes to make a difference."
This blogger reminds me of the sincere teenage girls here in the American Midwest with the "What Would Jesus Do" bracelets. I hope some of the midwestern kids get to read her!
She mentions going to a supermarket that won't send money to Israel - much like pro-Israel bloggers mention avoiding Caribou Coffee because it has Arab ownership ... but no matter who we boycott, I bet most of us can't boycott the cheap goods out of the sweatshops, since that's about all that's available. (Can you tell that I have a Chinese neighbor, since sweatshops are the overwhelming injustice that occurs to me when I think "boycott"?)
"Becky's average customer is about 30 years old, she says, although she also caters to high-school girls and women in their 40s and 50s.
Jeans at her store typically measure just 3 inches to 7 inches from crotch seam to top of the waistband, and Becky is considering selling an even more revealing, Brazilian-style jean.
"They are ridiculously low - lower and tighter," she said, adding that South American women inspiring them are "gorgeous and empowered by their curves." ..
Her customers are well aware of the message their attire sends to the opposite sex, she believes. Guys often shop with their wives and girlfriends at her store. When a woman comes out of the dressing room modeling low-cut jeans, the man's eyes "pop out of their heads," she said."
"Corsair the Always Rational, if Frequently Angry, Pirate has just discovered the rhetorical and intellectual joy that is Howard Zinn. Innocence shattered. I'm glad that someone can still get worked up about Zinn and his tired-out, patented, sad-sack combination of socialism, wobbly-ism, moral equivalence, and historical inaccuracy. The leftist cadres of the past linger on, long after they've become irrelevant. Of course, that doesn't mean we shouldn't administer an occasional kick in the ribs to their supine forms, as Corsair does here admirably."
Shark Blog seems to feel this material exposes how suicide bombers are obsessed with death and generally nuts. Is he sure he's not just giving them the attention and publicity they seek?
"Corporate socialism" -- the privatization of profit and the socialization of risks and misconduct -- is displacing capitalist canons. This condition prevents an adaptable capitalism, served by equal justice under law, from delivering higher standards of living and enlarging its absorptive capacity for broader community and environmental values. Civic and political movements must call for a decent separation of corporation and state."
'a gathering of peace and justice-oriented Muslims of all backgrounds who are dedicated to making the beauty of Islam evident in the world, founded in 1994.' A Muslim peace and anti-terrorist movement. Many interesting articles.
- (via plep
"Last week's announcement that scientists in New York had used the company's mail-order molecules to make polioviruses from scratch has prompted questions about whether the DNA synthesis industry deserves closer scrutiny ..."
Nonsense. BUSINESS - GOOD. REGULATION - BAD!
"Smallpox is probably just two or three years down the road, maybe less," said Cornette, who now lives in Florida. "Then what about the things that are 'none of the above?' Something dangerous but totally new?"
"A Saudi prince smuggled a 4,400-pound load of cocaine from Venezuela to Paris on his personal aircraft under diplomatic immunity, U.S. drug investigators charged Wednesday."
"After the roundtable was over, a Commerce Department spokeswoman said that she could not recall such public outcry during a government roundtable. Security guards were called during the meeting, but stayed outside the room ...
The assembled band of free software devotees said later that they believed they had won a commitment from the Commerce Department to include a representative in a future roundtable. But Bond did not seem to agree. "I'm not going to be dictated to," he said ...
Thursday, July 18, 2002 09:53 p.m.
Oversimplifying our view of the world like this was exactly what lead us to miss salient information about the new situation ... but some people will never figure it out, making it a lot easier for the "bad guys" to operate.
Northern Californians are delivering food to a reclusive indigenous group battered by a decade-old drought.
Late last month, the American visitors descended into the deep gorges of the Copper Canyon to take corn and beans to Raramuri (Tarahuamara) Indian villages.
You've reached the automated voice response system for TIPS. Please choose from one of the following options:
- If you'd like to report suspicious behavior by a co-worker, press 1
- If you'd like to report suspicious behavior by a friend, press 2
- If you'd like to report suspicious behavior by a family member, press 3
- If you'd like to report suspicious behavior by yourself, press 4
However, The terrorist "fleas" infesting the country "want to kill you," Watson said. "They could be in your neighborhood."
Thanks, but I'm not going there! I'm not connecting these miniscule little dots which are showing up on Blogdex even as I type. Get the "red team" on these problems, "Mite approaching!!" Let's all get a grip ... or at least consider the CDC reccommendations.
"Both Washington and al Qaeda are exploiting the ambiguity about bin Laden's status to feed into psychological warfare campaigns to stir doubt and confusion in each other." - Stratfor
Amid reports of an infestation of the U.S. by as many as 5,000 al-Qaeda sympathizers, the surveillance by the FBI of nearly 200 suspected hard-core al-Qaeda terrorists in major U.S. cities, and intelligence of a planned terror training camp in the Pacific Northwest has come the chilling revelation that an al-Qaeda "wise man" may be orchestrating all from inside the country ...
Sleeper Cells
In the meantime, more details have emerged as to the nature of the sleeper cells reportedly thriving in the U.S. At least five hard-core units are suspected to be searching for radioactive material to carry out an attack.
The Washington Times reported that active units of Middle Eastern men are thought to contain about six members each and to be operating in Atlanta, Seattle, Chicago and Detroit."
"Fight with eagerness and vitality and patience whenever you are forced to defend yourself. ... Your faith is the source of prosperity, freedom, independence, stability and justice to which you aspire."
"For a bit of the shock therapy Ashcroft and his fellow travelers seem to need, they ought to consult some of the citizens in the former East Germany who discovered, when looking into their Stasi files, that under the former regime they had been spied upon for years by a husband or wife.
A lesser read blog with news from Israel. Erudite and well-written. Not hysterical.
(See also: Nikita Article List)
"We wonder how many Americans are aware of the deep-seated prejudices of so many of our relentless warmongers -- inside and outside the government -- a thuggish gang that has virtually no respect whatsoever for Arab culture and is completely unable to view Arabs as fellow human beings."
"Former Secretary of State Warren Christopher and former FBI and CIA chief William Webster challenged administration policies dealing with terrorism suspects Tuesday, and Christopher warned that secrecy threatens to lead America down a path to repression... In a panel discussion of national security and civil rights, Christopher raised the specter of the kind of repression once common in Argentina."
"Can they get away with that? Isn't it, um, disloyal? Will this be the ultimate argument in favor of privatizing the Postal Service?" - The Rittenhouse Review
... is one of the few articles I've seen pointing out that the US government sure has built up a flimsy rag tag group of thugs into something resembling a glittering James Bond film villain. What's amazing is that most Americans seem to be swallowing the party line wholesale, even when they see over and over again the dire living conditions these villains were living in (video from Afghanistan caves and "training camps"). These guys might be considered valiant rebels against America in some Arab/Islam enclaves, but they're basically nothing but common murderers in their actions-- little different from our own home-grown killers. And yet we're touting these foreign criminals as some sort of superhuman threat to us all-- just because after decades of repeated attempts, and our own failings in many related matters, the criminals finally struck it lucky and did something that caught our attention. Perhaps the worst thing about all this is how the current US Administration is using this as justification for turning the US into a full-fledged police state. END UPDATE.
Even us straight-edgers have this problem sometimes ...
"When I was in college, one of my roommates was stoned, playing computer games. Meanwhile, not stoned, I was talking to another roommate's visiting sister. She later commented to her brother how nice the other guy seemed, but asked if I was stoned. I also got asked if I was on drugs by the boss in my first office job. I wasn't. Maybe some people just seem stoned?"
Next party when you're the only stone sober straight-edger there, and everybody starts asking how much you've been drinking to attain that state of bubbly exuberance, tell 'em "Lots!" It's sufficiently rare for anybody to be comfortable enough to cut loose without the aid of mind-altering substances anymore, that we might as well use what little bit of chemical leverage we have over uptightness to society's advantage.
(Or, like one black guy told my girlfriend, "I had no idea you folks treated each other like that too! I thought you just didn't like us.")
"I am 46 and have smoked cannabis for 33 years now, admittedly normally only an occasional joint every other week, but sometimes more ... I am the UK IT director and a UK executive board member, ironically, for a leading multi-national pharmaceutical company and have studied up to doctorate level ..."
You might decide to stay in Pittsburgh, hang out in the Beehive Coffeehouse, and pick up a beautiful historical brick building, cheap! in a neighborhood like Wilkinsburg. (And if you do stay, you'll find it easy to keep in touch with the latest in technology and international affairs, via Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, located conveniently next door to each other. Excellent medical care in this city too!)
SHHH! WHATEVER YOU DO, DON'T TELL PEOPLE ABOUT PITTSBURGH!
"President Bush on Tuesday proposed a strategy to protect America from terrorism that includes using the U.S. military to enforce quarantines during a biological attack and "red teams" of agents thinking like terrorists to pinpoint weaknesses."
"EVERYTHING WILL BE AGLOW IN NEVADA if the marijuana voter initiative passes. We had a similar one in D.C. that passed, only to have Congress stomp it. Obviously if we're going to send them all our nuclear waste the least we can do is let them light up too."
Cleveland is supposed to be doing better than average at stopping noxious white powder drugs. This article explains why:
Big Game Hunters - "The war on drugs has been criticized for targeting dimestore dealers. But the Caribbean/Gang Task Force pursues only the kings of the narcotics jungle."
Perhaps the most distressing aspect here isn't the problem of being "wrong," it's the problem of becoming absolutely, totally predictable in all circumstances. Once this happens, it also becomes relatively easy for an opponent to exploit this as a weakness ...
Another nice quote: "ECOLOGISTS are people who, concerned at man's relationship with his environment go beyond airing their concern. They take concrete steps to correct an imbalance or put right what is patently wrong."
Is there any tactful way for the US State Department to explain the restrictions a female American citizen may face once she is subject to Saudi Arabian family law?
"Last week's ''virtual visitation'' ruling by a Massachusetts court points to a new and dangerous trend in family law - judges permitting mothers to move their children hundreds or thousands of miles away from their fathers and justifying the separation by ordering Internet video conferencing as a purported substitute for a father's time with his children."
Given pervasive frustration of carnage on a plate and "why, you can eat at the salad bar," a dangerous snap case is urging others to join him in going postal.
"Under this new regime, the world is the CIA's oyster, and the drug lords are its friends. The agency's deepening and multiplying alliances in Latin America and Asia insure that cocaine and heroin will flood the United States in unprecedented quantities."
"Iranian police on Tuesday used tear gas to disperse a crowd of protesting workers in central Tehran after they tried to storm the labour ministry, witnesses told AFP. Hundreds of workers, protesting against low wages, pushed their way through the ministry's entrance in the centre of the city, witnesses said."
"They don't need jobs! They need religion! If they were devout, by Allah, they wouldn't worry about their families starving! Ardeshir, flog them!"
"Many Nigerian tribes consider displays of nudity by wives, mothers and grandmothers as a damning protest and an act that shames all those it is aimed at.
Chevron Nigeria had satisfied the women's demands by agreeing to hire more than two dozen villagers and build schools, water systems and other amenities."
"Are we capable of proactive reform, or will change in intelligence practices and policies require yet another unforeseen disaster? History argues for the latter, but the nation demands that we continue to strive for the former."
- (via sic semper tyrannis blogroll)
"The Constitution of the United States says what it means and means what it says" is a basic mantra to Coughenour, the chief federal judge for Western Washington.
Same goes for Judge Goodwin. (see below; hit "control-F to search this page.)
BINGO!! "Biology simply disagrees with our careerist culture."
"During the question period after a speech at Washington University, a student burst out: “I don’t want to have to wait until I’m thirty-five to have kids!” Orenstein’s priceless reaction speaks volumes about the chasm between the New Girl Order and the Second Wave Old Guard. “I nodded too, sympathetically. It really wasn’t fair. Then suddenly, I thought, ‘Wait a minute! I’m nearly thirty-seven and I don’t have children yet. These women don’t want to be me.’ ”
Operation RATS - the Retrograde Activities and Treachery System - will be a nationwide program giving millions of American bigots, paranoiacs, nosy neighbors, snoops, snobs, and others a formal way to report innocent actions by others that offend them. Operation RATS, a project of the U.S. Department of Anachronisms, will begin as a pilot program in 10 cities that will be selected based on the number of statues they have erected to Senator Joseph McCarthy.
"I don't know what the fuss is about with this Operation TIPS. Personally, I think it's a great idea myself.
Think about it - all those unamerican people grouped into one organization, easily tracked, as well as highly visible with little stickers in their window. It's never been easier to spot and know the enemy.
Great idea. The Bush administration should come up with more like that."
"The concern 20 years in the future is that we have a bleak, boring center of cultural production, which is these megamedia companies that get to call the shots of what gets produced and what doesn't, and the loss of the cultural vibrancy that comes with diverse, decentralized, unconnected, independent institutions for creating and distributing content. That's the dark story. The bright side, however, is that this trend toward concentration is reversed by technology and by legal principles that enable a much greater diversity of creativity."
A longtime journalist, Wallach proposed in 1993 to then-Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres that a group be created to bring Israeli, Palestinian and Egyptian youths together on neutral soil in the United States.
Each summer since then, hundreds of Israeli and Arab teen-agers have gathered in the woods of Maine in an effort to increase mutual understanding.
Wallach, a son of Holocaust survivors, described the coexistence sessions at the camp, where everyone is expected to voice all of their emotions, as a “detox program to get rid of all the hatred that we have built up inside.”
While those dominating politics, business, and religion spout patriotic slogans, proclaim the virtues of capitalism, and preach that this is a nation under God, the reality is one of the grim dismantling of all things decent and right and honorable. And for what? That a few bastard businessmen can deposit a few more millions into their personal checking accounts? That a few plutocratic politicians can pervert the welfare of the people? That a few paranoid preachers can evoke more division than unity in the gospel they spread?
I am mad because a handful of propagandists have caused the American people to buy into the charade that government is bad and private enterprise is an unqualified bonanza for all. Well, it certainly has turned out differently, hasn't it?
... What do these self-styled Christians know about the great prophetic tradition of an Isaiah, an Amos, a Jesus? All they can ask is, "Are you saved?" And by the Lord Mammon you are not if you don't do it my way! Damn you if you don't!
This is not what we died for and suffered for. This is not why we suffer our disabilities gladly. This is not why Pvt. Kopko got a piece of shrapnel in his skull.
[John Brand is a Purple Heart, Combat Infantry veteran of World War II. He received his Juris Doctor degree at Northwestern University and a Master of Theology and a Doctor of Ministry at Southern Methodist University. He served as a Methodist minister for 19 years, was Vice President, Birkman & Associates, Industrial Psychologists, and concluded his career as Director, Organizational and Human Resources, Warren-King Enterprises, an independent oil and gas company.
"Three years ago, amid lobbying to have the Ten Commandments posted in Altoona Area School District buildings, Polansky countered with her own demand that tenets of atheism be displayed, too ..."
And now she has her own Athiest's Church Building.
Emphasising that he is arguing from a strategic standpoint, Arquilla suggests that there are three possible ways out: first, total US victory, which would be "highly problematic particularly in the light of events in Afghanistan", as Bin Laden escaped and al-Qaida is regrouping elsewhere; second, victory by al-Qaida if its members succeed in obtaining weapons of mass destruction; and, third, a world in which there might be a dozen al-Qaida type networks, linked in some cases to nation states.
As a way out of this dead-end situation Arquilla proposes to focus more attention on "non-military strategies towards non-state actors [and] explicitly engage civil society actors to try to be the interlocutors of a peace. ... It seems to me that the NGO's are in a unique position to respect both sides and act as a clearing house for communication between them." ...
They propose the theory of "noopolitik" inspired by Teilhard de Chardin and his "noosphere", or sphere of consciousness. This has nothing to do with the cyberworld, computers and cables, explains Ronfeldt. He adds: "Noopolitik is foreign policy behaviour for the information age that emphasises the primacy of ideas, values, norms, laws and ethics - it would work through soft power". With others, such as Joseph Nye, Arquilla and Ronfeldt define soft power as "the ability to achieve desired outcomes in international affairs through attraction rather than coercion."
But this must be consistent with other actions, Ronfeldt points out. "The more we use military force in an indiscriminate way, the harder it makes it to create a cooperative network to fight against the non-state actors. That, I think, is the great strategic challenge of this war against terrorism."
Having the meter reader, postman, and cable guy keep an eye on things is not necessarily a bad idea, but how does one keep this from getting out of hand? "THEY" aren't saying - yet.
"It's now the 6th month of this, let's say, "movement" among Iranians. There are about 1000 Persian weblogs out there right now. Most of them update their weblogs from Iran, where the weak infra-structure for the Internet, results in a low percentage of the people who have access to the Net. However, about 60-70% of these bloggers live in Iran now.
Some are using their real name, some aren't. There are many female bloggers among them, expressing themselves in a way that nobody could ever do in such a traditional society. In fact, talking about politics, in explicit ways, is not so popular among them. Today, in my opinion, Iran is more about demanding social freedom, than actually political freedom. So the youth (90% of the whole Iranian bloggers) have an opportunity to share how they live their underground social life and how they don't care about the "official values" of the hardliner parts of the government.
Blogging has been a great bridge between the people in exile and the ones in the homeland. Many of them are so happy to see such a secular, rational and wise generation developing in Iran. Something they could never watch using the traditional media."
"... This is a moment when those who claim to support freedom must embrace the legitimate cause of the Iranian people, the brave Iranians who lit candles to mourn our dead on the eleventh of September, and who lit fires to celebrate the fourth of July with us earlier this month." - Michael Ledeen, NRO
"The Iranian people have been resisting their "government" for quite a while, now, but our State Department and the governments and—more shamefully—even the press of the free world barely seem to have noticed.
Let's make this something impossible to ignore.
Perhaps even more importantly, let's let the people of Iran know that we see what they're doing, and we're rooting for them all the way."
"The Bush administration pressed forward with its argument yesterday that ''enemy combatants'' should not have access to a lawyer even if they are American citizens, in a federal case that will have broad implications for the administration's strategy in the war against terrorism.
In an unusual telephone conference call with three appellate judges, Deputy Solicitor General Paul Clement reiterated the administration's assertion that the president alone has the power to make a determination - not subject to judicial review - that someone is an enemy combatant and that such people should not have access to lawyers. Enemy combatants can also be detained until the war on terrorism ends - another determination that the president alone is empowered to make, Clement argued."
Let's make it retroactive. Let's give Richard Nixon the powers to declare individual Americans enemy combatants as needed, and detain them until the war in Vietnam ends.
"Under the Domestic Guidelines, a terrorist enterprise is a group of at least two persons engaged in an enterprise for the purpose of "furthering political or social goals wholly or in part through activities that involve force or violence and a violation of federal criminal law." An abortion protest that includes blocking an abortion clinic in violation of the federal Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act (FACE) of 1994 appears to fall within this definition."
What if a Hillary Clinton became Attorney General with these guidelines in place?
Civil rights and media organizations are seeking names and other information on an unknown number of foreign nationals held by the Immigration and Naturalization Service since Sept. 11. "More people will be tried in secret, and that's unfortunate," said Lee Gelernt, an ACLU attorney specializing in immigrant rights. "They're appearing all by themselves in front of a judge, facing a trained INS prosecutor in secret. There's no public scrutiny of the process."
Machination.org, once your typical little ol' young-anarchist-news portal, is growing up! We may have the makings of a new voice among blog pundits here.
I question whether people who propose the cultural and intellectual isolation of Israel have peace as their priority, or further war and vindictiveness.
Short bites on intriguing web tidbits. Lark Farm is looking for new collaborators! If you're a fan of straightforward prose about odd yet significant things, you may like this site.
Crusty ol' England relaxes its pot laws, and America looks even more embarrassed and backwards
"After all, which would you rather have, 28 million Americans casually smoking a joint now and then to relax and de-stress and be able to watch the news without screaming and hurling sharp objects at Connie Chung's bizarrely shellacked head, or those same 28 million addicted to hardcore synthetic chemicals in Prozac and Xanax and Zoloft, with creepy polymerized smiles and a slight twitchy spasm in the left eye? You make the call."
"Perplexed by the number of corporate scandals? The Economist runs through the players and tells you who's a crook, who's "overly optimistic", and who's cooking the books." - A Joshua Tree in Every Pot
The Bush Administration aims to recruit millions of United States citizens as domestic informants in a program likely to alarm civil liberties groups. The Terrorism Information and Prevention System, or TIPS, means the US will have a higher percentage of citizen informants than the former East Germany through the infamous Stasi secret police. The program would use a minimum of 4 per cent of Americans to report "suspicious activity".
"Next time you're around a group of people, take a look around. Doesn't matter if you're at work, in class, at the grocery store, standing in line for a movie, at a party at someone's house, or at a concert. Now imagine that one of people there is a snitch, recording your every move.
"According to this SMH article by Ritt Goldstein, the US Justice Department wants to recruit at least 4% of Americans as informants for its Citizen Corps project. Such a high figure seems unlikely, since intelligence agencies already lack the human resources to adequately analyse information, and domestic surveillance has been increasing since September last year. [update: The 4% figure seems to be an extrapolation of figures from this trial. See also James Morrow on the intelligence resourcing issue]"
"Corporate officers of failed conglomerates have been forced to work at minimum wage jobs for two years while living in a half-way house for the ethically challenged. They will be required to balance their own checkbooks with the standard $25 penalty imposed for fudging the books. The comings and goings of the house will be filmed and broadcast on MTV’s Real World “Den of Corporate Jackals” edition." - Leftbanker
"I tripped across a blog called Veiled 4 Allah this morning, and the young woman, Al-Muhajabah, who keeps it has a wonderful set of articles and essays on being a Muslim woman in American society. Many of them revolve around the visible, physical recognition of a Muslim woman, mainly the wearing of the hijab, the full body covering, and the niquab, the face veil. She is intelligent, highly articulate, and has impressed me to no end by writing plainly and thoughtfully about her faith, rather than using it as a club like so many others do. This is a woman who has thought through her beliefs, and has made a personal choice rather than being a sheep." - (Owl's Court, July 11, 2002)
"Persian dance teacher and LA resident Mohamad Khordadian has been convicted of corrupting the youth of Iran with his dancing, which has been broadcast via satellite from Los Angeles. Khordadian cannot leave Iran for 10 years, can never teach dance classes again and is prohibited from attending weddings of non-relatives for three years."
This LA Examiner story also has some local news comments from people about spotting a small Iranian demonstration ... a taste of things to come as bloggers starts to report the material that's halfway between verified local news and unverified rumor.
A single mom hopes to find happiness by escaping her South Dakota relatives and marrying a guy in Egypt who she met over the Internet.
"Trevor's mother has engaged in some bizarre behavior, including wearing Muslim garb and declaring herself a Muslim ..." says the grandmother, who took custody of the kid.
Meanwhile, Grandpa "has been feeding her son pork, which is forbidden to Muslims, smoking around him and buying him firearms in an effort to spite her new religion."
"They are trying to control my life and I don't know why," the mom told The Washington Times.
"Mrs. Barakat took medication to treat depression and anxiety for three years until last August. She met Mr. Barakat on the Internet and then in Cairo in September."
Freedom, anybody? Recently I suggested "not to worry!" about someone else's grown daughter who was marrying a Mexican immigrant farmworker, because there were probably lots of relatives in Mexico to help raise her kid if things didn't work out. I got a pretty similar reaction. Women who aren't rich enough to tell everyone else around them to go to hell with their opinions, and who nonetheless publicly state that Mexicans and Egyptians should be allowed raise little American kids ... why, it's outrageous! These women should be drugged and placed under a psychiatrist's care until we see the error of our ways.
Islamic parents don't necessarily do any better than parents in South Dakota when it comes to closing their eyes to what's going on with their kids. This Muslim cleric in Australia is attempting to convince some parents that their sons are indeed guilty of a crime, and that the family ought to make a public statement of condolences and regret. Good luck! Society counts on everybody having someone like Mohammed Atta's dad, who believes in you no matter what. Eradicating this parental state of denial altogether might not be a good thing.
Obviously, any penniless Ralph Nader supporter drifting around the country who refuses to sell his video for money to a media outlet he thinks trashed the election coverage is a "political nut." Principles more important than money? Look where that road takes you ...
"National Review Online contributor Joel Mowbray was detained this afternoon at the State Department after an acrimonious exchange with top Foggy Bottom press flack Richard Boucher. Mowbray had challenged Boucher on his account of events at State this week, which had to fire its longest-serving career diplomat in response to the congressional uproar created by Mowbray's reporting on the "Visa Express" program..." - (via Fulton Chain Design)
"Press flack" seems a rather poor description of Mr. Boucher. Every time I watch a bit of his briefings, I'm amazed at Boucher's remarkable talent for remaining within the State Department's stated position, figuring out exactly how much is appropriate to say, and being factually accurate and civil in tone.
Irregularities in granting US visas in Saudi Arabia is not only a touchy subject right now-- it's something that needs to be exposed to the light of day.
One of the rare bloggers who reads on both sides. Literate and well informed. Great info on Iran.
What struck me about the little I've read on the Iranian student demonstrations in '99 was that soldiers went in and trashed some students' dorm rooms-- but only partially wrecked rooms of foreign students.
Men may be convincing, but we girls are known for backing out on a bad plan at the last moment. Someone remind the guys at Tanzim that a woman has a right to say no.
"Work dispute, hate crime, road rage, derangement, post-traumatic stress, industrial accident . . . these expressions of denial obstruct effective counterterrorism. The time has come for governments to catch up with the rest of us and call terrorism by its rightful name."
I beg to differ, Mr. Pipes. Calling every deranged, hateful individual who flips out and kills people a "terrorist" gives the big terrorist networks like Al Qaeda exactly the global reach they want-- they can say they're winning by their "Thousand Furious Attacks" strategy. Racist crimes by individuals are better fought as a criminal matter. Don't give these jerks the honor of being an official "terrorist," because that in itself is a motivation to sign up for evildoing. Let these jerks be prosecuted as the obscure, common criminals they are.
Britain to stop arresting most private users of marijuana - NYT
"A study published last year on drug habits in the European Union showed that 20 to 25 percent of adults in Britain used marijuana — about the same rate as shown for Denmark, France, Ireland, the Netherlands and Spain."
Today I finally found a quote which sums up my feelings on Israel: "As terrible as terrorism is, it isn't the real threat to the existence of Israel. The real threat is the absence of peace."
War Liberal remarks: "What is this, a "six degrees of separation" thing? ("Abdullah knows Omar, Omar knows Hassan, and Hassan once met Osama.") Not that 5000 in a nation of 300 million is that many, but the government is really stretching things here."
Good news: "The number of hardcore al-Qaida members in the United States who might actually do harm to Americans is in the low hundreds or even less, officials believe." Well, maybe not good news, but somewhat less alarming news than the 10,000 trained operatives we were led to believe were lurking about in September.
Busting each others' data-mining operations sounds like the next Spy-Counterspy rage. What people do *you* personally track, and what if this information falls into the wrong hands?
I think we're going to have to get really serious about creating good anti-harassment and anti-stalking laws, and enforcing them. Look where all this is going ... it's not just Madonna, tree-huggers, or wrongdoers who are at risk.
"Harassment" may be one of the next hot issues ...
"Schroeder, who has often rejected calls to adopt what he calls U.S. "hire and fire" practices to help create more jobs in Germany, said the scandals at Enron and WorldCom showed that the American economic model should not always be emulated in Europe.
"That is presumably just the tip of the iceberg and it has to do with a corporate culture which is different from here. There the individual employee is not valued and shareholder value is everything," he said.
Thursday, July 11, 2002 01:12 p.m.
"If we want Saudi princes to confront their society's hate-mongers, our own leaders should confront ours.
One problem with this prejudice (as with Osama bin Laden's) is that it blinds the bigots to any understanding of what they deride. If Islam were really just the caricature that it is often reduced to, then how would it be so appealing as to become the world's fastest-growing religion?
Islam already has 1.3 billion adherents and is spreading rapidly, particularly in Africa, partly because it also has admirable qualities that anyone who has lived in the Muslim world observes: a profound egalitarianism and a lack of hierarchy that confer dignity and self-respect among believers; greater hospitality than in other societies; an institutionalized system of charity, zakat, to provide for the poor. Many West Africans, for example, see Christianity as corrupt and hierarchical and flock to Islam, which they view as democratic and inclusive."
Lately I've been wondering howcome Bangla Desh, which is also a Muslim country, seems to do things differently from the so called "Monolithic Islamic World" with which "The West" must clash. From what I've read, the progress and cooperation seen among Bangla Deshi women is a good example for women anywhere.
Fields Report, July 9th - Good critique of this article
Arab News suggests that having a bunch of African people sitting around Mecca with no identity papers who "only care about money" and "multiply like rabbits" could be a problem.
Offered as further proof that the Islamic world's experience and culture is totally alien to us. We wouldn't know anything about illegal immigrant workers of a different race who people hate "because they multiply like rabbits." And if we did, we certainly wouldn't reward them with identification cards like this Saudi journalist proposes.
(Note to Farid in Indonesia if he's reading this: We actually have some very similar situations in the United States. Unfortunately, it's more politically advantageous for some individuals to try to get people upset with Muslims and Saudi Arabians than it is to look for some common ground and co-operation on social issues.)
Under these circumstances, why so slow on commonsense measures like limiting antibiotic use in livestock? Giving our farm animals humane living conditions means that Mother Nature's microbes will be much kinder to us too-- great description of the details in the book "Spoiled: Why our Food is Making us Sick and What We Can Do About It".
"If we are not already totally an apartheid state, we are getting much, much closer to it," said former cabinet minister and leftist Meretz party founder Shulamit Aloni.
"We are also moving farther and farther away from the founding document of the state of Israel," she said, in a reference to the nation's 1948 Declaration of Independence, which pledged "development of the country for the benefit of all its residents" and "complete social and political equality to all its citizens, regardless of religion, race, or gender."
Bravo to Ms. Aloni for standing up against housing discrimination! When I was a kid, they told me that I couldn't bring my best friend to the swimming pool because she was Jewish, and that racial covenants meant my Italian neighbors couldn't move a few streets over where there was a wonderful swimming lake. If there's one sure way to get a kid pissed off about discrimination, it's waiting until a really hot summer day with no air conditioning and sweltering humidity, and then telling the kid they can't jump in the water with all the rest of their friends because they are from an inferior ethnic group.
Come to think of it, isn't it an improvement the way the combination of air conditioning, integrated swimming pools, and anti-racism campaigns means we can get through most summers without major riots? Anyone else remember those "Long Hot Summer" news reports: "It's another scorcher today-- how much longer till the black folks in the city have another riot? They're already attacking the fire hydrants and the cops can't stop them ..."
Yes, I suppose that sexual harassment laws do by definition restrict free speech. But is suppressing harassing speech really such a horribly noxious imposition? Seems to me there remains an ample alternative audience of Neanderthal fellows interested in swapping the Neanderthal comments which women don't want to hear.
It has become clear to me that many men do not realize how often women are under immediate threat of physical aggression and unwanted sexual contact. I for one feel that sexual harassment laws are far preferable to Gandhi's alternative, which was encouraging women to physically assault men as necessary in defense of their honor. Men get beat up too much as is, without us women adding to the problem.
"To target individual academics for the actions of a government will lead to a complete loss of academic freedom of speech, irrespective of the issues."
Q: "For more than 27 years, I have worked in the Jewish sector, in the hospitals. I am a dedicated nurse. My patients love me, and I treat them with love and respect. Am I good enough to treat Jews when they are sick in the Hillel Yaffe Hospital, but not good enough to be their neighbor in Katzir? That is racism, pure and simple."
A: I don't think people would have any problem with you in Cleveland, OH, because we aren't at war, we place a high value on ethnic harmony, and we respect people who make an effort to be good neighbors. We have a wonderful Jewish community here too, with a much more relaxed atmosphere than your current location. As much as I wish for you personally that you would move to Cleveland, it would be better for the world in general if your good example of caring for people on "the other side" could somehow, Earth willing, spread to everybody else ...
- (Question via Catallaxy Files)
Dedicated to encouraging the growth of a visual and literary publishing community by offering a space to gather and exchange information and ideas, as well as to produce work.
Send dis guy a few spare containers, wouldja? The rest are all pre-positioned for unspecified activities involving Iraqk. (Hey, Saddam's in da house! Dude, we gotta bridge ta sellya in Brooklyn.)
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - The American Civil Liberties Union has urged state Attorney General Bill Lockyer to prevent FBI spying on political dissidents after recent revelations the agency had done so in the past.
In an open letter to Lockyer the ACLU's three state chapters urged Lockyer to enforce the state's right to privacy, adopted by voters in 1972.
"Since September 11th, life hasn't been the same. At the final count, I've lost 7 close friends and another 5 acquaintances. This has shaken me and I have felt a little helpless since. However, in my sorrow, I have found a new need for action."
Tristan proposes mandatory service for every American, except military personnel, to bring technology, health care, and general progress to the poor countries of the world. This would be financed by a one percent tax on the top half of the population.
"Why do this?
It seems ridiculous to ask for an effort like this. After all, why should we care? Well, for starters, let's look at the Manhattan skyline. See anything missing? My point is simple, if we work to help people around the world develop systems that allow them to rebuild their country, restore their dignity, and allow them to become self-sufficient, they will not look to destroy us. For historical precedents, take a look at the Marshall Plan after World War II and see how Germany and Japan are now strong democratic and capitalistic society with no intent to bomb the U.S. They are now players because we all worked together to rebuild them. Let's do the same for the rest of the world.
The other advantage is that it will foster more understanding among nations. Once you've travelled to a foreign country and have been exposed to its culture, you become a more open person. It's that simple: reaching out to other people is opening your eyes to a new world of possibilities."
This person lost 12 people, but he still has a spirit of kindness, generosity, and dedication to helping others. How different the response would be the next time someone asked "why do they hate us?" if our society proved by its actions and its example that we are dedicated to the welfare of others.
"The Internet phenomenon is becoming more common in Saudi Arabia with each passing day, as are its negative effects on family and personal life in the Kingdom. Parents here are concerned with the time their children are spending surfing the Net. Once we were concerned mainly about what our children were exposed to online, like pornography; but now even the most innocent of online games are becoming an obsession. We talked to some concerned parents ..."
"I had always associated sexiness with cleavage and sparkling wit, not political conservatism and anger. So I'm wondering, is there a whole new type of sexiness out there now?" -(via Rabbit Blog)
Report from "a group of anthropologists who study South American cultures where partible paternity is the accepted truth.
Partible paternity is the idea that more than one father can contribute genetic material to a child. In fact, the idea that all men who sleep with the child's mother may contribute biological materials to the child and share paternal responsibility."
"In 1996, I went to Iraq to report on life after the Gulf War. I've reported from Iran several times over the last decade. But it wasn't until last month that I completed the third leg of my Axis of Evil World Tour with a trip to the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. In many ways, it's hard to figure what President Bush was thinking when he linked the three countries. Iran is a theocracy. Iraq is a strongman state. And North Korea is a museum piece, our last living relic of totalitarianism. Now that I've spent time in all three places, I have some ideas about how they're connected, although I'm not sure they're the links the president had in mind ..."
"This site is a one-stop portal that describes best practices, consolidates lessons learned, explains campaign strategies and tactics, and links the efforts of freedom-of-information advocates around the world. It contains crucial information on freedom of information laws and how they were drafted and implemented, including how various provisions have worked in practice." "The Open Society Institute (Budapest) has provided initial funding for the freedominfo.org site. The National Security Archive at George Washington University serves as the secretariat for the site, and as its fiscal sponsor..."
"A high-ranking Lutheran pastor has been suspended from his duties and ordered to apologize to all Christians for participating with Muslims, Jews, Sikhs and Hindus in an interfaith prayer service in New York's Yankee Stadium after Sept. 11 ..."
How many liberation theologians does it take to change a light bulb?
None-- We shot out the bulb in the name of Christian revolution!
How many Kuhnian constructionist philosophers of science does it take to change a light bulb?
You're still thinking in terms of 'incremental change'-- what we really need is paradigm shift...we don't need a bulb with more attributes added on, we need ubiquitous luminescence.
How many 'emergent properties' advocates does it take to change a light bulb?
I decided not to use them, after interviewing them. I asked them if they could do it, and they said 'no problem--easy to do'. I asked them HOW they planned to do it, and they said they would simply start the house on fire, then wait for the heat to raise the temperature of the light bulb until it reached a far-from-equilibrium state, and that then 'new bulb properties' would emerge (but that we would have to keep an intense fire burning in the room forever--to sustain the emergent property). So, I gave them a false address and left...
"politikblogs are as ineffective as hamlet, worrying his desire for public justice like a dog with his favorite toothsome discard. they rage on impotently, endlessly, simply for the sake of releasing emotions. no utopia at the end of the journey; just neverending protests. today, now, this link is the alpha and omega. when the issue drops from the public eye, the politikblog drops it as well. there are no threads to follow, no connection to a past or a future, no resolution, no responsibility. hillman calls empty protest 'via negativa', the negative way. i see no politikblogger achieving public justice for any major issue; what i keep coming across is simply a string of petty private revenges. at the present time, politikbloggers devour each other over the actions of politicians who don't even know they exist, by reinterpreting carefully selected articles and opinion pieces generated by one of a double-handful of monopolistic media machines, as seen through the rose-colored glasses of their particular political caste. truly, "empty protest"
I am going to suggest that you think about biological warfare in terms of a TV show called "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," that you think about the world of biological weapons in terms of the "Buffy Paradigm," and that you think about many of the problems in the proposed solutions as part of the "Buffy Syndrome."
'Most Americans believe that all students have the opportunity to earn a college degree through hard work in high school and college. Yet, this year alone due to record-high financial barriers, nearly one-half of all college-qualified, low- and moderate-income high school graduates - over 400,000 students fully prepared to attend a four-year college - will be unable to do so, and 170,000 of these students will attend no college at all ... For the nation, the loss of human capital will exact a serious economic and social toll for much of this century' ( ACSFA )
See also this CSM coverage from last week, this Lumina Foundation report (1.18MB PDF) from January, and this other ACSFA report (2.09MB PDF) from February 2001
"All Things Considered just interviewed two of the creators of the Kronos Quartet's new CD, Nuevo. Regardless of whether you're into Kronos, the interview is an interesting tour of the breadth of Mexican music, from narcocorridos to Esquivel."
- Prentiss Riddle
Ronald McDonald was hanged July 4th in a dastardly terrorist attack in rural Northern Illinois, not far from the corporate headquarters of the McDonald's Corporation. President Bush immediately condemned the attack and blamed the Iraqi government and its evil leader Saddam Hussein for the hanging.
If you look at the larger picture in both the Bush and the Clinton administrations, including, of course, past U.S. history as well, you see a systematic pattern of privileging corporate interest and corporate profits more than any questions of real security ...
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