A paltry $7.95 stands between you and Democracy Inaction: carpoolers and bus commuters should be prepared to shield their neighbors from coffee spray . . .
Month: September 2004
good question
There’s no question that Osama bin Laden would prefer a Bush victory to a Kerry victory. The man may be evil but he’s not crazy. Would Kerry have let him get away at Tora Bora? Would Kerry have launched an anti-American terrorist recruitment drive in Iraq? Would Kerry have alienated the entire world from the fight against Al Qaida and made bin Laden a more popular figure in the Arab world than the president of the United States? (Saddam Hussein, too, by the way.) And would Kerry have starved homeland security to fight a counterproductive war, thereby ensuring the effectiveness of the next attack? But what I don’t understand is, why is Cheney admitting all this?
When you look at it that way, the more convinced I am that “Osama been Forgotten” is Bush’s real running mate.
art by lolito
Now playing: Glenn Gould: Variatio 3 A 1 Clav. Canone All’unisono from the album “J. S. Bach: Goldberg Variations Bwv988” | Buy it
know thyself
I scored 45 out of 100.
tip of the beanie to [Michael Hanscom]
he who must not be named
He’s back. Or perhaps he never really left . . . the ideals of Nixon live on in the party of Nixon, today’s GOP.
Be the first on your block to flaunt one of these.
Now playing: Radiohead: Scatterbrain (As Dead As Leaves) from the album “Hail To The Thief” | Buy it
a worthy cause
Texans for Truth, established by the 20,000-member Texas online activist group, DriveDemocracy.org, has produced a 0:30 second television advertisement, “AWOL.” The ad features Robert Mintz, one of many who served in Alabama’s 187th Air National Guard — when Bush claims to have been there — who have no memory of Bush on the base. In other words, Bush failed to fulfill his military duty while others were dying in Vietnam.
Watch the 30 second spot.
free but passive press
Project Censored 2005 – Top 25 Censored Stories:
* 1: Wealth Inequality in 21st Century Threatens Economy and Democracy
* 2: Ashcroft vs. the Human Rights Law that Hold Corporations Accountable
* 3: Bush Administration Censors Science
* 4: High Levels of Uranium Found in Troops and Civilians
* 5: The Wholesale Giveaway of Our Natural Resources
* 6: The Sale of Electoral Politics
* 7: Conservative Organization Drives Judicial Appointments
* 8: Cheney’s Energy Task Force and The Energy Policy
* 9: Widow Brings RICO Case Against U.S. government for 9/11
* 10: New Nuke Plants: Taxpayers Support, Industry Profits
* 11: The Media Can Legally Lie
* 12: The Destabilization of Haiti
* 13: Schwarzenegger Met with Enron’s Ken Lay Years Before the California Recall
* 14: New Bill Threatens Intellectual Freedom in Area Studies
* 15: U.S. Develops Lethal New Viruses
* 16: Law Enforcement Agencies Spy on Innocent Citizens
* 17: U.S. Government Represses Labor Unions in Iraq in Quest for Business Privatization
* 18: Media and Government Ignore Dwindling Oil Supplies
* 19: Global Food Cartel Fast Becoming hte World’s Supermarket
* 20: Extreme Weather Prompts New Warning from UN
* 21: Forcing a World Market for GMOs
* 22: Censoring Iraq
* 23: Brazil Holds Back in FTAA Talks, But Provides Little Comfort for the Poor of South America
* 24: Reinstating the Draft
* 25: Wal-Mart Brings Inequality and Low Prices to the World
I don’t know if I’d call these censored so much as ignored or under-reported: censorship implies external control, and my guess is this internally-controlled, ie, self-censorship. No less evil, but I’d like it to be clear which it is.
Now playing: Todd Rundgren: You Cried Wolf from the album “Anthology [1968-1985] (Disc 2)” | Buy it
freedom of the press — to lie?
Project Censored 2005 – Story #11:
In February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with an assertion by FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States.
Back in December of 1996, Jane Akre and her husband, Steve Wilson, were hired by FOX as a part of the Fox “Investigators” team at WTVT in Tampa Bay, Florida. In 1997 the team began work on a story about bovine growth hormone (BGH), a controversial substance manufactured by Monsanto Corporation. The couple produced a four-part series revealing that there were many health risks related to BGH and that Florida supermarket chains did little to avoid selling milk from cows treated with the hormone, despite assuring customers otherwise.
According to Akre and Wilson, the station was initially very excited about the series. But within a week, Fox executives and their attorneys wanted the reporters to use statements from Monsanto representatives that the reporters knew were false and to make other revisions to the story that were in direct conflict with the facts. Fox editors then tried to force Akre and Wilson to continue to produce the distorted story. When they refused and threatened to report Fox’s actions to the FCC, they were both fired.(Project Censored #12 1997)
I suppose the extension of this would be if someone were to rely on the news to make decisions about the efficacy or safety of a product and suffered some harm as a result: would the organization that willfully omitted the facts from its reporting be liable?
Now playing: Magazine: Believe That I Understand from the album “Secondhand Daylight” | Buy it
Philadelphia’s city-wide wireless experiment might be topped
Rolling wheat fields are also Wi-Fi country:
A large investor-owned company was not going to put in the needed infrastructure to allow us to bridge that digital divide here in rural America,” Husted said. “If someone was going to do it, it was going to have to be us.
A 1,500 sq mi hotspot? Read through this and look how many ways folks are finding to use this: there’s so much talk of networking in densely populated areas but doesn’t it make sense to want to connect nodes that are farther apart? And note the references to rural electrification: does that give any idea how much the Internet has penetrated people’s lives, even in agricultural areas like eastern Washington?
Now playing: Prefab Sprout: Cars And Girls from the album “From Langley Park To Memphis” | Buy it
freecycling and citizenship
This just in from the moderators of my local FreeCycle group . . . . I hope this person recovers from their Freecycle hangover.
[The text of the question is excerpted from mail we received from a real, live FreecycleSeattle member last week.]
Dear FreecycleAbby:
I made my first four offers today on FreecycleSeattle. Some of what I
experienced after that:
* Folks responding immediately to my OFFER just to be the FIRST, but
clearly not thinking about whether they really wanted what I was
offering – or even if it was possible for them to pick it up.
* Emails asking me questions that were already clearly answered in
my OFFERED posting.
* More than one person emailed with no mention of which item they
were interested in – in either the subject or the body of their
message.
* Another person actually asked me to ship the item to him…out-of-
state.
* At least one email lecturing (actually, berating) me about how
I “advertised” and “sold” my items. (Honestly, I did my best and I
think my posts show effort. And this being Freecycle, I didn’t think
I was advertising or selling anything.)
* And LOTS of people for whom the words “please” or “thank you”
don’t seem to be part of the English language. I don’t expect someone
to bow and scrape before me. But I didn’t really expect to be given
lots of orders and demands in response to my OFFER, either.I started today feeling good that I was doing something positive. I
ended the day in not the best of moods.signed, Cheerless in (Freecycle)Seattle
democratizing knowledge
BW Online | August 11, 2004 | Howard Rheingold’s Latest Connection:
The divide increasingly is not so much between those who have and those who don’t, but those who know how to use what they have and those who don’t.
hlr makes a good argument for Wikipedia, among other things: apropos of that, Ed Felten compared Wikipedia to the venerable Brittanica. Brittanica wins — for now. Both articles are instructive. I love Wikipedia: it’s my start page, and I learn something every time it loads. And, yes, I have edited a couple of articles, and rather than seeing that as a flaw that it has errors, I see it as an asset that I can fix them.