Category: 2004 US Election

The September Project: For Libraries:

On Saturday, September 11, 2004, people across the country will come together at public places like local libraries to discuss ideas that matter. Through talks, roundtables, and performances, people will share ideas about democracy, citizenship, and patriotism. Libraries are perfect places for such events: they are free, they are open to the public, and they are distributed nationally. There are over 16,000 public libraries in the U.S. and this does not include university, research, K-12, and places of worship libraries. The September Project is a collection of people, groups, and organizations devoted to making this happen annually and internationally.

I expect a library is on my list of destinations tomorrow. Has it really been three years? Somehow it seems like it was so long ago . . . .

Now playing: Magazine: Feed the Enemy from the album “Secondhand Daylight” | Buy it

When I read about the assault weapons ban expiring next week and then saw this image of a political leader with a Kalashnikov leaning against the wall behind him, it struck me as serendipitous. You know he’s in favor of an armed populace: does that mean people here who feel the same way are like him in other ways, too?

Boing Boing: Did the White House release forged documents about Bush’s service record?:

Charles at Little Green Footballs presents a persuasive argument that the memos recently released by the White House about President Bush’s National Guard service are forgeries.

My reply to Mark:

I don’t think I would find anything at LGF persuasive (I’d verify the weather myself, if they posted that it was raining): Josh Marshall commented on this earlier.

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/week_2004_09_05.php#003456
When someone’s entire experience with typesetting is Microsoft Word, their arguments are not all that credible. Perhaps the folks at MSFT did their best to make a slavish imitation of an old IBM Selectric as a sop to people who don’t like modern typefaces?

The fact that the White House was passing out a memo with a subject line of “CYA” suggests these were bona fide documents that didn’t originate with them.

The better question, as Brad DeLong points out is, why were these copies in the Lt Colonel’s files but not in 1st Lt Bush’s? If you take the argument that they were file copies only, not to be distributed, why weren’t they discovered before now? This is the slowest, most slipshod “discovery” process ever.

Simon Woodside | What’s New? weblog:

Where was W? A visual explanation, version 1.1

Texans for Truth:

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.

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

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

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

Continue reading “freecycling and citizenship”

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.

TWiki . Main . AdvancedSSHTipsAndTricks :

However, security tools such as SSH, like plumbing, can have a tendency to leak at the joints if poorly connected.

As little as I understand of this — I use ssh every day but nowhere near as elegantly or completely — I enjoyed reading it.

Now playing: Sigur Ros: Svefn G Englar from the album “Agaetis Byrjun” | Buy it