The Spiders, Part 2, holy shit.

originally posted by xowie

Our friends at The Nation have put together a nice package on globalized media, centered around a damning chart of conglomerated ownership put into perspective by NYU Prof. Mark Crispin Miller and supported by a bunch of great essays and a call for reform.

originally posted by xowie

originally posted by xowie

Finally the 'War on Terrorism' is achieving its policy objectives. Osama bin Laden is looking haggard. We may not have caught him or brought him to justice but, at the cost of thousands of innocent Afghan lives, billions of dollars of US citizens' money and the civil liberties of the Free World, we have got him looking haggard.

originally posted by xowie

NPR’s Morning Edition 12.31.01

Shazia Mirza is unique among standup comics. Mirza is a practicing Muslim – and a woman – who likes to poke fun at her own culture. “People ask me,” she says. “Why does your mother walk five steps behind your father? I say because he looks better from behind.” Join Morning Edition Monday to hear more of her unique humor.

The American Library Association has announced a third annual list of the Best Free Reference Web Sites.

Alarmed, perhaps, by such patent lunacy--and also by the danger that America's own coalition against terror, in which India and Pakistan have vied for leading roles, will be busted up--the White House, through its spokesman Ari Fleischer, counsels "restraint." India is unimpressed. Counsel of restraint from a nation that has just overthrown the government of one country and now has five or six more in its gunsights can hardly be expected to carry weight with one whose Parliament has been attacked, as it believes, by its enemy of almost half a century.

When the Bush Administration began its war on terrorism, announcing that if you weren't with us you were against us, did it imagine that from the dizzying heights of its sole superpowerdom it would command the nations, rewarding some, raining bombs on others, and dominating all, according to its sole interest and pleasure? The nations have had other ideas. Preferring American practice to American preaching, they have taken up arms in their own causes, just as previously many built nuclear arsenals whose use again urgently threatens the world. We have not one unified war on terrorism but many clashing wars. It's hard to say which are more dangerous--those that, like Israel's, seek to join the American one or those that, like India's, seem to undercut it. All are burning out of control. For now, the instruments that alone might stop them--negotiation, treaties, a readiness to compromise, measures of disarmament--have been cast aside.

“Literary Traveler is an online magazine dedicated to the exploration of the literary imagination. We hope to bring you inspiring, informative, and unique articles about writers, and creative artists, and the places they traveled.”

“It’s a new style of terrorism."

What I read on my Blogger vacation: Ginger toonies. War on karaoke. Wynton Center. Al-Qaeda manual. Paul Battaglia. LA Weekly lists. How to subdue. “Strike Hard” campaign. Asteroid belt. The Metamorphosis.

originally posted by xowie

Poor White Racism (a reply to A Question of Privilege)

In order to put and end to poor white racism, you have to understand the situation of poor whites. You do not learn how a gun works by inspecting bullet holes, you inspect the gun. The gun metaphor is very appropriate for poor white racism, because poor white racism is a mindless weapon. Someone else is pulling the trigger. (…)

This kind of racism is unique from the garden variety racism that is typical of, say, the middle class or upper classes (i.e. the kind of racism that has at least the potential to be remedied by the kind of therapy group work that people like Chris Crass devote all their time to). Garden variety racism comes from a presumed, mostly unconscious sense of superiority, which is reenforced by the dominant culture, of course. Even certain kinds of “anti-racism” are really just manifestations of this garden variety racism (i.e. “I’m such a big- hearted white boy for ‘helping’ those poor people of color”). (…)

Just as avoiding the issue of racism is a cop out, making semi-mystical claims that racism is an uncurable disease that we may never be rid of, is also a cop out, it allows people to relinquish their responisbility for stoping it, it also allows people in the white left to shirk the hard, ugly, unpleasant, and often unrewarding work of really trying to put an end to racism amongst white people in general. Racism, like rape, is fundamentally about power. Poor white racism is both a conscious and an unconscious false expression of power by a powerless group over an even more powerless group. (…)

Because the white left is largely middle class we end up with the spectacle of white suburban ARA youth fighting white working class skinheads. We have the oddity of having white activists dealing with thier own racism, or insisting that “everyone is oppressed”, but refusing to organize in poor white communities because those communities are racist and sexist.

FYI for those, like us, still dependent on Blogger:

Blogger has had a security breach. It appears no permanent damage has been done, but as a precaution, we advise you change your FTP password if you had it stored on Blogger. U: Also, it wouldn’t hurt to change your Blogger password, as well (go to one of your blogs, select team, and then click on your name).

De preacher was up preaching and he said, 'Every tongue got to confess; everybody got to stand in judgment for thyself; every tub got to stand on its own bottom.'


One little tee-ninchy woman in de amen corner said, 'Lordy, make my bottom wider.'

Iceland launches energy revolution (BBC News)

People my age will see the first steps towards the hydrogen economy. My children will watch the whole transformation. My grandchildren, when they are grown, will live in this new economy where Iceland will be totally independent of imported energy, and where all the energy in the country comes from clean renewables.

The various ZNet Watch Sites have been reorganized and collected into this great index page. The page is worth visiting for the A’s alone: activism watch, africa watch, alternative media watch, anarchy watch, animal rights watch.

Shoe bomb graphic (Guardian Unlimited)

Stop! It is illegal to spray graffiti here! We have just taken your photograph. We will use this photograph to prosecute you. Leave now!

Replica of WTC in Christmas lights.

originally posted by xowie

Saudi Arabia’s Apartheid (washingtonpost.com)

One of the (still) untold stories is the cooperation of U.S. and other Western companies in enforcing sexual apartheid in Saudi Arabia. McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Starbucks, and other U.S. firms, for instance, maintain strictly segregated eating zones in their restaurants. The men’s sections are typically lavish, comfortable and up to Western standards, whereas the women’s or families' sections are often run-down, neglected and, in the case of Starbucks, have no seats.

Stop American Billions for Israeli Bombs by Alisa Solomon. More here, here and here.

originally posted by xowie

Did you know? Some people enjoy sharing books via binary newsgroups and even p2p!

originally posted by xowie

Far out PYL home game. (No trivia questions, just prizes and whammies.)

originally posted by xowie

The primary goal of Ftrain.com, the goal which all other goals serve, is to make the site fully conscious and self-aware by 2051.

Nathan Crombie -- who plays a creature called an orc in the blockbuster movie trilogy -- claimed he and a group of fellow actors got high EVERY DAY on ultra-strong grass called Thunderweed. They would sneak away between takes in New Zealand to smoke spliffs at the top of a tower on the set.

originally posted by xowie

Mumia lives! Now let him disappear by Dan Kennedy. Harsh, with interesting links.

originally posted by xowie

Your own body is a phantom, one that your brain has temporarily constructed purely for convenience. I know this sounds astonishing, so I will demonstrate to you the malleability of your own body image and how you can alter it profoundly in just a few seconds.

Rachel’s Compendium of Online Book Discussions, et al. – “Currently there’s a lot of interest in book clubs, and, as far as I know, there’s no place on the Web to find a listing of all of them. Hence, I’ll give it a shot. To be a book club, in my mind, I believe there needs to be some type of time-sensitive element, and, preferably, some type of guided discussion. I’d further classify book clubs in four ways: Web-Based (text and comments on the web); Web-Enhanced (books read off-line and discussed via a web site); E-mail-Oriented (discussion occurring via an e-mail list); and Live Chat (via IRC or some other medium).” This page has a good set of links to mine for active book clubs and other resources.

Lone Wolf and Cub Ogami Action Figure “This is the main character of the classic manga saga. He comes complete with a detailed wheeled cart and Daigoro (Cub) figure, cloth banner with calligraphy, costume accessories (sandals, hat, cloth costume, etc.), and all the swords and other samurai weapons we see in the story, and is highly articulated. This figure stands 12 inches tall."

“like the needle… needle and spoon”

Palestine has finally been published. I wonder if it will sell out quickly given the Current Situation. You can order it from the publisher Fantagraphics which is probably the best option, or from Amazon if like me you don’t care about all those patents and things you pretend to care about when it’s fashionable.

It was a dark and stormy month… (eastbayexpress.com)

From his Oakland apartment, they watched in wonder as thousands of total strangers vehemently debated NaNoWriMo protocol and formed writing klatches groups on the official Yahoo site and dozens of unaffiliated ones. On MetaFilter, people posted queries such as “I wonder if it would be cheating to put together an outline before the November 1st start date?” and “Is it within the rules to use Benzedrine to fuel the fury?” There also were dissenters, who called the idea “fantastically horrible” and likely to produce “a stream-of-consciousness crapfest.” “I was avidly following all of these things with my mouth agape,” says Baty.

The full list of 110 films used to make the three-minute montage The Spirit of America. Oh, the patriotic three-minute montage, I should have said.

originally posted by xowie

At the gym and on the BART, San Francisco welcomes you.

originally posted by xowie

Phil Agre’s latest RRE pointers mailing includes links to some year-end “top ten” music lists. I’ve probably spent more time singing about the itsy-bitsy spider this year than I have listening to new music. What did I miss?

• best albums of 2001 (Onion AV Club)
• Best of 2001: Music (artforum.com)
• The Best (and Worst) of 2001's Concerts and CD's (washingtonpost.com)
• year's best classical CD's (economist.com)
• Best Electronic CDs of 2001
• Jazz: Our Picks (Borders)
• Time's Best and Worst Music of 2001

It looks like maybe 100,000 people, at least 80,000 people, most of them black, were not permitted to vote who had a legal right to vote in Florida. That story was simply not covered in the U.S. press. And that is how the election was won.

Here’s how they did it:

Socialcritic.org’s Selected Readings in Social Criticism is a stupendous directory of texts available online for your perusal and edification. Don’t miss the concise list of war on terrorism readings – an excellent primer of dissenting thought in these times of stifling conformity.

Lots of folks have linked to Owen Briggs' Design Rant recently but I just now got around to looking through it, and I see that this is crucial stuff – required reading for anyone involved with web design in any capacity.

I’ve heard a lot about how beautiful they are on Marketplace lately, but I hadn’t seen any Dutch banknotes before now. Wow.

The ritual consists of interested humans arriving at a predetermined Wal-Mart at 12 noon on the first Sunday of every month and proceeding to push empty shopping carts slowly and silently through the aisles. Eventually, all of the participants locate one another and form a single-file chain of anti-shoppers which weaves, wanders, and whirls throughout the different departments of the store for about an hour. Overall, it is a soothing and fun experience for the actors, and perhaps a memorable spectacle for shoppers. It is a collective reclamation of space that is otherwise only used for buying and selling. It is a symbolic display of the will to resist the capitalist ideology. And, it is a living, breathing, moving, evolving sculpture.

Avoiding and Recovering from Colds and Flus

Abu-Jamal Death Sentence Thrown Out (AP)

A federal judge on Tuesday threw out the death sentence imposed nearly two decades ago on Mumia Abu-Jamal, revered by supporters worldwide as a crusader against racial injustice but reviled by others as an unrepentant cop-killer.

U.S. District Judge William Yohn cited problems with the jury charge and verdict form in the trial that ended with the former journalist and Black Panther’s first-degree murder conviction in the death of a Philadelphia police officer. The judge denied all of Abu-Jamal’s other claims and refused his request for a new trial.

The judge said Abu-Jamal is entitled to a new sentencing hearing within 180 days. ``Should the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania not have conducted a new sentencing hearing … the Commonwealth shall sentence petitioner to life imprisonment,'' the judge said in his 272-page ruling.

The ruling could be appealed to the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals.

We don't manufacture much of anything; just war. We don't concern ourselves with education; just war. We don't attend to the 40 million Americans without health coverage; just war. We don't focus on the 30 million American children living in poverty; just war. We don't support the arts; just war. Even though a a multitude of human needs were in existence prior to September 11, and have only increased since then, we continue to direct our attention and our resources into what we do best: war. Just war.

originally posted by xowie

Sensi in Hollywood.

originally posted by xowie

Some film-makers in Los Angeles see the current relationship between Hollywood and the White House as a mutual back-scratching function, with President Bush seeking to win over the normally pro-Democratic entertainment community while Hollywood wins brownie points which it may be able to employ later in its relationship with the government.

originally posted by xowie

Say it ain’t so, the Sorting Hat sent me to Slytherin!

Four thousand one hundred one pages on Abbie (Abbott) Hoffman, courtesy the Federal Bureau of Investigation, via newbreed librarian.

That MetaFilter book club people were talking about starting now lives at Yahoo! Groups : MeFiBooks.

WP: The Coldest Warrior by Ted Gup.

originally posted by xowie

I just got an email with the following headers:

From: xz9Q.559fMh2334@msn.com
To: <Undisclosed.Recipients>
Subject: Anything other than white is unacceptible 191943
Date: Fri, 30 Nov 2001 15:55:57 -0800

xrefer: “The web’s reference engine … contains encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri & books of quotations.” Is it any good? (racism quotes, gormless definition)

OJR Features: Will Microads Save Online Content? (Part One)

Saudi clans working with U.S. oil firms may be tied to bin Laden

Two billionaire Saudi families scrutinized by authorities for possible financial ties to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network continue to engage in major oil deals with leading U.S. corporations.

We are targeting these groups that do it all the time. If you are at your house one night and you want to get a free copy of some software, that's not what we are talking about.

The new Google Catalog Search is dope.

In my late teens, I saw "Wild Style." I went to a music store and told the man there I wanted two turntables. And he laughed at me, said "You don't need two, you just need one!"

infoshop.org interviews Katie Sierra via David Grenier.

blogdex social network explorer: randomwalks.com

From Follow Me Here:

Michael Moore’s publisher tells him his forthcoming book Stupid White Men and Other Excuses for the State of the Nation will not be distributed, and the print run will be destroyed, because the content is offensive and he is intellectually dishonest for not saying that the President has done a “good job” in recent months.

Library Juice 4:44

“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement. Remember that the book which bores you when you are twenty or thirty will open doors for you when you are forty or fifty and vice versa. Don’t read a book out of its right time for you."

Doris Lessing

Hello, Switzerland.

originally posted by xowie

What do you get when you mix the best book ever written with the most prolific games designer of the last fifteen years? Lord of the Rings by Reiner Knizia. (...)

I can see the game becoming as popular as Settlers of Catan.

In wartime, people want a cocksure leader, the kind of guy who enjoys sparring with reporters, grins when things appear to go badly and shows occasional glimpses of our national craziness — you never know, he really might just decide to flatten Baghdad. Like Osama bin Laden, Rummy clearly digs the war, and while most of the Bush team walks around wearing permanent expressions of hemorrhoidal despair, he looks like he’s having fun.

originally posted by xowie

Adbusters: America vs. The World

Assignment: List direct American military intervention on other nations' soil from World War II to the present day. Do not include: indirect military involvement such as arms sales, however significant (e.g. Israel); nuclear threats or nuclear testing (e.g. Marshall Islands); establishment of controversial bases or defense systems (e.g. Western Europe, Saudi Arabia); humanitarian missions that did not involve combat; or the geopolitical impacts of military treaty development, acceptance or rejection. Discuss.

Hello, mycroft.pica.army.mil!

Seattle Metaphysical Library

TidBITS Mac newsletter on Digital Photo Goodies.

Infographic: clearing out the caves (CNN).

White-Out: The Outing of Whiteness - The experimental movie is an intriguing mix of extensive one-on-one interviews with whites and Blacks from Africa and the U.S., compelling scenery, and an innovative and unflinching historical perspective. Ms. Bradford has produced an incisive examination of how whites automatically assume their race and culture to be “normal”, all others “abnormal” to varying degrees, and how the absence of whites' examination of their own identity helps keep racism locked into place. She says, “Stepping out of our conditioning as whites and taking an honest look at our whiteness is one of the most important things we can do to end racism."

Although that description suggests that this movie uses Black people to represent all “Others” – excluding Asians, Latinos, and native peoples, as is too often the case when race is discussed – it still sounds like it could be useful for introducing a white audience to their own racism. I’d love to see it.

From “An Exchange on White Guilt” (part of Gregory Jay’s Whiteness Studies site):

Antiracism is not about guilt or blame. You don’t have to be guilty or blameful to receive privileged treatment at the bank, at the store, in the courts, in legislative policy, etc. just because you are “white.” This is not about individuals; this is about structures of privilege.

For two centuries laws and customs in the United States gave “white” people (a word that appeared in countless legal decisions and legislative acts) an unfair advantage over others. “Hard working immigrants” of European descent faced a hard lot, but their relative lot was made easier by the fact that they did not have to compete on a level playing field with nonwhites. The job market and access to education were thus skewed in their favor, just as men did not have to face much competition since women were denied the right to compete for most jobs or for admission to the best schools and colleges.

Again, these are structures of privilege, and they benefit people no matter whether those individuals want this to be the case or not. It doesn’t matter how fair and antiracist you may be, you are not the one they follow in the department store, but you are the one that gets her loan approved at the bank. It’s this structure and legacy of white privilege that’s appalling.

I welcome any conscious effort by European Americans to celebrate their heritage as long as this includes loudly denouncing white supremacy and the myth of the existence of “white” people.

In sum, with this decision, she broke the commercial press's legal monopoly on First Amendment protection, and extended that protection to an online periodical. This is a huge precedent. It applies to Indymedia. It applies to the website of Washington-based independent journalist Jeremy Bigwood, he wrote to me yesterday, because he's been reporting on Bolivia and the Andean drug war, too. It applies to any independent online journalist or website who makes a fair and responsible attempt to publish the facts and opinions on important public issues.

originally posted by xowie

Google has brought a huge usenet archive online, dating back to 1981 – check out the original rec.mag, alt.zines, and alt.etext Kyosaku announcement from November seven, 1994! (Kyosaku?)

Links to free culture (Marcel Mauss, the Free Store, the Situationists, the Internet gift economy, GNU, net.art, mail art, free music, free publishing, etc.) courtesy the Free Words project, via jessamyn.

The Utterly Surreal Test - Result

I am a Collection of Elvis Impersonators. I refine elastic nightmares with habitable abstract umbrellas. My perspective oranges enter forgotten densities of responsible soap. Evil lids of atomic paper eat my incomplete golf balls. Who spices folded robots? The Utterly Surreal Test

Although the world’s best Chinese food is served in Monterey Park, I am not brave enough to eat here. (Vegans read at own risk.)

originally posted by xowie

The most unusual (and visible) aspect of betel chewing is its effect on the salivary glands. You don't just salivate, you pour; and the saliva emerges from your mouth tinted a deep brick red. (...)

Perverse as it may sound, betel-drooling is quite pleasurable indeed. There is an almost orgasmic satisfaction to be found in the experience of saliva-ducts open to full throttle. Delicious above all is the aftermath: when the chew is finished, your mouth is left astonishingly fresh and sweet. You feel uniquely cleansed, drained, and purified.

On the one hand, I would have liked to have gone to DC’s “2nd annual” Zine Fair,“a celebration of diy publishing and radical thought” – which sounds a lot like the old indy rock yard sale, this time with an anarchist bent. I suppose it was a nice way for the city to celebrate my son’s first birthday, in any case.

In this fight for our cherished freedoms, those cherished freedoms should definitely be the first thing to go. Sieg heil, y'all.

Don't count me among those who quake that Mr. Ashcroft is shredding the Constitution. He does respect some rights, after all, like that of illegal immigrants and terrorists to buy guns in the U.S. without fear of government intrusion. And he just doesn't seem clever enough to undo the Bill of Rights, even with the president's backing. You have to have more command of the law than he does to subvert it.

originally posted by xowie

When they moved from a 65% cool computer ad format to an 89% luxury crap ad format, I let my subscription lapse. This means I have to wait a few extra weeks to read things like Wired’s October The Fellowship of the Ring cover story online.

Huge bonuses were paid to Enron insiders two days before the bankruptcy filing. Also, a great response to Bill Lockyer’s tasteless comment about Ken Lay.

originally posted by xowie

IHT.com: Villagers Dying Under U.S. Bombs, Anti-Taliban Forces Say

From Ethel:
What really caused the prisoners to revolt, and what really killed them? Also: It takes money, unimaginable power, and greed unchecked by moral or ethical considerations to make money, as the saying goes. (Featuring your favorite group and mine, the Carlyle Group.)

Font of the Week? Font of a lifetime! Learn about Albertus, create your own sample, and download a truetype version for Windows.

Sen. Thurmond Celebrates 99th Birthday (yahoo/news) looking healthier than ever!

Q: Given the trend just after the attacks to revise popular culture and pull images of the World Trade Center or terrorism out of any entertainment, were you concerned about the content?

FM: [Laughs.] Well, it's on the press.

originally posted by xowie

“A joint initiative of six organizations with exceptional expertise in computer and Internet training in the [global] South,” itrain online is a multi-lingual directory of training materials and tutorials on all aspects of computer, network, and internet technologies.

Danza (jish, boingboing, 0sil8) hasn’t hit Daypop yet. This ought to be interesting.

From Follow Me Here:

From this weblog community vantage point, the outrage about the Dictatorship’s mad, ongoing powergrab under Ashcroft’s influence seems so palpable, but where’s the organized opposition behind the spleen? It may turn out to be one of the greatest, most enduring humiliations in American history – certainly on a par with McCarthyism, if that phrase still makes anyone blush – that reasonable Americans are allowing this to happen with no more than ineffectual spluttering like this. Is it time to write your Congressional representatives? Ha! Time to march on Washington? blockade the Justice Dept? Do the words mass protest, or nonviolent civil disobedience, resonate with anyone anymore?

The Weblog Review has given us a once-over and compared us favorably to MetaFilter, which is pretty cool, though not as cool as it would have been back when… Nevermind. I’m a little surprised that a weblogger reviewing weblogs isn’t familiar with the convention of hooking a perma-link to each post’s date/time info, but I have chosen to suppress the link color and hide the underline, so the point is taken that I will miss out on some direct links as a result. I suppose I could also put a link to the archives higher up, with those nav links at the top of the sidebar. In any case our official rating is a 4 and our reader rating is a 2.75, so you know what to do (scratch your butt, close this window, and go get something to eat)!

Monkeyfist.com unveils a new look (I was going to make some joke involving gloves but what’s the use) which does a great job showcasing some of the very best original content on the Web. My favorite recent piece goes a little like this:

I am homophobic.

I am homophobic (literally, “afraid of non-heterosexuals”) to the extent that I accept the exclusive validity of “traditional” notions of gender, of masculinity or femininity. I assume, as most people do, that everyone around me is heterosexual, unless they make it clear that they aren’t. By making this assumption, I expect a uniform range of behaviors from everyone I encounter. This expectation has everything to do with why life is extremely difficult for those who are homosexual and for those who’s sexual identity lies somewhere in between. Because it takes a considerable amount of work to break out of these expectations, only a very small number of people who feel overwhelmingly that they are homosexual, and simply cannot live normally otherwise, actually “come out of the closet.” The same closet that’s built and maintained by me and by everyone else who assumes and expects heterosexuality of everyone.

Most people of color (and therefore most of the world) are lactose intolerant. White poison from Colorlines and The Food Pyramid Scheme are two interesting articles about racism and the dairy industry. Additionally, NoMilk and NotMilk are informative sites about the untold horrors of milk consumption. It’s time to go vegan again!

originally posted by beXn

“How Gyroscopes Work” from Howstuffworks.com, courtesy The Segway Blog (see flux).

Diary of the first Segway owner. (c/o boing boing)

originally posted by xowie

Darrell, O.J. - let’s roll!

originally posted by xowie

Know your rights. (via Emil Guillermo.)

originally posted by xowie

Yahoo! News Full Coverage-Literary News

Q: I feel an overwhelming need to kill this man in the cave, but the location of the cave is unknown to me, and so it's impossible to find him. He's been allowed to stay in the cave, however, by the fanatical rulers of the country where the cave is, Afghanistan, so I feel an overwhelming need to kill those rulers. As they've moved from place to place, though, I haven't found them, but I've succeeded in finding and killing many young soldiers who guarded them and shepherds who lived near them. Nonetheless, I do not feel any of the expected "closure," and in fact I'm becoming increasingly depressed and am obsessed with nameless fears. Can you help me?

A: Your real problem is simply the way that millions and millions of people around the world feel about you. Who are these people? They share the world with you -- one single world, which works as a unified mechanism. These people are the ones for whom the mechanism's current way of working -- call it the status quo -- offers a life of anguish and servitude. They're well aware that this status quo, which for them is a prison, is for you (or for the privileged among you), on the contrary, so close to a paradise that you will never allow their life to change. These millions of people are in many cases uneducated--to you they seem unsophisticated--and yet they still somehow know that you have played an enormous role in keeping this status quo in place.

Times Cries Eke! Buries Al Gore by Gore Vidal.

originally posted by xowie

Ten Do’s and Don’ts to Raising Healthy Multiracial/Multiethnic Children:

Children are concrete learners - they learn about themselves and the world through real experiences, not words and lectures. In a society so polarized by race and ethnicity, our children must have lots of direct contact with both sides of their family. The easiest way for this to occur is through experiences with both parents.

When two adults cross the racial divide to have a child, they can never go back. Your child represents an in-your-face challenge to racism and the belief of every racial, ethnic and national group that ingroup marriage is somehow normal and better. (…)

It’s difficult for a child to develop prejudicial beliefs or inaccurate information about one side of their heritage if they have positive contacts with both sides all the time. Its easy to develop prejudices when the child is around people from only one of his/her backgrounds. (…)

When you hold and talk to your infant, talk about her pretty skin, beautiful eyes, and curly hair. Tell her how much she looks like her father and mother. Sing songs about a beautiful, brown, curly headed baby. Read books about multiracial children, families of the world, and all aspects of her heritage. Give her mirrors to see herself; when you talk to others affirm her positive multiracial identity. (…)

Don’t teach children that color does not matter. It does! - in this country, and most countries in the world. And color matters not only in the greater society, but within every single racial and ethnic group (Blacks, Hispanics, Natives Americans and Asians). People’s initial reactions to other people are based on physical characteristics - what that person looks like (skin color, hair color and texture, facial features).

Children respond to people who care about them - regardless of their background. It certainly helps if these adults know about multiracial children and how to support their healthy identity development.

Do not entrust your child to adults who do not respect their need for a full identity. And, do not assume minority adults support multiracial identity; many do not.

I constantly hear from young biracial and multiracial adults who do not feel good about themselves, because their parents did not support their mixed identity. The rest of the world does not ignore it!

Children need classmates, neighbors, playmates, etc, who represent both racial groups (or more). If this does not occur, children develop an unrealistic - and overly romantic - view of the part of their heritage that is missing, and then want to discover ‘being black’, ‘being Native American’, ‘being Hispanic’, etc. The problem is they truly don’t know what it means to be one of these minorities, so they become attracted to the stereotypes of the group - music, behaviors, clothes, language, etc. Do not raise a child in a single-race environment - especially if its white.

Our children are minorities, have direct personal connections with the dominant group, and are something new - what many are calling third culture children.

Ninety five percent of our children’s experiences - good and bad - have nothing to do with race and ethnicity. Our children progress through the same developmental stages, learn the same school-related tasks, and have all the same challenges as single-race children.

They just have one more experience: being multiracial or multiethnic.

Mr. Kamen plans to demonstrate today a two-wheeled battery-powered device designed for a single standing rider. Its chief novelty lies in the uncanny effect, produced by a finely tuned gyroscopic balancing mechanism, of intuiting where its rider wants to go -- and going there.

“It is Bobby Fischer without a shadow of a doubt.”

originally posted by xowie

CD buyers beware – record companies are distributing discs which are broken in a number of ways: they won’t play on many CD players including most computers and DVD players and they won’t allow songs to be converted to mp3 format. As usual, if you buy one from a store, you’re stuck with it (exchanges only, no returns). So bookmark Fat Chuck’s corrupt CDs list and print it out before you go shopping. Considering that the only music worth listening to since 1991’s Nevermind has come out first on vinyl, this shouldn’t really be a problem.

"In India, there are three to four people sharing beds in hospitals, and two or three more on the floor, waiting for their shift. This is not an old epidemic. It is just starting. In 20 years, we could be talking about a billion cases of AIDS.''

originally posted by xowie

David Furnish, Johnny Bergius and Janet Street-Porter are planning to summit Kilimanjaro today to benefit The Elton John AIDS Foundation.

originally posted by xowie

MetaFilter will be a definitive spot today. If you miss what it was or wonder what it could be, stop by. Which other weblogs are doing a good job with today’s Link and Think observance of World AIDS Day? Yours?

“Almost 10,000 people will die today from AIDS," says Eric Sawyer, founding member of ACT UP NY. (AIDs Coalition to Unleash Power is "a diverse, non-partisan group of individuals united in anger and committed to direct action to end the AIDS crisis.")

Five cases of plagiarism involving George Harrison (but not all of them his fault).

originally posted by xowie

The great trouble with the Negro in the South is that all presumptions are against him. A white man has but to blacken his face and commit a crime to have some Negro lynched in his stead.

An abandoned woman has only to start a cry, true or false, that she has been insulted by a black man, to have him arrested and summarily murdered by the mob.

Great song.

originally posted by xowie

Bonghit sanctuary.

originally posted by xowie

CounterPunch: We Are the War Criminals Now by Robt. Fisk, and Suffer Palestine’s Children by Sunil K. Sharma.

originally posted by xowie

Industry 2, Free Speech 0.

originally posted by xowie

Over all, more than 1,200 people have been detained as part of the sweeping investigation, including men traveling the country with large amounts of cash and box cutters, and those who sought information on crop-dusters and flying lessons on large jets. But a senior law enforcement official said for the first time last week that just 10 to 15 of the detainees are suspected as Al Qaeda sympathizers, and that the government has yet to find evidence indicating that any of them had knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks or acted as accomplices.

originally posted by xowie

It has come to be assumed in much of the Muslim world that to be a proponent of women's rights is to be pro-Western. This enmeshing of gender and geopolitics has robbed Muslim women of their ability to develop a discourse on their rights independent of a cultural debate between the Western and Muslim worlds.

The God of Small Things Study Guide

Baptists urged to pray for Muslim conversions during Ramadan.

“It’s a free country,” said Ibrahim Hooper, communications director of the Council on Islamic-American Relations. “If he wants to have Christians fast and pray, we’re hardly in a position to tell people not to."

originally posted by xowie

An Alternate Reality (nytimes.com)

Most political reporting about the stimulus debate describes it as a conflict of ideologies. But ideology has nothing to do with it. No economic doctrine I’m aware of, right or left, says that an $800 million lump-sum transfer to General Motors will lead to more investment when the company is already sitting on $8 billion in cash.

Okay, so let's have that national ID card. Or, better, a national ID tattoo. Or, better yet, how about an identifying microchip embedded into every American's ear? I'm sure Oracle's Larry Ellison could devise a tiny chip for that purpose, one that could easily be read by an electronic scanner.

originally posted by xowie

Eliminate terrorism? All you need is love.

originally posted by xowie

Naughty children to be registered as potential criminals (news.telegraph.co.uk) - “[UK] police are to set up a secret database of children as young as three who they fear might grow up to become criminals.”

Remember the little rush of pleasure the first time your brain was forced to question itself by the tessellations, optical deceptions and serene beauty of M.C. Escher? Relive that sense of wonder with a few of his artistic heirs: Kelly Houle and István Orosz specialize in "catoptric anamorphosis" (the art of distorting an image such that you need a mirror to correct it). Their visions include the unexpected, poetic, and flat-out impossible.
to Art by cricket

Should I set up a randomWalks mailing list?

Let our position be absolutely clear: An attempt by any outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.

The Secret Service in Durham, NC are investigating a poster (critical of Bush’s Texas executions) on a teenager’s wall, according to the Independent Weekly.

Wild WP joint on Freemasonry.

originally posted by xowie

At her best, which was often, Kael was so brilliantly persuasive on her own terms that she could seem right — right for Pauline Kael — even when wrong by your own standards or, indeed, nearly everyone else's.

originally posted by xowie

Father Mychal Judge, The Firemen’s Friar.

originally posted by xowie

Stamp Backlash Worries Muslims (washingtonpost.com) - Xenophobic philatelists eschew the recently introduced Eid Mubarak postal stamp.

Playing With Fire, for Pesos

Except for the diesel fuel that drips down his chin, the jug of fuel he totes around and the wand of fire he brandishes, Sanchez acts much of the day like a friendly traffic officer, waving pedestrians across his corner of Insurgentes Avenue and Thomas Edison. Although a few passersby hesitate before stepping into the crosswalk where Sanchez is preparing his act, most walk right by without a second glance. He’s far from the only fire-eater in town.

sprawling over four acres north of Cincinnati, Jungle Jim’s is the endpoint of a global network of farmers, suppliers, producers and distributors. Each day, the gates of its loading docks roll open to take in a universe far beyond La Choy and Old El Paso – 110,000 products, fresh and canned, boxed and frozen, shipped in from all over.

“What are we having for dinner?”

“I don’t have anything for you on that at this point in time."

“Well, didn’t you go to the store?"

“I’m not going to discuss tactics, techniques or procedures."

“Well, did you, like, go to the store or not?"

“We have achieved our objectives."

“Did you get the frozen pizza?"

“I’m not going to tell you what those objectives are.”

When Laura Bush delivers her terse radio address on Saturday, November 17, she says nothing of deposed kings or the place of women among Afghanistan’s new government. She does not mention the resolution submitted to Congress by New York Democrat Louise Slaughter and Florida Republican Ileana Ros-Lehtinen urging that women be leaders in any new government. She does not mention RAWA, and she does not promise the women of Afghanistan that the Northern Alliance will not be permitted to oppress them. She speaks as though women’s liberation is a fait accompli.

originally posted by xowie

America’s hyperreal war on terrorism by Anis Shivani

The best way to understand “America’s new war” is as a convenient legitimizing rubric to extend American economic and military power abroad, and to complete the repressive domestic agenda already set in motion during the post-cold war years in the guise of the “war on drugs.”

In both instances, corporate globalization’s increasingly intolerant attitude toward dissent of any kind is implicated. This is not so much a war against “terrorism,” but a pre-emptive strike against domestic and international opposition to the hegemony of transnational capital in the early years of the twenty-first century. (…)

This is the postmodern form of repression, where terror-originating from the state is completely unlocalized, and it penetrates to the very core of the potential dissenter’s heart and mind, and allows no possible refuge from the panoptical sights of the police state. (…)

In effect, the anti-terrorism legislation of 2001 is analogous to Hitler’s 1933 Enabling Act, converting the hithertofore soft American totalitarian state into a hard one, making explicit by writ of law what was already occurring in terms of supression of free speech, dissent against the corporate global order, and massive inequalities in access to power and justice. The usurpation of the voters' will in the 2000 election was a test-run: since this judicial coup engendered no noticeable dissent among the intelligentsia, press, and common people, the stage was set for an all-out assault on the remaining liberties of the people. (…)

Racial profiling of Arab and Muslim Americans has been endorsed by even liberal Senators. Anti-globalization activists wonder if their shop has been closed for good. The distinctive element of this wave of repression is that it is accompanied by soft talk. The president and his surrogates will continue to make the correct multicultural noises about acceptance of difference, even advocacy of a Palestinian state should that be necessary to buy the short-term allegiance of recalcitrant Muslim states, but the words will be as hollow as the administration’s “compassionate conservative” ideology. As more than $2 trillion was handed out to the richest Americans in a “tax cut” designed to starve the federal government of resources for public spending, the compassionate part of this policy relied on the armies of compassion to rally ordinary people to public service and on so-called faith-based initiatives to handle the welfare discards. (…)

The war on terrorism signifies not a return to multilateralism, as some have suggested, but an escalation of the unilateralist position already taken by conservatives during the first eight months of this administration. “You’re either with us or against us.” Is that multilateralism? The US is only seeking a thin cover for its avowed military and economic goals (including assertion of hegemony in the key, oil-rich Central Asian region), but it is not multilateralism by any means.

The recount report from the national media consortium, using data painstakingly gathered by the National Opinion Research Center (NORC), at a cost of almost a million dollars, was finally released. The data provide strong support for reform, as the data demonstrate (among many other things) that:

• our current voting system has class, racial, and disability biases;
• punch card balloting must be eliminated;
• ’second-chance’ technology, which cuts down on overvotes, needs to be available at the precinct level, everywhere;
• provisional voting should be a universal right;
• ballot design should be taken out of the hands of local officials, who may be partisan, incompetent, or just bad designers;
• hand recounts are justified, to ascertain the will of the people;
• voting rights should be restored to felons who have served their time;
• poll workers need (and deserve!) more training; and
• voter education should be a serious and well-funded public obligation.

originally posted by xowie

• Thanks to evil-doers, Eleanor Smeal is hangin' at the White House.
• Feminist Majority Foundation just bought Ms. magazine.
• Interview with Mandy Carter.

originally posted by xowie

The trouble with Harry.

originally posted by xowie

Epic Macy Gray interview.

originally posted by xowie

originally posted by xowie

Leonid viewing info

From the AP:

Astronomers expect this year's Leonid meteor shower to peak during a half-hour period around 5 a.m. EST on Sunday, when as many as 70 meteors a minute could streak across the sky. If the weather is clear, the shower should be visible from all North American locations.

To best view the shower, head to a dark location far from city lights. The meteors should be visible across the sky, appearing to radiate from the east, in the direction of the constellation Leo that gives the shower its name.

Only a lawn chair, warm clothes and the naked eye are required. Binoculars or telescopes are not necessary.

Many astronomy clubs and observatories plan to hold meteor shower-gazing parties.

The most famous depiction of the 1833 leonids was actually produced in 1889 for Bible Readings for the Home Circle.

During the three hours of its continuance, the day of judgment was believed to be only waiting for sunrise, and, long after the shower had ceased, the morbid and superstitious still were impressed with the idea that the final day was at least only a week ahead. Impromptu meetings for prayer were held in many places, and many other scenes of religious devotion, or terror, or abandonment of worldly affairs, transpired, under the influence of fear occasioned by so sudden and awful a display.

Over the centuries, the Leonids have been unpredictable. Even though the Earth passes through the comet's orbit every year, the intensity of the shower depends on the density of the dust stream at that point.

Decades can pass and the Leonids can be anemic, scientists say. Some years, though, most recently in 1966, the shower can be extraordinary, Chester said. Tomorrow's should be, too.

"This is the best shot you're going to have," he said. "If you don't do it now, you're never going to get the opportunity in your lifetime again."

It isn't enough for your heart to break, because everybody's heart is broken now.

Judith’s hotlist for the week.

originally posted by xowie

‘Your job is to say, ‘Fuck you, God! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!’ Because nobody else is going to say it. Our politicians aren’t going to say it. Nobody but the writer is going to say it. There’s time in history when it’s time to praise God, but now is not the time. Now is the time for us to say, ‘Fuck you! I don’t care who your daddy was. Fuck you!’ And get back to our job of writing.’

originally posted by xowie

It says here they are going to bury me in private. Babbs says there's been thousands of e-mails and he wants me to thank you all for writing. Meanwhile, I've still lots of forms to fill out and they're looking for a bigger halo but durned if I'm going to play that harp. I'm holding out for the thunder machine. See you around. — Kesey

I’m feeling an incredible affinity for this job lately -- three day work week, ambling around the city, looking at people in shop windows, dogs, trees, going into everyone’s apartments and seeing how they live, handling thick piles of cash, feeling like a general bad ass.

The kids over at MetaFilter are agitating to start a book club. I’ll be surprised if it happens on mefi proper, as that doesn’t seem to be the way creator Matt Haughey wants to go with mefi, but I’ll be equally surprised if it doesn’t happen somewhere. Mefi has already spun off several projects and communities, and I think there are many more waiting to be born.

If you’re coming from MetaFilter, welcome and make yourself at home. If you want to join in the discussion just email us.

Niem has constructed an ACME Novelty Toy Gallery, assembling the intricate paper designs included in Chris Ware’s ACME books and taking copious loving pictures. This is wonderful.

I’m going to buy some TextAd impressions at MetaFilter, and I need help coming up with a short (50 characters or less) description of randomWalks. Any ideas?

Krazy Kat Archive – “George Herriman’s Krazy Kat (1911), a comic drama of love and rejection in the manner of a surreal commedia dell’arte, proved a hit with intellectuals because of its wit and advanced style.” Via The Blacklist.

A visit to the Brautigan Library by Jessamyn West.

The Working Writer by Susan Wiggs

When I was in graduate school I took a course from B.F. Skinner, the famous behavior scientist, who taught us the importance of PRDs in self-motivation. He suggested rewarding increments of work with single kernels of popcorn. The true artist substitutes M&Ms for popcorn because really, how motivating is dry popcorn, anyway?

A visit to the Brautigan Library by Jessamyn West.

A recent GeekLog post leads to some informative comparisons of slash-style website systems.

On the public radio tip, two from The New York Times: NPR’s Story Project Proves Truth Is Stranger, Public Radio’s Private Guru.

Tom leaves three days later, drained from lack of sleep and fried from staring at his monitor. With his jacket empty of weed, another workday stares him in the face. It's been a weekend muffled in sensory white noise, a visit to a cocoon of headphones, pixels and dope, and he'll do it again next Friday.

“This weekend I had a hole drilled through my skull."

Move over nedlog – German schoolgirl Annika Irmler has the world’s longest tongue, as verified by the Guinness Book people. Anagrams are left as an exercise for the reader.

Adding and Subtracting – this has got to be a hoax.

A plane has crashed in Queens, NY. From what I can gather, it crashed shortly after taking off from JFK. No one knows why it happened so don’t freak out too badly. CNN.com is crushed but you can read the news at robots.cnn.com. The relevant story is here, and (as usual) Metafilter has scooped the media and you can best follow the developing story in this thread. Also if you’re stuck in an office and away from a TV like myself, you might want to download Apple’s Quicktime 5 and watch the BBC World News Quicktime stream.
Yahoo full coverage

I worked last night, all night. The immense devastation, smoking and steaming in the cool air, illuminated by artificial light against the black sky appeared more eerie than it had been the in the light of day. From most vantage points, beams of light shining up into the sky, from huge self contained light plants, illuminated the rubble piles from behind making the already surreal mountains of destruction appear more imposing while at the same time strangely beautiful. The beauty that quickly vanishes as you get closer and watch the awesome and dangerous work going on.

French Reporter Tells of Days Held in Jail by the Taliban (nytimes)

Mr. Peyrard, who speaks some Pashto but was detained with two Pakistani journalists who translated for him, said that the younger guards liked to practice their English with him, repeating: “This is a jail. This is a cell. This is a mouse.” When the American planes came over, they would shout: “This is Mister Bush.” At one point, when the bombardments slowed they shouted “This is Mister Bush droopy."

DC’s own Politics and Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse presents an annotated reading list titled Books For Understanding Old and New Worlds.

Ken Kesey is in critical condition recovering from surgery for a tumor on his liver. (Who’s Ken Kesey?) U: He has passed away.

In honor of the heroes at “ground zero," let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!
Let’s roll!

"Parties in Brooklyn are a bit more chill and laid-back, less thumb-up-their-ass than Manhattan," says Ingram, whose Sessions party is only two months old. "People are less concerned about what you're wearing and more concerned about having a good time. And people dance in Brooklyn!"

originally posted by xowie

Another great hotlist from silver surfer Judith Lewis.

originally posted by xowie

DC’s own Politics and Prose Bookstore and Coffeehouse presents an annotated reading list titled Books For Understanding Old and New Worlds.

Daypop: body bags

The new L.A. novel is supposed to be rough, tough and gritty. Rachel Resnick’s Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick is all of that, and I enjoyed it immensely, although maybe that’s because half the book is about one of my favorite ex-girlfriends.

Anastasia curls her rubber-flex vavoom body up on a restaurant booth seat, her black bra poking through a stained and tattered black vest that’s missing a button, babbling lovely as a backwoods brook released from the fetters of a makeshift dam, boldly racing from Kant to cryogenics to Lorena Bobbit’s trial, all the images sparkling like skybound drops of water shining with exuberant randomness and rapture, and as she rambles she doodles on a tablecloth, a balloon-bursting head, tiny dot eyes and mouth. She then fills in the frame of the skull with a million stars. “This is my head,” she says.

originally posted by xowie

There are major disputes - about agricultural subsidies and dumping, about tariffs and the patenting of life forms. The most contentious issue is drug patents. India, Brazil, Thailand and a coalition of African countries want clear language stating that patents can be overridden to protect public health. The US and Canada are not just resisting - they are resisting even as their own delegates head for Qatar popping discount Cipros, muscled out of Bayer using exactly the kind of pressure tactics they are calling unfair trade practices.

originally posted by xowie

I was googling “emergence” (see the first chapter of Emergence by Steven Johnson) but before I could get anywhere I got stuck watching the glider gun. I love the glider gun!

From wood s lot:
Waking Up In Time by Peter Russell
A Speech Without the Speaker by Jaggi Singh
Anarchism and the Anti-Globalization Movement by Barbara Epstein

From Follow Me Here:
Torture Seeps Into Discussion by News Media (The New York Times)
A peek at Al-Qaeda’s Encyclopedia of Jihad from The Sunday Times
FDA approves Ecstasy therapy tests

While firemen and police were racing into the fires of hell in downtown New York, and now, while our soldiers and airmen and Marines are putting their lives on the line in Afghanistan, the Administration and its Congressional allies are allowing multinational companies to make their most concerted effort in twenty years to roll back clean-air measures, exploit public lands and stuff the pockets of their executives and shareholders with undeserved cash. Against such crass exploitation, unequaled since the Teapot Dome scandal, it is every patriot's duty to join the loyal opposition. Even in war, politics is about who gets what and who doesn't. If the mercenaries and the politicians-for-rent in Washington try to exploit the emergency and America's good faith to grab what they wouldn't get through open debate in peacetime, the disloyalty will not be in our dissent but in our subservience. The greatest sedition would be our silence.

Islam — The Power of Women (The Globalist)

One key cause for the inability of Islamic countries to compete economically is that from Morocco to Iran, women do not go to work. The most extreme case is of course Afghanistan. There, we see the tragedy of highly trained women — if they haven’t already fled the Taliban’s harsh regime — being forced to sit at home, even when the country desperately needs their skills.

Women doctors cannot heal sick patients, women engineers cannot design repairs on buildings or roads, and women managers cannot help bring order from the country’s chaos — all because of their gender.

I'm the boss?

New Observations Online issue 125: Comics via Media Backlog.

When of tired of playing with Diamonds, Spades, Hearts and Clubs try Joints, Leafs, Bongs and Buds.

originally posted by xowie

There is more than one way to respond to the horror of Sept. 11. And there is more than one kind of patriotism. We forget this. You do not have to rally around Bush and tolerate Cheney's chthonic creepiness and wave a frantic flag and believe every scripted half-truth that drizzles out of the Pentagon, applaud the nonstop attacks on an already demolished nation. Pro-America does not mean pro-war.

"The mission was laid on like General Motors coming to the Afghan war, like we did in Vietnam," Mr Hersh said. At the same time, a company of rangers parachuted onto a Kandahar airfield in an operation portrayed the next day in dramatic TV footage. But in his article, Mr Hersh said that before the drop, an army pathfinder team had checked that the airfield was free of Taliban forces. The raid was for the benefit of the cameras.

originally posted by xowie

"We felt horrible when we learned that the Red Cross … warehouse had been struck," White House chief of staff Andrew Card told Meet the Press. So horrible that at 8 o'clock on the evening of Oct. 25, two more Hornets dropped two 2,000 lb. guided weapons on the warehouses. The next morning a B-52 bomber delivered three more 2,000 lb. smart bombs. A third Hornet dropped another bomb that missed the warehouses and hit a residential area 700 feet to the south.

originally posted by xowie

We should be putting the current international developments in context rather than just having wrestling matches between colourful characters. I've already started writing X-Men as a pacifist comic.

Jerry Kindall says:

According to the latest Ansible, when Isaac Asimov’s Foundation was published in Arabic, the title was translated as… “Al-Qaeda.” Apparently Asimov’s future history is as popular among Arabs as it is among English speakers, and one “Middle East expert” thinks it might well be where bin Laden’s terrorist organization got its name. China Miéville notes that the term has “no political precedent” in the Arabic world and says: “Unlikely as it sounds, this is the only theory anyone can come up with."</blockquote

The Almost Complete Codes List (AVS TiVo Forum) features new codes and easter eggs for the latest TiVo software update.

Am I a Terrorist or a Member of Al-Qaeda or a Taliban Fighter or Not?

If you like explodingdog, you will probably like the book. Please buy one so I can make some of my money back.

So you want to build your own MacQuarium?

originally posted by xowie

NYTM: How ‘The Simpsons’ survives.

originally posted by xowie

Random-Abstract.com - Formerly known as Totally-Useless.com shares this list of domains.

Random dotcoms using whois off of networksolutions
I am sure I missed a whole bunch of them.
Random Drivel.com
Random Whim.com
Random Walks.com
Random Effect.com
Random Babe.com
Random Abandon.com
Random Element.com
Random Games.com
Random Ideas.com
Random Joke.com
Random Penguin.com
Random Oila.com
Random Ridge.com
Random Scribbles.com
Random Soft.com
Random Surf.org
Random Task.com
Random Thought.com
Random Unity.com
Random Violence.com

via MeFi: A picture of weblogs. Cool! randomWalks is represented.

originally posted by xowie

In words unusual for a defense lawyer, Wixted said the case was not about whether the rabbi was a "miserable little piece of dung as a human being" but whether there was sufficient evidence to convict him of soliciting his wife's killing.

originally posted by xowie

TV News Killing Our Precious Verbs (washingtonpost.com)

Pentagon: Afghan village a ‘legitimate target’ (CNN.com) Following up on an earlier story, I guess the US position on bombing innocent people is crystal clear now, if it hadn’t been before:

We hit what we wanted to hit… The people there are dead because we wanted them dead.

B-52s, the crude weapon of the frustrated bully, should be banished to the scrapyard. This campaign, as ministers and their defence advisers are finally admitting, has shown up the poverty not only of military thinking but of the very utility of weapons of war.

The bombing is sending a powerful unintended message to Muslims everywhere that bin Laden is telling the truth when he says that America is at war with Islam. If the bombing campaign carries on into Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, Al Qaeda's hand will be strengthened even more.

originally posted by xowie

The Terrorist Attack on America: an astrological perspective, by Liz Greene.

NYC wants to build a giant dome (last 2 paragraphs) over the WTC site so work can continue through the winter.

You can now watch all of Pixar’s (Steve Jobs' other company) short films at the Pixar website via Apple’s Quicktime. The server seems to be slashdotted so be sure to check back if you can’t get through – this is some witty and beautiful computer animation.

Sisters and brothers should deliver their cash holdings, especially the coin collections in socks, pots and bottles, as well as amounts in secret funds, to the bookkeeper.

"There were no Taliban in the village," said Ahmed, a mechanic who said he is about 20 years old. "There were no tanks or Taliban cars. They just killed innocent people. . . . The plane saw us, and they opened fire. We don't understand why they did that."

originally posted by xowie

A year ago I posted about joining a CSA (community supported agriculture) program. If I were as ambitious and meticulous as Rebecca Blood, I’d give you a careful analysis of whether joining such a program was worthwhile economically, with some consideration of the organic and local nature of the produce thrown in.

Being neither, I’m happy to report that we had a lot of fun getting fresh vegetables every week. We were unfamiliar with cooking (if not eating) some of the vegetables, which inspired us to try a bunch of new recipes – exactly as I’d hoped when we signed up. I especially enjoyed the salad mix we got in early spring and summer and again in the last couple of weeks of the program in fall. Who knew arugula was the most delicious green on earth, and why didn’t anyone tell me?

In the middle of the season they hooked up with a nearby orchard to offer a fruit share – literally the day after I had been thinking of inquiring whether they had considered such a thing(!) – and the locally grown apples were abundant (~dozen/week), crisp, and sweet.

I was a bit surprised we didn’t get more tomatoes and corn, though I understand (thanks to the rad newsletter) that predatory herbivores were a problem this year. We also split a two-person share among my wife, father, and brother, so there you go. In any case we will surely participate again next year.

Skyscrapers are no longer being designed; no one wants to live in them... Buildings will now be more sober, serving the people who live in them. Donald Trump made a big thing of inaugurating his Trump Tower but now he keeps a parachute in his office.

Ha’aretz: U.S. papers: FBI hunting suspected terrorists with Israeli passports. I saw a wire story in which US authorities were officially denying these reports yesterday, but today I wonder: could this be related to the “heightened state of alert” the FBI requested on Monday?

SFBG: Goth is dead. Long live Goth.

originally posted by xowie

"It’s not like I had this un-ambiguous thing of ‘Oh my god, we must stop bombing and turn it over to the World Court.’ So these were more just personal comics about how I’d been feeling about the whole situation. And I was drinking heavily when I made them, frankly. I’ve gone through a lot of Jim Beam in the evenings, because I’ve been working whole days in a midtown Manhattan office, listening to sirens and re-booting cnn.com, which is like the worst thing you can do to yourself psychologically."

originally posted by xowie

Don't worry, at first glance these things might look baffling and complex, but they'll quickly become second nature to you once you actually start cleaning up after your disgusting messy self you utter, utter filthy bastard.

originally posted by xowie

I'm not justifying what happened on Sept. 11, but it's clear that when Bush said if you're not with us, you're with the terrorist -- when he said he wanted the man dead or alive -- he was calling out the posse, and black people know the posse. They come by and get you in the middle of the night and kill you without due process.

Beetle Bailey? At The World Trade Center? How weird is this?

There are 11 President Bushes, three Mayor Rudolph W. Giulianis and one National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

originally posted by xowie

Apparently, someone asked Raymond Chandler once what he thought of Hollywood ruining all of his books. And he took them into his study and pointed up to the shelf where they all were, and he said, "Look, they're there. They're fine. They're okay."

Realtime Javascript Editor: “Type your code on the left and see the output immediately on the right.” Cool!

My wife wants to read some ghost stories, so here is the Shadowlands true ghost stories site (recommended on MetaFilter) and many more sites at open directory: ghost stories.

From World New York:

US broadcasts to Afghanistan available at 8700 kHz, shortwave. Or, listen on the Internet by tuning a web-controlled shortwave radio to that frequency.

In Jalalabad, the Sultanpur Mosque was hit by a bomb during prayers, with 17 people caught inside. Neighbors rushed into the rubble to help pull out the injured, but as the rescue effort got under way, another bomb fell, killing at least 120 people. In the village of Darunta near Jalalabad, a US bomb fell on another mosque. Two people were killed and dozens--perhaps as many as 150 people--were injured. Many of those injured are languishing without medical care in the Sehat-e-Ama hospital in Jalalabad, which lacks resources to treat the wounded.

originally posted by xowie

the hampshire historical society

"They don't want you to hear these other voices out there," McKinney said at a public forum in Clarkston. "Help me come up with a strategy to get through this white noise that's been put out 24 hours a day."

originally posted by xowie

There are no mobile phone transcripts of Afghan civilians bidding farewell to their loved ones as the cluster bombs rain down around them, no immediate images of the impact of the wayward missiles on unlucky suburbs. Unlike those who perished in the World Trade Centre, the dead in Afghanistan do not have names, only numbers. And, given the limited access to the area, even those are questionable.

originally posted by xowie

My new weblog has already been hacked! (Thanks adam.)

originally posted by xowie

retroCRUSH presents the worst pre-fab Halloween costumes ever.

Many Blacks Have Doubts. Here’s Why (washingtonpost.com)

A Smarter Web (MIT Technology Review) in which Mark Frauenfelder (BoingBoing) explains the semantic web – I’m looking forward to reading this.

Nowar Collective: Poisoning the Well by Rahul Mahajan

Pilgrimage to a Holy Place (washingtonpost.com)

On the northern perimeter of the site, at Chambers and West streets, an elevated walkway over West offers the most panoramic view. From here, the huge wasteland looks like the handiwork of a stupendous meteor.

If only it had been. People could call it an act of God. There would be no one to blame.

Toxic chemicals have been detected at levels exceeding federal safety standards in the soil and air around the still-burning rubble of the World Trade Center, according to documents compiled by the Environmental Protection Agency.

In addition to the dioxins, PCBs, benzene, lead and chromium found at the site, the EPA data released Friday showing low levels of contaminants had been found in the water and sediment of the Hudson River.

The Bomb With A Loaded Message (washingtonpost.com)

“Is taking the picture down the right response?” asks Cathy Renna, GLAAD’s New York spokeswoman. “I actually want the picture to run, but with context. It gets to something we need to discuss, which is that it’s okay to be in the Navy and to write ‘fag’ on a bomb and drop it on a terrorist. That word is still okay with some people, and these are the kinds of things you might see if you happened to be gay and were serving in the military. It exemplifies every single reason why our work is as relevant as it was on September 10."

Of Microbes and Mock Attacks: Years Ago, The Military Sprayed Germs on U.S. Cities

Between Sept. 20 and Sept. 27 of 1950, a Navy mine-laying vessel cruised the San Francisco coast, spraying an aerosol cocktail of Serratia and Bacillus microbes – all believed to be safe – over the famously foggy city from giant hoses on deck, according to declassified Army reports. According to lawyers who have reviewed the reports, researchers added fluorescent particles of zinc-cadmium-sulfide to better measure the impact. Based on results from monitoring equipment at 43 locations around the city, the Army determined that San Francisco had received enough of a dose for nearly all of the city’s 800,000 residents to inhale at least 5,000 of the particles.

Two weeks after the spraying, on Oct. 11, 1950, Mr. Nevin checked in to the Stanford Hospital in San Francisco with fever and other symptoms. Ten other men and women checked in to the same hospital – which has since been relocated to Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. – with similar complaints. Doctors noticed that all 11 had the same malady: a pneumonia caused by exposure to bacteria believed to be Serratia marcescens. Mr. Nevin died three weeks later. The others recovered. Doctors were so surprised by the outbreak that they reported it in a medical journal, oblivious at the time to the secret germ test.

Thoughts in the Presence of Fear by Wendell Berry.

originally posted by xowie

Frank Rich, How to lose a war.

originally posted by xowie

"He's one of the greatest architects in the world, and you'd expect him to be more enlightened. But then you expected more from Leni Riefenstahl."

originally posted by xowie

Eight white men discuss the future of technology.

Lynda Barry: the deep #1-ness of life obscured.

Eye witness accounts of the US strikes on Kabul courtesy RAWA.

In fact there was a previous terrorist attack on Congress, in 1954, and it was led by a woman. Puerto Rican nationalist Lolita Lebrón organized a machine gun ambush from the House gallery which wounded five members of Congress. (A few months ago, at age 81, Lebrón was sentenced to 60 days in jail for trespassing at Vieques.) The story is, sadly, familiar:

Because of a desperation which was superhuman, three or four island patriots led by Lolita Lebrón took the road from New York to Washington. They made the trip by bus, because it was cheaper. The U.N. officials who failed to read Lolita Lebrón's poster [This reference by Jose de Vasconcelos is of a picture that appeared of Lolita Lebrón in the N.Y. Times with a picket sign reading "We demand the complete independence of Puerto Rico." (1953)] travel high above in jet planes; they could not discern the humble caravan headed by Lolita Lebrón. The island girl, like her comrades, bought only a one way ticket partly for the economy, no doubt, but also because they realized that they were on a trip from which there was no return.

originally posted by xowie

The Greatest has become our mute, iconic, bloated Buddha. The man with the fastest hands and legs in sports now moves as slowly as though he were under water. The wittiest athlete now whispers inaudibly. His body is ravaged by Parkinson's, a disease that is degenerative and will never get better. Watching Ali on a dais being lovingly fed by his wife, Lonnie, hurts my heart and makes me question my own fandom, my own complicity in his debilitation. Seeing a tape of his epic fight with Joe Frazier in Manila has become a bittersweet experience for me. While it was happening in 1975, I was drenched with sweat, hoarse from screaming and emotionally spent from the ebb-and-flow drama. But today, seeing the aftereffects on both men has made the greatest fight I ever saw no longer such a powerful argument for the sport it once exalted.

originally posted by xowie

I toy with the notion of brandishing my tiny sword in the aisle long enough to make a quick statement against our squandering of natural resources in guzzling SUVs, or the disruption of whale habitats with naval sonar exercises. I fantasize about shouting ‘STOP THE BOMBING!’ at the top of my lungs against a backdrop that would secure me a spot on the nightly news. I wonder if I’d do jail time, or whether the other passengers would kill me first.

originally posted by xowie

First check out the Signage then check out the rest of this artist’s great site – perhaps starting with the about page. Thanks, riley dog.

Owen Briggs' marvelous Box Lessons are helping me fix a cross-platform layout problem that has been bothering me for months. The exact bug was identified and solved with help from glish’s CSS hacks and, ultimately, Tantek Celik’s box model hack. (Add a link to CSS resources at the Web Standards Project and you now have access to the sum of all human knowledge on the CSS box model.) So I think I’ve finally solved the issue with the sidebar taking on various widths between IE5/Mac and the IEs on Windows, causing that gutter over there to grow and shrink. Unfortunately, there’s been this stupid horizontal scroll bar appearing under IE5/Mac lately – and come to think of it, I’m afraid I might be introducing it to Windows with this latest solution. In any case, if you are seeing something unusual (or … usual) and want to comment on the layout, please [reply].

“Face it. They’re the team we all wish we had in Boston.” (The Globe’s most popular story of the week.)

originally posted by xowie

Nuclear Power & Terrorism at The Nation. (Now that you have your Cipro, don’t you think it’s time to pick up some potassium iodide?)

originally posted by xowie

Larry (‘Superfly’) Ellison getting his wings clipped, hopefully.

originally posted by xowie

So there's a serious attempt to stifle debate. But, of course, God bless the Net. I keep getting more articles of various dissenting opinions e-mailed to me; naturally, some of them are crazy and some I don't agree with at all. But you can't shut everyone up. The big media have been very intimidated, but not the Web.

originally posted by xowie

Now try to see yourself leaping to your feet and commanding the rest of the passengers, "I am taking control of this plane! Defy me and you will regret it!" First, you will feel like an idiot. Second, you are unarmed, and the most vulnerable parts of your anatomy have never been more inviting, or accessible, targets.

originally posted by xowie

UK potheads celebrate reclassification.

originally posted by xowie

Check out Realwar model figures and then browse the rest of the inflammatory propaganda tucked away here.

Howard Kurtz, How to botch a crisis.

originally posted by xowie

Apple release iPod – updated live

To have your whole music library with you at all times is a quantum leap when it comes to music. And iPod fits in your pocket. Never before possible.” 3 breakthroughs in iPod: Ultra-portable. Ultra-thin hard drive: 1.8 inch hard drive is .2 inches thick. 5 Gigabytes: 1000 songs at 160K bit rate[!]

Displaying Photographs on the Web

My purpose here is to give examples of and make suggestions for various presentation options we have when displaying our photographs on web pages. Why bother? Because we don’t mount plain photographs directly to our walls, so why place plain photographs alone on our web pages? A gallery or museum will take care in their choice of framing and placement of photographs within a space, don’t our online exhibits deserve the same attention? The careful choice of a frame and background color serves to visually seperate the image from the surroundings, drawing the eye toward the photograph without distracting the viewer.

One last rumor to drive you mad with desire before you even know what exactly you lust for: SpyMac.com (nope, never heard of them either) predicts the “iWalk,” a combo PDA and MP3 player with handwriting recognition and Airport network access.

Pravda: “Old women sell venereal diseases”.

originally posted by xowie

Best A List Apart ever: “Double Typographic Issue For Your Pleasure.”

The Mac Observer Interview With Online Comics Pioneer Scott McCloud On Comics, His Mac, & Windows

• AP: Mexican songs chronicle attacks.
• LAT: guitar hunting in Mexico.
• DIY sugar skulls.

originally posted by xowie

The Ultimate Guide to Shooting Rubber Bands is illustrated and quite comprehensive. Also, Cards as Weapons.

While I’m looking for info on its origin, you might want to read an article called the “real” deal about nuclear, bio, and chem attacks.

Before BSE surfaced, no one had ever accurately assessed just how many uses there are for a dead cow. There had been some guesses. According to the authors of the British inquiry, "it has been said, and not altogether facetiously, that the only industry in which some part of the cow is not used is concrete production." But if the concrete is loaded onto a truck with rubber tires and driven down a paved road, or if the production company's annual report is printed on glossy paper, or if the company office uses plywood in its construction, then cow parts are involved. The paper is probably coated with a gelatinous chemical ultimately derived from tallow. The tires and the pavement are manufactured, in part, with bovine fatty acids, and the plywood is bound together with adhesive made partly of cow blood.

Proud to be an American? Pledge allegiance to this:

Among the alternative strategies under discussion are using drugs or pressure tactics, such as those employed occasionally by Israeli interrogators, to extract information. Another idea is extraditing the suspects to allied countries where security services sometimes employ threats to family members or resort to torture.

"What was most noticeable is your inability to work," she said. "I was trying to read a speech. I could hardly see. The mesh part in front of your eyes is like having 15 screen doors in front of you. You start seeing double."

originally posted by xowie

Nothing seems to track: Gov. George Pataki said he was taking Cipro but wouldn't get tested. Senator John Breaux said he got tested but might not take Cipro. Dan Rather said he hadn't been tested or taken Cipro. Tom Brokaw ended the NBC news with "In Cipro we trust."

originally posted by xowie

Ralph Nader to Tommy Thompson: nationalize Cipro.

originally posted by xowie

Attention! People of Afghanistan, United States forces will be moving through your area. We are not here to harm you! We are here for Usama bin Laden, Al Quaeda, and those who protect them! Please, for you own safety, stay off bridges and roadways, and do not interfere with our troops or military operations. If you do this, you will not be harmed. Do not approach United States forces. Stay in your homes! We are not here to occupy you, or to overrun your country. If you see United States forces, you need to find shelter and not leave it until we have left the area. This is for your protection. Roadways and bridges will be unsafe for travel. Your home will be the safest place. Do not listen to the Taliban or Al Quaeda. We will not harm you if you comply with these instructions.

originally posted by xowie

October 22 actions against police brutality and murder. (via movementbuilding.org)

originally posted by xowie

I reminded the audience that ABC correspondent Cokie Roberts had been asked if there was any opposition to the war. ‘None that matters,’ she replied. ‘Well,’ I continued, ‘would you all care to join me in saying, ‘Fuck you, Cokie Roberts’ when I count three? Okay, one . . . two . . . three . . . ’ And it came at me like an audio tidal wave — thousands of voices shouting in unison: ‘FUCK YOU, COKIE ROBERTS!!!’

originally posted by xowie

L.A. porn stars strike back against terrorism. Also, a day in the life of an adult video store.

originally posted by xowie

"I always have men come up to me afterwards and ask me questions and say: 'Is it true that (Muslim) women have to walk steps behind their husband, is that true?' I say 'Yes, they look better from behind'."

originally posted by xowie

The effects of drugs and prostitution over time. “This is a series of arrest photographs of the same individual taken over the course of 10 years.” Disturbing and fascinating.

"People are reading," Henry said hopefully. When I asked what they were reading, he said, "Nostradamus, and books about germs." Myself, I wanted to buy every book in the store and stack them into a windowless castle for myself, I wanted to stroke their papery bodies, I wanted, a little, to burn the store down. Language is metaphysics, and I hate metaphysics today. I hate the religious and philosophical lies which estrange me from the immediate life in favor of lost or imaginary kingdoms and gardens, in favor of paradisiacal or hellish afterlives, all lies. Today I want to eat and fuck.

The Gap wanted us to be in a commercial and we said 'no' and everyone said, 'why not'? It's almost as if, if people are willing to give you that much money, you are insulting everyone you know by turning it down. People's opinions about selling out seem to have changed over the years.

In my own English Department at George Mason University, when the radicals wanted to create a program to push Marxist propaganda under the heading "Cultural Studies," the internal memo describing this new offering had this wonderful defining paragraph:

Cultural Studies can be understood as the working title for an assemblage of theoretical approaches that are often interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary but also anti-disciplinary. Such work focuses on the analysis and critique of culturally constituted cultural forms and practices and on historically constituted social identities and agencies in the context of their imbrication with the asymmetrical relations of power that permeate the production and reproduction of the economic, political, and ideological dimensions of specific societies.

I love that opening: "can be understood." By whom?

Www.randomwalks.com will stop working at some point today or this weekend. You will still be able to reach randomWalks at 216.92.165.104. Things should be back to normal early next week.

Do some good at Windowbox.com: change the world with urban gardening.

AT&T has a text-to-speech software demo that blows away anything I’ve ever heard. You can type in up to 30 words and download a small audio sample of either a male or female voice speaking the text. If you’re at a loss for what to type, try some favorite song lyrics or cut and paste the following:

God, if only that War on Drugs hadn’t been so effective! I could really use some fucking marijuana right now!

Iron your letters. This problem can be solved.

City of Berkeley says stop the bombing.

originally posted by xowie

"We are in the process of putting a proposal together and analyzing what it would take to get to get something running in a matter of a small number of months, like three months, 90 days. We think we could put up this technology very, very quickly."

"I made this offer not because the government can't afford to pay for the software, but [to] shut up the critics who were saying, `Gee, Larry Ellison wants to build a national database because he wants to sell more databases,' which is pretty cynical and bizarre."

Ellison said that if he does donate the software, maintenance and upgrades won't be free.

Check MacSurfer for links to lots of speculation on just what Apple might announce next Tuesday. The widespread assumption is that it will be a digital music device, but even that seems to be a guess. All Apple has said in their press event invite is that the “breakthrough digital device” is “not a Mac.” All I can say is, whatever it is, I want one. (Excuse me while I wipe the drool from my chin.)

From the watch-what-you-say-watch-what-you-do department comes an admonition from extremist and patriot John Ashcroft that government agencies must use caution in complying with Freedom of Information Act requests.

As if you need another reason to visit BoingBoing regularly, they’ve added a sideblog edited by a rotating guest. This week’s editor is science fiction author and school teacher Pat York. Not this Pat York, mind you. A different one.

Read the list of ingredients. If you want something that simply looks like a hamburger and has no taste of its own, then a list headed by soy is right for you. But if you want something that actually looks like the vegetables with which it is made, that has texture, taste and appeal, look for an ingredients list that has lots of vegetables and maybe a little rice or cheese as a binder.

Steven Baum’s Ethel the Blog has an interesting take on the “powdery substance” sent to dozens of abortion clinics across the country.

On this cool, autumn-hazy day in the waning year 2001, the richest country in the world is dropping bombs on the poorest -- America has invoked the right of "self-defense" against Afghanistan. But in that poorest country in the world, winter approaches, and six million people are now living on the razor-edge of starvation. How many will die as a result of America's bombing campaign?

7,000? That would be miraculously few.

When will Americans wake up to the dirty secret that they are even now suffering and hurting other people for the sake of an imperium?

More excellent news for Californians: emergency contraception just became lawful here.

originally posted by xowie

Brutal repression of Muslims in Uzbekistan.

originally posted by xowie

Anyone who complains to me about their job will be forced by me to read this incendiary tract about the nature of work and power structures and false consciousness. This was the first thing I have ever read in the bathtub and worth every soggy page.

BloggerBot is supposed to let you post to a Blogger-managed weblog via AOL Instant Messenger. Right now it looks like it’s been bloggered – overloaded due to traffic from the Blogger home page.

It was the loveliest landscape I have ever seen: the hypnotic precipices beside us, falling 5,000 ft to jade rivers or lakes of lapis lazuli; the magnificent mountain ranges with the first snow of the autumn lying thinly on them; the gorgeous valleys with their green fields, and willows turning gold and red; the full-bearded men in turbans and green-striped chappans balanced on tiny, out-of-scale donkeys; the village women scurrying like formless ghosts in burkas of blue or white.

originally posted by xowie

Editorial balance:
- Iron Chef Morimoto goes to Philly.
- More hype for Salute to America’s Heroes week.

originally posted by xowie

Eddie Haskell goes to war by James Higdon, and The Utter Failure of Weblogs as Journalism at kuro5hin (both c/o wood s lot)

originally posted by xowie

Cluster bombs are used to cover a broad area rather than a single specific target. The bomblets, or "sub-munitions", contain higher explosive than landmines and their normally brightly-coloured casings make them attractive to children... On average, between 5% and 12% of the bomblets fail to explode, according to UN estimates.

originally posted by xowie

L33t chicks are everywhere, it seems.

originally posted by xowie

Hey feds! We could really use some fucking information right now!

originally posted by xowie

Playthell Benjamin: Even in the Ruins, Race Matters.

Bite Me at Chin Chin.

originally posted by xowie

I decided that what I had embarked on was an intensive meditation retreat. It had all the elements, I told myself: the long hours of silent sitting; the walking back and forth, going nowhere; the grueling schedule and sleep deprivation; the hypnotic, enigmatic chants ("…and if that looking glass gets broke/Mama’s gonna buy you a billy goat..."); the slowly dawning realization that there is nothing to look forward to but more of the same. And at the center of it, of course, was the crazy wisdom teacher in diapers, who assigned more demanding practices than I had encountered in all my travels in India—like "Tonight you will circumambulate the living room for two hours with the master in your arms, doing a deep-knee bend at every other step, and chanting, ‘Dooty-dooty-doot-doot-doo, dooty-dooty-doot-doot-doo.’" Or "At midnight you will carry the sleeping master with you to the bathroom and answer this koan: How do you lower your pajama bottoms without using your hands?"

Honoring 9-11, three asteroids were named Compassion, Solidarity and Magnanimity.

originally posted by xowie

FBI: “the sky is falling”. U: The press release has moved. The original file was named “skyfall.htm”… what the hell?

The once-humble unlucky tourist page has become epic. TouristGuy appears with Bert on page 5.

originally posted by xowie

September 11 Resources is a directory of several hundred sites pertaining to the Current Situation.

It's as though it's 1937 and I'm a bandleader named Freddie Hitler. Maybe we should change the name now. A friend suggested 'Basket of Puppies.'

originally posted by xowie

Sure, The Emmys got cancelled again, and, as a nominee this year, I already found out that I wasn't getting one of those little gold people so who cares if I can't walk down the red carpet in my Bob Mackie gown? I don't even wear a gown -- I wear pants, ill-fitting pants at that! Yesiree, I say, BOMBS AWAY! Rockets red glare! We are all WHITE WITH FOAM!

originally posted by xowie

Wartime Lies: A Consumer’s Guide to the Bombing, Alternet via booknotes.

I mentioned to Joseph Atick of Visionics that the City of London was thinking about using his technology to establish a database that would include not only terrorists but also all British citizens whose faces were registered with the national driver's license bureau. If that occurs, every citizen who walks the streets of the City could be instantly identified by the police and evaluated in light of his past misdeeds, no matter how trivial.

originally posted by xowie

Taxonomy of anti-war chants.

originally posted by xowie

Médecins Sans Frontières today rejected U.S. ‘humanitarian’ airdrops as useless and dangerous. MSF-USA has photos taken by Afghan refugees at a camp near Peshawar.

originally posted by xowie

Wired has done a great job of collecting links about Afghanistan.

Herblock.

originally posted by xowie

MeFi war thread.

originally posted by xowie

Updated info about chemical and biological terrorism at the Stimson Center.

originally posted by xowie

Gerson, 37, is an owlish man who fills yellow pads with doodles when you ask him a question. He says he believes that social justice must be central in Republican thought. ''The great stories of our time,'' he told me, ''are moral stories and moral commitments: the civil rights movement, the War on Poverty.'' He and the president get along well. The president calls Gerson ''the scribe.'' They share an intensely felt Christianity.

originally posted by xowie

The Media Cover-Up of the Gore Victory by David Podvin.

“Wired is collecting Web sites whose content is posted either by people living in Afghanistan, or by recent expatriates. I’ve started with these,” says senior editor Paul Boutin.

I love printables:
posters for peace
war resisters league anti-war flyers
hate-free zone posters
unamerican propaganda
maps (afghanistan)
free dmitry
adbusters pdfs

Also printable:
better times sustainable living flyers (“make your own snacks')
2001 calendar
october calendar
musical staff paper
dollhouse accessories
mothers against peeing standing up
And with that I think it’s time to stop.

The Chairman Smiles - Exhibit of posters from the former Soviet Union, Cuba and China.

Vaginal Davis and Margaret Cho.

originally posted by xowie

Pick up a jar. Those tiny ice-like formations on the bud are THC crystals. Now smell it. If you're a marijuana user, you'll say, "Wow!"

originally posted by xowie

There is nothing anti-American about opposing the drive to war by Mike Marqusee.

originally posted by xowie

poetry on the subject of virgules and whatever that other thing was.

originally posted by xowie

Two great links from today’s xblog: 5inch custom CDR media (I especially like the bitmap and fuk blanks) and Nooface, a slash-style site “in search of the post-PC interface”.

How did GRAPE-NUTS cereal get its name?

• the blue version
• the "official" version
• my favorite version

In making the world safe
For US corporations
We have made the world unsafe
For US citizens

One of the very interesting side effects of our Freenet is the almost immediate rise of a parallel Internet. Because our community is diversified and technophile enough, after a few days people already had the first Freenet public web pages out targeting fellow Freenet participants. One guy put up a small web page selling his consulting service for people needing help with configuration and installation issues. A student in the neighborhood is starting a Freenet web site (which eventually might become accessible from the public Internet as well) offering to do the shopping for people, including home delivery. Our internal IRC site is pretty much in demand and there are almost always neighbors to find there for chats or discussions.

"I'm glad he's dead with the rest of them, and I don't like feeling something like that," Samantha finally said. "But he wasn't just a bad tipper -- he killed people."

originally posted by xowie

“Virgulesolidus.com” is available.

United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission - Nuclear Site Locations: “This site is no longer available.”

Why doesn’t the government want you to see these photos of the WTC site? The photographer was detained and his digital storage media nominally erased, but he managed to recover the 72 photos and they’re now being mirrored globally. There’s nothing especially surprising or shocking in the few I’ve looked at; what’s interesting I suppose is that these photos, like the hundreds posted in the days following the attack, haven’t been filtered through the media apparatus of professional photographers who answer to editors who answer to bankers who answer to the almighty dollar.

"They had nothing. All they had was a vocal group. They didn't have any instruments," says Flea, who graduated in 1980, two years after Proposition 13 was passed and school arts programs began getting the ax. At Fairfax, Flea was a member of the jazz band, orchestra, marching band and choir. If those programs hadn't been there, "for me it would have been completely devastating because that was the only reason I went to school." Performing at Fairfax 20 years later, he says he felt "shaken up about it. There was just no music for kids in public schools."

originally posted by xowie

LAW: The rush to Auden and Yeats; also Judith Lewis on our new censorship.

originally posted by xowie

“Unmediated.org” is available.

I only hate N.Y. because my parents live there. Waiving the flag by Erin Aubry Kaplan.

originally posted by xowie

The official game show of randomWalks just taped a week of shows with rescue workers and firefighters. Take one bong hit every time Bullard says “Tami”.

originally posted by xowie

When the towers went down, so did the sense of control that makes us feel like adults. In such moments of regression, we fall back on patterns that provided safety in childhood...Just as children cannot help but love their parents, regressed adults must rally 'round their leaders, and any critique or mockery threatens this bond.

originally posted by xowie

Simulating an Airport Software Base Station in Mac OS X.

Persian Lima Bean with Dill Rice (Bagali Shevid Polo)

In his latest link-filled <a href="" http://www.counterpane.com/crypto-gram-0109a.html>Crypto-Gram Newsletter Bruce Schneier takes a look at airline security, biometrics, intelligence, cryptography and steganography in light of the Current Situation. According to his analysis, the airline industry is, perhaps not surprisingly, taking measures aimed almost exclusively at establishing a sense of security among travelers rather than relying on experienced experts to increase actual security. Biometrics are simply not a viable solution to the problem of identifying one suspected terrorist in on the order of ten million travelers, and steganography, practiced properly, cannot be defeated. So what’s the good news? A remarkably sane and insightful voice is suggesting rational defense measures that stand a chance of working while preserving the freedoms that define America. It may not be much, but I’ll take what I can get these days.

Redesigning the OS X Dock by Brian Ellis. If Steve can get over his not-invented-here complex this will be the Dock circa Mac OS X 10.5.

Hurry up and drop that butter.

originally posted by xowie

Suddenly, this terrorist leader displaced Pamela Anderson as a popular Internet search term, and a new cluster of domain name registrants tried to seize the remaining unregistered cognates of the name. (Unlike the actual person, the now highly desirable osamabinladen.com was nabbed in 2000, as was the alternate spelling usamabinladen.com, registered to a possibly fictitious Usama bin Cocksucker in Helltown, Penn.)

originally posted by xowie

Interviews about death by Studs Turkel.
Color-print this flag sticker for your car.
A poem by Daniel Berrigan.
Awesome peace action in the Dam Square.
WP peace march photos.
Love love love in Union Square.
WTC steel recycled by Mafia?
Why we shouldn’t bail out the airlines.

originally posted by xowie

People keep saying that the world has changed completely since September 11th, but when I checked the Constitution it hadn't changed at all. Let's fix the real problems, sure. I've said that all along. But extreme measures, whether at home or abroad, are only going to make the problem worse. (...)

I've heard all the arguments for unquestioned obedience to authority in wartime, for example that only the military really knows what its doing, but those arguments apply to nearly everything. Besides, the military openly admits that it has no idea what it's doing. In a war without boundaries, a democratic people must be fully engaged with the war, contributing appropriately to the war but also regulating the government's conduct of it. That's what civil liberties are for. In fact, protecting civil liberties is a military imperative in an even more straightforward way. When our government violates civil liberties, it abandons its claim to moral and political legitimacy.

i c h e n e y p o k a t
i w i e n k c a j i h n
t n a t s i n a h g f a
a f a s l t t u f g p t
l k o i h u w s h n e s
i w s r l i b t e i n i
b a a o c u n a c l t k
a x m r m h i g k i a a
n s a r o u s g t f g p
a r u e d t s a a o o e
p r o t e s t l b r n a
e m a h e r e u i p p c
r t r b r s s r t m f e
i g a l f h n u k e n x

originally posted by xowie

B l o w b a c k blog (“when wartime decisions come to haunt the people that made them”) features comprehensive links and excellent blogging of the Current Situation.

On my way to pick up lunch I caught a few minutes of NPR’s news special Peace Rally featuring Bryan Becker (International Action Center), Michael Albert (Z Magazine), Michael Kelly (Atlantic Monthly), David Dellinger (Chicago Seven), and Judith Zuk (Brooklyn Botanical Garden) talking about this weekend’s anti-war activities in DC.

Rafe Coburn’s Primer on Raising Your International Literacy lists several resources which, taken together, will expand your understanding of the Current Situation as well as other Concurrent Situations, not to mention Situations to come.

The Mac Observer’s List Of Retail Locations That Will Carry The Free Mac OS X 10.1 Upgrade

Time and patience.

originally posted by xowie

"I was going to have a sign saying something like 'It would be fine if you stayed at 69,'" McFarlane said.

originally posted by xowie

World New York has archived its World Trade Center disaster coverage which includes personal stories and valuable links. I hope Grant wins an award for this, though I’m not quite sure who should give him what.

MERIP has a fact sheet on Afghanistan’s refugee crisis.

originally posted by xowie

Here is an updated schedule of events in Washington, DC this weekend.

Dr. Mann, equipped with his hidden "wearcam," went into chain stores and innocently asked why there were domes on the ceiling. He secretly filmed the employees' evasiveness and their defensive responses — "They're here for your own good" — and then reached into his bag and pulled out a video camera of his own. At that point, he was usually kicked out of the store. "Of all places I go, it's the casinos and department stores and police stations that object most strongly to my apparatus," he said. "And yet those are the places where I feel it's most needed to prevent what would be a one-sided totalitarian regime."

Judith Lewis on the latest rumors.

originally posted by xowie

Women I know in New York and Washington debate whether to order Israeli vs. Marine Corps gas masks, and half-hour lightweight gas masks vs. $400 eight-hour gas masks, baby gas masks and pet gas masks, with the same meticulous attention they gave to ordering no-foam-no-fat-no-whip lattes in more innocent days. They share information on which pharmacies still have Cipro, Zithromax and Doxycycline, all antibiotics that can be used for anthrax, the way they once traded tips on designer shoe bargains.

originally posted by xowie

I tried to put it in the simplest possible terms for you people, so you'd get it straight, because I thought it was pretty important. I guess I figured I'd left no real room for confusion after putting it in a four-word sentence with one-syllable words, on the tablets I gave to Moses. How much more clear can I get?

The DC Independed Media Center welcome team has posted a schedule of S29-related events including workshops and conferences leading up to a weekend of peace rallies and marches taking place in lieu of the IMF/World Bank protests. I’d like to recommend an activity that should be relatively safe, but after Genoa I don’t think it would be responsible to take a guess. March organizers were denied a permit as far as I can tell, and, although I would expect the black blocs to behave, it’s anybody’s guess whether the provocateurs will be out and what police will be prepared to do to protestors (“We’re going to go [to the protest] and take care of business: kill, kill, kill,” said one cop). I am torn up by the fact that I fear my baby boy would not be safe at a peace march, but there you go.

A panel of four Williams College professors urged restraint in the so-called war on terrorism Monday, with one of them calling upon America to bomb Afghanistan not with explosives but with food and medical supplies.

Anthropology professor David Edwards, speaking during a public forum at Chapin Hall, said airlifts similar to those provided to West Berlin by the United States and Britain in 1948 and 1949 could prove a public relations coup and an unexpected blow to terrorist Osama bin Ladin, in a country wracked by starvation, civil war and oppression.

"Bin Laden expects us to strike with military force. It's what he's prepared for. In dealing with terrorism, you have to do the unexpected," said Edwards, an expert on Afghanistan who was joined on the panel by political science professors Marc Lynch, Gary Jacobsohn and James McAllister.

I feel so much pain and anger about the destruction of the twin towers, and then I can't even talk about it in class. I'm too angry about the way everyone's talking about Arabs. I can't share my pain with them. This club has never been so important to me before. It's the only safe place for me where I can mourn what has happened to our city, and not be hurt by those around me at the same time.

Anti-Starbucks downloads.

originally posted by xowie

Downtown Brooklyn after the crash.

originally posted by xowie

Starbucks apologizes for forcing NYC rescue workers to pay for water. (snopes.com)

originally posted by xowie

Civil libertarians—and there aren't many—have to be careful not to believe that the huge popular support for the Bush war effort will make significant resistance nearly impossible. But opposition to a coup d'état against the Bill of Rights is our only alternative to yielding to the beginnings of a police state for an indefinite period.

originally posted by xowie

Guardian Unlimited: Now what? - Chewy Q&A goodness. Scroll down for “Who is making money from the terror crisis?”

The Book Forager is a neat interactive tool that I can’t seem to explain right now so just check it out.

ArianaE, an Afghan web portal, has a listing of Afghan restaurants in the US. I’d really like to visit one in the near future. Do you suppose they have many vegetarian options?

The pictured map, uncovered in the files of the Council on Foreign Relations, tells a part of the Afghanistan story that has attracted virtually no attention. Note the proposed pipeline routes and that once the Persian port of Gwendar is reached, the American oil industry is home free.

Live Seybold keynote coverage: Mac OS X 10.1 released.

slashdot: hackers would be subject to life imprisonment under Ashcroft’s anti-terrorism legislation.

originally posted by xowie

xowie sez: 10 reasons to oppose the proposed national I.D. card.

originally posted by xowie

I’d forgotten to keep an eye on think peace, the collaborative weblog started in response to the New War. Also want to watch:

• wtc filter
• znet reactions
• red rock eaters
• cnn
• washingtonpost
• nytimes
• guardian uk
• warlog
• village voice

Web Communities Respond to 9-11, via wood s lot.

I've realized that almost no one wants the war the government and media have been trying to sell us on for a week. My own father, a supremely patriotic man and an avowed conservative who joined the Navy back in the early 60s, does not want this war. Every veteran I've talked to does not want this war. No one wants terrorists to be able to kill more people, but no one believes this garbage that our only two options are doing nothing and going to war.

Al-Hewar Center has a huge page of links to statements and condolences from Arab-American and Muslim-American organizations and personalities.

originally posted by xowie

Salon: Sex in a time of terror

Have you heard the good news?

HRW statement on Afghan refugees.

originally posted by xowie

Read 1/10th of this: End of Liberty? Chilling Maureen Dowd. Scroll down for Susan Sontag. Cory D. on that pimp Larry Ellison. Still more Robert Fisk. Jonathan Gold. On the defense of civil liberties. Jim Washburn. Disgraceful pundits. Derrick Z. Jackson.

originally posted by xowie

The real fear now is chemical.

Can you find Afghanistan on a map?

Christopher Hitchens’s latest. (thanks, J.)

originally posted by xowie

Homeland?

originally posted by xowie

This week’s urban legends.

originally posted by xowie

War, being a dramatic departure from the stream of events that went before it, is an especially fertile occasion for the pursuit of private agendas. World War I, for example, institutionalized the public relations industry. Most of the founding figures of public relations first came to prominence by participating in the propaganda campaign that persuaded Americans, against great odds, to join the war on the side of France despite isolationist sentiments and the large number of German immigrants in the country. As they built the government's propaganda machinery, they also built the professional networks and personal reputations that guaranteed their success, and the success of public relations as a concept, in the post-war world.

What new social structures will be institutionalized in the course of the war that is now getting under way? The answer, I think, can be found in plain sight, in the military doctrine that the Bush people have been articulating. ... One of the great dangers of the coming war is that it will institutionalize this kind of warfare, applying it not simply to dangerous individuals in foreign countries but to the civilian populace of the United States.

Who knows what will happen now? Not me, buster. That's why I live out here in the mountains with a flag on my porch and loud Wagner music blaring out of my speakers. I feel lucky, and I have plenty of ammunition. That is God's will, they say, and that is also why I shoot into the darkness at anything that moves.

originally posted by xowie

Three Arab-Americans from Utah have been kicked off a flight from Minneapolis because the other passengers refused to fly with them.

"After a few minutes," he recalled later, "the pilot came up to me. . . . He told me that he's not safe with me flying to Dallas."
"What do you have against me?" the incredulous passenger asked.
"He just said, 'I'm not going to take you. Myself and my crew are not safe flying with you. They don't feel safe.' "

It’s a fabulous season for apples – “four times the quantity of last year” according to one grower – and one of the greatest memories I have is of spending a cool, sticky, exhaustingly fun day at a pick-your-own orchard up in the Blue Ridge mountains with family and friends one autumn years ago. In all the, well, everything, I almost missed this Washington Post guide to pick-your-own orchards near DC. Considering my son’s newfound appreciation for the fruit (apples and pears are the only solids he’ll countenance) I really hope we can make it to one before all the apples fall.

I’ve heard lots of talk about the forbidding mountainous terrain of Afghanistan. Trying to get a look for myself, I’ve come across this Time photo essay on famine and photojournalist A. Raffaele Ciriello’s photos of Afghanistan. Thanks to Cursor for both links.

Still available: 72virgins.com.

In 1998 alone, literally half the top 10 highest-grossing films involved one form of apocalypse or another: Armageddon, Saving Private Ryan, Deep Impact, Godzilla and the most wildly popular disaster movie of all time, Titanic. James Cameron’s epic is so well-known that a favorite haircut for young men in Kabul is something called the "Titanic." Barbers reportedly get jailed for cutting boys’ hair like Leonardo DiCaprio’s, but their teenage customers love it.

originally posted by xowie

Jonathan is looking for volunteers to help take Life During Wartime to the next level.

Rumsfeld Might Change ‘Infinite Justice’ Name - washingtonpost.com.

Chinese Working Overtime to Sew U.S. Flags - washingtonpost.com.

"This is your receipt for your husband...and this is my receipt for your receipt."

originally posted by xowie

Pakistan’s nukes.

originally posted by xowie

Judith Lewis interviews Mir Tamim Ansary. Also in the Weekly: To Be Muslim and American in L.A. by Celeste Fremon.

originally posted by xowie

ergodraw: Adobe Illustrator tutorials.

Looking again at last Tuesday's darkness, peering deeper into Krishna's mouth, we see not just ourselves but the entire world staring back. It would be comforting to believe the international outpouring of sympathy in the wake of the attacks was simply that, but it was also a global craning of necks. What will happen? The world looks out its windows and wonders how, if, when, and where the full weight of the structure will fall.

During the Gulf War of 1991, I gave a talk to a high school assembly in Massachusetts, a private school where the students came from affluent families and were said to be "95 percent in favor of the war." I spoke my mind, and to my surprise got a great round of applause. But in a classroom afterward, a girl who had been staring at me with hostility throughout the discussion, suddenly spoke up, her voice registering her anger: "Why do you live in this country?"

I tried to explain, that my love was for the country, for the people, not for whatever government happened to be in power. To believe in democracy was to believe in the principles of the Declaration of Independence--that government is an artificial creation, established by the people to defend the equal right of everyone to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I interpreted "everyone" to include men, women, children all over the world, who have a right to life, not to be taken away by their own government or by ours. When a government betrays those democratic principles, it is being unpatriotic. Love of democracy would then require opposing your government.

The Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund has compiled a partial list of the rash of hate crimes and murders committed in the past week.

originally posted by beXn

Patterns of inquiry revealed by the network:

• Amazon sales
• Yahoo "buzz"
• Yahoo most-viewed
• Lycos 50
• Google zeitgeist

You can create any number of scenarios to prove that nonviolence won't work, but meanwhile we rarely question that the violence is clearly failing. In other words, most in the media become very skeptical when they hear about pacifism. They equate it with just letting people walk all over you, which it clearly is not. When you study Gandhi, King, Merton Day, Muste and all the others, you find that it's direct resistance to authority, a direct resistance to Caesar. But it's a very difficult subject to comprehend. Everybody is always, "What if someone breaks into your house with a gun and wants to shoot your family? What do you do then?" So you can create scenarios where clearly it probably won't work, but meanwhile there are 40,000 a people a month who are dying in wars around the world. The U.S. is selling weapons to 142 nations; we're the world's biggest arms dealer. We spend $800 million a day on Pentagon programs, bankrupting our economy, and rarely is this ethic questioned. So I question it.

think peace is a collaborative weblog to which everyone is welcome to post.

Suppose bin Laden is the mastermind of the recent horror. Imagine he had gone before the Afghan population a week earlier and told them of the U.S. government's responsibility for so much tragedy and mayhem around the world, particularly to Arab populations as in Iraq and Palestine. Imagine that he further told them that Americans have different values and that they cheered when bombs were rained on people in Libya and Iraq. Suppose bin Laden had proposed the bombing of U.S. civilians to force their government to change its ways. In that hypothetical event, what would we want the Afghan people to have replied?

We would want them to have told bin Laden that he was demented and possessed. We would want them to have pointed out that the fact that the U.S. government has levied massive violence against Iraq's civilians and others does not warrant attacks on U.S. civilians, and the fact of different values doesn't warrant attacks of any sort at all.

So isn't this what we ought to also want the U.S. public to say to George Bush?

Don’t start World War III.

originally posted by xowie

It’s Understanding Islam Week over at Dan Hartung’s Lake Effect, and I have faith that Dan will do an outstanding job of gathering and explicating links. Thanks to Follow Me Here for the pointer.

Q:What is the meaning of the suffix ‘-stan,’ found at the end of the names of so many countries?

A:The names of seven countries, all of them Asian, have either the ‘-stan’ or ‘-istan’ suffix. They are: Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.

The use of these suffixes, both of which mean ‘country’ in Persian, illustrates the broad historic influence of Persian culture. These suffixes are similar to the English ‘Land,’ as in ‘Finland,’ ‘Greenland,’ ‘Iceland,’ ‘Ireland,’ ‘Poland,’ and of course, ‘Disneyland.’

graphic: Pakistan at a glance, Washington Post.

This decency and sense of fairness is America's greatest strength, but it has also been a weakness. Americans want to think of themselves as a benign nation that stands for the downtrodden against the strong, and for right against wrong. This has sometimes made it much harder to make people see the distortions that their government's policies have produced over decades in the Middle East and other parts of the world; that the America that they believe in and strive for --the America of decency and freedom -- is not the same America experienced by millions of people whose lives are ruined by US-backed dictators and despots, who see their loved ones incinerated by "smart bombs" and wasted by sanctions. People are sometimes unwilling to see an image in the mirror that they do not like. The America that wrote to reassure me and other Arab Americans that I am safe at home here is not the same America that with unconditional support sentences my cousins to a life of brutality and violence under endless Israeli occupation. But it is the America that can and must act to stop it.

Here in the UK I pray for everyone of you there. I have always loved New York so much. Its energy has always felt to me to be as much about love and ozone-positive fresh air as money and commercial dynamism. Whatever was intended in these acts of terrorism, they have created only more energy and more love. - Pete Townshend

originally posted by xowie

Alternet: alternatives to war; the racism of war fever.
NYT: a nation of checkpoints; the big terrible.
Salon: life will never be the same; rally ‘round the flag.
WP: fears for liberties; a beating and regrets.

originally posted by xowie

I did not see the speech at the Islamic Center, but support what I think Bush said. Someone please tell me what the hell this means though: Both Americans and Muslim friends and citizens, tax-paying citizens, and Muslims in nations were just appalled and could not believe what we saw on our TV screens. My eyes hurt from reading that.

originally posted by xowie

The U.S. has already demanded that Pakistan terminate the food and other supplies that are keeping at least some of the starving and suffering people of Afghanistan alive. If that demand is implemented, unknown numbers of people who have not the remotest connection to terrorism will die, possibly millions. Let me repeat: the U.S. has demanded that Pakistan kill possibly millions of people who are themselves victims of the Taliban. This has nothing to do even with revenge. It is at a far lower moral level even than that.

originally posted by xowie

Criticism of this most devastating of all intelligence failures has been muted; there seems a widespread assumption that the Arabs who have been rounded up since Tuesday must all be guilty. And there is unity in vengefulness, too. According to a New York Times-CBS poll yesterday, only 6% now oppose military action and a substantial majority would support war "even if many thousands of innocent civilians are killed". That support is especially strong among those too young to remember the second world war, Korea or Vietnam.

originally posted by xowie

"The terrorist attacks will cause the widespread use of Carnivore and at the very least an acknowledgment of the Echelon system... The tragedy may soften our commitment to privacy as a public and allow for these technologies, once they are in place, to stay in place afterward. I can't think of anything that would better expedite the abuse of this technology than what has just happened." - Coralee Whitcomb, CPSR.

originally posted by xowie

Nuclear Safety?

originally posted by xowie

graphic: Opposing Forces in Afghanistan.

As Palestinians who suffer daily from acts of Israeli aggression against our innocent people, we cannot find the words to express how shocked we were to see the horrific scenes on TV. We condemn such acts and we do not accept such horrific acts in the 3rd millennium where peace, prosperity, and freedom should cover the whole world. We reiterate our deepest condemnation of this horrible act on these innocent humans. No matter how can we express our sorrow, we can't find enough words to say how sorry we are.

originally posted by xowie

Lynda Barry, with you.

originally posted by xowie

People from every corner of the world have come to our nation to enjoy the freedoms we hold so dear and to escape the hatred and persecution that exists in their homelands. Let us not stoop down to the level of our attackers and also be guilty of senseless acts of hatred against the innocent. We must rise above our circumstances and show the world our resolve and what it really means to be an American.

originally posted by xowie

I have been thinking about the words retaliation and punishment and act of war. I have been thinking about violence, what it feels like to be nothing to someone else. What it feels like to be a consequence of someone else's disassociated rage, disconnected fury. I have been thinking about the cycle of hurt for hurt, nation against nation, tit for tat. I have been thinking about how deeply something else is required. I have been thinking about the courage it requires to think about something other than violence as a response to violence. I am thinking about the complexity of this and the loneliness of this and the helplessness and the sorrow that would be felt in the space where violence once was and the grief. I have been thinking that for those of us who are living on the planet right here, right now, we must live in this dangerous space, allowing the helplessness, the grief, the sorrow to create new wisdom that can and will and must free us from this terrible prison of violence.

originally posted by xowie

BBC: The very latest images from space.

Tips for planning an anti-war action, from a group calling for student protests Thursday at noon.

originally posted by xowie

The plight of the Palestinians is the single most important issue to most Arabs. Professor Shibley Telhami of the University of Maryland conducted a poll in which citizens of five nations -- Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon and the United Arab Emirates -- were asked how important the Palestinian issue was to them personally. In four nations, 60 percent said it was the most important. In Egypt, reviled throughout the Arab world as the state that made peace with Israel, 79 percent said it was.

originally posted by xowie

On a so-called Christian station, I heard a preacher tell his listeners that Islam was a cult that worshipped the moon and preached total destruction of Jews and Christians. Callers seemed baffled about which religion the terrorists might have adhered to—-"Islam or Muslim?"—-or asked which Middle Easterners they'd seen on TV celebrating the bombing: "Is it the Israelis who don't like us, or the Palestinians?"

originally posted by xowie

Our leaders have described the recent atrocity with the customary cliche: mindless cowardice. "Mindless" may be a suitable word for the vandalising of a telephone box. It is not helpful for understanding what hit New York on September 11. Those people were not mindless and they were certainly not cowards. On the contrary, they had sufficiently effective minds braced with an insane courage, and it would pay us mightily to understand where that courage came from.

originally posted by xowie

i am about to go buy a flag to put in front of my parent's house so that you don't think that my family is anti american. we are very american, we love being here in america, we love everything american, it's people, it's land, it's culture (s), it's freedom, it's wide variety of choices for professions, everything about it. we loved it before we came here, and learned to love it more after coming here. but i am getting the flag merely to keep people wanting to hurt my family, from questioning how american they are, because they look different. having the flag does not make me love america more, it just means that i have a flag in front of my house. -- MetaFilter post

"Does anybody think that we can send the USS New Jersey to lob Volkswagon-sized shells into Lebanese villages -- Reagan, 1983 -- or loose 'smart bombs' on civilians seeking shelter in a Baghdad bunker -- Bush, 1991 -- or fire cruise missiles on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory -- Clinton, 1999 -- and not receive, someday, our share in kind?" History did not begin on September 11.

originally posted by xowie

The Voice is back. The “wailing wall” at the V.A. Hospital, plus flyers of missing people.

originally posted by xowie

“Responding to Terrorism”: A Compendium of Articles from the Alternative Media collected by Utne Reader Online.

Nineteen years ago today, the greatest act of terrorism — using Israel's own definition of that much misused word — in modern Middle Eastern history began. Does anyone remember the anniversary in the West? How many readers of this article will remember it?

Powerful commentary by Robert Fisk.

originally posted by xowie

"We should be careful when we use those analogies. If I ever used war analogies, I apologize. Football is not war." - Ray Brown.

originally posted by xowie

Take a peek at photojournalist Raku Loren’s What’s Really Going On.

Statement of the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA)

originally posted by xowie

Our government has a bad record in its ‘wars’ against such ill-defined enemies as poverty or drugs. Terrorism in the modern world is effected across many borders and its remediation requires analogous forms of cooperation. ‘War’ may sanction actions that increase our insecurity and vulnerability. War does not easily coexist with justice despite the best efforts to elaborate just war theory. War seeks the destruction of the other rather than efforts to find the best ways in which to coexist with those who are different.

originally posted by xowie

Devastating hi-res photos by Sara K. Schwittek, Brooklyn, N.Y.

originally posted by xowie

Argentina: 2 missing Australia: 9 confirmed dead, 85 missing Bangladesh: 50 confirmed, more missing Belgium: 60 missing Brazil: 5 missing Canada: 2 confirmed, 100 missing (est) Chile: 1 missing China: 4 confirmed, 30 missing Colombia: 6 confirmed, 116 missing Denmark: 5 missing Dominican Republic: 3 missing Egypt: 1 confirmed, 3 missing El Salvador: 1 confirmed, 18 missing Finland: 7 missing France: 81 missing Germany: 4 confirmed, 700 missing India: 250 missing Indonesia: 1 confirmed, 1 missing Ireland: 4 confirmed Israel: 1 confirmed, 150 missing Italy: 8 missing Japan: 2 confirmed, 100 missing Lebanon: 1 confirmed, 2 missing Malaysia: 7 missing Mexico: 150-500 missing (est) Norway: 1 missing Pakistan: 3 confirmed, more missing Paraguay: 2 missing Peru: 5 missing Philippines: 7 missing Portugal: 3 confirmed, 20 missing Puerto Rico: 1 missing South Africa: 1 confirmed, 2 missing South Korea: 1 confirmed, 27 missing Spain: 9 missing Sweden: 1 missing Switzerland: 4 confirmed, 10 missing Taiwan: 9 missing United Kingdom: 100 confirmed, 200 missing (est) Zimbabwe: 6 missing

originally posted by xowie

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

What would happen if instead of bombs, we instead bombed them with food and those 45 words?

originally posted by xowie

Noelle: Will this bring peace?

Admiral Carroll: We can inflict grave damage, but it will not bring peace, it will not end terrorism, it may even exacerbate it. We will lose the sympathy shown around the world. We should make Americans safe from terrorism by reducing the motives. Terrorism arises out of abject poverty and hopelessness. If I can't protect my children, if I see my family dying around me, I become a terrorist out of a feeling of sheer helplessness. Without any hope for the future, they give their lives.

originally posted by xowie

If we are to make progress as a civilization—or, more critically, survive as a species—we face the stark choice of either building a new global culture of compassion or continuing to ignore or support our current system's cultivation of inequality, militarism and the degradation of human life where economic and social decisions are guided only by market values. Without fundamental change, the forces who see violence as the only method to address legitimate grievances, symbolized in the carnage of lower Manhattan and along the Potomoc, will inevitably grow and become more destructive in this noxious environment.

originally posted by xowie

[Friday's Congressional resolution is not] based on a quest for justice. It is an open-ended invitation to attack anyone U.S. leaders decide to target. And those leaders -- Dick Cheney and Colin Powell among them -- are some of the same people who during the Gulf War unleashed attacks not only on military targets but on civilians and the entire civilian infrastructure of Iraq, killing hundreds of thousands of innocent people during and after the war. This resolution, and the statements from the Bush administration about an ongoing global war, suggest that what is coming will be even more frightening.

originally posted by xowie

One target of operation "Infinite Reach" was bin Laden's paramilitary camp in Afghanistan. "The U.S. picked the highly accurate cruise missile for the strikes against the Afghan camp," reported CNN's military correspondent Jamie McIntrye, "because of their ability to fly with pinpoint accuracy." One of the missiles was so inaccurate it hit the wrong country, Pakistan, several hundred miles off-course.

originally posted by xowie

War Against the Planet by Vijay Prashad, Fearing strikes, Afghans flee Kabul by Amir Shah, Bush’s Faustian Deal With the Taliban by Robert Scheer.

originally posted by xowie

Any explanation of Middle Eastern violence that relies upon the notion that Islam is an inherently violent or inherently anti-Western religion is false and misleading. First, Islam is one of the world's largest and most diverse religions and like Christianity or Judaism there are thousands of views within Islam about the religion and also about violence and the West. Secondly, there are major differences even among explicitly Muslim militants and activists regarding these issues - some insist upon non-violent struggle and others regard violence as a legitimate tool. There is no way one can generalize about Islam or any religion for that matter.

originally posted by xowie

In response to Tuesday’s terrorist attacks, Clear Channel, the world’s largest radio network, has sent out a list of some 150 "lyrically questionable" songs by everyone from the Animals to the Zombies to its radio stations, recommending that the songs not be aired.

originally posted by xowie

Suicide bombers are supposed to be 17-year-old zealots with nothing to live for but the hope of a martyr's welcome by 72 virgins in paradise. These men, the FBI reveals, lived middle-class lives, had degrees and jobs and wives and kids and a willingness to leave them all to kill us. Among the casualties last week was our sweet certainty that anyone lucky enough to be able to live in America, share its vices and freedoms and gifts, surely would not want to destroy it.

originally posted by xowie

Felt by all the world.

originally posted by xowie

The simplistic stereotyping that goes on - equating Arabs and Muslims - must stop. Two-thirds of Arab Americans are, actually, Christian. And up to three-fourths of the U.S. Muslim population is not Arab.

Now what does this word Islam mean? Oh, wow, it comes from the word salaam, which means peace. Suddenly, it was dawning. Hey! Didn't I once write a song called Peace Train? It was fast becoming clear that I was now being confronted with something much greater than I had originally anticipated: possibly - the Truth!

Truly, our hearts bleed for the attacks that have targeted the World Trade Center (WTC) as well as other institutions in the United States despite our strong opposition to the American-biased policy towards Israel on the military, political and economic fronts. Islam, the religion of tolerance, holds the human soul in high esteem, and considers an attack against innocent human beings a grave sin. This is backed by the Qur’anic verse which reads: "Whosoever kills a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if be had killed all mankind, and whosoever saves the life of one, it shall be as if he had: saved the life of all mankind." (Al-Ma’dah:32)

originally posted by xowie

Altered city. Brief interview with Angus Kress Gillespie. How little kids are handling it. Raw thoughts. No more illusions. We need the rule of law, not the rule of war. Perseverance amid 450,000 tons of debris. Now more than ever. Fallout.

originally posted by xowie

Remember when you didn’t know?

Usman Farman:

The next thing I remember is that a dark cloud of glass and debris about 50 stories high came tumbling towards us. I turned around and ran as fast as possible. I didn’t realize until yesterday that the reason I’m still feeling so sore was that I fell down trying to get away. I was on my back, facing this massive cloud that was approaching, it must have been 600 feet off, everything was already dark. I normally wear a pendant around my neck, inscribed with an Arabic prayer for safety; similar to the cross. A hesidic Jewish man came up to me and held the pendant in his hand, and looked at it. He read the Arabic out loud for a second. What he said next, I will never forget. With a deep Brooklyn accent he said “Brother, if you don’t mind, there is a cloud of glass coming at us, grab my hand, lets get the hell out of here?” He helped me stand up, and we ran for what seemed like forever without looking back. He was the last person I would ever have thought, who would help me. If it weren’t for him, I probably would have been engulfed in shattered glass and debris.

wtc-filter is a good weblog covering the war. If they had a link to randomWalks, I would make it my home page. If they were to add one more weblog, though, it should be World New York.

Astrological analysis of the WTC attack.

Dear reader, two Sundays in the future: you know vastly more than I do about what I mean when I say war. Do you envy me, living in this before, this last shred of relative innocence? I hope not. I hope I ought to envy you, the wild sweet peace you enjoy, the simultaneous epiphany of universal human amity and accord, the melting of all world guns into memorial sculpture which took place on, say, Sept. 16, the miracle that occurred in place of the carnage I’m dreading today. Oh, I hope I ought to envy you; I hope I’m a moron.

originally posted by xowie

When we cry out for violence, we are indeed asking our leaders to do to other civilians and rescue workers precisely what has happened to us here. Let us use great caution and prudence in our solutions to this horror. We owe that to our counterparts the world over -- people who by no means deserve to suffer the way we are now. I think most people, having seen what I just have, would be hesitant to call for an expansion of this horror.

originally posted by xowie

I woke with the images, the cry for retribution: brutality begetting brutality, blood in my eye. I need to believe that this is somehow un-American. Their whole point is to make us a nation at war. We should resist, resist becoming like those who did this.

- James Taylor, Singer, songwriter

originally posted by xowie

Poynter.org’s gallery of front pages.

originally posted by xowie

Not angry - haven't felt that once, strangely, and I am a reasonably irascible old man. Just surges of disbelief at the kinds of things said on tv and radio; the damnable dance of politicians and the professional pundit puke while shattered hearts lie bleeding true blood. Warm and wet. The stirring promise of endless battlefields to satisfy lust for metaphoric blood. Just experiencing, along with a legion of others, the advancing exhaustion of some subtle psychical strata due to encompassing more than the emotional machinery is yet (if ever) evolved to accomodate without something palpable and accessible to touch. Lots of pictures but no picture. Lack of effect leading to lack of affect. Absurdity of trying to comfort a grieving loved one by email. Not that there's anything to say, only the will to feel alongside of. O world of lost children believing in disbelief instead of doubting doubt. History returns to the starting point armed with ever less poignant weapons. Image of a Fireman on the 31st floor of a crumbling tower when the heavens suddenly open and forever rushes in like a leviathan come to reclaim her young.

originally posted by xowie

SiameseQuadraped: I’ve been focusing on thought and compassion and the meaning of love all week, and the incidents in NY/DC/PA came at at a time when we were talking about Holden Caufield in The Catcher in the Rye, and the book, Brave New World. Anyway, next week we are reading “All Quiet on the Western Front,” and I came across this quote, marked as “great” by a student of mine in her journal. “It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.” And this one: “Our bodies are a thin skin stretched painfully over repressed madness.”

Here is a poem by Randall Jarrell:

The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner

From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State,
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.
Six miles from earth, loosed from its dream of life,
I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.
When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.

originally posted by xowie

Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process - or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world - seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world. But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences.

originally posted by xowie

What can you do? Here are some things to consider:

1) Being peace yourself. Take the time to stop, breathe, and notice your feelings and reactions to all that has happened and is happening. In the face of the immensity of this tragedy, face your own sense of helplessness and powerlessness. And at the same time, consider how your every word, action, and interaction with another right now carries the potential for peace or war. Be gentle with yourself and others; our compassionate presence for each other will be required more than ever.

2) Cultivate an environment of peace and tolerance in your community -- stand up for and speak out for groups that are receiving the brunt of ignorance and hatred. Consider contacting Muslim organizations and mosques in your community and express your concern for their well-being and safety. Ask if there is anything you or your sangha can do in support of them, i.e. organizing a sitting meditation vigil in front of a mosque to express solidarity and offer protection.

3) Political Action: How the U.S. government responds to this situation will have ramifactions for generations to come. Military action right now has the potential to escalate the situation and increase violence across the world, and will not deter terrorists but rather solidify hatred for the U.S. Contact President Bush and your legislators and express your wish to see this national crisis handled in a sane way.

4) Gather Together: Organize gatherings to offer people a chance to share grief, sadness, fear, anger, and other feelings and thoughts about what has happened, and to discuss nonviolent and skillful actions that can be taken together.

originally posted by xowie

Experts have opined that the US has to hit "someone" within 10 days, that cruise missiles targeted somewhere in the Middle East are the only appropriate action. The deputy secretary of state, Paul Wolfowitz, said that "the whole civilised world has been shocked... and even portions of the uncivilised world have started to wonder whether they're on the wrong side". How's that for the official American view of the planet?

originally posted by xowie

"Our nation must be mindful that there are thousands of Arab-Americans who live in New York City," Bush said, "who love their flag just as much as the three of us do, and we must be mindful that as we seek to win the war that we treat Arab-Americans and Muslims with the respect they deserve." It's a message that 17-year-old Roula Abu Hassan says her teacher at school missed today. She says her health teacher told her class at a high school in Brooklyn that "Palestinian children all want to become terrorists." Both Roula and her mother Saud Abu Hassan, who moved to the United States from the Palestinian territories, are visibly upset by the statement and want the teacher to apologize.

The Detroit Free Press is presenting 100 Questions and Answers about Arab Americans, which I would fail were it a test.

The man who occupies the White House cried today. Good. Keep crying, Mr. Bush. The more you cry, the less you will go to that dark side in all humans where anger rages to a point where we want to blindly kill.

Tell the mayor, a guy most of us have not liked, that he is doing an incredible job, keeping the spirits of everyone up as high as they can be at this moment. Being there for a city I believe he loves, his own cancer still with him, he goes beyond the call of duty.

But do not declare war and massacre more innocents.

originally posted by xowie

Hey terrorist motherfuckuhs! This Bud’s NOT for you.

originally posted by xowie

Pilot Charles "Chic" Burlingame, Oak Hill, VA
b. Orange County, CA, 1949
a "huge Angels fan"
Navy fighter pilot, 350 carrier landings
Contestant, Greed, Tic-Tac-Dough
Captain, American Airlines Flight 77
died the day before his birthday
"Put out my hand, and touched the face of God."
from his friends in Hollywood

originally posted by xowie

If you read nothing else today, read Mir Tamim Ansary on Afghanistan. I will probably throw the whole thing up here when I get a chance, but don’t wait for me. Go now.

I might have linked more photos sooner had I still a DSL connection. All of these links are from World New York:

• Geoff at macrostate's photos of the aftermath
• First-person photos of the WTC evacuation
• Cynthia Malaran is the source of the quote below
• George Weld covers the attack and the aftermath
• James Nachtwey's photojournalism in Time
• Jay Boucher's eerie photos from New Jersey include the familiar skyline

“I had originally started this photo collection as a tribute to the view out of my bedroom window that I grew up with. Never did I think…”

BBC: Islamic world deplores US losses.

originally posted by xowie

We are at war, they said. And I thought: they have learned nothing, absolutely nothing, from the history of the twentieth century, from a hundred years of retaliation, vengeance, war, a hundred years of terrorism and counter-terrorism, of violence met with violence in an unending cycle of stupidity.

originally posted by xowie

Ask Bush to show restraint.

originally posted by xowie

Falwell: I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen'.

originally posted by xowie

I have dropped my quarters in slots my daughter will never see, in buildings she will never enter, on observation decks that do not exist any longer, except in my mind. And I have listened as the timer counted down the time left before the viewfinder would fade to black. And I can imagine looking thru the viewfinder, and wondering why that plane looks so damned close. I can imagine looking uptown as the plane came closer, and closer, and seeing Harlem, and thinking, damn: I shoulda gone to Sylvia’s Soul Food. ‘Cause Harlem, far from being the bad part of town, was one of the safest places in New York yesterday. Even terrorists know which victims count the most in America. America, if you want safety, you’d best get your ass to the ‘hood. Get your boogie shoes to 123rd street. Move immediately into the Robert Taylor Homes, or Cabrini Green, or the lower 9th Ward in New Orleans. Do not pass go, let alone Wall Street. For there you are like sitting ducks.

originally posted by xowie

The idea that one could ever be prepared for such inhuman terror is absurd. However, viewed through the U.S. television networks, Tuesday's attack seemed to come less from another country than another planet. The events were reported not so much by journalists as by the new breed of brand-name celebrity anchors who have made countless cameos in TimeWarner movies about apocalyptic terrorist attacks on the United States -- now, incongruously reporting on the real thing. And for a bizarre split second on Tuesday night, CNN's graphic "America Under Attack" disappeared and in its place flashed another one that said "Fighting Fat" -- an eerie ghost graphic that yesterday passed as news. The United States is a country that believed itself not just at peace but war-proof, a self-perception that would come as quite a surprise to most Iraqis, Palestinians and Colombians. Like an amnesiac, the U.S. has woken up in the middle of a war, only to find out it has been going on for years.

originally posted by xowie

If we are provoked into war, it will involve none of the massive military campaigns of World War II. It will more resemble a cold war of antagonism always on the edge of hot war, with similar costs: titanic sums of money spent on security, civil liberties curbed, anxiety and paranoia displacing hope and trust, the life of the mind constricted and contorted, and vast opportunities for human betterment lost.

originally posted by xowie

liz: I urge each and every one of you to TURN OFF your television and your radio for JUST ONE DAY. Try it. A media moratorium. A cleansing of your system, if you will. A fast from "the facts." I did it today and I feel so much better, so much more full of love and peace and understanding and hope for myself and all of humanity. Our brains, like our bodies, can only handle so much stress and trauma. After the 10 millionth replay of the plane hitting the tower, I knew I was being manipulated in a most unpleasant way. A migraine ensued that has only now, after several hours of yoga and media fasting, gone away. Right now is the time to sleep, take your B vitamins, meditate, and move your body. Love thy neighbor. MASTURBATE. Do that loving-kindness thing for yourself and try to remember that you're alive, which means there are still opportunities for you to do some good.

originally posted by xowie

Of course, I'm smoking a pipe dream here, offering a strategy straight from LaLaLand. America will "retaliate," Americans will feel pretty darn good about it, and the president's approval ratings will shoot up higher than 110 stories. It all goes without saying, just like the reasons for terrorism go without saying -- meaning literally that the reasons can never be seriously discussed. The agony thousands of American families are going through this morning will be repeated -- first in an Arab nation, and then, soon, in America again. What goes around comes around. Again and again and again.

originally posted by xowie

A hole in the world by Jonathan Schell

originally posted by xowie

As one who professes to pray to Jesus every morning in the oval office, I hope our President will heed the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount who said, "..it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth" ..."but I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you."

originally posted by xowie

We who favor peace must create our own national dialogue before we can hope to influence the larger one.

originally posted by xowie

Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.

originally posted by xowie

Tuesday was International Peace day.

originally posted by xowie

This log is dedicated to presenting those graphics created to explain the terrorist act against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

We are calling on the political and military leadership of the United States and its allies to seek justice rather than revenge, and in doing so, break the horrible cycle of violence and suffering. During these difficult times, we call for tolerance and for people in the U.S. and around the world to stand firm against the persecution of innocent Arab and Muslim peoples. We vow to redouble our collective efforts towards social, racial, economic, and environmental justice, civil liberties for all, and nonviolent conflict resolution. Our hearts and thoughts are with the victims and their families. We join people around the world in praying for peace.

originally posted by xowie

The speech Bush should give.

originally posted by xowie

Dan Kennedy: The End of Decadence.

originally posted by xowie

The enthusiasm of many who planned to participate in the protests has suddenly evaporated. The willingness of the American public to even listen to the protesters' message has surely diminished. Impassioned arguments about the depredations of global capitalism sound, for the moment at least, moot.

One Metropolitan Police Department detective put it even more bluntly. "Most of us are veterans," he said. "We're going to go [to the protest] and take care of business: kill, kill, kill."

originally posted by xowie

A co-worker said when he went in to wake up his 4-year-old daughter yesterday morning, she asked, "Did any more castles fall down?"

originally posted by xowie

Understanding Osama bin Laden - AlterNet:

The State Department has theorized that if the people of a rogue nation experience enough suffering, they will overthrow their rulers, or compel them to adopt more sensible behavior. The terrorist actions in New York and Washington are a clear and ironic implementation of this strategy against the United States. (…)

Above all, Americans need to remember that the rest of the world has an absolute right to self-determination that is as defensible as our own. A despicable act of terror such as that committed in New York and Washington is a measure of the revulsion that others feel at U.S. actions that seemingly limit those rights. If we perpetuate a cycle of hate and revenge, this conflict will escalate into a war that our great-grandchildren will be fighting.

The broadest goal today of progressives is one that transcends any ideology: we, all of us, as individuals, must become aware and participating citizens of the world, not just the U.S. We have to pay attention beyond our flimsy borders, and we must demand that the U.S. treat others as we would have them treat us. Because no matter who was behind the attacks, it’s certain that they felt they were treating us as we have treated others.

And in countless cases, that is correct. The same emotions of shock, terror, grief, rage, and powerlessness that many of us felt yesterday have been felt before by the ordinary people in Belgrade, Dili, Mogadishu, Baghdad, Panama City, Beirut, and many other places where the craters take the form of American footprints. They know the world is a small place. So must we all.

Resources for helping children deal with the 9-11 attacks:

• Mr. Rogers on helping children deal with scary news
• FEMA on caring for children
• David Walsh on talking with children; covers babies thru high school
• Q&A: explaining disasters to children, coping with grief
• PBS resources for educators
• PBS resources for parents
• USA Today on talking to kids
• more info and insight at Follow Me Here: "Don't become glued to the television and unavailable to your children when they need you most."

Commentary: A Few Words from Ali Abunimah

originally posted by xowie

Tuesday did not offer a flattering exhibition of America's leaders. President Bush gave a timid and stilted initial reaction in Sarasota, Fla., then disappeared for an hour before resurfacing in at a base in Barksdale, La., where he gave another flaccid address with every appearance of being on tranquilizers.

No American president since FDR after Pearl Harbor had faced quite the kind of rhetorical challenge that W. confronted on Tuesday night; and if it seems a tad unfair to hold W. to the Roosevelt standard, well, nobody made this guy run for president, or forced him to steal the position when he couldn’t win it at the ballot box.

originally posted by xowie

It may seem presumptuous on my part, but I personally believe we need to think seriously whether a violent action is the right thing to do and in the greater interest of the nation and people in the long run. I believe violence will only increase the cycle of violence.

originally posted by xowie

• Fear & Loathing in America
• Giuliani's Moment
• Refuse and Resist Anti-Arab Racism
• Shattered
• World response matrix

originally posted by xowie

At 8:59 a.m., before he had heard the news, David Jacobs, a Brooklyn resident and software architect, posted to the Web log randomWalks a New York Times interview with Bill Ayers, the former Weather Underground bomber who recently published a memoir, Fugitive Days. While the Twin Towers were being designed and built in 1972, Ayers was planting bombs in the Pentagon and the Capitol. ‘I don’t regret setting bombs,’ he told reporter Dinitia Smith in the interview, which ran, presciently, Tuesday morning. ‘I feel we didn’t do enough.’ Only a few minutes later, Jacobs did what the Times couldn’t: He explained the strange synchronicity. ‘It’s a complete coincidence that I posted about the weathermen moments before the WTC & Pentagon fires,’ he wrote on the site. ‘More soon.’

originally posted by xowie

More weblog coverage: booknotes and kottke.org.

Check out this unique and powerful satellite image “processed with the SWIR band which is particularly sensitive to fire spots. Thanks to this SWIR band two red spots are clearly visible through the plume of smoke at the south end of Manhattan island.”

The 9-11 coverage by two hundred weblogs, including randomWalks, has been archived for posterity.

Noam Chomsky: On the Bombings.

originally posted by xowie

When I began crying I thought, ``Bury the dead. Bury the dead and tell each one of their mundane American stories, all with the same ending, and make everyone read all 10,000 or 30,000 or whatever, and see if that makes people thirst for more blood, when it's all told out, when they've heard the stories of all the dead, and when they understand that America will go and put the ending on tens of thousands of other stories, in Afghanistan or wherever we decide, then ask if they want that to happen, or if they want to figure out some way around it.''

They pay rent-a-cops $5.75 an hour to make sure the bad guys don’t get on my plane. That is what my life is worth - less than the cost of an oil change. Too harsh, you say? Well, chew on this: a first-year pilot on American Eagle (the commuter arm of American Airlines) receives around $15,000 a year in annual pay. That’s right - $15,000 for the person who has your life in his hands. Until recently, Continental Express paid a little over $13,000 a year. There was one guy, an American Eagle pilot, who had four kids so he went down to the welfare office and applied for food stamps - and he was eligible! Someone on welfare is flying my plane? Is this for real? Yes, it is.

originally posted by xowie

Deep 9-11 searches free from LexisNexis.

originally posted by xowie

Remy, a student of P.S. 139 in Brooklyn, said that he had been in school all day, and could tell something was wrong early in the morning, because teachers kept leaving the class to talk in the hall. He recalls, "My teacher said, 'I don't have permission to tell you what happened.'"

originally posted by xowie

Ray Downey: an essay from Gov. Keating.

originally posted by xowie

A caller asked Howard if he thinks the World Trade Center buildings will be rebuilt. Crazy Cabbie said they should be put right back up to show the world we haven't been defeated. He also said that his radio partner Cane said that when those buildings went down it was like chopping off the country's testicles. We need our manhood back so they should be put back up right away.

originally posted by xowie

Neale of wrongwaygoback.com is constructing a detailed timeline of 9-11 World Trade Center attack.

Why the towers collapsed features a helpful graphic.

"We are Arab-Americans, yes, but today we feel American. This happened on our soil here. The people who lost their lives are our people, too."

originally posted by xowie

"I said to the guy next to me, "It's going to crash in. It's going to crash in.' Then it crashed in,'' Lee said.

originally posted by xowie

Over in Brooklyn, which is even more ethnically diverse than New York, the most unusual thing is the light. That and all the people. In Boreum Hill, about three miles southeast of the massive column of smoke, dust, and ash, you can still see scraps of paper hovering in the sky. The debris refracts the sun, touching everything on the street with a spooky, gray-gold patina. All along Atlantic Avenue, thousands of people walk home from work or school in Manhattan or Brooklyn. Some wear dust masks. Dozens gather on the street corners to gaze up at the sky.

originally posted by xowie

Jonathan of killyourtv.com has started a special blog on the attack called life during wartime.

Political cartoonists respond to the attack.

If you’re having trouble with the news sites:

Google Current Events. Many online news services are not available because of extremely high demand. Here are links to news sites, including cached copies as they appeared earlier today.

How Good Were the World Trade Center Pilots? - slate.com.

The Village Voice: Listening to the Arabs of New York

Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own. - Matt. 3:34

originally posted by xowie

The Objectives And Aims Of Jihaad:

1. Raising the Word of Allaah, the Most High
2. Helping the Oppressed
3. Repelling Aggression and Protecting Islam

originally posted by xowie

Oliver North (gak!) just pointed out on Fox News that the U.S. once went to war with the Barbary Pirates.

In other words, 9-11 could result in a declaration of war.

originally posted by xowie

9-11 links at ResearchBuzz.

originally posted by xowie

Poynter.org: Covering the Attack - story ideas, ethical guidelines, media analysis.

The corporate media often referred to Pearl Harbor as they covered the attacks. This analogy appears to come from the unexpected nature of the attacks as well as their overwhelming force.

While there are some parallels between the two attacks, there is also a difference that has disturbing implications for everyone in the United States. The attack on Pearl Harbor was made by another nation. This attack was most likely the work of a small group of people. The United States was able to attack Japan afterward because nations are easy to find. Small groups of people are somewhat more difficult to find. Thus, national defense agencies and industries will undoubtedly see a substantial increase in their operating funds while Americans will see a corresponding decrease in civil liberties.

Lest anyone make this a partisan issues, Clinton laid the ground work for tomorrow's attack on civil liberties with such actions as greatly increasing the FBI's wire-tapping abilities. With CNN interviewing people like Tom Clancy (no joke), there will be no shortage of people calling for Americans to trade in some more freedom in return for a promise of more security. Benjamin Franklin correctly said that the people who would make that trade would neither get nor deserve freedom or security.

WTC/Pentagon attacks meta-coverage:

• World New York
• Camworld
• Scripting News

Everyone from Pat Robertson to assorted elected officials are blaming not only Islamic terrorists, but "Islam" as a shorthand for it--all with, as yet, no evidence of who might have been behind the attacks.

Tom Brokaw on NBC can't get enough of State Department officials. For hours this morning, NBC "reported" that the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine had "claimed responsibility" for the attack on the World Financial Center. Brokaw's source, it turns out, was an anonymous caller to Abu Dhabi television.

originally posted by xowie

Good reminder from an activist mailing list:

Be vigilant against the anti Muslim hysteria that could hit. We already ran into a guy who was spray painting ‘Fuck Islam’. After a few stern words, and a talk about the Muslims who surely were in the World Trade Center when the planes hit, he helped us spray paint over his racist tag. White people in particular have a real responsibility here to protect our middle eastern brothers and sisters from the mindless, racist, reasonless attacks and finger pointing that are sure to follow this attack.

Check in here if you’re alive in New York or any other affected city (DC).

dead @ 32 is hosting lots of photos and video of the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks.

Huge smoke cloud visible on NYC radar. (MeFi)

originally posted by xowie

What good is spilling blood?
It will not grow a thing
“TASTE ETERNITY”
the sword sings Blues for ALLAH
In’sh’ALLAH
They lie where they fall
There’s nothing more to say

• Robt. Hunter

  look at water and fire
  earth and wind
  enemies and friends all at once
  the wolf and the lamb
  the lion and the deer
  far away yet together
  look at the unity of this
  spring and winter
  manifested in the equinox
  you too must mingle my friends
  since the earth and the sky
  are mingled just for you and me
  - Rumi

  ‘An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.'
  

• Mahatma Gandhi (via Noise Between Stations)

originally posted by xowie

If you're in Manhattan, think about something seriously for me -- there was already a major blood shortage, and there will be an immense need for blood. Most hospitals have set up ways for you to walk in and donate blood today; please, if you're OK, and your family is OK, and you are just glued to your television, think about ungluing yourself, walking to your nearest hospital, and donating blood.

I cannot stress how important this is right now.

PFLP denying responsibility. DFLP too.

originally posted by xowie

CIA fact sheet and Muslim student database on Osama bin Laden.

originally posted by xowie

Astrological software for Apple Macintosh.

Sec. 101: Prohibition of Certain Devices.
(a) In General -- It is unlawful to manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide or otherwise traffic in any interactive digital device that does not include and utilize certified security technologies that adhere to the security system standards adopted under section 104.

originally posted by xowie

Buddy Holly’s 65th birthday. Rave on!

originally posted by xowie

Transform Columbus Day.

originally posted by xowie

My unseen opponent began with some highly irregular, if not totally absurd, opening moves - shifting all his pawns forward by one square. These were moves that no Grandmaster would ever play. From this deliberately unpromising position emerged moves of extraordinary power. In the first game I was totally crushed.