randomWalks

These alternate Apple MWSF home pages are hilarious.

To make sure that Caitlin grew up with the right priorities, I created huge padded rainbow apples, the early Apple logo, to go at each end of her cot.

Do You Want to Play?

If these rules make sense to you, we could quickly cross the line from words to action, both on the Web and in neighborhoods and villages around the world, by inviting people and organizations that support these goals to meet and work together, locally and face-to-face -- in schools, community centers and houses of worship -- or online and across any cultural or national border.

Hamed Karzai worked as a consultant for the huge US oil group Unocal, which had supported the Taleban movement and sought to construct a pipeline to transport oil and gas from the Islamic republics of Central Asia to Pakistan via Afghanistan.

Five Things We Will Do in 2002 (washingtonpost.com): “In the spirit of renewal, Home section staffers share our personal struggles against clutter and disorder, and our resolve to gain the upper hand against overcrowded closets, teetering stacks of books, messy nests of paperwork, photographs and batter-spattered recipes.”

Dig Steinbeck?

originally posted by xowie

Seed.

Mark your calendars: May 4th, 2002 is Free Comic Book Day!

Aw shucks, randomWalks won an O.Dub award. Great work, team!

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)