The War on Drugs has been responsible for massive amounts of federal asset seizures. I can't remember if it was Bush or Reagan, but one of 'em enacted a law that gave the federal law enforcement agencies the abillity to seize your goods if they even SUSPECTED you were involved in some form of drug trade or possession, and they don't have to disclose the "evidence" that led them to believe you were guilty. This resulted in a lot of innocent people taking it in the bung.
I see a parallel here in recent events. The government has just come up with another way to criminalize otherwise innocent people. We already have a greater percent of the population incarcerated than any nation (but, hey, it's good for the economy!).
The scariest thing, to me, is that if the government spent as much time and money trying to educate us about drugs, rather then spend it on propaganda, we might not have so many lives destroyed. Similarly, if we spent as much time and money on finding a peaceful solution to the terrorist problem, instead of bombing the hell out of people and whittling away at US Citizens' civil liberties, maybe we could get somewhere.
Meanwhile, I'm a bit scared that my political beliefs will get me thrown in a jail. Please, you may not agree that we shouldn't be bombing Afghanastan, and you may not agree with my politics, but every single American is in danger of losing our freedoms. And that's what we are supposed to be fighting for in the first place, isn't it?
Let's extend Cliff's theory. I can get 550 cinnamon flavored toothpicks for approximately $.02 each. Since I can get a box for less than a stick of RAM, I can sell a box to Cliff, and he can paint one end of each toothpick black, and one white. He can line all the toothpicks up with the black ends pointing away from him. Then, when he wants to represent an "on" bit, he can turn the toothpick around.
It will require Cliff to manually input the data stored in the toothpick array, but it the advantage of being cheap, AND it consumes zero energy!
What we need is an interface that operates like a little joystick that you put in your mouth, perhaps in the shape of one of those baby sucker things. Click by biting down, maybe have a few extra "mouse-buttons" added to the keyboard, which could be operated by two hands.
Telephone conversations may be impeded, but think of all the geek-girls you could get when they find out how much exercise your tongue gets.
After 10 hours of pulling cables, the Kursk has finally been brought to the surface. Russian inspectors onboard the Giant 4 entered the sub, and returned five minutes later. After a brief announcement that "all the vodka rations had been destroyed", the Kurst was dropped back into the Barents Sea.
What's the difference between a mini-black hole and a regular, run-of-the-mill, black hole? I mean, they are both singularlities, right? You don't get much more "mini" than that.
This is sort of off-topic, but I thought people might find it useful.
Everybody knows that you can visit X10s' site and wade through a few pages to find the link to set a cookie to prevent X10 ads from popping up for 30 days. Why, in god's name, they think that I would want to start seeing the ads again after I'd banished them, I don't know.
But after a few emails exchanged with their tech support, I was given this link:
It sets the cookie with an expiration date of 365 days (even though the confirmation page that pops up says 30 days, just check your cookie expiration date).
Advertise utility, durability, and user-serviceability, rather than the sexiness of a product when surrounded by semi-naked chicks, and maybe I wouldn't find it quite as necessary to block their crap.
So now liberals and communists and terrorist sympathizers are one in the same? Why not just bunch that together with homosexual/feminist/ethnic minority?
By that logic, the Washington Post is more likely to contain misinformation/propaganda than a foreign paper. Which news source does the US government have more control over?
Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn.
That's true. Users don't need software that is bundled in the sense that Microsoft Office is, where every program interacts "seemlessly" with any other program (especially at the cost of bloat). BUT, being able to install an entire set of tools from a single source is a very attractive feature.
In other words, I don't care if I can imbed Excel Spreadsheets in Word documents, but I would hate to have to search out and separately install each app that I use within Office.
[whine mode]So now posting something contraversial gets me modded as a troll. There were some important points in there that I felt needed to be brought up. It's not like I said "ha, ha, fucking new yorkers suck anyway".
Like it or not, US "acts of aggression" are largly responsible for building the country you live in. You use gas, right? Imagine $5/gal permenantly. Food, close, electronics, everything we have is a result of "US extortion." It may be cold, but most of us aren't willing to give that up.
You're right. That's why I ride my bike to work 3 out 5 days, why I try to buy locally grown food (or grow my own), and why I try to support my local economy in general. It's hard, and there is no way I can completely avoid supporting corporations that take advantage of third world countries (or stop paying taxes!), but I make an effort.
I'd support them if they were acting as a unified nation. Retaliation might be one of those actions. But continued rampant globalization in the interest of the plutocratic elite don't represent a unified nation.
Here are a few things that you might want to look at:
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/IraqCrisi s. htm
Sweat shops suck because a lot of times the workers have no right to organize into unions, and working conditions are less than humane. So why don't they just quit? I don't know. Maybe the deals that the foreign governments make with the IMF require them to somehow encourage their citizens to work or get thrown in jail. That's a good point, though. I'll have to research it more.
It's blind patriotism like that which prevents people from criticising the actions of the American Government which lead to terrorists going to the extremes we have witnessed. Now is precisely the time to question the behavior of our government.
I'm not saying that the terrorists were right. What they did was about as wrong as it gets. But we seriously need to ask ourselves: "what is the US Government doing to the rest of the world that would cause them to despise us so much?".
This isn't so much anti-american sentiment as it is anti-globalization sentiment. Once we determine who was responsible for the bombings, we might begin to understand their motivation. But don't let that end discussion on all the other possible reasons that anyone would have to hate the US. If we really want a safe country, one to be proud to live in, we'd ensure that our government stopped treating the rest of the world like a cornfield waiting to be harvested.
There is nothing more ridiculous than listening to people express "shock" and "surprise" at the multiple airplane hijackings and terror attacks on September 11. I'm surprised an attack against the U.S. of this magnitude hasn't happened sooner. One nation can only treat the world as a slave plantation and its peoples as slaves for so long, before the slaves finally rise up. There isn't a region of the world the U.S. hasn't pillaged and raped to some degree over the past 150 years. In a world with 6 billion people, there are always going to be a few who resort to individual and group terrorism to protest the policies of a global empire like the U.S.
Could there have been a better selection of targets to protest U.S. financial hegemony and military violence? First, it was Scam Central: The two 110-story World Trade Center towers, the most prominent symbols of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism. Then it was Violence Central: The Pentagon, home of the badly misnamed Department of "Defense." These attacks are being called "cowardly" by U.S. politicians and media pundits. Cowardly? Compared to the U.S. pilots who dropped bombs from over 15,000 ft. above Serbia for 78 days in 1999, safely out of the range of Serb gunners on the ground and against a nation with no air force to counter the U.S.? I don't think so.
"What balls," is all I have to say. These terror attackers risked being caught and possibly beaten and tortured while in custody. They sacrificed themselves in what may have been the boldest terror attacks in history. And who has ever turned airplanes into bombs for taking out office towers and government buildings? Yeah, it was a group of mean fuckers who did what they did on September 11, but they sure as hell weren't cowards.
Don't get me wrong. I despise individual and group terrorism not only because it causes loss of life. It also represents the ultimate rejection of mass struggle. Now the job of well-meaning U.S. activists just got a whole hell of a lot harder. We can expect some more Bill of Rights shredding legislation and more violent crackdowns on protest because of the terror attacks. We can also expect people to not want to hear peace activist's demands for an end to the destructive and violent policies of the U.S. all over the world. "Show some respect for the victims and victim's families," some people will tell us. If now isn't the time to demand an end to U.S.-backed violence around the world, then when will it be a good time to do so? With the U.S. government preparing(and most likely already carrying out) a fresh round of bombings around the world in retaliation for the terror attacks, now isn't the time to be quiet about U.S. violence against defenseless people. The eleven year U.S.-led war of bombs from the air and draconian sanctions via the U.N. against the people or Iraq is just one example of the kinds of policies we shouldn't back down from denouncing.
When I was still living Fort Collins, Colorado two years ago I attended a talk by the wonderful peace activist Kathy Kelly of Voices In The Wilderness(VITW). VITW has been campaigning against the bombing and U.S. imposed sanctions regime against the people of Iraq for about a decade now. VITW has courageously and openly defied U.S. government enforcement of the unjust U.N. sanctions by smuggling badly needed humanitarian aid into Iraq over the past decade. Kelly offered the small audience who came to see her speak that October evening a chilling anecdote about an Iraqi boy she met while making one of her many humanitarian tours of Iraq. The single digit aged boy described to a crowd at a gathering what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a pilot so that one day I can bomb Americans!"
That anecdote has haunted me ever since and I knew it was only a matter of time before that angry Iraqi boy's apocalyptic wish would come true. It's a chilling sentiment but it's completely understandable. The only world that poor Iraqi boy and countless other children his age have ever known, if said boy is even alive today, is one of U.S. bombings and sanction's imposed misery. Yet this pre-adolescent boy is(was?) sophisticated enough to figure out that it's the U.S. government that is ordering the bombings and imposing the devastating sanctions against his country, not Saddam Husein. Perhaps it's time for the majority of the U.S. adult population to match this Iraqi boy's sophistication and start demanding that their government end the bombings and the sanctions regime.
The combination of bombings and sanctions has led to a death toll in Iraq over the past decade that easily tops 1 million. I haven't seen much, if any, concern in the mass media about this horrible U.S. caused suffering in Iraq. This is the same mass media that treated the intense six week bombing campaign against Iraq at the beginning of 1991 like it was a video game where no Iraqis were being injured or killed(talk about disrespecting the victims of massive military violence!). The bombings have never stopped. Yet about the only time the media covers new bombings is when the president is looking for a boost in his poll numbers and holds a press conference after the fresh round of bombing begins.
The sanctions aren't even a topic of debate in the mass media. Try to find some commentary anywhere about Thomas Nagy's September Progressive article, which demonstrates how the U.S. government intentionally used the U.N. sanctions against Iraqi to degrade the country's water supply. Meanwhile, peace activists like Kathy Kelly are hardly mainstays in the media pundit circus. However, every time a U.S. president orders bombings of countries like Iraq or Serbia the mass media gives plenty of airtime to retired military officers for the purpose of fanning the flames of war.
Now peace activists are going to be asked to shut their mouths about U.S. violence around the world out of respect for the thousands of victims of the September 11 terror attacks. What a bunch of bullshit. I say, honor the memory of the victims of September 11: Denounce and oppose U.S. violence everywhere.
There is nothing more ridiculous than listening to people express "shock" and "surprise" at the multiple airplane hijackings and terror attacks on September 11. I'm surprised an attack against the U.S. of this magnitude hasn't happened sooner. One nation can only treat the world as a slave plantation and its peoples as slaves for so long, before the slaves finally rise up. There isn't a region of the world the U.S. hasn't pillaged and raped to some degree over the past 150 years. In a world with 6 billion people, there are always going to be a few who resort to individual and group terrorism to protest the policies of a global empire like the U.S.
Could there have been a better selection of targets to protest U.S. financial hegemony and military violence? First, it was Scam Central: The two 110-story World Trade Center towers, the most prominent symbols of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism. Then it was Violence Central: The Pentagon, home of the badly misnamed Department of "Defense." These attacks are being called "cowardly" by U.S. politicians and media pundits. Cowardly? Compared to the U.S. pilots who dropped bombs from over 15,000 ft. above Serbia for 78 days in 1999, safely out of the range of Serb gunners on the ground and against a nation with no air force to counter the U.S.? I don't think so.
"What balls," is all I have to say. These terror attackers risked being caught and possibly beaten and tortured while in custody. They sacrificed themselves in what may have been the boldest terror attacks in history. And who has ever turned airplanes into bombs for taking out office towers and government buildings? Yeah, it was a group of mean fuckers who did what they did on September 11, but they sure as hell weren't cowards.
Don't get me wrong. I despise individual and group terrorism not only because it causes loss of life. It also represents the ultimate rejection of mass struggle. Now the job of well-meaning U.S. activists just got a whole hell of a lot harder. We can expect some more Bill of Rights shredding legislation and more violent crackdowns on protest because of the terror attacks. We can also expect people to not want to hear peace activist's demands for an end to the destructive and violent policies of the U.S. all over the world. "Show some respect for the victims and victim's families," some people will tell us. If now isn't the time to demand an end to U.S.-backed violence around the world, then when will it be a good time to do so? With the U.S. government preparing(and most likely already carrying out) a fresh round of bombings around the world in retaliation for the terror attacks, now isn't the time to be quiet about U.S. violence against defenseless people. The eleven year U.S.-led war of bombs from the air and draconian sanctions via the U.N. against the people or Iraq is just one example of the kinds of policies we shouldn't back down from denouncing.
When I was still living Fort Collins, Colorado two years ago I attended a talk by the wonderful peace activist Kathy Kelly of Voices In The Wilderness(VITW). VITW has been campaigning against the bombing and U.S. imposed sanctions regime against the people of Iraq for about a decade now. VITW has courageously and openly defied U.S. government enforcement of the unjust U.N. sanctions by smuggling badly needed humanitarian aid into Iraq over the past decade. Kelly offered the small audience who came to see her speak that October evening a chilling anecdote about an Iraqi boy she met while making one of her many humanitarian tours of Iraq. The single digit aged boy described to a crowd at a gathering what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a pilot so that one day I can bomb Americans!"
That anecdote has haunted me ever since and I knew it was only a matter of time before that angry Iraqi boy's apocalyptic wish would come true. It's a chilling sentiment but it's completely understandable. The only world that poor Iraqi boy and countless other children his age have ever known, if said boy is even alive today, is one of U.S. bombings and sanction's imposed misery. Yet this pre-adolescent boy is(was?) sophisticated enough to figure out that it's the U.S. government that is ordering the bombings and imposing the devastating sanctions against his country, not Saddam Husein. Perhaps it's time for the majority of the U.S. adult population to match this Iraqi boy's sophistication and start demanding that their government end the bombings and the sanctions regime.
The combination of bombings and sanctions has led to a death toll in Iraq over the past decade that easily tops 1 million. I haven't seen much, if any, concern in the mass media about this horrible U.S. caused suffering in Iraq. This is the same mass media that treated the intense six week bombing campaign against Iraq at the beginning of 1991 like it was a video game where no Iraqis were being injured or killed(talk about disrespecting the victims of massive military violence!). The bombings have never stopped. Yet about the only time the media covers new bombings is when the president is looking for a boost in his poll numbers and holds a press conference after the fresh round of bombing begins.
The sanctions aren't even a topic of debate in the mass media. Try to find some commentary anywhere about Thomas Nagy's September Progressive article, which demonstrates how the U.S. government intentionally used the U.N. sanctions against Iraqi to degrade the country's water supply. Meanwhile, peace activists like Kathy Kelly are hardly mainstays in the media pundit circus. However, every time a U.S. president orders bombings of countries like Iraq or Serbia the mass media gives plenty of airtime to retired military officers for the purpose of fanning the flames of war.
Now peace activists are going to be asked to shut their mouths about U.S. violence around the world out of respect for the thousands of victims of the September 11 terror attacks. What a bunch of bullshit. I say, honor the memory of the victims of September 11: Denounce and oppose U.S. violence everywhere.
Don't turn this into a sensationist media extravaganza. By implying that the nation is in chaos, you are giving the terroists exactly what they want. The psychological element of terrorist attacks are potentially a lot more powerful than the actual physical attack.
Yes, this a tradgedy, but we don't exactly have rivers of blood flowing through the streets of every city.
A classic text-based game of drug dealing. The police-dealer shootouts are non-graphic, so you could say that it doesn't count as violence. Think of the lessons that could be learned. The kids could learn to appreciate the free market, as well as the value of a good ol' AK-47. And they would see that dealing drugs is really not a very profitable career (unless you deal herion).
Physical objects could be protected with built-in nanobots encoded to self-destruct if they are created as a copy without an initialization code. It'll make copying things a lot more difficult, but, much like software today, dillegent hackers will always find a way around the copy protection measures.
Carefully devised protection methods will make copying all but impossible, and relagate the copiers to a fringe portion of society, so no one will really have anything to worry about, because we know that w4r3z don't really effect the cost of software.
I haven't seen the cartoon yet, but I've heard the soundtracks,. If you get a chance to pick these up, DO IT! The music is amazing. Some of the tightest downtempo jazz/funk I've heard in years!
Slashdot Mirror
The War on Drugs has been responsible for massive amounts of federal asset seizures. I can't remember if it was Bush or Reagan, but one of 'em enacted a law that gave the federal law enforcement agencies the abillity to seize your goods if they even SUSPECTED you were involved in some form of drug trade or possession, and they don't have to disclose the "evidence" that led them to believe you were guilty. This resulted in a lot of innocent people taking it in the bung.
I see a parallel here in recent events. The government has just come up with another way to criminalize otherwise innocent people. We already have a greater percent of the population incarcerated than any nation (but, hey, it's good for the economy!).
The scariest thing, to me, is that if the government spent as much time and money trying to educate us about drugs, rather then spend it on propaganda, we might not have so many lives destroyed. Similarly, if we spent as much time and money on finding a peaceful solution to the terrorist problem, instead of bombing the hell out of people and whittling away at US Citizens' civil liberties, maybe we could get somewhere.
Meanwhile, I'm a bit scared that my political beliefs will get me thrown in a jail. Please, you may not agree that we shouldn't be bombing Afghanastan, and you may not agree with my politics, but every single American is in danger of losing our freedoms. And that's what we are supposed to be fighting for in the first place, isn't it?
Speak out!
Is my math wrong, or is Cliffs?
Let's extend Cliff's theory. I can get 550 cinnamon flavored toothpicks for approximately $.02 each. Since I can get a box for less than a stick of RAM, I can sell a box to Cliff, and he can paint one end of each toothpick black, and one white. He can line all the toothpicks up with the black ends pointing away from him. Then, when he wants to represent an "on" bit, he can turn the toothpick around.
It will require Cliff to manually input the data stored in the toothpick array, but it the advantage of being cheap, AND it consumes zero energy!
Just don't let the cat step on the array.
The key to fooling the keylogger is to use a blank password, of course.
FBI recruiters who are reading this: you know where you can contact me about that job offer.
What we need is an interface that operates like a little joystick that you put in your mouth, perhaps in the shape of one of those baby sucker things. Click by biting down, maybe have a few extra "mouse-buttons" added to the keyboard, which could be operated by two hands.
Telephone conversations may be impeded, but think of all the geek-girls you could get when they find out how much exercise your tongue gets.
10-9-01
After 10 hours of pulling cables, the Kursk has finally been brought to the surface. Russian inspectors onboard the Giant 4 entered the sub, and returned five minutes later. After a brief announcement that "all the vodka rations had been destroyed", the Kurst was dropped back into the Barents Sea.
What's the difference between a mini-black hole and a regular, run-of-the-mill, black hole? I mean, they are both singularlities, right? You don't get much more "mini" than that.
This is sort of off-topic, but I thought people might find it useful.
= ht tp://www.x10.com/x10ads1.htm
Everybody knows that you can visit X10s' site and wade through a few pages to find the link to set a cookie to prevent X10 ads from popping up for 30 days. Why, in god's name, they think that I would want to start seeing the ads again after I'd banished them, I don't know.
But after a few emails exchanged with their tech support, I was given this link:
http://www.x10.com/home/optout.cgi?DAY=365&PAGE
It sets the cookie with an expiration date of 365 days (even though the confirmation page that pops up says 30 days, just check your cookie expiration date).
HTH!
Advertise utility, durability, and user-serviceability, rather than the sexiness of a product when surrounded by semi-naked chicks, and maybe I wouldn't find it quite as necessary to block their crap.
How's this for utility?
So now liberals and communists and terrorist sympathizers are one in the same? Why not just bunch that together with homosexual/feminist/ethnic minority?
By that logic, the Washington Post is more likely to contain misinformation/propaganda than a foreign paper. Which news source does the US government have more control over?
Linux will not gain converts by giving users the same thing, that they will then have to relearn.
That's true. Users don't need software that is bundled in the sense that Microsoft Office is, where every program interacts "seemlessly" with any other program (especially at the cost of bloat). BUT, being able to install an entire set of tools from a single source is a very attractive feature.
In other words, I don't care if I can imbed Excel Spreadsheets in Word documents, but I would hate to have to search out and separately install each app that I use within Office.
[whine mode]So now posting something contraversial gets me modded as a troll. There were some important points in there that I felt needed to be brought up. It's not like I said "ha, ha, fucking new yorkers suck anyway".
I fart in your general direction.
Like it or not, US "acts of aggression" are largly responsible for building the country you live in. You use gas, right? Imagine $5/gal permenantly. Food, close, electronics, everything we have is a result of "US extortion." It may be cold, but most of us aren't willing to give that up.
You're right. That's why I ride my bike to work 3 out 5 days, why I try to buy locally grown food (or grow my own), and why I try to support my local economy in general. It's hard, and there is no way I can completely avoid supporting corporations that take advantage of third world countries (or stop paying taxes!), but I make an effort.
I'd support them if they were acting as a unified nation. Retaliation might be one of those actions. But continued rampant globalization in the interest of the plutocratic elite don't represent a unified nation.
Here are a few things that you might want to look at:
i s. htm
http://www.zmag.org/chomsky/index.cfm
http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/IraqCris
Sweat shops suck because a lot of times the workers have no right to organize into unions, and working conditions are less than humane. So why don't they just quit? I don't know. Maybe the deals that the foreign governments make with the IMF require them to somehow encourage their citizens to work or get thrown in jail. That's a good point, though. I'll have to research it more.
It's blind patriotism like that which prevents people from criticising the actions of the American Government which lead to terrorists going to the extremes we have witnessed. Now is precisely the time to question the behavior of our government.
I'm not saying that the terrorists were right. What they did was about as wrong as it gets. But we seriously need to ask ourselves: "what is the US Government doing to the rest of the world that would cause them to despise us so much?".
This isn't so much anti-american sentiment as it is anti-globalization sentiment. Once we determine who was responsible for the bombings, we might begin to understand their motivation. But don't let that end discussion on all the other possible reasons that anyone would have to hate the US. If we really want a safe country, one to be proud to live in, we'd ensure that our government stopped treating the rest of the world like a cornfield waiting to be harvested.
I'm re-posting this because I think it has some important points.
The following article was written by Rick Giombetti, from Seattle, WA. Posted with the author's permission.
Why The Surprise?:
"I Want To Be A Pilot So That One Day I Can Bomb Americans!"
Who saw it coming?
There is nothing more ridiculous than listening to people express "shock" and "surprise" at the multiple airplane hijackings and terror attacks on September 11. I'm surprised an attack against the U.S. of this magnitude hasn't happened sooner. One nation can only treat the world as a slave plantation and its peoples as slaves for so long, before the slaves finally rise up. There isn't a region of the world the U.S. hasn't pillaged and raped to some degree over the past 150 years. In a world with 6 billion people, there are always going to be a few who resort to individual and group terrorism to protest the policies of a global empire like the U.S.
Could there have been a better selection of targets to protest U.S. financial hegemony and military violence? First, it was Scam Central: The two 110-story World Trade Center towers, the most prominent symbols of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism. Then it was Violence Central: The Pentagon, home of the badly misnamed Department of "Defense." These attacks are being called "cowardly" by U.S. politicians and media pundits. Cowardly? Compared to the U.S. pilots who dropped bombs from over 15,000 ft. above Serbia for 78 days in 1999, safely out of the range of Serb gunners on the ground and against a nation with no air force to counter the U.S.? I don't think so.
"What balls," is all I have to say. These terror attackers risked being caught and possibly beaten and tortured while in custody. They sacrificed themselves in what may have been the boldest terror attacks in history. And who has ever turned airplanes into bombs for taking out office towers and government buildings? Yeah, it was a group of mean fuckers who did what they did on September 11, but they sure as hell weren't cowards.
Don't get me wrong. I despise individual and group terrorism not only because it causes loss of life. It also represents the ultimate rejection of mass struggle. Now the job of well-meaning U.S. activists just got a whole hell of a lot harder. We can expect some more Bill of Rights shredding legislation and more violent crackdowns on protest because of the terror attacks. We can also expect people to not want to hear peace activist's demands for an end to the destructive and violent policies of the U.S. all over the world. "Show some respect for the victims and victim's families," some people will tell us. If now isn't the time to demand an end to U.S.-backed violence around the world, then when will it be a good time to do so? With the U.S. government preparing(and most likely already carrying out) a fresh round of bombings around the world in retaliation for the terror attacks, now isn't the time to be quiet about U.S. violence against defenseless people. The eleven year U.S.-led war of bombs from the air and draconian sanctions via the U.N. against the people or Iraq is just one example of the kinds of policies we shouldn't back down from denouncing.
When I was still living Fort Collins, Colorado two years ago I attended a talk by the wonderful peace activist Kathy Kelly of Voices In The Wilderness(VITW). VITW has been campaigning against the bombing and U.S. imposed sanctions regime against the people of Iraq for about a decade now. VITW has courageously and openly defied U.S. government enforcement of the unjust U.N. sanctions by smuggling badly needed humanitarian aid into Iraq over the past decade. Kelly offered the small audience who came to see her speak that October evening a chilling anecdote about an Iraqi boy she met while making one of her many humanitarian tours of Iraq. The single digit aged boy described to a crowd at a gathering what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a pilot so that one day I can bomb Americans!"
That anecdote has haunted me ever since and I knew it was only a matter of time before that angry Iraqi boy's apocalyptic wish would come true. It's a chilling sentiment but it's completely understandable. The only world that poor Iraqi boy and countless other children his age have ever known, if said boy is even alive today, is one of U.S. bombings and sanction's imposed misery. Yet this pre-adolescent boy is(was?) sophisticated enough to figure out that it's the U.S. government that is ordering the bombings and imposing the devastating sanctions against his country, not Saddam Husein. Perhaps it's time for the majority of the U.S. adult population to match this Iraqi boy's sophistication and start demanding that their government end the bombings and the sanctions regime.
The combination of bombings and sanctions has led to a death toll in Iraq over the past decade that easily tops 1 million. I haven't seen much, if any, concern in the mass media about this horrible U.S. caused suffering in Iraq. This is the same mass media that treated the intense six week bombing campaign against Iraq at the beginning of 1991 like it was a video game where no Iraqis were being injured or killed(talk about disrespecting the victims of massive military violence!). The bombings have never stopped. Yet about the only time the media covers new bombings is when the president is looking for a boost in his poll numbers and holds a press conference after the fresh round of bombing begins.
The sanctions aren't even a topic of debate in the mass media. Try to find some commentary anywhere about Thomas Nagy's September Progressive article, which demonstrates how the U.S. government intentionally used the U.N. sanctions against Iraqi to degrade the country's water supply. Meanwhile, peace activists like Kathy Kelly are hardly mainstays in the media pundit circus. However, every time a U.S. president orders bombings of countries like Iraq or Serbia the mass media gives plenty of airtime to retired military officers for the purpose of fanning the flames of war.
Now peace activists are going to be asked to shut their mouths about U.S. violence around the world out of respect for the thousands of victims of the September 11 terror attacks. What a bunch of bullshit. I say, honor the memory of the victims of September 11: Denounce and oppose U.S. violence everywhere.
The following article was written by Rick Giombetti, from Seattle, WA. Posted with the author's permission.
Why The Surprise?:
"I Want To Be A Pilot So That One Day I Can Bomb Americans!"
Who saw it coming?
There is nothing more ridiculous than listening to people express "shock" and "surprise" at the multiple airplane hijackings and terror attacks on September 11. I'm surprised an attack against the U.S. of this magnitude hasn't happened sooner. One nation can only treat the world as a slave plantation and its peoples as slaves for so long, before the slaves finally rise up. There isn't a region of the world the U.S. hasn't pillaged and raped to some degree over the past 150 years. In a world with 6 billion people, there are always going to be a few who resort to individual and group terrorism to protest the policies of a global empire like the U.S.
Could there have been a better selection of targets to protest U.S. financial hegemony and military violence? First, it was Scam Central: The two 110-story World Trade Center towers, the most prominent symbols of U.S. multinational corporate capitalism. Then it was Violence Central: The Pentagon, home of the badly misnamed Department of "Defense." These attacks are being called "cowardly" by U.S. politicians and media pundits. Cowardly? Compared to the U.S. pilots who dropped bombs from over 15,000 ft. above Serbia for 78 days in 1999, safely out of the range of Serb gunners on the ground and against a nation with no air force to counter the U.S.? I don't think so.
"What balls," is all I have to say. These terror attackers risked being caught and possibly beaten and tortured while in custody. They sacrificed themselves in what may have been the boldest terror attacks in history. And who has ever turned airplanes into bombs for taking out office towers and government buildings? Yeah, it was a group of mean fuckers who did what they did on September 11, but they sure as hell weren't cowards.
Don't get me wrong. I despise individual and group terrorism not only because it causes loss of life. It also represents the ultimate rejection of mass struggle. Now the job of well-meaning U.S. activists just got a whole hell of a lot harder. We can expect some more Bill of Rights shredding legislation and more violent crackdowns on protest because of the terror attacks. We can also expect people to not want to hear peace activist's demands for an end to the destructive and violent policies of the U.S. all over the world. "Show some respect for the victims and victim's families," some people will tell us. If now isn't the time to demand an end to U.S.-backed violence around the world, then when will it be a good time to do so? With the U.S. government preparing(and most likely already carrying out) a fresh round of bombings around the world in retaliation for the terror attacks, now isn't the time to be quiet about U.S. violence against defenseless people. The eleven year U.S.-led war of bombs from the air and draconian sanctions via the U.N. against the people or Iraq is just one example of the kinds of policies we shouldn't back down from denouncing.
When I was still living Fort Collins, Colorado two years ago I attended a talk by the wonderful peace activist Kathy Kelly of Voices In The Wilderness(VITW). VITW has been campaigning against the bombing and U.S. imposed sanctions regime against the people of Iraq for about a decade now. VITW has courageously and openly defied U.S. government enforcement of the unjust U.N. sanctions by smuggling badly needed humanitarian aid into Iraq over the past decade. Kelly offered the small audience who came to see her speak that October evening a chilling anecdote about an Iraqi boy she met while making one of her many humanitarian tours of Iraq. The single digit aged boy described to a crowd at a gathering what he wanted to be when he grew up. He said, "I want to be a pilot so that one day I can bomb Americans!"
That anecdote has haunted me ever since and I knew it was only a matter of time before that angry Iraqi boy's apocalyptic wish would come true. It's a chilling sentiment but it's completely understandable. The only world that poor Iraqi boy and countless other children his age have ever known, if said boy is even alive today, is one of U.S. bombings and sanction's imposed misery. Yet this pre-adolescent boy is(was?) sophisticated enough to figure out that it's the U.S. government that is ordering the bombings and imposing the devastating sanctions against his country, not Saddam Husein. Perhaps it's time for the majority of the U.S. adult population to match this Iraqi boy's sophistication and start demanding that their government end the bombings and the sanctions regime.
The combination of bombings and sanctions has led to a death toll in Iraq over the past decade that easily tops 1 million. I haven't seen much, if any, concern in the mass media about this horrible U.S. caused suffering in Iraq. This is the same mass media that treated the intense six week bombing campaign against Iraq at the beginning of 1991 like it was a video game where no Iraqis were being injured or killed(talk about disrespecting the victims of massive military violence!). The bombings have never stopped. Yet about the only time the media covers new bombings is when the president is looking for a boost in his poll numbers and holds a press conference after the fresh round of bombing begins.
The sanctions aren't even a topic of debate in the mass media. Try to find some commentary anywhere about Thomas Nagy's September Progressive article, which demonstrates how the U.S. government intentionally used the U.N. sanctions against Iraqi to degrade the country's water supply. Meanwhile, peace activists like Kathy Kelly are hardly mainstays in the media pundit circus. However, every time a U.S. president orders bombings of countries like Iraq or Serbia the mass media gives plenty of airtime to retired military officers for the purpose of fanning the flames of war.
Now peace activists are going to be asked to shut their mouths about U.S. violence around the world out of respect for the thousands of victims of the September 11 terror attacks. What a bunch of bullshit. I say, honor the memory of the victims of September 11: Denounce and oppose U.S. violence everywhere.
There's a difference between rejecting religion and rejection spirituality.
Many many many dead.
Don't turn this into a sensationist media extravaganza. By implying that the nation is in chaos, you are giving the terroists exactly what they want. The psychological element of terrorist attacks are potentially a lot more powerful than the actual physical attack.
Yes, this a tradgedy, but we don't exactly have rivers of blood flowing through the streets of every city.
5) What happens when the developers code a bunch of new, rare, powerful items and sell them on Ebay under a pseudonym?
A classic text-based game of drug dealing. The police-dealer shootouts are non-graphic, so you could say that it doesn't count as violence. Think of the lessons that could be learned. The kids could learn to appreciate the free market, as well as the value of a good ol' AK-47. And they would see that dealing drugs is really not a very profitable career (unless you deal herion).
Honestly, how could IP law be applied?
Physical objects could be protected with built-in nanobots encoded to self-destruct if they are created as a copy without an initialization code. It'll make copying things a lot more difficult, but, much like software today, dillegent hackers will always find a way around the copy protection measures.
Carefully devised protection methods will make copying all but impossible, and relagate the copiers to a fringe portion of society, so no one will really have anything to worry about, because we know that w4r3z don't really effect the cost of software.
I haven't seen the cartoon yet, but I've heard the soundtracks,. If you get a chance to pick these up, DO IT! The music is amazing. Some of the tightest downtempo jazz/funk I've heard in years!
As a barista emblazoned with a familiar logo!