I've just been offered a "real" job in a library in DC. Perhaps this weblog will resume in a few weeks once I get settled in ... It's been fun attempting to surf about for a sustainable-alternatives newsfeed!
To dig out the sort of material linked on Sassafrass Log for youself, here's a start:
Check Metafilter, World's End, the international, environmental, and tech links on Green Man Ark; also Unknown News, Random Walks, Red Rock Eater, NewsInsider, MaxSpeaks, Cursor or BuzzFlash, Rantburg, anything with Dr. Menlo ... and then surf around a bit at random through the material in my blogroll ...
Count on those independently-minded Oregonians to be uncomfortably forthright and direct!
"The key question is whether a candidate can successfully run on his record of service while actually serving the country, instead of spending all his time trawling for money and votes."
"A self-confident elite might have children early, late or never. But it wouldn't have an ongoing angst about the immediate impact of children on your wallet, sex life, career path and social life. It would treat children as something you did, and the future as something you talked about."
"Where is Saddam? Where are those arsenals of weapons of mass destruction, if indeed they ever existed?
"Perhaps Saddam is still hiding somewhere in a bunker underground, sitting on cases of weapons of mass destruction and is preparing to blow the whole thing up and bring down the lives of thousands of Iraqi people."
"Worn down by job searches that have stretched on for months, demoralized by disappointing offers or outright rejections, some unemployed people have simply stopped the search. Over the last two years, the portion of Americans in the labor force — those who are either working or actively looking for work — has fallen 0.9 percentage points to 66.2 percent, the largest drop in almost 40 years ...
More than 74.5 million adults were considered outside of the labor force last month, up more than 4 million since March 2001 ...
"This is what we see today — job searches that can take 6 to 12 months," said Charlie Beck, who has directed the support group, Priority Two, for the past 20 years. "By six months, people really start to doubt themselves, and they start to doubt they're ever going to find anything. They start to doubt everything."
Uncertainty crept slowly into Mike Guido's outlook. But after the third "really good opportunity" slipped away, "it started to dawn on me," Mr. Guido said. "It just wasn't happening. It wasn't going to."
"The Pentagon's decision to close its only peacekeeping training institute must be the ultimate in false economies."
"For political progressives in the US, the first item on a new agenda could be how to reconstitute the Peacekeeping Institute. As the ongoing conflict in Iraq demonstrates, international issues today require civil-military partnerships as never before. Whether it is called peacekeeping, public security or nation-building, the fact is that success or failure in Iraq will be measured largely on the extent to which social and political stability is built over the long-term."
"What is lacking today is not a need for patriotic service, nor a willingness to serve, but the opportunity. Indeed, one of the curious truths of our era is that while opportunities to serve ourselves have exploded---with ever-expanding choices of what to buy, where to eat, what to read, watch, or listen to--- opportunities to spend some time serving our country have narrowed ...
"Americans did not fight and win World War II as discrete individuals. Their brave and determined energies were mobilized and empowered by a national government headed by democratically elected leaders. That is how a free society remains free and achieves greatness. National service is a crucial means of making our patriotism real, to the benefit of both ourselves and our country."
"Want to be healthy? Strong? More open and lickable and less bitter and baffled and cynical? Ask for it, place some divine intent behind it and breath it in and imagine what it would feel like to radiate health and sexual vibrancy and self-defined joy and really cool taste in shoes. That's how you start.
Because this is the biggest collective delusion of all, that you can't get at it, that it's so much wimpy tofu-hugging BS, so much fluffy New Age psychobabble. What a convenient excuse that is to remain wallowing and acidic and humming at a simplistically low, want-based pitch, happily drunk on the disinfo They want to sell you. It's just too easy. And lazy.
And it does require work. It takes some concentrated and open-hearted effort to raise that awareness, to tune in on that level, sift through the bogus media and healers and teachers and pretentious yoga classes, gurus, smarmy inane Chicken Soupy books to find the authentically divine heat and rush and thrust.
You gotta get off your ass. You gotta question everything. You gotta see the world anew, always, every moment, to progress and evolve and vibrate higher. And, to be sure, it can be a total divinely annoying pain in the ass.
But, really, when you get right down to it, what else is there?"
Toxic fuel traces found in grocery lettuce -
and in organic salad mix too!
"A laboratory test of 22 types of lettuce purchased at Northern California supermarkets found that four were contaminated with perchlorate, a toxic rocket-fuel ingredient that has polluted the Colorado River, the source of the water used to grow most of the nation's winter vegetables ...
"State and federal environmental officials now believe that perchlorate, a salt widely used by the U.S. government to help power missiles and the space shuttle, may cause health problems, even in trace amounts."
"Seven monks swathed in saffron robes padded onto the moist grounds of Arlington National Cemetery yesterday, followed by six uniformed Marines in crisper pace bearing the coffin of a fallen comrade.
"Even in death, Kemaphoom Chanawongse, 22, straddled two worlds -- the Thailand he left when he was 9 and the America he ultimately gave his life for. The corporal died in Iraq March 23 in an ambush outside Nasiriyah.
Friends and family called him "Ahn." His fellow Marines called him "Chuckles," for his sense of humor and love of laughter."
"Aspasia, quite simply, is the inspiration for this page. She is also one of the great dissenters of world history. Arriving in Athens around 450 BCE, she challenged gender prejudice by opening a school of rhetoric and philosophy that welcomed both men and women. She introduced salon culture to the city and counted amongst her contemporaries Socrates, who claimed he learned from her the art of rhetoric, the playwrite Euripides, the philosopher Anaxagoras, and the sculpter Pheidias. When Aspasia married Pericles, the great statesman of the Golden Age, his opponents charged her with impiety (the age-old slur of the malcontent), and spread rumors that her salon was a bordello. Her successful defense in court wasn't enough to put an end to this kind of politics, as it occassionally resurfaces to torment our own vulnerable democracy. Nonetheless, Aspasia can be counted among the great figures of our Hellenic heritage, as much for her courage in the face of ingrained superstition as for her eloquence."
"You will not be able to stay home, dear Netizen.
You will not be able to plug in, log on and opt out.
You will not be able to lose yourself in Final Fantasy,
Or hold your Kazaa download queues,
Because revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
"Revolution is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will not be brought to you on Hi-Def TV
Encrypted with a warning from the FBI.
Revolution will not have a jpeg slideshow of Dubya
Calling the cattle and leading the incursion by
Secretary Rumsfeld, General Ashcroft and Dick Cheney
Riding nuclear warheads on their way to Iraq,
Or North Korea, or Iran ...
"Revolution will not be right back after
Pop-up ads about eCommerce, eTailers, or eContent.
You will not have to worry about a
Cookie in your browser, a bug in your email, or a
Worm in your recycling bin.
Revolution will not run faster with Intel inside.
Revolution, dude, is not getting a Dell.
Revolution will increase your Google rank.
Revolution is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword,
"Is not an AOL Keyword, is not an AOL Keyword.
Revolution will be no stream or download, dear Netizen;
Revolution must still be live."
"Vested interests -- the music and movie industries, telecommunications companies and governments -- are starting to clamp down politically and economically ...
"They would very much like to get us back to the days when there were three radio stations and one telephone company," he said. "We're going to have to fight to remain users and not be turned back into consumers."
"Rheingold cited a range of political, legislative and technological barriers to innovation, including the broadcast flag, trustworthy computing ("don't trust the user," Rheingold dubbed it) and tight control of the radio spectrum by incumbent telcos.
"If all the attempts to control people's use of technology are successful, "it really could make the Internet something we look back on with nostalgia," he said.
"EPA criminal agents are being diverted from their normal investigative work to provide security and drivers for agency Administrator Christine Todd Whitman ... EPA agents assigned to investigate environmental crimes have at times been ordered to perform more personal tasks ..."
Good luck, you sick and injured Iraqis! (When the US regime signs on to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, we'll let you know.)
""Why shouldn't the typical citizen, faced with a choice between Bush-style tax cuts and a plan to provide health insurance to most of the uninsured, choose the latter?"
"The calamity of 9/11 demonstrated that modern technology and human intelligence guided by hatred can lead to immense destruction. Such terrible acts are a violent symptom of an afflicted mental state. To respond wisely and effectively, we need to be guided by more healthy states of mind, not just to avoid feeding the flames of hatred, but to respond skillfully. We would do well to remember that the war against hatred and terror can be waged on this, the internal front, too."
"They are happy here that the Shia mosques have taken control of the Mukhabarat files, and seem confident that the religious establishment is well suited to the task of finding the missing. "I think the mosque is better than any government," says Fadil Eissa, another man just back from Baghdad, searching for a lost cousin."
Now Iraq will wear Brand America
"One has to wonder about the convenience and efficacy of Iraq losing its cultural heritage for those hell-bent on remaking the society in the image of rapacious capitalism and thoughtless consumerism. Of course, that’s yet another discussion that is light-years beyond our media’s capabilities."
"So here’s my cartoon:
"Teenager holding progressive magazine with headline “Chaos all part of the plan”: Dad, how could you have supported an action that is so fucked up?
"Dad, head in hands: I didn’t know. I didn’t know."
"Did you know that a US Marine of the rank of Private or Corporal, ranks that make up a majority of the Corp, brings home less than 10,000 dollars a year? I knew our service people are not getting rich but this is shameful. If a Marine Corporal is married, or married with kids his pay would have his family ranked as 'poor' by US Census Bureau standards."
BlogMatcher is a program that helps people find weblogs that match their interests and find like-minded blogs. When given an URL to a weblog (called "Reference Blog") the system finds other blogs that appear to discuss similar topics.
"Showing that I'm not _completely_ submerged in ephemera, here's a new, serious project that I think has been soundly overlooked. It's courtesy of San Francisco-based Worldlink TV and the place I sometimes volunteer/help at, the Internet Archive. [I have nothing to do with this particular effort, though, just dig it.] Basically, the two parties are teaming up to offer streaming daily news sourced from the TV stations of the Middle East. The show is called 'Mosaic', and it takes footage from national broadcasters in Jordan, Lebanon, Iran, Yemen, Syria, and more, creating a fascinating compilation of news as it's reported in those countries ..."
"The answer is conservation. Fuel efficiency. Solar and wind power. And keeping our promise to care for creation. Care about America. Care for America. For our families, for our future.
"Brought to you by the Sierra Club and the National Council of Churches"
"VIPS, made up of 25 former intelligence officials in the CIA, State and Defense Departments, Army Intelligence and FBI, made their first public statement on February 5, critiquing Powell's presentation before the UN Security Council seeking an international mandate for the war.
"Never before has a group of veteran CIA graduates -- all cum laude -- gotten together to critique the government," McGovern said.
"CIA spokesman Tom Crispell, asked for comment on the former officials' remarks Thursday, said: "They're criticizing policy, not intelligence."
"...there's power, wonder-working power, in the goodness and idealism and faith of the American people."
"That phrase was not mere wordsmithing. I know it well. I know about polished church pews; I know about dress shoes that blistered my young feet and the smooth heft of the hymnal. As the son of a Baptist minister, I know ...
"Bush was stealthily passing the message to the flock, to my flock. The issues that have plagued that flock for a quarter century are integral to understanding the second self-professed "born-again" man in the White House, his political tactics and his war in Iraq."
"The City Council voted Monday to repeal an old ordinance that prohibited immoral conduct, including extramarital sex. The law was passed after the city incorporated in 1957.
"The ordinance banned immoral conduct defined as "any person exposing his or her person or the private parts thereof; or the doing of any other act with the intent of arousing, appealing to or gratifying the lust or passions or sexual desires of any person to whom he or she is not married."
Violating the law could result in a $250 fine or three months in jail, or both.
"Our paradigm now seems to be: something terrible happened to us on September 11, and that gives us the right to interpret all future events in a way that everyone else in the world must agree with us," said Clinton, who spoke at a seminar of governance organized by Conference Board.
"And if they don't, they can go straight to hell."
The Democratic former president, who preceded George W. Bush at the White House, said that sooner or later the United States had to find a way to cooperate with the world at large.
"We can't run," Clinton pointed out. "If you got an interdependent world, and you cannot kill, jail or occupy all your adversaries, sooner or later you have to make a deal."
"The digital divide is not just about the haves and the have-nots. It's also about the yawning gap between those who are comfortable using technology and those who fear or despise it.
It's a gap strewn with broken computers, faulty ISPs and confusing technical manuals, as well as various other financial, social, psychological and physical factors ...
1: One who loves his or her country. 2: One who loves and protects the people of his or her country. 3: One who perceives national defense as health, education, and shelter of all people in his or her country. (Orig. FPA, 1991)
"I mean, you look at dictatorships and basically, they get up in the morning and the single most important thing is not looking out for their people, it's how do we preserve the regime. How do we continue our ability to control everything and repress everyone and control the press and deny freedom of religion and enlarge our prisons and force people, in the case of other countries, to live on subsistence food. I don't get it."
-- U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, on April 14's "Meet the Press"
However, Google's turning up very little info about this National Library in Iraq. What gives?
"The leading libraries of Iraq include the University of Basra Central Library; the University of Mosul Central Library; and the library of the Iraqi Museum, the National Library, and the University of Baghdad Central Library, all in Baghdad. Public libraries are in most of the provincial capitals." MetaFilter thread
"Google is a privately-owned US company that has a policy of collecting as much information as possible about everyone who uses its search tool.
It will store your computer's IP address, the time/date, your browser details and the item you search for.
It sets a tracking cookie on your computer that does not expire until 2038.
This means that Google builds up a detailed profile of your search terms over many years.
Google probably knew when you last thought you were pregnant, what diseases your children have had, and who your divorce lawyer is.
It refuses to say why it wants this information or to admit whether it makes it available to the US Government for tracking purposes."
"Troops were driving past the German embassy even as looters carted desks and chairs out of the front gate ...
"It also provided a glimpse of the shocking taste in furnishings that senior Baath party members obviously aspired to; cheap pink sofas and richly embroidered chairs, plastic drinks trolleys and priceless Iranian carpets so heavy it took three muscular thieves to carry them."
A CNN executive describes the horrible incidents he's had to keep to himself. How much collaboration with a criminal regime is acceptable for the sake of keeping your operations running?
"One of my research areas is public sector efficiency, which means the analysis of diverse methods of providing public services, such as by contracting out, vouchers, public enterprise, etc.
"The new Iraq is now one giant Federal government program, the new libertarian nightmare. Much of it will be under the purview of contractors ...
Pharmaceuticals and related topics - SARS therapies, how to identify a chemical weapons plant, Cipro in Iraq, patents, etc. A good spot to check in on the industry.
"Bruce asked what kind of non-violent cause or causes might unite America and why Democrats have not proposed it. I can suggest at least three: homeland security, energy security, and national productivity.
"Americans should be enlisted in an urgent national effort to secure our neighborhoods against terrorist attacks. We can volunteer for training in emergency medical response in case of mass casualties and assume auxiliary police and fire duties. Our people would also rally around a national project to make us sufficiently energy efficient that no American need die for foreign oil in the future. And we can all participate in shifting our economy from one of consumption to one of saving, investment, and productivity."
A brief, informative dissertation on Iraq, plus MetaFilter's dhartung's pick of links on overthrowing dictators.
"To ask whether democracy, even in a non-Western sense, has a chance in Iraq is to jump one step ahead of the game. The fundamental questions we need to answer first are: What was the nature of Iraqi civil society before the Ba`thist regime destroyed it? How did the Ba`th oliberate it? And can Iraqi civil society be rebuilt after Saddam has left the stage?"
Even Republican congressmen are cut out of the loop on post-war Iraq planning
Q: How do you get the attention of the Bush Administration? Say, for example, you have run across lots of information that Saddam's fanatics are organizing to fight a guerrilla war ...
A: You can't get their attention. First, they're not willing to listen. Second, they are committed to cutting out the long-term, strategic research at agencies like the CIA, thereby ensuring that the country can't think more than 5 minutes ahead.
"How refugee camps are laid out: buildings, supplies, logistics ("Aid workers try to give the food to women instead of men. Workers find the food is more likely to get to older people and children that way because women are the ones who cook the food. Men are more likely to sell the rations for money to buy something else").
"There's also a well-done Flash version that shows a typical layout."
"The only thing I can do is to be available." Why do people say where they are when they're on a cell phone? What's different in intergenerational cell phone use, vs. teenagers on the cell phone? Plus a bunch of info on wireless and networking ...
"It's particularly disturbing that a group headed by a man who openly states he believes the faith of Islam is evil would enter into a Muslim country in the wake of an invading army," said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesmen for The Council on American-Islamic Relations."
"To those who tuned in for the Thursday morning press conference, there seemed to be another glaring discrepancy between the two men: forthrightness. This may be more a reflection of the way politicians need to speak in the U.S. because of the oversimplifying American media, or it may be because of the American political system and the short attention span of the American voter. But whatever the reason, there were obvious differences when the two men were called upon to address serious issues surrounding the war. Blair acknowledged them and discussed them; Bush ignored their validity altogether and obfuscated with misleading information.
"To sway public opinion (with the ultimate aim of affecting the government), and to add one's presence and voice to a chorus of opposition. Violent or disruptive protests, while they will get attention, will neither win public sympathy, nor change government policy.
"The disrupters are mostly just alienating the mainstream and marginalizing their own viewpoint. This is counterproductive. Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com points out that disruptive protests make their perpetrators look narcissistic and self-dramatizing, and could even bring on a whole new wave of surveillance and crackdowns from Ashcroft.
"So what kind of protests are valid and useful?
"I'm still up for peaceful marching, which did make a national impact on February 15 and March 22. Other smart ideas: protests by key groups whose opinions are respected (hint: this doesn't mean Hollywood celebrities), and concerted efforts to positively influence media coverage."
"An ethics instructor at the U.S. Naval Academy explores how fighting a ruthless enemy can provoke ordinary soldiers to become ruthless themselves:"
"In the spring semester following the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the start of President Bush's "war on terror," I gave an unusual assignment to my students. I asked them to write essays detailing exactly why they are different from terrorists. The midshipmen were to spell out as clearly as possible how the roles they intended to fill as future Navy and Marine Corps officers are distinct in morally relevant ways from that of, say, an Al Qaeda operative. They dubbed the assignment "creepy," but gamely agreed to do it. After they had read their efforts aloud, I gave the project a twist. I had them exchange papers, and told them each to write a critical response to their classmate's paper, from the point of view of a terrorist. Then I had them read those responses aloud."
"The midshipmen found the entire exercise very disturbing because it forced them to reflect on that thin but critical line that separates warriors from murderers ..."
Skip the TV fluff, spend 10-15 minutes on these general military sitreps, and get a life! Somebody's gotta get to work and keep the economy functioning. (Are these reports accurate? Who knows. At least they're plausible and substantive.)
"Halliburton, Stevedoring Services of America get government contracts for early relief work. "It puts Halliburton in a prime position to handle the complete refurbishment of Iraq's long-neglected oil infrastructure, which will be a plum job."
- Not surprising at all
"... is the news on who is being awarded government contracts to clean up the mess in Iraq. I mean, honestly, could it get more obvious than this?"
"If Cheney were pushing this war to get money for Halliburton, and Bush is the new Hitler, stifling free speech and advancing his agenda with dictatorial glee, how did it happen that Halliburton actually lost its bid for reconstruction in Iraq?"
- This retired former chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force does not hold back on the firepower! Opening gambit:
"There's some things that surprised me a little bit. One is, as a consequence of the clumsiness, political clumsiness, we do not have help from Turkey and Saudi Arabia ...
"So why do people watch Fox News? Its popularity is linked to the belief that most mainstream media is liberal. I couldn't understand either viewpoint until I started living and working among knee-jerk Republicans, the types who feel entitled to squander resources, who think violence can solve problems, and who are pitifully overweight because they drive oversized cars to eat supersized meals."
"People in conservative suburbs know they live immoral lives. They know they drive too much and eat too much, and they know their bloated lifestyles impoverish the world. They know they are permanently degrading the environment, and, somewhere down inside, they know it takes a massive
military machine capable of unprecedented murder to keep their SUVs rolling. And they also know the government they support could easily turn on them, take away their nominal prosperity in the name of higher corporate profits. Finally they know they are unhealthy and could do much better for themselves and their families. But they don't want to admit it, because then they would have to take action. And that's why Fox News is popular. It doesn't confront viewers with the sordid truths of our society. Instead it creates
a steady, slick flow of opinion that comforts people who would prefer not to change. Who prefer working for others than for themselves. Fox gives them a feeling of belonging, the same way a sportscast creates team spirit. It
does so by lying ..."
"Feel sorry for the tyrant
Champion his cause
I admire your conviction
But your logic has some flaws
Protest marchers march for peace
Rallies on the hour
Yet you offer no solution
On removing him from power ..."
- Hints from the National Mental Health Association
"Middle- and high school age youth:
-- Plan for shared time in front of a reliable national newscast. Because the war will be discussed in school every day, your teen may be more ready to talk when he or she gets home than you’d guess. This is a good opportunity for conversation.
-- Discussing history with this age group can help put the war and related politics in context.
-- Get teens to open up about what they’ve heard each day about the war. Use the opportunity to correct any misinformation they may have acquired.
-- This age group may ask very technical or even grisly questions that may seem off the wall to you. Take each question seriously and do the best you can to answer it.
-- Encourage them to work out their own positions on the war – even it differs from your own. This is an age when kids are developing personal ethics and morals, a process you can support with open discussion and debate."
"A group of higher education experts is calling on the federal government to change the way it handles visa applications for foreign graduate students in math, science, and engineering. Since 9-11, the State Department has become more cautious about issuing visas for those students, saying their skills could be exploited by terrorists. The new scrutiny has led to an application backlog of as many as 2,000 cases.
"Last week, David Ward, president of the American Council on Education, testified at a House Science Committee hearing on the issue. Here he speaks about what he thinks are the main problems with the State Department's policy on foreign students."
"`When the Priest asked us to gather for a Peace Service we said we didn't want to come`. He said.
`What do you mean` I inquired, confused. `We didn't want to come because we don't want peace` he replied.
`What in the world do you mean?` I asked. `How could you not want peace?` `We don't want peace. We want the war to come` he continued.
What in the world are you talking about? I blurted back.
That was the beginning of a strange odyssey that deeply shattered my convictions and moral base but at the same time gave me hope for my people and, in fact, hope for the world."
