Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 16:21 - Category: Unfiled ;
Ok, but what will he do for an encore?
Kid in car crash thrown 25 feet in air, hangs onto power lines until saved.
“A teenager was catapulted at least 25 feet in the air during an auto accident but grabbed onto overhead utility wires like an action hero and dangled for about 20 minutes before a rescue crew brought him down by ladder.” (With video). Link [Boing Boing Blog]
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 16:06 - Category: Unfiled ;
‘The Devil’s Excrement’
“Ten years from now, 20 years from now, you will see,” former Venezuelan Oil Minister and OPEC co-founder Juan Pablo Perez Alfonzo predicted in the 1970s, “oil will bring us ruin.” … Perez Alfonzo had a different name for oil: “the devil’s excrement.”
Today he seems a prophet. When it hit the jackpot, Venezuela had a functioning democracy and the highest per-capita income on the continent. Now it has a state of near-civil war and a per-capita income lower than its 1960 level.
Far from an anomaly, Venezuela is a classic example of what economists call the “natural resource curse.” A 1995 analysis of developing countries by Jeffrey Sachs and Andrew Warner found that the more an economy relied on mineral wealth, the lower its growth rate. Venezuela isn’t poor despite its oil riches–it’s poor because of them. “
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 16:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
Will there be a Chinese “Grapes of Wrath”?
‘Ecological meltdown’: huge dust cloud threatens Asia
“Gigantic dust clouds swirling over China are threatening the world’s most populous country with the first-ever “ecological meltdown”, experts here warn.
The institute blames “over-cultivation, overgrazing, over-cutting and over-pumping” for the escalating catastrophe. Marginal land is being increasingly pressed into cultivation, but quickly turns to dust under the strain. The country’s 290 million sheep and goats strip the vegetation off grazing lands. Cutting down forests removes the trees that bind soil to the ground. And excessive pumping of water from underground aquifers dramatically lowers water tables, drying out the earth.”
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 10:07 - Category: Unfiled ;
Earth to Microsoft
Worm hits Microsoft, which ignored own advice.
That’s right, Microsoft forgot to patch their own servers, and got whacked by the worm along with everyone else.
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 09:52 - Category: Unfiled ;
The UN inspectors report
“Iraq unwilling to give up weapons, U.N. inspector says.” - LA Times headline.
Tell me, how can Iraq give up weapons when inspectors haven’t yet found any weapons?
“‘Inspection is not a game of catch-as-catch-can,’ Blix declares. But nuclear chief ElBaradei has found no proof of an atomic arms program.”
Indeed. Let me repeat that. No one has found any weapons. None. Zero. Zip.
However, the report has changed no opinions -
“Despite a tough report by chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix on Iraq, few members of a split U.N. Security Council changed their positions on war or peace, leaving Washington Tuesday scrambling for support.”
The Guardian comments
“Two main conclusions may be drawn from the interim reports delivered to the UN security council yesterday.
One is that while Iraq has shown a previously unexpected degree of cooperation in creating a “workable environment”, it still has many serious questions to answer and has very much more to do in helping the inspectors to fulfil their mandate.
The second conclusion to be drawn from this high drama in New York is that there are good reasons both to hope that the inspections can succeed and to persevere with them, for as long as it takes.”
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 00:22 - Category: Unfiled ;
“In the story, the buildup to this is terrific, in a church, with all of the prayers for victory, usual sanctimonious crap, and then this old guy shows up with a message from God: if you want to pray for victory, at least be absolutely certian what you’re praying for. After he tells them, he leaves, and they all decide that he must be insane because what he said made no sense. Mark Twain also had a piece, something like “A Letter From the Recording Angel”, which is a written answer to prayers. Per request, a variety of people are being afflicted with disease and catastrophe. Meanwhile, prayers for the poor and unfortunate, said aloud in church, have not been granted, as they conflict with secret supplications.”
A prayer from Mark Twain
O Lord our God,
Help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead: help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it.
For our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet.
We ask it in the spirit of love, of him who is the Source of Love, and who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all who are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.
Amen.
A friend emails about this “prayer”
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 00:16 - Category: Unfiled ;
Shouldn’t we finish this war before starting another one?
“U.S. Forces Fighting Afghan Rebels. U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan are involved in the largest-scale fighting in nine months, the U.S. military said Tuesday.”
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 00:12 - Category: Unfiled ;
Dont mourn, organize
Iraq’s time running out, US says
This shouldn’t have been unexpected - that Hans Blix would play hard cop, whacking Iraq, thus giving the U.N. a fig leaf reason to vote for war. Too many peace activists, I think, have been relying on the U.N. to stop the war from happening. Don’t bet on it. The UN may crumple under pressure from the US and vote for war. It’s best not to rely on the UN. Or on “let the inspections work”, because the inspections are a rigged game at best.
Speaking of hard cop, look at Colin Powell, he’s been playing hard cop for some number of days now. Tell me, is Colin Powell really the moderate we have believed him to be? Or maybe he’s as much of a right wing ideologue as the rest of the Bushies, but hides it better.
5,000 Iraq children die each month because of the sanctions, and it’s been this way for a decade now. Hundreds of thousands will die in the coming war. For what?
Nothing materially has changed in Iraq in ten years. No new threats. No old threats, for that matter. So why the mad rush to war? Is there some clock ticking we don’t know about?
What it’s really about is empire, oil, and imperialism. The belief that the USA must be supremely dominant everywhere is the motivating force of the Axis of Weasels in DC. It’s madness, of course. It can’t and won’t succeed. I mean, they’ve said they expect us to be at war for twenty years or so, y’know, first Iraq, then North Korea, then Iran, then .. whoever.. Is this the kind of world you want to live it? I didn’t think so.
It’s time to mobilize and organize as never before. This Feb. 15 will be a worldwide “The World says No to War” day, with action and protests across the globe, in dozens of countries.
Imagine three million people in DC sitting down in the streets…
Bob Morris @ Jan 28th 2003 00:10 - Category: Unfiled ;
J29
Today, in the State of the War address, George Bush will warn us of all manner of imminent peril if we do not immediately reduce Iraq to rubble.
Tomorrow, Jan 29, there will be mass protests across the country in response. Bring signs, banners, candles, drums. In LA, it’s at the Westwood Federal Bldg. 5 PM.
ANSWER has a partial list of cities, and flyers like the one pictured, but with a blank time & location, so you can create your own flyers.
Be there.
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