Smile

Yes, liberals, you won the culture war

“In case you didn’t notice, America’s 20th century “culture war” ended yesterday. Liberalism won. This sweet victory over unreason and sexual prejudice now pushes to front and center stage our venerable struggle over political democracy, which is in crisis today over corporate power, money dominance and the weakening right to participate and vote.

Justice Kennedy’s magisterial opinion for the Supreme Court striking down anti-sodomy laws in Lawrence v. Texas will come to mark the end of 30 years of political strife fueled by right-wing rage against sexual modernity. Liberalism has won the final battle.”

Now let’s win the political war…

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Mandela slams Bush

“Former South African President Nelson Mandela kept up his verbal onslaught against George W. Bush on Friday and implied he would not meet the U.S. president when he makes his first visit to Africa next month.

Mandela condemned Bush for launching the war against Iraq, saying he was wrong to bypass the United Nations and overthrow Iraqi President Saddam Hussein by force.

“Since the creation of the United Nations there has not been a World War since 1945. Therefore, for anybody, especially the leader of a superstate, to act outside the United Nations is something that must be condemned by everybody who wants peace,” Mandela said.”

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I support a constitutional amendment banning Bill Frist

“Senate majority leader, Bill Frist, said today that he would ‘absolutely’ support a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage in the United States”.

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Brass knuckles in Britain over Iraq ‘evidence’

Ministers knew war papers were forged, says diplomat

“A high-ranking American official who investigated claims for the CIA that Iraq was seeking uranium to restart its nuclear programme last night accused Britain and the US of deliberately ignoring his findings to make the case for war against Saddam Hussein.”

BBC set to sue Minister over Iraq ‘lies’ claim

“The unprecedented row between the Government and the BBC took a dramatic twist last night when Andrew Gilligan, the reporter at the centre of claims that Number 10 deliberately ’sexed up’ evidence against Saddam Hussein, announced he was ready to sue a serving Minister.”

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Google + wireless = God?

“Says Alan Cohen, a V.P. of Airespace, a new Wi-Fi provider: “If I can operate Google, I can find anything. And with wireless, it means I will be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. Which is why I say that Google, combined with Wi-Fi, is a little bit like God.

God is wireless, God is everywhere and God sees and knows everything. Throughout history, people connected to God without wires. Now, for many questions in the world, you ask Google, and increasingly, you can do it without wires, too.”

Wireless Google shows you how to connect using a cell phone, Palm, etc.

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What did they expect?

“Facing a marked increase in the frequency and brazenness of attacks on U.S.-led forces in Iraq in the last two weeks, military officials are for the first time speaking more openly about the potential for a long-term fight to quell the resistance to the American presence.

Although the term is rarely used at the Pentagon, from every description by military officials, what U.S. troops face on the ground in Iraq has all the markings of a guerrilla war — albeit one in which there are multiple opposition groups rather than a single movement.”

Perhaps the Iraqi troops vanishing in face of the US invasion was a deliberate strategy. Retreating in the face of overwhelming force, after all, is a classic guerilla warfare tactic. All those Iraqi troops, armament, and weapons went somewhere…

The US may make the mistake of thinking the Iraq opposition is centrally commanded and has a head that can be chopped off. This is almost certainly not true. Instead, this is a classic case of asymmetric warfare, with many groups, maybe in loose contact, maybe not, determined to drive the US out.

In other words, good morning Vietnam…

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Wikis

The definition of ‘asymmetric warfare’ in the above post comes from Wikipedia, ‘the free encyclopedia’.

Wikis are blogs that anyone can post to. More importantly, anyone can update or add to an existing page. Thus the definition of ‘asymmetric warfare’ gets added to over time by multiple authors, who enhance and enlarge it.

This is open software as applied to information and web pages! Wikis are focused on a specific topic or interest, with many topics being comprehensible only to computer geeks. However the idea is fast expanding to non computer topics, like the excellent Wikipedia.

Lists of wikis

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“A tale told by an idiot…”

“…full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. That’s how Shakespeare put it, railing about how life sometimes seems pointless.

That’s how I felt last night, briefly, when I learned that Ed, a good friend, died as a result of a motorcycle accident. He was a husband, father, grandfather, friend, and died doing what he loved; riding his motorcycle with friends on mountain roads above L.A. with his wife on the back (she’s bruised but otherwise unhurt). Friends behind him said it looked like the bike hit gravel. Just a few tiny rocks…

Crazy motorcyclists? I make no such judgment. He’d been riding for decades and bikes were part of him. He wouldn’t have been Ed without his motorcycles. When he had an important decision to make, he’d go for a ride to clear his mind and decide.

No, the tale of life is not told by an idiot. However sometimes the tale is sad and murky. It’s almost trite to say this at times like these, but I’ll say it anyway - Carpe diem. Seize the day. We know not what comes next.

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My camblog gets SmartMobbed!

SmartMobs is a blog from the book of the same name by Howard Rheingold. It deals with the social ramifications of “mobile communication, pervasive computing, wireless networks” especially as they lead to collective actions of all types.

I emailed Smart Mobs about my camblogging the Bush Protest, figuring it was a perfect example of smartmobbing, and they posted it.

Was I the first to camblog a protest?

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California recall echoing Florida voting debacle?

From Daniel Weintraub’s California Insider

“Big news from the Secretary of State’s office on the recall. According to a spokesman, Secretary of State Kevin Shelley has interpreted the law to say that county registrars need only be verifying the signatures they received by June 16. The rest they may set aside until the end of the next reporting period on July 23. Then they will report that number to Shelley and he will give them the go-ahead to verify the second batch. But they won’t be required to report that new number until Aug. 22. If this ruling stands, it will delay considerably the verification process and the date by which the recall qualifies for the ballot. It would almost certainly delay the election until March.

This is looking more like a mirror image of Florida every day. Instead of a Republican Secretary of State fighting to slow a recount and elect a Republican president, we have a Democratic Secretary of State acting to slow a signature count to prevent the recall of a Democratic governor.” Italics added.

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The Protest Bush rally in L.A.

It was great! Several thousand people came. We were loud, boisterous, and militant. Bush was inside the Century Plaza Hotel getting legalized bribes, er, doing fund raising, while we were outside protesting.

As you can see from the first photo, Laura Bush slipped out to speak to the crowd. Tragically though towards the end of her speech, some neer’do-well’s unfurled a Bush you lied you’re fired banner from their hotel balcony facing the crowd. Laura, I feel your pain.

Ok ok, Laura was actually John Price, a very funny stand up comedian. There was some hip hop, spoken word, several speeches; Filipinos, a Gulf War vet, the National Lawyers Guild, Palestinians, Latinos, and many more.

We did good. The crowd was larger than I’d expected. The peace movement is alive and well in L.A.

My first attempt at camblogging went quite well. I took several photos with my cell phone then emailed them using the cell phone to a website where they were posted instantly. Check it out!

PS The banner was a ’satin pink slip’ compliments of Code Pink!

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Recall backers say they’re close

“Backers of the campaign to recall Democratic Gov. Gray Davis from office say they have collected nearly 900,000 signatures - the minimum needed to qualify for the ballot - and plan a victory celebration on July 4 in Orange County.”

If the recall qualifies by July, and it looks like it will, then the recall election will probably be held in the fall - bad news for Gray Davis.

Meanwhile

Peter Camejo, who ran for California governor in 2002 as a Green, will announce on Monday he is running for Governor in the recall.

and

“Opponents of the move to recall Gov. Gray Davis are asking their supporters to intimidate signature gatherers and complain of harassment at stores where recall petitions are circulating.”

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Hey Dubya, I thought you said we’d won the war

Two U.S. soldiers reported abducted

“American troops and helicopters scoured the desert Thursday for two U.S. soldiers who were apparently abducted from an observation post north of Baghdad. Ambushes and hostile fire elsewhere in Iraq killed two U.S. soldiers and two Iraqi civilians and wounded eight other Americans.  “

One G.I. dead, another wounded in ambush

“American soldiers came under fire again today across Iraq, with one soldier shot in the head and wounded while shopping and another killed in an ambush late last night near the southern city of Najaf.”

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National Do Not Call number

The Federal government just opened a website where you can sign up to be on a national Do Not Call list for telemarketers. If you are on the list, and they call, it’s serious fines. Keep trying to get on the website, because everyone is signing up.

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Dean easily wins MoveOn.org primary

Not only does this give the Dean campaign a huge publicity boost and major media attention, I think it also makes him the frontrunner.

DEAN          139360  43.87%
KUCINICH       76000  23.93%
KERRY          49973  15.73%

Everyone else
EDWARDS        10146   3.19%
BRAUN           7021   2.21%
GRAHAM          7113   2.24%
GEPHARDT        7755   2.44%
LIEBERMAN       6095   1.92%
SHARPTON        1677   0.53%
OTHER           6121   1.93%
UNDECIDED       6378   2.01% 

Total         317647   100.0

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Camblogging the Bush protest

I’m going to camblog the Bush protest in L.A. tonight!

Say what, you say? Let me explain.

My Nokia 3650 cellphone takes photos and has email. Thus I can take photos with the cell phone then email them to the PoliZeros Phonecam weblog, where they will be automatically posting - literally within seconds after I take the photo. I can include text also.

This is way cool. Maybe even a whole new way of blogging and of journalism. Cops smashing heads? Take a picture of it, and it’s on the Net within seconds. Not that I expect this to happen, I’m just using this as an example of what’s possible now.

I’ll start posting the photos about 5:30 pm PDT to the PoliZeros Phonecam weblog.

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Gay rights

Today the Supreme Court overturned the Texas anti-sodomy laws which, in effect, legalizes gay sex. Next month the Massachusetts Supreme Court is widely expected to legalize gay marriage. Vermont already permits gay unions, while Canada recently became the third nation to legalize marriage between gays.

This is an earthquake. Gays are on the verge of getting legally recognized civil rights, just as did Blacks did during the civil rights campaigns of the 1960’s.

The fundies are foaming at the mouth over this. Indeed, their anti-gay bigotry is a point of pride to them (go figure). They will no doubt be screaming at Bush to do something about this horrid Homosexual Menace.

The Bushies think this will play their way in campaign 2004, hoping to make it a central issue. I  disagree. Making gay rights a major campaign issue will fracture the right, and fracture it badly. And I expect gay rights will be an important issue in 2004.

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New L.A. alt newspaper

L.A. CityBeat

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Restitution Sought From Enron Officials

“Former Enron Corp. executives, including chairman Kenneth L. Lay, chief executive Jeffrey K. Skilling and the company’s directors, failed to protect 20,000 workers’ and retirees’ savings, and should pay restitution, the Labor Department contended yesterday in a lawsuit.”

Restitution? How about prison?

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We’re torturing, and we’re proud of it

“Privately, the Americans admit that torture, or something very like it, is going on at Bagram air base in Afghanistan, where they are holding an unknown number of suspected terrorists.

What is perhaps most disturbing about all this is that the US officials who have leaked the information have not done so out of a need to expose something that they see as shameful. On the contrary, they have made it clear that they wanted the world to know what is going on because they feel it is justified.”

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BBC and Blair at war

“The row between Downing Street and the BBC over the corporation’s Iraq coverage escalated to an unprecedentedly venomous level yesterday when Alastair Campbell, the government communications director, demanded but failed to secure a BBC apology by his deadline of yesterday.

The BBC said it was being put under an “unprecedented level of pressure” from Downing Street.”

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Kucinich v. Dean

Where it is demonstrated that Kucinich is way more progressive than Dean. Not that Dean ever said he was progressive…

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PoliZeros guest map

Click the GuestMap icon.

Then click Post. Click where you are on the globe, enter some info, and a little icon of you appears on the PoliZeros Guest map. A free service from BraveNet.

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Brit soliders killed by Iraqi mob

“The attack on British forces here that killed six military police officers Tuesday was carried out by a mob of Iraqis enraged that paratroops had sought to patrol the town’s market, witnesses and local officials said today.

After a seemingly prosaic dispute between the paratroops and townspeople escalated into an intense firefight, witnesses said, scores of Iraqis armed with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenade launchers laid an Alamo-like siege to a police station where British military police were training local patrolmen. At least four soldiers were killed at close range when their ammunition ran out.”

So much for the Bush line that this was due to Saddam launching a counter attack. Rather, this was clearly an uprising by the people.

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Uncensor your Internet access!

“Turn your home computer into a miniature Web server that you and your friends can connect to when your Internet access is censored.

If you are blocked from accessing a Web site, you can connect instead to the Web site running on your home computer, where you will be able to access a form that lets you type in the URL of the Web site that you want to see. Then the contents of that site will be displayed to you even though you never actually access the site directly.”

Requires Windows 2000 or XP.

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