Bob Morris @ May 31st 2005 09:13 - Category: Unfiled ;
Sue is starting a new blog, and we’re using Movable Type. I’ve got a bunch of newbie questions for anyone who has an MT blog; like how do you upload pictures, how do I customize the look and feel, etc. Any help appreciated. Email me or leave a comment. Thx!
Bob Morris @ May 31st 2005 07:55 - Category: Unfiled ;
European leaders should accept that the EU constitution is dead after it was rejected in the French referendum on Sunday, said the former EU commissioner Lord Kinnock today.
The former Labour leader warned that any attempt to ratify the treaty against the wishes of the European people would merely serve to increase the alienation millions feel towards the EU.
Adam Curry points to a seriously good rant by ” Paul Nicholls, who is a lawyer in the UK” about the No vote.
You need a good indepth knowledge of EU law to understand the real and serious concerns. What is not published is the decline of soveriegnty of member states.
The ECJ (European Court of Justice) have repeatedly pronounced the fact that European law should prevail. Yes…they have, if you want the chapter and verse I’ll quote it, but this will be a terribly long post. The effect in the UK has been frightening, common law interpretation by the Judges has now been biased to give effect to Europe, some Acts even rewritten after the event. The ECJ has told the UK to do this, and, for political reasons, we’ve stayed in and had to play ball.
There is an academic debate as to the precise effect of EU law, but, the clear fact is that each member state has slowly lost its identity. The principle of “parliamentary supremacy” is edging away slowly but very surely here.
Chat to virtually any small to medium European businessman. People are concerned over Europe because the joining together of the states means a loss of national identity. Look at Chirac. The French public have voted very clearly. The system cannot and should not now be put in place. The EU are already trying to rewrite history and suggest that other member states should go to a referendum. Why? The position was clear, unanimity was required. Why bother other member states now? I fear that the rules will be changed (again).
Now, look at the system of the EU. fragmented, disjointed, segretated and corrupt. The budget has not been ratified for TEN years because of ‘widespread fraud’. So you really want to remain blissfully ignorant? Thank goodness the French didn’t want this. No self respecting person who has the slightest inkling wants this. It’s exceptionally concerning. The Dutch are expected to vote no, clearly they will.
The official elite line, except from those like Kinnock, is the French made a short-sighted blunder by voting against the EU Constitution, which they did because of internal concerns like jobs, In other words, they spin it as a protest vote against Chirac, thus the rejection was not directly related to the Constitution itself.
The above post, I think, clearly shows the vote was in fact directly related to the proposed Constitution, that people were voting on the issues, that they don’t want the decreased national soveriegnty with little in return that comes with the proposed Constitution - and they mistrust the EU in general.
Bob Morris @ May 31st 2005 07:43 - Category: Unfiled ;
CEOs at California’s largest 100 public companies took home a collective $1.1 billion in 2004, up almost 20% from 2003. That compares with the 2.9% raise that the average California worker saw last year,
“The average CEO made 42 times the average worker’s pay in 1980. That increased to 85 times in 1990 and is now over 300 times,” said Brandon Rees, a research analyst. “That is clearly not a sustainable rate of growth.”
Bob Morris @ May 31st 2005 07:42 - Category: Unfiled ;
Microsoft has until midnight tonight to comply with an EU anti-trust ruling on competitive practices or face fines of up to $5 million a day.
Bob Morris @ May 31st 2005 07:40 - Category: Unfiled ;
“Three men, three beards, and no power. Cleaning up the vast wasteland of rock & roll!!! “
Bob Morris @ May 30th 2005 08:45 - Category: Unfiled ;
By Eugene Debs
Eugene Debs was born in Indiana in 1855. A militant trade unionist, he became the leader of the Socialist Party. He is best known for his working-class and internationalist opposition to World War I.
After the U.S. entered the World War, Debs continued to speak out opposing the war. In 1918 he was sentenced to ten years in prison under the Sedition Act. He ran for president on the Socialist Party ticket from his jail cell in 1920 and received nearly a million votes.
His article was published in 1915, titled “When I Shall Fight.”
“I refuse to obey any command to fight from the ruling class, but I will not wait to be commanded to fight for the working class. I am opposed to every war but one; I am for that war with heart and soul, and that is the world-wide war of social revolution.
Bob Morris @ May 30th 2005 08:39 - Category: Unfiled ;
Crazy Frog Axel F is based off the revving sound of a Swedish mo-ped.
“This song is incredibly irritating and puerile and we’re still trying to understand why people like it,” Gennaro Castaldo, a spokesman for HMV [A British music retailer], said.
Click Watch the Video to hear the ring tone. *I* didn’t find it to be obnoxious, but then my ring tone is “I Wanna Be Sedated” by the Ramones.
Malcolm McLaren, the ex-Sex Pistols manager, told The International Herald Tribune: “Listen to this song and you can hear the death knell of the traditional music industry.”
Bob Morris @ May 30th 2005 08:32 - Category: Unfiled ;
‘The second French revolution’
What the British press had to say about the result of the French EU referendum
After France’s no vote, all bets are off on EU
Bob Morris @ May 30th 2005 08:20 - Category: Unfiled ;
From the Washington Post
“Philadelphia, its suburbs and indeed much of Pennsylvania have experienced a foreclosure epidemic as low-income homeowners take on mortgage debt they cannot afford. In 2000, the Philadelphia sheriff auctioned 300 to 400 foreclosed properties a month; now he handles more than 1,000 a month. Allegheny County, which includes Pittsburgh, had record auctions of foreclosed homes, and officials speak of a “Depression-era” problem. The foreclosures fall particularly hard on black and Latino families.”
via BOPnews
Real estate foreclosure rates soar in Sunbelt
Dallas may lead Texas, nation in home foreclosure rate
Here’s the chart for all states.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 15:53 - Category: Unfiled ;
European leaders desperately played down Europe’s biggest crisis in 50 years as voters in France overwhelmingly rejected the European constitution.
Chirac’s government will probably fall because of this, and it never had to happen. He could have just had it raftified, but instead called the election in an attempt to boost his re-election chances. The Netherlands votes in three days, and will probably reject it too. This is a political earthquake.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:58 - Category: Unfiled ;
swarming the Minutemen with the ECD.
Updating the anti-Minuteman swarm topic: the Electronic Civil Disobedience group has urged people supporting the Swarm the Minuteman project to join an electronic sit-in against the Minuteman movement, scheduled for May 27-29th. This uses Floodnet to overwhelm Minuteman web sites.
Don’t use the program. I tried it for about three minutes, then closed it down, to discover it had opened four more windows. I closed those, and found it was still running, clicking each time it contacted a Minutemen site. I had to reboot. At best this is an ill-mannered program.
Plus, what does this accomplish? Not much. Get in the streets, organize, sway public opinion our way. That’s the way to do it. Netwars like this prove little.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:51 - Category: Unfiled ;
Email from Kirsten Anderson
Didja hear about Schwartengrabber’s latest P.R. stunt? This was in San Jose. He was doing some sort of publicity stunt about funding for transportation. They were going to have him join with a bunch of Cal Trans and city people and fill pot holes. (put on a hard hat and a day-glo orange vest the same color as my macaroni and cheese) But the street they decided to do this on didn’t have any potholes for the cameras–there were just a few cracks. SO! Oh, NO!!! The cameras and lights and stage and everything were set up, but no potholes to fill.
So they got a crew to dig potholes, then (for the cameras) had the big show of the governator filling in the phony holes with the rest of the workers. What’s cool, is neighbors on this street filmed the entire thing. They’re pissed off. Because only two blocks away and all over the city, there are tons of potholes that need filling. And they’re also finding out that the city of San Jose not only had to pay for all those workers to dig holes and refill them, but the police protection and everything else. So, mega-bucks for a p.r. stunt.
I think the emperor’s lack of clothes is starting to show!
And yes, this really did happen
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:51 - Category: Unfiled ;
Schapelle Corby, 28, from Australia, was sentenced last week to 20 years in Indonesia after 9 pounds of marijuana were found in her luggage. Her sentence has gotten huge media attention in Australia, and even the government is involved.
Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said yesterday said it would take some months to finalise a prisoner exchange agreement between Australia and Indonesia that would allow Corby to serve some of her sentence in Australia, but not reduce it. The only way she could reduce her sentence, if her appeal was unsuccessful, was to seek a presidential pardon.
Indonesia clearly resents the intrusion of Australian politics into their courts, saying that she could have received death and that 20 years is a moderate sentence by their standards. Corby is appealing, but this is risky, as her sentence can be increased as well as decreased during the appeal.
Among the the 10 pieces of evidence against her
A drug dealer employing baggage handlers would be highly unlikely to smuggle four kilograms of marijuana into Brisbane airport and then into a stranger’s bag, just to send it on to Sydney. Such a task would further require another handler at Sydney to sneak it out of the bag and hide it while attempting to get it out of the airport. As road haulage experts have confirmed, smugglers could avoid this by sending it by road.
Me, I think a pro trying to smuggle drugs in tourist luggage would be more likely to smuggle cocaine or heroin, as it’s odorless and far more valuable, and that attempting to sneak 9 lbs.of pot out in luggage is something a neophyte one-time smuggler would recklessly attempt - and pay way too high a price for doing.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:47 - Category: Unfiled ;
Employers of illegal immigrants face little risk of penalty
Owners of hotels, farms, restaurants and retail stores who hire illegal workers — never widely sanctioned to begin with — now face a negligible risk of being penalized.
What the Minutemen don’t realize is they will be taking on entrenched business classes who need that cheap labor. They probably think, being good right wingers and all, that they are allies with business. They will learn differently.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:42 - Category: Unfiled ;
It might be cheap, but it’s going to cost the earth. The cut-price airline ticket is fuelling a boom that will make countering global warming impossible.
Unless the boom in cheap flights is halted, say Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, Britain and other countries will simply not be able to meet targets for cutting back on the emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) that are causing the atmosphere to warm, with potentially disastrous consequences.
Hmm, in the past 5 months, I’ve travelled 16,000 miles by air.
Bob Morris @ May 29th 2005 09:38 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:23 - Category: Unfiled ;
Via Rock and Rap Confidential from Reuters
The rock band Nine Inch Nails said on Friday it canceled plans to appear on next week’s MTV Movie Awards after the network questioned the band’s plans to perform in front of an image of President Bush
The band was slated to perform “The Hand That Feeds,” the first single from its latest album.
A Los Angeles Times review called the song “a warning against blind acceptance of authority, including that of a president leading his nation to war.”
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:22 - Category: Podcasts ;
We’re at the breakfast table, reading the morning paper, listening to the Dorktones podcast. They are a Rotterdam garage-pop band that also does a podcast of obscure, amazing rock from all eras, stuff you’ll never hear elsewhere. I used to have a mail order business selling rare 60’s rock, and the Dorktones podcast plays 60’s rock I’ve never heard before. Impressive.
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:21 - Category: Unfiled ;
Vatican attacks on Spain’s gay marriage law
A senior Vatican cardinal has today condemned as “iniquitous” plans to allow gay marriages and adoptions in Spain, one of Europe’s most Catholic countries.
The attack on the Spanish Government’s Bill to legalise same-sex marriages is an early indication of how the new papacy can be expected to adhere rigidly to the precedents put in place by Pope John Paul II, and supported by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in his role as Prefect for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith.
The new Pope has described homosexuality as objectively disordered and an intrinsic moral evil.
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:18 - Category: Unfiled ;
I just installed CounterSpy on two computers that were running other spyware programs. On the first scan, it found dozens of cookies and a couple of trojans the other programs had missed. CounterSpy is currently the best spyware killer, bar none.
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:15 - Category: Unfiled ;
Bob Morris @ May 28th 2005 09:10 - Category: Unfiled ;
Good morning from Gate 54 in Terminal B at Orlando International Airport where they have a very strong, free, wifi signal. Most surprising, and most excellent! [Scripting News]
Here in L.A. there’s free wifi in Pershing Square, downtown Culver City, and I’m sure lots more locations too. If you know of any, please post them in the comments.
Bob Morris @ May 27th 2005 13:22 - Category: Unfiled ;
“Five cases of Quran ‘mishandling’” found by Brig. General Jay W. Hood
Yet
“Pentagon officials says no credible evidence of Koran abuse.”
Bob Morris @ May 27th 2005 12:09 - Category: Podcasts ;
This looks really interesting
The Podcast Hotel: Where Art and Commerce Meet.
On Sept. 6 and 7, the Jupiter Hotel in Portland, Or., will become a podcast and videoblog studio. Rooms will be for recording, editing and producing. The court yard will be a media lounge. The underground club will be for podcast concerts. And the city of Portland will become our stage.
The stage will be set not just in Portland but around the world, where podcasters and video bloggers will document their work and their communities for inclusion in the Podcast Hotel. It’s an extended event that will celebrate not just podcasting and video blogging but the ability of us all to create in whole new ways.
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