Comments here
Bob Morris @ May 9th 2007 14:04 - Category: Unfiled ;
I just turned off one of the comment spam killer plugins here after several people mentioned their comments weren’t getting through.
Everything should be fine now, let me know.
Archive for May 9th, 2007
Kindergarten kids confront Minutemen
Bob Morris @ May 9th 2007 12:02 - Category: Immigrant rights ;
The Minutemen were harassing migrants at the Mexican Consulate in Santa Ana CA. Across the street at an elementary school, kindergarten kids stood on the jungle gym, fists in the air, chanting “Mexico, Mexico” !
More on Tyler Froatz
Bob Morris @ May 9th 2007 09:47 - Category: Unfiled ;
As reported here, Tyler Froatz was arrested on May 1 in DC on weapons charges and for assaulting Sarah Sloan of the ANSWER Coalition at an immigrant rights rally in DC. He is being held without bail.
Kristinn Taylor, who was quoted in articles as being a friend of Froatz, is head of the DC chapter of the hard right Free Republic. Froatz is also a member. There’s nothing about this on Free Republic so maybe the topic has been banned. Scanning other hard right wing sites perhaps shows the reason why. There’s little if any support for what Froatz did. Even Taylor is backing away from him.
“Like a lot of people who feel strongly about the immigration issue, he was out protesting,” Taylor said, who added Froatz was not working for Free Republic during his protest.
Considering the severity of the charges, it seems probable Froatz will go to prison. His next court appearance is May 17. Given the culture of violence and hatred the hard right can encourage, it’s hardly surprising when its perhaps more mentally unstable adherents nut up and do things like this.
Open source warfare, an example
Bob Morris @ May 9th 2007 00:23 - Category: Brave New War, Climate change ;
The Pentagon is shipping 35,000 more troops to Iraq while the governor of Kansas says says their tornado victims need help but there’s a shortage of National Guard because those troops are in Iraq, not Kansas.
This is a clear example of one of the aims of open source warfare, the hollowing out of the state by slowly bankrupting it and diverting its energies into wars it can’t win. When that happens, the void gets filled by corporations and other private entities who move in to do the work the government can no longer do.
We’re seeing that with global warming now, especially here in the US. Both parties and the government are asleep at the wheel, mouthing that something needs to be done, but not doing anything. That they are preoccupied by the war(s) is a given.
So who is moving in, planning to spend huge sums to remediate global warming? CitiCorp, Bank of America, and Wal-Mart, that’s who. Citi just announced they will spend 50 billion over the next ten years to reduce their own greenhouse gas emissions and to fund other projects as well. BofA is doing the same with 20 billion. Wal-Mart is planning one of the biggest solar projects ever at their own stores.
“We are taking aggressive steps toward our goal of being supplied by 100 percent renewable energy,” Wal-Mart’s vice president for energy, Kim Saylors-Laster, said.
Would it be that the federal government was taking such steps. But by spending hundreds of billions on insane wars, diverting needed energy, time and money away from the country, the government itself is becoming hollowed out and unable to act quickly and effectively. So, increasingly and by default, the real players in global warming will be the mega-corporations, because only they have the money, technology, and skills to get it done.
I think Citi, BofA, and Wal-Mart genuinely get it about global warming. Too bad our government doesn’t. But it’s too preoccupied and desperate to win a war that can not be won to focus on much else. The hollowing out of the US government, a prime goal of open source warfare, continues.
Free stats for WordPress.org blogs
Bob Morris @ May 9th 2007 00:08 - Category: Blogging ;
WordPress.com blogs have had free stats for a while. Now WordPress has made this available for self-hosted WordPress.org blogs. Just install the plugin and you’ll get stats on views, referrers, top posts, search engine phrases, outgoing clicks, and incoming links as a tab off Dashboard.
Plus, all the stats activity happens on their servers not yours. This is yet another great tool from the always amazing WordPress, who are continually coming up with ways to make WP even better.
(Read the FAQ. Polizeros stats didn’t work until WP tech support referred me to the FAQ and said to add a function in the footer, now it works fine.)
