After a major software update it seems that at least one of my Atom Feeds (Not-A-Blog) might not be updating properly in newsreaders. It is difficult to be an Arab in a state that earmarks Jewish National Fund land only for Jews, where residential communities deny Arabs the right to join them, where the Knesset legislates a citizenship law that prevents family unification between Israeli Arabs and their Palestinian spouses.But here's one solution from Haaretz: National Service for Arabs
First lady Laura Bush was honored Tuesday for her help in supporting the health, education and welfare of children.
"The war on terror” made me do it. That’s the excuse that works for George W. Bush to rationalize his assaults on the rule of law, from arbitrary arrest to torture. So why not try some war-on-terror obfuscation to bail out his president-dictator buddy over in Pakistan?
That’s the card Bush played at his Saturday press conference when he once again celebrated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf as a strong ally in the war on terrorism: “If you’re the chief operating officer of al-Qaida, you haven’t had a good experience. There has been four or five No. 3s that have been brought to justice one way or the other, and many of those folks thought they had found safe haven in Pakistan. And that would not have happened without President Musharraf honoring his word.”
Of course Bush’s statement was utter nonsense. Al-Qaida has been having a very good experience with its CEO Osama bin Laden—whom Bush had promised to get “dead or alive”—being still very much alive and apparently moving with his minions quite easily across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. So too his Taliban sponsors, who seem to get stronger each month; Afghanistan is no closer to stability than Iraq, that other war-on-terrorism battleground where Bush once claimed triumph.
To self-important assholes like Roger L. Simon, the last thing you can get away with is suggesting that what they're involved in isn't the most important thing in the whole wide world...How dare someone like Kevin Drum (who happens to run a blog that actually makes money for its owners) suggest that blogging isn't a really big fucking deal that's going to change the world and blah, blah, blah, woof, woof, woof! Jesus, what a prissy old fart Roger's become...(By the way, who the fuck is Roger L. Simon to tell anyone what constitutes an appropriate level of discourse on the internet? Or anywhere else, for that matter.)
Oxford announced its Word of the Year today, LOCAVORE, plus the list of runners-up (which included, in alphabetical order: aging in place, bacn, cloudware, colony collapse disorder, cougar, MRAP vehicle, mumblecore, social graph, tase (or taze), previvor, and upcycling).
“Locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.” However it’s spelled, it’s a word to watch.
The Canadian police announced that it will stop targeting people who download copyrighted material for personal use. Their priority will be to focus on organized crime and copyright theft that affects the health and safety of consumers instead of the cash flow of large corporations.
The first doctor on the scene of Princess Diana's fatal Paris crash thought she would survive, her inquest has heard. Richard Keen QC, representing the family of Henri Paul, asked him: "Do you remember saying that you thought the lady you had treated would survive?" He answered: "Yes, I said that." He could not judge the extent of the Princess' internal injuries, he said. "I did not have any way to make any precise diagnosis," he said. "I did not have the equipment to take the blood pressure so my supposition of diagnosis was the head injury but I had to suspect something serious."
On November 5, Guy Fawkes Day, a privately run Web site took in over $4 million for Ron Paul’s presidential campaign. In one day. Dr. Paul had not organized this. This was 100% word of mouse. The Establishment news media were stunned – almost speechless. This was impossible, as far as they were concerned. This was completely unprecedented in American political history. They do not understand what is going on. A revolution is going on.
The word "revolution" is used all the time. Occasionally, it is accurately applied. This time, it is. The Internet really does constitute a revolution. This revolution is based on two factors: a new technology and unprecedented price competition. There has never been price competition like this in the field of communication. Digits that can be viewed as images – words, pictures, and videos, with audio files thrown in for good measure – are delivered instantaneously on demand (or even without it: spam) without paper, printing costs, or postage costs. The primary limit on communication today is the time cost of reading.
This technological reality is creating nightmares for Establishments in every nation. Why? Because the cost of access to voters is now limited to time and marketing creativity. It is not limited by either space or mass. This has never happened before in recorded history. For over four centuries, the structure of Establishment rule has rested on one assumption above all others: the high cost of delivering images to large numbers of people. This assumption has become increasingly ludicrous ever since 1996.
