July 3rd
Datajunkie also has a very cool logo:
Go ahead and gasp.
Even if its true that Howard Zinn--who actually served in ww2 when its clear that the only thing the Original O Dub has ever served is on the menu and its large portions--doesn't love America sufficiently enough for Oliver's tastes I don't understand someone who's African American putting this guy down. Here's just a partial rundown of Mr. Zinn's civil rights pedigree from Wikipedia:
Civil rights movement
In 1956, Zinn was appointed chairman of the department of history and social sciences at Spelman College, where he participated in the Civil Rights movement. Zinn served as an adviser to the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC).
While at Spelman, Zinn collaborated with historian Staughton Lynd and mentored young student activists, among them writer Alice Walker and Marian Wright Edelman. Although Zinn was a tenured professor, he was dismissed, in June 1963, after siding with students in their desire to challenge Spelman's traditional emphasis of turning out "young ladies" when, as Zinn described in an article in The Nation, Spelman students were likely to be found on the picket line, or in jail for participating in the greater effort to break down segregation in public places in Atlanta. Zinn's years at Spelman are recounted in his autobiography You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times. His seven years at Spelman College, Zinn said, "are probably the most interesting, exciting, most educational years for me. I learned more from my students than my students learned from me." [1]
Zinn said that while at Spelman, he observed thirty violations of the First and Fourteenth amendments to the United States Constitution in Albany, Georgia, including the rights to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and equal protection of the laws. In an article on the civil rights movement in Albany, Zinn describes the people who participated in the Freedom Rides to end segregation, and of the reluctance of President John F. Kennedy to enforce the law.[2] Zinn has also pointed out that the Justice Department under Robert F. Kennedy and the Federal Bureau of Investigation headed by J. Edgar Hoover, did little to nothing to stop the segregationists from brutalizing the civil rights workers.[3]
Zinn wrote frequently about the struggle for civil rights, both as a participant and historian [4] and in 1960-61, he took a year off from teaching to write SNCC: The New Abolitionists and The Southern Mystique. [5] In his book on SNCC, Zinn describes how the sit-ins against segregation were initiated by students and, in that sense, independent of the older, more established civil rights organizations.
This is the guy that Oliver Willis calls an "idiot". Astonishing. Beyond contempt. So beside Oliver's name on my linkroll I've added a whole list of African American bloggers who are probably better and brighter than Oliver Willis and who know who their friends are. Oh, he adds: "I hate people like Howard Zinn". Unreal. Un fucking real.
It's actually a fairly complicated issue. Voting activists that I respect are split on the Holt Bill in the house. Everybody agrees that the Feinstein bill is terrible and seems to have been written by voting machine lobbyists. I would think that if any of the senate bill makes it into the final package this bill shouldn't pass.
There has finally been a debate between the pros and cons of this issue and you can listen to it here. Unlike Paris Hilton going to jail this issue may determine who wins or gets away with stealing the 2008 election.
A Special "I Link Therefore I Am" Version of Around the Internets
It's amazing how badly the entertainment industry wants people to believe that anything they don't like must be illegal. There's already a long history of them suing the easiest party for them to find rather than the party actually breaking the law, so it shouldn't be much of a surprise to see them doing so again. Apparently the MPAA has sued some sites that create a directory of online videos, mainly TV shows and movies. These sites do not host the files. They simply point people to where they are online. Effectively, it's the same thing that a search engine like Google does. There are plenty of Google searches that will lead you to unauthorized content, but for some reason, the entertainment industry believes that if you make a specialized search engine or directory you're somehow liable. These sites have come under attack before, and the MPAA may be hoping that by creating a specialized search engine they'll be able to show "inducement" under the Supreme Court's Grokster standard. It will definitely be worth watching how these court cases go, because if the MPAA succeeds, it effectively means that they'll have the right to sue anyone who links to infringing content by claiming inducement. That would be a horrible precedent to set.
Mark Millar says that he's seen the initial shots of Wanted and that they've done the first two issues pretty much word for word, which means that it should be sensational. This is one comics property that I always thought would make a really good movie. Wikipedia info on the film here.
Late Night Weekend Around the Internets
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"No word yet on whether the organization will offer a similar trip to see and hear Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani or any of the other Republican presidential candidates."
So I wrote him this:
Well, first, I think the reason why ACORN, run by mostly unaccountable white folks by the way last time I checked, is that the Republican Party is thought to be, quite correctly, kind of a racist party. Why did white supremacist David Duke choose the GOP? Because that's where he felt comfortable and I agree with him. I know that there's a tactical reason not to lay your eggs in one party but why help the other people that's clearly a racist party and against any significant widestream effort that would actually improve the lot of the black underclass for example: direct federal funding of education as opposed to property taxes or amending these top down trade deals to protect the bulk of african american blue collar workers or investing more in education than prisons or not waging imperialistic war against mostly brown skinned people and the list goes on. What benefit would there be to hearing Fred Thompson speak? I mean, even white americans are soured on the GOP...why should African Americans embrace them? Wouldn't building the Green Party into a viable second party make more sense. Your opinion please.
So far no response from Elwin. Hey, he said he wanted feedback...I also forgot to mention the republicans are really really bad because they've stolen the last two presidential elections by purging mostly african americans from the polls. I know Elwin is impartial but sometimes a grudge is a healthy thing...
June 19
more other interesting artists at the fair--the couple who built modded broomsticks and the black wood carver come to mind--but they didn't have websites so...
Quick links I need to read more carefully:
New Google Public Policy Blog
33 Ways to Watch TV Online
10 web operating systems reviewed
Locus Magazine Reviews Ken MacLeod's New Novel (it sounds cool because it features a channel similar to the one at the top of the page that features executions as opposed to songs.) Cory Doctorow also gave it a rave review.
Interesting Site Called Fleen that Reviews Online Comics
June 14
So you want to be a black republican?
Uploaded by fagenbecker
Here are the interesting quotes from the new council rep from Homewood:
"The issues of some people, like those in the blogs, are not my issues," Burgess says. "What's holding our district back is the education for our kids, the violence and lack of economic development in our communities." Such issues, he notes, get very little attention from bloggers, who are much more likely to be set abuzz by the news that Ravenstahl was detained by police at a Steelers game in 2005.
Burgess admires the blogs for being an "unfiltered perception of some segment of the community." But, he adds, "The authors of the blogs are talking about the perspective they live" -- and "mostly, they aren't living in Homewood."
First, and this is just flat out wrong on so many levels, there are a number of local blogs that do concern themselves primarily with education and economic development, almost nauseatingly so. I suppose Pittsblog and Mark Rauterkaus would be the first stops. Of course, I'm curious as to what he's going to do about the issues of education and economic development as a councilman. I always thought that those were macro issues that involved direct federal funding for education as opposed to property tax based (where the residents of Fox Chapel and the residents of Homewood (or what American Writer Greg Palast bluntly and correctly calls "American Bantustans" ) get a slightly different kind of "public" education.) and massive deindustrialization where corporations and their political servants are rewarded for hollowing out the American economy...not to mention continuing an imperialist war at odds with the public in and in concert with what C. Wright Mills called "The Power Elite".
Two, the reason that Luke got a lot of attention early is not because whitey is preoccupied with minor things about how the mayor beats raps that would lead other people into beatings or arrests (I would think that would interest an African American man, really.) but because he's perceived to be a lightweight machine dem--who would be a republican in a two party town-- who doesn't have the heft, breadth, or depth to do anything to fundamentally change the many things that are wrong in the city. Furthermore, they were also shadow operatives for the now deceased Peduto campaign and they probably thought it was helpful to his campaign.
Three, there's nothing stopping someone from writing about Homewood who lives in Homewood, aside from that Post Gazette guy who registered as a Republican because, you know, as a black man he's completely unbiased. (File under: what's wrong with the corporate media and the objectivity principle.) Actually, if you really are unbiased, does that make you smart? Some black guy who won't tell me who he wants to win the Civil War because he's "objective"? Who's more helpful to me you or David Sirota, or even the late Steve Gilliard? (More thoughts on him when I have time..tragic loss.)
I suppose, if Burgess understood the Internets, he could write that blog and tell me more about what he's doing to improve the local economy and education in Homewood. Hey, I'd like to know.
"American 'militarism,' accordingly, involves the attempt of military men to increase their powers, and hence their status, in comparison with businessmen and politicians. To gain such powers they must not be considered a mere means to be used by politicians and money-makers. They must not be considered parasites on the economy and under the supervision of those who are often called in military circles 'the dirty politicians.' On the contrary their ends must be identified with the ends as well as the honor of the nation; the economy must be their servant; politics an instrument by which, in the name of the state, the family, and God, they manage the nation in modern war.' What does it mean to go to war?' Woodrow Wilson was asked in 1917. 'It means,' he replied, 'an attempt to reconstruct a peacetime civilization with war standards, and at the end of the war there will be no bystanders with sufficient peace standards left to work with. There will be only war standards ... ' American militarism, in fully developed form, would mean the triumph in all areas of life of the military metaphysic, and hence the subordination to it of all other ways of life."
June 12
June 10
Late Weekend Around the Internets
Well, the fact that we didn't see the actual hit itself blurs things just a bit. One, its meant to symbolize how you would see a quick death. Actress Sean Young, who had a near death experience, described it as someone turning the television off. Two, its kept open ended because of movie potential. That nervous guy who goes into the bathroom isn't a hitter who finds a gun in the stall. Those black kids aren't hitters either. Three, life goes on for Tony as uncertain as it ever was and Paulie Walnuts is the head of the New Jersey gang? Please. I opt for two: "Sopranos: The Movie."
June 7
From Rebecca:
"The 2007 Holt bill and its revised version is NOT a compromise bill, although it HAS been COMPROMISED in various regards. Specifically it re- funds the EAC (the earlier version actually extended the EAC as an institution, indefinitely, the later version provides a $1B handout to the vendors, to be doled out by the EAC since they are out of HAVA money to give away) with funds that will CERTAINLY be used by states, such Holt's home base of New Jersey, to purchase VVPAT add-ons to DREs, hence perpetuating the use of this unreliable and expensive equipment. The bill does NOT ban DREs, as some HR811 advocates have been misinformed to believe and expound. In the case of New Jersey, purchasing precinct-based opscan equipment is NOT an option, since the state has continued (to this date) to refuse to certify any such equipment.
The Holt bill also will be the FIRST to FEDERALLY legislate and thus legitimize the restrictive use of non-disclosure agreements in the examination of election systems. Certainly Holt could have disallowed trade secrecy for voting systems and the vendors could continue to protect their intellectual property with copyrights and patents. Instead, this is a very bad aspect of the bill, because it introduces this sanction of secrecy in such fashion that election advocates run the risk of being silenced or threatened with lawsuits if they reveal information about the equipment. The NDA section of the Holt bill has been weasel-worded such that advocates will be required to foot hefty attorney fees in order to ensure that the NDAs that they sign do not contain implicit risks such as compensation for vendor loss of income, criminal charges if false claims are made, and so on.
There are many other severely bad aspects of this bill, such that it does NOT pose an improvement for 2008 or 2010, but rather provides a further legacy of bad voting equipment and election-related policies, that will be exploited by the vendors into a 180 degree turn-around from the bill's (presumed and touted) intentions. We will be dealing with this additional resulting mess for another half-decade, much as we found ourselves dealing with the mess that HAVA created for the last half-decade.
I am of the strong opinion that a bad federal bill is WORSE than no bill at all. At least with no federal bill, the states can continue to enact GOOD legislation (with the assistance of input from concerned citizens and election advocates). With a bad bill, threats (such as we saw with HAVA) and intimidation (such as from the DoJ) can be used to force unwanted election equipment down on the municipalities. HR811 is a bad bill and should not be supported AT ALL BY ANYONE, least of all, election integrity advocates.
............ .... and further, the companion bill is unlikely not to have sufficient bipartisan support to pass muster in the Senate, and certainly both the House and Senate do not have sufficient votes to override a Bush veto. ............ ......... the "shushing" tactics used by so-called election integrity advocates to quelch debate and discussion on Holt's bill this round have been rather appalling. It seems apparent (at least to me) that supporting (or remaining quiet about) HR811 is actually a "litmus test" to see who will continue to get a seat at the table at hearings, and who will benefit from the grant money being doled out by the feds.
So far, we can see that the legacy of this crop of House Dems will include hundreds of billions of war debt, plus the death of tens of thousands (including many of our own service people) in the Iraqi civil war, all in the spirit of "compromise. " Let us not be fooled by the gutless Dems that Holt's voting bill will not be similarly "compromised" to promote the vendors' agendas.
Rebecca Mercuri.
And the pros:
Folks,
In an effort to be gentle and polite, here's my overview opinion on
HR 811.
I wholeheartedly support it, and will continue to do so. And I
encourage you all to do the same.
The bill has been in markup lately and only a choice few have seen it
along the way. I do not know who all has seen it, but I believe that
Barry Kauffman (Common Cause) is one of them and still likes it as it
is. His opinion trumps some of you folks' opinions by me.
What I read in some of your emails [on this and other lists] is
anger. Unthrottled, unbridled anger. What on earth are you all so
angry about? Some of what you say is somewhat inaccurate, but we
will pass on that for the moment. But mostly what I see is a railing
at the heavens because it's not raining in the right spot.
In the House now they have a huge contingent of sponsors and
cosponsors to HR 811. It has taken well over a year to garner that
support. It is based on a tentative balance, as is every negotiated
bill, and yet it still retains bipartisan support.
Right now, large corporate forces are opposing the bill, because it
would affect what they see as their "proprietary" rights (it would
let others see what poopy computer code they've been selling or would
allow the theft of Windows code which is also used in their systems)
and some of those corporate interests also now have the ears of
elections officials, whom they have been wining and dining and whose
elections they have often quite effectively infiltrated with their
employees' hands. They have gotten such elections officials to write
letters to legislators (who have waved hunks of paper around to show
same) advocating against the legislation.
We are not bloody likely to get anywhere near this kind of
Congressional support for any other bill of this sort ever again. It
is all we can do to keep Voter ID out of the blasted thing before it
is passed. There is absolutely no reason to throw the bill away.
And further to that, I'll stand AccuPoll's machine up to some of your
opinions any day. Even our cohorts at CMU and Pitt computer dep'ts
can appreciate its merits. Also appreciate the integrity of the
company. I get furious when folks come up and say that no DRE -
or "no electronic voting machine" - is good enough. The machines are
meant for (a) expediency of tabulation of votes, and (b) facility
of user interface with the ballot, and (c) accurate calculations.
This is really what all computers were/are designed for. We don't
want them to do any more. And this is what should be reflected in
the federal law. If they are doing this stuff and are not retaining
recountability, accessibility, security, safety, or voter-
verifiability, then they are not good enough tools toward our ends.
Certain of your plans of action really are no plan at all. Certain
items such as emergency paper ballots in case of breakdown really do
not belong in federal legislation. They are covered in county and
state legislation. I don't really think it is a good idea to cast
off all our various state legislation in favor of uniform federal
legislation (although Pennsylvania' s election laws are so convoluted
and self-contradictory and antiquated in many places that I have to
bite my lip when I say that).
Let me reiterate what I keep on saying in various arenas. The Help
America Vote Act was written by Bob Ney for his voting machine
comapny owning friends to make a pile of money and possibly to rig
votes in certain places. It was passed by a Republican Congress,
another bunch of his friends. (I hope he has so many friends in
jail.) You know what Bob Fitrakis wrote about the computers in Ohio
vis-a-vis the lost federal emails and the voting tabulations running
through the same server.
The companies spent virtually nothing on R&D but everything on
schmoozing. Now we have all, like sheep, bought their machines, even
against all common sense. So we need to fix this, and that fix
should rightly come from a federal level. We really cannot outlaw
bad companies or bad business decisions by counties and states. But
we can legislate against their effects. What do the bad machines
do? What wrongs might they cause? How do we prevent those?
Right now, too many folks are dividing those of us who have been
working toward getting the best out of what we have been given -
finding the best machines, using the happy notion of accessibility to
its best intent, etc. We have to let common sense prevail, and we
have to work with what we have. We cannot go off railing and wailing
and flailing, and those who do should please disassociate themselves
from those of us who remain calm.
I'm still sticking behind 811 because it is our best shot. We have a
cannon aimed at the groin of the problem, and even if we don't have a
killer charge in the cannonball, we need to fire, because the only
thing we have left is shotguns at 500 feet.
- Audrey
June 5
JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be here.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, before we go further, “economic hit men” -- for those who haven’t heard you describe this, let alone describe yourself as this, what do you mean?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, really, I think it’s fair to say that since World War II, we economic hit men have managed to create the world's first truly global empire, and we've done it primarily without the military, unlike other empires in history. We've done it through economics very subtly.
We work many different ways, but perhaps the most common one is that we will identify a third world country that has resources our corporations covet, such as oil, and then we arrange a huge loan to that country from the World Bank or one of its sister organizations. The money never actually goes to the country. It goes instead to US corporations, who build big infrastructure projects -- power grids, industrial parks, harbors, highways -- things that benefit a few very rich people but do not reach the poor at all. The poor aren’t connected to the power grids. They don’t have the skills to get jobs in industrial parks. But they and the whole country are left holding this huge debt, and it’s such a big bet that the country can't possibly repay it. So at some point in time, we economic hit men go back to the country and say, “Look, you know, you owe us a lot of money. You can't pay your debt, so you’ve got to give us a pound of flesh.”
AMY GOODMAN: And explain your history. What made you an economic hit man?
JOHN PERKINS: Well, when I graduated from business school at Boston University, I was recruited by the National Security Agency, the nation’s largest and perhaps most secretive spy organization.
AMY GOODMAN: People sometimes think the CIA is that, but the NSA, many times larger.
JOHN PERKINS: Yeah, it is larger. It’s much larger. At least it was in those days. And it’s very, very secretive. We all -- there’s a lot of rumors. We know quite a lot about the CIA, I think, but we know very, very little about the NSA. It claims to only work in a cryptography, you know, encoding and decoding messages, but in fact we all know that they’re the people who have been listening in on our telephone conversations. That’s come out recently. And they’re a very, very secretive organization.
Rest of the transcript here. He can also be seen talking at the bestest music channel that I've ever created here and above.
June 2
The Pinky Show : concept & purpose
Q: What is The Pinky Show?A: The Pinky Show is the original super lo-tech hand-drawn educational TV show. The Pinky Show focuses on information and ideas that have, for various reasons, been misrepresented, distorted, suppressed, ignored, or otherwise excluded from mainstream discussion. The creator and main character of the show, a cat named Pinky, presents and analyzes the material in an informal, easy-to-understand way, with helpful illustrations that she draws herself. Episodes are short and are available on the internet for free at www.PinkyShow.org.Pinky's Take on International Banking:
Pinky's Take on Globalization:
Labels: music, pinky show, radical cartooning
Ask Congress to SLOW DOWN on HR 811
Call Congress for Open, Public Debate on HR 811
No secret vote counting, full public accountability
May 31, 2007
Dear Representative _____________:
We are contacting you because we do not want HR 811 to be fast-tracked.
Our voting system is too important an issue not to allow time for public debate.
We are alarmed that this bill leaves far too many unacceptable vulnerabilities in our election process.
We urge you NOT to support HR 811.
We must do better than HR 811.
This bill federalizes secret vote counting
and invites -- rather than prevents --
systemic corruption of our elections.
We do not consent.
IN LIEU OF HR 811, WE PROPOSE:
1. Paper ballots, not paper trails
2. Federal BUYOUT of all touchscreen voting equipment
3. No secret vote counting, no secret records, no secret contracts,
and no trade secrecy in our public elections
4. No control of voting technologies by four White House appointees
5. No unfunded mandates
Please consider a workable, alternative proposal for essential election reform
outlined in brief presentation here:
http://www.ElectionDefenseAlliance.org/five_point_proposal
I sent a copy of that to the yahoo newsgroup that I'm a part of. Here is the main response counter to it that was posted.
Dear Philip (and everyone),
Among the organized groups participating in VotePA and this list, the
vast majority have indicated that they support HR 811 as the best
vehicle available to get voter-verified paper with audits and other
needed changes in time to meaningfully help protect the 2008 election
in Pennsylvania and in our entire nation.
HR 811 currently has 216 bi-partisan cosponsors in the US House.
A large coalition of national groups including VoteTrustUSA,
VerifiedVoting, Common Cause, MoveOn, PFAW, and others also strongly
support the bill. There are many other national, state, and local
organizations, political groups, and governmental groups that support
the bill as well.
Detractors include vendors (who stand to make larger profits if the
bill fails), election official (who are resisting the work it will take
to change our voting system to provide voter-verified paper and the
audits), and part of the so-called activist community such as you have
mentioned in your post who generally seem to claim the bill either does
not go far enough or in some cases that it is not a "perfect" bill.
Unfortunately, the vendors' and election officials' goal is to maintain
the status quo. Not surprisingly, the vendors and election officials
have employed high-priced professional lobbyists to fight the bill and
maintain that. On the activist side, the detractors have been very
vociferous but have in general not stated any concrete alternatives to
the bill that might realistically get in place in time to protect the
2008 election.
I will be posting a more detailed analysis and information as to what
is happening with the bill soon.
Marybeth
I still can't make a call here. I'm leaning slightly toward the detractors because here's the rules: if there's any room for the GOP to cheat then they'll do it. And after watching the dems in action, or rather inaction, on both the war and impeachment I'm fairly certain that they won't prosecute republicans if they break the law, let alone operate within the law legally to disenfranchise voters. Those rules don't seem to apply to the democrats. I guess I'll have to read more on this issue...
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