"A California environmental group ponies up to test for pollutants in humans. The results, regardless of organic food habits, sound like the problems of a toxics disposal site: pesticides, flame-retardants, lead and other toxins."
The day Saddam Hussein was caught, Bush quietly signed into law several provisions of Patriot Act II. (c/o Ross Mayfield)
The North American Free Trade Agreement took hold 10 years ago, after a bruising, arm-twisting debate. Today it is more than ever a politically charged symbol of the promises and perils of free trade.The NY Times thoroughly weighs the pros and cons of Nafta, 10 years into it.
The accord, known as Nafta, brought under one canopy three hugely different economies: the wealthy United States, middle-class Canada and striving Mexico. The disparities made Nafta the boldest gamble ever on the proposition that free trade could benefit all.
Leaders promised the accord would create millions of good jobs, curb illegal immigration and raise living standards "from the Yukon to the Yucatan." A decade later, the verdict, even among Nafta's strongest supporters, is that for those goals free trade by itself is not enough.
"Presidential contender Howard B. Dean, who has said little about religion while campaigning except to emphasize the separation of church and state, described himself in an interview with the Globe as a committed believer in Jesus Christ and said he expects to increasingly include references to Jesus and God in his speeches as he stumps in the South."
It's a simple idea born out of complicated emotions. The Colgans are longtime peace activists who have opposed the war in Iraq from the beginning. They marched in antiwar demonstrations before Ben was deployed to Baghdad. Joe and Patricia Colgan still believe the war to be "completely wrong" and "unjust."curse you, irony.
"I know it seems like a contradiction. How can your son be a hero in an unjust war?" Joe says. "It's the contradiction of a parent. We had a son in the Army, and we supported him no matter what. He did what the commander in chief wanted. He died doing what he believed in; he died doing what he loved. That's a hero."
In the next breath, Joe Colgan, 62, holds his head in his hands.
Ralph Nader, who never registered as a Green, has stated that if he runs in 2004 he will do so independently of the Green Party. Voting for Nader in 2000 was the first time I voted in a national election. That said, I see this as good for the party - the European Greens built up from local/regional bases and now sit on nearly every parliament. Running large presidential campaigns is not the way to build a third party, especially one that prides itself on being grass roots. Nader's running as Green would likely hurt the party because many Greens have already lined up behind Kucinich and Dean, and would thereby cause unecessary internal rifts w/in the party (between the 'Anybody but Bush' crowd and the Naderites). It would be a far more effective strategy for the Greens to prove their strength through building coalitions with other progressive causes (MoveOn, etc.) than to divide the progressive movement by running a large national campaign, which would be a waste of time and money that could much better (&more efficiently) be spent on local and regional positions that can actually be won.
If you thought life couldn't get any stranger, Michael Jackson has joined the Nation of Islam.
Well, we've got web and e-mail back up
Ok kids, so, you were all kind and gracious enough to help pay for our new server, and for that I am incredibly grateful towards all of you; really, really touched. But well, I kind of have some bad news. Now don't get angry at me, but well, I made a mistake in my first choice of hoster, and am now getting robbed for $200 of the money put towards our relocation. Before you read the following, I'd like you to note that I've found a new and infinitely better hoster, RackForce, and that the server will be online shortly, at which time I will begin to move our shit over. However, at this particular moment, I'd like to convey to you what transpired, as I stated it in my complaint to the Better Business Bureau, earlier today:
I recently purchased Dedicated Web Hosting through CI Host. The cost of the package was for roughly $150/mo with a $200 setup fee. After my account was configured and I logged into my server to install some necessary software, I discovered that the configuration of the server, as well as the "managed services" provided by the company would not be sufficient for my needs.How completely fucked up is that? They want $200 for switching on a computer only for me to find out it doesn't work! Well, I don' t intend to stand for it, and on my way into work tomorrow (as I took the day off to work on moving over to the new server today) I plan to file a form at my bank branch to stop payment on the transaction. Since I can not guarantee that I will be successful in doing so, however, I would like to ask those of you who give a fuck—and I hope that's everyone, from full-fledged neckers to our regular and irregular visitors, to e-mail both billing@cihost.com and sales@cihost.com and insist that they terminate my contract (name: Daniel Sieradski, account: #ci61883463, domain: youraunt.net) with a full refund, including setup and monthly fees. Let them know that you think it is an entirely reprehensible business action, and that you fully intend to make all of your associates who are currently hosted by their company, as well as those who you know are looking for hosting, aware of the underhanded manner in which their company conducts business. Please, help me get our money back.
This feeling was exacerbated by the fact that upon every occasion on which I tried to reach their customer service staff by telephone, I was placed into a call queue that disconnected me after staying on hold for 5 minutes. This has happened well over 12 times thus far, 8 times today alone. When complaining about this fact to their receptionist she merely apologized and returned me to the call queue where I was disconnected once again.
Infuriated, I went to cancel my account, and in the process of filling out their online cancellation form, discovered language in an argeement I would be required to sign in order to cancel, which requires that I waive my entitlement to a refund of my setup fees. However, on the company's website, prior to signup, there was a bolded statement: "Risk free contracts! - 30 day money back guarantee on all servers." There is no asterisk, nor link, nor small print which notes that this is not an entirely true statement.
When, after several attempts, I was finally able to contact a service representative, I was informed that in signing my contract with the company, that I had consented to all company policies, even though the specific policys relating to the waiver of setup fees upon cancellation was not stipulated within the contract itself.
I believe this to be a completely misleading business practice and am incensed by such 'contractual trickery'. It is a completely dishonest way of making money and constitutes a breach of good faith.
How do you like your 4th Amendment? Diced to shit, I hope, cuz it done been destroyed.
Apparently Diebold doesn't want voters to get paper receipts of their votes:
"A Pentagon audit has found Vice President Dick Cheney's former company may have overcharged the Army by $1.09 per gallon for nearly 57 million gallons of gasoline delivered to citizens in Iraq, senior defense officials say." More from The NY Times.
Hi kids. I regret to inform you that we've been hacked. Things have been getting progressively worse as of late, with our system coming under constant attack from all over the world—script kiddies with IRC bots, gamers looking to leech bandwidth, Africans looking for a safe harbor. But today was the final straw. Today our system security was completely and totally compromised. We need to get off this box immediately.
i just put together & presented a presentation on net.art, particularly the early stuff, for craig baldwin's history of reproducibility class here at sfai. as a practicing net.artist it was a cool opportunity for me to explore some of the roots of the practices of the medium in greater detail. especially interesting (to me anyway) is the stuff that came out of the mid-late 90s, before php and MySQL were widely available and before the explosion of bandwidth; artists had to be much more inventive & efficient with what they had to work with - namely the raw features of HTML: image maps, form elements, text as image. the medium has turned out to be far more ephemeral than anyone had thought. much of the work from this period is no longer available (&arguably, the most dominant aesthetic of net.art today is '404: not found').
A seven year-old Louisiana boy was reprimanded by school authorities for explaining to his classmates that his mother is a lesbian. After explaining what "gay" meant to another student, he was chastized by his teacher in front of his classmates and given an early morning detention where he was made to repeatedly write "I will never use the word 'gay' in school again." The ACLU has full details.
"Police work is often lionized by jurists and scholars who claim to employ 'textualist' and 'originalist' methods of constitutional interpretation. Yet professional police were unknown to the United States in 1789, and first appeared in America almost a half-century after the Constitution's ratification. The Framers contemplated law enforcement as the duty of mostly private citizens, along with a few constables and sheriffs who could be called upon when necessary. This article marshals extensive historical and legal evidence to show that modern policing is in many ways inconsistent with the original intent of America's founding documents. The author argues that the growth of modern policing has substantially empowered the state in a way the Framers would regard as abhorrent to their foremost principles."
I can not believe for a fraction of a moment that any of you people who purport yourselves to be my friends would imagine for even a moment that I would be responsible for such activities as those that have recently transpired in the Shoutbox.
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