The Civil War – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com
The Civil War – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com.
The NY Times’ timeline is really very useful; and important in this year.
Satellite image shows U.S. blanketed by winter storms – Yahoo! News
Satellite image shows U.S. blanketed by winter storms – Yahoo! News.
Toronto is somewhere under that.
Al Jazeera English: Live Stream – Watch Now – Al Jazeera English
Al Jazeera English: Live Stream – Watch Now – Al Jazeera English.
The reportage is brilliant, the massive actions confirming my profound optimism in the people’s finally shrugging off the mantle of the 20th century, but in watching this real act of democracy–people’s will manifested politically, albeit with a simple demand lacking in a coherent (so we are told) aftermath (what comes next? that seems to be motivating state & military politics now)–I am reminded of the similar but very tragic Burmese uprising of a couple of years ago. You know: the one that focused, was personified by the shooting death of the Japanese news photographer, Kenji Nagai, in September 2007. The junta ruling Burma is still in power and although there has been some positive movement, it’s not been nearly enough and the status quo pretty much obtains.
The number of schools….
Cool, in watching online the CBS 60 minutes interview of Assange, I learned that he went to 37 different schools. (Not sure if that includes colleges/unis). That trumps my number: 22 (or 23) not counting college, grad school. And he seemed to have had an even more itinerant upbringing than we did….
The Haves and the Have-Nots – NYTimes.com
The Haves and the Have-Nots – NYTimes.com.
It’s easy to forget, at least for those coming from rich locations, just how much wealth is required to enable something like open source development, at least that using the Internet and ICT. It’s a little counter-intuitive: community, the commons, all these things that characterise open source work, ought not to require wealth. But they do. One needs the infrastructure for it, for starters, even if that infrastructure does not copy the 20th century West’s. One needs, more importantly, the temporal luxury of being able to say, I shall work on this, not that; I shall choose not be chosen. And that kind of wealth is huge and nearly invisible–unless one is a political or social minority, where the wealth of saying, I choose, is ever present.
Egypt Leaves the Internet – Renesys Blog
Egypt Leaves the Internet – Renesys Blog.
This is extraordinary. “Interdiction” takes on a new meaning? No: just the old meaning applied to new media. Which suggests that to have old freedoms writ into new modalities we need new protections. For this sort of interdiction–sudden, as here, but also it could be progressive, so that one doesn’t really know it’s occurring until too late, it’s occurred and there’s nothing to do because there is no way to discriminate one from the other–this sort of clamp down could occur, does occur, will occur everywhere.
Microcredit: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Microcredit: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
A fairly decent article… and it naturally–this is after all, Korten writing–raises the issue of what counts, what makes up a community. Local communities are geographically determined; but must all communities then be of that shape? Obviously, I think not. But then what configures a non-local community? What orders it, enables determines it and its boundaries and striations?
Ford warns of TTC fare hike; budget reveals minor cuts – thestar.com
Ford warns of TTC fare hike; budget reveals minor cuts – thestar.com.
It’s always depressing–really depressing–to read of such patent hypocrisy from the Tories and right-wing, in general. Harper’s desire for more prison expansion is another case in point. Government, the logic goes, is always bad, except when it builds prisons, which instance right-wing social ideals but do worse than zero for actual crime and even less to counter social injustices. Government money is bad otherwise–sigh.
Meanwhile, our tax dollars are spent in obscure ways to produce negative effects and to counter social justice, and our tax dollars–mine, say–are spent on things which are worse than costly: they lock in a system that will continue the social injustices and opacity.
\’Violence is OK, if that\’s what it takes to make our mark\’ – UK Politics, UK – The Independent
\’Violence is OK, if that\’s what it takes to make our mark\’ – UK Politics, UK – The Independent.
Hard not to recall how a few weeks ago the beeb’s savant could opine that though there might be dissatisfaction there would, could not be in England such violence. What an idiot.
This Backlash Against WikiLeaks Is Bogus And Outrageous — What Happened To Freedom Of The Press?
This Backlash Against WikiLeaks Is Bogus And Outrageous — What Happened To Freedom Of The Press?.
I’m impressed. Even Henry Blodget of SAI finds the extraordinary attacks an outrage.
Quote:
So enough with this gnashing of teeth about how WikiLeaks must be stopped. WikiLeaks is just the messenger here, not the agent. WikiLeaks is just doing what everyone in the press always says is the reason we should have press: Digging up information that powerful people don’t want you to know.
newspeak 