» Archive: August 2005
Elmer in Israel
Jon Elmer, The NewStandard: "Arab victims of last month's terrorist attack on a bus in northern Israel will not be eligible for the same compensation as Jewish victims of Palestinian attacks because the perpetrator -- a Jewish Israeli soldier -- was not considered a member of a group hostile to the state of Israel."
Telus Strike
WSWS: "Twelve-thousand five-hundred Telus workers in British Columbia and Alberta have been walking the picket lines since July 21. The conflict has been provoked by Telus, the largest telecommunications company in western Canada, with the intention of busting the union and shredding what few obstacles remain to the contracting out of any part of the company’s operations."
Effects of Inequality
Peter Wilby: Forget Raw Fish And Berries, It's Equality That Saves Lives
Not all such differences in life expectancy are attributable to differences in lifestyle, such as smoking, drinking, drugs, exercise and diet. Poverty and inequality induce stress: one survey in the 90s showed that families living on less than £10,000 a year were more than twice as likely to have daily arguments as those on more than £20,000. We look admiringly at high life expectancies in Japan and Sweden and debate if raw fish or lingonberries would do the trick for us, too. It never seems to occur to us that the longevity may be connected to these being two of the most equal societies on Earth.
Finch Ave.
Toronto Public Space Committee: Maybe we shouldn't have burried that river in a concrete pipe...
CBC Lockout Coverage
Locked out CBC workers are covering the lockout on their own web site. Hopefully they'll start covering other stuff; it'd be interesting to see what CBC coverage was like, sans management.
None dare call it stolen
Harper's Magazine's None Dare Call It Stolen is well worth the read. Because, y'know, if it happened twice...
A few quotes:
And on Election Day, twenty-six state exit polls incorrectly predicted wins for Kerry, a statistical failure so colossal and unprecedented that the odds against its happening, according to a report last May by the National Election Data Archive Project, were 16.5 million to 1. Yet this ever-less-beloved president, this president who had united liberals and conservatives and nearly all the world against himself - this president somehow bested his opponent by 3,000,176 votes.
...
At Kenyon College in Gambier, for instance, there were only two machines for 1,300 would-be voters, even though "a surge of late registrations promised a record vote". Gambier residents and Kenyon students had to stand in line for hours, in the rain and in "crowded, narrow hallways", with some of them inevitably forced to call it quits. "In contrast, at nearby Mt Vernon Nazarene University, which is considered more Republican leaning, there were ample waiting machines and no lines". This was not a consequence of limited resources. In Franklin County alone, as voters stood for hours throughout Columbus and elsewhere, at least 125 machines collected dust in storage. The county's election officials had "decided to make do with 2,866 machines, even though the analysis showed that the county needs 5,000 machines".
Weblog Slowdown
As even occasional readers have noticed, the weblog has slowed down quite a bit over the last few months.
Things will continue to be slow, as we focus on fundraising and planning for the fall, and the future.
Things will likely pick up again in early October.
Keep an eye on the front page for new developments and new stories.
Protests in China
Boston Globe: "Protesters demanding the closure of an eastern China battery factory that they say is spewing lead into the environment clashed with police, and dozens of people were injured, witnesses and hospital officials said yesterday. After the initial melee, thousands of demonstrators torched police cars and broke into government offices, witnesses reported. Such protests are becoming more common in rural China as villagers vent their anger against corruption, environmental degradation, pollution, and the seizure of land for real estate development."
We 'Atta' know better by now
Mohammed Atta, the alleged “lead hijacker” of the 9/11 attacks, has resurfaced on the media radar providing a flurry of questions and responses regarding the ABLE DANGER program, a military intelligence unit. According to Congressman Curt Weldon (R-PA), “ABLE DANGER was a Department of Defense planning effort, tasked…by the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The task …was to identify and target Al-Qaeda on a global basis and…present options for leaders (national command authority) to manipulate, degrade or destroy the global Al-Qaeda infrastructure.”
Network Model
Christian Science Monitor: Al Qaeda to West: It's about policies
Analysts cautioned that Zawahiri's statement is not evidence of direct Al Qaeda knowledge of the London attacks, and said it probably fits into Al Qaeda's evolution into an ideological motivator, rather than organizer, of attacks.Is that why you're not supposed to throw rocks at a hornet nest?
"Such messages are usually a call-to-arms, sort of top-down guidance to go forth and do your thing," says Ayers. He says while Al Qaeda was "tightly organized" before the invasion of Afghanistan, the dispersal of members since has left a "confederation of groups that adhere to the same fundamental principles.... essentially they are functionally autonomous groups."