FBI Raid Silences Teen Anarchist's Site. Discussions on indymedia and slashdot.

From Infoshop News: When wearing a mask is a revolutionary act:

January 28, 2002, 12:50 PM EST
NEW YORK -- Bracing for large-scale protests at the World Economic Forum, the NYPD drew a line in the sand Monday over an obscure law barring demonstrators from wearing masks. Chief of Patrol Joseph Esposito told a news conference that the department would strictly enforce the code, which prohibits three or more protesters from wearing masks. "Three or more with masks and they're marching, they're under arrests," Esposito said.

From BBC News: Curtains for semi-nude justice statue:

"He [Ashcroft] has more important things to worry about than what appears in the pictures."
   -- Justice Department spokeswoman Barbara Comstock

Then I guess our one-man Department for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice won't mind this one either.

Mario Ferrari's robotic creatures include a Conductor & Piano player

ACLU Action Alert: Oppose Attempts to Allow Unchecked Domestic Spying!

Village Voice: The Attack on Civil Liberties

EFF Analysis of USA PATRIOT Act (Oct. 31, 2001)

From ZDNet News: Laid-off techies invoke old law :

The Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires companies to give employees 60 days notice before mass layoffs or a plant closing, was originally intended to help blue-collar workers deal with plant shutdowns. Now, laid-off tech workers are finding out that it can apply to them as well, and they're taking action.
[...]
It requires companies with more than 100 workers to give employees at least 60 days notice of a plant closing or mass layoffs. A plant closing is defined as the shutdown of a single site in which 50 or more employees lose their jobs. Mass layoffs occur when a company lets go 500 workers over 30 days, or 33 percent of the work force, if that means at least 50 people.

From NY Times: "Almost All Probing Enron Received Campaign Money" (requires free registration):

Of the 248 Senators and members of the House of Representatives on 11 congressional committees investigating the firm, 212 received donations from the two companies [Enron Corp. or Arthur Andersen], according to an analysis by The New York Times and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonprofit research group that tracks money in politics.

byte.com: Coding Is a Crime, by Shannon Cochran

WHITEHOUSE.ORG: President: "I Did Not Have Improper Relations With That Woman: Miss Enron"

Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation - The Politicians Credo

A Bibliography on Automatic Text Categorization, compiled and maintained by Fabrizio Sebastiani

Three alternative taxonomies of time-based media, from SMaTBaM (Serving Massive Time-Based Media).

The Classification of Malt Whisky, by Charles MacLean, including A CLASSIFICATION of EIGHTY FIVE SINGLE MALT WHISKIES, Using Clustan Analysis, by Dr. David Wishart

The Progressive: "The Secret Behind the Sanctions -- How the U.S. Intentionally Destroyed Iraq's Water Supply", by Thomas J. Nagy

Common Cause: A Field Guide To The Enron Scandal, including Top Recipients of Enron PAC Contributions to Current Members of Congress

Mark my calendar:

• What: A presentation by Kathy Sreedhar, Executive Director of the Unitarian Univeralist Holdeen India Program (UUHIP), which provides critical support to advocacy and human rights organizations that help free bonded laborers.
• When: SUNDAY, JANUARY 20, 2002, 12:30PM
• Where: FIRST UNITARIAN SOCIETY IN NEWTON, MA,
  1326 Washington St., on Rt. 16, near exit 16 (West Newton) of the Massachusetts Turnpike.

You think your job stinks?...

FREE PEEP(s) SHOW!!

Attention Massachusetts residents! Tell your state rep to Support SB 2139, the Contraceptives Coverage Bill, with NO CRIPPLING AMENDMENTS.

From iAbolish: Mauritania Silences Abolitionists!:

Chattel slavery thrives in the west African country of Mauritania. But its government has just banned Action for Change (AC) - a political party that speaks out on slavery. Please e-mail Senators Biden and Helms - ranking members of the Foreign Relations Committee. Tell them that the US should not aid a government that hides slavery and silences abolitionists.

EFF: Norway v. Johansen -- Norway Indicts Teen [Jon Johansen] Who Published Code Liberating DVDs -- U.S. Entertainment Industry Pressured Norwegian Prosecutors.

"Free Jon" mailing list

It's time once again to nominate your favorite weblog (hint, hint) for the Second Annual Weblog Awards (aka the 2002 Bloggies). But hurry -- you only have until 10:00 PM Eastern Standard Time on Sunday, January 13, 2002!

Three Reviews of the new book "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" by Jean-Charles Brisard and Guillaume Dasquie. And some supporting evidence (BBC News, 1997). Thanks to WHAT REALLY HAPPENED for the link.

Scientists plan remote control for genes

From eeTimes: Injectable chip opens door to 'human bar code':

A Florida-based company has introduced a passive RFID chip that is compatible with human tissue, and the developer is proposing the chip for use on implantable pacemakers, defibrillators and artificial joints. The company, Applied Digital Solutions (Palm Beach, Fla.), also said that the chip could be injected through a syringe and used as a sort of "human bar code" in security applications.
[...]
"We are advocating that this technology be totally voluntary," [Keith] Bolton [senior vice president of technology development] said.
[...]
At Alien Technology Corp. (Morgan Hill, Calif.), engineers have already discussed using that company's ultrasmall RFID chips in human applications. Alien, which uses a process known as fluidic self-assembly to create chips measuring 350 x 350 microns, has demonstrated its 900-MHz technology on everyday products such as soap and shampoo bottles. The coded information can be detected and read across distances measuring almost 3 feet.
[...]
Analysts also suggested that human identification technology would be more likely to be popularized when engineers are able to integrate more memory and other features, such as global-positioning satellite units and induction-based power-recharging techniques.

Telegraph.co.uk: Good news: Doomsday has been postponed! Yeah, by a measly 200 million years. Big deal!

From Fire Engineering Magazine: "Burning Questions...Need Answers": FE's Bill Manning Calls for Comprehensive Investigation of WTC Collapse:

Fire Engineering has good reason to believe that the "official investigation" blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may already have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests, to put it mildly, lie far afield of full disclosure.
[...]
Respected members of the fire protection engineering community are beginning to raise red flags, and a resonating theory has emerged: The structural damage from the planes and the explosive ignition of jet fuel in themselves were not enough to bring down the towers. Rather, theory has it, the subsequent contents fires attacking the questionably fireproofed lightweight trusses and load-bearing columns directly caused the collapses in an alarmingly short time.
[...]
The builders and owners of the World Trade Center property, the Port Authority of New York-New Jersey, a governmental agency that operates in an accountability vacuum beyond the reach of local fire and building codes, has denied charges that the buildings' fire protection or construction components were substandard but has refused to cooperate with requests for documentation supporting its contentions.
[...]
Firefighters, this is your call to action.

From Workers World:

A PARABLE WITH NO NAME

The horses and the mules got to talking during the oats break. They were fed up with being whipped, overloaded and starved by Warthog, but didn't know what to do about it. Some wanted to tell the pig where he could go, but others worried that could cost them their jobs. And jobs were scarce these days, although goodness knows there was plenty of need for their services.

"I know," said Storm. "Let's drop a load of bricks on him next time out." That cheered them up for a while, but then someone remembered what had happened to Shadow when she tried something similar.

They thought some more. The lap dog wandered by, saw they were stretching out their break long after their meager fare had been eaten, and said, "So what are you all plotting now? Revolution?"

Everyone was quiet until the hoof-kisser had gone. Then old Sparky spoke up. "Is that what Warthog's afraid of? That we'll all get together and give him the heave-ho? Not a bad idea."

"I don't know," said Boots with a slight shiver. "Would we really be any better than Warthog? Wouldn't we just be exchanging one master for another?"

"You've been living in the barn and wearing a saddle for too long," replied Sparky. "Those of us who sleep out in the field and pull the heavy loads don't think like Warthog. We're used to working as a team, looking out for one another. We could really change things if we all organized and gave Warthog the heave-ho."

Storm said dreamily, "Maybe another world is possible. But it would take a lot of work. I say we just drop the load of bricks on him."

It certainly was tempting. Warthog was at that very moment humiliating a new member of the team, a colt still only half- broken and chomping at the bit. All around were horses and mules going about their business, trying not to feel for the newcomer, just trying to get through another day.

They wanted to do something, but they knew that without a plan, without the support of the others, it would only end in reprisals. The gang went back to work.

Their days melted into one another. Their feedbags got lighter and lighter while their loads got heavier and heavier. Warthog was never satisfied with how hard they worked or how little they ate. He always wanted more.

Want to know what happened? The ending is up to you.

Vaneechoutte, M. and Skoyles, J.R., 1998: The memetic origin of language: modern humans as musical primates

Two excellent articles by John Pilger, via The Mirror:

• From THIS WAR IS A FRAUD:

  None of those directly involved in the September 11 atrocity was Afghani. Most were Saudis, who apparently did their planning and training in Germany and the United States. The camps which the Taliban allowed bin Laden to use were emptied weeks ago. Moreover, the Taliban itself is a creation of the Americans and the British. In the 1980s, the tribal army that produced them was funded by the CIA and trained by the SAS to fight the Russians. The hypocrisy does not stop there. When the Taliban took Kabul in 1996, Washington said nothing. Why? Because Taliban leaders were soon on their way to Houston, Texas, to be entertained by executives of the oil company, Unocal. With secret US government approval, the company offered them a generous cut of the profits of the oil and gas pumped through a pipeline that the Americans wanted to build from Soviet central Asia through Afghanistan.

• From THIS WAR OF LIES GOES ON:

  According to Tony Blair, it was impossible to secure Osama bin Laden's extradition from Afghanistan by means other than bombing. Yet in late September and early October, leaders of Pakistan's two Islamic parties negotiated bin Laden's extradition to Pakistan to stand trial for the September 11 attacks. The deal was that he would be held under house arrest in Peshawar. According to reports in Pakistan (and the Daily Telegraph), this had both bin Laden's approval and that of Mullah Omah, the Taliban leader. The offer was that he would face an international tribunal, which would decide whether to try him or hand him over to America. Either way, he would have been out of Afghanistan, and a tentative justice would be seen to be in progress. It was vetoed by Pakistan's president Musharraf who said he "could not guarantee bin Laden's safety". But who really killed the deal? The US Ambassador to Pakistan was notified in advance of the proposal and the mission to put it to the Taliban. Later, a US official said that "casting our objectives too narrowly" risked "a premature collapse of the international effort if by some luck chance Mr bin Laden was captured".

Take the PATRIOT'S ENERGY PLEDGE (Reduce Your Oil Dependence)! Now that's subversive!

Test your SF IQ! Can you ID them all? Fantasy and Science Fiction: "Plumage from Pegasus" (a.k.a. "Adventures In Mishmosh Land" by A. Patchwork Girl, Customizer), by Paul Di Filippo (really!)