thenation.com: "A Fair Vote in San Francisco" -- Instant Runoff Voting is gaining momentum. Try it out!

AI USA: Help protect human rights defender Golden Misabiko in Democratic Republic of Congo

Many's the time I've driven right past the Natick Soldier Center, and idly wondered just what the heck goes on in there. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine it had anything to do with a Family of Latrines.

Did you hear the news? Kenneth Lay To Head Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence. Really! What, don't you believe me??

Palestine Chronicle: Aren't all human lives worth the same?

Send your high-bandwidth friends a PlayMail, and have its contents annunciated by an entity of your choosing!

From Boston Globe: Warlord's men commit rape in revenge against Taliban:

The crime is perpetrated, say victims and aid workers, by the men who answer to warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, a Northern Alliance commander whose 3,000-man army, Junbish-e-Millie, now rules much of the country's north.
[...]
Pashtun families make easy targets because the Junbish disarmed many of them when Dostum's troops, assisted by US special forces who continue to accompany the warlord everywhere, drove out the Taliban.

Quick -- what's the first thing you notice in this picture? Upon seeing this, I immediately scrambled to sign up for Linden Lab's "Early Creator Program", but they seem to want only ubergeeks who are, um, "well-equipped" with:

• Pentium III 800MHZ or higher
• 256MB RAM or more
• Windows 2000, NT or XP
• Nvidia GeForce 2 or GeForce 3 series GPU, 32MB RAM
• DSL, cable modem, or LAN connection to the Internet (256Kbps downstream or higher)

I am not worthy...

I'm gonna report that xenophobic hatemonger Pat Robertson to international cybercop Peter Csonka and the COMMITTEE OF EXPERTS ON THE CRIMINALISATION OF ACTS OF A RACIST OR XENOPHOBIC NATURE COMMITTED THROUGH COMPUTER NETWORKS (you know, the COEOTCOAOAROXNCTCN). Yeah, that'll make everything all better...

From iabolish.com:

• "Pakistan's Slave Trade" - Andrew Bushell, Boston Phoenix
• "Sale of Children Thrives in Pakistan" - Andrew Bushell, Washington Times
• "Lifting the Veil on Taliban Sex Slavery" - Time Magazine
• "Afghan Girls on Sale for 100kg of Wheat" - News International
• "It All Started with a Study Break ..." - Interview with Jay Williams
• Beginner's Guide - How to Become an Abolitionist

Ask your U.S. Senator to ratify the U.N. Optional Protocol on Child Soldiers, which entered into force on 12 February 2002.

From washingtonpost.com: Immigration Judges Seek Independence From Justice Dept.:

The group argues that Attorney General John D. Ashcroft serves as supervisor of both the INS, which prosecutes immigration cases, and the immigration judges, who adjudicate them.

From sacbee.com: Russian orchestra members removed from U.S. airliner:

Airline officials said Monday's problems on United Flight 947 began after orchestra members broke out bottles of liquor they had carried on board with them. They were in "much different spirits" when they returned to the airport on Tuesday.

Must see: Promises -- "explores the [Middle-East] conflict through the eyes of seven Israeli and Palestinian children living in Jerusalem."

Dial up Enron's new Voice Mail System

ZDNet News: The convergence of .NET and Java

Brush up your yodelling skills online, and soon you'll be warbling along with Wylie and the Wild West!

Political parody site EnronOwnsTheGOP.com tells buzzflash.com that it won't shut down in the face of legal threats from the Republican Party of Texas. For some excellent background on the issues involved, see How Enron Did Texas by Nate Blakeslee.

Tired: fight-or-flight. Wired: tend-and-befriend

John Blair: Criticize Cheney, Go to Jail

Have US forces in Afghanistan engaged in war crimes?

Testosterone prevents Alzheimer's?? I'll drink to that!! From now on, I'm wearing my testosterone patch on my forehead! And maybe some estrogen to go with! And I'll be sure to spend plenty of time viewing television, listening to the radio, reading newspapers or magazines, reading books, playing games such as cards, checkers, crosswords, or other puzzles, and going to museums. And popping plenty of ibuprofen. And eating lots of yellow curry.

DallasNews.com: Outlaw [radio] station raiding airwaves

EFF Action Alert: You Buy It, You Own It! -- Back Philips vs. Tainted CDs (Feb. 6, 2002)

SatireWire: ANGERED BY SNUBBING, LIBYA, CHINA, SYRIA FORM AXIS OF JUST AS EVIL

Coalition to Oppose the Arms Trade (COAT): "Press for Conversion" quarterly: Issue 46: "Power Politics: Oil, Terror the War Against Afghanistan"

Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: NPR Continues Distortion on Mideast "Calm"

Next best thing to uploading Garry Kasparov: The Distributed Chess Project -- Creating Chess Playing Artificial Neural Networks with Distributed Evolutionary Algorithms

I think Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Senator Robert Byrd both need to have their medications changed.
From Washington Post: O'Neill Near Tears in Confrontation:

"I started my life in a house without water or electricity," said O'Neill, who grew up in a low-income St. Louis, Mo., household. "So I don't cede to you the high moral ground of not knowing what life is like in a ditch."

"Well, Mr. Secretary, I lived in a house without electricity too, no running water, no telephone, a little wooden outhouse," said Byrd, who was raised by his aunt and uncle in West Virginia's coal country.

... and the heated exchange continued (with apologies to Monty Python):

O'Neill: House! You were lucky to live in a house! We used to live in one room, all twenty-six of us, no furniture, half the floor was missing, we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of falling.

Byrd: You were lucky to have a room! We used to have to live in the corridor!

O'Neill: Oh, we used to dream of living in a corridor! Would have been a palace to us! We used to live in an old water tank on a rubbish tip. We got woke up every morning by having a load of rotting fish dumped all over us! House, huh!

Byrd: Well, when I say "house", it was just a hole in the ground, covered by a sheet of tarpaulin, but it was a house to us!

O'Neill: We were evicted from our hole in the ground. We had to go and live in a lake!

Byrd: You were lucky to have a lake! There were 150 of us living in a shoebox in the middle of the road!

O'Neill: A cardboard box?

Byrd: Ay!

O'Neill: You were lucky! We lived for three months in a rolled-up newspaper in a septic tank! We used to have to get up every morning, at six o'clock and clean the newspaper, go to work down the mill, fourteen hours a day, week in, week out, for sixpence a week, and when we got home, our dad would thrash us to sleep with his belt!

Byrd: Luxury! We used to have to get out of the lake at three o'clock in the morning, clean the lake, eat a handful of hot gravel, work twenty hours a day at mill, for twopence a month, come home, and dad would beat us around the head and neck with a broken bottle, if we were lucky!

O'Neill: Well, of course, we had it tough! We used to have to get up out of the shoebox in the middle of the night, and lick the road clean with our tongues! We had to eat half a handful of freezing cold gravel, work twenty-four hours a day at mill for fourpence every six years, and when we got home, our dad would slice us in two with a breadknife!

Byrd: Right! I had to get up in the morning, at ten o'clock at night, half an hour before I went to bed, eat a lump of cold poison, work twenty-nine hours a day down mill and pay mill-owner for permission to come to work, and when we got home, our dad would kill us and dance about on our graves, singing Hallelujah!

PayPal IPO party spoiled by rival's patent lawsuit

The Global Ideas Bank -- including milkyears and Vernor Vinge's How to survive in the Post-Human era. And see also some comments on Vinge's Singularity by a gaggle of emminenti.

From dumblaws.com:

GENERAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS
Chapter 264: Section 16A. Communist party.
Section 16A. The Communist Party is hereby declared to be a subversive organization.

GENERAL LAWS OF MASSACHUSETTS
Chapter 264: Section 17. Subversive organizations; prohibition.
Section 17. A subversive organization is hereby declared to be unlawful.

Makes me want to join up ... but then I'd have to turn myself in.

George W. in the Garden of Gethsemane -- An Open Letter to George W. Bush from Michael Moore

breaking news: FedEx Introduces Overnight PeoplePak!

Where do terrorists get their money? If you pay taxes, some of it may come from you.

BBC News: AFRICA: Aid appeal for Lagos blast victims

College freshmen more politically liberal than in the past, UCLA survey reveals

New study: Girls barely trail boys in mathematics

Oppose Anti-Choice Judicial Nominee Charles Pickering, who has been nominated to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.

From GOLDMEMBER CHOPPED OFF:

This week, the MPAA judged in favor of MGM studio, who claimed that the subtitle of "Goldmember" for the next Austin Powers movie was an infringement on the intellectual property of their James Bond franchise. New Line apparently tried to bargain by offering Mike Myers as a Bond promotional tool and shifting release for its "John Q", but MGM wasn't biting.

Maybe they should call it "Austin Powers in The Movie The MPAA Won't Let Me Call Goldmember". Or "Austin Powers in **CENSORED BY THE MPAA**". Or just change GOLDMEMBER to 60|_|)|\/|E|\/|3ER, and see if MGM wants to go crying back to the MPAA one more time. And since when does the MPAA get to issue "judgements"?

Support Operation Enduring Enron!!!

DRCNet: Electronic Music Organization Creating Anti-Rave Law Database