Features/News
From Sedes Draconis
Or Something Like That
I made the mistake today of looking at the newspaper before going off to finals.
In international news today, Bush put his foot where his mouth is (or is that, his foot where his money is?) and declared to the world that might makes right, and things like the United Nations and international law are irrelevant to those with the power and arrogance to ignore them.
In state news, in Humboldt County (Northern California), home of some of the last remaining pockets fo old-growth redwood forest, logging companies are hiring climbers to go up and forcibly remove tree-sitters so they can be arrested, and logging go forward.
Old growth, meaning a mature forest; which for redwoods means trees over a thousand years old. But who cares? After all, claims that aggressive logging can have negative environmental impact "have no scientific basis".
In local news, budgets for education and public transportation are being slashed.
On the bright side, my semantics final exam went pretty well, I thought. :?
I don't know . . . don't have much else to say, right now.
(2003.03.24)
Oh, well here's something:
Someone on zbb brought up Howard Dean the other day. He's a Dem Presidential candidate for 2004. And as much as the Greens are closer to holding my true allegiance, I feel like there's too goin' to be too much at stake to vote for anyone who doesn't have a realistic chance of beating Bush. So I looked him up.
And Dean's looking pretty impressive: an M.D., strong on pro-choice; the governor who made Vermont the first state to explicitly recognize same-sex civil union; some respectable stances on foreign policy, Iraq, homeland security, etc: anti-Hussein, but reluctant to war, and strongly opposed to unilateral action, or the US becoming a police state in the name of security.
Takes a stand on environmentalism (calling for a return to the Kyoto accords, e.g.), universal health care, and is one of the stronger opponents to Bush's tax-cuts for the ultra-rich. And a candidate that's lookin' like he's got some solid support, and a chance to win.
So, someone to watch while we wait, and wait, for an end to Bush. But for the impatient, there's always: http://www.votetoimpeach.org/
Links:
- http://www.deanforamerica.com/ (partisan)
- http://www.politics1.com/dems04.htm (non-partisan)
- http://www.gop.com/Newsroom/RNCResearch/research011003.htm (& hostile)
(Frankly, I wish I had a hostile site to link to that was a little more coherent and less demagogic, but that's the best I found.)
(2003.04.08)
On his blog, my brother had a piece last week called "Land that I Love", relaying the rumor he had heard from 3000 miles away that the Saturn Cafe here in our hometown of Santa Cruz had renamed their french fries to "Fuck George Bush Fries". I went their for lunch today, and sadly this is not true, they're "Impeach Bush French Fries". Close enough. I took a picture.
See also: Another picture I took, while wandering the streets of Santa Cruz.
(2003.05.22)
On a different note, I just found an uplifting Boston Globe article. Apparently Iraqi's National Library was not nearly as severly looted as it looked like. Instead many of the texts were unofficially taken to a mosque for safe-keeping before the looters and arsonists arrived. People really are awesome sometimes, I hope it's completely true.
(2003.09.09)
Lies, Damn Lies, and Neo-Conservative Think Tanks
This war on terrorism is bogus, an article in the Guardian. You have been lied to. It's time and past to dump this regime.
Watching Fox News and Extreme Stupidity: Highly Correlated! Study Shows
2003.10.17 Who kills orchards?: Patrick Nielsen Hayden on Direct Contravention of the Geneva Conventions by Americans in Iraq.
and
Getting out the Vote: Billmon on the issues of computerized voting (plus lots of comment-discussion).
