Tuesday, February 27, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 1:46 pm
"It’s very hard to predict the Bush administration today because they’re deeply irrational. They were irrational to start with but now they’re desperate. They have created an unimaginable catastrophe in Iraq. This should’ve been one of the easiest military occupations in history and they succeeded in turning it into one of the worst military disasters in history. They can’t control it and it’s almost impossible for them to get out for reasons you can’t discuss in the United States because to discuss the reasons why they can’t get out would be to concede the reasons why they invaded."
 
posted by @netwurker at 7:54 am
"Poetry's capacity to rattle governments is not, it appears, confined to totalitarian regimes. A collection of poems by detainees at the US military base in Guantánamo Bay is to be published later this year, but only in the face of strong opposition by suspicious American censors."

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Wednesday, February 21, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 12:57 pm
"A major US study has concluded that a generation of young girls is being psychologically damaged by a culture of sexualisation.

The report by the American Psychological Association says women and girls are depicted in a sexualised manner throughout US culture - on television and the Internet, in movies, music videos, magazines and video games.

The study says it is leading to eating disorders, low self-esteem, depression and poor academic performance."

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Monday, February 19, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 8:51 am
"Whether Internet addiction is a distinct malady deserving of its own diagnosis or just another manifestation of an addictive personality remains a subject of vigorous debate. Critics of the diagnosis are quick to point out that problematic online behaviors are almost always manifestations of "real-world" problems transported to the Internet. It appears that this describes Pacenza's case, in which a "real-world" sexual addiction became a cybersexual addiction, leading him to access an adult chat room from an IBM workstation."
 
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 2:47 pm
Australia:

"If the bookies are to be believed, Kevin Rudd will be the next prime minister of Australia.

Online betting agency Centrebet says the new Labor leader has lifted the party from lame-duck status to federal election favourite."
 
posted by @netwurker at 2:02 pm
"The US government has a new website, http://www.ready.gov. It's another attempt at scare mongering in the style of the old "duck and cover" advice after WWII.

The fun thing is that these pictures are so ambiguous they could mean anything! Here are a few interpretations."

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Tuesday, February 13, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 3:09 pm
"Josh Wolf, 24, has spent almost six months in jail. More time than any journalist in US history for protecting his sources. He was jailed on August 1st of last year when he refused to turn over video that he had shot of an anti-G8 demonstration in San Francisco to a federal grand jury."

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posted by @netwurker at 12:48 pm
"Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Travel expenses and additional payments were also offered.

The UN report was written by international experts and is widely regarded as the most comprehensive review yet of climate change science. It will underpin international negotiations on new emissions targets to succeed the Kyoto agreement, the first phase of which expires in 2012. World governments were given a draft last year and invited to comment.

The AEI has received more than $1.6m from ExxonMobil and more than 20 of its staff have worked as consultants to the Bush administration. Lee Raymond, a former head of ExxonMobil, is the vice-chairman of AEI's board of trustees."

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posted by @netwurker at 12:45 pm
Australia:

"A study has found that many women are worse off under the new federal industrial relations changes.

Queensland's Griffith Business School has analysed the first 10 months of WorkChoices and found overtime pay has been lost at double the rate of previous Australian workplace agreements.

The study also shows the WorkChoices legislation has performed badly on wages, conditions and productivity.

Griffith industrial relations professor David Peetz says women's conditions and pay sunk in the first six months of WorkChoices, especially in the private sector.

The professor says women's real wages fell by 2 per cent in the private sector despite a record profit share for businesses."

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Monday, February 12, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 2:01 pm
"Player Solves Perplex City ARG, Second Season Planned The first season of Perplex City, a card-based Alternate Reality Game (ARG) by Mind Candy, has come to a close, as Mind Candy officials revealed today that the game's ultimate goal, the "Receda Cube", has been found by Andy Darley in England.

A game, which is part of the ARG genre previously spotlighted in a 2005 Gamasutra feature on ARGs written by Mind Candy executive producer Adrian Hon, had proved popular both in North America and within its home of Europe."

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posted by @netwurker at 8:32 am
"So this is what it has come to:
Two young artists (their demeanor an echo of 1960s creative
expressiveness), paid a pittance to playfully
market a surrealist cartoon movie starring several talking
base-level consumer commodities, have been labeled semiotic
terrorists and criminals by official reality. What does this
political panic reflex, played out in the gerontocratic and the
politically correct Commonwealth of Massachusetts, tell us?"

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Saturday, February 10, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 11:04 am
 
Friday, February 09, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 6:25 pm
 
Wednesday, February 07, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 3:03 pm
From SMH:

"A junior US officer reported witnessing Taliban prisoners of war being sexually abused in Afghanistan weeks after Australian terrorist suspect David Hicks says he was anally penetrated by his American captors.

Documents obtained by AAP show the officer reported a Taliban prisoner was abused on February 11, 2002."
 
Saturday, February 03, 2007
posted by @netwurker at 3:51 pm

"LAST August, a federal judge found that the president of the United States broke the law, committed a serious felony and violated the Constitution. Had the president been an ordinary citizen — someone charged with bank robbery or income tax evasion — the wheels of justice would have immediately begun to turn. The F.B.I. would have conducted an investigation, a United States attorney’s office would have impaneled a grand jury and charges would have been brought.

But under the Bush Justice Department, no F.B.I. agents were ever dispatched to padlock White House files or knock on doors and no federal prosecutors ever opened a case.".....