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The Six Enneads - Plotinus.
comment posted at 2:41 PM on Jul-22-04

"Mr. President, pardon Papa Jack" In 1908 a former Texas dockworker and inventor named Jack Johnson became the first African American boxer to ever win the world heavyweight title. His victory sparked race riots and prompted a search for a "great white hope" (writer Jack London asked white fighters to "wipe that smirk off Johnson's face"). But then Johnson defeated two "white hopes", one of whom was the legendary Jim Jeffries. In 1912, authorities went after Johnson in court. His crime? Messin' with the white woman. Charges were brought against him for violating the Mann Act, a federal law that made it a crime to transport a woman across state lines for "immoral purposes." He married the woman, but he was sentenced to a year in prison anyway. Johnson fled the country, living in Europe as a fugitive for seven years, losing his title Havana in 1915 to a much younger white opponent after a 26-round fight in 100-degree-plus heat (Johnson possibly threw the fight in exchange for leniency that he never received). He returned to the U.S. in 1920, surrendered and served a year. He never again was given a chance to reclaim the title. When he died in poverty aged 68 in a car crash, not one boxer attended his funeral. Now a group of US Senators (among them Hatch and McCain), prominent African Americans (Samuel L. Jackson, Jesse Jackson, many others) and boxing writers seek a posthumous Presidential pardon for "Papa Jack". (more inside)
comment posted at 2:15 PM on Jul-22-04
comment posted at 9:18 AM on Jul-23-04

Rogue wave!
comment posted at 12:53 PM on Jul-23-04

'Enemy Contact. Kill 'em, Kill 'em'. The Price of Valor. Invisible Casualties. The Psychological Effects of Combat. The Psychological Consequences of Killing: Perpetration-Induced Traumatic Stress. Soldiers, Self-Defense, and Killing in War - (PDF). Psychological and Psychosocial Consequences of Combat and Deployment with Special Emphasis on the Gulf War. Military Leaders’ Obligation to Justify Killing in War. And, from last year, come The Killer Elite, From Hell to Baghdad - The Killer Elite Part II, and The Battle for Bagdhad - The Killer Elite Part III--Evan Wright's Rolling Stone articles recently published as Generation Kill. They are well worth re-reading in this context.
comment posted at 10:48 AM on Jul-21-04

Asia Grace
comment posted at 11:07 AM on Jul-21-04

We've already discovered, just so far, the remains of 400,000 people in mass graves.
Um, no. No, you haven't.
And USAID, in its report Iraq's Legacy of Terror: Mass Graves, might want to do some fact-checking too, along with our dear leader as well ("There's mass graves"), and his supporters.
comment posted at 6:01 AM on Jul-20-04
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comment posted at 12:45 PM on Jul-21-04

"The Federal Trade Commission and Congress must act to prevent Fox News from using the deceptive and misleading trademark 'Fair and Balanced.'" After yesterday's 2,700 viewing parties and a Doonsbury plug, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism is now the #1 selling DVD on Amazon. At the same time, MoveOn launches a campaign against the slogan, and AlterNet challenges Fox's trademark. (Previous discussion.)
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comment posted at 1:47 PM on Jul-20-04

Failure is not an option, it's mandatory. "For more than three decades, the Republican Party has relied on the "culture war" to rescue their chances every four years, from Richard Nixon's campaign against the liberal news media to George H. W. Bush's campaign against the liberal flag-burners. In this culture war, the real divide is between "regular people" and an endlessly scheming "liberal elite." This strategy allows them to depict themselves as friends of the common people even as they gut workplace safety rules and lay plans to turn Social Security over to Wall Street. Most important, it has allowed Republicans to speak the language of populism."

An opinion about how the surety of losing wins votes for the Republican party.
comment posted at 12:21 PM on Jul-16-04
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comment posted at 5:20 PM on Jul-17-04

Is it a gargoyle? No, it is the heartwarming, sly, naughty long-tailed Macaque monkey of Bali, creature of myth and of the Sacred Forest. It may think it's a gargoyle, or perhaps it's only dreaming of Notre Dame
comment posted at 12:11 PM on Jul-16-04

Paul Wolfowitz is the greatest Trotskyite of our times. He believes in permanent revolution. ...and in the Middle East, to begin with, needless to say." thus spoke Seymour Hersh, at a seminal conference during which the National Rifle Association and the ACLU searched for common ground - "Kenneth Starr.....will join a panel session with National Rifle Association Executive Vice President and CEO Wayne LaPierre, Jr., Americans United for the Separation of Church and State Executive Director Barry Lynn and ACLU President Nadine Strossen....". Strange bedfellows, indeed (Metafilter 21918). Whassup? Trotskyite ghosts prowl the the White House amidst a power struggle of historic proportions.
comment posted at 7:16 AM on Jul-16-04
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comment posted at 5:33 PM on Jul-17-04

"How do we nurture the healing side of religion over the killing side? How do we protect the soul of democracy against bad theology in service of an imperial state? OVER THE PAST few years, as the poor got poorer, the health care crisis worsened, wealth and media became more and more concentrated, and our political system was bought out from under us, prophetic Christianity lost its voice. The Religious Right drowned everyone else out. And they hijacked Jesus. The very Jesus who stood in Nazareth and proclaimed, 'The Lord has anointed me to preach the good news to the poor.' The very Jesus who told 5,000 hungry people that all of you will be fed, not just some of you. The very Jesus who challenged the religious orthodoxy of the day by feeding the hungry on the Sabbath, who offered kindness to the prostitute and hospitality to the outcast, who raised the status of women and treated even the tax collector like a child of God. The very Jesus who drove the money changers from the temple. This Jesus has been hijacked and turned into a guardian of privilege instead of a champion of the dispossessed. Hijacked, he was made over into a militarist, hedonist, and lobbyist, sent prowling the halls of Congress in Guccis, seeking tax breaks and loopholes for the powerful, costly new weapon systems that don't work, and punitive public policies."
Bill Moyers on democracy excruciate.
comment posted at 5:18 PM on Jul-15-04
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comment posted at 11:36 AM on Jul-22-04

Catscan.com is one of the strangest sites I've seen in some time. I have no idea how these people got their cats wedged into their scanners, or why.
comment posted at 6:08 AM on Jul-14-04

?????? ????? - Name:Zena Amaar / Location:baghdad, Iraq
I am 13 years old. I am in the 2nd class in AL-MUTAMAYSAT secondary school whech means the secondary school for excellent student. I spend most of my time working on computer and reading stories, i have a library of about 75 books some of them are stories and the others are poetical books. Also i help my mother in housework. My father is a lucturer in the colleg of engineering. At the same time he is postgradute student. He is working hardly to get the PhD in computer engineering. My mother is assestant prof. in the colleg of engineering. I have only one brother. He is in the primary school in the 4th class. I love my family so much. (via sylloge :)
comment posted at 6:06 AM on Jul-14-04

"When two Iraqis sit together to talk then politics will be there."

Quite a powerful weblog post by Baghdad citizen 'Mohammed' who tries to focus on the positive side of things against ever increasing frustration. Just one of a number of Iraqi weblogs that are beginning to pop up now that both the Internet and freedom of speech is available to the commoners.
comment posted at 11:18 AM on Jul-13-04
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Blavatsky Net - Theosophy.
comment posted at 6:41 AM on Jul-14-04

Midaregami: The Japan Hierarchy. The stratified hierarchy of Japanese society is mirrored onto those foreigners who choose to live in Japan. Inspired by The Geek Hierarchy.
comment posted at 1:58 PM on Jul-13-04

Hell On Earth. U.S. News... now has obtained all 106 classified annexes to the report... Taguba focused mostly on the MP s assigned to guard the inmates at Abu Ghraib, but the classified files in the annex to his report show that military intelligence officers--dispatched to Abu Ghraib by the top commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez--were intimately involved in some of the interrogation techniques widely viewed as abusive. The abuses took place, the files show, in a chaotic and dangerous environment made even more so by the constant pressure from Washington to squeeze intelligence from detainees. Riots, prisoner escapes, shootings, corrupt Iraqi guards, unsanitary conditions, rampant sexual misbehavior, bug-infested food, prisoner beatings and humiliations, and almost-daily mortar shellings from Iraqi insurgents--according to the annex to General Taguba's report, that pretty much sums up life at Abu Ghraib. Some PDFs are in Shining a light in a real dark place.
See also Making Torture Legal.
comment posted at 8:47 AM on Jul-13-04

Press Box Red For 50 years, Lester Rodney was a forgotten footnote in perhaps the most controversial American sports story of the 20th century: Jackie Robinson and the breaking of baseball's color barrier. Now, the 93-year-old Rodney is getting his due. In the decade before Robinson debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Rodney was the sports editor of the Daily Worker, a newspaper (the FBI files are here on .pdf) better known as the house organ of the American Communist Party. With strident editorials and feature stories about what he dubbed "The Crime of the Big Leagues," Rodney was an early, often lonely voice in the struggle to end segregation in baseball. But Rodney's contribution was never acknowledged, because of that "sickening Red tinge". Many baseball historians were staunchly anti-communist, and didn't want to acknowledge the contributions of the Communist Party. So Rodney's role (.pdf file) was left out of the official story. With the publication of his biography, Rodney's place in baseball's epochal story has introduced him to a new generation of admirers. "I wanted that ban to end because it was so unfair; I saw the tragedy of these great black ballplayers, like the catcher Josh Gibson, who didn't get a chance to play. It's unimaginable today, but look at Barry Bonds: Imagine if he had been born earlier and been unable to play." (login details for LATimes story in the main link: sparklebottom/sparklebottom)
comment posted at 12:38 PM on Jul-12-04

Virtual Tours of England.
comment posted at 8:31 AM on Jul-11-04

'The Dots Never Existed' Taken together, the facts in the report show that virtually every major claim President George W. Bush used to justify the invasion of Iraq—from Saddam's growing nuclear program to his close ties with Al Qaeda—was either wrong or exaggerated.
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comment posted at 12:25 PM on Jul-16-04

Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese Art From China and the US.
comment posted at 5:23 PM on Jul-9-04

"Disposable" Instant Messaging. Click a link and chat to someone with just your browser*. "Include [a link] when you create eBay auctions, Craigslist personals, weblogs, moblogs, personal websites, Friendster, etc. and viewers will be able to contact you instantly." *Requires Flash.
comment posted at 10:58 AM on Jul-9-04

Bill Clinton Daily Diary Your can him; you can hate him. Now you can read him at his new blog.
comment posted at 8:26 AM on Jul-8-04