drat fink
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booty call
"But even if there's nothing exactly new about making money from war, this particular conflict, a preemptive war of choice, presents the somewhat novel prospect of the U.S. government deciding how war profits will be distributed even before the first sorties are launched. Whether you think Iraq will be "conquered" or "liberated" by American forces, regime change in the country will open up vast new opportunities for commercial interests to do business there, and the Bush administration could have wide latitude in determining which of those interests win out. Already, companies are jockeying for prime positions, and already there are signs that the White House is being nicest to its friends."
window to the world
i just saw someone break into a car in the lot outside my window. i had heard a loud crash but had ignored it. i thought someone was throwing out some garbage. then i was mindlessly staring down at someone at the back of a bmw mini-suv as i was closing the window. just looked like a guy was putting something in the back of the vehicle. then he rollerbladed off with a couple of bags and only then did i notice that the back window had been smashed. about three minutes later he returned and snagged another bag from the back. i felt like screaming at him but im not sure what good that would have done. just pop that one into the "people suck" file.
fish tales
"An obscure Jewish sect in New York has been gripped in awe by what it believes to be a mystical visitation by a 20lb carp that was heard shouting in Hebrew, in what many Jews worldwide are hailing as a modern miracle."
somebodys watching you
"“Almost all of the pieces for a surveillance society are already here,” says Gene Spafford, director of Purdue University’s Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and Security. “It’s just a matter of assembling them.” Unfortunately, he says, ubiquitous surveillance faces intractable social and technological problems that could well reduce its usefulness or even make it dangerous. As a result, each type of monitoring may be beneficial in itself, at least for the people who put it in place, but the collective result could be calamitous." (reg req)
bacteriophage
"Subviral marketing is a topsy-turvy trend that's said to be being pioneered by brands including Budweiser, Ford, Levi's and Mastercard. While traditional viral attachments feature short, slapstick video clips stamped with the brand's logo and web address, subviral campaigns are carefully shot to seem like they were produced by an internet prankster."
bull in the heather
"An American woman peace protester was killed Sunday by an IDF bulldozer, which ran her over during the demolition of a house at the Rafah refugee camp in the southern Gaza Strip. Another activist was wounded in the incident."
east village people
"Sporting a cameraman's vest and lugging a satellite phone, Christopher Allbritton may be no match for heavy artillery. But he's apparently got enough guts to be the Web's first independent war correspondent.
Allbritton, a former New York Daily News reporter living in the East Village, plans to file stories directly to his weblog, Back to Iraq 2.0, next month as part of an independent news-gathering expedition to Iraq."
vidal fluids
"MARK DAVIS: In the past few years, you have shifted from being a novelist to principally an essayist or, in your own words 'a pamphleteer'. It's almost the reverse of most writers' careers. Why the shift for you?
GORE VIDAL: Why the shift in the United States of America, which has obliged me --since I've spent most of my life marinated in the history of my country and I'm so alarmed by what is happening with our global empire, and our wars against the rest of the world, it is time for me to take political action. And I think anybody who has the position, has a platform, must do so."
essex arms
"As political events go, the gathering last week at Essex, a hip Manhattan restaurant on the Lower East Side, was a resounding success. Several hundred people crammed the sleekly decorated space, clutching beers and awaiting former Gov. Howard Dean of Vermont, a Democratic presidential candidate. Outside, several hundred more formed a line halfway around the block."
and the winner isnt?
"The backlash against prominent stars opposing any attack on Iraq has impacted on this year’s Oscars, with organisers drawing up a blacklist of people who will not be allowed a platform to air anti-war views.
Meryl Streep, Sean Penn, Vanessa Redgrave, George Clooney, Dustin Hoffman and Spike Lee are among those who will not be speaking, amid fears they could turn the ceremony into an anti-war rally."