] The split by France and Germany from the United States
] over war in Iraq may mark the beginning of a strategic
] shift in which once-staunch allies are now willing to
] form blocs to oppose the unilateral American exercise of
] power, a senior intelligence analyst said Tuesday.

U.S.-Europe Disputes Over Iraq Seen as Foreshadowing Strategic Shift in Alliances - from Tampa Bay Online

] Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management consultant,
] must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he
] flies to and from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get
] off a government watch list because he shares the same
] name as a suspected terrorist.
]
] What's more, the suspected terrorist Iqbal has been in
] U.S. custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba,
] since January 2002 when he was captured in Afghanistan.

Transportation Security Administration = Totally Stupid Assholes?

If you haven't read about it yet, you should follow the link through to CAPS II... Think all this added anti-terror security is temporary? Think again. Of course, they are promising that the institutionalized revision will actually include a way to remove yourself from the list ( :-O, these people are absolutely BRILLIANT). How one gets on the list will, of course, remain secret. So, basically, if everyone flies, and they need to get rid of someone they don't like, its really easy, and its impossible for anyone to ever find out what occured. You can bet your ass a hell of a lot more then "due process" will be "vanishing" under this system (Mike Hawash anyone?). Look for it to eventually get applied to every single mode of transportation in the country. Look for the Supreme Court to "interpret" that this is "legal." I'm sure that one or two of the justices will agree to "take one for the team" and write a dissent, if that makes you feel any better.

Wired News: Due Process Vanishes in Thin Air

] The Bush administration's attitude, assisted by a
] Congress that long since abandoned any commitment to
] liberty, is that government has the right to know
] absolutely everything about you and that government can
] violate your fundamental rights with impunity as long as
] the cause is deemed worthy.
]
] You, on the other hand, have absolutely no right to know
] what the government is doing in your name and with your
] money, unless the information is deemed harmless by
] people who have every motive to cover up misdeeds.

Dan Gillmore on the glum outlook at CFP.

Mercury News | 04/06/2003 | Why we may never regain the liberties that we've lost

] Japanese PC Watch Site has tons of cool new photos from
] robots featured at this years Robodex 2003 Trade-Show.

Wow... A car show for robots...

I4U :: Future Technology News - More Amazing Photos From Robodex 2003

This site is basically a weblog. Most of the main news articles come from the major media. Their perspective is a matter of article selection. Seems, at a cursory investigation, to lack the kind of wide eyed conspiracy theories present on other sites.

Antiwar.com

Elonka wrote:
] It would probably be worth clarifying this point for
] Memestreams, too, especially since we routinely quote other
] people's webpages word for word. Where's the dividing line
] between "fair use" quoting of someone else's page, and
] "plagiarizing" it?

This is a very important question, and also an very hard one to answer.

Basically:

What MemeStreams users are doing right which the Agonist is not is that they always link the articles they are taking information from.

I think that you shouldn't quote too much text. If you are responding to an article, then you need to quote the content you are referring to, but in the case where you are merely recommending, you should quote enough text to show the reader what they are getting on the other side of the link, but not enough text to allow the reader to get all of the information without following the link. I think that 99% of the time, MemeStreams users do this well.

There may be cases where things are over the line here. Its obviously impossible for me to police it completely. For the most part it hasn't been a problem. No one has ever complained about being linked from MemeStreams and users seem to do the right thing almost all of the time.

RE: Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] Kelley's insightful window on the details of the war
] brought him increasing readership (118,000 page views on
] a recent day) and acclaim, including interviews in the
] The New York Times and on NBC's Nightly News, Newsweek
] Online and National Public Radio.
]
] The only problem: Much of his material was plagiarized --
] lifted word-for-word from a paid news service put out by
] Austin, Texas, commercial intelligence company Stratfor.

He should attribute everything. That is the key. Unfortunately, he is still posting unattributed entries.

Wired News: Noted War Blogger Cops to Copying

] In no uncertain terms, the president affirmed that “the
] world has a clear interest in the spread of democratic
] values,” not least because “free nations do not breed the
] ideologies of murder.” The president invoked the examples
] of American-led democratization in post-World War ii
] Germany and Japan, and he pointedly rejected the claim
] that Arab nations are incapable of sustaining democracy.
] What the president did not say, yet gently and
] ambiguously implied, was that so deep a cultural change
] would require America to occupy Iraq in force and manage
] its affairs for years to come.
]
] Could such a venture in democratic imperialism be
] harmonized with our liberal principles? Even if so, would
] it work? Is it possible to bring liberalism to a society
] so long at odds with the values of the West?
]
] All of these questions were posed and answered, both in
] theory and in practice, during Britain’s imperial rule of
] India. Three great British thinkers, Edmund Burke, James
] Mill, and John Stuart Mill, not only philosophized about
] liberal imperialism; they lived it.

This is long, and yet way too short...

Democratic Imperialism: A Blueprint by Stanley Kurtz - Policy Review, No. 118

] "At the end of three years, if we are successful, we
] would expect to have demonstrated in a laboratory setting
] that sentinel plants can indicate the presence of
] explosives."

Plants that change color in the presence of certain chemicals or biological agents.

Wired News: Plants: New Anti-Terror Weapon?

] Claims that man-made pollution is causing "unprecedented"
] global warming have been seriously undermined by new
] research which shows that the Earth was warmer during the
] Middle Ages.

WooHoo!!! Pollution is OK! Everybody get your Freon!!

Telegraph | News | Middle Ages were warmer than today, say scientists