This is very very interesting, beyond it's exposure of the weakness of modern mass media. Read!

"There Are no Secrets

This has been the tagline of my weblog for years.

Now that the Internet has empowered any man or woman to have a voice, the truth can be found.

I tried screaming at my TV, telling the news anchor he was wrong! I have first hand information! Yelling at the newspapers doesn't help much either. Writing on the Web does."

Adam Curry (yes, THAT one) talking about the problems with the mainstream press in the context of a recent assasination in Holland.

DaveNet : Adam Curry: The Big Lie

HOT LIVE PUSSY ACTION.

LIVE NUDE CATS

Ok...for the first time since the apple II, I actually want to play with a Mac. I think UNIX is awesome, but I am too lazy to start using it, so Mac OSX makes me happy.

[Originally from Nanochick. MacOS X Rules. There is no doubt.]

Apple - Mac OS X

Despite the fact that this guy is basically off-base and a complete idiot, I'm going to recommend this. I just wish memestreams could capture my comments in a reasonable way, but I think this article is so stupid that it should be obvious to any thinking person.

Let me get this straight. Ralph Nader (news - web sites) -- former presidential candidate (and close friend of Al Gore (news - web sites)), consumer crusader and political activist -- believes the way to bring Bill Gates (news - web sites) to his knees is for President Bush (news - web sites), in the guise of the Office of Management and Budget, to mandate that the government limit its purchases of Microsoft products.

In other words, spread the dollars around to Apple, IBM, Corel, Linux (news - web sites) firms and other manufacturers to encourage competition and get better pricing. Or as Nader himself told Reuters, "The only consumer in North America who can break up the Microsoft monopoly simply through purchasing strategies is the U.S. government."

Why Nader's Microsoft plan is flawed

-- Bolster security for air, road and rail travel and prevent undesirables from crossing into the United States

If you are not afraid, you should be. 1984 is upon us. Look at what the FBI did with COINTELPRO. This is scary stuff.

Yahoo! News - Bush Proposes Major Overhaul of Homeland Security

Visitors subject to the increased scrutiny will be from countries considered by the United States to be sponsors of terrorism and other unspecified nations that critics said are likely to be Middle Eastern.

The beginnings of fascism in the U.S.? I really can't believe how stupid this is. It's been said before by others, but now I believe it: Ashcroft is a full-on Nazi.

Yahoo! News - U.S. Unveils Fingerprint Plan, Angers Arab Groups

"Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat. "

Salon.com Technology | When 300 baud was the bomb

MADISON, WISCONSIN-When I arrived in Afghanistan (news - web sites) last November, Operation Enduring Freedom-the American bombing campaign that eventually toppled the Taliban-was being hailed by the U.S. media as an unqualified success. Precision bombing and first-rate intelligence, the Pentagon (news - web sites) claimed, had kept civilian casualties down to a few dozen victims at most. Long-oppressed Afghan women burned their burqas and walked the streets as the country reveled in an orgy of liberation. Or so we were told.

The amount of disjoint between television and reality was shocking. The "new" Northern Alliance government was no better than the Taliban; with the exception of the U.S.-appointed former oil-company hacks in charge, they were Talibs. Women still wore their burqas, stonings continued at the soccer stadium and the bodies of bombing victims piled up by the thousands. Not only was the War on Terror failing to catch terrorists, it was creating a new generation of Afghans whose logical response to losing their friends and parents and siblings and spouses and children would be to hate America.

Why didn't the truth about the extent of civilian casualties get out?

I blame the journalists, though Lord knows, some of them tried. As a novice correspondent for The Village Voice and KFI-AM radio in Los Angeles, I carefully studied the pros. A brilliant war reporter for a big American newspaper-he'd done them all, from Rwanda to Somalia to Kosovo-filed detailed reports daily from his room down the street from mine as I charged my electronic equipment on his portable generator. The next day we'd hook up a satellite phone to a laptop to read his pieces on his paper's website. Invariably every mention of Afghan civilians killed or injured by American air strikes would be neatly excised. One day, as a test, he fired off a thousand words about a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bomb that had taken out an entire neighborhood in southeastern Kunduz. Hundreds of civilians lay scattered in bits of protoplasm amid the rubble. His editors killed the piece, calling it "redundant."

MEET THE PRESS - The Corruption of Journalism in Wartime

Wondering about Pakistan and India? Check out the CIA World Fact Book!

CIA World Factbook 2001 - Pakistan

... Money will keep talking, the public interest will keep walking. The great battles, in short, are still ahead.

washingtonpost.com: The New Face of Another Gilded Age