Nothing and Some More

Mark A. R. Kleiman, with Huh?!, points to the BBC transcript of Mister BinLaden talk and echoes various weird things about the propaganda made based on that tape.

A note to the warhawks: This sort of stuff makes it really, really hard for those of us who are trying our best to support your cause but who don't like being bullshat.
A note to the peace camp, and especially to those on the fence: An idea isn't responsible for the arguments made on its behalf. There is no valid inference from the proposition "Bush and his friends are a bunch of liars" to the proposition "Saddam Hussein's acquisition of a nuclear weapon is nothing to worry about."

Osama's Tape, the real translation (someone should tell him about Jospin) (via Electrolite)

I forgot about the war-to-be long enough to read and listen to Neal Pollack Takes on America (and what is Transom.org)

Following the links again, I end up on Beg The Question, a graphic novel (via The Onion Review this week)

Wartime again, an Anti-War Republican: an Interview with Congressman Ron Paul

TO: Will we have to wait for Castro to die for the embargo to end?
RP: I think the momentum is moving in our direction. But it would require overriding a veto. It is getting to be so popular.... I don’t try to defend Castro. I just happen to think I can undermine them better by introducing them to buying our stuff.
I believe that’s the way we should treat people like Saddam Hussein too. China should not be considered the perfect nation either, yet we have done everything [for China] all the way back to Nixon. Now they literally receive more export-import money than anybody else. It’s like $3 to $4 billion a year of special subsidies they get. At the same time we hear this stuff about North Korea and how bad they are. "They have weapons." Well, we should talk to them. Yet we can’t talk to Saddam Hussein.

Jacques Chirac Time Interview France Is Not a Pacifist Country

Google is your friend

Lately I'm wondering why I am doing this site. If what predicts Nick Denton is true, that Google might use weblogs to improve what appears on GoogleNews, then I have my answer: counterbalancing other voices. But I'm still convinced it can be done automatically. And I'm not the only one thinking it.

Je me demande pourquoi je prends du temps pour publier ce site, parce que peut-être serait-il mieux employé pour faire autre chose! Internet à haut débit permet à des programmes de se lancer sans autorisation

A l'examen, cette nouvelle chaîne emprunte beaucoup aux radios libres du début des années 1980. Son budget, très réduit, est fixé à 20 000 dollars par mois (autant d'euros) consacrés pour l'essentiel aux frais de diffusion. La programmation comportera principalement des films d'horreur et de science-fiction et des clips musicaux. Comme les premières radios libres, America Free TV ne demandera d'autorisation à personne pour émettre. Dès son lancement, la chaîne sera disponible pour les millions de foyers abonnés au haut débit via le câble ou l'ADSL dans le monde. Aux Etats-Unis, America Free TV pourra être reçue par trois millions de foyers.

A votre avis, la super CNNaLaFrancaiseDontReveLePresidentChirac aura un site web?

Face aux médias américains, le vice-président de Radio Canada défend la francophonie

Il ne faut pas considérer la francophonie comme un héritage du passé ou une réalité abstraite, mais comme un enjeu fondamental des décennies à venir, affirme [le Québécois Sylvain Lafrance, président de Radios francophones Publiques]. Chez moi, à Montréal, je peux capter France-Bleu Périgord sur Internet... Avec le développement des nouvelles technologies et l'omniprésence des médias américains, nous devons plus que jamais occuper notre espace radiophonique, sinon les Etats-Unis s'en chargeront. Le problème est le même pour les lusophones, les hispanophones, etc.

Tout à fait en rapport: Radio France diffusera au format Ogg Vorbis

How do I become a producer?. Public Access Television allows anyone to have their own TV show, regardless of race, age, gender, handicap, religion, background, gender preference, party affiliation, residency, history, beliefs, status, class, or income. See also The Global Village, Public Access Television Community Television around the world.

Hints to build a Linux-based PVR. And a Slashdot thread on a MultiMediaCenter linux-based box

Tools for recording, editing and writing a radio show.

Getting close to the machine

Ullman's prose is lucid, and her narrative of romancing a cypherpunk, coding big applications, and trying to resolve her feelings concerning her father's death, are described with a sort in a tone that oscillates between involvement and detachment, between the real and virtual that anyone who uses computers seriously will find resonant.
[...]
The world is ambiguous, but the world inside a computer is neutral, pliable, full of wonders.

The Lefty Interview: Jeanne D'Arc (and Body And Soul, Jeanne d'Arc blog, with a lot more questions than answers)

Everyone talks about blogs as the voice of "ordinary" people, but by definition, we're people with computers, middle and upper middle class people for the most part. Writers do plenty of outreach to schools, community centers, senior citizen centers, prisons, everywhere, teaching people to get their stories on paper, because we know that telling your story and expressing your opinion is an act of empowerment. Middle-class Americans, for the most part, have no idea how hard it can be for powerless people to take their own lives and thoughts seriously. It was something I realized when I went to college and dealt with upper middle class people for the first time. They believe in the significance of their own experiences in a way someone like my mother, or most of my friends from high school, couldn't even begin to imagine doing.

Iraqjournal.org, the only website providing regular independent reporting from the ground in Baghdad.

LIVE from the blogosphere, a very rough transcript.

what is a blog? low budget personal reality tv, editorial rant, political, collaborative - individual...
popular but not entirely new. overusing "blog". it's a means of publishing, but that's not so new. how is this different from personal home pages? The threshhold of technolgoy to publish is so LOW. used to be a lotta work, other people would have to do the web site creating all this work for each other. (Suck.com 2 guys) easy as sending email - makes a big difference.
[...]
Heather or Susannah? -- If you're given a medium in which you can publish ANYTHING in any way. why are they repeating same info you can read in washington post? where's the artist? alternative ways of blogging? same story on every blog. eg Daypop.