SGAC in the news

Lots to talk about - especially Abbott laboratories' CEO Miles White committing, to our faces, that he'd extend the ACCESS Initiative, only to have his PR folks call us later and tell us that it wasn't what he meant. But what you can check out now are some pictures from the Chicago action in front of the Tribune, another company on whose board White sits:

Only 5 points left

At an abysmal 32 percent, CNN is showing Bush as being awfully close to crazification.

More Google Maps API wonderfulness

This Craigslist/Google Maps mash-up has been eminently helpful in my ongoing apartment search.

Miles to go before I sleep - but how many?

This Google Maps-powered pedometer site is pretty cool. Here's a walk I took a couple years ago.

1000 more days of Bush Doctrine

Arthur Schlesinger makes the case that Bush is indeed the Worst President Ever, a sort of Anti-Lincoln who would have blown up the world if he'd been in Kennedy's shoes.

Job opening

Global Justice is hiring a director, if you're interested and qualified.

Note to self

Don't drink coffee.

Fighting for love

Susan is really on today:

You're after love, you fall for pride instead. Ah, but hubris wears the tailored suit with a rosebud boutonniere. Hubris tips the maitre d' in twenties. Hubris parks the SUV in VIP garages. You think I'm talking rich people here? You can have your biggie fries and a chip on your shoulder, both. Vanity is classless, and clueless. From Donald Rumsfeld to Ronald McDonald, all you need is empty calories in your hungry gut to send you off to fight your wars. Once you're weaned of love by demon pride, respect is what you're after and nothing fills the bill like the cantankerous guns of Generalissimo Ignoramus.

It's well worth your time to read the rest.

Pentagon ascendant

Even amid calls for his resignation for helping, in all his hubris, to cary us down a disastrous path in Iraq, Rumsfeld seems bent on increasing his department's power. From the Post:

Details of the plans are secret, but in general they envision a significantly expanded role for the military -- and, in particular, a growing force of elite Special Operations troops -- in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, the plans reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon's involvement in domains traditionally handled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.

First, anyone should be concerned about attempts to increase the unilateral authority of the military, as it is uniquely situated to usurp our power, especially during wartime. Secondly, in an international climate so lacking in reasonable diplomacy, decreasing the role of the State Department is very worrying, as its power is already so diminished. Lastly, what's this about fighting terrorists outside war zones? I thought we're fighting them over there so we won't have to fight them here. /snark

SGAC in the news

Check out a joint Princeton SGAC and ACT-UP Philly action on Abbott:

The company, located in Whippany, sent no one to meet with the demonstrators -- all members of the Princeton Student Global AIDS Campaign and ACT UP Philadelphia -- although the picketers left a gift basket filled with melted Easter bunnies and a letter addressed to CEO Miles White.

The group explained that the melted candy was symbolic of how useless the older versions of the company's leading AIDS medication, Kaletra, become when not refrigerated. The FDA approved a new version of the drug in October that does not require refrigeration and can be taken without food, and the letter lists the group's demands, which include affordable pricing for the new version of Kaletra in low- and middle-income countries.

I love creative demonstrations.

Guess who's reading

Got my first hit (that I know of) from Abbott Laboratories yesterday. Someone inside Abbott using Windows 2k found me via a blogger search. Fun!

OH-Gov: GOP primary "may not be worth the winning"

Looks like insiders are respecting the well-run Strickland campaign, an opinion which, although meaningless electorally, could help bring more national dollars to the important Ohio gubernatorial contest. Of course, you can always do your part, too.

Obama '08

Please, please, please. The dude just gets it (from the Economist, via Kos):

The junior senator from Illinois, Barack Obama, one of the Democrats' most admired politicians, has tried to make a joke of it. "You hear this constant refrain from our critics that Democrats don't stand for anything," he remarked the other day. "That's really unfair. We do stand for anything."

I think he's our best hope since Bill, maybe even be more clever with words. And that is saying something.

Owning car = bad

As if I needed any more reasons to love the Metro, the Post reports that gas prices are still on the rise, as are partisan tensions over the cost increases.

For some belated Eath Day fun, check your ecological footprint.

Staving off netpocalypse

Matt Stoller over at MyDD has some good posts up about net neutrality, with exactly the sort of idealism we need right now. I'm disappointed to hear that the EFF won't be taking a position on this - as a member, I'll be asking them to get involved. It's in all our interests to have a free-flowing internet, and we should all get involved early to save it. As Stoller says,

The libertarians need to wake up and realize that if they want free markets, they are going to have to fight for them.

Bush White House Zen

What is the sound made by an administration imploding?

Is it a resounding boom, or just a little pop?

Portman relocating, trade deals in question

Lots to celebrate as Rob Portman is repurposed from US Trade Representative to director of the Office of Management and Budget. Without Portman, trade deals that would have damaging effects, especially on poor countries' ability to produce or procure necessary AIDS medications, will be deeply weakened, if not completely dead. That's another win for SGAC and its partners.

Demography porn

Check out these religion maps, as featured on Boing Boing.

Phonegate?

So, this might just be a mix of idle speculation and the dearest wishes of a million leftie wonks right now, but damn would it be exciting if Adam Cohen's hunch is right.

Can they have threesomes instead?

Interesting bit over at Think Progress on abstinence education from our lovely Bush Administration:

Abstinence curricula must have a clear definition of sexual abstinence which must be consistent with the following: “Abstinence means voluntarily choosing not to engage in sexual activity until marriage. Sexual activity refers to any type of genital contact or sexual stimulation between two persons including, but not limited to, sexual intercourse.”

Which is followed by this:

Throughout the entire curriculum, the term “marriage” must be defined as “only a legal union between one man and one woman as a husband and wife, and the word ’spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife.” (Consistent with Federal law)

Now, seeing as this is one of the more technicality-driven administrations in recent history (which I'm sure will be blamed on Bill "definition of is" Clinton), I think we've got to interpret this education doctrine in context. If gay people aren't allowed to marry, and unmarried people aren't supposed to have sexual contact "between two persons," then we've got to assume they're meant to have sex in groups, and to masturbate. Once again, gay people get to have all the fun.

Crap.

Well, so much for peace in the middle east. A bomber from Islamic Jihad blew up himself and a number of Israelis in Tel Aviv today, the first such attack this year to take Israeli lives. In a feat of depressing predictability, Hamas, while not taking any credit for the bombing, isn't saying it was bad, either:

... Hamas leaders declined to condemn the bombing, suggesting it was an act of self-defense. A Hamas spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zouhri, called the attack "a natural result of the continued Israeli aggression and escalation against our people."

Great. This will be just what extremists on the pro-Israel side of the fence need to justify sanctions against the new Palestinian government, continuing down everyone's favorite spiral straight to chaos.

Also, I wonder about this bombing business. What does it get the organizations that perpetrate such acts? It seems like a tactic without a strategy at this point, unless you're just out to get your leadership offed by Mossad.

On silence

So it's been some time since I've written here. It'd be a long explanation if I chose to go into it, but the short version is that I found somewhere even more interesting than the blogosphere in which to hang out (or would it be "out which to hang? So confused).

It's a strange place filled with politics, peer-to-peer interaction, music and communities. I happened upon it and quickly became hooked, to the point that it's obviously impinging on my online life. I'd describe it to you, but for the uninitiated, it'd just be a bunch of technical jargon. I can't even link to it.

Anyway, it's called reality. I highly recommend it.

Smackdown

This is all over left blogistan today, but in case you missed it, check out Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez's response to right-wing anti-immigrant talking points over at her blog, La Queen Sucia. I just wish she would have linked to the facts she cites, like a Pew study she mentions, which apparently shows that, as with every other group, by the third generation Latin American immigrants are fully assimilated English speakers.

Hanoi Hien?

Hien Bui, proprietress of the local Froggy Bottom Pub, is expanding her popular business - to Ho Chi Minh City. This is great - now if I'm ever in Vietnam, I'll know where to get the chicken tenders and spicy fries I crave.

Worst. Leaks. Ever.

So, those leaks from the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq over which everyone is making such ado? Turns out the information wasn't even true:

When President Bush authorized Vice President Dick Cheney's top aide to reveal previously classified intelligence to a reporter about Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain uranium, as the aide has testified, that information was already being discredited by several senior officials in the administration, interviews show.

A review of the records and interviews conducted since that crucial period in June and July of 2003 also show that what the aide, I. Lewis Libby Jr., said he was authorized to portray to reporters as a "key judgment" by the intelligence community had in fact been given much less prominence in an earlier intelligence report.

What's brilliant is that through this farce the administration was able to trap some big-name reporters into rallying against efforts to disclose the sources of the leak, essentially the very people who had just cynically lied to them. Judith Miller especially must be feeling pretty stupid:

Mr. Fitzgerald, in his filing, said that Mr. Libby had been authorized to tell Judith Miller, then a reporter for The New York Times, on July 8, 2003, that a key finding of the 2002 intelligence estimate on Iraq was that Baghdad had been vigorously seeking to acquire uranium from Africa.

But a week earlier, in an interview in his State Department office, Mr. Powell told three other reporters for The Times that intelligence agencies had essentially rejected that contention, and were "no longer carrying it as a credible item" by early 2003, when he was preparing to make the case against Iraq at the United Nations.

This disaster is, of course, all the fault of the reporters involved. Whether through laziness or loose ethics, they failed to double-check the information they were fed, choosing instead to take the administration at its word. Those in the media must learn from this that they simply cannot trust any statement of this administration, that everything must be vetted; Bush and his staff have abused their access to intelligence data and relationship with reporters, and any information they provide needs to be viewed in that context. If any in the press care at all about the truth, that is.

Things can always get worse

It seems that when you have an administration like this in charge, anything is possible. Well, anything bad. Case in point - even during one of the worst military and foreign policy blunders in recent memory, the Bush administration is at work planning the next one:

The Bush administration is studying options for military strikes against Iran as part of a broader strategy of coercive diplomacy to pressure Tehran to abandon its alleged nuclear development program, according to U.S. officials and independent analysts.

Excuse me, what now? Didn't we just go through this, oh, I don't know, four years ago, with another country starting with "Ira?" I mean, I'd like to discount this as folks inside the pentagon just finding things to do, and assume that this will never make its way out into real policy, but hey, that's what I thought at this point in 2002.

And as usual, a post over at The Poor Man has already covered this issue in more brilliant poignance.

Kos on Colbert Report

Go watch. Choice quote:

We have found that the Republicans are really good at telling you when you can be born, they're good at telling you when you can die, but not very good at the stuff in between.

SGAC is winning

News was so huge yesterday that I didn't get time to blog it. Abbott Laboratories, exclusive manufacturers of the critical AIDS treatment Kaletra, have finally registered that drug for approval to sell in South Africa. From SGAC:

Chapters --

Yesterday was an incredibly big day for the campaign. Abbott Labs announced registration of the new Kaletra in South Africa while declaring that it would be made available at $500/patient/year -- the same price level of the older version of Kaletra. Media that picked up the story attributed Abbott's actions to activist pressure that the company has been receiving over the last several months. And that pressure came directly from student activists in SGAC.

Everyone should give themselves a good pat on the back and look forward to the Week of Action (April 10-19) with a renewed energy. There are still several urgent demands that have not been addressed by Abbott at all. And while registration in S. Africa is a step towards access, it is not nearly enough.

Attached is SGAC's official response to Abbott's announcement yesterday. Please feel free to circulate to the rest of your chapter and even your school paper to show the kind of progress that we've made on this campaign. Also, there is a link provided below to view Abbott's press release from yesterday's anouncement.

Abbott Press Release:
http://abbott.com/news/press_release.cfm?id=1078

Peace,

Sara Renn
Grassroots Action Coordinator

While some of that media has been less than entirely positive towards SGAC, the recognition that the campaign got this done is amazing. Every student that's been involved to this point should be immensely proud - this injustice is starting to unravel.

527s in peril

The House has passed a measure that would essentially kill most of the last election cycle's biggest leftie orgs, the 527s like America Coming Together, by capping donations from individuals. The legislation would also remove party spending limits. It's a direct attack on the Left, as the DNC is always far behind the RNC in fundraising, and most 527 spending was in support of Democrats, and financed largely by small numbers of wealthy donors. Republicans should be criticized for their blatant partisanship and cynical abuse of power.

That being said, this could be a very good thing for the Democratic Party. Wha?

In 2004, I worked for several 527s, some paid, some volunteer. I think all of them had received significant outlays from billionaire George Soros. What became more apparent as we approached election day was that the work I was doing, because it was so poorly coordinated with other groups, was actually in large part a duplication of what other organizations had already done. With ACT, I called likely Democratic voters in Northeast Ohio, all of whom seemed to have been called previously by other get out the vote operations.

At the same time, Republicans were operating everything through their party apparatus. Even activists in their grassroots (who organized neighborhoods for months ahead of time instead of ACT's two days, but that's another story) were coordinated by the GOP directly. I think they benefitted greatly from this, while the ACT effort served largely to confuse and annoy our target voters.

The question now becomes one of party culture. Republicans have long been the party of organization and monolithic structure, while Democrats traditionally have been a more multifaceted coalition of a party. I think this heterogeneity is important, but useful only to a point; it's great that we represent so many different views and respect different lifestyles, but it doesn't help us forward the things we agree upon if those differences lead to political defeat by way of nightmarish disorganization. Perhaps quelling the 527s will force us to regroup, and to start giving again to the DNC, to start trusting, if only out of necessity, in our ability to win as a unified team.

Perhaps it has been the only way to win all along.

Geek break

Apple has released a public beta of Boot Camp, their Windows XP dual-boot solution. And it includes drivers. Yes, graphics drivers, too. Oh, splendiferous, PC-game-induced joy.

Wonderful digs on Microsoft in the Apple materials, too:

EFI and BIOS
Macs use an ultra-modern industry standard technology called EFI to handle booting. Sadly, Windows XP, and even the upcoming Vista, are stuck in the 1980s with old-fashioned BIOS. But with Boot Camp, the Mac can operate smoothly in both centuries.

Word to the Wise
Windows running on a Mac is like Windows running on a PC. That means it’ll be subject to the same attacks that plague the Windows world. So be sure to keep it updated with the latest Microsoft Windows security fixes.

Departures

More very, very late Christmas gifts in the news today:

Delay's resignation is good news for the enemies of corruption, but not a full victory - by waiting until after the primary, he's set himself up to continue influencing matters, as his successor will be his own, hand-picked choice.

In other bittersweet news, President Trachtenberg is also on his way out, but not until 2007. Rumblings have been that the board is not terribly pleased with his fundraising of late, and so the disinterest in re-upping his contract may not be his own.

Our Brand is Crisis

This movie looks incredible - a frightening perspective on both the political cynicism of the James Carvilles of the world, and the indefatigable hubris of the advocates of US-style democracy. Anybody want to go see it sometime?

I love the Metro

I think I was sitting next to former Senator and presidential candidate Bob Graham on the blue line today. He was impeccably dressed, exceedingly (perhaps excessively) polite when asking for directions, and obviously new to the experience. I don't even think you'd ever see even a city council member on the Rapid in Cleveland.

Music break

Just saw the Philly band Bumrunner at Asylum in Adams Morgan, and aside from the loss of my eardrums, I'm pleasantly impressed. Even better, their music plays well even without the amp turned up to puree. They've got a few tracks available for download on their site, as well as their MySpace page. Go check them out.

Google's next search solution

Google Romance (Beta) promises to address one of the more pressing issues of the company's traditionally more tech-savy user base - their lack of dates. From the splash page:

Google Romance is a place where you can post all types of romantic information and, using our Soulmate Search™, get back search results that could, in theory, include the love of your life. Then we'll send you both on a Contextual Date™, which we'll pay for while delivering to you relevant ads that we and our advertising partners think will help produce the dating results you're looking for.

I'm sure these guys will be excited.