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Saturday, December 13, 2003 |
QUOTE OF THE WEEKEND
"We're all connected ...sin is when we're disconnected. Sin is the separation of human beings."
- - The Rev. Bill O'Donnell
(In 1988, to Martin Sheen, on what he learned working in the civil rights movement.)
Father O'Donnell, a giant in the world of peace and social justice activism, died Monday , 12/8/03, at his desk at St. Joseph the Worker Catholic Church in Berkeley. In some 40 years of activism and nonviolent civil disobedience, he was arrested more than 230 times. Targets of his educational efforts ranged wide over the decades, from directors of Catholic hospitals, who tried to block their employees from unionizing, to U.S. District Judge G. Mallon Faircloth, who last year sentenced Father O'Donnell to six months in federal prison for trespassing at the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation, formerly the School of the Americas, at Fort Benning, Ga.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/12/11/BAG113KV0F1.DTL
THIS WEEKEND IN HISTORY
December 13th, 1989 -- South African President F.W. de Klerk meets for the first time with imprisoned African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela, at de Klerk's office in Cape Town
December 14th, 1985 -- The wonderfully surnamed Wilma Mankiller is sworn in as Principal Chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, becoming the first woman to head an Indian Nation within the US.
WEB SITE OF THE WEEK:
Real Stupid News - S-t-r-e-t-c-h-i-n-g the truth so you get more
Seen, heard, or smelt any RealStupid news stories lately? Put on your RealStupidNews press hat and send us your stupidest news tips--links, original stories, images, anything goes. They can come from websites, newspapers, bathroom stalls, anywhere really stupid news is made or reported.
http://www.RealStupidNews.com
RHINO'S HOLIDAZE SHOPPING TIP
Don't Buy Wal-Mart for the Holidays
Wal-Mart engages in some of the worst labor practices in the country: paying its employees substandard wages, forcing unpaid overtime on its workers and refusing to provide affordable health insurance. This holiday season, pledge not to shop at Wal-Mart and to ask your friends and families not to buy you gifts from Wal-Mart until the chain:
- Pays its one million workers a living wage
- Provides affordable health insurance to its employees
- Stops discriminating against women
- Stops attacking employees who want to be represented by a union
- Ceases forcing unpaid overtime on its employees
- Stops pressuring suppliers to lower their labor costs
Tell Wal-Mart that until it changes its ways, you will take your holiday shopping to other stores and will urge your friends and family to do the same.
TO TAKE ACTION, Go to Work For Change:
Don't Buy Me Wal-Mart for the Holidays
NO MORE CREDIT CARDS!
Credit-card implant provokes criticism
NewScientist.com news service, 11/27/03
An under-the-skin implant that makes credit card payments via radio signals is attracting widespread criticism from technologists, privacy lobbyists and security experts. Advanced Digital Solutions in Palm Beach, Florida, announced a plan to turn its rice-grain-sized Verichips into a method of payment at ID World 2003 in Paris, France recently. The company's previous proposal to implant GPS systems inside people also prompted skepticism. But ADS claims its Veripay system, which is based on radio frequency identification (RFID) technology, would end the problems of identity theft and make it impossible to lose your credit card. at: http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994429
RHINO HERE:
In the wake of Democrat Gavin Newsom winning the San Francisco Mayor's race, narrowly beating Green challenger Matt Gonzalez, many of The City's artists, activists & earnest volunteers; 107,030 of them, 47%, are feeling kinda bummed. Newsom got 118,651 votes or 53%. But consider that the Green Party represents only about 3% of registered voters, yet, the Green candidate received 47% of the vote.
Democrats hold onto San Francisco mayor's office, defeating Green Party maverick
LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer San Francisco Chronicle, 12/10/03
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2003/12/10/politics0359EST0020.DTL
If you know SF Gate columnist, Mark Morford's work,
you'll know he has something to say about all this. And that's...
7:30:33 AM 
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Buff Our SF Bubble, Mayor - - Attn: Mr. New Mayor Guy!
Can you please do something about all the garbage and ennui?
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist, San Francisco Chronicle, 12/10/03
... All major cities are suffering in BushCo's budget-gutted, warmongering world, but S.F. feels like the hardest hit, if only because, given our radical sense of openness and awareness and record number of Nobel Laureates and gay leather shops, any decrease in our glitter reservoir is that much more profoundly felt. The massive implosion of the mixed-blessing dot-com era left a gaping hole where our pulse once was. The exodus of bands and artists at the same time left a gaping scar where our bitchin' dragon tattoo once was. The influx of badly dressed newbie dot-millionaires who are still gouging the housing market left a huge hole where tolerable condos for under $500K once were.
We got problems. To stroll down historic Market St. from, say, 10th down to Fourth is to walk the gauntlet of misery and sadness and lots of screaming ranting wildly gesticulating hissing spitting psychotic gangrenous homelessness, with no end in sight. I don't care how noble or altruistic or perky you are. That walk will hammer your soul and embitter your humanity as you scramble for some disinfectant...
... So, above all, Mr. Mayor, whatever else you may think your job entails, your real gig is to polish and hone our fine and tarnished bubble every damn day. To make it stronger, bolder, funkier, shinier, a goddamn gleaming astrodome of bookstores and hot sex and gourmet chocolates and intelligent political discussion and organic vegetables. Let's get this straight, right now, from Day One. Your job is to make our glorious gemlike screwed-up bubble more able to deflect the slings and arrows of outrageous homophobic conservatism, while still remaining pliable enough to allow a kaleidoscope of viewpoints and ideologies and dog parks and sexual positions and gay rights legislation and sake-tasting shops...
... how will you enhance, and promote, and buff, and proudly represent this crazy whack amazing progressive hippie burned-out coffee-shopped idiosyncratic proudly atypical spiritually incendiary American bubble? You must ask yourself this question right now, and from every day hence. Now, get to work.
IT'S ALL AT: Buff Our SF Bubble
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6:30:08 AM
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© Copyright 2005 Gary Rhine.
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