Anyone surprised?
President Bush commuted the sentence of former aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby Monday, sparing him from a 2 1/2-year prison term in the CIA leak case. Bush left intact a $250,000 fine and two years probation for Libby, according to a senior White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision had not been announced.
– Bush Commutes Libby Prison Sentence – washingtonpost.com
It’s the definition of impunity.
I’m getting ready to pick up some colleagues and head south to the U.S. Social Forum in Atlanta. It promises to be an amazing event with over 10,000 progressive activists coming to together to address the many challenges facing American society today.
Most anything that happens this week I will blog at http://FORpeace.net, but if it seems relevant I will post here as well. And there’s always Twitter. Have a great week with lots of justice and equality!
This is pretty exciting news. Lawrence Lessig has been the leadership driving the Creative Commons and “free culture” movement. He is brilliant and widely respected in geek circles. Last week he announced that he is shifting his research and advocacy away from intellectual property issues and toward the corrupting influence of money in politics.
I suggest he look up my friends at Democracy South as well as other grassroots activists who have been working on this issue for many years.
Today is the ACLU’s Day of Action to Restore Law and Justice. Activists will gather in Washington, DC to rally and lobby to fix the Military Commissions Act and to restore Habeas Corpus.
If (like me) you can’t make it to DC for the main event, come to a simultaneous rally in Second Life!
Tuesday June 26, 2007 8:00 AM to 10:30 PM SLT (Pacific Time), concurrently in Second Life and in Washington DC!
T-shirts and signs at MoJo Fields [Second Life: Mojo Fields (86, 88, 519)], and then teleport to the rally at the Washington Mall in Second Life, where you can also watch a live webcast of ACLU’s Day of Action from Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the Fellowship of Reconciliation were all founded between 1915 and 1920. I usually refer to organizations this old as “dinosaurs” due to the incredible inertia that comes from being so big and being around for so many decades. I am really impressed with my colleagues at the FOR. They are really open to innovation and change. In my first week on the job, we began a blog and secured a space in Second Life!
I won’t have time to do much in SL this week because I will be traveling with about a half-dozen FOR colleagues to the US Social Forum. You can follow our exploits by way of our new blog: http://FORpeace.net !
If you want to see more dinosaurs evolving into full-fledged 21st century organizations, please support this effort by commenting on the blog, linking to us, or even giving money through our Change widget (right). Next on tap: social networking, RSS feeds, a whole new web site, and about a dozen internal improvements to get us really cooking with gas. It’s going to be a busy year. 🙂
Continue reading “A great leap forward”
I’m getting ready to replace my trusty 3-year-old Treo 600 with a newer model. I’m looking at the colorful and affordable 680, and the newer, professional 755p. They are almost the same with the following differences. Any advice?
| Treo 755p | Treo 680 |
| $279* | $199 |
| CDMA2000 EvDO (faster Internet) |
GSM/GPRS/ EDGE (works outside the US) |
| 128MB storage | 64MB storage |
| 1.3MP camera | VGA camera |
| Sprint | AT&T |
I actually think the international function might be more important to me than the faster speed, even though I would benefit from the latter much more often.
* Probably more because I am already on Sprint.
It’s my first day on the new job, and I’m trying to figure out a short-term solution to a long-term problem. I want to set up a way to track and share my own to-do list, text notes, and maybe calendar, but preferably in a way that will be forward-compatible with a more comprehensive, organization-wide system that I will figure out and implement later. I’ve stored some running lists of groupware and self-organization tools, but I don’t know which ones (if any) support open standards or some other way to get data out.
One interesting tool is http://Grou.ps which seems to be a collector/aggregator for other services. Anyone used it? Should I just give up my resistance to the Borg and use Google?
A new report by Media Matters for America and the Campaign for America’s Future asserts that Americans are not as conservative as we think, and that we’re even moving to the left.
… a look across the scope of American public opinion reveals a public that holds progressive positions and supports progressive solutions on economic issues, on social issues, on security issues – indeed, on nearly all the key issues confronting the country. For years, the conventional wisdom has maintained just the opposite, but the facts are impossible to ignore.
– Media Matters – The Progressive Majority: Why a Conservative America is a Myth
I guess it was just a matter of time before some nonprofit geeks met LOL cats and made the love child: http://www.lolnptech.org
😀
Almost a month ago, I wrote about leaving my job at Netcentric Campaigns in search of something that would make me happier while continuing my own growth professionally and personally. I laid out what I wanted from a new job:
- Collaborative organizational structure supported by democratic management.
- Openness to innovation at the strategic and technological levels.
- Ability to telecommute…
- Passion for what I’m doing…
And I also mentioned in that post that I had a job interview the following day. It was with the Fellowship of Reconciliation for the position of Communication Co-coordinator. That phone interview went very well, which led to an in-person meeting, which led to a job offer, which led to a bit of a dilemma for me. I was at the point of looking ahead at the wide world of options, activating my social networks, and also looking forward to a break from work. Along came a perfectly good offer that more than met my criteria, but I was just starting my job search, not ready to end it.
I spent some time contemplating (while participating in the NetSquared conference), I spoke to colleagues, I listened to friends. I finally decided that although the timing was not ideal, this job was a very good fit, especially in terms of the criteria I had already developed. I took the job!
Continue reading “Working for peace”