Listics

Steve Gillmor aims one straight at Moe, Larry, and Sergey:

Over and over incumbents are walking up to the light at the end of the
tunnel and saying, "Looks like a train." If Google leverages its scale

to create new inventory around links, the net effect will be to incent
competitors to route around it. Just as Google destabilized Office by
creating the world’s fastest (and free) spell checker, reference tool,
and pizza delivery service, so too will a craigslistian series of
competitors destabilize Google if they are stupid enough to persist in
refusing a conversation with the very beta-testers who are their
partners.

Halley sez,

This is when I butted in and said, "I feel like you guys are making
buggy whips and you’re asking us new automotive executives how our
technology can help you. It can’t help you. It will kill you. And we
don’t care!" (Not a direct quote, I can’t recall what I blurted out.)

What’s
democratic about blogging is NOT that we blog about ideas behind
politics and democracy. What’s democratic about blogging is that it is
free and anyone can use it and therefore, we start to hear from all the
voices that make up this democracy. The technology — that is, the
software is democratic in and of itself.

The following is from today’s press release.  Note the high ranking petitioners, including Rear Admiral
John D. Hutson (Ret. USN), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy, and Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA), former Chief Judge (IMA) of
the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for
the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody, the
American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights First charged today in
the first federal court lawsuit to name a top U.S. official in the
ongoing torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan that has tarnished
America’s reputation.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Illinois on behalf of
eight men who were subject to torture and abuse at the hands of U.S.
forces under Secretary Rumsfeld’s command. The parties are seeking a
court order declaring that Secretary Rumsfeld’s actions violated the
U.S. Constitution, federal statutes and international law.

“Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for
this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful
interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop
torture,” said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the lawsuit and
director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project. “He gives lip
service to being responsible but has not been held accountable for his
actions. This lawsuit puts the blame where it belongs, on the Secretary
of Defense.”

The groups are joined as co-counsel in the lawsuit by Rear Admiral
John D. Hutson (Ret. USN), former Judge Advocate General of the Navy;
Brigadier General James Cullen (Ret. USA), former Chief Judge (IMA) of
the U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals; and Bill Lann Lee, Chair of
the Human Rights Practice Group at Lieff, Cabraser, Heimann &
Bernstein, LLP and former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
at the Department of Justice. Admiral Hutson and General Cullen are “of
counsel” to Human Rights First.

The Defense Department has issued a denial of responsibility for the war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Interesting exchange of posts and comments between Jeff - the Republican in Dem clothing - Jarvis and Oliver - the hope for today’s left - Willis.  Willis scores all the points, but by internally linking his own posts roughly 250 times, Jarvis gains more Technorati and Google juice. 

He’s going into action to mark the 1500th American killed in action in Iraq. 

A friend writes about the Public Listening Project.  A couple of guys go to a public place wearing T-shirts printed with a subject (The War in Iraq) and the question (What’s your opinion?)  And they listen.  Here’s a partial description…

Wearing our t-shirts about once every two weeks, we typically stand in a public area waiting for people to approach us to offer their opinion.

People "select themselves" to talk to us. Once approached, we generally encourage them to discuss their viewpoint as much as they would like to, always listening respectfully, and asking other questions whenever it is appropriate.

Depending on their schedules, people will talk to us for varying lengths of time and usually leave feeling appreciative of the opportunity to have expressed their opinions. They will also almost always talk to us again if they see us another time.

Public radio has some webcast material on the project too.

Norm Jenson at One Good Move has a great video clip of Bill Maher on the Guckert/Gannon thing. Lesley Stahl, Robin Williams, Joe Biden and Tommy Thompson join Maher in a serious discussion of how the male escort found his way to a security clearance that had him that close to our beloved leader.  "Uptight?  Better latent than never…".

The clueless management at the Tulsa World is promoting a lawsuit against a local blogger for linking.  The blogger, Michael  Bates, appears to be in the right regarding fair use, and the Tulsa World appears to be quite clueless regarding use of the web.  Their design may suck, but their content is behind a subscription firewall.