For the 2 or 3 people that probably read me, my apologies.

I’m swamped at the moment – one paid project, one volunteer project, and then I have to find time to play with my new toy: a 14" iBook — for OS X of course. I haven’t even booted into OS 9.

I also owe leftyblog a response. I’ve written about 3 pages so far, but I haven’t had time to finish it.

A man who was carrying a rifle is being arrested by a riot police officer during the Bastille Day parade on the Champs Elysees avenue in Paris,

I haven’t seen much coverage of this.

For 6 days, hundreds of oil workers have been trapped in a Nigerian oil terminal (owned by Chevron Texaco) by hundreds of women from surrounding villages, demanding jobs for their sons and electricity for their homes.

As many as 600 women from villages around the terminal took over the multinational Escravos plant on Monday, saying they want the company to hire their sons and use some of the region’s oil riches to develop their remote, rundown communities.</p>

Nigeria is the world’s sixth-largest oil exporter — and the fifth-biggest supplier of U.S. oil imports — in major part because of the vast reserves of the Niger Delta here. Yet the people in the Niger Delta are among the country’s poorest.

Unarmed but unbudging, the women have blocked access to the helipad, airstrip and docks that provide the only exits for the facility, which is surrounded by rivers and swamps.

…

In the terminal airfield, two dozen women danced in the rain alongside four helicopters and a plane, chanting: “This is our land.”

For my non-geek readers, here is a good article from Newsweek on how the big labels are killing internet radio.

So just go and read the latest Mark Morford column.

Of course we’re at war. Just look at all those flags stuck in all those manicured lawns, the ominous United We Stand billboards, the all-new 2003 Ford Excursion now with room for 13 and a full 10mpg Highway/7mpg City, all the cheap plastic stars-and-stripes kitsch at the Hallmark store, Made in Malaysia.</p>

…

Of course we’re at war. Witness all the angry puffed-up deflections, every reproach of the president and every suspicious glance in the direction of his corporatized administration instantly retorted with a nice “how dare you don’t you know we’re at war” or maybe “the president has a great deal on his very compact little mind right now and he can’t be bothered with the details of, you know, rampant favoritism and hypocrisy.”

…

And it’s becoming increasingly difficult to find anyone but the truest I-believe-everything-Ari-Fleischer-says jingoists who actually believes this “war” has become anything but a grand excuse, a marvelously leveragable plaything which the Bush cadre can point to as their very own personal holy shroud, some sort of sacrosanct shield to protect them from criticism and claims of blatant impropriety and selling the nation’s soul for pennies on the barrel. </blockquote>

Vice President Cheney appeared in a promotional video for Arthur Andersen in 1996, when he was CEO of Halliburton. There are some prophetic quotes:

“I get good advice, if you will, from their people based upon how we’re doing business and how we’re operating over and above the just sort of normal by-the-book auditing arrangement,” Mr Cheney says in a short section of the video.

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Tom Toles

See the Photo.

BARCELONA, Spain (Reuters) – Angry protesters invaded the stage and drowned out U.S. Health Secretary Tommy Thompson at the world AIDS conference Tuesday in protest at what they see as Washington’s inadequate response to the pandemic.