Month: January 2007

Darfur trial: appeal update

(Background: Darfur Genocide on Trial)

The brief for the appellants (former defendants) has been filed. It was about 38 pages long with a 29 page appendix.

The District Attorney’s Office of the District of Columbia has until the 2nd of February to file its brief and then the appellants have 15 days after that to file a rebuttal brief if they so desire.

After this, the DC Court of Appeals will schedule oral arguments before three judges in DC. Their ruling will come sometime in the following six months.

Robert Hollander, the attorney who advised the defendants at trial, said that he believes this appeal has a strong chance of success. If it prevails, and the verdict is overturned, this will be a major victory for the campaign against genocide in Darfur and also for activists who hope to use the necessity defense to justify nonviolent civil disobedience.

Many lower courts have upheld necessity, but no court of appeal has done so for cases of civil diosbedience. The precendent would be very significant.

The rest of the story

There was a column in yesterday’s paper about the public meeting regarding the Worcester Youth Center’s executive director using the n-word when dealing with youths.

The author mentions that Youth Center board of directors president Allen Fletcher rambled on about race for awhile, alienating many of those present, and then left.

What the author doesn’t mention is that, immediately before walking out of the meeting, Mr. Fletcher got into an argument with another person about what he (Mr. Fletcher) considered a racist (anti-white) incident at the Youth Center. (I got the impression there was a lot of background here, none of which I am privy to.) So it was even more dramatic than the column describes.

Also, to be fair to the members of the board who spoke after Mr. Fletcher, I had the impression that they leapt to his defense in spite of his comments, not because they necessarily agreed with what he said.

In any case, while this incident was the most memorable part of the night, it wasn’t the most important. It’s disappointing that the columnist gives two sentences to the comments of the non-board members at the meeting. Because that was what touched my heart. I am proud to live in the same city as these folks.

You don’t need me to tell you what they think. You can watch the uncut video of some interviews taped after the meeting. Bits of this were also part of the latest Worcester Indymedia news video.

Lest this post be too negative, here are three nice things: Drupal 5 is out, I started a page on playing with Worcester’s webcams, and my roommate insists I link to Faith Browser. So there you go.

Items

Worcester's Christmas tree went into a wood chipper today

Media: The Globe and T&G are cutting jobs. Michael Ball considers this. Worcester Indymedia debuts a video newscast about the Thursday Lincoln Square peace vigil and a community meeting in response to a controversy at the Youth Center.

Church: The Diocese of Worcester has reportedly cut its annual deficit by 90% in the past three years. I know nothing about the backstory here. In other news, at least one Vatican official digs Oscar Wilde:

Our role is to be a thorn in the flesh, to move people’s consciences and to tackle what today is the No 1 enemy of religion — indifference.

City: “Back Alleys Become Commons.” I’ve seen some of this in Worcester, and would like to see more. Over at WCCA, two new videos: the latest performance from teen guitarist Desiree Bassett, and a report from another peace vigil. Finally, it’s been suggested that someone compile a list of Worcester residents not running for Mayor. The web seems an obvious place for this. Suggestions?

Bumper stickers and other items

People, we now have Real Solutions bumper stickers. If you want one, I would like you to have one. E-mail pieandcoffee@gmail.com.
DSCN8619

These are the bumper stickers that’s gonna make the people sway, and rock, and clap their hands to the beat, and get up and dance, in an area that will be big enough for them to do it in.
Continue reading “Bumper stickers and other items”

Nothing? Check!

On the first working day after an insulting blog post about the Barbara Haller website appeared on the lynne4district4 blog, the Haller website was revised! How’s that for service?

Here’s a classic from the old site:
haller1

Note that even though the last five entries are blanks, Haller gets a green check for each, and “Lynn Simond” (perhaps a veiled reference to opponent Lynne Simonds) gets a red cross. Nihilism represent!

Not that Simonds’s website, or any sitting councilor’s website, is much better. The only good one I know of is Joff Smith’s.

Three questions:

  1. Any reason a city councilor needs more than a one page site? (I mean heck, 37signals itself is technically a one-page site, with each product or blog getting its own site.)
  2. Any reason a campaign needs to post a site with a bunch of “under construction” pages? You could always post a one-pager, then post the other pages after they are constructed.
  3. Any reason someone running for the Council needs a website at all?

Items (mostly media)

Niniane, child prodigy and an old friend of the Pie and Coffee gang, is working out of Google’s China office and blogging about it.

Worcester Movies Weekly: Nobody else in town seems to be doing the web + print thing as well as this publication.

Worcester Movies Weekly

I picked up this month-old copy today. Problem: there’s no mention of the date until page 6! Presumably they’ve fixed this since then.

I have another article about local media at the Worcester Activist blog, now more or less “launched.” They also have an events calendar, wiki directory of organizations, and a place to post comments about T&G articles.

MassResistance Watch comments on an event where gay marriage foes kept drifting into the pro-gay-marriage area:

I guess I could understand the Vote on Marriage people wanting to sit on our side since their side had Larry Cirignano . . . .

Why does Cory Doctorow hate America? Interview via Bruce Sterling:

The American lifestyle frankly sucks. The media is generally shit. The food stinks.