News White House defends plan for faith based environmental grants CNS News

"Already under attack from the Left and increasingly from the Right, the White House is defending a plan to expand its Faith Based Initiative in order to fund religious groups dedicated to environmental causes like 'global warming.' Jerry Lawson, director of the Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star program, recently advocated the expansion of President Bush's program while speaking to a group of environmentalists in Washington." (01/13/03)
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewNation.asp?Page=/Nation/archive/200301/NAT20030113b.html


News Drug tunnels found under Mexican-Arizona border Arizona Republic

"Mexican agents found four tunnels under the Mexico-Arizona border that were presumably used to transport drugs or migrants into the United States. The tunnels were found Saturday by Mexican agents patrolling near the border city of Nogales, federal investigators said. The agents entered a drainage canal as part of their patrol and found a door at the border that led to four separate tunnels, each about 1 yard in diameter" (01/13/03)
http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/0113DrugTunnels13-ON.html


News India bans ancient sandpit sport Ananova

"India's wrestling authorities have banned the ancient sport of sandpit wrestling in an attempt to help its wrestlers keep pace with the rest of the world. The popular spectator sport has been abolished so athletes will train on mats according to world standards." (01/14/03)
http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_739575.html?menu=news.quirkies


News Old flag supporters march on Atlanta capitol Atlanta Journal-Constitution

"A column of 300 supporters of the old Georgia state flag and its Confederate battle emblem arrived at the state Capitol late this morning after a march from Turner Field. The purpose of the march was to celebrate the ouster of Gov. Roy Barnes and remind his replacement, Sonny Perdue, of the promise he made for a statewide vote on the issue." (01/14/03)
http://www.accessatlanta.com/ajc/metro/0103/14flag.html

News Homosexuals, gypsies angry at Holocaust Day snub The Scotsman

"Minority groups today complained they felt excluded from the programme of events being organised for Holocaust Memorial Day. Exhibitions, a candlelit vigil, film screenings and lectures are being staged in Edinburgh around January 27 to commemorate the estimated 11 million people who died as a result of Nazi persecution before and during the Second World War. Hundreds of thousands of gays, disabled people and gypsy travellers were killed along with six million Jews." (01/14/03)
http://news.scotsman.com/edinburgh.cfm?id=48802003



Commentary The act of murder in a stateless society Strike the Root by Donald Mills

""As the reputation of the private investigating firm, and ultimately the private court, depends upon the expeditious handling of the matter, your case will in any event be processed in due order. Note that it is reputations which are on the line here, which means you’ve got a much better chance of justice being administered, and adhered to, than you would ever have with the current justice system. " (01/14/03)

http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/mills/mills1.html

Commentary Intervention and the anti-war left Strike the Root by Lee McCracken

"The quasi-pacifist Left of today still seems to harbor many of these impulses to remake the world. The fact that much of it is queasy about the use of military force doesn’t do much to check the warmongering of those with less restraint. Once you concede that justice is on the side of intervention, you’ll have a hard time objecting when the hawks point out that diplomacy has failed and war is the only remaining option. Accept Donald Rumsfeld’s ends and you’ll soon find yourself accepting his means." " (01/14/03)
http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/mccracken/mccracken9.html

Commentary Boycott the Hummer Strike the Root by Jack Rain

"So there are no Hummers in my future. I’m not buying one, leasing one, and I will even refuse to ride in one. It is a child of the war machine. Its parent the Humvee -- short for 'High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle' -- is everything I don’t want this government to be: highly mobile, multipurposed with wheels." (01/14/03)
http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Rain/rain31.html

The true American addiction? Computer solitaire

by Steve Brewer

"We were having the carpets cleaned at our house, and I was sitting at my desk in my home office. No chance of doing anything productive with carpet-cleaning machinery roaring all around. So I was plunking away at computer Solitaire.

The carpet guy noticed and said: "Solitaire, huh? It's funny, with all the high-tech games out there, the one I see people playing most is good old Solitaire." "It's my downfall," I said without looking away from the screen, too busy losing another game. "Keeps me from getting any work done." (01/09/03)

The 'Ring' and the remnants of the West

by Spengler

"The most important cultural event of the past decade is the ongoing release of the film version of J R R Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. No better guide exists to the mood and morals of the United States. The rapturous response among popular audiences to the first two installments of the trilogy should alert us that something important is at work. Richard Wagner's 19th-century tetralogy of music dramas, The Ring of the Nibelungs, gave resonance to National Socialism during the inter-war years of the last century. Tolkien does the same for Anglo-Saxon democracy." (01/11/03)

Digital Delusions

By JACK KAPICA
Globe and Mail Update


Only a few decades ago, it was held as a universal truth that technological progress would let us finish our jobs long before the work day was over. In fact, futurologists predicted, the next big crisis would be about what we were going to do with all that leisure time.

One has to wonder at the naivete of that belief. Did it not occur to the futurologists that employers would still expect workers to put in a full day's work?