hydrarchist writes: "Robert Fisk's latest, from the London Independent 10/09/2001

'The Taliban have kept reporters out; does that mean we have to
balance this distorted picture with our own half-truths?'

09 October 2001

A few months ago, my old friend Tom Friedman set off for the small
Gulf emirate of Qatar, from where, in one of his messianic columns for The New York Times, he informed us that the tiny state's Al-Jazeera satellite channel was a welcome sign that democracy might be coming to the Middle East. Al-Jazeera had been upsetting some of the local Arab dictators – President Mubarak of Egypt for one – and Tom thought this a good idea. So do I. But hold everything. The story is being rewritten. Last week, US Secretary of
State Colin Powell rapped the Emir of Qatar over the knuckles
because – so he claimed – Al-Jazeera was "inciting
anti-Americanism''.

Open Source DNA?

Eugene Thacker eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu

Opening the Biomolecular Black Box

What follows here is a series of observations, comments, and reflections on
the current intersections between computer science and molecular biology. In
conjunction with issues pertaining to open source initiatives, this aim of
this paper is to raise similar questions in the domain of biotechnology.



All of us have witnessed the media-hype generated by such biotech issues as
the human genome, human cloning, and debates over the use of embryonic stem
cells. But what often goes unmentioned is that the real generator of radical
change in fields like biotech is not genome mapping, cloning, or genetic
engineering != it is >=bioinformatics.=a technology-driven quest.

But is that all that bioinformatics is? In other words, what other kinds of
developments can emerge out of this intersection between computer science
and molecular biology, between computer code and genetic code, between data
and flesh? Could it be that approaches from computing (network theories,
systems theories, parallel processing, a-life) might have something to teach
us about the complexity of the organism? Could such approaches even
transform the way in which molecular genetics and biotech has traditionally
thought of the organism, the body, and biological >=life

[text continued at:
http://www.mikro.org/Events/OS/text/Eugene-Thacker _OSDNA.htm]

Autonomedia writes: "October 2 — Noam Chomsky, MIT Professor and outspoken critic of U.S. foreign policy, discusses U.S.-Muslim relations and possible reasons for the tensions between the two. Professor Chomsky addressed the MSNBC.com chat audience through a typist over the phone from Boston. Chat producer Will Femia moderates.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/637155.asp#BODY"


or to read the transcript without the ads go to:
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=01/10/03/0667590

hydrarchist writes: "On Wednesday we published the article "Toni Negri -- Terrorism is an Essential Sickness of the System", having found it in French on italy.indymedia.org. The article was attributed to Toni Negri, for reasons which are plain from viewing the original french post. It has been brought to our attention that this article was in fact written by a Juan Domingo, participant in the Yahoo e-group on Toni Negri. Someone saw fit to repost his article with Toni Negri listed in both the subject line, and as author. The text has made its way rapidly around the net, and generated considerable confusion, as is clear from the messages in french which eventually clarified the mistake, which you can find in the comments section. We apologize to our readers and particularly to both Toni Negri and Juan Domingo for any confusion.

For purposes of transparency you can read the article and some correspondence below. There are also some short remarks by Michael Hardt which are verifiably his own!