The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century

Lisa Joins Global Voices

This one has been languishing in the “oh yeah, I should blog this” file and it’s about time I posted it.

I’ve mentioned the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

before. My ties with it are many: it’s where Wendy worked, I met Wendy

at a conference organized by Berkman, Wendy’s former boss John Palfrey and my boss’ boss Elliot Noss know each other and each holds the other in high esteem, and I know a number of people there.

Global Voices is a project/blog founded by a couple of people I know: Ethan Zuckerman (whose wife, Rachel Barenblat, conducted our wedding ceremony) and Rebecca MacKinnon.

It’s a citizens’ media project that spotlights blog entries from

outside North America and Western Europe, providing news, perspectives

and stories that we’d otherwise miss. A team of editors keeps an eye on

the blogosphere, each covering a specific region (Middle east, Africa,

South Asia, East Asia, Americas and Eastern Europe) and distilling the

most notable blog entries. If you want to see the greater blogosphere,

Global Voices is a good starting point.

I also know Lisa Goldman by way of her sister, Deenster.

Aside from being a perfectly charming dim sum lunch companion, Lisa is

also an engaging writer who lives in Tel Aviv and blogs about life and

“the current situation” over there in her blog, On The Face (here’s the explanation behind her blog’s name).

Here’s where both Global Voices and Lisa meet: Lisa’s been invited to represent the Israeli blogsphere on Global Voices Online!

She’ll be doing a roundup of the most notable Israeli blogs of the week

and posting her summary on Global Voices every Saturday.

Congratulations, Lisa, and thanks for the weekend reading material!

In the News

Maciej on Secret Prisons in Poland

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date November 24, 2005
1 Comment on Maciej on Secret Prisons in Poland

Maciej Ceglowski, former hacker, painter and all-round interesting guy, commented on the Washington Post article that refers to secret outside-the-law prisons run by the CIA.

The article teases by saying that these prisons are in “eastern

European democracies”. The Post knows which specific democracies, but

won’t divulge them at the request of the U.S. government, for reasons

of security. Maciej writes that there is a considerable body of

evidence that suggests that his home country, Poland, is one of the

eastern European democracies in question.

Like most first-generation immigrants from oppressive regimes to North America

— myself included — Maciej holds America and its

principles — if maybe not its current administration — in high

regard. (He and I also hold Canada in rather high regard, but he trumps

me for having coined the Ceglowski Axiom,

“Any sufficiently advanced society is indistinguishable from Canada”.)

That’s why his closing paragraphs ring particularly true to these ears:

There’s an almost absurdist irony to the situation. The reason Poland

and other countries in Eastern Europe are so unabashedly pro-American

is that for fifty years, America stood for the antithesis of this kind

of behavior. Poles knew full well about secret prisons, torture,

incarceration without trial, and secret services that operate outside

the law, and they looked to the United States as a society that stood

against this kind of arbitrary exercise of state power.

Fifteen years later, we have television shots of

Polish and American generals standing side by side in in fraternal

solidarity in Iraq, and now perhaps hosting a special little Polish

branch of an American secret prison system. There’s a deja vu to this

that I hope other Poles will find as upsetting as I do. And I get to

feel the shame from both directions, since my adopted country is

colluding with my native one to break the laws of both.

Music

Symantec Tries to Get Funky

Post author By Joey deVilla
Post date November 22, 2005
3 Comments on Symantec Tries to Get Funky

Photo: Spoof album cover -- 'Peter Norton and the Funky Bunch: Anti-Virus for the People'.

P-Nort and the crew IN THA HIZZLE TO CAP THA VIZZLE! And hopefully, it won’t slow down your procizzle or thrash your hard drizzle.

[via Teaching the Indie Kids to Dance Again] Here’s a little musical biscuit you might want to choke down only once: Symantec Revolution [2.6MB MP3], a song promoting Symantec (the people behind Norton Antivirus) based on the 1991 hit Good Vibrations by Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch.

The lyrics name-drop Symantec CEO John Thompson and boast of how “No-ki-a and Chevron think we’re tough!”. Here’s a sample from the breakdown:

Enterprise is hot, I’m telling you

Do we know e-commerce? You bet we do!

Shelf space means the world to us

‘Cause our brands are causing quite a fuss

(Bass!) We’re the leader in internet security

People trust our work implicitly

This world-wide conference is to prove

Symantec is hot, hot, hot, so raise the roof!

Any more street and they’d be “C.J.” from Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas.

If this song doesn’t want you to jump up and install some anti-virus software on your computer right this instant, you’re probably in good company.

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The Chrismukkah Blog

Chrismukkah.org is the blog for those of you in Jewish/Christian households, like mine, where this Chanukah/Christmas, it’s lumpia (egg rolls) and latkes (potato pancakes).

Toronto (a.k.a. Accordion City)