Although you are reading this at www.connix.com/~wbrady/diary1.htm all the links on this blog entry have been coded to take you to the new URL address for my journal entries.
     I'm not certain how many folks among long standing readers will actually see this page
     For as of this week just past, my old dial-up web service provider, Connix turned over all its accounts to Earthlink / Mindspring. And I am not comfortable making the change. Mind you, I have nothing against Mindspring, but I have long become accustomed to dealing with advertising free site and I plan on continuing to keep it that way. (well, actually, I was uncomfortable with some small print in the acceptance contract ...you know, that legal stuff that people never read when they agree to use some new "free" service. The small print part I couldn't get anybody at the Earthlink 800 customer support number to clarify made it sound as though Earthlink would lay claim to total copyright ownwership of images "on webpages" and other material that gets uploaded to Earthlink's servers.
     So I intend to transfer the whole diary kaboodle over to my registered domain, http://rondak.org/diary/diary1.htm as the days and months move into the future. While I am not happy with the screwing that the corporate owners of Connix [Bizness.Online] have given its dial-up customers in New England, they don't assume ownership of original materials that their domain registered clients upload to their own sites.
     The archives are up for an as yet undetermined amount of time. I plan on doing a custom 404 for each of the old connix pages, but have no idea how long this kind of effort will be honored. So please bookmark the change now. Thanks.
     

---

9-11 after-effects | more on the world goes psychotic channel

---

      Never thought I'd be using such terms but I just cannot describe what is going on in the world in any other terms. People ~all across the planet~ are definitely paranoid. For example, Orly airport is [according to friends who just came back from Paris] beset with military guards. The Champs de Elyess was closed off and the American Embassy was thick with more gendarmes than they thought were in all of France.
     Many Americans have, in large measure, and surpsingly to their credit, actually been reflective about what the implications for the plane bombings of WTC mean with regard to how major portions of the world perceive us.
     We are arrogant and greedy. We do seem to lack any sensitivity about how difficult for literally billions of the world's population suffers so that we might be able to buy Tickle me Elmo™ dolls on a moment's notice. And for what?
     On the other hand, many of the privileged in this country, still feel entitled to steal from the rest of us so that they might be able to have caviar and armed guards to their gated estates; estates paid for by the sweat of labor both in the USA and abroad. Greed still rules.
     The spiked level of public giving to charities is encouraging, but skepticism about an equitable distrbution of the relief dollars would certainly be justified. After all, with all the literally billions of dollars in supposed aid pouring in to coffers, questions about who manages such wealth and how it gets distributed to those acutally in need remain not only unanswered, but also unasked!
     Surely no one can sincerely tell me that the now unemployed illegal Haitian WTC janitorial crewmember will have the same chance to get some dollars to pay for her kid's education, medical needs or even food has the same chance that some stock trader's Park Avenue triplex-housed widow for collected cash. Not on a bet.
     And while I continue to maintain that nothing can justify the massacre of 6,000 people in one fell (make that two) swoops of dive-bomber harakiri religious fanatics.
     But the slower murder of the poor in this very country by the privileged isn't justifiable either.
     God ain't on either side, folks. We just gotta pray for the best in the future, for all of us.