Pop and Politics Talk Back

Santana on Tavis

2009-04-02T21:08:00.000-07:00

for Carlos (haiku)

black magic shaman
eighteen inches mind to heart
journey of the soul

Check this out!

2008-11-11T09:05:00.001-08:00

Taxation Without Representation

2007-07-25T12:45:00.001-07:00

Time for DC to get the same rights we're "spreading" throughout the Middle East.

/snip/
BACKERS OF D.C. voting rights say they are ready to bring their bill to the Senate floor. That the District's long-disenfranchised citizens are ready is an understatement. Before Congress heads out of town for its August recess, it should -- without further delay -- take up the issue of justice for the people who live in the nation's capital but are denied a basic American right.

done gone home!

2006-11-13T09:20:00.000-08:00

We Talk Backers love Blogger and it's been a real nice party here, great hosts and all, but we took our act back home, to P+P, where your favorite blog now appears right on site, big and bold in the left-hand column! See you all there.

prez speech tag clouds

2006-11-03T09:19:00.000-08:00

(via Boing Boing) Chirag Mehta created a tag cloud that illustrates the words presidents used most frequently in their speeches as a way to measure which issues they deemed important (or which issues they thought would win them the most support). Not surprisingly words like "Crime," "Deficit," and "Welfare" are prominent in Bill Clinton's cloud while "Terrorist" is the most prominent in G.W. Bush's cloud. Move the slider back and forth to find out what presidents have been talking about from 1776-2006. Here's the link.

pop goes the rap reality/the white rapper experience

2006-11-01T23:03:00.000-08:00

Question: When did VH1 start giving a shit about hip hop?
a) They were down from the start when they played Public Enemy videos in the late 80s/early 90s to give the burgeoning counterculture movement exposure.
b) They still don't give a shit about hip hop, but they do love the money and ratings it's starting to bring in for them.
c) "FLAVA FLAV!"

If you answered both b) and c), you answered correctly.

In VH1's latest hip hop reality show, little rich kids get to play rap with some dude from Law and Order on "Ice-T's Rap School." Don't worry, he's got some street cred; he had a cameo in Breakin'. The premise is to take some prep school kids to the streets. They get to play with spray cans and hang out with Grandmaster Caz and Melle Mel. (Mad props to the cats making the show for recognized the old school, son!) Through VH1, these kids and their parents will learn the power of hip hop. Because rich people need hip hop.

Hey poor kids who'd benefit a lot more from being given the opportunity to produce, record, and perform hip hop under the mentorship of rap pioneers, ya'll jealous much? Probably not as bitter as MC Serch, the host of VH1's next hip hop reality show: Ego Trip's White Rapper. Ego Trip, a collective of commentators on hip hop and race, are funny as hell. MC Serch isn't. He's just mad that no one recognizes him, which is sad because he did pave the way for white rappers who followed.

That's Pete Nice and MC Serch AKA 3rd Bass in the picture above. Serch is on the right with the high top fade and the name of his crew shaved into the back of his head (that you obviously can't see). They dropped classic rap records ("Pop Goes the Weasel," "Gas Face") and were among the first white emcees. But when they did it, they did it alongside black emcees. Even their DJ was black, so you know they were down. The show will be funny. But MC Serch's stance on white and other non-black rappers is pretty damn ignorant (I say "pretty damn" because I like 3rd Bass).

Excerpts from his myspace blog about the show and white rappers:

The premise of being a white rapper has gotten so white washed. I met white rappers, and please do not be afraid for what I am about to tell you, but I have talked to and dealt with white rappers who have...ready...NEVER PERFROMED IN FRONT OF BLACK PEOPLE!!!!. How is this possible? Are the black people so hard to find for white rappers? Are white rappers not going to black people to seek thier approval. HOW CAN WHITE RAPPER BE WHITE RAPPERS IF BLACK PEOPLE HAVE NEVER SEEN THEM RAP...

A white rapper cannot be considered a white rapper until he rips in front of a crowd of black people. I am not saying they all have to be black. You can have some spanish, some multi-racial kids mixed in there for flavor, I would even say Asain people. But if you are a white rapper that performs in front of a white crowd then you are not a rapper at all. You are a guy who is simulating what it feels like to rock a crowd.

Now I have some pretty strong thoughts about his argument, but white rapper Sage Francis' rebuttal is much stronger. Read Sage's Open Letter to MC Serch

nbc shuts up the chicks

2006-10-30T15:07:00.000-08:00

The Dixie Chicks are apparently too controversial for NBC. The Washington Post reported Friday that NBC refused to run ads for their new movie Shut Up & Sing because "they are disparaging of President Bush."

Larry Lessig points out that this is not the first time NBC has acted in order to protect the image of W. In a piece for Wired Lessig wrote about filmmaker Robert Greenwald's attempt to license a 1 minute clip from Meet the Press (an NBC program), in which the President explained his reasons for going to war. Greenwald's agent was told they could not use the clip because it was “not very flattering to the president.” He used it anyway.

the volunteer state

2006-10-30T11:51:00.000-08:00

He's a bible-thumping, anti-gay marriage, privileged son of the south. He's Harold Ford Jr, and he's the key to the midterm elections and a barometer in many ways for the future of the country.

He wants to change course in Iraq, proposing to divide the country, former-Yugoslavia-style, into three roughly independent cantons or states. He attacks Republican positions on homeland security and immigration, but is cozy with Fox News reporters and calls the President a friend. He's not easy to pigeonhole and he won't be easily tarred with the liberal brand.

He's running neck and neck with Republican candidate Bob Corker. Ford is black and Corker is white. The Tennessee voting population is roughly 16 percent black and there have there been no (zero) black senators from the south since Reconstruction. Newsweek estimates Ford needs to win 40 percent of white voters overall in order to prevail on election day.

"He needs white independents and even some white Republicans to win," says Merle Black, a professor of political science at Emory University. While Ford is ahead by small margins in some polls, recent history (including races in Virginia in 1989 and North Carolina in 1990) suggests that white Southerners will sometimes say they're willing to vote for a black man in a poll but act differently in the privacy of the voting booth."

The Republican Party fully aware has aired attack ads that among other things play on fear of black-white sex, as in miscegenation, as in the mixing of the races! Below is the now-infamous ad that features a mock playboy party girl in thrall to the bachelor Congressman.

Maybe we've reached a turning point in all of this. What's it gonna be Tennesee?

web 2.0, reprise

2006-10-24T18:48:00.000-07:00

A few days ago I blogged about how “NBC 2.0” restructuring plans were merely faux 2.0. Well it seems everyone is talking about 2.0 these day: what it is, what it is not, and whether it is becoming the platform for the short-term future of greedy people.

Legal scholar, creative commons founder, and all-around free internet superhero Larry Lessig wrote a post recently about the distinction between real 2.0 and fake 2.0 sites, arguing that YouTube is among the latter. He explains:

"YouTube gives users very cool code to either “embed” content on other sites, or to effectively send links of content to other sites. But never does the system give users an easy way to actually get the content someone else has uploaded. Of course, many have begun building hacks to suck content off of the YouTube site. (On the Mac, I’ve used TubeSock to do that). But this functionality — critical to true sharing — is not built into the YouTube system."

This post drew the ire of Nick Carr, who accuses Lessig of-- what else?-- promoting communist values.

So why does any of this matter, really, in the world beyond academics and tech geeks? Essentially because something good—media tools and practices that enable true exchange and collaboration-- are being co-opted by those who want to maintain the status quo.

If we fight to maintain the possibility of Web 2.0 by supporting net neutrality, copyright reform, and by attempting to distinguish between the fake end the real, we’ll encourage more great progressive interactive tools, the kind Lessig deems 2.0, such as flickr and Blip TV and more DIY projects like open source gaming and software and citizen journalism.

While the verdict is still out on whether people participating in making media are more likely to be active citizens, efforts such as Sunlight's Under the Influence project, which enables web users to investigate how many members of the House of Representatives have their spouses on the campaign payroll, seem to have significant political value.

So don’t believe the hype! Web 2.0 is not about making money, it's about sharing culture.

Boo!

2006-10-23T10:20:00.000-07:00

Salon's video blog offers a gem today: a Republican National Committee ad that ran on CNN this weekend, featuring no candidate positions, no policy info, no attack on rival candidates, nothing but grainy footage of Osama and other men in Arab garb doing "scary" things that look like maybe combat training or parody martial arts moves. Quotes run across the screen in barely legible font about "killing Americans" etc. This is supposed to be just a general message from the Republicans as a party to the voters. Nice. Full of actionable information. Thanks.

Salon editor Kerry Lauerman suggests that maybe the RNC is taking writing cues from the Lamont campaign in Connecticut, which has been caricaturing exactly this sort of Republican (read: Lieberman) shite. Watch the ad and then-- boo, scary-- go vote Republican. Or sign up to fight in Iraq for freedom or whatever the thing is supposed to be making you feel like doing beside pissing your pants laughing or turning it the fu-- off! (Yeah we're cynical, thanks to stuff like this!)

Happy "Dress-Like-A-Ho" Day!

2006-10-22T02:50:00.000-07:00

There wasn't a parental warning on the site. I didn't have to fork over my credit card number or proof of age. And yet I'm freely paging through images of hundreds of pouty women clad in the most outlandish of role-playing fetish gear. There oughta be a law ... against the superskanky women's costumes at SpiritHalloween.com!

From sexy witch to saucy maid, from skanky mail carrier to slutty scarecrow, the Halloween-costume wardrobe for women is now entirely built on a base of thigh-high fishnets and push-up bras.

Oh hells no I'm not wearing that

Even the New York Times is ready to toss out the G-string vampire costume this Oct. 31.

New York Times: Good Girls Go Bad, For A Day
New York Times: Halloween On Heels

I'm hoping this skeezy trend is a sex-positive feminist "Take Back The Dominatrix Outfits!" holler, but it's hard to keep up that optimism while vainly searching for a costume that wouldn't make my parents cry.

“I think it’s damaging because it’s not just one night a year . ... If it’s all the costume manufacturers make, I think it says something bigger about the culture as a whole.” Tanda Word, Texas Tech student, prefers being warmly dressed on Pumpkin Day

It's worse when tacky oversexualization, aka Skankula, starts preying on the kids' costumes:

I wear more than this to the beach

nbc 2.0...or not

2006-10-20T17:18:00.000-07:00

NBC announced its decision to save $750 million over the next 2 years by filling the first hour of prime time with low-cost schlock like reality programs and game shows, and by laying off roughly 700 fulltime employees.

NBC plans to reinvest the savings in digital media and other "high-growth areas." NBC News President Steve Capus told The Washington Post, "We've been a TV business that dabbles in digital. Now, we're positioning as a news content-production center going forward that happens to do television."

The Post's front page story by Frank Ahrens on the restructuring plan, dubbed NBC 2.0, dutifully portrays NBC as a forward-thinking company adapting to the digital era. The story leads with this:

"NBC Universal announced sweeping cuts to its television operations yesterday, demonstrating just how far a once-unrivaled network must now go to stay competitive with YouTube, social networks, video games and other upstart media."

But just because NBC wants to earn money in the digital-media environment doesn't mean it's "2.0". Web 2.0 is about the second generation of Internet-based services, such as social networking sites, wikis and blogs that allow people to collaborate and share information in new ways. This sharing and collaboration only works, however, if people are given the right to use content, a rule of the game NBC doesn't seem likely to abide. Earlier this year NBC forced YouTube to pull all NBC material from their site. You can read more on Sean Coon's blog.

The Post piece says NBC is adapting to the new landscape, which must include all forms of delivery that "consumers demand." What NBC doesn't seem to get is that it's not about delivering what the consumers demand but about including them in the process of production by granting them the freedom to borrow, remix, circulate, translate, aggregate and enjoy without legal (like copyright law) and structural (like inflexible programming schedules and editorial gatekeepers) restrictions. It's going to take more than shifting funds around for NBC to go 2.0.

antiamerican US law

2006-10-18T12:10:00.000-07:00

It happened today and now we have to live with it. The disgraceful Slobodan Milosevic-style "Act to Protect My Peoples" has been signed into U.S. law.

What was once a misguided reaction to 9/11-- the elevation of the President to the Decider, the sham trials, the secret kidnapping and torturing, the flaunting of national and international law, ie, all of what should have been put right long ago-- has been made legal, prettified as a Congressional Act complete with calligraphy and provisions and sections and fancy signatures at the bottom. It's a disgrace and it was the lead in exactly one of the nation's top five newspapers.

You can't not look at the pdf of the document-- it's full of creepy Halloween gems, the gory bits of this high-speed traffic accident of a document. To generally sum up: (1) the president or sec of defense decides who has rights and who doesn't; (2) they don't have to tell anyone why or how they made their decisions; (3) and they also decide for people all over the world when and where the Geneva Conventions apply.

‘‘(ii) a person who, before, on, or after the date of
the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006,
has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant
by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another com-
petent tribunal established under the authority of the
President or the Secretary of Defense.

‘‘(4) CLASSIFIED INFORMATION.—The term ‘classified
information’ means the following:
‘‘(A) Any information or material that has been deter-
mined by the United States Government pursuant to
statute, Executive order, or regulation to require protection
against unauthorized disclosure for reasons of national
security.

‘(g) GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF
RIGHTS.—No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by
military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva
Conventions as a source of rights.

You could be an unlawful enemy combatant. And so could I. And there's not a whole lot anyone could do about it. How's that for national security? It's the sort of thing that could bring the Democrats over to the side of the National Rifle Association.

new terrorist breeding ground

2006-10-18T11:55:00.000-07:00

The internet has long provoked fear and suspicion. It has been accused of everything from promoting child porn to spurring disaffected youth to violence. And now the internet is being named as the latest enemy in the war on terror.

Today’s Reuters story Web could be terror training
camp: Chertoff leads with this description of a hyperbolic message from Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff:

“Disaffected people living in the United States may develop radical ideologies and potentially violent skills over the Internet and that could present the next major U.S. security threat.”

The article goes on to quote Chertoff as saying:

"They can train themselves over the Internet. They never have to necessarily go to the training camp or speak with anybody else and that diffusion of a combination of hatred and technical skills in things like bomb-making is a dangerous combination," Chertoff said. "Those are the kind of terrorists that we may not be able to detect with spies and satellites."

I guess those are the kind of terrorist that can be found with wiretaps? Chertoff is, of course, a major proponent of wiretapping. Here is a video of him arguing for safety by any and all means at the opening of the Joint Regional Intelligence Center in Norwalk, California, in August.

Nothing like fear mongering to get people to give up their civil liberties.

Disney It Ain't

2006-10-18T00:06:00.000-07:00

Poor Pope Benedict XVI. Like Sammy Hagar to David Lee Roth, he's having a hell of a time living up to his superpopular predecessor. Pope John Paul II got his own comic books, a flash Popemobile, and calls for canonization. Pope Benedict got the keys to the Vatican and some poorly-made flaming effigies.

Now, Pope John Paul II even gets his own animated film.
Cartoon tribute to Pope John Paul

Experts are calling this a move toward bolstering Catholicism's dwindling popularity among the young folk, but honestly, a cartoon isn’t going to lure in us Catholics feeling increasingly disillusioned by the church’s rigid policies. We want condoms! We want birth control! And not that shifty rhythm method stuff, the real kind! Women clergy members! Popemobiles!

Popemobile!

no freedom for Freedom

2006-10-16T22:55:00.000-07:00

The FBI has a new target -- the Filipino Community. There are Al-Qaeda-linked terrorist cells in the Philippines, which isn't news, but the feds are now targeting Filipino activists in northwestern US as supspected terrorists.

On October 4, Freedom Allah Siyam, a Seattle Filipino activist changed his name from Gotcho Cupp in 1998, had feds come to his house and question his mom with a long list of names of suspected terrorists. The wife of political emcee Geologic of the Blue Scholars was also on the list. Siyam isn't even Muslim; he put Allah in his new name because it's Arabic for God and he wanted to "keep God to [his] goals and aspirations."

According to the news report:

In 2005, a family friend told Siyam that he'd been questioned by Homeland Security agents who'd asked whether Siyam was leading troops of youths into the Philippines to convert them into anti-American Muslims.

Read the full article for more FBI fear and paranoia.

the evolution of oppression and the minstrel show

2006-10-16T22:43:00.000-07:00

While more than 80 million people have watched some guy who spent too many hours dancing in front of a mirror to Vanilla Ice, there are some neglected gems on YouTube.

I first stumbled on this video on Playahata, and then found the guy who made the video's blogsite. Here's what he had to say about the video:

The concept came to me while driving home one day. It describes the methods of oppression over time leading to todays hijacking of popular culture.

His first video is just as strong (gotta love that Flava Flav):

rendered

2006-10-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

Torture Taxi is a nonfiction book that pits a cadre of misguided evil people in power against everyday American heroes. It's the story of a tragic reality that reads like a novelized Hollywood script.

The book is called "torture taxi" because that's the unofficial name given to the business jets that fly suspects in the War on Terror to countries like Egypt and Morocco to be tortured by the CIA. The torture taxis are low-tech, as far as military equipment goes, able to elude detection around the world through the camouflage provided by tangled registration papers filled out by phony companies. The planes are the CIA transports of the never-voted-upon Bush Administration program of extraordinary rendition and they were tracked and identified by a group of curious air traffic controllers, so-called "plane spotters," one of whom in the book is seen searching the sky over the Nevada desert with a pair of binoculars and wearing a T-shirt that says "Democracy is not a spectator sport."

"Extraordinary rendition" is a Wonder Bread sandwich of a phrase, lacking any hint of flavor. By design it meant almost nothing to anyone before it became the widely known sinister euphemism it is today. According to authors Trevor Paglen and A.C. Thompson, this is what "extraordinary rendition" meant to falsely accused Binyam Mohammed in 2002, the year the torture taxis took to flight:

"Pakistani police brought him to a military airport in Islamabad. Waiting for him was a group of black-clad, masked Americans. The men stripped Mohammed naked, took photos, inserted something into his anus, and dressed him in a track suit, then blindfolded him, placed earphones on him, shackled him, and put him on a plane. He would be transported to Morocco, Afghanistan, and Guatanamo Bay."

That was four years ago. Mohammed was beaten severely, threatened with death and disfigurement, his back and penis slashed repeatedly with a scalpel. He's still a captive at Guantanamo, awaiting trial, one of the hundreds of residents of Bushland legal limbo.

For Tom Cruise as the Mission Impossible guy, for Harrison Ford in every movie, for Sydney Bristow and Jack Bauer, all of them, all of the movie and TV heroes and spies, the question is always: Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys, and which of the two am I?

I suppose it was inevitable that we wrote ouselves as an entire country into this dominant version of the cliched Hollywood movie script. So how's this movie gonna end?

and they're off…

2006-10-12T13:08:00.000-07:00

The 2008 presidential race is already heating up. On Tuesday Senator John McCain responded to his potential rival Senator Hillary Clinton’s suggestion that George W. Bush bears some responsibility for North Korea's nuclear status by turning the blame back on her husband.

According to the Washington Post, in a campaign speech in Michigan McCain said:

"I would remind Senator Clinton and other Democrats critical of Bush administration policies that the framework agreement her husband's administration negotiated [with North Korea] was a failure. Every single time the Clinton administration warned the Koreans not to do something—not to kick out the IAEA inspectors, not to remove the fuel rods from their reactor—they did it. And they were rewarded every single time by the Clinton administration with further talks."

According to Slate’s Fred Kaplan, McCain’s claim is just plain false.

And according to the conservative siteWorld Net Daily, YouTube people were acting in agreement when they limited access to a political ad that mocks the Clinton Administrations policies on North Korea.

Why would McCain draw Clinton into a public brawl? The Washington Post's political blog The Fix sees McCain's goals as twofold: 1) to impress conservative voters and 2) to elevate himself to Clinton's level by creating a situation where they're opponents.

The real question: Are these two just out of the gate or well into the first stretch?

american twinks

2006-10-11T20:10:00.000-07:00

So, hey, why isn't President Pervez "Mushy" Musharraf of Pakistan afraid of the Big Bad Wolf (ie, terrorism generally and al Qaeda in particular)? Is it maybe because he's secretly on the side of Osama in the War on Terror? Or maybe because he's a Muslim living among Muslims in a combative part of the world and so isn't hypnotized by the exotic unknown and has got some perspective?

Spinning off Mushy's recent appearance on the Daily show, Daryn Cambridge explored the idea at his blog:

Two weeks ago, Jon Stewart interviewed Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf. After discussing the multiple assassination attempts on Musharraf's life by Al Qaeda forces, Stewart said to Musharraf, "You seem to be at the forefront of the [terrorist] threats, yet you seem much calmer about it than we [Americans] are." President Musharraf confidently replied, "Yes, I am." The audience immediately chuckled at the irony of such a statement. The President of Pakistan-- having survived two separate Qaeda attempts on his life and presiding over one of the central national arenas in the global war on terror where Osama bin Laden is perhaps residing and planning future attacks -- is less stressed about the terrorist threat than we are in America. Stewart, equally perturbed by the irony, brought his head out of his hands and took a giant bite out of one of America's most recognizable symbols, a twinkie. At this moment, Stewart and Musharraf, albeit briefly, elucidated the stark contrast between what is actually happening and how we are choosing to react. Our perception of the current global situation can be altered and tinkered with by politicians, who can strongly influence the way our media portrays a story…

gootube

2006-10-10T17:55:00.000-07:00

Mega-search engine company Google bought the profitless YouTube for $1.65 million yesterday and this silly thank you video from Chad Hurley and Steve Chen shows the two YouTube twentysomething founders giddy to be millionaires.

Mark Cuban, media critic/owner of the Dallas Mavericks, HDNet and HDTV cable network, claims this is the beginning of the end of YouTube because the deal will spur copyright owners to crackdown on illegal use of their work. He explains more in his post I Still Think Google is Crazy.

On the contrary, others like St. Petersburg Times TV/media critic Eric Deggans see the purchase as a victory for consumer generated media and advocates of copyright reform.

Boing Boing points out that what Google and YouTube have in common is censorship.

"Google was slammed by free speech advocates for complying with authorities in China to launch a filtered google.cn this January. And YouTube has been the subject of growing criticism for takedown policies, which are at best erratic, and at worst, de facto censorship."

For more, here is NYT Andrew Ross Sorkin's analysis of the deal.

Fun and Games in North Korea

2006-10-09T11:45:00.000-07:00

The next contestant on "Today's Horrifically Bad National Leaders"-- an unofficial Talk Back game show-- is a return guest and high-fashion fanatic. He has fluffy hair and a penchant for enormous eyeglasses. When traveling, he enjoys feasting on exotic foods, gulping Henessey cognac and "partying with female pleasure teams." At home, he trades in arms and narcotics and counterfeits U.S. currency on a massive scale. He's a handsome holdover from the totalitarian era and a present-day missile launcher and nuclear bomb tester. Please give a warm welcome to Mr Impunity, Kim Jong IL, leader for life of flourishing North Korea!

bush's job

2006-10-07T10:47:00.000-07:00

Jon Stewart is convinced that the reason for Bush's low job approval rating is that Americans just don't understand what his job entails. This montage of Bush spouting sound bites about what he believes his job to be is both disturbing and hilarious.

incestuous amplification

2006-10-06T21:21:00.000-07:00

We all know that politics is increasingly driven by public relations campaigns and that Bush and his administration are masters of spin. Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber's recently released book “The Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies and the Mess in Iraq” argues that America has been defeated by its own PR machine—a phenomenon that in military lingo is referred to as “incestuous amplification.”

Incestuous amplification! Doesn’t that just about sum it all up? I imagine it works on a personal level too. It’s what was at play each time Foley convinced himself that he was just being friendly with those pages. And it’s the force at work when his defenders say the pervy IMs were just the booze talking.

Aside from giving us a concept that sums up a lot of our collective and individual delusion, Rampton and Stauber have written a compelling account of the strategies used by the GOP and administration officials to manufacture consent for the war, demonstrating precisely how the Bush administation has aimed its propaganda not at the enemy but at the American people. And they remind us that this practice violates long-standing American political traditions dating back to the Smith-Mundt Act passed in 1948, which basically prohibits propaganda meant for the rest of the world from being circulated within the US. These days though, administartion officials clearly feel that they first and foremost need to focus on gaining support at home by any means necessary.

free speech ain't cool on college campus

2006-10-04T10:00:00.000-07:00

Rapper Kamikaze, one half of Crooked Lettaz with rap star David Banner, sparked a student boycott at Milsaps College in his home state of Mississippi. What did he do to outrage the campus kiddies? As an invited performer for "Sexual Awareness Week 2006," he bashed bush.

During an interlude in his set, the rapper made comments about current U.S. president George W. Bush, infuriating members of the audience.

"I prefaced it by saying 'I know that a lot of you, or some of you, won't agree with what I'm saying and you're entitled to your opinion, as I am entitled to mine'," Kamikaze told AllHipHop.com. "There is a real strong Young Republican contingent at this school."

In his speech, the rapper accused Bush of pursuing oil and engaging America in a senseless war in Iraq, and also insisted that the government lied to start the war.

Of course, the young republicans didn't take too kindly to this and responded with a letter, claiming his statements were "tacky, senseless and an absolute, astonishing, explicit blasphemy of the sitting President of the United States; an act that represented the worst that Millsaps College could offer to its students..."

Oh look, the letter's right here... (and it features choice lines such as: "The Student Body Association along with the Socializing, Acitivities and Programming for Students Board (SAPS), has no use for your shameful, adolescent and worthless viewpoints of our leader..." You read it right: the Milsap SAPS were offended by criticism of "their leader"!).

priests and politicians

2006-10-03T13:05:00.000-07:00

Yup, that's now-resigned Congressman Mark Foley (R-FL) chatting it up in an "over friendly," not explicit manner, with an underage boy. By now you've heard about it, and the fact this his Christian conservative GOP buddies knew about it yet refused to take action, though House Speaker Dennis Hastert claims it was taken care of last spring . Though folks are calling for Hastert's resignation as well, President Bush ain't down with that, he said during a discussion in Stockton, CA (where they named an elementary school after him...which also happens to be my hometown)

The credibility of our government just keeps sinking. It's gotten so bad, that we have to laugh and joke about it, since the high ranking officials (Hastert and others) aren't doing anything about it. Another shady politician? Business as usual.

And here's the ABC report:

punked

2006-09-27T17:41:00.000-07:00

We Americans are different: we think we're special and the rest of the world thinks we're especially isolated and willfully ignorant. Newsweek, it turns out, panders to both sides of the equation, printing two dramatically different versions of its weekly magazine-- one for domestic readers and a completely different version for foreign readers. Check it out here.

This week, in the European, Asian and Latin American editions of the magazine, readers are presented with a cover story on the unfolding disaster of American policy in Afghanistan and a warning of future entanglement and bloodshed. In the U.S. edition of the magazine, however, the cover story is a book review article of the latest work by American celebrity photographer Annie Liebovitz (the one who took the photos of Tom and Katie and Suri!).

I suppose it's only fair to mention that the Liebovitz piece is... an exclusive! Here are the teasers from the foreign and domestic editions (you guess which is which):

1) The Rise of Jihadistan
Five years after the Afghan invasion, the Taliban are fighting back hard, carving out a sanctuary where they—and Al Qaeda's leaders—can operate freely.

2) Through Her Lens
In her new book, Annie Leibovitz, our most famous photographer, places celebs side by side with surprisingly personal images of love and loss. An exclusive.

So, is it that Newsweek thinks U.S. readers don't give a shit about the unraveling disaster in Afghanistan? (Do we?) Or is it that Newsweek thinks we care more about Annie Liebovitz and her celebs? (Do we?) Or is it that Newsweek thinks we've had enough of bad news? (Have we?) Or is it that Newsweek doesn't want to print any more bad news about Bush leadership this election season? (Why?)

Why exactly won't Newsweek run what it clearly thinks is an important story on major events for the only people who have the power to influence those events?

anti-americanism and the left

2006-09-21T12:42:00.000-07:00

Whatever you think of Hugo Chavez and his Bush is Satin speech yesterday to the UN General Assembly, he may be inadvertently sabotaging the American Left by aligning himself with them. Waving a copy of Noam Chomsky’s book Hegemony or Survival: The Imperialist Strategy of the United States, Chavez said "It's an excellent book to help us understand what's been happening in the world throughout the 20th century...and what's happening now."

Was Chavez’s endorsement of Chomsky a great moment for those who see Chomksy’s powerful and unwavering political activism as embodying the spirit of freedom of expression in America? Or will Chavez’s speech work to further the Bush administration long campaign to characterize anyone who challenges its policies as unpatriotic?

The conservative Frontpagemage.com suggests the latter:

"Chavez and Chomsky made mutual admirations pacts; Osama bin Laden makes allusions to Michael Moore; the Huffington Post legitimizes the ravings of a leftist fascist and an Islamofascist; and the Unholy Alliance grows steadily clearer day-by-day."

A Washington Post story claims the speech proves that there is no such things as bad press. At the very least Chavez is getting people reading. The Chicago Tribune reports that sales of Hegemony or Survival, have jumped into the top 10 of Amazon and Barnes & Noble.com and that its publisher has ordered an additional paperback printing of 25,000 copies.

american blackout

2006-09-19T13:32:00.000-07:00

Alleged voting irregularities during both the 2000 and 2004 were under reported by the mainstream news media. They are most commonly thought of as mere rumors generated by conspiracy theorists unhappy with the election results, as inadvertent errors caused by technological problems on the part of voting equipment or organizational mishaps on the part election officials.

American Blackout, a film by Guerilla News Network’s Ian Inaba, premiering in select theatres this month, convincingly demonstrates that these irregularities are not as innocent as the powers that be would have us believe.

In a review of the film Shari Frilot writes:

"Ian Inaba's American Blackout is a stylish, intelligent and provocative documentary that looks at the historic and systematic disenfranchisement of the Black vote through the lens of the political career of Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia).... While tracking McKinney's career, Inaba reveals a host of ways in which Black political power is systematically squelched, ranging from the slander that assailed McKinney when she stood up to the Bush administration on 9/11 and Iraq, to the political machinations that disempowered the Black vote in the Georgia Democratic primaries and the Ohio presidential election in 2004. Inaba reminds us that African Americans have long fought a war inside our country for their right to vote, and unfortunately that war rages on today. American Blackout emotionally revitalizes the core of our power as American citizens—the right to vote—and effectively reveals that the fate of Black voters is inextricably tied to the fate of all Americans."

The film’s website features the film trailer asks people to help spread the word, to donate money, and to host screenings of the film.

our man in arabia

2006-09-18T13:56:00.000-07:00

Dubai ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum-- aka "Sheik Mo"-- has been celebrated by Time Magazine as a world-shaping titan and embraced by the Bush family as a business partner. This week, however, a court in Lexington, Ky., indicted him as a trafficker in boy slaves. The class-action suit accuses the Sheik of financing the kidnapping and transfer of young boys to Dubai, where they are put to work as camel jockeys to entertain the petro-dollar elite. Tom Flocco offers this summary of the story being reported this week by AP:

The U.S.-based suit alleges that Mohammed and his brother were part of a conspiracy "to buy boys in the slave trade and hold them in bondage in brutal camps in the Dubai desert." The lawsuit reportedly detailed information involving thousands of boys as young as four years old who were prized because they weighed less than 44 pounds. Sheikh Mohammed's personal 747 aircraft was parked at Bluegrass Airport this week in Lexington [...] AP has not reported whether evidence exists regarding young boys being trafficked out of Lexington. The sheikh was reportedly there purchasing thoroughbred yearlings.

Time raves that although Sheik Mo's "family-run city-state is no democracy [...] it has become a model of business-style governance." Ah yes of course, how we love business-style governance, where mere enslavement is no barrier to achieving the dream-life of wealth and success!

But Sheik Mo-- in addition to being a world-shaping titan and an alleged slaver-- is a poet. And in an online offering called "The Ferocity of the Lions," he may be hinting at his true feelings on the matter of the enslaved boy jockeys:

Oh the hope of my life!
Oh the peak of my desire!
Tell me how to get rid of the manacles.

The rest of his verse is less clear but equally evocative... that is to say, a complete mystery of sillines. I have no idea what any of it is about. My guess, though, is that if Saddam Hussein, another of the region's ruler-poets, had embraced "business-style governance" when he had the chance, he'd likely be at the races today, scribbling his verse in the open air instead of in a tiny jail cell and making plans to buy buildings in Manhattan and horses in Kentucky.

WoT review

2006-09-16T14:34:00.000-07:00

War on Terror
A Review of Work Performed, September 2006

I. Update

1) There are 140,000 American young men and women fighting in Iraq and 19,000 fighting in Afghanistan. President Bush claims the period of "employment" for these men and women will not end any time soon and that it will be up to future leaders to finish the job he has begun.

2) Osama bin Laden has recovered from kidney troubles and is up and moving about again in the undisturbed climes of a place called Waziristan on the Pakistan border. He reportedly holds meetings in the oak-forested Waziristan hills with members of the regrouped and expanding Taliban. A Senior White House official reports specualtion among Bush advisors that Bin Laden has employed an ancient Oriental cloaking spell to hide all of Waziristan from the President and from U.S. spy and war technologies.

3) War on Terror-partner Pakistan has announced its complete resignation in the matter of policing the stretches of its border that include darkened Warziristan.

4) British partners in the reignited Afghan theater of the War on Terror submitted harrowing reports this week, including one from Helmand Province, where a British battalion found itself unexpectedly fighting insurgents as part of its goodwill mission to begin reconstruction in the area: "We are flattening places we have already flattened, but the attacks have kept coming. We have killed them by the dozens, but more keep coming. We have used B1 bombers, Harriers, F-16s and Mirage 2000s. We have dropped 500lb, 1,000lb and even 2,000lb bombs. At one point our Apaches helicopters ran out of missiles because they had fired so many. Almost any movement on the ground gets ambushed."

5) The War on Terror operation in Iraq, meantime, is seen in all corners-- with one notable exception-- as a steaming mess of reeking quagmire. This week 's serving came with an escalation of violence and a higher-than-the-usual-high-number of shot and bombed people.

II. Summary and Findings

1) The primary goals of Phase One of the War on Terror included (a) killing or capturing Osama bin Laden, (b) destroying al Qaeda, and (c) taking control of Afghanistan and Iraq.

2) A fair assessment on the progress made so far on Phase One is: not so good, poor. Look in the coming weeks, however, for additional and probably sunnier reports on the progress of Phase One from the leaders of the War on Terror, who will be in the possession of information and facts vital to an overall assessment but also unfortunately unavailable to non security-cleared analysts and voters.

3) Happily, Phase Two of the War on Terror is less ambitious, amounting merely to regime change in North Korea and Iran and the creation of a pro-American, Israel-friendly, democratic but not-too-democratic, endlessly oil-supplying Greater Middle East.

III. Conclusions and Recommendations

1) Aaaahhhh! This plan totally sucks! Who do we call to cancel this work-order and receive a complete refund!

hacking diebold

2006-09-13T21:23:00.000-07:00

Computer Scientists at Princeton released the results of the first-ever independent assessment of Diebold voting machines today.

And the news ain’t good.

In a Salon story today, Brad Friedman writes:
“The study reveals that a computer virus can be implanted on an electronic voting machine that, in turn, could result in votes flipped for opposing candidates. According to the study, a vote for George Washington could be easily converted to a vote for Benedict Arnold, and neither the voter, nor the election officials administering the election, would ever know what happened. The virus could also be written to spread from one machine to the next and the malfeasance would likely never be discovered, the scientists said.”

Friedman is one of the founders of VelvetRevolution, the umbrella organization of more than 100 election integrity groups that “acquired” the Diebold system and handed it over to Princeton researchers.

The study was released along with a videotape demonstration. Marty Kaplan at The Huffington Post posted his own demonstration How to Hack a Diebold Voting Machine.

In the past Diebold has not been very eager to hear criticism of its products. Perhaps because, as Swarthmore Students discovered in 2003 when they uncovered internal Diebold memos, Diebold is well aware of security problems with their machines. The company tried to sue the students for posting the memos on the Web, but the students won the suit with the help of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You can read the details here, and more about e-voting and election fraud here.

What’s next? Diebold vs. Princeton?

"if you want an audience, start a fight"

2006-09-11T21:43:00.000-07:00

Disneyland visitors were greeted by a blow up doll dressed up as a Guantanamo Bay inmate wearing a bright orange jumper and black hood at the Rocky Mountain Railroad ride. The piece stayed up for an hour and half before staff shut down the ride to remove it. The culprit? None other than the enigmatic world famous guerilla artist Banksy, whose political and social pieces have graced the walls of the West Bank to San Francisco's Haight Street. He's even snuck his paintings into famous museums such as the Louvre in Paris.

Last week Banksy, who calls himself a "guerrilla artist", hit out at hotel heiress Paris Hilton.

He tampered with hundreds of her new albums in music stores, replacing her CD with his own remixes and giving the tracks titles such as Why Am I Famous?, What Have I Done? and What Am I For?

He also changed pictures of her on the sleeve to show her topless and with a dog’s head. Click here for the full article

The man's a genius, and a legend in the street art world; he was named Esquire's 2005 Artist of the Year. Check out his site: http://www.banksy.co.uk/

whadda they know

2006-09-11T21:17:00.000-07:00

Truth Out today posted an Agence France Presse round-up of international newspaper editorials. There are no big surprises but the general disgust on the part of editors around the world toward the Bush response to the attacks in the last five years is sobering.

Papers in Europe and the Middle East were the most brutal-- which may seem a foregone conclusion now, but in the immediate wake of the attacks, European editors across the political spectrum couldn't have been more supportive, exclaiming across the top of Le Monde, of all places, that "We are all Americans." And editors in the terror-plagued Middle East expressed hoped that al Qaeda, in awakening the sleeping giant that day, would at last meet its end. Obviously most of all of that good will is long gone.

The British Financial Times: "The way the Bush administration has trampled on the international rule of law and Geneva Conventions, while abrogating civil liberties and expanding executive power at home, has done huge damage not only to America's reputation but, more broadly, to the attractive power of Western values."

Lebanon's Daily Star: "Instead of isolating and wiping out Al-Qaeda, Bush has created a long list of new foes in his ever-broadening war on terror. In doing so, he has bolstered the popular impression that the United States is waging a crusade against Islam-- an impression which Al-Qaeda skillfully exploits in order to gain more support."

Egypt's Al-Ahram: "Five years ago, the history of the world changed twice, once in the hands of Bin Laden and his gang, and once in the hands of Bin Bush and his administration."

Jordan's Al Ghad: "The administration of George W. Bush used a vengeful mentality in dealing with the 9/11 crime and has turned the entire world into a battleground."

The Australian papers were reportedly more sympathetic.

conspiracy theories...

2006-09-11T18:42:00.000-07:00

As America remembers 9/11 five years later (as if we'd forget only five years later) with memorial services and explotation movies and TV specials(World Trade Center, United 93, ABC's "The Path to 9/11," etc.), let's not forget the conspiracy theories we love to google so much.

I'm no conspiracy theorist, and no, I haven't sat down and watched the entirety of Loose Change, the low-budget documentary that strings together news reports to present an alternative version of how it all went down. If you haven't seen or heard about it, here it is.

Of course this controversial film sparked some outrage with many people passing the film off as complete BS. But one guy went through and did his own fact-checking, so here's "Screw Loose Change" done sorta VH1 pop-up video style with annotated comments to refute the claims.

But really, you can't trust anyone these days.

9/11: the disney version

2006-09-11T15:10:00.000-07:00

September 11, like all commemorative days, is an event during which our collective memory is actively shaped. And this year Disney owned ABC is vying for significant influence over how 9/11 is remembered. Last night and tonight ABC stations nationwide are broadcasting “The Path to 9/11” a two-part miniseries described by Salon’s editor-in-chief Joan Walsh as “an anti-Clinton hit job written by a conservative Iranian-American, Cyrus Nowrasteh, a friend of Rush Limbaugh, that lards blame for the tragedy on President Clinton and his cabinet and airbrushes the culpability of George W. Bush and friends.”

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson told the LA Times that the film, which ABC is billing as a “docudrama” based on the 9/11 Commission’s findings, is "indisputably wrong." Cyrus Nowrasteh admits that the film’s most controversial scene – where a Clinton administration official passes up an opportunity to kill Osama Bin Ladin — was based on nothing at all, telling a right-wing radio station that the scene was “improvised.”

Media Matters reports that a New York Times story on Saturday September 9 falsely attributed a petition of 200,000 urging ABC to cancel the show to the Clinton Administration and Democratic party officials when in fact the petition was signed by people across the political spectrum. On Saturday, ABC claimed that criticisms were unfair because they were not yet done editing. You’ve got to wonder then, why they sent out review copies to conservative media organizations and conservative bloggers. Editor and Publisher’s Greg Mitchell said it “raises eyebrows” that review copies were not sent to liberal bloggers and liberal media outlets.

The Washington Post describes one of the most outrageous scenes of the film:

“Clinton himself is libeled through abusive editing. A first-class U.S. operative played by Donnie Wahlberg argues the case for getting bin Laden while the al-Qaeda leader is openly in view in some sort of compound in Afghanistan. CIA officials haggle over minor details, such as the budget for the operation. The film's director, David L. Cunningham, then cuts abruptly to a TV image of Clinton making his infamous "I did not have sexual relations with that woman" remark with regard to Monica Lewinsky. The impression given is that Clinton was spending time on his sex life while terrorists were gaining ground and planning a nightmare.”

Disney also planned to distribute the historically false “Path to 9/11” to tens of thousands of American classrooms, via lesson plans created by Scholastic – the world’s largest publisher of children’s books – with whom Disney enjoys content sharing deals. The study guide suggests that former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had a role in the September 11 terrorist attacks. Scholastic cancelled distribution on Friday after thousands wrote the company to complain.

Blogger Deborah White called The Path to 9/11 “ classic” Disney:

“a live-action cartoon complete with heroic white men (in suits) and a token white heroine (in a skirted suit), brooding Middle Eastern men, very artful and pretty photography, and oodles of dramatic background music.”

Sometimes its difficult to pinpoint precisely how big media conglomerates inhibits democracy. But not last night. And not tonight. For more on who owns what media and to join the protest movement against media consolidation go to Stop Big Media.

our CEO president

2006-09-08T12:20:00.000-07:00

What comes of government streamlining? Private firms get hired to act in the government's place. That arrangement has a nice ring in the mouths of small government "let the market decide" advocates, but it doesn't always work out so smoothly in practice. Our tax-payer billions have bought us an inefficient mess of a War on Terror, for example, one overseen by our "CEO" president. Bush's heavily nongovernment-corporate-contractor-conducted war is more evidence that exposes the "small government" philosophy as fantasy.

No one likes "big government," or at least all the bloated bureaucratic inefficiencies the term implies, but there's too much the government has to do today to not be pretty damned huge: managing security and business and economics and the environment and workforces and science and health and disease across states and nations and continents takes a great deal of resources, including people.

You want to find out how our business-style "small government" works, how it undercuts fiscal responsibility and almost all of the other kinds of responsibility that define democratic rule? Robert Greenwald's new film on the war, Iraq for Sale, takes a stab. At the website for the film there are links to supporting investigative pieces all published today to coincide with the film's release, including one at alternet and the American Prospect and Colorlines.

the redistricting game

2006-09-07T13:37:00.000-07:00

Before this year’s November elections a team of researchers at USC plan to launch a game that simulates how legislative redistricting works--who does it, what their motivations are, and the impacts on communities and legislative representation. As the redistricting game website explains:

“Right now, the political system in many states provides the state legislatures themselves draw the line. While this system can sometimes work well, it has also proven subject to a wide range of abuses and manipulation that often has the result that incumbents are re-elected time and time again.”

In a presentation at USC’s Annenberg Center for Communication today, the game’s creators explained that their ultimate goal, based on the idea that games are capable of setting disposition, is not to simply educate young people about redistricting but to get them interested in learning about the rules and structure of politics.

Researchers at the center Sasha Costanza-Chock and Mimi Ito challenged the game creator to imagine how to make the game more of a conversation—not just kids learning about grown-up politics but also kids teaching adults about their political systems and mode of political participation--the dynamics of lunchroom cafeterias to protests organized on and about Friendster (also see my post from yesterday). They pointed out that kids, after all, are systematically excluded from “grown-up” politics. And perhaps if adults paid attention, they could learn a thing or two from the too-young-to-vote set.

revolt against facebook

2006-09-06T21:29:00.000-07:00

Facebook released several new features Tuesday, including something it calls "news feed," which appears on users' homepages and reports every move their friends make. It's not the information that's new, just how it's being presented. And apparently many of the 8 million-plus Facebook users don't like it. According to Al Tomkins, by 9:45 pm Wednesday night, 419,304 students had joined electronic protests against "news feed." Time tries to explain what everyone is so worked up about, with links to college newspaper coverage. And Forbes writes on the ramifications for Facebook advertizing.

uberman olbermann

2006-09-06T12:53:00.000-07:00

Keith Olbermann, host of MSNBC's Countdown, is all over the web today for lambasting the Bush Administration's new election-season angle of attack on media dissent (the most effective way to limit any dissent). In a series of speeches this week, first Rumsfeld and then Bush linked American journalists with the Nazis and al Qaeda, implying that members of the media who questioned Administration policymaking were tools of a nefarious plot launched by al Qaeda to use the media "divide the American nation." Last night's sharp-eyed analysis is, as usual, delivered in stirring fashion by old Olbermann, who seems to be feeding off the increasing callowness of the Bush spin machine to channel Edward R Murrow more powerfully each day. It's a hell of a contest we have unfolding before us. You can watch the video as well as read Olbermann's recent batch of righteous dispatches online here.

it's the end of the world (wide web) as we know it...

2006-09-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

...well, not yet, but a case which threatens free speech on the net has been brought to the California Supreme Court:

The California Supreme Court is set to hear arguments in San Francisco Tuesday on whether someone who posts a defamatory comment by another person on the Internet can be sued for libel.

Two civil liberties groups say the court’s eventual ruling, due in three months, could have far-reaching implications for free speech on the Internet.

While the case before the court concerns individuals—a Canadian doctor seeking to sue a women’s health activist for posting a third person’s comment about him—the court’s ruling could also determine whether Internet service providers can be held liable when they knowingly allow defamatory remarks to be posted. (full article here

Yes, the freedom to post whatever we want may be at risk. Bloggers (and anyone who posts on a message board, leaves comments on webites, or has a myspace) beware, if this goes down, anyone who reposts a third party's defamatory statements can be sued for libel. Yup, reposting someone else's words is grounds for being sued. Good thing that's just a quote from a news report up there.

and the award goes to Mos, in jail!

2006-09-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

So Mos Def got thrown in the clink last night for his guerilla concert outside Radio City Music Hall, which was hosting the gala Video Music Awards. Mos was out there singing the "Katrina Clap" in a flatbed truck before New York's Finest hauled him away. Here are some of the highly sought after lyrics (thanks to these guys):

Listen homie, It's dollar day in New Orleans,
It's where there water everywhere and people dead in the street

And Mr. President he 'bout that cash,
He got a policy for handlin' the bruthas and trash,
And if you poor you black,
I laugh a laugh, they won't give when you ask,
You betta off on crack, dead or in jail, or with a gun in Iraq
And it’s as simple as that,
No opinion my man it's mathematical fact,
Listen, a million poor since 2004,
And they got illions and killions to waste on the war,
And make you question what the taxes is for,
Or the cost to reinforce the broke levee wall,
Tell the boss he shouldn’t be the boss anymore (or or),
Ya'll, by any means

It's dollar day in New Orleans,
It's where water everywhere and baby's dead in the street
It's enough to make you holler out,
Like where the fuck is Sir Bono and his famous friends now,
Don't get it twisted man, I dig U2,
But if you aint about the ghetto, Then Fuck You Too,
Who care bout Rock N' Roll when babies can't eat food,
Listen homie that shit ain't cool,
It's like dollar day for New Orleans

Feel that Katrina Clap!
Let's make them dollars stack!
And rebuild these streets,
God save these streets,
God save these streets,
God save the soul,
Feel that Katrina Clap!
See that Katrina Clap!

spinning Iraq, again and again

2006-09-01T14:46:00.000-07:00

It is no wonder this guy wore a "Bullshit Protector" over his ear during the president's address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars this week. We're going to need a lot more of these things.

In the run up to the first Gulf War, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl identified only as Nayirah provided tearful testimony before the House of Representatives' Human Rights Caucus in which she claimed that Iraqi soldiers had torn hundreds of babies from hospital incubators and killed them. Her lurid testimony made a compelling argument for military action. You bet it did, because that was the point. Then-President Bush quoted Nayirah at every opportunity. In six speeches over the course of one month after the testimony, he referred to the "312 premature babies at Kuwait City's maternity hospital who died after Iraqi soldiers stole their incubators and left the infants on the floor."

A year after the start of the war, Harper’s Magazine publisher John MacArthur wrote in the New York Times that, after extensive investigation, he discovered that no such thing ever happened, that Nayirah was the daughter of Kuwait's Ambassador to the US and Canada, and that her fabricated testimony was part of PR firm Hill and Knowlton’s campaign to drum up support for the war. Ambassador Saud Nasir al-Sabah denied the charge, saying "If I wanted to lie, or if we wanted to lie, if we wanted to exaggerate, I wouldn't use my daughter to do so.” You can read more about it here.

The second President Bush has enjoyed the same heady mix of Iraq + war + PR. The Washington Post reported yesterday that the US-led military force in Iraq is looking to pay a PR firm $2 million "to effectively communicate Iraqi government and Coalition goals and to build support among our strategic audiences." The contract asks the winning firm to monitor international news in Arabic and English as well as US national and local news. An anonymous PR practitioner told the Post that military commanders want news "to be received by audiences as it is transmitted [by government writers] ... because they don't like the way it's been turning out."

In this case, as in most, the word "monitor" is code for "control" -- the message and its reception, to whatever extent that may be possible. I can just imagine the mad creative frenzy of proposal writers at those PR firms today, poring over reports of Hill and Knowlton’s Nayirah, hatching all sorts of similarly plotted faux news stories full of blood and tears, while that $2 million contract dances like sugarplums in their heads.

Former FEMA director Mike Brown says Bush told him to lie...

2006-09-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

Mike Brown took the blame for the government's lack of action during Hurricane Katrina last year, and was removed from his position as FEMA director. Bush's old buddy Brownie is now saying he was a scapegoat and Bush told him to lie:

O‘DONNELL: So let me get this clear. Someone in the White House was telling you to lie?

BROWN: Well, yes. They give you the talking points. Whenever you go out to do any interviews they always have the talking points. Here‘s what the message for today is and here‘s how we are going to spin everything. That‘s just the way Washington, D.C. works and that‘s just wrong.

Read the full transcript from his interview on Hardball (you gotta scroll down to the bottom to find it, sorry).

hurricane harris

2006-08-31T10:47:00.000-07:00

US Representative and Senate candidate Katherine Harris is under fire again, this time for her baldly stated views on politics and faith, which she shared with Witness, a Florida Baptist publication. The transcript of the interview is an excellent resource on the cumulative effect of a Christian-right aproach to american politics, evidence of how in moving from one hot-button issue to another-- gay marriage, Terri Schiavo, stem cell research-- the long-term implications for governance become ratcheted up, how advocating for a US theocracy has become a normalized part of the political debate.

Harris after all is a sitting member of Congress, a woman who has served in government for many years, who attended Harvard and who was speaking for the record. Yet the interview reads like a madras manifesto, where secular is equated with evil, where only the faithful are qualified to serve the public, where individual citizens would submit to a moral and religious code outlined and enforced by the government-- because "nonChristian citizens don't know any better"-- and where lawmakers who don't support such views are "legislating sin" and so must be replaced.

There is plenty of conviction on display, and plenty of confusion, too. God chooses our leaders, she says, yet she's also encouraging the faithful to get them out of office. There is also an endtimes-style preoccupation with "taking the country back," as if Gore and then Kerry and all the defeated Congressional Democrats of the past six or more years have been running the country, going to war, appointing Supreme Court justices.

A bonus of the transcript is Harris's sidelong, hesitant, semiconscious admission of her role in the "stolen" presidential election of 2000. Witness asks her "Why should Florida Baptists care about this primary election?" To which she says:

"… Florida is the forerunner state. What happens in Florida sets the trend for what happens nationally. And with this election, if Bill Nelson wins, it’s going to be a very frightening proposition in 2008, in the presidential elections, because whoever wins Florida will win the presidency. And [Bill Nelson] will be in a position to largely influence…"

Ha! She should know!

2008 democrat ticket?

2006-08-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

Mos Def interviews Al Gore and posts it on MySpace. The men, the medium, the topic-- it's a fantastic two minutes, the entertainment-politics continuum just shrinking to nothing. Best quote goes to Mos: "I'm a big fan of second acts."

That Wacky Conan

2006-08-28T13:51:00.000-07:00

The truth is the Emmy's are boring. So it makes sense that the hottest news coming out of last night's show is Conan O'Brian's opening segment in which the presenter is shown flying aboard a plane that starts to violently shake and then crash. (Watch it here.) This sketch might have been funny if a real plane hadn't crashed and killed 49 people in Kentucky the same morning.

LA Weekly blogger Nikki Finke wrote:

"The very idea that tonight's Emmy showcast on NBC was so scripted-in-stone that neither the network nor host Conan O'Brien could change a word of the broadcast opener, or decide not to show it altogether and substitute another skit crafted at the last minute, is absurd. After all, isn't that the reason Hollywood pays writers for these awards shows? C'mon, couldn't one executive or producer, much less Conan or the television academy that puts on the Emmys, pipe up and say, "Uh, maybe starting with a plane crash comedy skit on the same day there was an actual plane crash might be in poor taste? Let's rewrite." But, noooooooooo."

NBC affiliate general manager at the Lexington, Kentucky, says he was "stunned" by the skit. “We wish somebody had thought this through. It’s somewhere between ignorance and incompetence.”

Ain't that the problem with giant corporations (like NBC, which is owned by General Electric)? They just so often leave you wondering WHO'S IN CHARGE?

Other commentators thought it distastful that Conan introduced Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert by saying that "these two presenters have done for fake news what the Fox News Channel has done for fake news." In a post titled, "Conan Slams Fox News at the Emmys," Greg Tinti writes: "I usually wouldn't make a big deal out of something like this, but today's just the wrong day for the gratuitous slam of Fox News as 'fake news.' You know, because two of its journalists were just freed from the very real experience of being kidnapped while on the job and then held hostage for 13 days."

If you find these stories banal, and if you don't mind your news completely made up, here's what I think is the best coverage of the Conan controversy.

got my ban on...

2006-08-25T18:09:00.000-07:00

You know the song: that repetitive, annoying, senseless ("got my Vans on but they look like sneakers" -- Vans are sneakers, fool!), and catchy ass hell song "Vans" by teenage Bay Area rap group the Pack has been banned by MTV. Despite its popularity, MTV refuses to play the video because they consider the video to be a four-minute ad for Vans.

Because Nelly's "Air Force Ones" wasn't promoting Nikes? Because Chingy's "Holiday Inn" wasn't free promotion for the hotel company? Because Busta Rhymes' "Pass the Courvousier" wasn't promoting liquor? Because Run DMC's "My Adidas" isn't a classic hip hop record? Or is it because MTV doesn't want to give free promotion if they're not getting any ad dollars in return? I've never seen a Vans commercial on TV, let alone on MTV.

Not that the video is anything special, just a bunch of getting hyphy and skateing with a cameo by Too $hort (though hip hop's co-opting of skate culture is interesting), but here's the video...

the water

2006-08-25T10:25:00.000-07:00

Slate magazine today posted a collection of Katrina memoirs written by four students from Walker Charter High School in New Orleans. The teenagers and their families rode out the storm but were evacuated later after the floodwaters overtook their neighborhoods. Here's a sample from Vickey Brown, 17:

I ran all the way home. I was yelling to my grandma, "We going to die, the water is flowing up the street and it looks like it is getting higher." I began to cry.

"Well what can I do? Won't you stop crying? It's going to be OK," my grandma replied. I was scared for my life.

Then my mom stormed in the door.

"Get only two outfits and some shoes," my mama said in a scared voice.

"Mama, I don't want to leave my grandma," I said, crying.

"She can come too, I don't want to leave her here either."

So I went to my grandma's room to ask her would she go with me. I got on my knees besides her and asked, "Grandma, come with us please, I don't want to leave you here without me."

"Girl, just go with ya mama, you hear me, now go on."

My mom tried to convince her to go, too, but my grandma wouldn't budge. Deep in my mind I was wondering what would happen to my grandma if I were to leave her. It hurt me to my heart to leave her, but I was too scared to stay.

As we passed the bridge on Claiborne and Earhart Boulevard we saw a dead man lying at the foot of the curb with a white sheet over his body. I looked at him with amazement because I had never seen a dead body before.

prognosis

2006-08-24T10:11:00.000-07:00

Andrew Young, in offending Koreans and Jews and Arabs in one fell swoop this week, demonstrated that African-Americans, even those who have dedicated their entire life to working for expanded civil rights and inter-ethnic dialogue, are not immune to the "Turned Old, Tired, Bigoted and Cranky" syndrome known to affect white folk over 60 in vast numbers.

Symptoms reportedly accelerate if the subject increases his or her association with the "filthy rich." Seriously addled thinking is a warning sign loved ones are advised to monitor closely-- things like publicly advocating for WalMart to move into black neighborhoods in order to ease exploitation, for instance.

Experts say the subject often doesn't know what's happening to him or her. Speaking in public becomes difficult. They mean to say something like: "Increasing the number of black-owned groceries in predominantly poor black neighborhoods would go a long way to ease deep-rooted frustration and ethnic tensions there." But what comes out is something ranting and digressive like: "Those are the people who have been overcharging us-- selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and retired to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans and now it's Arabs."

Treatments focus on getting the subject out into the world as much as possible and steering them clear of golf courses and corporate honchos.

Anybody in There?

2006-08-22T12:01:00.000-07:00

The recently foiled terrorist attacks and the escalating violence in Iraq have given a cringing world another blast of the president’s vapid sound-bite foreign relations analysis that sounds more like the comments of a jilted lover than the leader of the world’s most powerful nation. Comments like “They hate us because they hate our freedom” and “they don’t appreciate what we are doing for them” may make the world cringe but on the bright side it also provides fodder for The Daily Show. See last night’s segment inspired by a recent New York Times piece that reported that President Bush "expressed frustration that Iraqis had not come to appreciate the sacrifices that the United States has made in Iraq."

And real life can be even funnier than make believe when it comes to W. (even if it is funny scary). Today Bob Harris posts a cleaned up photo of Bush’s press conference notes that further confirm that there is not a lot going on in there.

mexico way

2006-08-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

The presidential election recount-standoff and protest-crackdown in Mexico continues and has spread to Chiapas, where votes cast for the governor's seat are now also being recounted.

Election protestors have thronged public spaces. Riot police have been shooting people with water and real bullets. There are videos of political personalities involved taking bribes, fleeing to Cuba, stuffing piles of US greenbacks into bags, going on gambling sprees in Vegas. Leftist presidential candidate and ongoing election contestor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (Mexico's Al Gore for now) is sleeping in a protest tent in Mexico City's main plaza. And it's all been going on since election day, July 2nd.

The rural poor and Mexico City voters cast their ballots for change, a politics high on social and economic justice. The wealthy north and its business leaders voted for liberal trade and low taxation, an economy pinned to the benefits promised by NAFTA and the course pursued by current president Vicente Fox for more than a decade.

Heightening the drama is the fact that where a large part of the rest of the world has been turning to the right, Latin America has been moving left. What will happen in Mexico?

Unfortunately, you won't find a whole lot of answers in the US English-language press... Blogs are best, including the two embedded above. Other good links, anybody?

9/11: hollywood vs. real life

2006-08-21T19:10:00.001-07:00

In World Trade Center, one of the movies based on 9/11, PFC Dave Thomas is a hero who, after hearing news of the terrorist attack, takes it upon himself to strap into his military gear and head to ground zero to help out, starting a search and rescue mission with Sgt. Dave Kearnes. The movie tells his heroic tale with a slight inaccuracy.

In the movie, PFC Dave Thomas, is white. In reality, Sgt. James L. Thomas, upon whose story the character is based, is black. I'm sorry, did I say slight? I meant someone screwed up big time.

How the producers failed to get a physical description or consult him in the making of the film is beyond me. After all, one of the key elements in any physical description is skin color. Maybe a heroic tale about American unity and patriotism just looks better in white? Had this been a story about a fugtivie, I'm sure they would have gotten the ethnicity right.

American Apparel Apparently Assholes

2006-08-21T19:10:00.000-07:00

I don't have beef with American Apparel's ads. You can call me a perv if you want to but that amateur porny dirty roach motel bed series looks kinda hot, and at least it's better than fake-boobied airbrushed models, and it's no worse than other ads.

The problem with AA, it seems, is their violations of workers' rights and the fact that company founder Dov Charney is a pervert who has had several sexual harrassment charges filed against him. (Since when is holding meetings in your boxers inappropriate?)

KnowMore.org, a corporation watch web service based on wiki software founded by Bernard Dolan and Sage Francis providing folks with social responsibility profiles on corporations, has just run an in-depth feature about American Apparel. Turns out, the folks at AA saw their negative rating on KnowMore.org and challenged Bernard Dolan to come to their LA headquarters and talk to employees. So he did. And this is the result.

marion jones diaries

2006-08-21T10:11:00.000-07:00

Marion Jones may well be a doper, but let's face it, she's the right kind of doper. Floyd Landis, by contrast seems sad-- broken and crumpled and, well, just not camera-ready. Jones, though, is so damn charismatic and pretty, her story so full of triumph and tragedy that in america there will always be a silver lining in the form of a profit-making TV movie or a reality show or a tell-all book or all of the above: C'mon VH1: "The Superfast Surreal Life of Marion Jones." Get on that!

Where's That Money Going!

2006-08-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

This week an open source journalism project was lanched to investigate congressional earmarks--line-items inserted into a bill to direct funds to a specific project or recipient without any public hearing or review. There are currently 1,867 secret spending earmarks worth more than $500 million in the Labor-Health and Human Services appropriation bill now before Congress. The Sunlight Foundation along with Citizens Against Government Waste, Porkbusters.com, Human Events Online, Club for Growth, the Heritage Foundation, and the Examiner Newspapers mean to do something about it! They have have pulled together a database of the earmarks, complete with an interactive map, and they are asking you to help make sense of the information. An Examiner editorial explains how:

"Check out the earmarks for your state and then call your congressman and ask if he or she sponsored any of your state’s earmarks. If the answer is yes, ask why the congressman’s name isn’t on the earmark. If you recognize the institution designated to receive the earmarked tax dollars, call them and ask them what they intend to do with your money.

Then email us at info@examiner.com with the subject line “Earmarks” and tell us what you found out. The Examiner will be asking more questions about who got the earmarks and why, so your information could be very important. You will be part of an army of citizen journalists determined to shine some much-needed light on spending decisions made behind closed doors by powerful Members of Congress."

It's rare to see Democrats and Republicans, professional and amateur investigators pooling resources. Find out more here.

Watada won't go!

2006-08-17T11:21:00.000-07:00

WireTap Magazine posted a piece today on Lt. Ehren Watada, 28, who is facing indictment and imprisonment for refusing to deploy to Iraq. He faces a pretrial hearing this week.

Watada is the first military officer to face charges for opposing the war and the government seems to be pursuing his prosecution to deter further objection from within the ranks of the Armed Forces. Watada faces a maximum sentence of seven-and-a-half years.

But the military lawyers might have a hard time winning this case. Watada has been straightforward and reasonable throughout. He is no radical, patsy or opportunist. As the Wiretap story makes plain, his motivations fall in line with the highest ideals of the US military code and the laws of war that govern soldier conduct throughout the world, laws that have been strengthend since being disregarded over the last decade or so in places like Bosnia, Rwanda and Sudan, where soldiers who "just followed orders" are now having to live with what they did while dodging investigators from the Hague International War Crimes Tribunal. Watada is right to not want to join that class of soldier.

Here's some of the wiretap story that speaks to Watada's motivations:

After the Sept. 11 attacks, Lt. Watada was moved by a profound sense of duty and patriotism and enlisted in the Army right out of college in 2003. He received no monetary assistance from the military to pay for his education. His first two years in the Army were spent in a tour of duty in South Korea.

"It is a preconception that we have when we join the military that people just blindly follow orders," Lt. Watada said in a phone interview. "But if you can't distinguish between lawful and unlawful orders, the Abu Ghraibs will continue to exist."

Since January, Lt. Watada has twice submitted a formal resignation application. But... the Army maintained he had not fulfilled his obligation. He then offered to serve in Afghanistan, a war he considers unambiguously tied to Al Qaida, but was turned down. He also said he was willing to face a nonjudicial hearing, resign his commission, and accept a less-than-honorable discharge. But this, too, was denied.

Lt. Watada did not apply for conscientious-objector status because he does not oppose all wars, just the war in Iraq.

"I think the people at the top could have pushed for the resignation if they wanted to," he said. "They have kind of expressed surprise that the military did not want to get rid of me quietly."

By comparison, the Administration's actions with regard to US constitutional law, the US military honor code, and the international rules of combat constitute a record of lawyerly shucking and jiving and craven retreat from principle that any schoolyard child could tell you isn't the best approach to winning lasting security.

Watada's case may force more of these issues into the spotlight and spur increased mainstream media debate on Iraq and on the needlessly reckless conduct of the Bush Administration's War on Terror more generally.

Here's a video of Watada making his case.

Fake News and the Feds

2006-08-15T18:14:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post reported today that the FCC has FINALLY launched an investigation into broadcasters who air unattributed video news releases as straight news. The investigation was prompted by Center for Media and Democracy study released in April that found that 77 stations had aired without proper labeling video news releases (or what the center calls “fake news”) produced by General Motors, Master Foods, Pfizer, and Panasonic among other companies. Lucky for the White House, fake news-makers are off the hook. Last year a New York Times report revealed that the White House paid to produce public relations spots for its initiatives and gave them to television stations, many of which aired them as news broadcasts. You can read all about fake news and other horrifying PR-age scandals at the Center for Media and Democracy's PR Watch.

we are utterly alone

2006-08-14T10:07:00.000-07:00

White House spokesman Tony Snow said Friday that President Bush read The Stranger by Albert Camus while on a ten-day vacation at the ranch. Was it the low popularity rating and the upcoming election season that turned the President to perhaps the defining work of existential alienation?

Breitbart noted that Bush was quoting Camus in Europe a year and a half ago and says it's good to hear he finally got around to reading the man's most influential book.

fauxtography

2006-08-13T12:08:00.000-07:00

Last week, Charles Johnson from the Little Green Footballs blog site, exposed a Reuters photo depicting clouds of smoke over buildings in Beirut as being altered. The photo, taken by photographer Adnan Hajj, who worked for Reuters since the early 90s, used the Photoshop clone tool to reproduce smoke, making the image seem more intense than it was in an attempt to influence public opinion. Reuters pulled the photos and fired Hajj.

Somehow, the image managed to pass through the hands of photo editors, yet was called into question by a one-man blogging operation. And the mainstream media look down on bloggers? Funny how bloggers are the ones revealing the real truth.

Bloggers have also called into question photos of the Qana attack with inconsistent time stamps from different photographers. Click for the full story.

primaries semi-update

2006-08-09T14:49:00.000-07:00

The bad news is that outspoken and embattled Representative Cynthia McKinney lost her primary race in Georgia. The good news is that so did Bush patsy Joe Lieberman, who will be replaced on the November ballot in Connecticut by tough-talking liberal Ned Lamont. More good news, from this side of the political spectrum, is that Lamont won by running full-on against Lieberman's support of the war in Iraq, which means Lieberman's loss seems like a preview of coming attractions…

save 1-800-SUICIDE

2006-08-09T01:11:00.000-07:00

1-800-SUICIDE, a suicide prevention hotline which two millions teenagers have called over the last eight years, among which many were part of the LGBT community, is in danger of losing its funding from the government as the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA), a federal agency, plans to operate its own suicide prevention hotline. Why? Because the government wants access to confidential information about those in crisis, information which 1-800-SUICIDE refuses to turn over. As a result, the government refuses to provide the hotline program with funding.

If funding is cut, and the program folds, the youth will lose a valuable resource. This article from the Daily Kos breaks down the implications it can have on the LGBT community.

Want to help? Visit www.save1800suicide.org.

american blackout

2006-08-07T08:35:00.000-07:00

Georgia Democrat, black congresswoman and outspoken critic of the Bush administration and the War on Terror Cynthia McKinney is facing heated Republican-orchestrated opposition in the primaries this week, which is no surprise. The details of the campaign against her are included in a New York Times article/review of American Blackout, the recently released documentary about race-based voting fraud during the Bush years and McKinney's struggle to expose it.

Mark Denning for the Times' All Movie Guide wrote:

Filmmaker Ian Inaba digs into the controversy over the 2000 Florida ballot count and the ways in which race played a hand in the legal decisions that resulted in George W. Bush's appointment as president. Ianba's research leads him to Representative Cynthia McKinney, a congresswoman from Georgia who spearheaded an investigation of the firm that created voter lists for the State of Florida (and had ties to high-ranking Republican figures) and who was also an outspoken opponent of Bush's policies regarding terrorism and the war in Iraq. In the 2002 election, McKinney had reason to believe she had fallen victim to the same corruption she sought to expose when she lost her House of Representatives seat in a hotly contested election. American Blackout received its premiere at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival.

get thee to youth hostel now!

2006-08-03T02:01:00.000-07:00

The recently proposed Abe Lincoln Study Abroad Act seeks to increase the number of American students studying abroad to one million. That's a five-fold increase over 2003-2004, when 191 000 American students studied overseas. Watch out world! Imagine the expanded expat scene in Bali!

In an open letter to the President, Dick Durbin, senator from Illinois and one of the authors of the act, wrote: "The United States is a military and economic superpower, yet it is continually threatened by a serious lack of international competence in an age of growing globalization. Our lack of awareness is now seen as a national liability." ...Um, yeah.

The question is whether the president, who had never left the country before taking office, will take the not-so-subtle suggestion and sign up for a semester abroad after his term as Decider-in-Chief ends. I guess it's never too late for anyone to gain perspective on their country. I propose we revive the Real World by getting a camera crew to follow W around wherever he decides to go. "Yeehaw. How d'yall say terrorist in Greek?"

more from the middle east...

2006-07-30T15:01:00.000-07:00

A photostory and article from www.uruknet.info, a website for "Information from Occupied Iraq," calls to question the weapons used by Israel's military forces and also a first-person narrative from a Lebanese journalist coping with the casualities and life in these war-torn times.

I'd post more of the photos but they're too gruesome. The picture of the three-year-old boy above was one of the few where a victim's face was actually viewable. If you think you can handle viewing these atrocities, then click here.

the children are the future...

2006-07-28T12:56:00.000-07:00

OK, so these images have been running rampant on the web and in the blogosphere for the last few days but in case you missed it...

Aww, isn't that sweet? Cute little Israeli girls writing "From Israel, with love" on tank shells...

I wonder, at what age do they get to fire rounds into Lebanese buildings?

This Show is the News!

2006-07-26T15:03:00.000-07:00

Stephen Colbert's brilliant way with politicians has attracted mainstream media attention again. This time it's because Colbert got Congressman Robert Wexler to say, among other foolish things, "I enjoy cocaine because it's a fun thing to do," during his appearance on The Colbert Report last week. In response to Good Morning America and Today Show pieces on the appearance, The Colbert Report put together a hilarious segment that begs the serious question--What is more fake, the news or the funnies? You can watch it here.

like oil and water

2006-07-23T19:38:00.000-07:00

In his MySpace blog (reprinted on Davey D's forum), Phonte of Little Brother details his experience performing at a southern hip hop festival alongside pop-rap stars Three Six Mafia, Rick Ross, Dem Franchize Boyz, and others. Now for those not familiar with Little Brother, they're, well, in Phonte's words: "three college educated niggas who ain't trappin and/or reppin one particular hood or housing project = The Cosby Show in the eyes of most niggas....real talk."

While most of the other artists at this event make repetitive, catchy, pop-rap that follows the current standard of crunk, Little Brother make conscious hip hop. In fact, their concept album "The Minstrel Show" was a spoof on black artists being forced to put on a show. Their music surely clashed with the collar-poppin, white-tee wearing fans. But did they get booed off stage? Nope, not even that. What Phonte feels was much worse...complete silence.

"I really wonder sometimes if my music is that 'intelligent' or are niggas just that dumb?"

Read more as he analyzes and breaks down today's rap fan.

life in wartime

2006-07-22T10:58:00.000-07:00

Laila El-Haddad calls her blog "Raising Yousuf: a diary of a mother under occupation." She's Palestinian and lives in Gaza. She's lately been to the US and has appeared on NPR. Her blog puts a face on the events we've grown used to reading about and watching on TV, including the events unfolding in Lebanon right now. It also shows in the everyday details of family life, the impossible reality of the politics of the Middle East, the pure whackness of basing anything on the unapologetic desire to see whole other nations, cultures, people simply go away and never come back. That's the path that always ends in border security walls, ethnic cleansing and final solutions, and that makes routine family life-- ie, life-- impossible.

Here's an excerpt:

Things are bad in Gaza. Very bad. Not to mention of course in Lebanon, where Yassine's family lives, in the Wavel refugee camp in Baalbeck, a Hezbollah stronghold.

They, of course, along with all of Lebanon, are blockaded by an air and sea, so Yassine has sort of become a double-refugee now: he can go back neither to Palestine, nor Lebanon. It brings back very bad memories for him, having grown up during the civil war there, and narrowly escaping mass slaughter at the hands of Syrian-backed, Israeli-advised, Phalangists in the Tel Zaatar camp, where his family originally lived, and where his uncle went missing.

Of course, what's happening in Lebanon provides some uncertain relief for Gaza residents, where 82 Palestinians have been killed in the past 12 days, 22 of them children.

I was finally able to reach my Aunt who is doing an amazing job updating her blog under such duress, and who recently published an op-ed about the situation in the Boston Globe. She was dazed and anxious, but had her wits about her. They had not gotten electricity in 24 hours when I spoke to her; people have been standing in long lines to purchase candles.

And of course, Rafh is still closed; 8 people have died waiting to get home. Egypt, following Israeli orders, is refusing to open the gates.

The nights are turning into days, and days into nights, as the sonic booming shocks them awake, shattering windows and terrorizing the population. The stress is taking its toll, but to quote my Aunt, though they are not living with ease, they are living with resolve.

Medicines are also running dangerously low. And to add to the misery, Israeli tanks have blockaded northern Gaza-- where my Aunt lives, and where our house is-- from southern Gaza-- where my 84 year old grandmother lives on her own.

I think of them every day. I still cringe when I see news helicopters; or fireworks; or thunder; Today we had a thunderstorm, and the thunder was so loud it scared Yousuf, who thought it was gunfire and shelling, as I tried to assure him he was safe. But I wondered, inside of myself, does safe have an address?

Bush the Groper

2006-07-19T09:16:00.000-07:00

President Bush's trip to Europe to attend the G8 Summit has done nothing to improve the cowboy's image internationally. And thanks to the Internet (and Jon Stewart last night) we can all watch! During downtime at a G8 meeting he strolls over to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and gives her a neck massage. For anyone who has taken sexual harrassment training her reaction is an unqualified "I'm not comfortable with this." In non-PC speak her body language says "Get your fucking hands off me creep." You can watch the video and more at Crooks and Liars and Alternet.

Live from Iraq

2006-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

While many rappers talk big about toting guns and shooting people in the streets, they'd probably piss themselves if they had to go to war. Not these guys, they've already lived it. Here's a video clip about a group of marines who wrote and recorded "Live from Iraq" in their barracks in the midst of battle in Iraq.

Also, check for "Voices from the Frontline", another collection of material from artists stationed in Iraq.

LIFEbeat update

2006-07-12T15:57:00.000-07:00

The partly homophobe reggae AIDS-awareness concert to be held in New York next week and blogged about here (below) and elsewhere has been canceled. LIFEbeat, the concert sponsor, has conceded to criticism that anti-gay Beenie Man and TOK were perhaps inappropriate messengers for the cause but does so in an embittered, accusatory statement, harshing the bloggers who opposed the homophobe performers by painting the international group of writers and activists as a select group of potentially violent freaks. Nice.

To its credit, LIFEbeat included in its statement this olive branch: "Dialogue is important and LIFEbeat’s staff and board respect the opinions of those who came forward to make their feelings known. We have always and will continue to support the GLBT community." Okay. Alright. Maybe we've all learned something.

beenie boy!

2006-07-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

This here Beenie Man reggae artist is part of the noble crowd of singers dedicating their time and talents to the LIFEbeat concert against AIDS in New York on July 18. Problem is he writes the occasional confusing lyric, like the one where he suggests lynching lesbians. In "Han Up Deh" he sings: "Hang chi chi gal wid a long piece of rope," the term "chi chi" being jamaican slang for gay folk. Another artist on the LIFEbeat bill TOK has the same sort of problem. In "Chi Chi Man" the group encourages burning gay men, which beside being grotesque and medieval is not so good if the point of the benefit concert is to raise awareness about AIDS!

LIFEbeat executive director John Canelli told BET's Keith Boykin Monday morning that his organization knew that Beenie Man and TOK were homophobic artists but decided to do the concert anyway. "We didn't make the decision blindly and we knew there would be controversy."

A coalition of Black lesbian and gay bloggers have launched a worldwide online campaign to cancel performances at the benefit by Beenie and TOK. Jasmyne Cannick is one of them, as are Donald Agarrat, Clay Cane, Terrance Heath, Frank Roberts, Pam Spaulding and Bernard Tarver.

you can't walk into a 7/11 unless you have a slight indian accent

2006-07-11T16:53:00.000-07:00

I heard about this last week but couldn't find much. Thanks YouTube for this incredible display of racism from ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee Senator Joe Biden...

"In Delaware, the largest growth in population is Indian Americans, moving from India. You cannot go to a 7/11 [a chain store] or a Dunkin Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking".

HAHA! Whew, that's good racism. I would keep slapping my knees but the vomit from my disgust interrupted my laughter. Oh, what's that Joe? We took you out of context?

Witness his lame attempt to offer his interpretation of his statement, sans stupid grin...

I'm Dave Chappelle, B*tch!

2006-07-08T19:47:00.000-07:00

The lost episodes of Chappelle's Show premieres tomorrow on Comedy Central, but should fans support it? Chappelle himself calls it a "bully move" by Comedy Central to run episodes not intended for public consumption. And yes, they even rub it in:

"An announcer at the beginning introduces the hosts, cast members Donnell Rawlings and Charlie Murphy, before a live studio audience -- but not before intoning: "Dave Chappelle going once, Dave Chappelle going twice. ... (Bleep) it."

It's mean-spirited and, like the patter between Rawlings and Murphy that follows, not at all funny."

Click here to read the complete article.

As much as I'd like to support Dave, I don't think I can resist not watching the lost episodes.

Patriotism at its Best

2006-07-04T21:08:00.000-07:00

In honor of Independence Day, this remix called “The Abuse of Power,” brilliantly mocks the Motion Picture Association of America's "You wouldn't steal a handbag..." anti-piracy campaign. If you have not seen the original MPAA campaign, check it out here.
Happy 4th!

static bling

2006-07-02T21:45:00.000-07:00

Leonardo Dicaprio just finished up his latest movie, The Blood Diamond, about a smuggler who gets caught up with a diamond syndicate in Africa. The movie aims to shed light on the way the diamond industry funds civil wars in Africa and leads to the slaughter of thousands of men, women, and children.

But wait! The movie could hurt diamond sales! What will the poor diamond industry ever do if people stop buying diamonds?

Yeah, right. Like that will ever happen. If Kanye's "Diamonds from Sierra Leone" didn't have an impact on his millions of fans or any of his celebrity friends, you think a movie starring Luke from Growing Pains is gonna have an affect?

you loot, we prosecute

2006-07-02T20:54:00.000-07:00

The U.S. justice system is hard at work again, putting real criminals behind bars. Three people convicted of looting during Hurricane Katrina were sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Fifteen years? That's it? I can see if they were taking candy bars, but they were taking liquor, beer, and wine! According to our court system, that's a severe criminal offense like killing an 8-year-old, since that's what the father who burned his kid with scalding hot water got sentenced.

an ascap golden note

2006-06-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

The 19th annual ASCAP awards were held Monday night at the Beverly Hilton in LA, a star-studded affair hosted by Ciara. LL Cool J received a Golden Note Award, and Bill Withers, author of hits like "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Lean on Me," took home the Heritage Award.

Accepting his Golden Note, LL free-styled, calling on members of the "fraternity" of music to resist the siren song of celebrity meaninglessness. "Don’t forget to be an artist. Don’t forget to say what you want to say and not what they want you to say." He called on the industry to "create instead of compete" to "leave a legacy of music for the next generation" and a "new renaissance of people."

And what better venue for the message than a music award show-- a place where hierarchy is as tangible as hair extensions and makeup, where you're either one of the somebodies pressed by paparazzi or... well, you ain't.

Withers broke comical for his acceptance: "I would say something profound but LL already said it all." Thunderous laughter and applause.

The event was spectacular but also in parts informal. Some came in jeans. Others, like Destiny's Child singer Michelle Williams, came in full evening attire. Rapper/Producer Missy Elliot kept it unique with a bright orange and sky-blue silky headrap and shirt that matched. Other celeb attendees included: Jagged Edge, Jermaine Dupri, who won Songwriter of the Year, Mary Mary, Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis, Webbie, David Banner, Tank, Chingy, Lil' Mo, New Edition, and Xcape.

Reported by staff whizkid Vanessa Mizell.

Images: (1) LL; (2) and (3) Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams; (4) Terry Lewis; (5) Jagged Edge.

the minstrel show

2006-06-29T22:16:00.000-07:00

Rappers need beef for a healthy rap career. They beef with just about anyone. Most are publicity stunts and others are ridiculous, like rappers Ludacris, 50 Cent, Ice Cube, and others beefing with Oprah claiming she doesn't support the hip hop community and only caters to her large white audience.

Yet when Bill O' Reily forced Pepsi to drop Ludacris as a spokesperson, all he got was a few one-line disses on a few tracks.

But is it Harpo who's catering to a white audience, or these gangsta artists who are putting on the show and wouldn't dare do anything upset The (White) Man who signs their checks?

Here's an article titled We Still Wear The Mask By Dr.William Jelani Cobb that examines just that, offering great analysis on why black rappers perpetuate misogyny and violence towards their own people and community.

turn it off already!

2006-06-28T10:04:00.000-07:00

Who gave U.S. Marine Corporal Joshua Belile permission to (1) compose music (2) play the guitar (3) sing in public (4) do any of those things in front of a digital camera and (5) even sort of resemble mega-cool Pixie’s dude Frank Black? Ugh. Yet another case of bad decision-making on the part of the officer class in Iraq!

So now this guy's lousy folk song "Hadji Girl"-- a crude thought-dream of cultural incomprehension-- is flying around the internet all over the world. The image of Belile above was pulled from a Russian website. I can't read any of the words around the photo but I don't think any of it is good.

The only course of action is a court-martialing and then a showering of the offender with nonstop high-volume recordings of his own bunk singing and strumming-- a no doubt cruel and unusual punishment but as Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld would justify it: "Hey, this isn't some nice guy we're talking about here."

all jocks outta the pool!

2006-06-27T21:11:00.000-07:00

June has been a bad month for social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace as well as for the people who use them to broadcast their debauchery or to stealthily stalk the innocent. First MySpace was sued by a 14-year-old who says she was assaulted by a guy she met there. Then Weight Watchers announced it was pulling its ads on MySpace because it objects to appearing on pages belonging to porn stars. (Porn stars love MySpace.) Then BusinessWeek ran a worried Q & A with new MySpace security czar Hemanshu Niga. And now Kent State University has announced that student athletes have until August to take down their Facebook profiles, citing concern for both the safety of the athletes and the reputation of the school. A story about the ban in the Columbia Dispatch leads with these oddly mild examples:

“One student chose a picture of himself shirtless holding a Miller Lite can for his profile photo. He's on the baseball team. Another belongs to the 'My cell phone is my best friend when I'm drunk in Kent' group and lists skinny-dipping as an interest. She competes in track and field.”

Miller Lite and skinny dipping? Is the university really ready to take on the First Amendment over this? Kent and other universities would save themselves a lot of time, money and effort if they just launched a campaigned to inform college students that grownups-- including parents, cops, teachers, and coaches-- have discovered the Facebook. Surely self-censorship would soon follow.

a huge government victory?

2006-06-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

I don't know how this went relatively unnoticed but it was reported on June 15 that the Supreme Court ruled that police no longer have to knock on alleged suspects' doors when issued a search warrant.

The article on CNN.com claims this new ruling to be a "huge government victory." Really? Who does this benefit?

The difference between knocking before kicking your door down and just storming into your house unannouced may not be that big but it raises concerns about privacy, intrusion and excessive force.

Yesterday cops had to knock, today they're just barging in, tomorrow they're throwing grenades through your window.

And if I was a cop, I'd be pretty concerned about my safety going into a suspected criminal's house unannounced. You think he's gonna offer tea and crackers? Or grab a gun and shoot at the intruders, like anyone who had their front door kicked in by a group of armed men would do? Someone's getting shot and killed, like these unfortunate victims of police screw-ups. (WARNING: viewing this list of innocent men, women, and children may cause you to dig up your Ice-T "Cop Killer" cassete and drive to the nearest police station with a baseball bat and molotov cocktails.)

What's worse is that with Justices Alito and Roberts sitting on the Supreme Court, this is just a taste of what's to come.

evil stewart

2006-06-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post editorializes today on the dangers of encouraging critical thought in young people, citing a study that says the 48 percent of college-age people (that’s a lot!) who watch the Daily Show "develop cynical views about politics and politicians that could lead them to just say no to voting." Um, maybe. On the other hand, those "cynical" views could lead them to vote. Or to work to change the system. Or to dance around in a circle chanting whoo-haa-booey!

Post Columnist Richard Morin is nostalgic for something that never was. "Lets get back to serious news!" "Let's get back to trustworthy politicians!" It's a common problem for older folks who don't watch the Daily Show.

p2p planet

2006-06-22T15:32:00.000-07:00

The National Research Council today came out with a strong statement of scientific fact: "There is sufficient evidence from tree rings, retreating glaciers, and other "proxies" to say with confidence that the last few decades of the 20th century were warmer than any comparable period in the last 400 years."

Read the news release and full reporthere.

This will come as no surprise to most of us and none of us who have seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. To encourage others to see the film and slow global warming, the website Share the Truth employs cutting-edge P2P political strategy and film marketing that, among other things, allows people to sponsor others to go see the movie-- by simply paying the ticket price or footing the bill for travel to a town where the film is showing (although in the latter case it would undoubtedly be better for the planet just to wait for the DVD or, I'm just going to say it, download the thing in a few months).

co-opting consumers of color

2006-06-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

You’d think that as media conglomerates have recognized the money to be made by catering to racial and ethnic communities, that media products might grow more diverse. But just the opposite, reports Makani Themba-Nixon in the last issue of the Nation:

"Flagship properties that were once trumpeted as success stories in black ownership--BET and Essence magazine--have become little more than shadows of their parent companies. The outlets' makeovers were designed to garner greater "synergy" and brand recognition for their corporate masters. As a result, BET looks more and more like VH1, complete with dog-eat-dog "reality" shows, cloying countdown lists and decade retrospectives that work to remake history--even black history--into trivia."

Many say media titans have been homogenizing their products and thus culture around the world for several decades now. The fact that it took them so long to recognize the value of BET and Essence audiences is perhaps more surprising than the bland culture-lite products they're now serving up for those same audiences.

benefiting mr. kite

2006-06-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

The LA police department’s drones have reportedly taken to the sky over the city. Q: How will I know when I see one? A: Well, you know that thing that’s been "stuck" in the tree outside your window for the last fifteen minutes? Well that’s one of them and it’s streaming your life live, Truman Show-style, to the sheriff’s MySpace account. You’re one of his 10 million special friends.

At $30,000 each, the sheriff’s office says the drones are a steal, because helicopters cost $2 million a piece, not including barrels of fuel and landing pads and maintenance. Here’s Aviation Week on drones: "They’re inaudible from 1,000 ft. or less, can detect targets under trees, distinguish facial features from 4 naut. mi., and automatically recognize target vehicles."

Maybe we could get some of these drone-kites to teach our “targets” when the targets are still preschool age, before they become adult "targets under trees" or the people driving "targeted vehicles"?

save screech!

2006-06-21T00:13:00.000-07:00

North Korea is testing missiles, Dan Rather quit, but screw all that...Screech is about to be homeless! Say it ain't so!

Dustin Diamond, who as "Screech" on the early 90s teen comedy series Saved by the Bell, provided millions of kids with years of afterschool cornball humor (and if you wake up early enough, you can still catch reruns on TBS). In fact, I'm willing to bet this is old news to most of you but, like every former child star, he's broke and is losing his home and is selling t-shirts to raise money to prevent foreclosure at www.getdshirts.com

He's also selling banner "brick" spaces for $1,000, so I guess he's losing his mind too. He's been leading a campaign to get his home back. He was recently on the Howard Stern show and has been getting a lot of unnecessary press (like this blog posting).

I don't know what's worse -- Diamond's situation, or that people as pathetic as myself care. But hey, the man kept us entertained in our adolescent years and taught us how not to dress -- the least you can do is buy a t-shirt.

a howard dean of an mp3

2006-06-19T21:03:00.000-07:00

Last week the song God Save the Internet was released online by Broadband, a folksie trio--Kay Hanley (pictured here), Jill Sobule and Michelle Lewis--now poised, if the swiftly climbing number of downloads is any measure, to rob the heart of America from the Dixie Chicks. Or not. The song seeks to inspire direct political action, demanding listeners to rally around the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, which seeks to ensure continuing fair access to the web for all. Problem is it's a terrible song, even as a mocking tribute to... who exactly, Joan Baez? Clearly the song is tongue-in-cheek, and it is good for a laugh, but really, can't we get Radiohead to contribute for chrissake? We need a musical heavy-hitter behind this fight! Wasn't that the lesson of Howard Dean: Right strategy, wrong guy?

hip-hop pbs

2006-06-19T21:00:00.000-07:00

Still two weeks to tune in Jeff Chang at the American ID Series, where he's flexing interpretive muscle on contemporary evolving US culture. Here's how he started off on June 9: "Hip-hop provided a way for invisible young people to make themselves known, to represent themselves." Go Jeff! In this forum, he may be communicating to people who have never given any of this real thought. So go Jeff again!

download roundup

2006-06-19T11:53:00.000-07:00

Stream it now. Not later!

First get your M.I.A. groove on. Then check out Brit hipster girl Lilly Allen, who's breaking out everywhere including here.Then you can go get dreamy at Saddle Creek in Omaha, Nebraska: click to stream Azure Ray’s first song and then from the stream-list you can fill a half-hour with interior gems from Bright Eyes, Broken Spindles, Orenda Fink, and Maria Taylor. Finish up by climbing on board Yay Area hyphy radio hosted by DJ Backside.

Now you're all filled up for the week. Enjoy!

mainstream hip hop tackles serious global issue: Cristal champagne

2006-06-16T12:42:00.000-07:00

In a recent issue of the Economist, the managing director of Louis Roderer Cristal, an expensive and popular champagne favored by millionairre rap stars, announced that the company's association with hip hop is "negative attention." Now Jay Z is boycotting Cristal after already giving them years of free advertising from name-dropping it in most of his hits.

"Cheap" Cristal starts at several hundred dollars -- the average rap fan can't afford it. The only people who've been getting played this whole time are rich materialistic rappers who've been giving free advertising to and supporting companies that don't care about what they represent, and at the same time encouraging fans to foolishly throw money away. (I had a friend who bought a $600 bottle of Cristal for his wedding. A $12 Korbel woulda done it for me.) This is just a repeat of the Hillfiger incident years ago when it was announced he didn't want minorities to wear his clothes while Wu-Tang and others kept referencing the brand in their song.

With as much pull as Jay-Z has, he's going to boycott a damn champagne company?! I mean, I'd feel stupid too if I spent hundreds of thousands of dollars only to be slapped in the face but damn Jigga, ain't there something IMPORTANT to protest?

Hopefully this will be a wake up call for all of the rap stars who should be putting money into the communities they came from and the ghettos they glorify rather than multi-billion dollar companies who laugh while they make money for them. (Slavery's never been this easy -- they don't even have to crack a whip!) Let's hope they don't just switch back over to Dom P.

If you have no idea about what this blog is about, here's a detailed article from 2004 about hip hop and champagne. Read and laugh/cry at the ridiculous amounts of money they spend.

Booty Check

2006-06-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

Earlier this month our friends at playahata blogged the opening of World Cup in Germany and the racist nature of soccer in Europe. Included was a mad time-lapse photo of Toni Braxton singing the grand opening number with the stiff opera quartet Il Divo. Braxton was fantastic and not just because her tiny skirt ended up flapping over her waist in the breeze while, unfazed, she tried to push it back over her naked curves, referencing for all the world as iconic an American pop-culture moment as there is: Marilyn Monroe standing over the windy subway grate in the Seven Year Itch.

The takeaway: although the political "head" of our culture may be estranging the world, our pop-culture "booty" is busy reminding everybody what they still love about us. Yaaay Toni! Thanks for that.

MurdochSpace.com

2006-06-13T16:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, no more posts about MySpace after this, I promise. Everyone and their pet has a damn MySpace page and it's supposedly great for networking. But has anyone ever read the fine print?

"By displaying or publishing ("posting") any Content, messages, text, files, images, photos, video, sounds, profiles, works of authorship, or any other materials (collectively, "Content") on or through the Services, you hereby grant to MySpace.com, a non-exclusive, fully-paid and royalty-free, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense through unlimited levels of sublicensees) to use, copy, modify, adapt, translate, publicly perform, publicly display, store, reproduce, transmit, and distribute such Content on and through the Services."

The New York Daily News wrote an article about it here with comments from a spokesperson saying they're going to rewrite the terms of service.

fader

2006-06-13T11:30:00.000-07:00

Fader magazine is probably the lead vehicle right now in the business of commodifying cool. Reading it twists you up: "I'm a fan; I’m repulsed; I’m both!" Fader is the bad boy with the hot car, the yucky girl with the perfect smile. You want it but it's not good for you.

So, for instance, last week the Fader staff blogged Jamaica Style Week 06, a week-long fashion show in Kingston put on by "Saint International Modeling Agency and whole bunch of other yardies…" The photos posted on the site say it all: beautiful Jamaicans, African-inspired designs, primary colors-- the clothes are cool looking and partly because they suggest what a more inclusive, "ruder," expanded couture culture might look like. And of course chilling in Kingston for a week probably didn’t suck either. So you think: "Yaay Fader! Way to go!" But then you look again, pause, and think: "Oh no you don’t Fader. This is just more of the same-- skinny girls and gawkers, colonial commodification of the exotic, a billion-dollar industry tapping consumer weakness and neuroses. Does Jamaica need that? Does anybody?"

Fader confuses: it talks fancy to you but treats you like a wannabe lover. I don’t know what I feel from one page to the next. Is anyone with me on this? Anybody?

Email from an American overseas on the death of Zarqawi

2006-06-09T11:21:00.000-07:00

Here's an account of the morning of Zarqawi's death that was posted on a MySpace bulletin (MySpace and YouTube are probably the best things to happen to the internet since Al Gore). It's a nice little slice of a soldier's daily life...

From: "Travis Gluesenkamp"

Date: Thu, 08 Jun 2006 07:05:33 -0500

Holy cow. at 1200 our time I was laying in bed. I woke up cause I heard a few gunsots. as I was putting my boots on I heard more gun fire. then a machine gun. I grabbed my weapon and ran to the roof thinking we were being over run. I got to the roof and bullets were flying every where. the was shooting in all directions. It sounded like the entire city was fighting its self. some rounds hit right were I was taking cover. I got a little worried cause I forgot to put on my body armor and helmet. I was just up there in a tshirt. So we got hunkered down and were looking to see who was shooting at us. we couldn't see anyone, but we could hear where it was comming from, and the rounds were still hitting around us. then over the radio we heard thet they killed zarqawi. the y were shooting to celebrate. the IP and Iraqi army were shooting every bullet they had. We went back inside because it was getting to dangerous to stay outside. plus we cant shoot them because they arn't firing "at" us. the shooting went on for a half hour, and just as it was winding down the insugents started to mortar us. I guess they weren't as happy about his death. So needless to say it was a wild morning.

guilty til proven innocent

2006-05-16T15:06:00.000-07:00

A man coerced into confessing to murder in 1996 will be freed after DNA tests found the blood of another convicted murderer in prison.

"Mr. Warney appears poised to join a roster of people who confessed to crimes they had not committed, a phenomenon whose size has been one of the startling revelations of the DNA era." Full article here.

Makes you wonder how many others were placed in similar situations? Time to reinvestigate the West Memphis Three case.

If you only read one blog READ THIS!

2006-05-16T12:11:00.000-07:00

Winston McCuen thinks black people are savages. He even admits that slavery was a good thing.

To McCuen, black people deserved this sort of taming because they are from the jungles and, as a whole, obviously genetically inferior.

"Intellectually, yes they are," said McCuen to a local news station. "This has been confirmed over and over, and this is a generalization. Again, there are some blacks who are more intelligent than individual whites. But as a rule, that is true. I-Q tests prove it over, and over and over."

But the worst part?

This guy is a Latin teacher at Brookland-Cayce High School in South Carolina. He got fired from his previous teaching gig for refusing to take a confederate flag off of the wall.

Isn't it nice to know he is working closely with our youth? I really, really hope this nut is not tenured.

Click here to see the nonsense

No news is good news from the border

2006-05-15T13:23:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush is planning to send thousands of U.S. troops to the U.S.-Mexico border,
THIS ARTICLE reported.

Some argue that we are stretching our military way too thin. And how will this affect our relationship with the Mexican government?

In related news, one woman suggests using DNA to control immigration into the U.S. with THIS idea.

Not an easy exit for 2006 seniors

2006-05-11T10:31:00.000-07:00

Roughly 48,000 high school seniors might not graduate in 2006, because they didn't pass the California High School Exit Exam.
However, a group of advocates is suing the state of California over the issue, claiming schools have not adequately prepared those students and they should be allowed to graduate.

THIS argument claims that the education system has failed those students, and they should be allowed to graduate regardless of exit exam results.

THIS piece claims that educators should stick to the standards no matter what.

What I'm wondering is, why did it take so long for folks to file a law suit? The exit exam has been around for several years, and all educators have known about the 2006 deadline all along. Why wait until the last minute to raise the issue?
And, keep in mind that the test consists of 8th-grade level math and 9th- and 10th-grade level English.

And, the pending lawsuit doesn't adequately address the needs of English Language Learners, who make up a large portion of those 48,000 students. THIS article addresses the issue.