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Saturday, December 27, 2003
Astroturfing: faux "grass-roots" sentiment, strewn across the letters to the editor sections of small newspapers throughout the country. Check out these two samples, from Josh Marshall:From "Kevin Manix" in Las Vegas:
As a nation, we have watched helplessly as parts of America were devastated by wildfires that displaced families, ruined communities and took many lives. In the past two years alone, forest fires burned nearly 11 million acres. President Bush understands the necessity to manage forest and rangelands to protect the land and prevent further destruction caused not only by fires, but also disease and infestation of insects.
From "William R. Stogner" in Hattiesburg:
As a nation, we have watched, helplessly, as parts of America were devastated by wildfires that displaced families, ruined communities and took lives. In the past two years alone, over 145,000 fires burned nearly 11 million acres. The president understands the necessity to manage forest and rangelands to protect the land and prevent further destruction caused not only by fires, but also by disease and infestation of insects. There were five of them, using exactly the same phrasing. And this isn't the only one. Icky, icky, icky.
posted by jeev |
3:03 PM |
 
Friday, December 26, 2003
What it's like here, now:
From the Cal Lawrence Hall of Science, via Beastblog
posted by jeev |
7:06 PM |
And from the same site, Oooh, trippy.
posted by jeev |
10:59 AM |
Agit-Flash. A little over the top towards the end, but pretty damn impressive.
Via a list-serve.
posted by jeev |
10:55 AM |
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
Update on the Park Service's "update": gays to stay in, but:As part of its update, the National Park Service plans to add scenes including rallies by the Promise Keepers, a fundamentalist Christian men's group, and by pro-life groups to the video.
To do so, however, may not be historically accurate after all. Those rallies did not occur at the Lincoln Memorial or even on the nearby Mall, said Bill Line, a spokesperson for the National Park Service.
Line told the Gay.com/PlanetOut.com Network that the pressure to replace gay and pro-choice images with Christian and pro-life scenes comes from conservative Kansas Republican congressman Todd Tiahrt.
In a letter to the National Park Service last February, Tiahrt objected to the portions of the video that depict gays and a National Abortion Rights League rally, Line said. Tiahrt is "in discussion" with the park service about adding the new scenes, Line said.
The 8-minute video, on public display since 1995, depicts images of a wide variety of events that took place at the Memorial, including black civil rights marches and anti-war demonstrations. The footage of gay rights lasts about 13 seconds, and the pro-choice footage lasts about 16 seconds, Line said. And, oh yeah,The National Park Service has been fighting a lengthy legal battle to continue to display an 8-foot cross in California's Mohave National Preserve, and has reinstalled plaques with Biblical verses along the rim of the Grand Canyon.
They have also endorsed the sale at Park Service bookstores of a creationist text, "The Grand Canyon: A Different View," which argues that, despite geological evidence to the contrary, the canyon was "created" several thousand years ago.
posted by jeev |
9:41 AM |
Tuesday, December 23, 2003
Cary Doctorow on the Future: The last twenty years were about technology. The next twenty years are about policy. It's about realizing that all the really hard problems -- free expression, copyright, due process, social networking -- may have technical dimensions, but they aren't technical problems. The next twenty years are about using our technology to affirm, deny and rewrite our social contracts: all the grandiose visions of e-democracy, universal access to human knowledge and (God help us all) the Semantic Web, are dependent on changes in the law, in the policy, in the sticky, non-quantifiable elements of the world. We can't solve them with technology: the best we can hope for is to use technology to enable the human interaction that will solve them. Via Kotte.org.
posted by jeev |
8:16 PM |
I hope this is an exaggeration. Alas, given what Dubya's crew is capable of, it may not be.All images of gay gatherings at national sites, including the Millennium March on the Washington Mall have been ordered removed from videotapes that have been shown at the Lincoln Memorial since 1995 according to a civil service group.
Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER) says that the directive came from National Parks Service Deputy Director Donald Murphy. Murphy is said to have been concerned about pictures in the video that showed same-sex couples kissing and holding hands after conservative groups complained.
The Millennium March held in 2000 to bring attention to LGBT civil rights issues drew tens of thousands of gays and their supporters to the mall for one of the biggest demonstrations since the civil rights and anti-war marches of the 1960s.
Also ordered cut from the tape were scenes of abortion rights demonstrations at the memorial, and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations "because it implies that Lincoln would have supported homosexual and abortion rights as well as feminism."
In their place, the Park Service is inserting scenes of the Christian group Promise Keepers and pro-Gulf War demonstrators though these events did not take place at the Memorial in what Murphy calls a "more balanced" version. From Gay365.com.
posted by jeev |
1:05 PM |
Monday, December 22, 2003
Shotguns in pickups good, but this is Evil:A Texas housewife is in big trouble with the law for selling a vibrator to a pair of undercover cops, and the Brisbane vibrator company she works for says Texas is an "antiquated place'' with more than its share of "prudes.''
Joanne Webb, a former fifth-grade teacher and mother of three, was in a county court in Cleburne, Texas, on Monday to answer obscenity charges for selling the vibrator to undercover narcotics officers posing as a dysfunctional married couple in search of a sex aid.
Webb, a saleswoman for Passion Parties of Brisbane, faces a year in jail and a $4,000 fine if convicted.
posted by jeev |
9:40 AM |
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