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For Neda: Death to Fascism in Iran and Worldwide
06.10.2010
11:18 am
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Opposition leaders in Iran have called off demonstrations on the anniversary of the contested June 11 2009 national election that led to the unrest that launched the pro-democracy Green movement there. Meanwhile, amidst the speculation as to whether that movement is dead, the Iranian government is doing what it can to squelch the dissemination of For Neda, HBO’s documentary about Neda Agha-Soltan. Agha-Soltan was the young Tehranian woman whose shooting death during a street demonstration was captured on video and became a symbol of the heart-rending struggle against Iran’s authoritarian regime. Here’s the full doc, dedicated to the people’s fight against fascism worldwide.

 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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06.10.2010
11:18 am
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From Contras to Crack: The Saga of Fawn Hall
06.08.2010
05:33 pm
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Twenty-three years ago today, Fawn Hall became the most famous secretary in America. On June 8, 1987 Hall testified in the Iran-Contra hearings  to helping her boss Lt. Col. Oliver North shred documents having to do with the affair, in which senior Reagan administration officials facilitated arm sales to Iran in order to fund the Nicaraguan contras.

According to Hall’s unsubstantiated Wiki entry, that wasn’t her only lapse of judgment:

Fawn Hall dated Contras politician Arturo Cruz, Jr. In one mishap, she transposed the digits of a Swiss bank account number, resulting in a contribution from the Sultan of Brunei to the Contras being lost. On November 25, 1986, she smuggled confidential papers out of her employer’s office hidden inside her leather boots…

Life after the hearings proved just as interesting for the late-20s Hall, who predictably pursued a modeling career and eventually met and married former post-Morrison Doors manager and archetypal L.A. music business maven Danny Sugerman. The Inside Edition clip below—hosted by a then-second-tier Bill O’Reilly—provides a snapshot of mid-‘90s tabloidism as the sordid strands of politics, drugs and entertainment tangle together deliciously. Sugerman later died of lung cancer in 2005 at age 50.

 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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06.08.2010
05:33 pm
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‘Crazy’ conspiracy theories of the Arab World vs the American mainstream media!
05.26.2010
09:13 pm
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Over at Salon today, Glenn Greenwald has posted a terrific, take no prisoners rebuttal (more a demolition) to an article published in the NY Times about how the citizens of Pakistan harbor dark and paranoiac thoughts about the United States, and of course, Israel (and India). It’s a well-established fact that some absolutely insane conspiracy theories are widely believed by the Arab man in the street. Even elite media types—people who travel a lot for work—fall prey to and propagate such memes—like the long discredited anti-Semitic text Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which was made into a TV mini-series in Egypt. Yes, it’s safe to conclude that utterly false, and quite unhelpful conspiracy theories about the USA are common currency in the Arab world… but… but what about the batshit crazy stuff Americans believe about the Middle East, Islam and Arabs?

From Greenwald:

Initially, it’s worth asking how these “conspiracy theories” compare to this: from the front page of The New York Times, September 8, 2002: 

More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb, Bush administration officials said today. . . . In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium. . . . An Iraqi defector said Mr. Hussein had also heightened his efforts to develop new types of chemical weapons. An Iraqi opposition leader also gave American officials a paper from Iranian intelligence indicating that Mr. Hussein has authorized regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons to put down any Shiite Muslim resistance that might occur if the United States attacks.

*Ahem*

He goes on to give example after example of mind-numbing misstatements of fact, fear of the other—and just plain awful reporting—all courtesy of America’s chattering classes, i.e. the folks who are supposed to be better informed than the public, the media elites.

It’s not hard to conclude that there are extreme misconceptions on both sides of the equation. If you watch, say, Al Jazeera in English (which is all we really have access to) it’s a pretty measured news organization, much more BBC than Fox News, that’s for sure. But look at our media here and the flouting of woefully misinformed—just fucking stupid—people like Sarah Palin as opinion makers. There was an article I came across just today about how the CIA was planning to make a phonied up video of Saddam Hussein screwing a little boy (before abandoning the idea because they realized it wouldn’t have the same taboo shock value over there as it would here!). I mean, this is the shit the CIA admits to! Is there any wonder at why the average Pakistani citizen would feel that the United States is the Great Satan and not trust us?

Paranoia? Or rational fear?

I highly suggest reading Glenn Greenwald’s entire piece, this is just a teaser for it.

Those irrational, misled, conspiratorial Muslims (Salon)
 
In conclusion, here’s a lovely bit of homegrown convoluted thinking… the maker of this video actually seems to believe in his heart that this man is a liberal plant at a Tea party! The Democrats sent him! Blame Obama! (To be clear, the guy is right to fuck with the idiot, but to call him a Democrat plant is quite a leap, I think you’ll agree! Can’t just be a conservative idiot, can he, he’s got to be a liberal plant? Or ACORN! WTF?)
 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.26.2010
09:13 pm
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Striking a pose for “American Able”
05.14.2010
01:44 pm
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From the site of Canadian photographer, Holly Norris:

‘American Able’ intends to, through spoof, reveal the ways in which women with disabilities are invisibilized in advertising and mass media.  I chose American Apparel not just for their notable style, but also for their claims that many of their models are just ‘every day’ women who are employees, friends and fans of the company.  However, these women fit particular body types.  Their campaigns are highly sexualized and feature women who are generally thin, and who appear to be able-bodied.  Women with disabilities go unrepresented, not only in American Apparel advertising, but also in most of popular culture.  Rarely, if ever, are women with disabilities portrayed in anything other than an asexual manner, for ‘disabled’ bodies are largely perceived as ‘undesirable.’  In a society where sexuality is created and performed over and over within popular culture, the invisibility of women with disabilities in many ways denies them the right to sexuality, particularly within a public context.

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Posted by Bradley Novicoff
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05.14.2010
01:44 pm
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An Open-Source History of Mondo 2000
05.13.2010
09:58 pm
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Ken Goffman, R.U. Sirius, also know as Ken Goffman was the editor/co-founder of Mondo 2000, one of the most visionary and influential publications of late 1980s and ’90s. He’s looking to use Kickstarter to finance a “collective memory project” about the magazine and its history, for posterity. It’s certainly a worthy subject to my mind. Goffman’s project would take the form of a physical book and possibly become a documentary, too. Kickstarter has a podcast interview about the project and the history of Mondo 2000.

This project stemmed from your original desire to do a memoir, but seems to have become something much more.

Originally, I had the idea that I could work with the idea of memory and perception in the context of writing a memoir. I probably didn’t remember my life that accurately, and perhaps not that interestingly, but if I made my memoir open-source and brought people who had their own memories of interacting with me in their own lives — during the late ’60s/’70s and the period when I was doing Mondo 2000 and earlier magazines — then something really interesting would come of that. It’d be a literary experiment and an exploration of memory and psychology.  That’s where it started.

On one level it seemed really self-indulgent; in another way, it seemed like a fairly original project.  There’ve been a lot of books where it’s “as told to,” starting with a book called Edie by George Plympton, where they go around and talk to a whole lot of different people and quote them verbatim about some person’s life and what they witnessed.

My feeling was this would dig a little bit deeper, more interactive and more probing. Eventually, largely as a result of thinking about raising capital to get started on Kickstarter, trying to get the equivalent of the small amount book companies give for an advance, I decided I needed to narrow my focus.  People would be interested in doing this just with Mondo 2000 and the magazines that preceded it.  So it was narrowed down to a period from 1984-1997, starting with a magazine called High Frontiers that mutated into Reality Hackers and then Mondo 2000.

Mondo 1995: Up and Down With the Next Millennium’s First Magazine by Jack Boulware (SF Weekly)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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05.13.2010
09:58 pm
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In Soviet Russia, *IT* Lets *YOU* Be
04.21.2010
06:06 pm
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Posted by Jason Louv
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04.21.2010
06:06 pm
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Ashram of Tweets
04.16.2010
12:39 pm
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This had me spitting coffee. It’s Guruji—the Real Social Media guru, who has come from India to Los Angeles, the real birthplace of spirituality and yoga, to enlighten the Tweeters.

(Ashram of Tweets)

(@guruji)

(Thanks, @leashless!)

Posted by Jason Louv
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04.16.2010
12:39 pm
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The iPad will save print? Yeah right!
04.04.2010
08:39 pm
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With all of the iPad hype going on this week, I was surprised that so few pundits were saying what I felt was glaringly obvious: No way in hell is the iPad going to save the ailing magazine and newspaper industry. Did anyone really believe that for a single second anyway? Gimme a break! I already get more than enough distractions for free—no, really guys, my infotainment cup has been runneth overing for a very, very long time now—that there is no way, not a chance—none—that I’m going to subscribe to your magazine or newspaper now that a device I never asked for in the first place has been caused to exist by Steve Jobs. I don’t care what your new iThingee is or how great your marketing people are telling me it’s going to be. If you think what you’ve got is so unique and must-read that I should pay for it, I’ve got news for you, it’s not. It’s a very big Internet out there and as long as 99.99999 percent of it is free, your subscription fee is a self-imposed death sentence, and will not even constitute a revenue trickle let alone a stream.

Witness the recent paywall experiment at New York Newsday. It did not go very well. During the first three months of the paywall, exactly 35 people opted to pay for what they had been previously getting for free. Raise your hands, readers in Long Island, NY, how many of you who plan to buy an iPad also have plans to tap the digital ass of New York Newsday for a monthly fee?

About what I thought: None of you.

Every morning I scan dozens of newspapers around the world for my job at the Los Angeles Times and believe me when I tell you that much of it looks like all the rest of it. Take a gander at the blog rolls at Huffington Post and the Drudge Report. They differ but only slightly. Together they list almost all of the top-flight, “world class” English entrants in the “must read” daily category of news producers and aggregators.  (And no, I don’t seriously include World Net Daily or News Max amongst them just because Matt Drudge does, I’m speaking generally here).

My point is that there are only really a few dozen news organizations worldwide—a hundred tops—that have any real import. Only the ones at the top of the Christmas tree of each day’s information cascade really matter. Everything else follows these sources. Of course there are rogue newsmakers like Perez Hilton who can break a story, but the likes of him are few and far between. There are but a handful of credible, well-run daily news organizations worldwide and beyond them are professional speciality magazines and more or less second-rate information sources. By this I mean the copycat news organizations of the Middle East, Asia and India that largely just regurgitate the Western news organizations output a day later and also the blogs that parse the very same information, dice it and slice it, opine about it and then point back to the original source. It can really start to look quite same-y the more of them you read. In the vast stew pot of information out there, should one chunk drop out behind a paywall, the flavor will remain exactly the same overall, whether or not that chunk is the New York Newsday, US Weekly or Wired magazine.

The $150,000 full page print ad has no equivalent in the online world and THIS is, very simply, the problem defined. Randy Michaels of Tribune hit the nail squarely on the head when he said that the magazine and newspaper industries had traded dollars for dimes in the transition from print to digital. Historically we know how it happened (the infant online ad industry sold very cheaply—they had to starting out—and got stuck with the fee structure), but why in 2010 when everyone has got their face in front of their computer all day long, is online advertising still only worth a fraction of the print equivalent? The static advertisement when displayed in the medium of yesterday that only over 50s read anymore is worth more than the dynamic electronic version? Why is this still the case?

If you ask me, this is what the industry needs top be concentrating on: getting their advertisers to foot the bill, not the public. The public has already spoken on this matter and they are not going to budge on the issue of paying for content on the Internet. That inconvenient yet incontrovertible fact is by now well-established, so what methods remain to monetize news content? If a media cartel formed of News Corp, Time-Warner, the New York Times, Tribune, Gannett and other of the major newspaper players (and indeed many of the online resources linked off the Huffington Post and Drudge Report blog rolls) with the goal of standing together to raise the prices of their online advertising to actually reflect the fact that, as I say, but a few dozen corporations are in the main responsible for the creation of 90% of all news, this might have an astounding effect.

We can say conclusively that the public will not foot the bill, so what is the alternative? I just told you. The worldclass news gathering organizations out there are performing tasks which are of great value to mankind and between them. they have the world’s attention. Should they all stand together and institute a form of collective bargaining with the very same vendors who pay them $150k for print ads and demand the same for access to their online audience—which constitutes a far more valuable aggregation of attention than their geriatric print readership—the industry could survive and even thrive. The subscription/paywall route is one of sure—and swift—extinction.

You can’t run a daily newspaper on 35 paid subscribers. No matter what shiny happy iPad apps the digital strategists are coming up with, no one subscribes to shit anymore under the age of 50. The newspaper media needs to get hip to this fast and not let the supposed iPad revenue model become a distraction.

Posted by Richard Metzger
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04.04.2010
08:39 pm
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French Documentary: People will kill to be on television
03.18.2010
09:12 pm
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Willing to kill for a shot at reality TV fame? A new documentary that aired tonight in France, The Game of Death (Le Jeu Du Mort) featured 80 pathological participants who thought they were taking part in a new reality TV show called Zone Xtreme. They were unwitting participants in a spectacle that closely resembled psychologist Stanley Milgram’s infamous “shocking” experiments of nearly forty years ago that tested how far human obedience could be taken. This is worse.

In the fake show, fake “contestants” played by actors were forced to answer questions. If they answered incorrectly, one of the participants would be asked to give the contestant an electric shock. No shocks were actually administered; the actor contestants pretended to get electrocuted.

Egged on by the beautiful TV hostess and an apparently bloodthirsty studio audience shouting “Punishment!,” only 16 of the 80 participants stopped before reaching the final, lethal 460 volt shock. People apparently kept up the shocks even when the contestant appeared to be dead or unresponsive.

French Documentary Shows Normal People Are Willing to Kill on Television (/Film)

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.18.2010
09:12 pm
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Glenn Beck is losing more and more advertisers
03.11.2010
07:11 pm
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Why in the world would any respectable company want to associate their product with a sociopathic sack of shit like Glenn Beck? And what ad buyer at which advertising agency would be dumb enough in 2010 to tell their client they should be purchasing advertising on the Glenn Beck show?!?! Whoever sold TurboTax on the idea should be drummed out of the advertising business for good. What fucking idiocy.

Nice work over at the StopBeck blog. Note how fast it was for TurboTax to pull out:

On March 9th, TurboTax advertisements began running on Glenn Beck’s show on the Fox News Channel.  Participants in the StopBeck effort promptly sprang to action.  Less than 24 hours later, TurboTax announced that they would be pulling their advertisements from Glenn Beck’s show.

This brings the total number of advertisers to drop Glenn Beck to 120.  On a related note, the broadcast of Glenn Beck’s show in the U.K. has been running without any advertisers for over a month now.

TurboTax’s statement:

Thanks everyone for your feedback, & for reminding us of what we value. We’ve pulled advertising from the Glenn Beck show.

 

 

Posted by Richard Metzger
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03.11.2010
07:11 pm
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