LiP Media Blog

This Week's Picks:

1. Red-State America Against Itself
   Kansas, once part of the great progressive heart of America, is now a conservative "red" state. How liberalism lost Kansas – and a whole lot of working-class America with it.
   Thomas Frank | tomdispatch.com
   http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=1551
   
   
2. Welcome to the Matrix
   Inside the Government’s Secret, Corporate-Run Mega-Database
   Madeleine Baran | The NewStandard
   http://newstandardnews.net/content/?action=show_item&itemid=662
   
   
3. The New Radicalism
   David Solnit's new book is a manual to help movements develop a strong clear analysis of what's wrong and why, a collection of visions of positive alternatives, and a resource and inspiration for strategies on getting the world we want. ***See Event Listing, below***
   Rachel Neumann | AlterNet
   http://www.alternet.org/story/19308/
   
   
4. Blackwashing
   Scratch the surface of a black conservative group and you find a vast right-wing conspiracy
   Joshua Holland | Gadflyer
   http://gadflyer.com/articles/?ArticleID=173
   
   
5. AUDIO | Guns
   Americans who love their guns. And the Americans who love them.
   This American Life
   http://www.thislife.org/pages/descriptions/97/81.html
   
   
6. Financing the Election
   This week, John Kerry accepts the Democratic nomination to run for United States President at the Fleet Center, a sports and entertainment arena named after the powerful FleetBoston Corporation, the biggest donor to Kerry's Congressional career.
   Bill Messler | CorpWatch
   http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=11460
   
   
7. AUDIO | An Anarchist Perspective
   Does anarchism demand an end to all authority? And what does anarchism bring to anti-capitalist resistance? "Against the Grain" host C.S. Soong continues his conversations about this underdiscussed line of thought and activism.
   Cindy Milstein | Against the Grain (KPFA)
   [Note: news stories at beginning of clip are from July 7 - you can fast forward!]
   MP3: http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?server=209.81.10.18&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20040707-Wed1200.mp3
   
   
8. How to Steal an Election: The Green Version, 2004
   We all know what happened four years ago. Arguably 2000's vote-rigging and Supreme Court usurpation of power had to be the most undemocratic event in the history of presidential politics...until last month, that is.
   Michael Donnelly | Counterpunch.org
   http://www.counterpunch.org/donnelly07102004.html
   
   
9. BOOK REVIEW | A World of Our Own Making: Medical Enhancement and the Pursuit of Happiness
   The Pursuit of Perfection: The Promise and Perils of Medical Enhancement
   by Sheila Rothman and David Rothman
   reviewed by Carl Elliot | Dissent
   http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/su04/elliot.htm
   
   
10. T.G.I.F., Amen
    The following prayers were distributed by the Industrial Christian Fellowship, a “cross-church Christian think-tank” based in Croydon, England. The Fellowship claims that “surveys have revealed that accountants, those in manufacturing, banking, and commerce, stockbrokers, and fund managers ... are seldom mentioned in church prayers,” and they issued eleven liturgies in an attempt to remedy that gap.
    Harper's
    http://www.harpers.org/TGIFAmen.html
    
    
11. My Big Beef with Big Media
    How government protects big media – and shuts out upstarts like me. A capitalist argument against media monopoly.
    Ted Turner | Washington Monthly
    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0407.turner.html
    
    
12. BAY AREA EVENT | Global Liberation:
    How to Uproot the System and Build a Better World

BOOK RELEASE PARTY:
Wednesday, July 28, 7pm
UFCW Local 648 Union Hall
1980 Mission @ 16th/15th
FREE

Featuring contributing activist-authors: Chris Crass, Van Jones, Ramsey Kanaan, Elizabeth Betita Martinez, Rachel Neumann, Patrick Reinsborough and Tom Wetzel, PLUS Street Theater by Antonia Juhasz and editor David Solnit of Art and Revolution with composer, artist and Punk Rock Orchestra violinist Carey Lamprecht

- Media Picks compiled and edited by Brian Awehali and Erin Wiegand

Posted by brian at 01:28 AM | Comments (0)

July 26, 2004

07.09.2004 | More bad news about Mad Cow; What "Fahrenheit 9/11" Misses; Mushrooms Rock

LiP Media Picks
"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

July 9, 2004 Edition

THiS WEEK: A stellar online exhibit exploring how photography makes us see race; more bad news about Mad Cow; "God Rocks!"; artist Sarah Jones talks about her run-ins with the FCC; why "Fahrenheit 9/11" may ultimately be a conservative movie; the growing momentum behind medical marijuana legalization; a devious rabbit tricks Bush into signing a gun ban law; the startlingly diverse uses of mushrooms; and how think tanks are trying to kill the open source software movement.

This Week's Picks:

1. ONLINE EXHIBIT | Only Skin Deep: Changing Visions of the American Self
   This groundbreaking exhibition examines how photography has made us see race. It includes over 200 historical and contemporary images from a wide range of genres that date from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. Superb.
   International Center of Photography
   http://www.icp.org/osd/preview/
   
   
2. Mad Cow: Worse Than You Think
   In December, a US Department of Agriculture (USDA) veterinarian discovered that a cow imported from Canada into Washington state tested positive for the invariably fatal Mad Cow disease. Two months later, the USDA quietly concluded that it had failed to find as many as 80 animals from the same herd that may also have been infected. The admission of failure, drowned out by a ridiculous Super-Bowl-related controversy, slipped nearly unnoticed past the public.
   Chris Clarke | Earth Island Journal
   http://www.earthisland.org/eijournal/new_articles.cfm?articleID=884&journalID=79
   
   
3. God Rocks!
   The following was culled from articles in Grand Canyon: a Different View, edited by Tom Vail and published by Master Books last year. Last summer the National Park Service approved the book, which presents a creationist view of the formation of the Grand Canyon, for sale in park bookstores and gift shops. In July three bronze plaques bearing biblical verses were reinstated to public viewing areas on the Canyon’s South Rim, despite advice from the Interior Department that such religious displays violate the First Amendment.
   Harpers
   http://www.harpers.org/GodRocks.html
   
   
4. INTERVIEW | Don't Get Too Comfortable
   New York's fearless impersonator, Sarah Jones, talks about her mix of humor and politics, and her battles with the FCC.
   Joshua Wolf Shenk | Mother Jones
   http://www.motherjones.com/arts/qa/2004/07/07_100.html
   
   
5. INTERVIEW | Howard Zinn on the Role Of Artists In A Time Of War
   David Barsamian | Sun Magazine
   PDF: http://www.thesunmagazine.org/343_Zinn.pdf
   
   
6. Stupid White Movie: What Michael Moore Misses About the Empire
   I have been defending Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" from the criticism in mainstream and conservative circles that the film is leftist propaganda. Nothing could be further from the truth; there is very little left critique in the movie. In fact, it's hard to find any coherent critique in the movie at all.
   Robert Jensen | Counterpunch.org
   http://www.counterpunch.org/jensen07052004.html
   
   
7. The Drive to Legalize Picks Up
   The movement toward ending America's irrational marijuana prohibition is building momentum. What's needed now is courageous leadership to take it to the next level.
   Ethan A. Nadelmann | AlterNet
   http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/19174/
   
   
8. Devious Rabbit Tricks Bush Into Signing Gun Ban
   The nation's sweeping new gun-control legislation is the result of a confidence trick pulled on President Bush by a devious rabbit, White House sources said Tuesday. The "Coney Act," which Bush signed into law Monday, prohibits the sale or ownership of handguns and semi-automatic weapons and enacts harsh penalties for the hunting of small game, most notably rabbits.
   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/news/index.php?issue=4027&n=1
   
   
9. Ford Gets an 'F' for Fuel Efficiency
   Two groups launch a nationwide campaign to tell Ford Motor Co. to clean up its act and to encourage Americans to declare independence from oil.
   Kari Lydersen | AlterNet
   http://www.alternet.org/envirohealth/19148/
   
   
10. Mushroom with a View
    Washington’s Paul Stamets is a downright visionary. He sees the lowly mushroom as the Next Big Thing for the future of our ecology — and, get this, one of the most vital pieces of our national security. It’s all in the power of the fungus organisms.
    Silja Talvi | Evergreen Monthly
    http://www.dragonflymedia.com/em/em2007/mushroomview2007.html
    
    
11. When Think Tanks Attack
    Australian blogger Tim Lambert has taken a closer look at some of
    the think tanks that have emerged as critics of open source
    software, which threatens Microsoft's position in the marketplace.
    "Why are all these think tanks so down on Open Source?" Lambert
    asks. "..I was able to detect a common theme to all their criticism. They all seem to be funded by Microsoft."
    John Lott’s Unethical Conduct
    http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~lambert/blog/computers/tanks.html
    
    
12. PROJECT HIGHLIGHT | Involver
    An alliance of independent organizations, venues and artists who are pissed off about the state of our country and are facilitating a new political movement with two solutions: 1. Convincing our generation that we have to get involved in politics in order to fix the big problems. 2. Offering ways to take action that will make the country work for us. We can just get pissed, or we can get involved.
    http://www.involver04.org/

- Media Picks compiled and edited by Brian Awehali

Posted by brian at 02:36 PM | Comments (0)