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July 03, 2006
07.03.06 Murdoch & Myspace; Seed Vault in Norway; Kinsey the Entomologist
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July 03, 2006 Edition |
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THiS WEEK: how Rupert Murdoch is developing the world's largest marketing machine, powered by the voluntary labor of millions of people; dumpster diving not just for punks and hobos anymore; construction begins on Norway's "doomsday vault" to house the world's seeds in case of global catastrophe; AFL-CIO undermines workers' self-determination in Haiti and Venezuela; why one of the most famous names in sexuality studies, Alfred C. Kinsey, should also be remembered for his fascinating work as an entomologist; newly-translated documentary of the brutal police attacks on civilians in Atenco, Mexico; $178 million per year being spent in the US on programs to tell girls not to lead their boyfriends on by wearing tight clothes; missing women, "over there" and "over here"; is evolutionary science intrinsically racist?; counting the homeless, or, how to lie with statistics; US now producing half the world's car exhaust; and many more items of interest and amazement in this week's overdue-but-well-worth-the-wait edition of Media Picks.
This Week's Picks:
- We Must Preserve the Earth's Dwindling Resources For My Five Children
Imagine a world devoid of pristine wilderness for my progeny to explore on the weekends in the sport-utility-vehicles of the future. - His Space
With the $580 million purchase of MySpace, News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch is betting he can transform a free social network into a colossal marketing machine, turning MySpace's teeming masses into an advertising, marketing, and distribution vehicle that gives News Corp. a hand on the steering wheel of popular culture worldwide.Spencer Reiss | Wired
http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.07/murdoch.html - Zen and the Art of Dumpster Diving
Capitalism makes you mistrust free time and freeloaders, makes you even mistrust what's free. Every second of every day, shiny ads for shiny stuff persuade you that price equals quality. Scavengers are neither in nor out of that equation, neither suckers (as some would call you) nor outlaws but odd byproducts, skimming the foam off a bloated system that leaks luxury, a wasteful want-then-toss system, the most wonderful system in the world.Anneli Rufus | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/37315/ - Work Begins on Arctic Seed Vault
Dug into a frozen mountainside on the island of Svalbard, Norway, the "doomsday vault" is being prepared to house all known varieties of the world's crops--a safeguard to ensure crop diversity in the event of a global catastrophe.BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/5094450.stm - AUDIO | AFL-CIO Partners to Undermine Self-Determination in Haiti and Venezuela
In this episode: freelance journalist Jeb Sprague and Kim Scipes, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Social Sciences at Purdue University North Central speak with Dennis Bernstein about the international foreign policy of the AFL-CIO's Solidarity Center and its activities in Venezuela and Haiti. Hear how the ACL-CIO leadership supported the Group of 184 in decimating labor unions and depriving thousands of workers of their livlihood. Also revealed is the NED-funded Solidarity Center's blueprint for fueling opposition and fomenting the coups in Chile, Venezuela and Haiti, and undermining democracy and self-determination in Latin America.Flashpoints
http://www.kpfa.org/cgi-bin/gen-mpegurl.m3u?server=157.22.130.4&port=80&file=dummy.m3u&mount=/data/20060613-Tue1700.mp3
TRANSCRIPT: http://upsidedownworld.org/main/content/view/327/1/ - CARTOON | Family Values
Shannon Wheeler | How To Be Happy
http://www.tmcm.com/comics/tmcm060703.gif - Kinsey's Other Report: On Wasps
Of the nearly 18 million insects in the Museum's entomological collections, more than 5 million are gall wasps that were collected by Alfred C. Kinsey. Most remember Kinsey for his groundbreaking studies in human sexuality (commonly known as the Kinsey reports), published in 1948 and 1953, which many credit as heralding the beginning of the sexual revolution. But prior to becoming the doyen of American sexologists, Alfred Kinsey had a distinguished career. As an entomologist.Michael Yudell | Natural History
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1134/is_6_108/ai_55127889 - VIDEO | Atenco: Breaking the Siege
San Salvador Atenco, May 2006. A small town in the suburbs of Mexico City. Two months before the presidential elections, a conflict for land and rights escalates between the population of Atenco and the Mexican government. Few outside of Mexico have seen this footage. The filmmakers present not only the in-the-street shots of police savagely beating "anything that moved," but also clips of the commercial news anchors flagrantly calling out for more repression of the popular movement from the state.Canal 6 de Julio and Promedios
Full: http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco_en.xvid.avi
In three parts:
1 - http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco_en1.mov
2 - http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco_en2.mov
3 - http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco_en3.mov
- INFOGRAPHIC | Election Year Issues
With 33 Senate seats and 435 House seats up for grabs, here are the hot-button issues that will shape the approaching 2006 elections.The Onion
http://www.theonion.com/content/files/images/Infographic-Election-Year-C.article.jpg - Abstinence Double Standard Threatens Girls' Health
The U.S. government has a solution for unwanted pregnancies, AIDS and cervical cancer. It's called abstinence education, and the government funds it to the tune of around $178 million per year. The only problem is that study after study shows that abstinence education has no effect on the rates of premarital sex or STD infection—but it's sure working hard to reinforce traditional gender roles.Jessica Valenti | AlterNet
http://www.alternet.org/story/37956/ - How We See 'Missing Women'
There's a war against women in our cities and on our lonely highways. And while the media focus on terrorists and saving Afghan women "over there," the women "over here" are missing and in many cases, murdered.Yasmin Jiwani | The Tyee
http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/06/21/MissingWomen/ - Dividing the Species: Race, Science and Culture
Does the notion of a continuum between biology and culture have to produce a racist essentialisation of cultural traits? Or can a non-racist evolutionary science help us tackle the return of scientific racism by engaging its claims head on? Or is science itself intrinsically racist? Marek Kohn and Luciana Parisi, two very different proponents of a critical engagement with scientific evolutionary theory, took up Mute's invitation to discuss these issues.An interview with Marek Kohn and Luciana Parisi | Mute Magazine
http://www.metamute.org/?q=en/dividing-the-species-race-science-and-culture - Counting the Homeless
Finding the true number of homeless people in a city is a logistical and political minefield, partly because counting the homeless is an inexact science, and partly because of disputes over how to even define homelessness. Numbers stir emotions, because they're used to symbolize how big a problem is and what sort of moral standing it should have.Roy Rivenburg | LA Times
http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-me-homeless24jun24,1,1805344.story?page=1&coll=la-headlines-politics&ctrack=1&cset=true - US Coup
Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty, Americans—who spent decades war-gaming a Soviet invasion and have taken more recently to daydreaming about "ticking bomb" scenarios—should cast at least an occasional thought toward the only truly existential threat that American democracy might face today. We now live in a unipolar world, after all, in which conquest of the United States by an outside power is nearly inconceivable. Even the best-equipped terrorists, for their part, could dispatch at most a city or two; and armed revolution is a futile prospect, so fearsomely is our homeland secured by police and military forces. To subdue America entirely, the only route remaining would be to seize the machinery of state itself, to steer it toward malign ends—to carry out, that is, a coup d'état. - US Produces Half of World's Car Exhaust
The United States represents 5% of the world's population but drive almost a third of its cars, which in turn account for nearly half the carbon dioxide pumped out of exhaust pipes into the atmosphere each year, according to a report that also found the average US car to get less than 20mpg.Julian Borger | The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1808314,00.html - The Great Grain Robbery by Agribusiness MNC's
As the wheat ripened in 2006, India's harvest of wheat was hijacked by global corporation with help from the Government. The hijack occurred through a two pronged strategy of capturing India's wheat market domestically and through imports.Vandana Shiva | ZNet
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=66&ItemID=10459
- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin
Wiegand and Brian Awehali
Posted by erin at July 3, 2006 10:14 AM