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THiS WEEK: What we can learn from Kafka's despair; Annalee Newitz examines monsters and capitalism; military veterans discuss myths and realities of recruiter propaganda; study shows there's a two-thirds chance the FBI can't find a requested file; new book divulges information on the US extraordinary rendition program—torture taxis; defending the institution of marriage from the ocean's most vicious predator; oldest known Australopithecus skeleton—a three-year-old girl—found in Ethiopia; researchers hard at work on vaccines against narcotics; how "fair" is "fair trade?"; Greenpeace's study on the most toxic laptops; the new "Warrior Ethos" of the US military; Brazilian Soma therapy combines Reichean therapy, capoeira Angola, and anarchist politics for mental-physical healing; when "democracy rights" groups are funded by the government; and much more to be enjoyed in this week's Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. What Kafka Knew
   Kafka’s ability to imagine and portray the unimaginable horror of conscious human life, imprisoned in power structures that function on the psyche as catatonia does on the body, may not seem to be generative of engagement for social transformation; certainly it was not in his personal case. What Kafka knew was a depth of despair that most Americans, and most particularly those of us on the Left, find shameful to acknowledge or to speak of at all, except couched in recurrent warnings of potential catastrophe.

   Christy Rodgers | Dissident Voice
   http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Sept06/Rodgers19.htm



2. So That's Why Frankenstein Is Green
   Cultural theorist Annalee Newitz says our favorite monster stories are really about the destructive effects of capitalism.

   Phoebe Connelly | Chicago Reader
   http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/bookreviews/060908/



3. VIDEO | Before You Enlist!
   Veterans, young and old, inform potential military recruits about the lies of recruiting officers and video, and the harsh realities of war.

   Youth4Peace
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFsaGv6cefw



4. CARTOON | Rebellion For The Image Conscience
   

   Clay Butler | Sidewalk Bubblegum
   http://www.sidewalkbubblegum.com/images/055.gif



5. FBI's Most Wanted: Its Own Files
   If you requested a file from the FBI, chances are good the agency can't find it. A Cox Newspapers study found that last year, the FBI said it had "no records" in response to roughly two-thirds of requests filed under the federal Freedom of Information Act, which is meant to ensure that citizens have access to information not exempted by law. The Treasury Department, which ranked second behind the FBI, could not find freedom of information-requested records 25 percent of the time.

   Lars-Marten Nagel | Statesman
   http://www.statesman.com/news/content/news/stories/nation/09/02/2fbifiles.html



6. AUDIO | Torture Taxis
   As President Bush admits the existence of secret overseas CIA prisons, we take a look at the U.S. government's shadowy program of extraordinary rendition with A.C. Thompson and Trevor Paglen, the authors of the new book Torture Taxi: On the Trail of the CIA's Rendition Flights.

   Amy Goodman | Democracy Now
   http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/09/15/1342250



7. COMEDIC INTERLUDE | New Bill Would Defend Marriage From Sharks
   "Liberals and Democrats would have you believe that sharks pose no threat to married couples. They tell us that sharks should just be left alone to mind their own business, and they won't do anyone any harm. But we say it's time for those of us with backbone to stand up for what we believe in—before that backbone is torn violently from our torsos by these soulless, underwater killers."

   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52984



8. Lucy's Big Sister
   Scientists exploring a hillside in Ethiopia have announced the discovery of a 3.3-million-year-old near-complete skeleton of a three-year-old girl, the oldest juvenile remains of one of the earliest direct ancestors of humans. In a report that will appear in the journal Nature, an international team of scientists has said features on the skeleton provide clear evidence for bipedal walking as well as the capacity for climbing trees.

   The Telegraph
   http://www.telegraphindia.com/1060921/asp/frontpage/story_6774710.asp



9. A Vaccine Against Narcotics
   Someday, along with jabs against mumps and measles, kids could get vaccinated against nicotine, cocaine and heroin.

   Jeffery Helm | The Tyee
   http://thetyee.ca/News/2006/09/15/Vaccine/



10. Farmers Question Value of "Responsible" Coffees
    The trend toward making coffee seen as socially or environmentally responsible was boosted in the early part of this decade when world coffee prices collapsed, pushing many farmers into bankruptcy or deep debt. Many of those left saw specialist labels as a way to boost income. Now, a slew of organisations offer an array of labels, all with differing requirements, paperwork, and fees. Many farmers find it hard to know which to chose, and whether their investment will be rewarded with better coffee prices.

    Mica Rosenberg | Reuters
    http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2006-09-08T075349Z_01_CAS827767_RTRUKOC_0_FOOD-GUATEMALA-COFFEE.xml



11. Toxic Laptops
    Some of the best-known laptops are contaminated with some of the worst toxic chemicals. Of the five top brands, Hewlett-Packard and Apple laptops showed the worst contamination levels.

    Greenpeace
    http://www.greenpeace.org/international/news/hp-apple-toxic-laptops180906



12. Cult of Cruelty
    Robert Fisk examines the US Army "Soldier's Creed" and the new "Warrior Ethos": "I am disciplined, physically and mentally tough, trained and proficient in my warrior tasks and drills..."

    Robert Fisk | Counterpunch / Mostly Water
    http://www.mostlywater.org/node/10409



13. Canada’s NED?
    Whose rights? What sort of democracy? These are the questions that must be asked of “Rights & Democracy,” a Montreal-based political group funded almost entirely by the Canadian government.

    Yves Engler | ZNet
    http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=55&ItemID=10970



14. VIDEO | Louis CK on Gay Marriage
    Stand-up comedian and star of the Showtime sitcom Lucky Louie, on the ever-so-sensitive issue of gay marriage.

    http://youtube.com/watch?v=yPvVnrV1tow

- Media Picks Contributing Editor: Adam Barker
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

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THiS WEEK: A look back at the roots of the real tragedy in New Orleans: the faulty levees constructed by the Army Corps of Engineers; feminist academic Germaine Greer has some bitterly poignant words on the life of the former Crocodile Hunter, Steve Irwin; Sudanese writer Kola Boof reminisces on her ex-lover, Osama bin Laden; rapper Mos Def arrested for performing his song "Katrina Klap" outside Radio City Music Hall; a review of several new books on African-American conceptions of Africa; Monsanto buys "terminator seed" company, giving it the power to control the food seed of entire regions; an interesting look at obsolete jobs in North America; Black youth in San Francisco talk about why they need a gun to survive; strikes shut down the controversial Phulbari open-pit coal project in Bangladesh, but with some losses along the way; how sex workers' rights are related to stopping police brutality and supporting reproductive rights; and many other points of interest and amusement in this "only a week late" version of Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. Rotten to the Corps
   If an unsafe building collapsed and killed 1,000 people, we wouldn't blame the building's manager, we'd blame the architects and engineers. Apparently it's different with unsafe levees. Otherwise, the fingers of an outraged nation would point directly at the Army Corps of Engineers, the agency that drowned New Orleans a year ago.

   Michael Grunwald | Grist Magazine
   http://www.grist.org/comments/soapbox/2006/08/29/grunwald/index.html



2. Crocodile Hunter Gets His
   There was no habitat, no matter how fragile or finely balanced, that Steve Irwin hesitated to barge into, trumpeting his wonder and amazement to the skies. There was not an animal he was not prepared to manhandle. Every creature he brandished at the camera was in distress. Those of us who live with snakes, as I do with no fewer than 12 front-fanged venomous snake species in my bit of Queensland rainforest, know that they will get out of our way if we leave them a choice. Some snakes are described as aggressive, but, if you're a snake, unprovoked aggression doesn't make sense. Snakes on a plane only want to get off. But Irwin was an entertainer, a 21st-century version of a lion-tamer, with crocodiles instead of lions.

   Germaine Greer | The Guardian
   http://www.guardian.co.uk/australia/story/0,,1865124,00.html



3. INFOGRAPHIC | Airport Security Oversights
   July 28, Portland, OR to Topeka, KS: 16 pounds of science textbooks.
   Sept. 3, London to New York: A few Muslim people may have slipped through with their dignity.

   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52333



4. His Prerogative
   People are animals. They fuck, pray, and make bombs. The Dinka women of Sudan say the devil is the most beautiful man you will ever lay your eyes on. I never took these words seriously until I encountered my now infamous ex-lover, Osama bin Laden.

   Kola Boof | Harper's
   http://harpers.org/HisPrerogative.html



5. VIDEO | Mos Def Arrested for Rapping (the Wrong Song) in Public
   Rapper Mos Def was taken into custody and charged with disorderly conduct Thursday night after an unauthorized performance outside Radio City Music Hall of "Katrina Klap," a freestyle indictment of the Bush administration's slow response to last year's hurricane victims in New Orleans.

   Chronic Magazine
   http://chronicmagazine.com/public.php?page_id=1554&level=1
   VIDEO OF THE ARREST: http://youtube.com/watch?v=qNKnoIV6BT4
   MUSIC VIDEO OF "KATRINA KLAP": http://youtube.com/watch?v=E2FlcRVTuCA
   



6. REVIEW | A Sort of Homecoming
   At least 12 million people from Africa were loaded into slave ships and transported to the Americas. How do people of African descent, scattered around the world, see their relationship to their ancestral home? Do they consider themselves "the African diaspora"? If their African heritage dates back several generations, is it "nebulous atavistic yearnings," as the Harlem Renaissance poet Countee Cullen once said, to search for their roots, to want some kind of bond with their ancestral homeland? Or is it important, in a neocolonial and still-racist world, that Africans and people of African descent see themselves as part of a transnational community? After all, the ancestors in question did not choose to leave their homeland; they arrived in the Americas in chains, and from the time they landed they were divided and dispersed, as a strategy of domination. Given the black collective memory of slavery, it is easy to understand the emotional tug of the ancestral land, the longing for Pan-African brotherhood and the desire for a community that is not racist.

   Hazel Rowley | The Nation
   http://www.thenation.com/docprint.mhtml?i=20060911&s=rowley



7. Monsanto Buys "Terminator" Seeds Company
   While most of us don’t bother to reflect on where the corn in the box of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes or the rice in a box of Uncle Ben’s Converted Rice come from, when we grab it from the supermarket shelf, they all must originate with seeds. Seeds can either be taken by a farmer from the previous season’ seeds, and planted to produce the next harvest. Or, seeds can be bought new each harvest season, from the companies which sell their seeds. The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture—Delta & Pine Land—is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds, the Monsanto Corporation.

   F. William Engdahl | Global Research
   http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20060827&articleId=3082



8. Lost Labour
   The decline of North American manufacturing is well documented. And when people speak of lost jobs, they usually mean the same job moving somewhere else. But in many cases, actual types of work have disappeared from North America. From steel mill foremen to grunts in the block ice plants, jobs that were common 60 years ago have either vanished or changed so much as to be unrecognizable.

   Richard Warnica | The Tyee
   Text: http://thetyee.ca/Photo/2006/09/04/LostLabour/
   Photos: http://thetyee.ca/gallery/2006/09/04/LostLabour/



9. VIDEO | Straight Pistol Play
   Black youth in San Francisco talk about why they need a gun to survive.

   Conscious Youth Media Crew
   http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=b1eb02280b981f5c7e14a1ea8ddd41d3
   (This feature is part of a four part multimedia series, "Got Shot," documenting the effect gun violence is having on Bay Area teenagers. Check out the rest of the series here: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=107e77e24743888ba9abaff5e32edca6)



10. Anti-Arab Racism, Islam, and the Left
    Anti-Arab/anti-Muslim racism is an indispensable part of the so-called "war on terror" or "the long war," as it is now referred to, and US plans to dominate the Middle East. By dehumanizing those that the US is waging war against, this racism makes their death and the destruction of their countries more palatable to the US public and quells domestic resistance to the war. Today it helps numb people to the deaths of dozens of Iraqis per day and the mass murder of Lebanese and Palestinians by Israel.

    Rami El-Amine | Monthly Review
    http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/elamine030906.html



11. Surveillance Society
    The Mass-Observation movement and the meaning of everyday life.

    Caleb Crain | The New Yorker
    http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/articles/060911crat_atlarge



12. No Blood for Coal
    Last week the Bangladesh government announced cancellation of the vastly controversial Phulbari open-pit coal project, owned by UK-listed Asia Energy plc. According to the National Committee to Protect Oil, Gas, Natural Resources and Ports, this marks a resounding victory for those who demonstrated against the project on Saturday August 26th, only to be met by the bloody firepower of the state's paramilitary Bangladesh Rifles force. The official death toll has risen to six, with at at least fifty wounded.

    Mines and Communities
    http://www.minesandcommunities.org/Action/press1203.htm



13. VIDEO | Block the Vote
    Across the nation, states have enacted new laws supposedly designed to prevent voter fraud and avoid election-day debacles. But qualified voters may also be left out in the cold, especially minorities, the poor, the elderly and the disabled.

    NOW | PBS
    http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/235/index.html



14. AUDIO | Labor of Love
    For decades now, from Brazil to India, from Canada to Thailand, across the planet women, men and transgender workers have been organizing for recognition of their provision of sexual services as labor. The sex workers rights movement is contributing to other social justice struggles like stopping HIV and police brutality - and defending reproductive and labor rights.

    Darby Hickey | Free Speech Radio News
    http://www.fsrn.org/news/20060904_news.html



15. How the Amazon's Indigenous People are Holding Back the 'Arc of Destruction'
    Across the so-called "arc of destruction," the logging, ranching and farming operations that are deforesting the Amazon basin, it is indigenous groups fighting for their own lives who offer the best resistance.

    Daniel Howden | The Independent (via Truthout and Mostly Water)
    http://mostlywater.org/node/9885

- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

Got something you want to see in next week's Media Picks? Send it along to our editors!

THiS WEEK: Bitch Magazine celebrates ten years of feminism and pop culture, and a new book to boot; the same herbicide that was used in Agent Orange and turns frogs into hermaphrodites is considered "safe" in your drinking water; an archaeologist argues that the inhabitants of Easter Island didn't die out from over-exploiting their own resources (as is commonly claimed), but from colonial genocide; biotech goes retro; investigative journalist Greg Palast suggests that maybe, just maybe, New Orleans isn't being rebuilt for the benefit of the 65% black population that lived there before Katrina; the author of the BDSM classic The Story of O discusses glorious immorality in a new documentary; a look at cartoonist Alison Bechdel's amazing new graphic novel / memoir, Fun Home; the origins of the Zapatista's "Other Campaign," and many fun side-trips to surprise and delight you, all in this week's Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. AUDIO | Bitchfest
   Lisa Jervis and Andi Zeisler, co-founders of the fabulous magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, talk about their origin as a zine ten years ago, their new anthology, Bitchfest, the politics of labels such as "post-feminist," "sex-positivity," and everyone's favorite five-letter word beginning with "b."

   Michael Krasny | Forum
   http://www.kqed.org/epArchive/R608160900



2. It's Not Easy Being Green
   Atrazine is among the world's oldest and most effective herbicides—the aspirin of weed- killers. It was developed during a period of intense innovation in the chemical industry that began with the Second World War and the invention of 2,4-D, the first “selective” herbicide: it could kill weeds without killing the crops. (It was later mixed with 2,4,5-T by the military to make the decidedly nonselective defoliant Agent Orange.) Syngenta, a company with roots dating back a couple of centuries that also gave the world DDT and LSD, introduced atrazine to the market in 1959. And today, the federally established “safe” limit for atrazine in human drinking water is 3 ppb, thirty times the dose that has, in lab experiments, turned frogs into hermaphrodites.

   William Souder | Harpers
   http://www.harpers.org/ItsNotEasyBeingGreen.html



3. Rethinking the Fall of Easter Island
   Jared Diamond, a geographer and physiologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has used the Rapanui, the native inhabitants of Easter Island, as a parable of the dangers of environmental destruction. "In just a few centuries," he wrote in a 1995 article for Discover magazine, "the people of Easter Island wiped out their forest, drove their plants and animals to extinction, and saw their complex society spiral into chaos and cannibalism. Are we about to follow their lead?" And in his 2005 book Collapse, Diamond described Rapa Nui as "the clearest example of a society that destroyed itself by overexploiting its own resources." When I first went to Rapa Nui to conduct archaeological research, I expected to help confirm this story. Instead, as I looked more closely at data from earlier archaeological excavations and at some similar work on other Pacific islands, I realized that much of what was claimed about Rapa Nui's prehistory was speculation. It was genocide, not ecocide, that caused the demise of the Rapanui.

   Terry L. Hunt | American Scientist
   http://www.americanscientist.org/template/AssetDetail/assetid/53200?fulltext=true&print=yes



4. Selective Breeding Gets Modern
   Faced with a consumer backlash, biotech is working on genetically engineered food without the genetic engineering. Good old-fashioned crossbreeding is getting a high-tech boost.

   Griffin Wright | Wired
   http://wired.com/news/technology/0,71433-0.html?tw=wn_index_18



5. INFORMATIVE PARODY | Monsantopoly
   

   Anna Lappé & Matthew Willse | The Nation
   http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060911/monsantopoly



6. PERSPECTIVE | Transportation
   The most popular vehicle in the world today is the bicycle. There are 40 times more rickshaws in Delhi than there are taxis in New York City. And Somalia's camel population is almost as large as its human population.

   Princeton
   http://www.princeton.edu/~ina/images/infographics/transportation_big.jpg



7. The Writer of O
   For many years, it was assumed that the erotic novel The Story of O had been penned by a man: What woman could—or would—write with such love about female mortification? Albert Camus stated defiantly, definitively, "A woman could not write this book." As a male fantasy of domination, the story makes Sadean sense, but as a woman's fantasy, it would threaten two thousand years of prevailing notions about female sexuality—and upset numerous husbands. "Women are as immoral as men," says the author, Dominique Aury (aka Pauline Réage), in American filmmaker Pola Rapaport's fascinating documentary Écrivain d'O (Writer of O), newly released on DVD. "But," she continues, her eyes twinkling with girlish mischief, "no one has noticed."

   Toni Bentley | Bookforum
   http://www.bookforum.com/bentley.html



8. REVIEW | A Dyke to Watch Out For
   The latest in breakout graphic novels is an unlikely candidate: a chronicle of its lesbian author's upbringing with her closeted, married dad, complete with side trips to the family business, the "fun home." "Fun" here is short for funeral, and it's an apt distillation of Vermont writer and illustrator Alison Bechdel's creative focus.

   Carellin Brooks | The Tyee
   http://thetyee.ca/Books/2006/08/23/FunHome/



9. The Other Campaign
   On the morning of January 1st, 1994, with the seizure of governmental offices in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Chiapas, Mexico, the Zapatistas announced thier existence to the world. They had emerged from the remote highlands of Chiapas, the southernmost and poorest state of Mexico. Their mestizo Mexican spokesperson, the incongruously tall and pale Subcomandante Marcos, effortlessly dispensed poetic prose, politics and wit in three languages: that morning of the takeover of San Cristóbal de las Casas, tourists in the street asked Marcos if they would miss their transportation connections; with exquisite politeness Marcos replied, "Forgive us, but this is a revolution."

   Roger Stoll | Z Net
   http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=59&ItemID=10833

- Media Picks Contributing Editor: Adam Barker
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

Got something you want to see in next week's Media Picks? Send it along to our editors!

THiS WEEK: Learn how to be invisible; when computing was "women's work; researchers hunt for the origins of the expert mind; considering Hezbollah and the secular radical left; a look at Pentagon-contracted private intelligence firms; why anti-immigrant fervor is more complex than simple ignorance and bigotry; invoking eugenics to oppose same-sex marriage; new RFID-tagged passports incredibly easy to copy; and many more items of humor and delight in this week's long-overdue (but still fresh) version of Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. AUDIO | How to be Invisible
   If you could have one of two superpowers—invisibility or flight—which would you choose? The "correct" answer, of course, is flight. People who choose flight have nothing to hide; they're selfless, competent, and unashamed. People who choose invisibility are deceitful, voyeuristic, fearful, crouching perverts. I would choose invisibility.

   Jon Ronson | Radio 4
   http://www.saminnes.freeola.net/Jon-Ronson-invisible.mp3



2. REVIEW | When Computers Were Human
   Long before the dawn of calculators and inexpensive desktop computers, the grinding work of large problems had to be broken up into discrete, simple parts and done by hand. Where scads of numbers needed computing—for astronomical purposes at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England, or to establish the metric system at the Bureau du Cadastre in Paris—such work was accomplished factory-style. And in this pre-machine era, computing was thought of as women’s work.

   David Skinner | The New Atlantis
   http://www.thenewatlantis.com/archive/12/skinner.htm



3. Life Sentences
   From a list of 98 sample sentences used by Department of Homeland Security officials for testing applicants for American citizenship: America is the land of freedom. Many people come to America for freedom. He wanted to find a job. His wife worked in the house.

   Harper's
   http://www.harpers.org/LifeSentences.html



4. WEBSITE OF NOTE | Save the Internet
   Just what it sounds like. Learn more about net neutrality, find out where various politicians stand on the issue, and join in the good fight for internet freedom.

   http://www.savetheinternet.com/



5. CARTOON | US Weighing "Final Option" Threat to Iran of a Shorter Bush Vacation
   

   Don Asmussen | Bad Reporter
   http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/pictures/2006/08/04/080406-950x316-badreporter.gif



6. VIDEO | Electronic Lebanon Public Service Announcement
   In the weeks after Israel launched its attack on Lebanon, a team of New York-based artists, designers, and multimedia producers converged on a warehouse location in Brooklyn to create a Public Service Announcement for Electronic Lebanon. The two minute PSA is intended for wide distribution and public viewing.

   ElectronicLebanon.net
   http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article5473.shtml



7. The Expert Mind
   How do "experts" in various fields acquire their extraordinary skills? How much can be credited to innate talent and how much to intensive training? Psychologists have sought answers in studies of chess masters—and the collected results of a century of such research have led to new theories explaining how the mind organizes and retrieves information.

   Philip E. Ross | Scientific American
   http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=00010347-101C-14C1-8F9E83414B7F4945



8. AUDIO | Hezbollah and the Left
   How should the left view Hezbollah? Is it a terrorist organization, as the US government claims? Is it the face of anti-imperialism in the Middle East? Or is it more complex than that? Lebanese Marxist Gilbert Achcar and cultural anthropologist Lara Deeb discuss Hezbollah's rise at the expense of the left and the prospects for a renewed secular radical left in the region.

   CS Soong | Against the Grain
   http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio8.09.06.mp3



9. Out-Sourcing Intelligence
   Private intelligence firms contracting with the Pentagon enjoy ties to Halliburton and millions in contracts doing the dirty work of interrogation and translation while sidelining the existing Pentagon bureaucracy. Experts say the military bureaucracy is—surprise!—too bogged down by careerists and incompetents and their void is filled by paramilitary corporations. Is the next step battalions run by military contractors?

   Pratap Chatterjee | CorpWatch
   http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=13993



10. REVIEW | Not Your Grandfather's History Book
    A Fictional History of the United States With Huge Chunks Missing is a whimsical anthology of short stories and artwork that lampoons our country's most iconic moments, as well as the history books that lionized them.

    Zack Pelta-Heller | AlterNet
    http://www.alternet.org/story/39468/



11. White Heat
    It's easy to chalk up the nativist frenzy in Tennessee entirely to the usual suspects: gut-level racism, bigotry, ignorance, NIMBYism, right-wing radio hosts. But what's eating Tennesseans, and hundreds of thousands of other Middle American nativists, is also something deeper, subtler—and likely to outlast the current debates over immigration policy. "This is not just about immigrants and immigration," says Devin Burghart. "It's something much greater—the nexus of race, national identity, who we are and who we want to be."

    Bob Moser | The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060828/moser



12. Breeding Injustice
    As recently as 70 years ago, "fitness" ominously referred to hereditary improvement of the “race” through selective breeding. Promotion of fitness in this sense, or “eugenics,” was so widely and casually embraced during the first half of the 20th century that many of its ideas were enshrined in marriage and reproductive law. While today only the most hard-hearted would press for sterilizing the “feeble-minded” or preventing the mentally retarded from marrying, similar arguments are regularly made in favor of banning same-sex marriage.

    Michael J. Amico | The Phoenix
    http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid19860.aspx



13. Radio (RFID) Tags Full of Security Holes
    At a pair of security conferences, researchers demonstrated that passports equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags can be cloned with a laptop equipped with a $200 RFID reader and a similarly inexpensive smart card writer.

    Declan McCullagh | News.com / Mostly Water
    http://mostlywater.org/node/9033



14. Blood For Oil
    An Australian company wants to "harvest" the fat from sheep and cattle to be converted to biodiesel.

    Asa Wahlquist | The Australian
    http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20098890-2702,00.html

- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

Got something you want to see in next week's Media Picks? Send it along to our editors!

THiS WEEK: Partake of some illegal art; Alan Moore discusses the social usefulness of erotic art (and his controversial new graphic novel, Lost Girls); white supremacists enlisting in military; how the organic label doesn't do a damn thing to improve labor conditions for farm workers; why the Israeli Defense Force really likes reading Deleuze and Guattari; victims of the Spanish civil war to receive reparations; a wonderfully subversive computer game teaches you the complex process behind a McDonald's hamburger; the history of the "stabbed in the back" legend, and how the conservative right has used it so effectively; military contractors fight over who gets to police the US border; the birth of Dada; "Faith Days" coming to a ballpark near you; and much, much more in this unusually large edition of Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. VIDEO | Illegal Art
   Rest assured: All films and videos on this site appropriate intellectual property, whether through the use of found footage, unauthorized music, or shots of copyrighted or trademarked material. Of particular greatness is the political campaign parody ad "Black Thunder," by Brian Spinks, Eugene Mirman, and Bill Wasik.

   Stay Free!
   http://www.illegal-art.org/video/index.html



2. INTERVIEW | The Porno-Graphic Novel
   Alan Moore, the author of Watchmen, V For Vendetta, and From Hell, now returns with Lost Girls, a three-volume hardcover graphic novel produced in collaboration with Melinda Gebbie. Lost Girls teams up three icons of children's literature—Alice from Alice In Wonderland, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Dorothy from The Wizard Of Oz—and re-tells their stories with the fantasy elements stripped away, replaced by real-world sexual experiences. Unsurprisingly, the book has stirred some controversy. Says Moore: "One of the reasons we started this was because we were sick of the approach to sex in the culture. It seemed to us unhealthy, unproductive, and unbeautiful.... I think if you were to sever that connection between arousal and shame, you might actually come up with something liberating and socially useful."

   Alan Moore interviewed by Noel Murray | Onion AV Club
   http://www.avclub.com/content/node/51180



3. Cost of Iraq war to Top Vietnam and Korea
   The Iraq war is to overtake Korea and Vietnam as the second-most expensive overseas military operation in US history, with spending expected to top US $500 billion by the end of the decade.

   The Australian
   http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,19812076-2703,00.html



4. White Supremacists Enlisting in Military
   A decade after the Pentagon declared a zero-tolerance policy for racist hate groups, recruiting shortfalls caused by the war in Iraq have allowed "large numbers of neo-Nazis and skinhead extremists" to infiltrate the military, according to a watchdog organization.

   John Kifner | New York Times
   http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/07/07/MNG6TJRC1G1.DTL



5. Us vs. Stem
   While the USDA organic seal covers a range of environmental practices, it says nothing about labor conditions. Contrary to most consumers' beliefs, the organic sector largely replicates the abusive conditions of conventional agriculture.

   Jason Mark | Grist
   http://www.grist.org/news/maindish/2006/08/02/mark/index.html



6. Bush Grants Self Permission To Grant More Power To Self
   "Previously, the president only had the power to petition Congress to allow him to grant himself the power to grant more power to himself," Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez said shortly after the ceremony. "Now, the president can grant himself the power to interpret new laws however he sees fit, then use that power to interpret a law in such a manner that in turn grants him increased power."

   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/51140



7. CARTOON | If Only...
   

   Mr. Fish | Harper's
   http://www.harpers.org/art/cartoons/mrfish/AlGore_350.jpg



8. The Art of War: Deleuze, Guattari, Debord and the Israeli Defense Force
   When the military talks theory to itself, it seems to be about changing its organizational structure and hierarchies. When it invokes theory in communications with the public—in lectures, broadcasts and publications—it seems to be about projecting an image of a civilized and sophisticated military. And when the military 'talks' (as every military does) to the enemy, theory could be understood as a particularly intimidating weapon of 'shock and awe', the message being: 'You will never even understand that which kills you.'

   Eyal Weizman | Interactivist Info Exchange
   http://info.interactivist.net/article.pl?sid=06/08/01/2112203&mode=nested&tid=1



9. Spain OKs Reparations to Civil War Victims
   The government Friday approved a divisive bill allowing reparations for victims of the Spanish civil war and the ensuing dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, some of the darkest chapters of Spain's modern history. All victims of the civil war launched by Franco's revolt against the republican government and his dictatorship—including exiles, former prisoners and relatives of those executed—would have a year to request reparations. A total of $25 million would be made available for payments.

   Mar Roman | AP/Anarchist News
   http://anarchistnews.org/?q=node/594



10. TIME WASTER | McVideoGame
    Making money in a corporation like McDonald's is not simple at all! Behind every sandwich there is a complex process you must learn to manage: from the creation of pastures to the slaughter, from the restaurant management to the branding. You'll discover all the dirty secrets that made us one of the biggest company of the world.

    Molleindustria
    http://www.mcvideogame.com/index-eng.html



11. Stabbed in the Back!
    Every state must have its enemies. Great powers must have especially monstrous foes. Above all, these foes must arise from within, for national pride does not admit that a great nation can be defeated by any outside force. That is why, though its origins are elsewhere, the stab in the back has become the sustaining myth of modern American nationalism. Since the end of World War II it has been the device by which the American right wing has both revitalized itself and repeatedly avoided responsibility for its own worst blunders.

    Kevin Baker | Harper's
    http://www.harpers.org/StabbedInTheBack.html



12. Congo's Abandoned Miners
    An angry crowd of men and children surrounds each new delegation as it arrives at the Ruashi mine in the southeast of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The miners are thin and their faces white with dust, but their voices are strong as they sing: "This land belonged to our ancestors, its copper belongs to us". Mwambe Kataki, Remy Ilunga and Pierre Kalume used to work for the powerful Gecamines mining company; now they dig for themselves and speak for all the miners when they insist that they will not be moved. They want to keep out the big companies which, after years of war, are returning to Katanga (Shaba) encouraged by the privatisation programme of Joseph Kabila's government.

    Colette Braeckman | Le Monde
    http://mondediplo.com/2006/07/06congo



13. AUDIO | Border for Sale
    Five major military contractors are competing to design a system to tackle up to two million undocumented immigrants a year in the United States. Boeing, Ericsson, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon are working on proposals that focus on high technology rather than high fences, but ignoring some of the fundamental problems of immigration.

    Joseph Richey | CorpWatch
    http://radio.indymedia.org/uploads/joe_interview_good.mp3



14. Making It New
    The war of 1914 divided the sympathies not only of intellectuals of various European countries, but of their avant-garde movements as well. "We will glorify war—the only true hygiene of the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of anarchist, the beautiful Ideas which kill, and the scorn of woman," the Futurist Marinetti wrote. Quite the reverse, the poets and artists who were to call themselves Dadaists were pacifists and internationalists. Most of them were draft-dodgers on the run from military authorities in their respective countries. Their revulsion at the butchery of the Great War, in which about ten million men died, over twenty million were wounded, and several hundred thousand lost limbs and sight, had a lot to do with what Dada was to become.

    Charles Simic | New York Review of Books
    http://www.nybooks.com/articles/19191



15. You Can Keep the Faith
    Bobble-head Jesus? A crucifix in your Cracker Jacks? This is the valley of the shadow of greed Major League Baseball hath begun to venture into after the July 27 debut of "Faith Days with the Braves" at Turner Field in Atlanta. Faith Days is a spectacle, as the New York Times wrote, where "churches will get discounted tickets to family-friendly evenings of music and sports with a Christian theme. And in return, they mobilize their vast infrastructure of e-mail and phone lists, youth programs and chaperones, and of course their bus fleets, to help fill the stands." But Faith Days is about more than family-friendly Christian entertainment with a twist of commerce. Beneath the veneer, it represents the ugliest edge of right-wing evangelism and its advancing influence.

    Dave Zirin | The Nation
    http://www.thenation.com/doc/20060814/zirin



16. INTERVIEW | Redefining Our Relationships
    An interview with Wendy O'Matik, author of Redefining Our Relationships; Guidelines for Responsible Open Relationships.

    Full Circle | KPFA
    http://kpfa.org/archives/index.php?arch=15355


]]> 2006-07-27T18:13:55Z 2006-07-27T18:02:45Z tag:www.lipmagazine.org,2006:/mediapicks//3.328 2006-07-27T18:02:45Z
erin erin@lipmagazine.org

July 27, 2006 Edition

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

Got something you want to see in next week's Media Picks? Send it along to our editors!

THiS WEEK: How the internets really work; why Hezbollah is not "just a puppet" of Iran or Syria; looking at the diversity of crime; what makes an encyclopedia useful—or accurate; a look at the downside of debt relief; the toxics-ridden cosmetics industry gets a PR makeover; the bizarre, yet cruelty-free, world of lab-grown meat; the art of plague; a century of "negro subversion"; and much more in this long-overdue-but-worth-the-wait edition of Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. VIDEO | Just a Series of Tubes
   As Senator Ted Stevens taught us in his June 28 speech on net neutrality, the internet is not a truck, but is, rather, a series of tubes. Naturally, the Senator's quote inspired a flurry of satirical videos, websites, and, of course, hilarious send-ups on The Daily Show.

   Jon Stewart | The Daily Show
   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DClkE64nFDY



2. Hezbollah Not a Puppet
   The Bush administration’s suggestion that Hezbollah’s incursion into Northern Israel was carried out at the behest of either Syria, which sought to stir up trouble in the region, or Iran, which wanted to divert international attention away from its disputed nuclear program, is misguided. All politics — even Islamist politics — is local; one need look no further than the internal dynamics of Lebanon to understand why Hezbollah would so recklessly cross the border and attack Israeli troops.

   Reza Aslan | Herald Sun
   http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,19905085-5006029,00.html



3. Report: Everything Made in Sweatshops
   The report was compiled by 135 government employees in an 20-by-80-foot Quonset hut without air-conditioning working six 18-hour shifts a week for $1.15 an hour.

   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/50883



4. AUDIO | A Life of Crime
   We think of crime as a kind of monolithic, menacing presence. But there are many kinds of crimes, and many kinds of criminals. Through our crimes, we express who we are. Today we hear of three different criminals and three different kinds of crimes.

   This American Life
   http://audio.wbez.org/tal/135.m3u



5. Know It All
   On March 1st, Wikipedia, the online interactive encyclopedia, hit the million-articles mark, with an entry on Jordanhill, a railway station in suburban Glasgow. The Encyclopædia Britannica, which for more than two centuries has been considered the gold standard for reference works, has only a hundred and twenty thousand entries in its most comprehensive edition. Apparently, no traditional encyclopedia has ever suspected that someone might wonder about Sudoku or about prostitution in China. Or, for that matter, about the Boston molasses disaster, the Rhinoceros Party of Canada, the forty-five-minute Anglo-Zanzibar War, or Islam in Iceland.

   Stacy Schiff | The New Yorker
   http://www.newyorker.com/fact/content/articles/060731fa_fact



6. The Devil's Brew of Poverty Relief
   Back in 2000, the United Nations established a Millennium Development Goal to halve global poverty by 2015. The G8's enormous wealth, along with its dominance in world trade, was to play the key role in this worldwide assault on poverty and disease. But six years into this war on poverty the goals are mired in a devil's brew of self-serving economic policies, lethargic bureaucracy, and outright disingenuousness.

   Conn Hallinan | Mother Jones
   http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/07/poverty_relief.html



7. Cosmetic Solutions: The Makeup Industry Gives Itself a Health Hazard Makeover
   Breast cancer. Genital abnormalities. Distortion and damage of genetic material. Common ingredients in cosmetic products have been linked to these hazards. As further research is conducted into the long-term and cumulative effects on cosmetics users, their children and the water supply that products are washed off into, more questions arise. Not that you'd know it by listening to the cosmetics industry.

   Diane Farsetta | PR Watch
   http://www.prwatch.org/node/4961



8. CARTOON | The Postmodern Condition
   

   Clay Butler | Sidewalk Bubblegum
   http://www.sidewalkbubblegum.com/images/150.gif



9. Would You Eat Lab-Grown Meat?
   As I type these words, men and women of science are growing meat in a laboratory. That's meat grown independently of any animal. It isn't hatched or born. It doesn't graze, walk or breathe. But it is alive. It sits growing in a room where somebody has called it into existence with a pipette and syringe.

   Traci Hukill | The Tyee
   http://thetyee.ca/Life/2006/07/18/LabMeat/



10. Marching Plague: The Critical Art Ensemble's Biological Defense Program
    A current work by the Critical Art Ensemble entitled "Marching Plague" mocks the notion that biological terror presents any serious practical threat, arguing instead that extravagant spending of tax dollars to defend against bioterror is no more than a means of "maximizing profit and consolidating power through the matrix of biocatastrophe."

    Stan Cox | Counter Punch
    http://www.counterpunch.org/cox07132006.html



11. Negro Subversion: Then and Now
    In a nation built on the foundation of White supremacy, anyone the authorities perceive as threatening that foundation is considered subversive. This has always been true of African Americans who fought for racial equality, and is now equally true for an increasing number of people, including artists, Muslims and anyone who speaks out against this nation's state-sponsored violence and racism.

    Clinton L. Cox | The Black Commentator
    http://www.blackcommentator.com/191/191_negro_subversion_cox_guest.html



12. AUDIO | Pentagon's Fine Line: War Machine, P.R. Machine
    The U.S. military doesn't do all its public relations work overseas -- it's also investing in grass-roots efforts here at home. The Pentagon's "America Supports You" program employs Pentagon staff and private PR contractors to coordinate activities that support the armed forces. "Freedom Walk" marches, letter-writing campaigns, even supplements in kids' Weekly Reader, are all paid for by the Pentagon itself.

    Martin Kaste | NPR Morning Edition
    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5553746



13. A Corrupt, Brutal Dictator in the White House
    In early 2004, President Bush issued a presidential proclamation barring corrupt foreign officials from entering the United States. Then, a few months ago, in spite of that proclamation, Washington was treated to the disgusting spectacle of an official visit by Teodoro Obiang, the corrupt dictator who rules over oil-rich Equatorial Guinea. But now the Bush Administration is preparing to roll out the red carpet for a man who, by sheer numbers, appears to have stolen far more than Obiang: President Nursultan Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan.

    Ken Silverstein | Harpers
    http://www.harpers.org/sb-a-corrupt-brutal-dictator-1152915051.html




- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali


]]> 2006-07-13T08:44:08Z 2006-07-13T08:34:50Z tag:www.lipmagazine.org,2006:/mediapicks//3.320 2006-07-13T08:34:50Z
erin erin@lipmagazine.org

July 13, 2006 Edition

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

THiS WEEK: Does "reproductive rights" include access to fertility drugs?; new online graphic novel follows a young journalist documenting the Iraq war—in 2011; crossword king Will Shortz made his name penning word puzzles, but is making his fortune on a simple numbers game; G8 members planning a massive expansion of nuclear power in their home countries; meanwhile, the environmental movement is still plagued by the nuclear dilemma; how the Reverend Kevin Thompson of Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church made a living on a $1.2 million baby-leopard-shark poaching ring; transgender writer and activist Kate Bornstein talks about her new book on suicide (and alternatives); Sylvia Federici discusses witch hunts, capitalism, and the connections between them; the yellow peril in Hollywood, then and now; and several other items of interest in this week's Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. Breeder Reaction
   Reproductive freedom isn't just a matter of who gets birth control or who can safely access abortions—for queer people, the disabled, and older women, it's a matter of access to fertility services. As they're finding, it's much easier to get approved for fertility services if you're heterosexual, under 40, and "physically fit." But the screening at fertility clinics poses a simple yet difficult-to-answer question: Should there be a right to reproductive assistance?

   Elizabeth Weil | Mother Jones
   http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2006/07/breeder_reaction.html



2. The Puzzlemaster’s Dilemma
   Millions of word freaks revere Will Shortz as the nation’s master of linguistic play, but the editor of the NY Times crossword puzzle isn't getting rich off his wordplay, nor off the documentary about him that premieres this weekend. It's his 50-book series of Sudoku puzzles—the ultimate puzzle for a postliterate world—that has him raking in the cash these days. Has Will Shortz’s moment in the sun arrived—just as the crossword is being eclipsed?

   Clive Thompson | New York Magazine
   http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=New+York+Times+Crossword+Creator+Will+Shortz+Gets+Rich+Off+Sudoku+--+New+York+Magazine&expire=&urlID=18540857&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.newyorkmag.com%2Farts%2Fall%2Ffeatures%2F17244%2F&partnerID=73272



3. CARTOON | America's Flags Afraid to Leave Their Homes
   

   Don Asmussen | Bad Reporter
   http://www.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2006/06/30/063006-950x314-badreporter.gif



4. G8 Plan: Global Nuclear Power
   World leaders are planning a massive expansion of nuclear power in their own countries and across the developing world, according to documents drawn up for the G8 summit and leaked to the Sunday Herald.

   Rob Edwards | Sunday Herald / Infoshop.org
   http://www.infoshop.org/inews/article.php?story=20060711105730601



5. Thanks, But No Thanks
   If someone had worked out how to cause a war within the environmental movement, they could not have developed a better means than nuclear power.

   George Monbiot | Monbiot.com
   http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2006/07/11/thanks-but-we-still-dont-need-it/#more-997



6. ONLINE GRAPHIC NOVEL | Shooting War
   The year is 2011, and Jimmy Burns, a young anti-corporate blogger has just seen his Williamsburg apartment blown to bits by yet another terrorist attack on New York City. He’s recorded the gruesome scene on his videoblog camera—footage Burns beams live to a freaked-out world and that makes him an overnight media sensation. Exploited by his own network (Global News: “Your home for 24-hour terror coverage”), enraged by the terrorists, and determined to tell the American people the truth, Burns takes off for Iraq to get the real story of a war that’s been raging for more than eight years.

   Anthony Lappé and Dan Goldman
   http://smithmag.us/shootingwar/index.php



7. The Moonies and the Sharks
   How a Unification Church pastor went fishing for converts and snagged an indictment as America's most prolific poacher of baby leopard sharks.

   Robert Gammon | East Bay Express
   http://www.eastbayexpress.com/Issues/2006-07-12/news/feature_print.html



8. AUDIO | Hello, Cruel World
   Tackling a subject of grave importance, Kate Bornstein, transgender actress, playwright, writer, and celebrated pioneer activist for the LGBTQI community, talks about her new book, titled Hello Cruel World: 101 Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and other Outlaws. Kate is widely known for her two previous groundbreaking books, My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely and Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women and The Rest of Us.

   GenderTalk
   http://www.gendertalk.com/real/550/gt566.shtml



9. AUDIO | Witch Hunts and Capitalism
   Witch hunts, contends scholar and activist Sylvia Federici, went hand in hand with the emergence of capitalism and that system's attempt to control and discipline human labor. In her book Caliban and the Witch, Federici relates the repression of witches and of women more generally to colonial conquest, resource appropriation, and other past and current agendas of capitalism.

   CS Soong | Against the Grain
   http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio7.11.06.mp3



10. REVIEW | Perpetuating the Yellow Peril
    The shameful depiction of minorities in television and film is hardly news. What makes Jeff Adachi’s new movie Slanted Screen special is that it offers a rare view of Hollywood from the inside.

    Lakshmi Chaudhry | In These Times
    http://www.inthesetimes.com/site/main/article/2705/



11. 50,000 Dead - But Who's Counting?
    After famously telling reporters that they "don't do body counts," Pentagon officials now say that they have in fact been keeping a record of civilian casualties in Iraq for one year. And while that number remains classified, independent estimates suggest that at least 50,000 people have died in the country since the 2003 invasion.

    Juliana Lara Resende | Inter Press Service / Countercurrents
    http://www.countercurrents.org/iraq-resende110706.htm




- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali


]]> 2006-07-27T18:17:14Z 2006-07-03T18:14:11Z tag:www.lipmagazine.org,2006:/mediapicks//3.329 2006-07-03T18:14:11Z
erin erin@lipmagazine.org

July 03, 2006 Edition

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

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:

1. 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.

   The Onion
   http://www.theonion.com/content/node/49845



2. 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



3. 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/



4. 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



5. 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/



6. CARTOON | Family Values
   

   Shannon Wheeler | How To Be Happy
   http://www.tmcm.com/comics/tmcm060703.gif



7. 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



8. 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
   



9. 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



10. 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/



11. 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/



12. 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



13. 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



14. 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.

    Harper's
    http://www.harpers.org/AmericanCoupDEtat.html



15. 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



16. 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


]]> 2006-07-13T08:49:20Z 2006-06-17T08:46:12Z tag:www.lipmagazine.org,2006:/mediapicks//3.321 2006-06-17T08:46:12Z
erin erin@lipmagazine.org

June 17, 2006 Edition

"The Best of the Rest of the Web"

SIGN A FRIEND UP FOR MEDIA PICKS: They'll be given the option to confirm their addition to the list, and may decline with one click. Click here.

THiS WEEK: The irony of white fear and insecurity; how gay politics could return to being a movement for real social change; an obligatory but still interesting article about the World Cup; cryptographer Bruce Schneier breaks down what is and is not safer in a post-9/11 world; another blow to "net neutrality" in the House; footage from the military/civilian clashes in San Salvador Atenco; an in-depth audio interview about the Zapatista Other campaign; and ways to recycle damn near everything, in this week's pleasantly compact edition of Media Picks.

This Week's Picks:

1. Why White People Are Afraid
   It may seem self-indulgent to talk about the fears of white people in a white-supremacist society. After all, what do white people really have to be afraid of in a world structured on white privilege? It may be self-indulgent, but it's critical to understand because these fears are part of what keeps many white people from confronting ourselves and the system.

   Robert Jensen | Alternet
   http://www.alternet.org/story/36892/
   

2. Libbing It Up
   The future of gay politics can be found in its past — with a few tweaks. To bring about *real* social change — dependent on truly transforming hearts and minds — it needs to reassess what kind of movement it wants to be.

   Michael Bronski | Boston Phoenix
   http://www.thephoenix.com/article_ektid14423.aspx



3. How to Watch the World Cup
   Starting today, the message of much of the world will be: Don't call us; we'll call you in a month. The World Cup begins and, outside the U.S., much else stops.

   Tony Karon | Mother Jones
   http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/columns/2006/06/world_cup.html
   

4. Tales from the Cryptographer
   Bruce Schneier has little patience for pointless security measures. As an internationally acclaimed cryptographer and security expert who travels extensively for work, he encounters them every day.

   Ken Picard | Seven Days
   http://www.sevendaysvt.com/features/2006/tales-from-the-cryptographer.html
   

5. House Rejects Net Neutrality
   "The First Amendment of the Internet – the governing principle of net neutrality, which prevents telecommunications corporations from rigging the web so it is easier to visit sites that pay for preferential treatment – took a blow from the House of Representatives Thursday."
   

   John Nichols | The Nation
   http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=90090



6. Fisk Raises 9/11’s Rude Question
   Casually dressed, shirtsleeves rolled up, Fisk spoke to a crowd of over 500. He struck his theme at once: "Refuse to accept the narrative of history laid down by presidents, prime ministers, generals and journalists.

   Crawford Kilian | The Tyee
   http://thetyee.ca/Views/2006/06/05/Fisk/



7. Evolving Evolution
   Despite much recent controversy about the theory of evolution, major changes in our understanding of evolution over the past twenty years have gone virtually unnoticed. A look at some recent books that push a deeper understanding of how plants and animals evolve.

   Edward Ziff and Israel Rosenfield | NY Review of Books
   http://www.nybooks.com/articles/18970



8. VIDEO | Atenco: Breaking the Siege (Spanish)
   Federal Preventive Police (PFP in its Spanish initials) invaded San Salvador Atenco on May 4, in what would prove to be a warm-up to the violent gun- and teargas-fueled evictions of a striking teacher's union occupying the center of Oaxaca City earlier this week. While an English-language version has not yet been released, the images from Atenco in this 47-minute documentary speak for themselves. Much of the violence in Atenco was captured by television cameras, but few outside of Mexico have seen this footage.

   Canal 6 de Julio and Promedios | Narco News
   Whole video: http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco.xvid.avi
   
   In three parts:
   http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco1.mov
   http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco2.mov
   http://salonchingon.com/movies/atenco_cerco3.mov



9. AUDIO | The Zapatista's Other Campaign
   Over twelve years ago, an uprising erupted in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas on the day that NAFTA was to take effect. Activists Mary Ann Tenuto Sanchez and R.J. Maccani talk about the Zapatistas' latest effort to reshape Mexican politics and unite the left with their "Other Campaign," or Otra Campaña.

   Against the Grain
   http://www.againstthegrain.org/audio6.06.06.mp3



10. How to Recycle Practically Anything
    Recycling and reuse businesses now employ about as many people as the auto industry, meaning not only can you recycle more things, but your discards are very much in demand, perhaps more than you realize.

    Sally Deneen | E Magazine
    http://www.emagazine.com/view/?3172




- Media Picks Contributing Editors: Adam Barker, Justin Park
- Media Picks compiled and edited by Erin Wiegand and Brian Awehali


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