....LMB: "Morning News Assault"....

July 22, 2002

Protesting Women Seize another Chevron Facility- I posted an article last week announcing that the Nigerian women occupying a ChevronTexaco facility had agreed to withdraw. Shortly after that article, the Nigerian women changed their minds, deciding that the oil company was unlikely to hold up their end of the bargain. The prolonged occupation then ended a few days later. It seems that the success of this first takeover by Itshekiri women is now being emulated by women from other ethnic groups seeking similar redress. Around 3000 Ijaw women took over an oil facility on Friday, demanding the same sort of company concessions as the Itshekiri: jobs for their sons; housing and eletrification projects; and more environmental protection from the damages of oil extraction. The article also predicts that another takeover can be predicted by the region's third-largest ethnic group, the Urhobos, in the near future.

U.S. Mulls Military's Domestic Role- the Posse Comitatus Act was a law passed in the late 1800s barring the US military from being involved in national law enforcement (except in extreme circumstances). In a recent interview with Tom Ridge, it came out that President Bush wants Congress to review that law, presumably with an eye towards eliminating or softening it. Ridge says that it is "very unlikely" that such a thing would happen. My guess is that either this is a real concern on W's mind, or it was a media ploy to make other Bush attacks on civil rights seem more palatable by comparison.

U.S. Moves to Undermine New Torture Treaty- the U.N. Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) has, after 10 years of negotiations, hammered out what looks like a workable treaty on the prohibition of torture by national governments. The current draft of the treaty seems acceptable to many countries, and would create an international prison monitoring system to make sure that inmates were not being tortured. Unfortunately, the US is now calling for re-opening the negotiations on the treaty, a step that will most likely destroy the treaty's fragile international support.

Mike Barnicle was a columnist for the Boston Globe for 25 years, before he was fired for making shit up in his columns. Seriously, he just made up quotes, and then sometimes made up people to say them. I'm flipping through the channels on TV this weekend, and there's Mike Barnicle doing commentary on a talk news show. Who the hell let this guy on the air? And then I come to find that he's still a columnist, now over at NY Daily News. The above article contains the latest Barnicle column fib accusation. Granted, I don't know how reliable the article is, as it comes from a newspaper gossip column.

Coke to Treat Options as the Real Thing- one of those non-confession confessions. One of the ways that big corporations have been using creative accounting is to pay their executives in stock options. The options have real cash value, but the company doesn't have to list it as an expense. This then makes their profit and revenue figures appear higher. The article above is about the Coca-Cola company's decision to start counting stock options as expenses. While it's commendable that they're going to start doing the right thing, it's also a quiet admission that they've been doing the wrong thing for quite some time.

Posted by Jake at 10:33 AM
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Lying Media Bastards is both a radio show and website. The show airs Mondays 2-4pm PST on KillRadio.org, and couples excellent music with angry news commentary. And the website, well, you're looking at it.

Both projects focus on our media-marinated world, political lies, corporate tyranny, and the folks fighting the good fight against these monsters.

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Media News

November 16, 2004

Tales of Media Woe

Senate May Ram Copyright Bill- one of the most depressing stories of the day that didn't involve death or bombs. It's the music and movie industries' wet dream. It criminalizes peer-to-peer software makers, allows the government to file civil lawsuits on behalf of these media industries, and eliminates fair use. Fair use is the idea that I can use a snippet of a copyrighted work for educational, political, or satirical purposes, without getting permission from the copyright-holder first.

And most tellingly, the bill legalizes technology that would automatically skip over "obejctionable content" (i.e. sex and violence) in a DVD, but bans devices that would automatically skip over commericals. This is a blatant, blatant, blatant gift to the movie industry. Fuck the movie industry, fuck the music industry, fuck the Senate.

Music industry aims to send in radio cops- the recording industry says that you're not allowed to record songs off the radio, be it real radio or internet radio. And now they're working on preventing you from recording songs off internet radio through a mixture of law and technological repression (although I imagine their techno-fixes will get hacked pretty quickly).

The shocking truth about the FCC: Censorship by the tyranny of the few- blogger Jeff Jarvis discovers that the recent $1.2 million FCC fine against a sex scene in Fox's "Married By America" TV show was not levied because hundreds of people wrote the FCC and complained. It was not because 159 people wrote in and complained (which is the FCC's current rationale). No, thanks to Jarvis' FOIA request, we find that only 23 people (of the show's several million viewers) wrote in and complained. On top of that, he finds that 21 of those letters were just copy-and-paste email jobs that some people attached their names to. Jarvis then spins this a bit by saying that "only 3" people actually wrote letters to the FCC, which is misleading but technically true. So somewhere between 3 and 23 angry people can determine what you can't see on television. Good to know.

Reuters Union Considers Striking Over Layoffs- will a strike by such a major newswire service impact the rest of the world's media?

Pentagon Starts Work On War Internet- the US military is talking about the creation of a global, wireless, satellite-aided computer network for use in battle. I think I saw a movie about this once...

Conservative host returns to the air after week suspension for using racial slur- Houston radio talk show host (and somtime Rush Limbaugh substitute) Mark Belling referred to Mexican-Americans as "wetbacks" on his show. He was suspended for a couple of weeks, and then submitted a written apology for the racial slur to a local newspaper. But he seems to be using the slur and its surrounding controversy to boost his conservative cred with his listeners.

Stay Tuned for Nudes- Cleveland TV news anchor Sharon Reed aired a story about artist Spencer Tunick, who uses large numbers of naked volunteers in his installations and photographs. The news report will be unique in that it will not blur or black-out the usual naughty bits. The story will air late at night, when it's allegedly okay with the FCC if you broadcast "indecent" material. The author of this article doesn't seem to notice that Reed first claims that this report is a publicity stunt, but then claims it's a protest against FCC repression. I'd like to think it's the latter, but I'm not that much of a sucker.

Posted by Jake at 04:02 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
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Mission: Mongolia

Jake's first attempt at homemade Mongolican barbecue:

Failure.

What went right: correctly guessing several key seasonings- lemon, ginger, soy, garlic, chili.

What went wrong: still missing some ingredients, and possibly had one wrong, rice vinegar. Way too much lemon and chili.

Result: not entirely edible.

Plan for future: try to get people at Great Khan's restaurant to tell me what's in the damn sauce.

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