....LMB: "Idiocy, Futility and Desperation"....

September 15, 2004

Professor says Bush revealed National Guard favoritism- stop the presses! Wake the children! A rich kid got preferential treatment to avoid the draft!

Our Savage Numbness- journal entry by This Modern World blog collaborator Bob Harris. Bob is gloomy because Americans no longer seem to care that the US military openly kills innocent civilians on a regular basis. But the second half of his post is much more interesting, as he recounts how Muslims that he has met in his recent trip to Egypt have felt about America and its actions. "This is true, I swear: we have hundreds of millions more potential friends than America realizes right now. And we are losing them for a generation or more. I promise you that on my soul."

NYC: Urgent RNC Aftermath: Casa Del Sol Put Under A Vacate Order!!!!- I'm not 100% knowledgeable on this one. If I understand correctly, Casa del Sol is a "squatted" community center and garden in NYC based out of an unused, abandonded building. The center has been there for over 20 years. And now, NYC looks like it wants to abruptly eject them from the premises. I'll post more info if/when I get some.

Teachers Lose Tax Breaks for Supplies- fuck Arnold Schwarzenegger. Due to short budgets, teachers are always paying for supplies for their students and classrooms out of their own pockets. Now, due to even shorter budgets I guess, teachers are losing tax credits that offset some of these purchases. From the look of it, California teachers stand to lose up to $1750 per year.

I've got very mixed feelings about American schools. In my experience, the education they provide is 100% dependent upon the individual teachers. The teachers who give a shit and spend their own money are the ones that you want teaching you (or your kids). Pissing on them is the last thing you want to do. Hell, surveys show time and time again that Americans are willing to pay even more taxes than they do, if they knew that money was going to education.

Well, we've got one solution here. iLoveSchools.com is a website that hooks up donors with schoolteachers who need money to buy supplies. Give it a look. If the Kindergaren Cop can't be bothered to support teachers, maybe you can.


Leapfrog- how Afghanistan is fucked, filled with all kinds of upsetting facts. The most obviously jarring figure is that "over 107 percent of eligible [Afghan] voters have been registered to vote." But apart from pending voter fraud, the article discusses the de facto rule by warlords, the Taliban-lite sexism, the lack of security, the deaths, the lack of aid, and the drug-running.

Posted by Jake at 10:45 AM | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I luv the new They Live look!

Posted by: salvage at September 15, 2004 11:38 AM

whats up with the new logo?--notice the skull/OBEY.

Posted by: Brian/Buddy at September 15, 2004 01:29 PM

It's temporary, just a li'l something I've been wanting to do, shake things up every now and again. It's from a little movie called "They Live." If you can tolerate the cheesiness, you'll probably like it.

Posted by: Jake at September 15, 2004 01:42 PM

oh the cheesiness is no problem. Try the Lost Skeleton of Cadavra- its not a parody of 50's B sci-fi movies- it is a 50's b sci-fi movie.

Posted by: Brian/Buddy at September 15, 2004 08:51 PM

I agree with you that to people like you and me this stuff about the Shrub being a spoiled brat is tiresome. Nonetheless, half the country seems to think he grew up as a roughneck on an oil rig and pulled himself up by his bootstraps, and anything we can throw out to break through that is useful.

Posted by: Amanda at September 16, 2004 04:53 AM

is it just me or does the logo bear an eeiry resemblance to John Kerry?

Posted by: Brian/Buddy at September 16, 2004 02:43 PM
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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.

All brought to you by Jake Sexton, The Most Beloved Man in America ®.


contact: jake+at+lyingmediabastards.com

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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