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By Sheila Lennon
'Bottom-up' journalism from the pros
4.09.03/ Iraq
news: Best sources portal
4.04.03/ The
Station Fire Weblog
April 11, 2003 - (Last
week's weblog)
Department
of Peace by 2005? From The Summit Daily News (Vail, Colo.):
U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, believes peace on Earth is a requisite
for human survival.
With that in mind, he introduced a bill Tuesday that would establish
a Cabinet-level Department of Peace, designed to promote peace through
mediation and education from the community to international levels.
The department would not only address war, he said - although war is
on the forefront of many people's minds - but also would address domestic
violence, human rights and hate crimes. ...
The bill has the support of 47 other congressional leaders - all Democrats...
"This is a perfect time to question the assumptions we have about
our culture, our society and the world as to whether war should be considered
inevitable," Kucinich said. "Is there another way of proceeding?
Is there a path we can take to make it possible to play a leading role
in the world without having to project our armed forces?
The Oakland
Press adds,
The bill's sponsor, Democratic U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, said
this is his second legislative attempt at pushing the initiative. His
initial foray was launched in July 2001 - two months before the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks.
While the proposed peace department would try to head off international
conflicts before they result in war, it also would address issues closer
to home such as domestic violence, child abuse, mistreatment of the
elderly, and attacks based on race or sexual orientation.
Community-based violence prevention programs and peer mediation in
schools are proposed solutions.
Here's Kucinich's
website with a release on the bill.
Link
to this item | Comment
Leahy
slips organic foods reform into budget:
From the Brattleboro (Vt.) reformer,
WASHINGTON -- Sen. Patrick Leahy led the Senate in a giant step toward
restoring the integrity of organic food standards with an amendment
slipped into a frenzied late-night session to approve President Bush's
supplemental war budget.
The amendment, which mirrors a bill previously submitted for review
by Vermont's Democratic senator, requires organic farmers to maintain
a process entirely free from chemicals and scientific manipulation.
This had been the standard until this year, when a provision inserted
into the fiscal 2003 budget allowed farmers to use non-organic feed
yet still label the final meat, poultry or dairy product as organic.
Congressional proponents of Leahy's push had feared the war budget
would steamroll forward without allowing for the agricultural amendment.
But Leahy vowed to push the initiative. His amendment drew 51 co-sponsors
in the Senate, and passed 93 to 0 as part of the $78 supplemental budget
that will fund the ongoing war in Iraq.
...The previous standard, which is on the verge of being reinstated,
was first introduced in 1990 under the purview of the U.S. Department
of Agriculture. But the strict standards to qualify as certified organic
-- from soil, to feed to final product -- was wiped away earlier this
year by 10 lines in a 3,000-page budget inserted by House Speaker Dennis
Hastert, R-Ill. The change allowed certified organic farmers to use
cheaper conventional feed.
Or, as AP phrased it, "The Senate has repealed an exemption that
allowed chicken farmers to call their product organic even if the chickens
never ate organic meal, as long as the farmers could prove there was a
shortage of the feed."
The very concept is bizarre.
There's more news
from the Organic Consumers Federation, which tracks all this.
Link
to this item | Comment
 Honoring
"Lady Warrior": Navajo Times reports on the first
female American soldier killed in Iraq, Pfc. Lori Piestewa of Tuba
City, Ariz., a 23-year-old Hopi Indian. A
memorial fund has been established for her her 4-year-old son and
3-year-old daughter, who are being cared for by their grandparents. Her
mother, Percy Piestewa, released this statement:
"Thank you for all your support. It has made us so strong. People
from all over the world, from all over the nation, from people who feel
as if Lori were their own daughter.
"We ask people that they hug their little ones, tell them how
much they mean to them -- all the naliis (paternal grandmothers),
all the kids."
Mrs. Piestewa said that Lori's deeply held religious beliefs likely
helped sustain the soldier in her final hours and that "God took
her so that she no longer would be suffering."
"Tell people how awesome they are and thank them for all their
support. The support has made our family strong."
Cards and letters may be sent to
Percy Piestewa
P.O. Box 957
Tuba City, AZ 86045
Related: What
about Private Lori? From the Guardian (UK) yesterday:
For the last week America has been gripped by the 'Saving Private Jessica'
mission. But nobody wanted to hear the sadder story of her friend and
tentmate Private Lori Piestewa, who died in combat. Gary Younge reports
from her home town of Tuba City, Arizona
Link
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Independents'
day: What record industry slump? Independent labels say business has
never been better. From the Christian Science Monitor:
You won't hear many of these labels' artists on pop radio - and ironically,
that's one of the secrets to their success. By avoiding the major expenses
associated with getting a tune on the air - which can cost upwards of
$400,000 or $500,000 per song - independent labels are able to turn
a profit far more quickly, and share more of those profits with their
artists. Another secret of their success is that the labels target consumers
- namely, adults - who are still willing to pay for their music, rather
than download it for free.
Link
to this item | Comment
RFK
Memorial Journalism Awards: No links, unfortunately, but
the Cartoon winner is “This
Modern World” by Dan Perkins (alias “Tom Tomorrow”).
Link
to this item | Comment
"For
What It's Worth": A reader sent along a link to the labor
of love -- the lyrics of the 1967 Buffalo Springfield tune -- "Something
is happening here / What it is ain't exactly clear ..." -- illustrated
with current photos.
Related:
A tale of two photos: For what it's worth.
Link
to this item | Comment
Quick hits:
Mobs
loot Baghdad's treasures: Antiquities from "the cradle of civilization"
vanish. Don't look for them on eBay. If this link is busy, here's
another take.
Iraqi
"most-wanted" deck of cards (loads slowly)
Webby
Award nominees
The
new Matrix movie trailer (Zip file, to download)
RSS
Feed Reader / News Aggregators Directory
Topsy
Turvy: "A game of quick thinking where players must clear the
game board full of colorful game pieces before time runs out. This game
has a real twist. The game board rotates, causing the game pieces to tumble
around, creating an entirely new game environment every time!"
Weekend fun:
Bizarre record covers
Link
to this item | Comment
April 9, 2003
The
work that won Pulitzers: Gary Price links to this year's winning
stories and photos, not just the names of the winners. via Infomaniac
Link
to this item | Comment
A SARS blog: SARS
Watch.Org is "following Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome around
the globe." A sample post:
More weblogs by people living in SARS affected areas
This is sickening, the most appalling example of crisis mismanagement,
political bungling and criminal stupidity I have ever seen. To hell
with them, every last one of the lying, self-obsessed bastards.
Yet another blogger writing from Asia, this one Richard aka The
Peking Duck in Bejing, where they are apparently blocking access
to Time magazine online because of the story about the Chinese government
continuing
to try to hide the full extent of SARS. As you can see, he has some
strong feelings about it.
Link
to this item | Comment
Mob write: Help journalist-blogger Dan
Gillmor of the San Jose Mercury News write
a book called 'Making the News.'
Link
to this item | Comment
Reporters down:
JD Lasica
points to a
weblog by Stuart Hughes, a BBC producer in northern Iraq whose foot
was blown off by a landmine; he's still blogging from his hospital bed.
And to a BBC
News Online article about him: Iraq journalist's leg amputated.
There's also a moving story by Paul Belden of Asia Times about Tariq
Ayyoub, an Al-Jazeera journalist killed by American missiles as he reported
from the roof of the al-Jazeera office in Baghdad. It's headlined, Silenced
in the name of freedom,
People repaid him in kind. He earned the sort of loyalty and respect
that doesn't come through by being a braggart or a bully-boy, so common
in journalism. He won hearts and minds by setting an example of bravery
and honesty and kindness that others couldn't help but seek to emulate.
"If you write one thing about him," said Sawsan abu-Hamdeh,
al-Jazeera's Amman correspondent, "say this: Tariq was an honest
man. He was incorruptible."
Link
to this item | Comment
 Orchid
slideshow: Excellent eye candy. Blogger Mark Kevin Hall (Hidden
City) took a camera to the International Orchid Festival at Fairchild
Tropical Garden in Coral Gables, Fla., and posts 21 stunning closeups
of blooms. via Infomaniac
Link
to this item | Comment
TV
Stars Who Insist On Singing: Mp3s for the weird hall of fame:
Leonard Nimoy doing Both Sides Now, Jerry Springer crooning
Mr. Tambourine Man, many more. April
Winchell collects them.
Link
to this item | Comment
April 8, 2003
Al-Jazeera
Newscasts Land on U.S. Cable Television: Reuters reports,
NEW YORK (Reuters) - Al-Jazeera has reached a deal for its unedited
newscasts to be carried on cable television in the United States, where
the Arab-language network has been criticized for its coverage of the
U.S.-led war against Iraq.
Jazeera's half-hour news reports began running April 1 on cable TV
stations in Cleveland, Omaha, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Ithaca among
other cities, the nonprofit organization that is supplying the broadcast
said on Tuesday.
The supplier is SCOLA
(Satellite Communications for Learning), in Omaha, whose
list of affiliates includes Brown University and some Cox Cable
stations, although not in Rhode Island. Here's the press
release.
Link
to this item | Comment
Condolences to the Bloom family: Messages
to the family of the late David Bloom, NBC correspondent who died of a
pulmonary embolism in Iraq last week, may be sent to BloomFamily@NBC.com
or to
The Bloom Family
c/o NBC
30 Rockefeller Plaza
New York, NY 10112
Link
to this item | Comment
Unwired:
The Wi-Fi Revolution: A special report at Wired is all about wireless.
How
to Hook Up walks you through it, step by step. Power
Tools looks at wi-fi-enabled hardware of all sorts. There's much more.
Link
to this item | Comment
Agonist more a pirate than a plagiarist: The
Agonist has been our favorite source of breaking Iraq news since day one,
but we never thought Texas blogger Sean-Paul Kelley was doing any more
than copying and pasting incoming details he found elsewhere.
Now Wired
reports that another
blogger has accused Kelley of plagiarism for failure to identify the
source of some of these reports.
Kelley admits he was copying some items without attribution from Stratfor's
subscription-only intelligence reports.
He probably wasn't sourcing these because he knew he didn't have the
rights to republish them, but wanted to get the information out. The mailing
lists are full of such proprietary information.
Kelley has apologized
and said he learned a few lessons from the incident. He also says he has
come to an amicable agreement with Stratfor, added source information
to all archived posts, and he blogs on.
I think plagiarism is stealing someone else's work and pretending you
created it. I doubt any of Kelley's readers thought he had a mole feeding
him inside information, although readers certainly sent him links. Rebroadcasting
information available only by subscription is a commercial crime, like
ripping a CD and putting it on a file-sharing network. No one accuses
the ripper of plagiarism, though -- even RIAA calls it piracy.
Kelley left his keyboard for a few hours
to get married Saturday, and his webmaster filled in for him. This
24/7 blogging will no doubt get old for him very quickly, but I'm among
many who appreciate the effort.
Link
to this item | Comment
Idea
share: Believer
Magazine offers this interesting feature:
This page will regularly offer ideas for books or stories or works
in other media, from those who can't act upon them. All ideas are assumed
original and are cost-free. Take what you want and do what you will.
In all cases they are offered in the hopes that these worthy projects
will find their way to someone with the time and wherewithal to pursue
them.
The L.A. Times has a story about the new publication, which focuses on
books and authors: New
magazine has an abiding faith in the good book review
Link
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Free
reads: ClassicReader.com, "where you can read, search, and
annotate great works of literature by authors such as Dickens, Tolstoy,
Shakespeare, and many others. The collection currently contains 769 books
and 1041 short stories by 211 authors. New works are added to the collection
on a regular basis, many at the suggestion of readers."
Link
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All
Songs Considered: From National Public Radio:
In the past few weeks at All Songs Considered, we've been receiving
homemade CD's, Web site addresses with MP3 files filled with passionate
thoughts about the war in Iraq.
On this special edition of All Songs Considered, we present
some of the works, from either well-known musicians, or from home studio's,
that perked up our ears. These aren't classic tunes - we didn't hear
the next "Blowin' in the Wind" -- but in their own way they
are inspired.
Link
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 Flag-o-Rama!
Patriotic items for fanatical flagwavers: These are a joke today,
but they'll probably be for sale in your spam next week.
Internet-enabled
cutting board: No joke. "It contains a microprocessor-controlled
system capable of browsing the web. It can download recipes and display
them on a screen within the board itself... "
This and such stunning breakthroughs as the internet toilet roll browser
were among cutting edge designs at the Ideal Home Show in London.
More strangeness: Iraqi
Acres.
Link
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Subterranean Homepage News
by Sheila Lennon
features & interactive producer of projo.com |
