Top Articles on AWEARNESS Blog for July 2008
Big Oil's Bet Against Oil
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In the midst of photographing a 'Key Leader Engagement', training for high level US officers to learn how to interact/engage Afghan leaders, I took this shot. The overall training method is 'theater immersion', designed to replicate all facets of life in Afghanistan at Fort Bragg. At first I found myself trying to get a shot without the other photojournalist. Then I realized that the inclusion and or influence we might have on the meeting should be represented. The current conflicts are a new era in the relationship between news media and the military. As the war takes a turn for the worse, we need more coverage to bring the American public's attention to this conflict, so they can democratically decide between more troops or getting our soldiers out ASAP.
Having recently moved to Austin from San Francisco just about everything I experienced was somewhat of a culture shock. My parents were visiting from the Bay Area when I decided to take them to downtown Austin and show there where their son had decided to start the next phase of his life. This photo was taken in front of the new Austin City Hall. Again, coming from San Francisco it was quite a shock to see a "no guns" symbol on the door, and coupled with the word "Welcome", I couldn't resist not taking a photo.
With all the talk in recent years about immigration, the plight of native Americans has virtually disappeared from the headlines. But those problems haven't gone away.
Hence the relevance and power of Kent MacKenzie's 1961 film The Exiles, a documentary about a group of young native Americans who left their reservations in the late 1950s to live in the Bunker Hill section of Los Angeles. MacKenzie's film, which opened last Friday at the IFC Center in New York, couldn't find distribution when it was made and fell into obscurity, seen only by a handful of cinephiles over the past 47 years.
After a restored print was screened at the Berlin Film Festival in February, the film finally got the recognition it deserves.
Very much of its time, The Exiles straddles the line between documentary and fiction, featuring non-actors and authentic scenarios, but often staged, directed, and scripted by MacKenzie for dramatic effect.
Film afficionados will see a trace of Jean Rouch, Jean-Luc Godard, and even Robert S. Flaherty in this artful work of cinema. Its subjects appear to live their lives candidly, as if caught unawares by the cameras that follow them through the alleyways, squalid apartments, and nightclubs of their small piece of LA. Meanwhile, voiceovers remind us that, yes, this is a documentary and not a fiction film.
But as the best documentaries prove, there is no real difference. Both forms, when done right, have the power to teach us something about humanity, to affect us both intellectually and emotionally, and to show us life as it may be lived.
And The Exiles does all three with a light touch.MacKenzie does not go on and on about his subjects and their problems, or lay blame on those who displaced them. Rather, he simply presents their lives and lets them speak for themselves.
The Exiles may be a product of the early 1960s, but its message transcends history. No doubt, few will take the time to see the film during its brief run at the IFC, but those who do will be glad they took a chance on this near-forgotten documentary.
[Image: The Exiles film stills]
Jay Smooth breaks it down for the rest of us in, How To Tell People They Sound Racist.
Everybody has been in one conversation or another where you just had to make a double take because what came out of the mouth of your acquantaince, friend, family or lover was not just stupid but also bordered on racist.
Jay explains the importance of distinguishing between addressing the "what they did" conversation as opposed to the "what they are" conversation. Or as I've referred to my own writing on race, the difference between the actions and the intentions.
You may have not intended to be a racist. The thought may even revolt you. And yet, you'll say something so offensive to a person of color that you're reaction is to defend the purity of your heart. Yet that's the problem: for the offended, there is no way to measure anything other than the action. Actions live outside of the actor. Intentions are emotions and they are completely subjective.
Watch the video. Jay does a fantastic job at establishing a simple strategy for dealing with the unexpected Public Display Of Ignorace (or PDI).
Jay Smooth is the publisher of ill Doctrine, a hip-hop video blog and the seminal HipHopMusic.com. He is also founder of New York's longest running hip-hop radio show, WBAI's Underground Railroad.
WARNING: You may find the image of teenage kids rebelling against the establishment by playing backyard baseball with heavy metal rock blaring in the background either pathetically cute or appallingly endearing.
Build a Wiffle Ball Field and Lawyers Will Come "BACK before we lost our collective minds and began shrieking with horror at the thought of kids having fun on their own (as in not part of an official league or otherwise organized activity), they used to do things like find a vacant field, turn it into a makeshift diamond and spend glorious hours in the summer sun," the local newspaper, Greenwich Time, wrote in an editorial in support of the youths on Wednesday.
The regular players, mostly high school boys but including Tara Currivan, 15 (who swings a mean bat and brings lemonade to the field), and Scott Atkinson, 13, seem a little befuddled by the whole thing.
"They think we're a cult," said Jeff Currivan, 17. "People think we should be home playing 'Grand Theft Auto.' "
And they seem to get the fact that many adults are taken with the idea of kids' doing something that's not structured, not organized and not oriented toward improving your SAT scores.
"It's just old-fashioned fun," said Vincent Provenzano. "We did it on our own. Maybe people think that's unusual."
Groan!
I don't even know how to start with this one.
The New York Times reported about a brouhaha in Connecticut over a case of wiffle baseball. You see, the Connecticutians in the story are mad as hell and not going to take it anymore because teenagers in the neighborhood took over a city-owned lot (aided and abetted by a couple of parents, mind you), cleaned it up and turned it into a backyard baseball playground.
Yes, this is a case of neighbors yelling, "get off my lawn" to a group of clean-cut punks who want to have some clean-cut fun in walking distance and within their own neighborhood. They are actually complaining about the potential loss in property values or risk of liability by having kids and teenagers playing safely in a rescued abandoned lot in their own neighborhood.
And what kills me is the comment by the 17 year-old: That the adults would rather have them zombified in front of a computer game than seeing them out and about playing backyard baseball.
Am appalled by this, especially after writing about the incredible hardship the Uganda Skateboarders' Association went through to make a simple ramp out of mud in one of their poverty stricken suburbs. Compare that to this suburb in Connecticut and ... ugh. All am left with is a sigh.
Sigh.
It seems like everything has gone green these days - including the traditional school fundraiser. Thanks to new "earth-friendly" fundraising companies such as Greenraising, schoolchildren are now raising money for school activities by selling environmentally-correct products - including recycled wrapping paper, environmentally-safe cleaning products and fair trade coffee - instead of cookies and candy. As the Wall Street Journal recently explained in a feature article, these new types of fundraising activities not only tap into the whole green movement - they are also a response to other factors, such as the obesity problem in America.
For more on these green fundraising activities, check out Green Students Fundraising, Greenraising and Higher Grounds Trading.
[image: Green Students Fundraising]
Steve Wyatt, Associate Creative Director at Kenneth Cole Productions, linked to a new documentary about the Homeless World Cup
Farhad Warasta uploaded a photograph from a U.S. military training event in Afghanistan
David Alm mused on the future of race, social satire and the candidacy of Barack Obama and alerted New York-area readers to an oasis floating in the Hudson River
Kenneth Cole employee Evan Greenberg shared details of a plan by T. Boone Pickens to reduce U.S. dependency on foreign oil
Andrew Huff weighed in on the newest scandal at FEMA
Liza Sabater linked to a video that explains how to deal with racism in everyday life
Heather Dumford, Media Marketing Manager at Kenneth Cole Productions, pointed out interesting new TV programs on Sundance and PBS
Around the country people are reacting to the ever-increasing price of gasoline in ways that just 10 years ago would have seemed like the premise of a dystopian sci-fi thriller, or maybe a dark comedy.
Here's a sampling:
Recently, drivers in Holly Springs, Georgia, a northern suburb of Atlanta, who are stopped for speeding now have to pay a $12 surcharge to cover the gasoline costs of the cops who stop them.
A Kentucky woman was arrested for prostituting herself in exchange for a $100 Speedway Gas Card.
Nevada brothels are offering $50 and $100 gas cards to improve their declining business (mostly from truckers). These "double your stimulus" incentives are for anyone who spends $300 or $500 at the brothels, respectively.
And finally, in New York City, taxi drivers are pleading the Taxi and Limousine Commission to institute a $1.00 surcharge on every fare to cover the rising price of gasoline, which in New York is around $4.38 per gallon right now. Compare that to $1.80 in 2004, and you can see where the cabbies are coming from.
I'm glad I live in New York and don't own a car, as opposed to one of the other places mentioned above. Still, I'm not looking forward to those inevitable, even more crowded subway rides.
[Image: Derek Jensen on Wikimedia Commons]
This week's cover of the New Yorker, right, is barely off the presses and already has people talking, bloggers blogging, and presidential hopefuls on both sides of the fence agreeing that in this case, the magazine has simply gone too far.The cartoonist claims he wanted to illustrate the preposterous claim that Obama is unpatriotic, or worse, a terrorist. The magazine itself, no stranger to social satire but always respected for its intelligence and depth compared to other, increasingly shallow media, is nevertheless in hot water over this one.
Tell us what you think.
[Image: New Yorker cover illustration by Barry Blitt, Issue: July 21, 2008, AP photo]
He is reported as saying that there's no question there's Life as we know it out in the universe because we have indeed have what J. Allen Hynek has described as a "close encounter of the third kind". It's a coincidence that just this past weekend I had watched the Steven Spielberg movie by the same name. This comes, by the way, after it was announced that the Mars rover Phoenix has discovered evidence of the existence of water on the planets soil.
I had seen the 1977 movie as a child so there's a 31 year gap between the first time I saw it and last Sunday. Can I just tell you how incredibly impressed I am with Steven Spielberg's early work? I can't understand the "Spielberg hate" among academic and intellectuals. I was entering college in the 1980s and I remember vividly how "not cool" was it to watch anything written, directed or produced by Steven Spielberg because he was "too commercial".
Well, the movie may be famous for it's alien musical conversation scene, but in my book, the movie is worth every single ounce of your attention for it's first 10 minutes.
I heard somewhere that you know a movie is going to be good in those first 10 minutes. I completely agree. Not only does Spielberg establishes this movie as a modern fairy tale by wrapping the set in a cloud of dust. The movie is very much about how humans protect themselves from that which we cannot explain easily.
In those first 10 minutes, an alien contact is being recorded by the radar of an air traffic control room in the local airport. The back and forth between the people in the room and the airplane pilots is amazingly action packed even though what we're seeing is the conversation and some blips on the radar. The pilots "survive" the something that almost hits their airplanes and yet, when the air traffic controller asks "Do you want to report a UFO", the pilots all decline with a terse "No". In the end he too concedes and decides not to report what had just happened. As a defense mechanism against that which they couldn't explain, it is understandable. You can see that telegraphed on the faces of everybody in that air traffic control room.
Which makes me wonder ...
The last 8 years we've had an administration that had secret prisons and secret memos condoning and encouraging the use of torture and secret strategies for illegally wiretapping civilians. You've got to wonder what with all the news coming in of yet another cover-up or yet another "untruth" involving our foreign policy if instead of scoffing at Dr. Mitchell's claims of a cover-up about alien life if people are making a double take and actually considering them plausible. After so many lies about real tangibles happening here on Earth why shouldn't we believe his comments may indeed have more than an ounce of truth.
I mean, if we've been lied about the reasons for going into a war in the Middle East, wouldn't the government lie about contacts with alien life?
Scientists have just unlocked one of life's great wonders: why we laugh. Maybe you don't want to know, but don't worry: knowing why you laugh isn't going to stop you from laughing.
It's quite simple, really, according to the study by Alistaire Clark (which as far as I can tell isn't funny at all): We laugh because our brains encounter patterns they don't recognize, and in the process of computing -- or understanding -- the pattern, the physiological response of laughter just happens, involuntarily.
Could this mean there's an evolutionary function to those guffaws, chortles, and tee-hees? After all, why else would we need to express to the world that our brains just encountered a new pattern? It could be a survival mechanism, or a means of coping with sudden confusion, allowing us a pleasurable sensation while we figure out how to negotiate this strange new information.
In any case, I have a few questions for Mr. Clark: First, if laughter is caused by encountering a new pattern, why do we laugh at the same joke -- or line quoted from a favorite comedy -- over and over again? Second, why don't all foreign patterns register as humorous? Some are outright terrifying, like when a monster in a horror movie has eyes on its knuckles and seventeen tentacles growing out of its chest. That's certainly a new pattern for an earthly lifeform -- but it ain't funny. Unless, of course, it's on The Simpsons. But why is it funny then, but not in a John Carpenter film?
And what about learning algebra? I don't remember doing a lot of laughing then. Or getting tickled... What kind of new pattern is that?
[Image Credit: David Alm]
"How does the Communist Party exert control over 1.3 billion Chinese? How do you run China?"
As PBS explains in its new special on China, "Do it successfully, and have a hugely prosperous, innovative and powerful empire to rival any the world has seen. Mess it up and the chaos is vast and terrible." PBS continues to provide an in-depth look at "China through Chinese eyes to see how their history has shaped them- and where their present is taking them" during a four-part series entitled China From the Inside.
Part One in the series, Power and the People, will air this Friday, July 18, at 10pm. Tune in to see "patrols along China's border with Kazakhstan, Party meetings, officials in Tibet trying to impose authority at the grass-roots, a village election, and a corrupt embezzler in prison, reprieved from a death sentence. Chinese people throughout, from farmer to Minister, speak frankly about the problems the country faces and the ways forward."
[Image: "China From the Inside: Voters at Polling Booths" by Jonathan Lewis]
Seated near the center of the United States, Sioux Falls, South Dakota is not particularly known for its popularity among presidential campaign stops. It is, however, directly associated with former Senator Tom Daschle, who has played a critical, if underplayed, role in Senator Obama's run for the White House. While not a crowd of 200,000, as Barack Obama received in Berlin, Germany, this "small" gathering of 7,000 eagerly arrived to witness the message from a man known world-wide for his compelling and charismatic oratory skills. An opportunity such as this does not present itself very often here, and we were fortunate enough to be seated behind the podium. The image encapsulates the truly personable nature Obama displayed on stage.
This week PBS has two must-see programs, including one that looks at the future of stem cell research and another that examines the role of women in modern-day China.
On Wednesday, July 23 at 9pm, NOVA's ScienceNow will take you through a new way of creating embryonic-like stem cells -- without the embryo: "Though the new method offers a potential alternative to the ethically charged work of using human embryos to isolate these important stem cells, the technique still has a number of obstacles to overcome and has scientists warning this is certainly not the end of the debate."
On Friday, July 25 at 10pm, PBS is airing the next episode of the documentary by filmmaker Jonathan Lewis, China From the Inside. In this segment, Women of the Country examines the role of women in China, focusing on the disparity in the existence of women in urban versus rural areas of the country.
[image: Stem Cells via NOVA scienceNOW]
The Federal Intelligence and Surveillance Act (FISA) is one of those pieces of legislation that most people not only have not heard but due to its technicalities may not care about either. Yet FISA has become the bane of many a civil libertarian's existence not only for the fact that it gives the executive branch unfettered ability to spy on citizens without a warrant. It has become the lightning rod for the kind of "back tracking" legislation that are a step away from a constitutional amendments denying citizens the right to privacy.
In other words, Bush and his administration spent 8 years spying on US citizens illegally. They broke the law and now they're trying to remedy without due process by amending the law in such a way that would allow for the formerly illegal spying, all the while granting retroactive immunity from prosecution to the phone and telecommunications companies and government officials who aided and abetted the Bush administration.
When Barack Obama was running for the nomination, he spent a year saying he wouldn't grant immunity to the telcos. Now he's "flip flopped" on the issue and the civil libertarians of the Democratic Party are angry as hell.
So bloggers from sites like Daily Kos, Open Left, and other sites did what they do best : swarm in political actions online. They have bandied together to literally crash the gates at Barack Obama's party on the web by forming a group at MyBarackObama.com called Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right.
Given that the Obama gives people the tools to easily log into their address books at Google, Yahoo or any other web-based email service, groups at MyBarackObama.com can grow exponentially. Add to that the fact that the sites involved have the traffic to mobilize the first 1,000 it is then not shocking to see that the group has grown to over 10,000 members.
Some people are looking at this as if it is one of the biggest acts of civil disobedience online. I don't believe it is although, granted, it is "revolutionary" but only in the sense that it is the first time this has ever happened because, it is the first time any candidate has had this type of community organizing website set-up.
What is interesting to me is the fact that the Obama people are letting the group grow. It is a damn if you do, damn if you do moment for them. Yet I honestly believe that they look at this as a win given that now they will be able to compile data profiles of the malcontents.
In other words, the "protest" works to Obama's advantage because his people have now the permission from each registrant to be spied (while on the site) by the campaign.
Where do I stand in all of this? I think Obama's making a huge mistake and he shouldn't cave into the surveillance demands of the Bush administration. So am all for the civil libertarians cause.
Friday July 18th marks the 90th birthday of former South African President Nelson Mandela's. Mandela celebrated his ninth decade on the planet -- nearly three of which were spent as a political prisoner at -- in Qunu, his childhood home, described by The Australian as " the humble rural homestead where he was born and once herded cattle." Mandela gave this birthday message to the world:
"There are many people in South Africa who are rich and who can share those riches with those not so fortunate who have not been able to conquer poverty. Poverty has gripped our people. If you are poor, you are not likely to live long."
The former President also asked young South Africans to be "disciplined" in their lives. The twin themes of the disciplined life and the fight against global poverty have preoccupied Mr. Mandela since the end of the totalitarian rule of Apartheid. It was Mandela's own passion for organizational discipline that led, in part, to the ultimate triumph of the African National Congress as South Africa's ruling party.
[image: NelsonMandela.org]
The image above is a sample from the Transportation Security Administration's latest airport screening technology, the millimeter wave scanner. It and a backscatter x-ray machine were tested last year in Phoenix and are being rolled out in 10 of the country's busiest airports including LAX, JFK, DFW, ORD and others, as part of the TSA's "checkpoint evolution."
The agency says these devices will make it easier to screen for small but powerful explosives hidden against a passenger's body, and serve to replace hand pat-downs. The TSA assures that images will not be stored or transmitted, passengers' faces are blurred for privacy and that the screener viewing the revealing full-body scans will be isolated from public view. But privacy activists are crying foul. The American Civil Liberties Union has come out against the program, citing a laundry list of reasons they don't trust the system, and bloggers are shuddering at the thought of TSA agents seeing them essentially naked.
Although the images aren't saved in any system, you have to wonder how long before someone sneaks a digital camera in to snap photos of their favorites. On the other hand, CBS News in Chicago has been investigating claims of overzealous TSA agents at O'Hare, reporting stories of women being made to take nipple rings out and disabled men having their pants removed. If these scanners can eliminate situations such as these, maybe it is a privacy sacrifice worth making.
[Image Credit: Transportation Security Administration]
Recently, a group of current and formerly homeless teenagers staged a protest outside Milwaukee's city hall to draw attention to the plight of homeless teens in the city. Homelessness advocates claimed more than 400 teenagers live on the streets in Milwaukee, unable to find a place to sleep at night because only 16 beds are set aside specifically for them in area shelters.
"The issue of teen homelessness in Milwaukee is a shadow issue. It's an invisible issue," Daniel Magnusen from the Counseling Center of Milwaukee said.
Not just in Milwaukee: it's estimated that one in three homeless people in the US is aged 18 or under. Exact figures are hard to come by. Some are former foster children, others are runaways, and many are homeless along with a parent or sibling.
Because they may not be as obviously homeless as some other populations — they're generally not raving in the street, after all — it's harder to spot them. And finding a way out is tougher for teens, since they usually lack the work experience to get a job.
The Runaway and Homeless Youth Act, which provides federal funding to programs that help disconnected youth, is set to expire on September 30. Last month, the House of Representatives voted unanimously to renew it, and the Senate is expected to vote on it sometime this summer. The National Alliance to End Homelessness has recommendations on amendments to the law; take a look and contact your senator.
[image credit: WTMJ-TV]
I'll come right out and say it: If any kind of disaster strikes my Brooklyn neighborhood -- whether natural or man-made -- both my girlfriend and I are screwed.
I don't think of myself as a vulnerable person, but truthfully, I'm so unprepared for a calamity that I might as well be an unclothed baby in the middle of a Los Angeles Expressway at rush hour.
And I just found this out, by taking a very short click-through exam: What's Your RQ (readiness quotient). As of this morning, I was still blissfully unaware of how unprepared I really am.
I scored 1 out of 10 -- compared to 4.7 out of 10 among my Park Slope neighbors, meaning no one on my block should be asking me for help or advice in the event of an emergency.
Curious to know where you stand? Take the test and find out.
[Image Credit: Jean-Michel Roche, from Wikimedia Commons]
Mak Erot may not be a household name in the Western hemisphere, but the 101-130-year-old Indonesian woman (report