Ruby and I went to the anti-war march in Fayetteville, NC. I took a bunch of pics. This one of the SC Radical Cheerleaders was my favorite.

This is audio was produced for WBAI by Amber Cortes. I found it when Amber commented on my post The Stories of Experienced Radicals. She has graciously allowed me to link to this audio and thus share it with you. Her new blog and podcast is called You Never Know. This audio is from her blog post International Women’s Day Special: Women Who Ran For President. More great audio there. Check it out!

I hope more folks tell me about interviews with experienced radicals. I define experienced radicals as politically left men and women from around the world who’ve worked many years for positive social change. Maybe we can create a podcast site full of valuable stories that can teach the radicals of the future.

MP3 13m 19s 10.7MB 44.1kHz 160kbps

Read the whole story by clicking more. (I include here under fair use.)

March 1, 2006

Video Shows Bush Warned Before Katrina Hit

by MARGARET EBRAHIM and JOHN SOLOMON, Associated Press Writers 35 minutes ago

WASHINGTON – On the eve of Hurricane Katrina’s fateful landfall,
President Bush was confident. His homeland security chief appeared relaxed. And warnings of the coming destruction — breached or overrun levees, deaths at the New Orleans Superdome and overwhelming needs for post-storm rescues — were delivered in dramatic terms to all involved. All of it was captured on videotape.

The Associated Press obtained the confidential government video and made it public Wednesday, offering Americans their own inside glimpse into the government’s fateful final Katrina preparations after months of fingerpointing and political recriminations.

“My gut tells me … this is a bad one and a big one,” then-federal disaster chief Michael Brown told the final government-wide briefing the day before Katrina struck the Gulf Coast on Aug. 29.

The president didn’t ask a single question during the briefing but assured soon-to-be-battered state officials: “We are fully prepared.”

The footage — along with seven days of transcripts of briefings obtained by AP — show in excruciating detail that while federal officials anticipated the tragedy that unfolded in New Orleans and elsewhere along the Gulf Coast, they were fatally slow to realize they had not mustered enough resources to deal with the unprecedented disaster.

A top hurricane expert voiced “grave concerns” about the levees and Brown, then the Federal Emergency Management Agency chief, told the president and Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff that he feared there weren’t enough disaster teams to help evacuees at the Superdome.

“I’m concerned about … their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe,” Brown told his bosses the afternoon before Katrina made landfall.

The White House and Homeland Security Department urged the public Wednesday not to read too much into the footage.

“I hope people don’t draw conclusions from the president getting a single briefing,” Bush spokesman Trent Duffy said, citing a variety of orders and disaster declarations Bush signed before the storm made landfall. “He received multiple briefings from multiple officials, and he was completely engaged at all times.”

Homeland Security spokesman Russ Knocke said his department would not release the full set of videotaped briefings, saying most transcripts — though not the videotapes — from the sessions were provided to congressional investigators months ago.

“There’s nothing new or insightful on these tapes,” Knocke said. “We actively participated in the lessons-learned review and we continue to participate in the Senate’s review and are working with them on their recommendation.”

New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin, a critic of the administration’s Katrina response, had a different take after watching the footage from an AP reporter’s camera.

“I have kind a sinking feeling in my gut right now,” Nagin said. “I was listening to what people were saying — they didn’t know, so therefore it was an issue of a learning curve. You know, from this tape it looks like everybody was fully aware.”

Some of the footage and transcripts from briefings Aug. 25-31 conflicts with the defenses that federal, state and local officials have made in trying to deflect blame and minimize the political fallout from the failed Katrina response:

• Homeland Security officials have said the “fog of war” blinded them early on to the magnitude of the disaster. But the video and transcripts show federal and local officials discussed threats clearly, reviewed long-made plans and understood Katrina would wreak devastation of historic proportions. “I’m sure it will be the top 10 or 15 when all is said and done,”National Hurricane Center’s Max Mayfield warned the day Katrina lashed the Gulf Coast.

“I don’t buy the `fog of war’ defense,” Brown told the AP in an interview Wednesday. “It was a fog of bureaucracy.”

• Bush declared four days after the storm, “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” that gushed deadly flood waters into New Orleans. He later clarified, saying officials believed, wrongly, after the storm passed that the levees had survived. But the transcripts and video show there was plenty of talk about that possibility even before the storm — and Bush was worried too.

White House deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin, Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Blanco and Brown discussed fears of a levee breach the day the storm hit.

“I talked to the president twice today, once in Crawford and then again on Air Force One,” Brown said. “He’s obviously watching the television a lot, and he had some questions about the Dome, he’s asking questions about reports of breaches.”

• Louisiana officials angrily blamed the federal government for not being prepared but the transcripts shows they were still praising FEMA as the storm roared toward the Gulf Coast and even two days afterward. “I think a lot of the planning FEMA has done with us the past year has really paid off,” Col. Jeff Smith, Louisiana’s emergency preparedness deputy director, said during the Aug. 28 briefing.

It wasn’t long before Smith and other state officials sounded overwhelmed.

“We appreciate everything that you all are doing for us, and all I would ask is that you realize that what’s going on and the sense of urgency needs to be ratcheted up,” Smith said Aug. 30.

Mississippi begged for more attention in that same briefing.

“We know that there are tens or hundreds of thousands of people in Louisiana that need to be rescued, but we would just ask you, we desperately need to get our share of assets because we’ll have people dying — not because of water coming up, but because we can’t get them medical treatment in our affected counties,” said a Mississippi state official whose name was not mentioned on the tape.

Video footage of the Aug. 28 briefing, the final one before Katrina struck, showed an intense Brown voicing concerns from the government’s disaster operation center and imploring colleagues to do whatever was necessary to help victims.

“Go ahead and do it,” Brown said. “I’ll figure out some way to justify it. … Just let them yell at me.”

Bush appeared from a narrow, windowless room at his vacation ranch in Texas, with his elbows on a table. Hagin was sitting alongside him.

“I want to assure the folks at the state level that we are fully prepared to not only help you during the storm, but we will move in whatever resources and assets we have at our disposal after the storm,” the president said.

A relaxed Chertoff, sporting a polo shirt, weighed in from Washington at Homeland Security’s operations center. He would later fly to Atlanta, outside of Katrina’s reach, for a bird flu event. Officials say he was frequently updated on the road about Katrina.

One snippet captures a missed opportunity on Aug. 28 for the government to have dispatched active-duty military troops to the region to augment the National Guard.

Chertoff: “Are there any DOD assets that might be available? Have we reached out to them?”

Brown: “We have DOD assets over here at EOC (emergency operations center). They are fully engaged. And we are having those discussions with them now.”

Chertoff: “Good job.”

In fact, active duty troops weren’t dispatched until days after the storm. And many states’ National Guards had yet to be deployed to the region despite offers of assistance, and it took days before the Pentagon deployed active-duty personnel to help overwhelmed Guardsmen.

The National Hurricane Center’s Mayfield told the final briefing before Katrina struck that storm models predicted minimal flooding inside New Orleans during the hurricane but he expressed concerns that counterclockwise winds and storm surges afterward could cause the levees at Lake Pontchartrain to be overrun.

“I don’t think any model can tell you with any confidence right now whether the levees will be topped or not but that is obviously a very, very grave concern,” Mayfield told the briefing.

Other officials expressed concerns about the large number of New Orleans residents who had not evacuated.

“They’re not taking patients out of hospitals, taking prisoners out of prisons and they’re leaving hotels open in downtown New Orleans. So I’m very concerned about that,” Brown said.

Despite the concerns, it ultimately took days for search and rescue teams to reach some hospitals and nursing homes.

Brown also told colleagues one of his top concerns was whether evacuees who went to the New Orleans Superdome — which became a symbol of the failed Katrina response — would be safe and have adequate medical care.

“The Superdome is about 12 feet below sea level…. I don’t know whether the roof is designed to stand, withstand a Category Five hurricane,” he said.

Brown also wanted to know whether there were enough federal medical teams in place to treat evacuees and the dead in the Superdome.

“Not to be (missing) kind of gross here,” Brown interjected, “but I’m concerned” about the medical and mortuary resources “and their ability to respond to a catastrophe within a catastrophe.”

___

Associated Press writers Ron Fournier and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.

I feel that the public history of computer science is incomplete. When we teach the history of computer science or even just talk about it online we need to mention the details of people’s lives. Why? Details inform their work. They give us a fuller image of the men and women we respect and admire. They give us something to connect with. I know that you can be great at what you do no matter your sexual preference, gender, or race – but these things do make a difference. We need to celebrate our uniqueness. Especially freedom loving computer geeks.

The fact is the majority of geeks online are men – white, heterosexual, men. Not all geeks are men, but a majority are. (Once I have the data to prove this I’ll link to it. But a safe theory I believe.) I happen to be a heterosexual male and am ashamed of this majority I belong to.

The age of hetero male geeks ranges from early teens to senior adults. Sadly many guy geeks where once nerdy teenagers that were uncomfortable with their own sexuality. Young geeks can be pretty immature about sexuality online. Could this contribute to the lack of mainstream discussion of gayness among computer geeks?

While researching the Alan Turing some more I discovered that right before his death he was convicted by Britian’s discriminatory anti-gay law known as,

gross indecency under Section 11 of the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885. Turing was unrepentant and was convicted. [Why the hell should he repent?] Although he could have been sent to prison, he was placed on probation, conditional on him undergoing hormonal treatment designed to reduce libido. He accepted the oestrogen hormone injections, which lasted for a year, with side effects including the development of breasts. His conviction led to a removal of his security clearance and prevented him from continuing consultancy for GCHQ on cryptographic matters.

Via Wikipedia

This is so incredibly sad. Imagine how many MORE wonderful accomplishments for humanity Turing could have given if he wasn’t harassed, tortured, and possibly murdered. How disrespectful it is to have treated him this way. No man or woman should be treated this way – no matter the time or place. But for such a person who has given our planet so much to be treated this way is difficult to comprehend. We need to make sure that all history books discuss sexuality – and other things – relating to historic people while teaching their accomplishments. To hell with don’t ask don’t tell!

More interesting information from Wikipedia about Turing:

In 1954, he died of cyanide poisoning, apparently from a cyanide-laced apple he left half-eaten. The apple itself was never tested for contamination with cyanide, and cyanide poisoning as a cause of death was established by a post-mortem. Most believe that his death was intentional, and the death was ruled a suicide. It is rumored that this method of self-poisoning was in tribute to Turing’s beloved film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. His mother, however, strenuously argued that the ingestion was accidental due to his careless storage of laboratory chemicals. Friends of his have said that Turing may have killed himself in this ambiguous way quite deliberately, to give his mother some plausible deniability. The possibility of assassination has also been suggested, owing to Turing’s involvement in the secret service and the perception of Turing as a security risk due to his homosexuality.

In the book, Zeroes and Ones, author Sadie Plant speculates that the rainbow Apple logo with a bite taken out of it was an homage to Turing. This seems to be an urban legend as the Apple logo was designed in 1976, two years before Gilbert Baker’s rainbow pride flag.

From now on I’ll always think about Turing and his accomplishments when I see the rainbow Apple logo. It’s design may have not been intentionally symbolic but in my mind it is forever repurposed. Here’s to Alan Turing’s accomplishments! Cheers!

The first thing I noticed is that both these posts were by women who are dating a geek who is man. This seems to be the most common situation. Mine is a bit different in two ways. I’m a geek, who is a man, and I’m dating a woman who is a geek. We self identify as geeks. I’m not putting words in my geeks mouth at all. We like to describe this relationship we have as Geek Socialist Love. Super dorky I know.

So after reading Maryam’s post about dating geeks I wanted to say hell yes much of what she says is true. But also the feminist in me wants to say, DAMN what’s with all these “don’t tell him” and “Do make him” and “Do indulge him“? So many of these good suggestion can go both ways for geek women and geek men. I mean I could just email my partner the URL of this post and say, DO this for ME. Nope. Just too damn selfish. For just about every instant in the Do’s and Don’ts I could replace the female gender in the sentence and have very good advice for my geek partner. It’s interesting when dating advice is two way. No disrespect to Maryam. I’m VERY lucky to be with a geek who understands me as a geek.

What we need is more gender neutrality here. (I can hear people groaning already…) Yes your words and thoughts alter our existence and control the equality or lack of it. If we don’t stop thinking of MEN as the sole owners of brains and geekiness then our society is screwed. Not to mention the future of young girls who want to be programmers, scientists, engineers, physicists, etc. Show some respect. Stop looking at men as the only geeks!

(If you insist on maligning this little rant by calling it Political Correctness think about the propaganda of concervative think tanks and how they’ve planeted the desire to be perjorative in your brain. )

Organizations are now doing somthing about this. The ACLU is suing the NSA! [Wow!] There is something you can do about it. Sign the Move On Pettition to Restore the Rule of Law. Here is the letter that will be sent to your elected representative and the Justice Department. Public pressure works. Especially during a election year.

YOUR COMMENT TO CONGRESS AND THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT

TO: Your Senators
CC: (Attorney General Alberto Gonzales)
FROM: (Your Name and Email)
SUBJECT: Thoroughly Investigate the Wiretapping Program
__________

Dear (Senator/Attorney General),

(Your personal note)

President Bush admitted to personally authorizing thousands of potentially illegal wiretaps, and he doesn’t plan to stop. This abuse of power threatens the very core of our Constitution.

We demand a thorough and independent investigation of the Bush administration’s allegedly illegal wiretapping activities, including: (1) appointment of an independent counsel to respond to any criminal activity that may have taken place, (2) a thorough, meaningful and open Congressional investigation, (3) protection for all whistleblowers who come forward with evidence of wrongdoing in this program.

Sincerely,
(Your name)
(Your address)

The notion that war is intrinsic to man’s nature is dealt a powerful setback in Stan Goff’s Sex and War. Goff, a former Special Forces sergeant, argues persuasively that rather than being born that way, men are made into killers by governments, corporations, and systems of power. Drawing both on his experiences in the military and on his reading of feminist writers such as Patricia Williams, bell hooks, and Chandra Mohanty — and as the father of a son stationed in Iraq — Goff journeys through wars, ideologies, and cultures, revealing the transformation of men into killers. His story encompasses not just the battlefield and the book, but the Swift Boat Veterans controversy, the eros of George W. Bush, pornography, the Taliban, and gays and lesbians in the military. Goff’s remarkable ability to connect his own personal experiences to contemporary feminist criticism makes for a provocative discussion of war and masculinity.

Thanks to Ruby for reminding me to blog this…

Also I’m trying out this neat Flickr flash slideshow thingy. You can put it on your own site too! See the article HOW TO Quickie: Embedded Flickr Slideshows.

Check out the AudioActivism Photo Slide Show for my implementation of it. It’ll show you all the photos I’ve uploaded to Flickr. In the near future I’ll be posting a lot more HIGH res pics that I’ve taken. (More details about that soon) Plus some other cool moving image type stuff.

LIBRA (Sept.23-Oct.22): In one of his books, the Dalai Lama challenges readers to go just 10 minutes without having a negative thought about another person. When I told this to my acquaintance Arthur, he said, “What a simplistic, overrated fraud that Dalai Lama dude is. It;s totally easy to go 10 minutes without dissing someone.” Your assignment, Libra, is to submit to a marathon version of the challenge. See if you can go seven whole days without having a negative thought about anyone. His Holiness implies there’s a good selfish reason for doing so: it helps you cultivate a state of mind in which peaceful contentment is a natural condition. (bold mine)

I read this in the Independant as I walked to work this morning. I had for some unknown chearful reason said hello rather loudly to two different men at this point. I think they appreciated me saying hello.

Last night I was in a rather bad mood. I’d said some rather harsh words to someone I didn’t know. I went to bed worn out. I wonder what I dreamed last night? This morning was different. Thank you for sharing His Holiness advice Mr. Brezsny.

A few years ago when I read the online comic The Spiders – thanks Ruby – the concept of the video game console/Internet generation becoming PHYSICALLY active remotely from their living rooms amazed me. Not only could people playing peaceful video games develop positive social justice ideals, be creative, improve hand eye coordination, gain social skills, and make friends they could participate in NONVIOLENT DIRECT ACTION.

US solders are already guiding remote control flying robots that carry missiles and other weapons. What if the average citizen were able to wield this power? I wouldn’t wish such a nightmare scenario upon the earth but the potential of remote control empowerment is staggering. Video games already act as pre-training for battle. Especially in games like America’s Army, the US Army’s first person shooter video game. There have been reports of improved physical skills among soldiers who have played this game compared to soldiers who did not.

Instead of training new killers why not train activists to spread peace and understanding with high technology? Imagine a digital Engaged Buddhist monk wielding Akido across the physical world by traveling through the conduits of the Internet. William Gibson we are only beginning to understand the accuracy of your literacy soothsaying.

via: Boing Boing, Smart Mobs

“Trust is contingent on the evidence which one party provides the others of his true, concrete intentions; it cannot exist if that party’s words do not coincide with their actions. To say one thing and do another—to take one’s own word lightly—cannot inspire trust. To glorify democracy and to silence people is a farce; to discourse on humanism and to negate people is a lie.”

— Paulo Friere

I’m not turning the original question around to avoid answering it. Nor am I interested in obfuscating the core question. It’s just that when you start discussing such fundamental human issues you MUST take into consideration the complexity of human history and culture. There are a lot of different points of view. We can not just accept one ethical definition. We must analyze many.

Yet we must also consider what context, what frame of reference, we’re discussing these ethics within. The areas I’ve been thinking about recently are blogging, podcasting, citizens and professional journalism. Recently I was asked about my journalistic ethics during a talk about Audio Activism and podcasting. I almost immediately said, “I don’t consider myself a journalist. I consider myself a media activist. I don’t uphold myself to journalistic ethics.”

This was half jokingly answered, “Oh so you don’t have any ethics.” I suppose in the context of this talk among young journalists there is no other set of ethics to consider but journalistic ethics. Thus by disavowing ethics in general did I cast aside the one true ethics for media making? Not really. Just like I’m making my own media I can MAKE MY OWN ETHICS.

Without succumbing to hubris I will say I have strong moral and ethical values. They’re just not the most popular values of our country right now. I refuse to use only one name for my ethics and values. I refuse to adopt only one. I reserve the right to make changes to my ethics when ever I like.

Categories for your personal philosophy or ethics are valuable. It’s hard to deny category. Our brains crave them. We identify culturally and personally with groups that have names. But because of our chaotic world, values with precise names can become corrupted and vague over time. Maybe I am a moral relativist…

So here I would like to recommend that all students and professional journalists question “Journalistic Ethics”. If anything this is precisely what blogs and podcasts are helping us do. Many of the ethics journalist hold dear are valuable and important. Do not throw all of them out. Just revaluate and recreate them. Then vow to be more diligent in upholding until serious events compel you to do otherwise. The power of twenty first century media making is one of those times.

MP3 30m 48s 14.7MB 64kbps

More about Jimmy and Wikipedia:
http://www.wikipedia.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_wales

Sponsors: ibiblio.org
School of Information and Library Science
School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Scholarly Communications Working Group

An outsider artist in the art world is someone who doesn’t have formal training in the fine arts, may not consider themselves an artist, and creates prodigious amounts of art work.

When I make podcasts I don’t use editing much (thus my editing training goes out the window), I don’t consider myself a journalist (but occasionally a documentarian), and I record and share lots of audio. Other podcasters are much better examples of outsider artists than I. I’ve been interested in the technical and professional of audio and video for years.

Interesting when you put things in parallel isn’t it.

In the end George Bush has to take responsibility. When [the rapper] Kanye West said the President does not care about black people, he was right, although the effects of his policies are different from what goes on in his soul. You have to distinguish between a racist intent and the racist consequences of his policies. Bush is still a ‘frat boy’, making jokes and trying to please everyone while the Neanderthals behind him push him more to the right.

Thank you for linking to this Sally.

This post started off as just a fan boy kiss to Apple for making iTunes. Hence the screen shot there. But after watching Chuck Olsen’s newest Minnesota Stories called Minneapolis Primary [ MOV ] I just had to tip my hat to him. Watch it! It’ll make you laugh. As funny if not more so than John Stewart. Chuck, when are they going to call YOU dude and give ya a job!?!? Soooooo I must point out that iTunes not only will help you play, subscribe, and download audio but VIDEO too. WOW that is so cool! God I gota’ visit Minneapolis again soon!

James Lewis Cates, Jr., was born in 1948 in Chapel Hill. A life-long resident of the town, he was born into the predominantly African-American Northside community, and he bore witness to the monumental changes of the 1960s. He participated in civil rights sit-ins, was arrested along with hundreds of his peers, and was a member of the very first fully integrated graduating class of Chapel Hill High School in 1967.

James Cates died on November 21, 1970, fatally stabbed in the course of a knife-fight that occurred just outside the doors of the snack bar at the UNC Union. He bled to death lying on the bricks of the Pit. His killers were members of a Durham-based motorcycle gang, known as the Stormtroopers. They were notorious figures in the area, unmistakable on their Harley Davidson bikes and decked out in Nazi paraphernalia.

Last night Ruby and I went to Blood Done Sign OUR Names: The Lessons of Censored History For Our Struggles Today’ held on the UNC campus last night. It was sponsored by Campaign for Historical Accuracy and Truth (CHAT), CampusY, Chapel Hill-Carrboro NAACP, Student Action with Workers (SAW), UNC NAACP, United Electrical Workers Local 150 (UE 150), Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF), UNC-Chapel Hill Feminist Students United (fsu).

The place was packed with about 150 people to see the four person panel. (scheudal to be five) One panelist was Tim Tyson, the author of Blood Done Sign My Name. His words were very relevant to the students in the room because his book was a summer reading assignment for freshmen. (Called the Carolina Summer Reading Program) Yet another so called “controversial” selection. In the last few years UNC students have been asked to read Nickeled and Dimed which is about the struggle of low payed workers and Approaching the Qur’an which discuses the Muslim holy book. It’s great that these choices create such controversy. It gets people young and old thinking.

The absolutely riveting part of the night for me was when Matt Robinson told the story of the 1970 murder of African American James Cates in Chapel Hill. Matt wrote his master’s thesis on this terrible event. He gave so many details from so many perspectives. It was obvious he has spent years interviewing eye witnesses. It’s one thing when a historian reconstructs a story as fact but quite another when they provide first person accounts. I hope to bring Matt back to the AudioActivism studios and record his telling of these sad events.

All Americans need to organize and attend events like these. It is so important that all races, genders, and classes get together and discuss the difficult topics.

This morning on the BBC for colonist via NPR (aka BBC Newshour) I heard that British Home Secretary Charles Clarke claims he will begin enforcing a new “anti-terror law” that will deport any non-citizen in the UK that does things like glorify terrorism, incites violence, preaches hate, etc. Still no word on exactly what actions are on the list of “unacceptable behaviour”. They don’t seem to be able to apply the same rules to British citizens. They can’t just deport them. Fact is all the men who bombed the London tube and bus were British citizens.

Just as the BBC show was ending they read a email from a woman in Waltham, Massachusetts. She asked if Pat Robertson would be on a list of non-citizens to be deported for glorifying violence and preaching hate? I wonder if the UK will keep a list of non-citizens who are not allowed into the county who’ve preached hate? Hmm the righteous sword of anti-terrorism rhetoric cuts both ways me thinks.