|
April 5, 2003 - Saturday
Emmis Communications, owner of Honolulu television stations KGMB and KHON, sent out a press release yesterday describing the company's ongoing attempts to expand its national network of broadcast stations.
In case you missed it, as I did, here's a link to BBC's unauthorized footage of President Dubya seconds before the commander and chief announced the war was on.
Some of you may remember former UH religion professor Jim Douglass, who taught here for several years in the late 1960's and early 1970's. Jim had a big influence on me at that time, first when I was in a class while here for one year as an undergraduate student, and later as a friend. So I was not really surprised to see a message in my email last week with news that he was in a group that had arrived in Bagdad a week after the U.S. started bombing. I wrote a small item for Honolulu Weekly about the delegation. Then Jim's wife, Shelley, sent along this short description of their sprint to Bagdad, which required going through both U.S. and Iraqi military lines.
From Life of the Land's Henry Curtis comes this legislative alert:
Warning: Opponents of bad planing are in trouble
Your call and emails are needed right now (here is House and Senate contact information).
How would you like to fight a bad project and discover that you must pay $5000 to $10,000 as a down payment?
Senate Bill (SB) 1075 states that agencies can require Mediation in contested case hearings and bill 50% of the costs to community opponents. Mediation costs range from $200-$400/hour. The Mediator meets with both sides individually and collectively. While the mediator is talking to talking to the other side, you are paying half the bill. If they spent lots of time gabbing, you pay.
Either KILL THE BILL
or
Require the party requesting mediation to pay for the mediation
Please call or email your legislator immediately.
The bill is headed to the House Floor. Every legislator needs to be contacted.
April 4, 2003 - Friday
The thunder storm that's been moving down the coast towards us for several hours now seems to have disappeared. All that thunder and lighting just gone, leaving a steady drizzle in its wake. A few cats have gone out and are probably rolling in the dirt under the house. Hopefully they'll reappear soon.
This old photo of George Steele with a cat, maybe his own, was found among his belongings and sent my way last night.
| And this news from the Star-Bulletin newsroom:
"we're having a service for George Steele at 5 p.m.
Tuesday at Kakaako Waterfront Park. It's going to be a brief service so newsroom people who are working can attend and get back to work.
We're telling people to park at the lot at the end of Cooke Street, and we'll gather at a shaded area near the water."
|
George Steele and friend, 1980's |
Hawaii Public Radio's general manager Michael Titterton put his foot deep into his mouth yesterday morning while chattering along during their on the air fund drive. It was about 8:35 a.m. when he dropped this little comment.
"This is the islands.
We're a simple people.
We sing. We dance.
And we do radio on a shoestring."
The bad thing was it sounded like he meant it. The "simple people" stuff, that is. It sounded condescending in the extreme. Pretty aversive. I don't know, though, if it rubbed others the wrong way as well.
For a visceral sense of how limited the mainstream media really is, check out this set of videos from Free Speech TV, which can be viewed online via RealVideo. I haven't watched them all yet, but I highly recommend Bridge to Baghdad, which brings together groups of young people in New York and Bagdad for a conversation just weeks before the bombing began. You see a bit of the lives of these kids, the same ones now living under our bombs. Could more of this kind of information have impacted public opinion? You betcha. But make up your own mind.
April 3, 2003 - Thursday
The announcement that longtime Dept. of Transportation flack Marilyn Kali has been replaced by Advertiser reporter Scott Ishikawa was likely greeted with relief by reporters who dealt with her. Kali had a reputation as one of the most difficult government spokespersons to deal with.
I received this thoughtful and poignant reply to the reader's comment in yesterday's entry.
Jessica Lynch, the soldier who was rescued yesterday, is from my home town. She lived on Mayberry Run, on one side of Palestine, WV. I grew up on a farm on the other side of Palestine.
West Virginia has always had a high percentage of soldiers in any war. We enlist and serve for many reasons, many of them economic. Jobs are hard to come by in many areas of this state and military service can be an income and a source of education benefits. Those were Jessie's reasons: she wanted to be a teacher and military service would help her afford an education.
Jessie's military service is part of a long tradition of patching together income and a living so that we can live here near our families. Answering "support our troops?" is complex. Try answering that question from a fourteen year old. Killing is wrong, but so is disrespecting people in our culture who's only hope of affording higher education is to serve in the military.
My mother served in the Army during World War II. She took the stereotypes and ran. After basic training was over and new uniforms were issued, she asked all her fellow WACs to send their old shoes home to her sisters so they could finally have shoes to wear. My four aunts, who always had all the shoes they needed, opened package after package of sturdy, worn-down comfortable shoes.
Journalists have been a bigger part of war news this week.
First there was the firing of Peter Arnett.
Then came the release of several reporters who had been held by the Iraqi government, a move that received less attention than I expected.
Democracy Now has an interview with one of several journalists detained by U.S. troops.
And yesterday the Los Angeles Times announced it had fired a photographer for electronically altering a war photo for publication.
And it's worth checking out the group Reporters Without Borders which tracks these and related issues.
April 2, 2003 - Wednesday
The Honolulu Star-Bulletin is cited in the tale of an island April Fool's joke that made #38 in one ranking of the best 100 of all time.
#38: Hawaiian Tax Refund
In 1959, as Hawaii was being admitted into the Union as the 50th state, a Hawaiian radio station announced that Congress had passed an amendment to the Statehood Bill refunding all federal income taxes that the Pacific Islanders had paid during the previous year. Thousands of people believed the announcement, and the backlash when they realized that there was no refund coming their way was enormous. The Honolulu Star-Bulletin , which had nothing to do with the hoax, took the opportunity to self-righteously declare that it would never publish an April Fool's Day story again.
Sounds of cats fighting at 5:15 a.m. interrupted this entry. I know that Lindsey, Harriet, Toby, and Miki weren't involved because they are in the house. All others remain on the suspect list. I flipped the outside lights and then ventured into the yard. The fight had already broken up, but none of the remaining suspects were in sight. You never know if this is good news or bad news.
Several veterans responded to the comment at the end of yesterday's entry. Here's the best:
support our troops???
the real question i ask is " who are our troops"
and do they support this war
are they representative of the depth and breath of this country
or
are they high school kids born in an area of this country with no opportunity
in 1979 when i was discharged
every single NCO lifer .... about 20 in my unit....
was from a southern state
none from the West, Midwest or East
maybe it is different today i don't know
but .... i doubt we have a diversity of socioeconomic groups
i wonder what the composition of the US military would be if we had free college education
by God we certainly could afford it
i know this for a fact (based on my own experience)
if this military had 100% draft army
one third would be revolting passively about participation this conflict
about 2% actively .... causing the media to focus where it should be
and where congress failed us
on our own democratic process
a proper debate on doing violence without provocation
is this is the cycle ?
patriotic boys ...until ....they learn that medical benefits are not available for ...
some unknown unnamed disease
caused by some unknown biological or chemical agent
or
cause by our own environmental pollution of deplete uranium shells
then the cycle is complete " veterans against the war"
The sun is now rising in Kaaawa at 6:24 a.m. We're barely getting to the beach before it's breaking the horizon. So we're getting nearer to that part of the year when our early walk is in daylight and we see only the aftermath of the actual sunrise. How time flies.
Now I'm off to browse the news.
April 1, 2003 - Tuesday
FYI--I've been notified that this server is going to be 'down' for about an hour tomorrow (Wednesday) afternoon for a hardware upgrade, so don't be surprised when it happens.
Mac enthusiast and tech writer Henry Norr was suspended by the San Francisco Chronicle after being arrested in anti-war protests last week, according to a story in the San Jose Mercury News. Norr describes the situation in a letter to Jim Romenesko's Medianews (scroll down to find the letter).
An interested reader provided these comments on news coverage of war protests:
It's always good to think critically, right?
Consider:
1. Media consultants advising clients that patriotism is more commercially attractive:
2. Big business media (i.e. Clear Channel) directly getting involved in organizing supposedly grass-roots "support our troops" demonstrations:
3. Locally, "public service ads" aired on local radio and TV in advance of such rallies, including KHON's reporting on them more than once (and including times and intersections for people to rally at, complete with infographics), KHNL's coverage of a "rally" to be put on by a bunch of skydivers (which seems more to me like a publicity ploy for Drop Zone Hawaii, but no one's calling them on it), and an Tuesday article in the Star-Bulletin lovingly detailing three weeks of work going into organizing Saturday's event:
QUESTION: Did the considerably more organized, and more substantial, anti-war rallies get this kind of "pre-coverage"? More importantly, was all the free air time for Saturday's "opposing view" worth it, considering the result?
I can't think of a single mainstream media outlet (as well all know, the Honolulu Weekly's made no secret of its position) being as much an advance cheerleader for the NION and related events as they were this past week or so for the pro-war/pro-troops events. Is this just good community service? Commercial interest? Garden variety bias?
Beyond the cheerleading, though, I'm more disappointed that no one here is really investing anything in this very public debate to look beyond the black and white, beyond being able to get quote A from the left and quote B from the right and put "conflict" in the headline. Short of Ted Rall, I can't think of very many anti-war Americans who are "against our troops" -the idea propagated by the pro-war side (see also: "pro-life"). On the other hand, I'm just as sure there are many very patriotic, strongly pro-troop Americans who care deeply about our men and women in battle and in the principles our country stands for... but also have sincere and grave concerns about the bigger picture and how the Administration handled this operation.
March 31, 2003 - Monday
The Centers for Disease Control is suggesting that nonessential or discretionary trips to Hong Kong, China, and other parts of Asia be postponed because of the dangerous respiratory illness that has recently been spreading in the region. But that didn't stop the Sunday Star-Bulletin's travel section from featuring a front page NY Times story about trekking to Hong Kong.
Today's Washington Post has another excellent analysis of the political battle raging behind the scenes in the Bush White House.
Several people responded with references to stories about the Navy's AWOL dolphin, including those from CBS, BBC (at the bottom of the column), and The Times of London.
Gene Stoltzfus, an old friend now living in Chicago and an organizer for Christian Peacemaker Teams, forwarded this report from Rutba, Iraq. It's an interesting personal account of a different group of Westerners in the war zone.
March 30, 2003 - Sunday
It drizzled most of the night, but at 5:30 a.m. it is now raining. Despite the wet weather, about half the cats appear to be outside somewhere. They'll appear as soon as I start turning on lights and opening doors. Or so I hope.
A friend provided this tip, although I haven't found the story online yet:
The Times of London says that one of the U.S. Marines most prized special forces operatives may have defected.
Takoma, an Atlantic bottle-nosed dolphin, had been in Umm Qasr to check for mines.
Despite being one of the most pampered creatures in the US military, he has gone AWOL during his first mission.
Somehow, this use of dolphins really bothers me. It's bad enough that humans train to make war, and now we're drawing other species into the insanity. I hope that this report of Takoma's disappearance is accurate. AWOL is the place to be.
There's interesting perspective in a Washington Post story today on the tension between U.S. military and political goals in Iraq. The Los Angeles Times had a very good bit of reporting yesterday on Arab reactions.
I'm sorry to see that even the Committee to Protect Journalists can't keep up with news of journalists missing or killed covering the war in Iraq.
6 a.m. and it's now raining hard in Kaaawa. No walking at dawn today.
Previous week • Other
Search this site,
courtesy of the folks at
|
Online Store 
More choices
|
