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May 31, 2003 - Saturday
I just had a strange one...popped the compact flash memory card out of my camera and into the reader attached to this computer, but somehow the computer doesn't find the photos. Space on the card is used, but no files show up. Zero. Zip. Move it back to the camera, and the camera sees them, no problem. Figuring this out is beyond my 5 a.m. alert level.
The Washington Post offered up this insight into what might be the local news of the future, cooked up from a central studio at network headquarters in a remote location.
Reuters moved an interesting story yesterday reporting that a "growing number" of intelligence insiders believe the Bush administration slanted available intelligence data to justify the rush to war against Iraq.
And from Counterpunch, a chronology of "who said what when" on the issue of weapons of mass destruction.
| Well, I still haven't been able to load those pictures from the last couple of days, so here's one from earlier in the week. A less typical view of our morning destination in honor of the end of May. |
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May 30, 2003 - Friday
Honolulu Weekly editor Curt Sanburn is stepping down next month and heading back to San Francisco, so the paper is out looking for the right person to replace him. I'm told they're advertising on the mainland, were there are lots of out of work journalists.
And over at Hana Hou, the magazine of Hawaiian Airlines, editor Derek Ferrar (a former Honolulu Weekly editor) has stepped down, and another former Weekly editor, Julia Steele, will be taking over. Or so I'm told.
The Star-Bulletin had to print a whopper of a correction yesterday after reporting incorrectly on financial disclosure statements filed by Gov. Lingle's appointees. The original story, which appeared on Tuesday, failed to distinguish jobs and assets of appointees from those of their spouses. The correction, which ran about 13 column inches, reported errors in two-thirds of the cases originally cited.
Copies of the disclosure statements for these Lingle appointees are available online at the State Ethics Commission site. If completed properly, each interest is identified with either the filer (F) or their spouse (SP). These designations were apparently missed in the original reporting. And, as one reader noted: "It's the type of mistake that indicates the reporter didn't make a single phone call to verify the information before publication."
The error might have been somewhat mitigated if the original story had noted that under state ethics law, a public employee or appointee's financial interests include those of their spouse. Legally, for purposes of the state ethics law, they are one and the same. Nonetheless, this was a serious and embarrassing lapse in both reporting and editing.
Interestingly, the original story has simply disappeared from Starbulletin.com, leaving no evidence that it ever existed except for a missing number in the sequence of story links. And if there was any reference to "corrections" on the main Starbulletin.com page yesterday, or anywhere on the site, for that matter, I can't find it. Even the 13" correction isn't identified as such in its headline, so online readers won't know it is a correction unless they go directly to the story and read it.
The Advertiser, on the other hand, has a regular link in the entry page of its online edition that takes the reader directly to "corrections".
May 29, 2003 - Thursday
It finally happened. I got the call. Wow. Well, really, I got a message from Franklin Leonard, calling from Congressman Tom Delay's office to inform me that I've been selected to receive a "National Leadership Award". What can I say? Wrong number? Have I not been clear enough in expressing my views about Delay and his ilk? There are quite a few good columns floating around about this Republican scam, so I probably won't return the call. But perhaps I'll throw the message in the drawer for some day when I've got nothing better to do.
Speaking of Tom Delay, this telling anecdote appeared in a New York Times Op-Ed column earlier this week:
And Mr. DeLay recently revealed how he felt about rules of general applicability. When he tried smoking a cigar in a restaurant on federal property, the manager told him it violated federal law. His response, according to The Washington Post, was, "I am the federal government."
This has been a busy month for iLind.net, with an average of 430 visits and 1020 page views per day. With the better part of three days to go, there have been a total of 12,490 visits in May from 4,897 unique sites. That's the highest in the past 12 months, probably the highest...ever....Now if I could get 2 cents per visit, it would pay for itself, but that's probably wishful thinking.
I've added a new banner over on the right which links to the slowly growing collection of "old kine pics" that I'm scanning from negatives that have been in storage for decades. The next batch, which I hope to finalize in the next several days, is from the first protest landing on Kahoolawe in January 1976. Yes, I was there, one of the so-called "Kahoolawe Nine".
May 28, 2003 - Wednesday
Editor & Publisher reports that newspaper brokers are already pushing newspaper owners to prepare to bid on broadcast stations in their areas in expectation that the FCC will lift existing restrictions next week.
One of those quoted is Owen Van Essen, president of Santa Fe, N.M.-based Dirks, Van Essen & Murray, the company which marketed the Star-Bulletin.
"TV companies will move quickly in forming duopolies," Van Essen said, referring to a draft FCC proposal to relax restrictions on common ownership of two TV stations in the same market. "One of the things we've said is, yes, you can take a wait-and-see approach -- but that TV station that could be a perfect fit might be swallowed up."
It seems likely that some of that deal making is going on here, but it's not publicly visible yet. We'll see.
Yesterday's Advertiser left my head spinning. On the front page of their Hawaii section (page B-1), the Advertiser reported on an intentional fire scheduled at Schofield's West Range.
A "prescribed burn" of 1,200 to 1,500 acres will be conducted at the Schofield Barracks West Range starting as early as June 7 as the Army continues to plan for a Stryker Brigade Combat Team.
On page B-3, just two pages later, at the bottom of a column of brief items, sat this item:
Crews battle Schofield fire
Honolulu firefighters were called to assist yesterday with a fire at Schofield Barracks' West Range that burned about 75 acres.
The crews were dispatched at about 1:44 p.m. to assist federal firefighters, said Capt. Emmit Kane, Honolulu Fire Department spokesman.
The fire was declared under control at 5:27 p.m.
It left me wanting to know much more about what's going on up there at Schofield. But is this an instance where the new Nazi-style post-911 restrictions are going to impede or deter questioning about military activities?
The Bush administration is now trying to open the door for a new round of "usable" nuclear weapons, and we should all be taking this opportunity to do what we can to stop them.
Here's an excerpt from Retired Vice Admiral Jack Shanahan presented by TrueMajority.com:
Now Pres. Bush the younger and Congress are working to create a whole new generation of "usable" nukes. They are trying to repeal the Spratt-Furse provision so they can build a bunch of mini-nukes. They also want to spend millions to create a new high yield nuclear weapon to put on top of our conventional bunker busters, a weapon that already works fine.
The thought of this keeps me up at night for two reasons. First, America signed the global Non-Proliferation Treaty with over a hundred other nations. The deal was simple: If you don't have nuclear weapons, you can't build them; in exchange, those of us who do will work to get rid of ours. How can we complain that countries like North Korea shouldn't build new nuclear weapons in violation of the treaty when the Bush Administration proposes doing the very same thing? Second, with a trigger-happy White House that believes our country can win "pre-emptive wars" on the cheap, those folks might actually use these things if they ever got their hands on them.
Do the world a favor, send Congress faxes telling them you think there is no such thing as a "usable" nuke and they shouldn't try to build any. Just click this link. Then email your friends and ask them to do the same.
Thanks,
Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan (Ret.)
May 27, 2003 - Tuesday
The New York Times reports today on a battle brewing with Gannett in El Paso, Texas, a city that is now 75% Hispanic but where Gannett's daily, The El Paso Times, is criticized for "a disconnect between the largely sanitized, formulaic and Anglo version of El Paso in The Times and the predominantly Hispanic version on the streets." There's a familiar ring to the criticism aimed at Gannett down there in the big TX.
| The long weekend meant a chance to spend a bit more time on our morning walks and stop for a few more photos of our friends, canine and human. One thing leads to another, so I updated the gallery of Morning Dogs. Just click on Mr. George, or the Mornin' Dogs banner, for more. |
Mr. George |
And we had stopped to talk with George's people when they asked if we had heard about the Kaaawa riot. Didn't see that one in the news! It seems that a late night party on the other end of Kaaawa got out of control, turning into a melee with perhaps a couple of hundred kids. When the police finally responded around 1 a.m., it was with several dozen officers and liberal doses of pepper spray hosed out of portable tanks. The streets of Kaaawa were closed during the battle, or so we were told. It's kind of hard to imagine where HPD could even get several dozen officers to respond to anything in Kaaawa, since the whole coast from Kahaluu to Kahuku usually has only a handful of beat officers.
May 26, 2003 - Monday
I'm not sure how long this interview with Jason Blair in the New York Observer will be online, so read it now. This whole story just gets weirder and weirder.
I appreciated Vicki Viotti's story in the Advertiser this morning pointing to a collection of materials on Hawaiian annexation maintained online by the UH Library. On first glance, this is an excellent resource, and indication of what can be done online to give more people access to history.
| Yesterday morning it was Ms. Wally who insisted on occupying my lap. Every time I sat down in front of the computer, she appeared, 12 pounds of squirming feline maneuvering for the best position. |
Portrait of Ms. Wally
Click for larger version
(of photo, not of Wally)
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I decided to try for a one-handed portrait. It wasn't easy, cradling this dynamic bundle in one arm while trying to aim and operate the camera with the other. But it worked. Here's a good shot of Ms. Wally and I negotiating our respective positions.
May 25, 2003 - Sunday
I'm still digging through boxes looking for old photos and negatives. They've been in storage for years. These pictures have never been published or displayed, and some I barely remember. But somewhere along the decades, the events they depict have become "history". An interesting process. And the web suddenly provides a relatively simple way to share the images.
| I thought that I would share this timely bit of history--Honolulu's Memorial Day peace protest in 1971.
It was quite extraordinary. Opposition to the war in Vietnam had been building for several years, and the public was deeply divided, as it is today. As thousands of people arrived at Punchbowl for Memorial Day ceremonies, they were greeted by lines of white-faced peace activists standing along the roads leading to the national cemetery, quietly chanting, "How many more?" Referring, of course, to the war's casualties on all sides.
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Memorial Day 1971
click on photo
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The question remains as relevant today as it was then.
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