Sunday, June 21, 2009

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Eric Kuhn: Behind the NRDC's Social Media Strategy Top
When the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) needs to generate attention for environmental issues - ranging from bees to global warming - one of the people they turn to is Apollo Gonzales , the Netroots campaign manager. While he still believes traditional media (newspaper and television) is "king" in spreading information, in an interview for the Huffington Post, he shed some light into the NRDC's social media strategy. Eric Kuhn: First, what are some of the biggest issues that the NRDC is trying to spread the word about right now? Apollo Gonzales: Well, every issue we're working on is big to those in the affiliated program, whether it is our work on bees and colony collapse disorder, or the global warming and the Energy bill. We've got lots of campaigns in various stages of development, in addition to the two I just mentioned we're working to stop Mountain Top Removal, to spread the word about the value of Green jobs, protecting wildlife like Wolves and Polar Bears, exposing the truth about coal and other dirty fuels like Tar Sands, Oil Shale and Liquid coal. The list is endless. One of the issues you are focusing on is the plight of bears and wolves from Yellowstone. How does the communications department try to market an issue like this to people on line? We take a very holistic approach to communicating our issues. The traditional silos of media (print, television, web, etc.) just work better when they are informing one another. So while we've got action alerts going to peoples in boxes our press team is making and taking calls and our web team is featuring the issue on the website. That is just the start though, we're also getting our staff (who work on the issue) to blog about it on Switchboard , and we're sending the action and the blog to our Facebook fans, all the while sending messages to our Twitter followers. Often, the case is that a bump in attention in one place leads to a bump in attention to the other spaces. How does the NRDC utilize Twitter, Facebook and other social networks to try and make your causes "viral"? Initially, these spaces are a great distribution channel. Our content can be delivered right to the places people live online. That is the easy part to all of this, but these spaces are about engagement not just distribution. So we really try to listen to what people are saying about the issues and our content. We thank them for sharing our links, we point them to places where they can learn more, we promote their thoughts and contributions to the conversation within the channel. From a technical standpoint we are always looking at making our content as portable as possible so folks can share and redistribute our content in a way they choose. What is the most effective way to spread the word about an issue? Is it social networks, your blogs or something else? Television and newspapers are still king. They reach a massive audience more efficiently and effectively than any other medium. So to the extent that we can get a plug or a platform via those channels, we'll take it every time. Often we don't have that opportunity so we rely on the things you mention - social networks, blogs, Twitter, email, and our website. Every campaign is different, but putting energy in the blogosphere does really well for us. Whether we blog at Switchboard , or some outside blogger picks up our issue, with a little massaging we can give a blog post legs. A blog post is easy to link to, can be visually impressive (video, photo), comes with a built in audience of some size, and almost always has a sharing function built in. The blog post is the foundation that we build the social media strategy upon. More on Twitter
 
Jeff Biggers: Reckoning at Coal River: Media and Nation Must Bear Witness to Coalfield Tragedy This Week Top
A historic reckoning is taking place on Coal River in West Virginia this week--and in Washington, DC on Thursday. On June 25th, U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Water and Wildlife Subcommittee, will hold the first bipartisan hearing in a generation to address the impact of mountaintop removal mining operations. In the meantime, the human rights and constitutional violations of American citizens besieged by ruthless outside coal companies will be on full display to the national media and the nation--from the shocking and shameful mountaintop removal operations threatening the safety of a school and community in West Virginia, to the transformed halls of the US Congress. On Tuesday, June 23rd, local coalfield parents and residents will be joined by legendary 88-year-old West Virginia activist Winnie Fox, 94-year-old coal mining hero and former US Congressman Ken Hechler (D-WV), the nation's foremost climatologist James Hansen, actress and long-time environmental activist Darry Hannah, and director Michael Brune of the national environmental group Rainforest Action Network, on a nonviolent march from Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia to a nearby Massey Energy mining site to call attention to the blatant disregard for the safety of the children and community. The two sides of the Massey bridge over Coal River could not be more distinct--and a startling wake-up call to the nation. Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia might be the most tragic and symbolic site of American children left behind by their state government. Forsaken by state officials and a recent WV Supreme Court decision last week, the school and its children must play amid the toxic dust of a coal silo--and soon a second one--that sits less than a football field away. The Marsh Fork Elementary School also sits only a few football fields downslope of a 2.8 billion gallon earthen coal sludge impoundment, where Massey Energy is setting off thousands of pounds of explosives near the dam. Every school kid in the coalfields knows Massey's reckless history with coal sludge dams. In a haunting parallel to last December's TVA coal ash disaster, a Massey subsidiary in eastern Kentucky was responsible for the largest coal slurry spill at that point, leaking over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the area's waterways and aquifers. With blasting nearby, if the 380 foot earthen dam above the Marsh Fork school broke, the children and community residents would have less than three minutes to flee. Based in Richmond, Virginia, Massey Energy has demonstrated a merciless coveting for coal at any expense. At the 2008 4th quarter earnings call, the out-of-state company's president crowed that 2008 was the "most successful" in Massey's history, and their "very aggressive expansion plan" was executed "almost to perfection." The Virginia-based president was "especially pleased" that Massey reached an "all time record high" of $641 million in adjusted annual EBITDA. Now laying off workers due to market demands, with 19 union-busted Appalachian mining operations valued at $2.6 billion in 2008, the Richmond company shelled out $20 million in penalties for dumping toxic mine waste into the region's waterways in 2008; Massey also paid a record $4.2 million for civil and criminal fines in the death of two coal miners in West Virginia last year. Besides the obvious environmental tragedy of destroying over 500 American mountains and 1,200 miles of streams through massive explosives and mining waste, four other issues should be noted by the national media: 1) Mountaintop removal is a national issue, not a regional or Appalachian issue: Coal stripmined from mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia--though accounting for only 5-7% of the national coal production--is used by coal-fired plants that generate electricity for Americans across the nation, including the network and cable TV channels in NYC, the White House in Washington, DC, Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Wrigley Field in Chicago. 2) Mountaintop removal is an international climate change issue: Over 500 massive mountains and 1.5 million acres of hardwood deciduous forests have been clear cut and blown to bits in one of our continent's most important carbon sinks; and the coal exported from mountaintop removal operations, including millions of tons to dirty coal-fired plants in China, contribute to our growing carbon dioxide emissions climate crisis. 3) Mountaintop removal is a national health care issue: When entire communities in the coalfields are unable to drink their well water or tap water, and entire areas such as Prenter, West Virginia, are afflicted with various illnesses or some form of gallbladder disease from coal slurry contaminated water, our nation must come to grips with this health care emergency. According to a recent report by the University of California in Santa Barbara, the external costs of US coal-fired plants ("harm that comes about by damages to crops and buildings as well as health implications for humans--sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter") add $268 billion annually to our nation's health care system burden. 4) Mountaintop removal is a national human rights issue: As 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives continue to be detonated across the West Virginia mountains every day (with a similar amount ripping across eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia), American citizens living under or near mountaintop removal operations have been subjected to a state of terror, including daily blasting, dangerous bombardments of fly rock, rain showers of silica dust and heavy metals, contamination of their water sources, flooding, harassment, and the massive devaluation of their properties. In announcing the historic Senate hearings last week, on the same day that the Obama administration set forth its intent to do "all it can under existing laws and regulations to curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop coal mining," Sen. Carden said: "Mountaintop mining is one of the most destructive practices that already has destroyed some of America's most beautiful and ecologically significant regions. Today's decision by the Obama Administration to limit the practice through a stronger review of mountaintop mining permit applications is an important step in the right direction. However, it does not halt this incredibly destructive form of mining. We must put an end to this mining method that has buried more than a thousand miles of streams." Senator Cardin is the sponsor of S. 696, The Appalachian Restoration Act, a two-page bill that would outlaw the mining practice. As bridge between the Congressional hearings on Thursday and the march from Marsh Fork Elementary School on Tuesday, 94-year-old former West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler will be in the front ranks. Hechler held the first hearing on the impact of mountaintop removal in 1971. Later that year he introduced a bill to abolished strip-mining. When the House amendment to grant federal sanctioning to mountaintop removal under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was introduced on July 22, 1974, Ken Hechler rose and declared: "Mountaintop removal is the most devastating form of mining on steep slopes. Once we scalp off a mountain and the spoil runs down the mountainside and the acid runs into the water supply, there is no way to check it. This is not only esthetically bad as anyone can tell who flies over the State of West Virginia or any place where the mountaintops are scraped off, but also it is devastating to those people who live below the mountain. Some of the worst effects of strip mining in Kentucky, West Virginia, and other mountainous areas result from mountaintop removal. McDowell County in WV, which has mined more coal than any other county in the Nation, is getting ready right now to strip mine off four or five mountaintops. They are displacing families and moving them out of those areas because everybody down slope from where there is mountaintop mining is threatened. I certainly hope that all the compromises that have been accepted by the committee, offered by industry in the committee, that now we do not compromise what little is left of this bill by amendments such as this." Let's hope Hechler's voice--and those of the children and other coalfield residents in Coal River Valley, and around Appalachia--will be heard this time. More on Barack Obama
 
Meir Javedanfar: Faeze Rafsanjani's Arrest and Ayatollah Khamenei's Fears Top
The arrest of Faeze Rafsanjani, the oldest daughter of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani by the Iranian government, is a sign of warning against her father, and her supporters. Faeze is a well known figure. She is an ardent reformist and feminist. A former member of parliament, she was voted the 46th most powerful woman by Forbes magazine in 2004. She has already been in trouble before. In the late 90s, her feminist magazine, called Zan (meaning woman), published an interview with the former empress of Iran, Farah Diba. What worried the Iranian government about her is the fact that she took a leading role in the demonstrations. According to the Tehran based Asr Iran news agency, she was arrested, alongside another one of her brothers and four other family members, after attending a demonstration in Tehran's Tohid square. The fact that she is a leading Islamic feminist is one major source of worry. What has been notable about the current demonstrations is the presence of young women on the streets. Not only are they participating, but according to Roger Cohen's recent article from Tehran, they are also leading men to take on the baton wielding Basijis. Her presence can also motivate other demonstrators, as it could make them believe that they are being supported by higher powers from within. What is interesting is that she was not a big fan of Ayatollah Khatami, because he was too "weak". According to her supporters, if during his eight year presidency Khatami had stood up to the conservatives, they would not have suppressed the reformists. Faeze is much more in favor of Mousavi and his unwillingness to back down. Meanwhile, other senior politicians are voicing their concerns about the way in which the elections were carried out. In a recent TV interview , Ali Larijani the speaker of the Majles stated that the support of some of the Guardian Council members for one member (ie Ahmadinejad) was not helpful. In this case, Larijani is pointing to Ayatollah Jannati, who currently serves as the head of this all-powerful Council. An ardent supporter of Ahmadinejad and a close friend of Ayatollah Mesbah Yazdi who is Ahmadinejad's messianic mentor, it is thought that his close friendship and defense of Ahmadinejad is another reason why the president's "victory" at the polls is disputable. As the demonstrations in Iran continue, sooner or later, the demonstrators are going to need the support of a leader. Otherwise, the demonstrations may disintegrate, due to factionalism and dispute over how to continue. For now, Mousavi has not been too controversial. However, his recent statement that he is "ready to be martyred" could be taken as a clear sign that he is not going anywhere, and that he is going to lead until votes are recounted in a fair and transparent manner. The head of Iran's police force recently warned Mousavi about the demonstrators. What could separate him from his current status to that of Iran's Nelson Mandela, could very well be prison bars. Ayatollah Khamenei's perception about the demonstrator's current desires for regime change are inaccurate. However, if his unwillingness to compromise and violence against demonstrators continue, he could very well turn this fear into self fulfilling prophecy. More on Iranian Election
 
Great White Sharks Hunt Just Like Serial Killers Top
WASHINGTON Great white sharks have some things in common with human serial killers, a new study says: They don't attack at random, but stalk specific victims, lurking out of sight. The sharks hang back and observe from a not-too-close, not-too-far base, hunt strategically, and learn from previous attempts, according to a study being published online Monday in the Journal of Zoology. Researchers used a serial killer profiling method to figure out just how the fearsome ocean predator hunts, something that's been hard to observe beneath the surface.
 
David Rohde's Escape From Taliban: Taking Advantage Of Weary Guards, Using A Rope Top
KABUL, Afghanistan An Afghan journalist who was held captive by the Taliban for more than seven months along with a New York Times reporter revealed details on Sunday of a nighttime escape that included weeks of careful plotting, taking advantage of weary guards and dropping down a 20-foot wall with a rope.
 
Patricia Zohn: Culture Zohn Off the C(h)uff: James Gavin and the Stormy Weather of Lena Horne Top
For decades, Lena Horne has been an emblem of the complicated equation of race and talent. Today, we need look no further than Barack Obama for guidance about how to rise above the question of color and capability. Lena Horne in Hollywood - 1942 But Horne began her career in a time when she really had to worry about whether she could eat in the restaurant du jour or whether when she went to Miami on tour she could stay in a chic hotel. (The answers were no and no). She ended up returning to her home, New York, where she still lives, the city which both launched her and cushioned the blows of rejection over the years. She was always a lot more hotheaded and spoke more candidly about her trials than BHO. She felt herself more of a victim, and she probably was... affirmative action for beautiful and sexy performers was not on the charts when she began her career in the early days of the Cotton Club and Café Society. She often had to take on challenges that had nothing to do with her talent and everything to do with the "honey-colored" skin everybody was so wild about. Horne used -- and was used for -- her beauty with a series of famous men with whom she had relationships -- and mostly the feeling I get from the capacious new biography from James Gavin, Stormy Weather , is that she loved them too; it's easy to be confused when someone wants to look out for you about what their underlying motivations might or might not be. Consistently overlooked in Hollywood as an actress with chops, Horne alternately made her peace with being able to be one of the best at putting over a nightclub song and railed against the limitations that very special talent imposed. Lena-Ziegfeld Follies. MGM. 1946 This new biography picks up where a series of memoirs, interviews and an American Masters biography left off: Horne has not been shy or reluctant about speaking her mind over the years. Gavin first interviewed her for the New York Times in 1994. What's strong in this biography is the sweep of history -- we really sense what was going on in our country not only about race but about movies, politics and culture. And Gavin brings in a diverse cast to make his case that Horne was only one of many, if one of the most famous, who confronted issues that now seem impossible when Oprah Winfrey is among the most celebrated, and the wealthiest women, black or no, in the land. Gavin took some time to go Off the C(H)uff with me this week: Culture Zohn : Why is revisiting the career and life of Lena Horne important just now? Is she a symbol for a bygone time, or is there a contemporary take on what made her so important? James Gavin : Obama's victory, and the changes in attitude that made it possible, could never have happened without the victories of generations of fighters like Lena Horne. Lena, as she knew too well, got "in the door" of the white majority because of the degree to which she looked like them, sounded like them, didn't threaten them. Sixty years later, how much have things changed? Successful black film actresses, what few there are, tend to fit the old Horne mold. And Hollywood doesn't give them much to do. CZ :Horne seems to have changed her version of events from time to time. How did you determine what memories were fable and what were fact? JG : I spent untold hours at the library; I interviewed every eyewitness available and exhausted them with my probing. The bigger question to me was, why did Lena fabricate so much? I think it's because both she and the civil-rights leaders of the day felt she had to maintain an impeccable image. Icons are not allowed to make human mistakes. They're supposed to have flawless judgment and to please everyone, especially when they represent a minority. CZ : Horne's relationships with men, especially white men, are a main element of the biography. Artie Shaw, Orson Welles, Lennie Hayton could help with her career. You allude to the fact that even then, some thought she was sleeping her way to the top. What's your perspective? JG : Lena was very ambitious. No black man could have lifted her to the heights she craved. Her first husband was a failed black politician who'd been beaten down by society, and whose ego couldn't handle her success. Black men had a particularly brutal time of it then, and often vented their anger on women. Lena was drawn to men who offered safety and status. At the time, most of them were white. CZ : Horne clearly was always disaffected with Hollywood and felt more at home in NY. She wanted to be an actress and not just a singer cast in musicals and she felt she was not taken seriously. Yet you say that most people agreed that she was a much better singer than actress. Why did she struggle against this? JG : I think MGM was nothing if not progressive in signing Lena, and that they utilized her strengths in the best possible way. But the fact that she was mainly isolated in solo numbers was agonizing for a woman who felt chronically alone. Whether completely true or not, she blamed institutional racism for holding her back. But the hell she raised over her "cameo" stature did, I believe, have an impact upon the desegregating of Hollywood. CZ : Horne seems to have taken her early role with the NAACP very much to heart and embarked on a lifelong quest to find a way to combat racism. She was able to make her own personal experiences resonate even though they were in a rarefied world. How so? JG : Even though she seemed to exist in a "black ivory tower," as she put it, of beauty and privilege, the hell she'd gone through to get there eventually became known. She kept fighting, fueled by personal anger over feeling rejected, victimized, and given the sense that she was less-than. There's a lot there for most of us to relate to. CZ : Have you seen her recently? Is she still able to be politically or socially engaged? JG : In 2000, Lena withdrew into her East Side apartment and hasn't been heard from since. We've never gotten to learn her views on Obama, unfortunately. She's very fragile, but I'm told that in recent years she sometimes threw things at the TV when Bush appeared. How can you not love a woman like that? Gavin gave me a list of later generations of talented women who saw her as a beacon: Janet Jackson (wanted desperately to play Lena, and was cast, in that aborted ABC-TV biopic) Halle Berry (thanked Lena, among others of Lena's generation, in her Oscar acceptance speech) Alicia Keys (chosen by Oprah in 2007 to play Lena in an Oprah-produced biopic that, to my knowledge, has not been mentioned since) Whitney Houston (reportedly offered to play Lena in the ABC biopic) Angela Bassett (co-hosted a recent benefit performance in Pasadena of a stage musical based on Lena and starring Leslie Uggams) Mya : platinum-selling R&B singer, age 29, sang "Stormy Weather" in tribute to Lena With all of Horne's success, she apparently remained embittered about her trajectory. That seems a shame. She has had a fascinating, if bumpy, ride. In between appearances for his new book, Gavin is working on a documentary of his first book, Intimate Nights: The Golden Age of New York Cabaret with filmmaker Raymond De Felitta. More on Barack Obama
 
Mark Blankenship: True Blood Sucker Punch: Episode 2 Top
NOTE: This post contains of spoilers. Welcome to Sucker Punch, the only blog post that ranks the gaudiest moments on this week's episode of True Blood. Before I get to the latest installment, "Keep This Party Going," let me say that after posting last week's journey through the season opener, I went on vacation. Last night, when I surfed back here to see if anyone had commented on my post, I expected to find five or six responses. Instead, I found forty-nine. You guys, that's awesome. I look forward to spending the rest of the season with you! And now back to the important question: When does "Keep This Party Going" go the furthest over the top? Last week's Sucker Puncher, Maryann Forrester, can almost claim a repeat victory. It's delicious to watch her turn Merlotte's into a writhing almost-orgy, complete with patrons whose eyes turn black as they dance under her spell. You've also got to love a gal who will transform a restaurant owner into a dog. The customer is always right, y'all, and if she says it's time for you to shapeshift, then it's time. I can't quite give her the prize, though, due to some script holes. For instance, why doesn't Maryann arouse more suspicion when she orders everything off the menu? After what's gone down in Bon Temps, shouldn't the townsfolk be more conscious of strange behavior? And why-God-why doesn't Sookie do anything after she learns that Maryann's thoughts are both delivered in a male voice and are spoken in some crazy ancient language? This is the time to pull Tara aside and say, "Girl, get out. Mercedes McCambridge is doing a voiceover for your hostess at the luxury palace." But does she do that? No! Instead, Sookie announces in front of the witch lady that she wants Tara to move in. I almost spit out my Fresca when that happened. Doesn't Sookie realize that could put Tara in danger? Is she so wrapped up in her Bill-Jessica-Gran's memory drama that she's lost all sense? Sigh. That kind of inconsistency keeps Maryann and all of her subplots from being Sucker Punchable. Thankfully, this episode also lets Sookie be stupid in an interesting way. Anna Paquin effectively communicates the guilt and sympathy that convince her to drive Jessica to her old house. Sure, it's obviously a terrible idea, but it's not hard to understand why Sookie wants to be a big sister/confidante to this teenager in distress. And boy, do things get gauche when those two get together! First, how awesome is it that Sookie tells Jessica to change clothes before going to see her family? Jessica's miniskirt is actually a bit longer than Sookie's booty shorts, and Jessica's top reveals much less cleavage. Later, the show reaches one of its all-time peaks when Jessica threatens to destroy her abusive family. The scene is brilliantly written because it deepens Jessica's character not through dialogue, but through action. When she's holding her father by the throat, we instantly learn about the type of undead girl she has become and the type of soul-dead girl she used to be. Another nice touch comes when Tara is sussing out Eggs Benedict. It's not particularly gaudy, but when he confesses that he was in prison for drugs, she asks, "Selling or dealing?" That tells you a lot about Tara's life. Rather than being aghast at the thought of drugs, she implies she's created an internal standard for drug-related offenses. And speaking of drugs... I am once again beholden to my favorite hooker-dealer, Lafayette. For several reasons, he almost, almost gets Sucker Punch honors this week. When he gets shot while trying to escape Fangtasia and still manages a sassy comeback for his assailant? Awesome. When he talks smack to Vampire Pam about being a survivor first and a hooker last? Awesomer. When he suggests that he could be Eric's bad-ass vampire, if only Eric would turn him? Awesomest. (Bonus points go to that scene, by the way, because it lets us enjoy Eric's new haircut and track suit.) Yet despite Lafayette's strong showing, the Sucker Punch of the week comes from Amanda, the slutty-yet-virginal Christian pop singer who coos the instant classic "Jesus Asked Me Out Today" at the Fellowship of the Sun Retreat. I mean, how can you get trashier than that? The song and the singer are both designed to inspire dirty thoughts and then instantly make you feel guilty for having them. That defines the tone of the anti-vamp cult that Jason has fallen into. Could it be more obvious, for instance, that Sarah "Wife of the Boss" Newlin wants to help Jason sharpen his stake, or that Jason's retreat roommate Luke is about to melt with jealousy over Jason's success? I can't wait to see where it all goes. And whatever happens, I hope we get another single from Amanda. I'm anxious to download "Second Date With Jesus (And This Time We Had Beer.)"
 
Steve Rosenbaum: Iran's Graphic Coverage = 'Distributed Activism' Top
The unfolding events in Iran are creating some complex issues for mainstream media outlets playing by old rules. For CNN, the unverifiable nature of the stream of Twitter messages has them both presenting, and disavowing any of the information they're getting from unknown sources. It's not their fault, it's the very nature of their role as a fact-checker and a truth-teller. Yet, at the same time - we're watching and participating in a global event, engaging in both critical reading of unverified posts and often becoming part of the story, re-tweeting twitter posts and forwarding YouTube videos. With Twitter, understanding its central role as both the gatherer and megaphone for Iranian news and information - has decided to come off the sidelines and allow their users to color their avatar's green, to show support for the protesters. It's what Jerry Weinstein (@tummler10) calls 'Distributed Activism'. The shift in both the voice of the newsmakers, and the engagement of observers is unprecedented, and should provide us with a glimpse of media's fundamental role in an evolving democracy. For example: On Flickr you can see etehraz's photostream - live and uncensored. (you can follow him on twitter as well; http://twitter.com/etehraz ) On Twitter you can follow http://twitter.com/TehranBureau http://twitter.com/iransource45 And there's a updated aggregated channel of twitter feeds, flickr photos and uploaded and discovered video here: www.IranLive.Magnify.net Also, on Twitter - 'Stand Free with Iran' is posting here; http://twitter.com/Shawtttaaay And even Google has gotten into the act, releasing a Persian language translator here: http://translate.google.com/translate The point is - we're moving from an era of trusted authorities to an era where readers (and viewers) need to absorb information from multiple sources, and make their own sense of the data. It's hard work, being media literate in a fast moving world where truth can have multiple lenses. Multiple points of view should result in a more complex, but ultimately more truthful and more nuanced world. But it also means that the comfort of Walter Cronkite's "that's the way it is" brand of authoritative journalism is being replaced by a more complex cloud of information that requires a more engaged and critical reading and viewing of dispatches. The events in Iran are important because they encourage us to both pay attention to an important and fast moving story, and offer us for the first time a way to amplify and participate in the coverage. For example, even as protesters in Iran were using Twitter to tell their story, a rumor spread through the web on Sunday that suggested that Iranian Government forces were using the location tags on Twitter handles to hunt down the protesters. True or not, hundreds if not thousands of twitter users around the world changed their location to Tehran to help camouflage the data being created by the actual protesters on the ground. This digital participation is likely to be a sign of things to come, as data transmission becomes the primary tool in gathering protesters to a mass movement, and governments and dictators look to clamp down on digital freedoms to keep control. Gathering. Curating. Sharing. Organizing. These are the features that are becoming part of the mix of reader-contributed content and professional journalistic news-gathering. It's too early to say how this will evolve, but watching events unfold in Iran will certainly illuminate the changes in both Journalism and the new Digital Democracy that are forming both on the web and on the ground. More on Iranian Election
 
Sheri and Allan Rivlin: Compromise Needed to Pass Health Insurance Reform Top
Try telling conservatives that Barack Obama is no liberal and you just get blank stares. Reading their own talking points, they will never understand how one could possibly suggest that the president who has tripled the deficit and wants to socialize everything could be anything other than a liberal unless you want to call him a socialist. But liberals are certain Barack Obama is not a socialist and they are just starting to realize he is no liberal either. Progressives are just now finding out who they elected president last fall, and he is just as he campaigned, a remarkably audacious pragmatist. Audacious for everything he is trying to get done in his first year, but there is so much compromise in getting each element that the true left is wondering if the core kernel of progressive goals is getting bargained away. An aggressive agenda full of compromise to get it done After the stimulus bill and several bailouts, and in addition to new overtures to countless international allies and adversaries, the domestic agenda for 2009 includes health care reform and climate change and a host of other issues that only seem small by comparison -- but in each case, don't be surprised if compromise is the order of the day. For instance, earlier this month, Congress passed and the President pledged to sign legislation that for the first time allows the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate cigarettes - once thought a liberal dream - but some liberals are complaining that in crafting the Bill that Phillip Morris supported , so many compromises were introduced that the FDA is blocked from doing many of the things; such as regulating the dosage of nicotine or banning existing tobacco products; that might have the greatest impact on public health. Our point is not to criticize the progressives who will view this and other compromises as inadequate to the task of solving our most pressing problems. What they are saying is true and important, and this is America -- everyone has the right to voice opposition to a proposed piece of legislation. To a degree, principled voices on the left help move policy toward the left. The stronger the support for the left position the greater the leverage Obama has to get the best deal he can for his compromise position - one that has the peculiar benefit of being passed by Congress, signed by the President of the United States, and therefore the law of the land. But taken too far, these progressive voices can become an impediment to progress. This happens when some leftists start to see the center-left compromise-to-get-the-deal-done style Obama represents as an adversary of progress rather than as a means to achieve it. When the true believers on the left stand in opposition to the center-left, the right wing celebrates. The right wing has just been soundly defeated by the coalition of the left and center left, but it could gain new life if this coalition splits. We live in a Democracy and a Democracy is not about being right, it's about having a majority. Barack Obama (and Hillary Clinton) campaigned as a pragmatic center-left Democrat and Dennis Kucinich campaigned as the true representative of the far left. Obama won the nomination and we all rallied around him. He was not for "single-payer" national health insurance in the campaign and he is not for it now. There has been no sellout. Passing health insurance reform is going to be very, very hard. Bill Clinton's Pollster for the 1993-1994 health care reform effort Stan Greenberg wrote an article in this week's New Republic that is basically a repeat of what we wrote four months ago here . Greenberg has been looking at his own polling in 2009 compared to the polls he took in 1993, and he concludes (just as we did) that public views are not very different now than they were then, but to the degree they have changed, current attitudes are less supportive for reform. The big problem is, the views that undercut reform in 1994 - the majority's satisfaction with their own coverage, the public's desire for reform that saves them money (covering more people is just a bonus unless you don't have coverage now), and especially the public's rejection of any new taxes on themselves - are stronger now than then. Casual readers of the polls may miss this because healthcare polling is fairly confusing. In the abstract, the public strongly supports the idea of "health reform," but this is because they hope it will save them money, so they are just as passionate in rejecting any mechanism to pay for it if it might mean that they would pay additional costs. The most recent release from the Diagio/Hotline poll is typical. The headline: "High Public Support for Major Overhaul of Health Care" but this is followed by the sub-headline; "Taxing Health Benefits Strongly Opposed." Like most other polls, this one finds a strong majority (62%) supporting "a major overhaul of the U.S. health care system." But when they tested the current best idea anyone has come up with so far to pay for it, taxing employer paid health benefits as income, by 26% to 62% an equally strong majority says "no way." The latest NBC News Wall Street Journal poll find little difference when the proposal is more clearly defined and limited to people with the most expensive plans. When their list of possible elements of reform includes "require people with expensive health plans with more generous benefits than a standard plan to pay taxes on a portion of that plan's costs" 33% find it acceptable but 59% say it is unacceptable. People understand that health care reform will mean sacrifices but they want the sacrifices to fall on someone else, not them, and health care reform cannot pass until someone comes up with a politically viable way to pay for it. Obama's Going to Need Room to Maneuver Not Lines in the Sand: So far progressives have drawn two lines in the sand on this issue, one is certainly not going to be in the final bill, and the other may take a disappointing form if it does not get bargained away all together. Some see "single payer" national health insurance as the only legitimate goal for health care reform , while others like MoveOn.org are defining the "public option" as the sine qua non for reform. The President and most of Congress have rejected single payer as politically unfeasible, dismaying supporters who claim that the proposal has the backing of a majority of Americans . The president is right on this point, and the selective poll results are meaningless. If the question included the counter arguments - the cost, the bureaucracy, that many people who like their current arrangement would have to change to something new, etc., etc. - and still received majority support, well that would mean something. The existence of a "public option" (vaguely defined as a health insurance plan available from the government) is as much a line in the sand for Republicans who oppose it as a form of back door path to single payer. There is plenty of room for debate but also plenty of room for compromise. As CenteredPolitics.com Health Editor Jim Jaffe has pointed out here , a lot of different things could be arguably called a "public option." If the Deal-Maker-in-Chief needs to accept something less than the perfect definition in order to get "Health Insurance Reform" signed this year, we should all be ready to celebrate the achievement. More on Barack Obama
 
New York Senate Special Session Called By Paterson, Same-Sex Marriage Won't Be Considered Top
After two weeks of having no direct impact on the State Senate stalemate, Gov. David A. Paterson said on Sunday he would call the Senate to a special session this week, but would not include same-sex marriage among the bills to be considered, a move that stunned some of his key constituencies. The governor's apparent retreat on an issue he has made a central priority was surprising, especially because the leader of a Republican-dominated voting bloc in the Senate has been eager to bring the issue up for a vote.
 
David Weiner: #Thatsafrican -- When Twitter Went Racist? Top
UPDATE , 9:30pm EST: #Thatsafrican is no longer a trend. Was it taken down by Twitter? *** Oh man, this won't end well at all. Just as Twitter began to show the world how important the new medium can be, beating back claims that the tiny technology had already jumped the shark, somebody's got to go rain on their parade. For those of you who closely monitor Twitter trends, you already know what I'm talking about, but for the other 99.99% of the population, here's the deal: In recent days there've been a spate of user-participatory hashtag memes popping up on Twitter such as #nicerfilmtitles , in which thousands of people attempted to rewrite movie titles in a, well, nicer way. These were fun exercises in brainpower and cleverness and played up the lighter-side of a technology that has, as of late, been stuck in the deep, dark bowels of Iran. How is this a problem? It's not. Or wasn't, until sometime today when the term #thatsafrican became a trending topic on Twitter. The debate is already raging over the appropriateness of the trend. Is it self-deprecating humor? A cover for racists? Something only Africans and African-Americans can joke about? Something no one should be talking about? What's more, it brings into question the role of free speech on Twitter and the company's role as moderator, or lack thereof. If a popular trend on Twitter is deemed racist, what action is required on the part of the company? With the situation in Iran showing the extreme positives of Twitter and free speech, it will be interesting to see if #thatsafrican or another controversial trend will end up exemplifying the negatives. More on Twitter
 
David Jones: Up From Poverty Top
I've now woken up to the fact that I've spent virtually my entire adult life working on issues around urban poverty, and in some ways it has been a family profession, just like plumbing. My grandfather, Thomas S. Jones, came as a highly educated immigrant (a school master) to this country from Barbados around 1905. Because of the color line in New York, he couldn't even get a job as an elevator operator because he was too dark, but he managed to get himself educated as a podiatrist, recognizing that the Black community of his day desperately needed that service and couldn't get served by white doctors. But his real love was as a pamphleteer. I always remember being somewhat embarrassed walking with Dad down Hancock Street in Bedford Stuyvesant as he insisted on handing out his "Footnotes" newsletter to everyone we walked past. The pamphlet was much like a blog; it was filled with calls for voter registration, health tips, Black history - particularly about the Black members of Congress during reconstruction - news on lynching and police brutality, and continual calls for more education and better schools. But my father, Thomas R. Jones, was the one I was always trying to emulate. He grew up in Brooklyn, was an activist even as a teenager, became one of the few Black lawyers of his day, and was drafted a year earlier than anyone else because of his activism in organizing youth. Drafted as a private, he rose to the rank of First Lieutenant by the end of WWII. He came home and ran with Henry Wallace as a citywide candidate for judge (he lost). Ultimately he became one of the deans of Black politics in Brooklyn, founding a political club which elected him as Assemblyman and Shirley Chisholm to Congress and broke the back of the machine which had controlled Black Brooklyn for decades. He left the Assembly and became a Judge and had a well known confrontation with Senator Robert Kennedy when he bitterly complained to the Senator of repeated visits by state and national figures to Bed-Stuy, with no outcome other than photo ops. This led to work with the Senator right up to his death in creating Bed-Stuy Restoration, which in Kennedy's and my father's vision would be the prototype for rebuilding Inner City neighborhoods across America. I remember as a boy meeting a steady stream of unique people who came to argue about everything from Black Nationalism, to McCarthyism, police brutality, the arts. I met Eleanor Roosevelt, Dizzy Gillespie, Paul Robeson, Paul O'Dwyer, the artist Jake Lawrence who left paintings at the house on Dean Street when he couldn't pay his legal bills, and now is prominently displayed at MOMA. Everyone seemed to pass through our kitchen on Dean Street. So from very early on I began to take up my father's and grandfather's professions. I helped register voters in the Breevort Houses when I was 10. I use to go to doors with an adult in tow and say that if I was old enough I would want to vote, and ask if they were registered. I ran the duplicating department for my father's campaigns, and was taken out of school to go with him to Albany. I went to Wesleyan University , interned for Senator Kennedy the summer before he was killed (along with Bob Reich, the former Labor Secretary), went on to Yale Law School and then clerked ( I wasn't a very good clerk) for Constance Baker Motley. And then I temporarily went "off track." I ended up being recruited by a "white shoe" law firm, Cravath Swaine and Moore. Instead of urban poverty, I focused on being a very junior associate working on cases for Shell Oil and Time Inc and IBM. And I liked doing it. The pay was great, the work challenging, the excitement of doing work as part of the mainstream elite was seductive, and leaving behind the less glamorous work of advocating for poor people didn't seem such a bad idea. But then in 1976, because of my work in Kennedy's office in Washington and my father's widely recognized work, I was recruited by Bill vanden Heuvel to work as a New York City deputy campaign manager in the Jimmy Carter run for the White House. I took a six month leave of absence and in some ways never fully came back to the law. When I got back to Cravath, one of the partners took me aside and said that my leave indicated that I wasn't really committed to the firm. He was right. After 23 years leading CSS, I find that the issues that I work on are almost precisely the same as those my father and grandfather were confronting: inferior education, poor housing, racial intolerance, substandard health care, police brutality, and - perhaps more frightening - a growing body of urban poor who, with the loss of manufacturing jobs and few skills, may have worse outlooks then were available in Black Brooklyn of the 1950's and '60s. The emergence of the hugely successful Black middle class did not lift all boats. CSS has been on the front lines of urban poverty for 164 years and some of its innovations have stood the test of time. It created the Columbia School of Social Work, founded the Hospital for Special Surgery, established the first free school lunch program, free public baths, and the list goes on. It survives because each generation requires new approaches to chronic income inequality and racial prejudice. http://www.cssny.org/advocacy/ In the weeks to come, I'd like to provide some insight in the things we're struggling with, particularly in efforts to help the working poor of New York, and to seek your comments about what you agree and disagree with me about, as well as other ways to look at a city with nearly one-third of its residents who are poor or near poor. More on Poverty
 
Gabe Pressman: The Wrong Way to Measure Education Top
City Hall trumpets that test scores show New York City's 1.1 million school children are making vast strides in learning. But there are serious doubts that this is what's really happening. It hasn't been widely publicized, but a new study of the school system by a group of scholars, teachers, parents and advocates shows that the great test results aren't what they're cracked up to be. Indeed, one wonders what's really going on. The new study, titled "NYC Schools Under Bloomberg and Klein: What Parents, Teachers and Policymakers Need to Know," raises serious questions. At question as these educational experts see it, is what value does testing have in furthering education? Cited in the report is the warning by sociologist Donald Campbell that the higher the stakes, the more likely behavior contrary to the original intent of the measurement system will result. Campbell warned that the more testing is relied upon to make important social decisions "the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor." This became known as Campbell's Law. Thus, when children are promoted on the basis of testing, when teachers are rewarded for training kids to pass tests with high grades, when principals are rewarded for having higher and higher test scores, corruption of the system may well occur. Indeed, the other day, Merryl Tisch, chancellor of the State's Board of Regents, told me that too many young people are graduating high school without basic skills. She asked: ''Are the tests really telling us how well the educational system is doing?'' So the state's top educator, while praising Mayor Bloomberg and Schools Chancellor Joel Klein for trying, is still skeptical of the testing process. When three-fourths of the young people who reach college need remedial work to qualify for courses, she believes, there's something wrong. Steve Koss, a contributor to the study and former high school math teacher, says: "With such intense focus on standarized exam scores, it is increasingly difficult for public school teachers in New York City to keep in view the larger goals of developing their students' critical and creative thinking skills. Rather, the system operates on a politicized platform that serves the interest of adults, from the mayor and chancellor to principals and teachers.'' Koss, in his essay, quotes from Tom Chapin's song "Not on the Test" to describe what's happened to the public school system: "Go on to sleep now, third grader of mine. The test is tomorrow but you'll do just fine. It's reading and math, forget all the rest. You don't need to know what is not on the test." Gabe Pressman originally wrote this article for NBC New York .
 
Welfare Rolls Increasing In 23 Of The 30 Largest States Top
Welfare rolls, which were slow to rise and actually fell in many states early in the recession, now are climbing across the country for the first time since President Bill Clinton signed legislation pledging "to end welfare as we know it" more than a decade ago.
 
Greenwashing: More Than 98% Of 'Environmentally-Friendly' Products Make False Or Confusing Claims Top
More than 98% of supposedly natural and environmentally friendly products on US supermarket shelves are making potentially false or misleading claims, Congress has been told. And 22% of products making green claims bear an environmental badge that has no inherent meaning, said Scot Case, of the environmental consulting firm TerraChoice.
 

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