I plan to do the SONYA Studio Stroll this weekend. I've already marked my favorites. One of the photographers is named Amadou Diallo. At first, I thought it was a postumous exhibit. It's a different Amadou.
:::
From "Why
We Scapegoat the French" by John Edgar Wideman
A few months ago, before the war began, I visited the [French ] consulate
again for business. I watched a squad of white guys, dressed like MTV hip-hop
gangstas in baggy jeans and oversize hoodies (shades of the Boston Tea Party
when terrorists disguised themselves as Indians, another suspect minority)
plaster the consulate’s walls with anti-French slogans and U.S. flag
decals, then duct tape two large American flags to the poles of the consulate’s
entrance awning. ...
... Ugly words won’t be retracted or revised because the public is
being manipulated. Instead of winning over public opinion through informed,
principled debate, our leaders are pumping up anger...as addictive as oil.
Anger at the French and blaming the French hid the actual reasons for waging
war. ...a war the president needed so his reelection wouldn’t be squandered
like his father’s. ... Anger at the French solidifies America’s
complicity with the most militant, ruthless, intransigent elements of Ariel
Sharon’s Israeli government. Anger legitimizes any and all aggression
as a fitting response to 9-11. Finally, anger at the French is preferable
to admitting the dismal failure of American diplomacy, preferable to acknowledging
what seems to be the aim of our Middle East policy: transforming the region
into a vast plantation where a major portion of the globe’s oil reserves
can be securely harvested and profitably traded, with Israel, militarily dominant,
our untouchable proxy, the overseer guarding American interests. ...
Rather than postulate another ponderous axis of evil, here is a more humble
double-play combination that bears watching: Powell-Murdoch-Powell. In the
campaign to vilify France and French people, the New York Post has been outrageously
aggressive—smirking headlines deriding the AXIS OF WEASEL, French leaders
at the U.N. with animal heads grafted on their shoulders. The Fox News Channel,
an unconditional, often jingoistic supporter of the Bush administration’s
management of the Iraqi war, has not lagged far behind the Post in the systematic
vilifying of French political positions and French character.
...While the FCC ignores the threat to democracy posed by a media conglomerate
with ambitions to monopolize public access to information, Murdoch, because
he’s wealthy, determined and connected, continues to acquire media outlets,
building an empire to control and shape public opinion. ...
It's worth a read.
JonnaGill.com
is live! FTP'd it last night. What a cool feeling. It's like taking
the paper down from the windows of a new business. We're officially open to
the public. I'm happy to say, it was a very worthwhile effort, with a minimum
of friction and stress.
Designed and built by yours truly; I even took a couple of the photos, edited
the copy, and set up the hosting. Tools and technologies used: SSI, CSS, PHP,
PayPal; and the usual suspects -- Dreamweaver, Fireworks, Photoshop, Illustrator.
Hosting is by CornerHost.
This is phase one. Now, on to adding meta tags for the spiders and developing
the expanded site -- coming this summer. With any luck, the site will generate
both sales and investor interest.
:::
Countering
a wave of hate
For all the ugliness and tragedy of 9-11 there was a brief period afterwards
where I held a great hope... I held onto a glimmer of hope in the naive assumption
that something good could come out of all this. I imagined our leaders seizing
upon this moment of unity in America, this moment when no one wanted to talk
about Democrat vs. Republican, white vs. black or any of the other ridiculous
divisions that dominate our public discourse. ...
And then came the speech. "You are either with us or against us"
And the bombing began. And the old paradigm was restored as our leader encouraged
us to show our patriotism by shopping and by volunteering to join groups that
would turn in their neighbor for any suspicious behavior.
In the 19 months since 9-11 we have seen our democracy compromised by fear
and hatred. Basic inalienable rights, due process, the sanctity of the home
have been quickly compromised in a climate of fear. A unified American public
has grown bitterly divided and a world population that had profound sympathy
and support for us has grown contemptuous and distrustful, viewing us as we
once viewed the Soviet Union, as a rogue state.
- Tim Robbins on baseball and show business (sort of)
:::
Taxing the enemy
"We've heard of enemies' lists, but this now looks like the White House
and their friends in Congress want to start employing an enemies tax..."
- Democratic consultant Jenny Backus
"It's interesting that this proposed tax wouldn't apply to lawsuits
filed by corporations like Enron against its employees but it would apply
to lawsuits filed by employees against Enron," - Carlton Carl of the
Assn. of Trial Lawyers of America
Supporters of the bill say it would apply only to the largest lawsuits, but
Carl says the measure actually would have much broader coverage. The $100
million threshold requirement can be met by adding up awards in many similarly
filed cases.
Full
story
:::
opensecrets.org is
the site of the Center for Responsive Politics. They follow
the $$$ in politics.
They have an interesting piece on the companies
that were secretly asked to bid on contracts to rebuild Iraq:
The bidding process has been criticized for including only a handful of companies,
some with substantial political clout and none of which is based outside the
United States. USAID officials said the recent invitations to bid on reconstruction
contracts went to U.S. corporations for security reasons, and that foreign
companies may compete for subcontracting work...
capitaleye.org has
a handy
chart.
Also on capitaleye.org:
Americans may have been tuned in to battlefield coverage, but interest groups
of all stripes were closely monitoring congressional action on a number of
issues—taking advantage, in some cases, of the opportunity to score
a quiet legislative victory. Here's
a taste of what Congress was up to:
Patriot spam
Denise got an e-mail at work today with the subject "Last Chance! Get the
Iraq Most Wanted Deck of Cards!"
It links you to Great USA Flags, which sells all kinds of jingoistic stuff
including "Patriot Packs," flags, pins, and stickers. Here's some
of the copy:
This deck is being supplied to troops in Kuwait and is produced by United
States Playing Card Company, the leading playing card company in the world.
We are the only company authorized to sell this deck, complete with "Hoyle
®Joker" cards, as it appeared in the original 200 decks given to
Coalition soldiers.
... and remember, these are ...
But wait, there's more!
Why ignore success?! - And why give more attention to the bad guys... I know
-- let's put together a set of...
Operation Iraqi Freedom Military Heroes Playing Cards
Great companion to Iraqi 'Most-Wanted' Decks!
This brand new deck of playing cards makes a great companion to the famous
Iraqi 'Most-Wanted' Deck. 52 leaders and military heroes are featured on the
standard playing cards. The deck also includes two joker cards featuring US
Special Forces Operatives and a patriotic red, white and blue "cut card"
like those used at blackjack tables in casinos, plus The Golden Aces card!
Printed on casino-quality stock. 56 cards .
Note: This item is brand new and is currently in production. Shipping will
begin on May 30th.
Alright, they actually did give a little airtime to peaceful patriotism. There
are at least two pins with a theme like this:
This one's got a slightly-anachronistic "hippie" look to it, and
"i" is not capitalized - maybe suggesting one who's non-conformist
and a bit out of touch with the times, but I guess it's the thought that counts,
right?
:::
Fun with HTML... I had one of those interesting rendering
issues the other day. I'm using a form inside a table, and I'm using an image
field to submit the form. There are several other images in the table along
with the image field, and I needed to get all of them to align. The problem
was that the image field kept popping up one pixel, and making the whole grouping
look broken.
It occurred to me that the problem might be related to the "extra space"
problem caused when you add carriage returns in certain places in your HTML
source. Huh?! Yeah, if you have a carriage return inside the source code of
your <a> tags, for instance, sometimes the browser displays the link text
with an extra space.
I pulled all of the extra spaces and carriage returns out of my source code,
and the image settled into place. The HTML's not quite as readable, but at least
I don't have to redo the design.
