Crimea River

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Friday, May 30, 2008

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

RIP: Roslyn Zinn

The first time I contacted Howard Zinn was after a classmate in grad school mailed me a newspaper clipping covering his talk at a film festival in Taos, New Mexico, and he was discussing the Ludlow Massacre. I wrote a screenplay about it and it is also the topic of my undergraduate honors thesis. I was very excited about Ludlow and this was a great connection. I tracked down Prof. Zinn's home phone number in Boston, but as he was still at the film festival in Taos, I talked with his wife, Roslyn.
She must have gotten dozens of phone calls like mine -- random, effusive and enthusiastic -- people eager to speak with her husband. She not only was patient about taking another message like mine, but she engaged me -- she wanted to know what I knew. She was genuinely interested and prompted me with affirmation. She made me doubly happy I'd taken the chance and called because she was so kind and kind-hearted -- that was clear from just the phone call. Sometime afterward, I interviewed her husband, on the eve of the Iraq War, for KRFC.
Deep condolences to Prof. Zinn and his family. -- KT
(Click on post title to read obituary in Boston Globe.)

Wednesday, May 21, 2008

CNN: "Anti-foreigner" violence breaks out in South Africa

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- Police armed with rubber bullets were patrolling neighborhoods in Johannesburg on Tuesday in an effort to quell a recent spree of violence aimed at foreigners that police say has killed 22 people and displaced an estimated 13,000....
On Monday, South African President Thabo Mbeki called for an end to the violence.
"We dehumanize ourselves the moment we start thinking of another person as less human than we are simply because they come from another country" he said in a statement.
"As South Africans, we must recognize and fully appreciate that we are bound together with other Africans by history, culture, economics and, above all, by destiny. I call upon those behind these shameful and criminal acts to stop! Nothing can justify it."
(Click on title to read full story.)

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

"Earthquake Lights"



From YouTube: Similar in appearance to the aurora borealis, this was recorded about 30 minutes before the May 12 earthquake in Tianshui, Gansu province, about 450 km northeast of Sichuan, the epicenter of the 7.9 quake, by someone using a cell phone.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

China quake leaves cracks in wall of censorship

BEIJING (AP) Almost nonstop, the uncensored opinions of Chinese citizens are popping up online, sent by text and instant message across a country shaken by its worst earthquake in three decades...
But...
the government is still monitoring the online conversation. Seventeen people have been detained since the earthquake, warned or forced to write apologies for online messages that "spread false information, made sensational statements and sapped public confidence," the state-run news agency, Xinhua, reported Thursday. (Click on post title to read full story.)

Saturday, May 17, 2008

Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai delays return due to assassination plot


Myanmar's junta claims victory in "elections" despite 133,000 dead/missing

Aung San Suu Kyi's opposition party has rejected the Burma junta's claim that more than 92 per cent of voters approved a military-backed constitution in the first round of a referendum last week.
(Click on post title to read full story.)

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Tangled up in blue

Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Time's 100 Most Influential People

As with most "top"-anything lists, many of the choices here can be disputed, but there are some fascinating folks on this list whose stories are briefly captured in short essays written by their friends, peers, mentors and disciples. Click on post title to read about:
Herbie Hancock by Joni Mitchell and Wayne Shorter;
the Dalai Lama by Deepak Chopra;
Michelle Bachelet by Hillary Clinton;
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie by George Clooney;
Mia Farrow by Paul Rusesabagina;
Peter Gabriel by Bishop Desmond Tutu;
Aung San Suu Kyi by Anjelica Huston;
Alexis Sinduhije by Christiane Amanpour;
Bruce Springsteen by Sean Penn;
and more...
-- KT

RIP: Robert Rauschenberg


Dead estimated at 12,000 in China's 7.9 earthquake

From the Globe and Mail:
Yesterday's quake was the result of motion along the Longmenshan Fault that runs through Sichuan province, in which one side of the fault pushed up and over the other. The instability of this fault stems from the fact that the Tibetan Plateau is continually being pushed eastward by the collision of the Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate, the same geological process that created the Himalayan range. (Click on post title for complete story.)

Sunday, May 11, 2008

NASA wants to send you to the moon. (No, seriously.)

From MetaFilter:
NASA invites you to join this autumn's lunar exploration with the opportunity to send your name to the moon. Your name will be included in a database contained on a microchip and placed aboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. Submit your name and receive a Certificate of Participation. (Click on post title.)










"Mothers are all slightly insane."
~ J.D. Salinger

Saturday, May 10, 2008

Time Magazine: "Is It Time to Invade Burma?"

As the reported death toll in Myanmar stands at 100,000, the country's military junta is kicking cyclone refugees out of shelters to turn them into polling places, while the state-owned TV is broadcasting feel-good propaganda meant to encourage citizens to vote "yes" on a referendum aimed at strengthening their 40+ year rule. (Not that it's likely that many of the devastated starving and homeless Burmese are sitting around watching TV at the moment...) Meanwhile, aid from the Red Cross and countries around the globe is being seized by the military and re-distributed to the junta higher-ups, as well as to polling places in a defacto "blankets-for-ballots" exchange. The military are also vainly trying to plug up news leaks to the global community by harassing the on-site international press. -- KT
(Click on post title for Time's story.)

First Annual Pangea Day!






Friday, May 9, 2008

From ACLU.org: RIP Virginia Loving of Loving v. Virginia:

Mildred Loving passed away at her home in Milford, Va. on May 2. Loving was the petitioner in a landmark 1967 Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia. The decision struck down the state of Virginia's ban on interracial marriages.

Loving, an African-American woman, brought the case because she wanted to live with her white husband, Richard, and raise their children in Virginia. Following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, Mildred wrote Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, asking him if the new law would allow them to live together in Virginia. Kennedy forwarded the letter to the ACLU's Washington, D.C. office. ACLU volunteer-attorneys Philip Hirschkop and Bernard Cohen represented the Lovings in appeals to both district and appellate courts. Losing both appeals, they took the case to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they prevailed.

Richard Loving died in a car accident in 1975. Mildred Loving rarely gave interviews about her case, but in 2005, "The Advocate" re-published an article Loving wrote for the The Michigan Citizen advocating marriage rights for gays and lesbians. And on the 40th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision, she issued a statement on the same topic.

(Click on post title to hear a podcast of ACLU attorney Hirschkop discuss the case and Mildred Loving.)

From the Washington Post:

Chinese artist Lei Yixin stands with a clay model of the statue that will be in the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial at the National Mall. A federal arts commission is urging that the statue be reworked because it is too "confrontational." (Click on post title for complete story.)

Saturday, May 3, 2008

Rev. Wright hoopla

Originally posted on Wittenburg Door.com (5/01/2008) :

It suddenly occurred to me that Rev Wright is actually serving much the same purpose that Ralph Nader has. (I can almost hear people groaning...!) By insinuating himself into the spotlight and weighing in on urgent political matters (BTW, NOT the strict domain of politicians, ESPECIALLY in the midst of an election year!!!), he is raising legitimate issues, many of which folks just don't want to hear about. And if these "interlopers" manage to skid off the runway of reason, oh well. That's what public discourse is all about. Yes, true, one's a political figure and the other a religious one, but they're both social activists, and I can't think of a more APPROPRIATE time for them to speak out. If they get ignored or pegged as whack-o, that's the way the cookie crumbles. But democracy means never having to say SHUT UP!

The Rev's most explosive sound bites have been recycled over and over, and even if YouTube HAS actually done his POV justice, only Bill Moyers has had the journalistic ethics, not to mention common sense, to actually invite the Rev onto HIS show to drill deeper into his views. That's exactly what "fair and balanced" reporting refers to. Moyers is old-school, thank goodness.

Clinton's campaigners set up the Rev's appearance at the National Press Club? Hadn't heard that conspiracy theory before. And if true, it's kinda funny and darkly opportunistic, but all's fair, etc., and if I were the Rev, I'd have been on that national platform with bells on, too.

As for Obama -- if he's going to cave into the press THIS easily, I shudder to think how he'd behave in the face of a genuine adversary... No one can truly hurt his candidacy except him, which is another beautiful thing about our democracy (such as it is). Ultimately, it's between you and your ballot. -- KT

Springtime in the Rockies




"PreVista: Family Planning for the Future"

Mini-film phenom: 21-year-old Brit Nuru Rimington-Mkali just won Filmaka.com's grand prize. This is not his award-winning entry, but the tech and story-telling are stunningly innovative, and it's my favorite. -- KT
(Click on title to view film at Filmaka.com)




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