Monthly Archives: December 2003

Transparency

This entry was posted in bush Constitution Democracy Election 2004 Federal Government Patriot Act War on Terrorism on by

The bush administration could go a long ways in blunting its opposition by at minimum maintaining even the woefully poor previous levels of transparency. They, as the champions of freedom, would do even better if they broadened public access to government records and activities.
According to the Washington Post this does not appear to be the direction they have chosen:

…the Bush administration seems to be going in the other direction. The administration has been unusually successful keeping its policy deliberations out of public view, and millions of government documents — including many historical records previously available — have been removed from the public domain.

That the bush administration appears to feel an increasing need to hide the details of its activities from the public, even after the fact, seems to confirm that there is indeed something to hide.
Via Secrecy News.

Libya

This entry was posted in bush Election 2004 US Foreign Policy World Affairs on by

Libya has been off my radar for years and for those of us who haven’t been paying any attention to Libya for a long time Qadhafi’s recent fold on WMD’s appear to naturally follow from Bush policy. We are wrong.
Josh Marshall points out that:

The Libya deal looks like an especially good example of the Bush Doctrine in action if you haven’t been paying any attention to Libya for the last dozen years.

Read his short article and the references.
And Juan Cole argues that

… the real reason Qadhafi just folded is economic. And the lesson to be drawn here is that under certain circumstances, economic pressure can work, and remove the need for war.

Lesson: do your homework before locking in your evaluation of a current event.

Graffiti Archaeology

This entry was posted in Culture Photography on by

Some of this is fascinating…makes you wonder about the folks who wipe it out. Be sure to zoom in to get the full impact!

Graffiti Archaeology [Macromedia Flash Reader]
Envisioned and created by Cassidy Curtis (and a few photographer friends), this site is a “study of graffiti-covered walls as they change over time” in San Francisco. While reviled by public officials and city sanitation workers, these walls seem to come alive with a flourish, as visitors can watch these locales change over time. Currently visitors can browse through five different locations in the city. The real star of the site is the graphical interface that allows visitors to zoom in and out through the different phases of each site’s respective artistic evolution. Along with this fun feature, visitors can look at each site during various transformations, giving one a sense of how each wall has been changed by a number of graffiti artists.

Via the Internet Scout Report

Bad Press

This entry was posted in Journalism on by

David Shaw, LA Times, gives us his take on media failures in 2003: Lowlights of bad press deserve more bad press (free registration required).
After hammering the New York Times Shaw goes on to find 10 other bad moments, and bad they are. Your favorite is probably on the list. Sample:

Brian Walski, a Los Angeles Times photographer since 1998, used his computer to combine elements of two photographs, taken moments apart in Iraq, into one photograph that was then published on the front page of The Times. That’s a no-no. Times policy prohibits altering the content of news photographs. So The Times altered Walski’s career. He was fired.

Via Kevin Drum.