May 2009
27 posts
“I think if you’re Israel, and you’re a thousand miles away from the guy who’s got his finger, or will have his finger on the button of those Iranian missiles, ya know, I’m not sure you’re prepared to wait until Barack Obama finally gives up on the power of his own eloquence to change human history.”
—
Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Herald lays a frickin’ ZINGER down on the POTUS.
“…the power of his own eloquence…”
Jesus.
Ouch!
GPICT - Pretty Help Machine RE: Eric
Late on the GPICT again, but was going to write about this, so thanks, Rachel. (Brilliant title, btw. I see an NY POST headline-writing gig in your future…)
Jumped on the NIN page early on and flipped when I read Trent’s tweet the other day about the amount raised. Really amazing.
Now I know I was right to never change my AIM Screen Name from when I was 12…
Can’t wait for the NIN/JA show next weekend!!!
Eric’s donation link
NIN Eric page
I posted earlier this month here and on HuffPo about my friend Veronica De La Cruz, who has been working social media like crazy to save her brother Eric, who needs a heart transplant but couldn’t get one due to ridiculous inter-state red tape (he’s covered in Nevada but there are no centers who perform the operation; however, the nearest out-of-state facility is ineligible because his Nevada health insurance won’t cover it). Here’s the update: after big first week of awareness-raising, petition-signing and media coverage the De La Cruz family was able to appeal Medicare’s denial of coverage for Eric, and their appeal was successful. (Not sure if that’s attributable to Harry Reid’s office “looking into” it circa May 18th, but somehow I doubt it). Thanks to federal Medicare, Eric was able to get on the transplant list — but it will cost thousands of dollars to pay for the operation — which he needs to have before he can get treatment.
Enter Twitter. Veronica launched a fundraising campaign to raise money for the (very) expensive operation and Twitter jumped on board, under the hashtag #ERIC and with the distinctive supporter logo shown above (also seen here). It started to catch on. The retweets worked their way up, until Eric’s cause was being retweeted by Al Roker, Demi Moore, P. Diddy, Alyssa Milano, Kathy Ireland, Annie Duke, Kevin Smith, and Twitter celebs like Pete Cashmore and The Expert (for some context: Pete Cashmore has 716,304 followers; Alyssa Milano has 68,268; The Expert has 21,288; Al Roker has 19,307).
Even better, some celeb supporters did more than retweet. Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails joined the cause early and upped the ante significantly, putting the fundraising call out on his website and selling off various passes to the upcoming Nine Inch Nails/Jane Addiction tour. Per Paste mag:
A $300 donation will grant concert attendees access to the pre-show soundcheck and a meet-and-greet with the band, while $1,000 will get you backstage for dinner and relaxing with the band, as well as stage-side viewing for the show, autographs and pictures. For fans without tickets, a $1,200 donation comes with two tickets to the show and VIP treatment backstage. This is NIN’s final tour, so fans of the band will want to seize this opportunity.
Reznor raised over $260K in the first day - and as of now he has raised over $850K. He announced on his site that he had sold out of all the VIP packages in North America (and that’s a lot of cities!), so is offering something else awesome instead: One hundred collectable, signed skateboards by Tony Hawk (737,211 Twitter followers - and another #ERIC supporter). A $1,000 donation wins the skateboard plus a copy of NIN’s rarest CD release, STILL, signed by Reznor. Here’s a Twitpic of Hawk doing the signing; here’s Reznor’s appeal for a more help:
Please consider helping if you haven’t already - we’re showing the WORLD the power of a strong and committed community, and we’re quite possibly saving a life in the process. We still have a ways to go financially. Thank you all.
There’s retweeting, and then there’s this. Wow.
(On the other hand, I have to say that one of the weird things I’ve noticed during this campaign is a lack of CNN presence. Veronica worked at CNN, came up to New York from Atlanta, was with them until the end of 2008, parted amicably. I’ve kept an eye on her feed and the #ERIC feed Tweetdeck columns, and I have yet to notice a CNN-based retweet; searches within Rick Sanchez and Anderson Cooper for #Eric came up nil. I’m just surprised that there would be so little effort to help a former colleague - never mind that this is a legitimate story.)
So what happens now? I guess they wait - now that they are on the transplant list - and can prove that they have the money - they need an actual donor. Eric is in critical condition and, well, there’s a reason all this is happening with such urgency in the first place. In the meantime, Veronica and her family are doing what they can - with the help of “Eric’s Twitter Army.” From Trent Reznor to Tony Hawk to every celebrity retweeting out to thousands, to each individual person sending a flare up via Twitter - every little bit counts, especially now. I’ll leave the last word to Veronica:
Happy 2 be able 2 lean on my Twitter friends 4 strength, even from Cyberspace. xo
Listen
INTERVIEW: HARD NUMBERS ON GITMO FROM JAG LAWYER WHO ACTUALLY PROSECUTED THE TRIALS
Timely GPICT this week, given President Obama’s press conference earlier. Please listen to the above interview with Major Kyndra Rotunda, a former JAG lawyer who served on the prosecution team, worked in Guantanamo Bay, and was legal advisor to an elite team of war crimes investigators.
From Dennis Miller’s radio show, January 26, 2009. She has been on the show three times. Dennis said the phones light up when she is on and is one of the most popular guests they have ever had on.
Major Kyndra Rotunda is with us. She is the author of ‘Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials.’ I think she has a stranglehold on this whole situation. You should read the book and listen to her. She’s been there. Sounds like she doesn’t have an axe to grind. I like the way she presents info in a pragmatic way.
Listen. Hear the facts. THEN form opinion.
Simple!
In short:
Maj. Rotunda: “We know of 61 detainees that have gone back to the fighting. The reason we know that is because they’ve either been killed on the battlefield later or we captured them again. And, so, that number could actually be significantly higher, because what about the ones that we’ve released to the battlefield who we haven’t captured again yet or we haven’t killed yet on the battlefield.
Dennis: “61 out of 600…about a 10% known recidivism rate…”
D: “Out of the 245 that are left, I would assume most of them have gone through numerous yearly appraisals and were decided to be kept for probably legitimate reasons, right?
MR: “That’s right…These are the 245 of the 800+ that the military has reviewed every single year and said ‘No, this person is too dangerous to release’…Those 61 —- that went back to the battlefield —- the military said they’re safer than these 245 that we are holding. There’s a reason that we are holding [them].
D: “There’s the hard numbers of it, folks. We probably had around 850 at some point, we let 600 go, we’ve got 250 left, they do get yearly appraisals…”
Much more in the interview on potential alternatives to keeping the detainees at Gitmo (conclusion might surprise you), the Geneva Conventions, etc.
For more, please buy her book, Honor Bound: Inside the Guantanamo Trials.
You can also subscribe to The Dennis Miller Show Podcast in iTunes for daily interview segments.
The world could use more design... →
mic-ro.com
Click the link above for a look at the fifty most beautiful subway systems in the world.
We all know, there’s something about good design…
I especially love when everyday objects are made into art.
[Electrical box - Cairns, Australia]
Part 1: Interview With ‘Brothers at War’ Director, Jake Rademacher →
bighollywood.breitbart.com
“I wasn’t like a news crew out for one day on a mission, trying to get the answers I wanted to plug into my story. I was there as someone in for the long haul. I was there for three months and went on 30 missions, asked a lot of questions, interviewed a lot of war fighters and had a real interest in what they were doing and why they were doing it. I think a lot of those guys want to talk about what they’re doing, they just don’t want to have there story suffer the telephone game as it goes from the News Bureau desk to an editor back in the states who does the final edit even though the closest he’s ever been to the Sandbox is when he picks his kids up from kindergarten.”
“
Both leaders said they shared the view that Iran must not be able to build nuclear weapons, and President Obama said for the first time that by the end of 2009, he would be able to assess whether his diplomatic outreach to Iran had worked.
“By the end of the year I think we should have some sense as to whether or not these discussions are starting to yield significant benefits,” he said, “whether we are starting to see serious movement on the part of the Iranians. If that hasn’t taken place, then I think the international community will see that it’s not the United States or Israel or other countries that are seeking to isolate or victimize Iran. Rather, it is Iran itself which is isolating itself.”
” —Political Punch: Disagreements for Barack and Bibi
OK.
6 Months.
Next year’s State of the Union Address should be interesting.
Safari Users: Install the ClickToFlash plug-in, maintain sanity →
github.com
I can’t say enough about the ClickToFlash plug-in for Safari/WebKit-based browsers.
ClickToFlash is a WebKit plug-in that prevents automatic loading of Adobe Flash content. If you want to see the content, you can opt-in by clicking on it or adding an entire site to the whitelist.
We all know Flash is a resource hog. This cuts Safari’s CPU usage dramatically.
ADDED BONUS in the latest version: Toggle the setting to ‘Load H.264 videos from YouTube’. Doing so will automatically load H.264/MP4-formatted YouTube clips (when available) and play them using the Apple QuickTime plug-in. It is ridiculous to see side by side how much smoother these clips play using QuickTime vs. Flash.
Mega Flash FAIL.
GPICT: Fighting Epilepsy (So Kids Don't Have To)
How timely.
Just had lunch last week with a childhood friend who has epilepsy. He underwent a surgical procedure on his brain some time back in a drastic effort to arrest the condition from affecting his well-being.
Just recently, he hit the 6-month mark of being seizure-free.
Good one, Rachel.
Today’s GPICT comes to us from a girlcrush, because I sort of fell hard for Susan Axelrod this weekend at the WHCD (see here). I didn’t meet her, but I saw her a few times in the cocktail crush before the dinner and not only was she stunning and glamorous but amazingly gracious. (You can get a lot out of standing and quietly watching how people interact with underlings.) Later when I took this photo I told David Axelrod that his wife looked beautiful, and his face got all gushy and he said, “I know. She’s amazing.” And I agreed! So when I saw this morn that she was coming up on Morning Joe, I got geekily excited. (Am I revealing too much here? Oh well.) Turns out the Axelrods were in town last night to host a benefit for CURE - Citizens United for Research in Epilepsy which is the nonprofit organization Susan Axelrod co-founded in 1998 to raise funds and awareness to improve the lives of those living with epilepsy, including hopefully finding a cure.
This wasn’t a random act of philanthropy - the Axelrods’ daughter, Lauren, has been battling epilepsy since she was 7 months old. Susan Axelrod wrote pretty movingly about it in Parade magazine earlier this year, and was on Morning Joe talking about it as well (Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski hosted last night’s CURE benefit honoring Special Olympics chariman Tim Shriver. Wow, I just realized that there must have been a whole other layer of awkwardness to Obama’s Special Olympics gaffe on Jay Leno. Imagine having to face David Axelrod after that. Actually, two other layers: Shriver is the brother of Maria Shriver, who endorsed Obama early in the primaries along with their uncle Ted Kennedy. All that only just occurred to me).
Anyway! That’s why CURE is today’s GPICT. Donate here, watch Susan Axelrod and Tim Shriver on MSNBC this morning here, read Newsweek’s cover story on epilepsy here (atypically written by editor-in-chief Jon Meacham, whose friends had lost their son to it), and read Susan’s essay for the Newsweek issue here. And, because there’s still that girlcrush after all, look at how gorgeous she looked at the White House Correspondents Dinner here.
I Must Save My Child [Parade]
Susan Axelrod: Agony, Hope & Resolve [Newsweek]
Susan Axelrod & Tim Shriver on Morning Joe [MSNBC]
Donate: CURE [Cure]
GPICT: Gratuitous Public Interest Campaign Thursday [Charitini]
Great 'Brothers At War' Review →
bighollywood.breitbart.com
“The good ones don’t talk about it much. They have a silent companion called duty that moves them forward, with a strength borne of generations…
No, they don’t talk about it much. They just do.”
GPICT - Please support Michael Yon, independent combat journalist →
michaelyon-online.com
No brainer for this week’s GPICT.
I’ve been reading Michael’s dispatches since late 2006. His is basically the LONE voice I give any credence to regarding what is going on in the Iraq and Af/Pak Wars.
Why?
BECAUSE HE’S THERE.
Not in the ‘Green Zone’ like most mainstream reporters. Not on a Katie Couric-style staged walk-through. And not for an overnight trip or two-week jaunt that many other figures have used as the basis for forming their opinion on the conflicts.
He embeds with the combat troops. For months at a time.
FACT: NO OTHER REPORTER HAS SPENT AS MUCH TIME WITH COMBAT TROOPS IN THESE TWO WARS.
Again: No. Other. Reporter.
Take that in, and then reflect the next time you see a talking head on television or read an Op-Ed in the paper or on a blog. Ask yourself “Does this person really know?”
If this weren’t enough, know that the material is absolutely riveting.
“I try to let my work speak to that, and the fact that it has been submitted for three separate Pulitzer Prizes, in photography and reporting categories, and it continues to garner awards and acclaim from both mainstream and alternative media organizations is my testament to how I much I value the support of my readers. I show my appreciation by doing the best work I possibly can.”
PLEASE, IF YOU DO NOTHING ELSE, TAKE THE TIME TO READ THIS DISPATCH FROM 2007 ENTITLED “Bless The Beasts And Children” for an intimate and graphic vignette from the early part of the ‘Surge’ —- what turned out to be the defining turning point in the War in Iraq. (Warning: It’s graphic, but of all his work, I feel it gives the most blunt look at the evil we and the Iraqis faced and overcame. It truly lets you know the type of menace we were dealing with).
“Where did they go?”
“Soldiers from 5th IA said al Qaeda had cut the heads off the children. Had al Qaeda murdered the children in front of their parents? Maybe it had been the other way around: maybe they had murdered the parents in front of the children. Maybe they had forced the father to dig the graves of his children.”
If THAT weren’t enough, know that Michael is fully independent [read: no “network” or “editorial board” bias]. That said, he tells it like it is. He sugarcoats nothing. Calls a spade a spade. When we’re winning, and when we’re losing. When we fuck up, and when it’s clear that the strength of our values will prevail.
How does he maintain his independence? THROUGH READER SUPPORT. Michael is ENTIRELY FUNDED by individual readers of his online magazine, michaelyon-online.com
Please help support this tremendously important work.
Donation link here.
Order his last book ”Moment of Truth in Iraq” here.
Order one of many incredible combat photos here.
Linking Policy & Media Inquiries here. (If you are a blogger or member of the press, please help spread the word. Despite his proximity and honest reporting, Michael’s work has not gotten nearly the coverage it should be, as far as I am concerned).
@Michael_Yon on Twitter
Michael Yon Fan Page on Facebook
Subscribe to the site’s e-mail list here.
RSS Feed here.
About Michael Yon
Michael Yon is a former Green Beret, native of Winter Haven, Fl. who has been reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan since December 2004. No other reporter has spent as much time with combat troops in these two wars. Michael’s dispatches from the frontlines have earned him the reputation as the premier independent combat journalist of his generation. His work has been featured on “Good Morning America,” The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, CNN, ABC, FOX, as well as hundreds of other major media outlets all around the world.
Michael had previously written a critically acclaimed memoir, Danger Close. He was authoring another book when two of his friends died on consecutive days in Iraq (one of them being Winter Haven native Scott Helvenston). Following accounts in the American press, Michael became concerned that we were losing the war. At the same time, friends in the military said that the media was not telling the whole story. Not wanting to take sides in the increasingly acrimonious argument over the war, Michael simply wanted to learn the truth for himself, and to report without fear or favor. He decided to go to Iraq, financing his trip from his own pocket for more than half a year, then eventually receiving generous contributions from readers of his online magazine: MichaelYon-Online.com. As early as February 2005, Michael described the violence in Iraq as a civil war. In 2006, he said we were losing in Afghanistan. In 2007, he was the first reporter to claim the success of “the Surge.” When he first voiced these opinions, they were extremely controversial. Now they are conventional wisdom.
In 2008 Michael published his second book, Moment of Truth in Iraq, which is packed with exciting and heart-rending tales from the battlefields.
Even as main stream media is quietly pulling their reporters from Iraq in the wake of a weakened economy, Michael is preparing to return to Afghanistan in 2009, and from his observations and insight, Afghanistan is going to be much worse than anything we saw in Iraq and the conflict there could continue for decades.
Reporting from a war zone is very rough on equipment, Michael is constantly having to have his equipment repaired and replaced. Without the continued support and contributions of readers it will be impossible for him to continue his mission in Afghanistan and reporting on the victory in Iraq.
Thank you, in advance.
Listen
Great Moments In Shuttle Launch History:
Watched the live stream of the Atlantis Shuttle launch on NASA.gov earlier (Copernicus, eat your heart out). Chortled at the following:
“No birds observed in the immediate vicinity of the flight path.”
It’s a scary, post-Hudson world we now live in…
(Re)Blog for our Cause
This is exciting. Blogging add-on service Zemanta is planning to donate $3000 to five charities who get reblogged the most before June 6. We know we’re new on Tumblr, but we’re going to give this a try.
What can Goods for Good do with $3000? A lot.
Consider some of this:
$39 clothes 80 orphans in Malawi
$250 buys toys for 4 nursery schools at Consol Homes Orphan Care
$1,057 trains 12 nursery school teachers in early childhood development
$2,218 pays for a year’s supply of pens and notepads for ALL children in G4G schools
The education outlook in Malawi is grim. 50% of students drop out of school before the fifth grade, and 28% of those kids leave school simply because they don’t have school supplies.
Help us spread the word about Goods 4 Good. Please reblog this post. (And be sure to include the following link.)
This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.
Goods 4 Good is AMAZING. Help them win some money. Reblog!
Automatic reblog.
Play
