awesome!! oh yeah, videos::

Best John McCain Moments

and the Best Sarah Palin Moments

Fake News/Doctor Who
The Eagle Has Landed four, five, deleted scenes (fic | Jon, Stephen, young!Stephen, Four, Ten, Sarah Jane, Jack | PG)
Collage, serials 5-6 (art | Jon, Stephen, young!Stephen, old!Stephen, Four, Ten, Sarah Jane, Jack | worksafe)

Fake News
Waiting (fic | Jimmy | G)
COMFORT ME. (fic, art | Jon, “Stephen” | PG)

Hellsing
In The Frame Of A Girl (art | Girlycard | worksafe)

Hellsing/Twilight
And Shine Hellslight Now (comic | Integra!BellaxAlucard!Edward | PG)

Next Week in Shine:
Back in the present day, Yomiko has a conversation with Walter.

Chinese people say “erection”

So there’ll be an election soon. I don’t really want to waste too much breath on the issue except to say I’m really fine with whoever it ends up being. Partly because there’s good qualities in both candidates and their VP’s, but mostly because there are few things in the world that matter less than this. “This is the most important election in history” and blah blah blah and that may well be true but we’re all a bit like ants in an ant farm. “Once we chew out this tunnel it will revolutionize the colony!” Talk about majoring on the minor (that’s for you, mom). This election has really brought out how self-important we are. No wonder we never get anything done.

It started out funny to hear everyone’s opinion. To see the same certainty and gusto from people uttering a different candidate’s name. It was like Mad Libs, watching improv or watching hypnotized people act things out. People doing a little puppet song and dance over a suggestion given to them. And it was entertaining except there was this annoying reality that I had to look serious as they were talking. And I hate to sound like I’m above it all, maybe that’s just not the right preposition. Maybe I’m below it. Or beside or between, definitely around, just anything other than “in” it.

Negative, negative, negative. Laughing haughtily at others’ expense as if it was elementary school again. How can you stand to live in that dirty mind of yours? And I understand why most people are up in arms the way they are. Arguing over who “won” the “debate” or whatever. But the Christians, are cracking me the f*ck up. You should be ashamed of yourselves, really. I shouldn’t need to tell you to (re)read Romans 13:1-6. Or remind you that God’s plan has little to do with whether you’re comfy. Or that as long as there’s prayer, it doesn’t matter who leads. Why would you put yourself in a mental position of hostility toward people who don’t agree with you? As a Christian you are free from having to do any such thing so why would you choose it? Just where are you coming from anyway? I’ll be damned if you didn’t get it all twisted again. And you better get to flushin’ out all that disdain and replacing it with love cuz there’s a 50/50 chance that dude’s gonna be your leader and trust me, no one wants to hear you bitch and moan for four years in a “Christian” way. You better fall in love with that Will you’re always requesting to be done. Losing and gaining is for worldly natives. Who aren’t already dead. You look like a fool.

Anyway, I myself can’t bring myself to get super into politics of any kind. It’s regarded as a sign of intelligence these days but it’s really more of a personality trait. What I can easily do is sit comfortably in unanswered questions and “contradictions.” I believe, to the point of knowing, that what will be is going to be despite human schemes, effort, or ingenuity. And yet I vote, because I also believe that I have a part in this reality and it’s integral that I play it. Will I be used to “bring it about”? Or are we extraneous to the outcome? To those questions I say the answer is “yes.” Maybe. And to be frank that is a sign of intelligence.

Tonight I went to a screening of Stephen Colbert’s Christmas Special, something that apparently sprung up in Spring of 2007. While I cannot actually say anything about the Special itself, I can tell you a little bit about a one Mr. Stephen J. Colbert.*

Mr. Colbert was present for the screening, to answer our questions, give high fives and dance around stage speaking of Axe Body Spray and the such, and being the ever intrepid blogger that I am, I asked him a question.

I asked what it was like to be doing a live television show when the election results came in.

“It was really great. It was exciting. We knew [because of the results thus far] that CNN was going to call it at 11, and with five minutes left of the show, we just had to kill time. There’s actually a part where, if you’ve seen it, I start yelling, ‘Gobble it up. Gobble it all up!’ meaning that I was going to eat up all of the time we had left. But yeah, it was great.”

I tried to find video of this, but Comedy Central’s website is freaking out. Too many people trying to watch videos or something. However, you can watch the exciting moment where Jon Stewart calls the election for Barack Obama, and we sat there wondering if it was real.

Anyways, watch the Colbert Christmas Special. It airs on November 23 at 10pm EST. And while I can’t say anything about it, these links sure can.

*Ed Note: Middle name is actually Tyrone.

A historic video…for a historic week. Enjoy whilest I still recover.

We were on 37th & Hawthorne in SE Portland at the Back Stage pool hall in a small, intimate upstairs room with our own table & tv (we flipped between CNN, Fox & Indecision 2008). When we got done applauding wildly, tearing up, hugging and generally being amazed at what history was happening before us, just after Obama’s victory speech with a few pitchers and cocktails under our belts, Joe, Tiffany & i poured out into the street, looking for a Champagne nitecap. This ended up being right next store at Greater Trumps, a funky cigar bar where the bubbly couldn’t be had and so, transformed into 3 Basil Hayden’s with a cube. There was quite a bit of smoke but some nice outside patio tables & when we wandered out to get some fresh air, a joyful commotion had ensued . . .

Total Spontaneous Human Happening – all emotions dialed up to stun & thrill. Fireworks had been setup right on the block, people were suddenly armed with sparklers, pot lids, drums, trash cans . . . anything that glowed & made a happy racket. There was a man with an Obama mask waving and pumping his fists in the air, a man riding a unicycle AND playing the bagpipes (i couldn’t make that up if i wanted to), President Obama signs suddenly manifested, every car honked as it went down the street packed with people hanging out of every window and howling like animals, chants and drum beats went up, “Yes We Did!” and “O-ba-ma!” And then . . . people lined up on either side of the crosswalk on the corner, by of all namely places, the Baghdad Theater, hooting, hollering stamping, drumming and woo-hooing until the crosswalk indicated it was safe to walk. But they didn’t walk – they ran, like two teams intersecting in a mass, hands in the air, giving high-fives to everyone, every smiling stranger as they passed.

Such a silly and special moment to get caught up in . . . replete with YouTube Video proof!

The concession speech that harkens back to the John McCain of 2000:

President-elect of the United States Barack Obama takes the first step in fulfilling a campaign promise to reach across all lines:

Never thought I’d see Condi Rice look so…moved:

And it’s obvious I’m a little in love with Colin Powell:

After I’ve had a little time to process my short involvement in the campaign, I’ll write a longer blog post. For now, I’ll leave you with this clip.

Look closely. I think Stephen Colbert is tearing up.

Miss Moneypenny reporting for the Undercover Times

So it’s all over, and the result everyone knew was coming came. Still, I never quite expected the landslide that eventually came (Obama currently leads 338-163, and it may well end 364-174. Not bad compared to Bush’s 271-269 win in 2000). While the result looked pretty much beyond doubt even before yesterday, I still tuned in to a considerable chunk of CNN’s coverage, and switched over to FOX’s once in a while for a good laugh. If you don’t know what I mean, you haven’t been following the elections enough!

Which brings me to my next point – suddenly Facebook statuses became a flood of victory proclamations that largely went to the tune of “Change has come” or “May Barack lead us to a new world” or things like that. It was slightly bemusing, because honestly, I don’t think Obama will come even close to meeting his campaign promises in the next year, and perhaps not even in his entire term. Either way, his policies and promises don’t look like any form of panacea to the problems the world and his country face now.

I felt both candidates are really similar in terms of their aptitude towards the economy (read: not very strong), so where it mattered most to me were things like foreign policy and energy issues, and to a lesser degree (since I’m not American), taxes and healthcare. Obama clearly wins on his healthcare promises, but in terms of foreign policy and energy, I’m way behind McCain. Well, not his Drill, Baby, Drill tirade but his plans for more nuclear plants. Obama promised to stop nuclear proliferation, to shut down the coal industry (if I’m not mistaken), and yet to reduce US reliance on imported oil. How? Raising oil prices? I’m not sure that would’ve been the right thing to do in the current state of the economy. Foreign policy – no fight, McCain clearly has the greater experience (and it’s not just from being a P.O.W.).

Anyway, I felt McCain would’ve been the more suitable president, and might have been if it wasn’t for the totally inept handling of his campaign, and the nomination of Sarah Palin, which probably destroyed his last hope of winning the election. In fact, the tactics of hate and deceit, and in Palin’s case, pure idiocy, reduced my admiration for the man to pity, and you only have to watch a few episodes of The Daily Show to know how pathetic his campaigning really was. Or, of course, you could watch FOX and learn how great the man is.

So I really don’t know why I’m writing so much about elections I’m hardly involved in, but now that it’s over I guess I’ll just have to blog about other boring things like travel and photography.

I am very tired, but I want it to be noted that the smartly turned-out Republican consultant on CNN (missed his name – he has a moustache) just explicitly compared Barack Obama to open-source software.

He has possibly been influenced by CNN’s earlier unveiling of their eyelid-peeling ‘hologram’ presentation of guest speakers, which was just beyond parody/belief.

… not socialist or even liberal. Hell, he’s not even a Democrat. He’s a Republican!

This amazing news just came to light on Indecision 2008 election night coverage with John Stewart and Stephen Colbert, while interviewing a Harvard Law prof who knows Barack and Michelle.

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

see TONS more of them after the jump!

ho boy was this project not worth it…

via ES&S Voting Machines in Michigan Flunk Tests, Don’t Tally Votes Consistently | Threat Level from Wired.com

You’re already forgetting the coverage.  But the buzzwords of the 2008 election will be forever.

SNL does Countdown. I lol’d.

Also, unexpected slash on Salon. (Scroll down to #6.)

…less than 48 hours, you guys. Tomorrow this will be either prophetic or out of date. (*fingers crossed*)

The first Digital Crossroads of the year premiered Monday evening on Boise Community Radio. Listen to host and producer Radioactive Gavin focus on Fake News and Propaganda.

Download or stream the entire 30-minute program by clicking here… Digital Crossroads Fake News and Propaganda.

To view the spoof New York Times, go HERE.

If you want to hear the entire interview with Mike Bonanno of the Yes Men, click HERE.

To view the Indecision 2008 video, go HERE.

Music on the show is used with permission from Ooah, The Tasteful Nudes, Ocote Soul Sounds & Adrian Quesada, and Ernest Gonzales.

Here is the transcript for Digital Crossroads 2009 Episode 1:

It is really hard to research The Daily Show because the writing and acting is so damn funny. And now that most of the entire backlog of clips is available free online, the research process can go on for hours. On January 1st Viacom and Time Warner Cable reached an agreement in principle that avoided a blackout which would have prevented more than 13 million subscribers to Time Warner Cable in America from seeing The Daily Show and other programs on MTV, Nickelodeon, BET and a dozen other channels. According to Wikipedia, The Daily Show gets about 6 million viewers per week. In early October, election coverage on The Daily Show broke its own ratings records with an audience of 2.4 million, nearly a million more viewers than Hardball with Chris Matthews, according to the Washington Post.

A big attraction for viewers is political candidates who find late-night comedy shows easier for staying on message than interviews with pesky journalists. Candidates made over 100 appearances on late-night television, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Mason University.

Professor Robert Lichter told the Providence Journal, “Candidates have figured out that you can reach voters through entertainment venues even better than news.” The shows also give candidates the opportunity to reach voters who might otherwise never listen to them. According to Lichter, George W. Bush had more time to talk in one appearance on David Letterman in 2000 than he had during a full month on the CBS Evening News.

The Daily Show’s Indecision 2008 coverage was painfully on-target, like the clip you just heard from Election night. When Jon Stewart asked senior foreign correspondent Aasif Mandvi for a report from Al Quaeda headquarters, the screen read “Live from the Hindu Kush Mountains.” Even though the information is clearly ridiculous and the entire premise is an outrageous farce, viewers of The Daily Show become more aware about what is really going on. The Pew Research Center released a study indicating that regular viewers of The Daily Show tend to be more knowledgeable about news than audiences of other news sources, including Bill O’Reilly on Fox News and even Jim Lehrer on PBS.

The Washington Post published a huge feature in November called Onion Nation. Writer Wells Tower reported that The Onion website receives more than five million unique visitors per month. In the past three years, the Onion’s New York staff doubled in size, to 50 full-time employees, as the print edition of the paper, which is free, added markets in Austin, Los Angeles and Washington DC. Management says the nationwide circulation is 630,000.

Tower writes, “According to Robert Niles, editor of the Online Journalism Review, the success of the Onion lies in part in the ability of satirists to penetrate the hypocrisies of the news cycle that the straight press is compelled to dance around. For instance, just weeks after 9/11, when the likes of Dan Rather were pledging their support for President Bush on network TV, telling Letterman “Wherever he wants me to line up, just tell me where,” the Onion was already presaging, from the safe bunker of satire, the leaps of credulity America would soon be asked to make in obeisance to the War on Terror. For example, an Onion op-ed published in November 2001 read, “If I Don’t Get My Medium-Rare Shell Steak With Roasted Vegetables In The Next 10 Minutes, The Terrorists Have Already Won.”

Niles told Tower, “The public’s frankly gotten frustrated with the convention of objectivity, the idea that you have to present both sides of the story, even if one side is completely bogus.” Niles cited as an example news reports on global warming in which the views of politicians and lay-skeptics get consideration equal to studies by climate science PhDs. Niles went on to argue that satirists gained additional traction in the post-9/11 news climate, when mainstream media outlets didn’t push back as hard as they might have against perceived intimidation of the press by the Bush administration.

“Take for example, Bush’s former press secretary [Ari Fleischer's] chilling quote that all Americans ‘need to watch what they say,’” made about TV talk show host Bill Maher at a White House news briefing shortly after 9/11. Niles concludes “That should have been the moment that all the journalists woke up and said, ‘Screw that!’ But it was generally the satirists who felt emboldened enough to say the things that the mainstream news wouldn’t for fear of seeming too partisan.”

—

Mainstream political satire is taking shape in The Onion and The Daily Show. But 2008 was also a year when activists made news by publicizing their messages with political parody.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is representing a NYC activist who is protesting redevelopment efforts for New York City’s Union Square. Savitri Durkee set up a website parodying the Union Square Partnership, saying in a statement, “Union Square is where the U.S. labor movement was born and where abolitionists, suffragettes, civil rights activists and many others have fought for and exercised their First Amendment rights. It’s ironic that USP is now trying to keep me from using my parody website to speak out about the future of Union Square.”

EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry says, “Ms. Durkee’s site is a parody, so of course it mimicked USP’s site to some extent. That’s how parodies work. The parody site is plainly a fair use and protected by the First Amendment. This is a case about censoring speech, not about infringement.”

However, the Union Square Partnership, a group pushing to heavily redevelop Union Square, fired off multiple shots against Durkee to get her website taken down, starting with a DMCA takedown notice to Durkee’s hosting company, followed by a copyright lawsuit against Durkee and a claim that the domain name Durkee used violated their IP, demanding that it be handed over to them.

In June 2007 Palestinian-rights activists distributed over 10,000 copies of a parody of the Vancouver Sun in British Columbia. Media conglomerate Canwest filed a lawsuit in December 2007 claiming violation of the Trade-marks Act as well as BC common law by using the Vancouver Sun logo in the fake newspaper. After nearly a year, Canwest has dropped its lawsuit against retired college instructor Mordecai Briemberg, who always denied that he was involved in the production of the parody.

Anne Roberts, the co-chair of the citizens group the Seriously Free Speech Committee, formed to defend Briemberg and the other defendants, told the alternative weekly Vancouver Straight in November that Briemberg and his supporters are “celebrating a victory” over Canwest’s decision, which came after an extensive public campaign against the media giant.

Roberts said that Canwest is continuing its lawsuit against two other defendants, Gordon Murray and Carel Moiseiwitsch, in connection with the parody paper. Murray and Moiseiwitsch, two vociferous advocates of Palestinian rights, have publicly acknowledged that they created the newspaper parody, which satirized Canwest’s coverage of the Middle East. Canwest is seeking punitive and aggravated damages.

Here in the United States, the biggest story in phony news was the distribution of nearly one million spoof New York Times newspapers dated July 4, 2009. The real Times reported, “In an elaborate hoax, pranksters distributed copies… at busy subway stations around the city.” The lead story was “Iraq War Ends.” Other stories detailed similar wonders, including “national health care, a rebuilt economy, progressive taxation, [and] a national oil fund to study climate change.” The spoof “special edition” Times is also online, where it ‘reports’ that “new regulations carefully scrutinize government contracts with for-profit public relations companies. … The new rules would have forbidden the creation of the National Smokers Alliance, a front group formed by Philip Morris with the help of P.R. giant Burson Marsteller.”

The spoof paper, online at NYTimes-se.com has been linked to the Yes Men, a political satire group that’s previously targeted the World Trade Organization and Dow Chemical Company, as well as starring in their own movie, The Yes Men.

To mark the November opening of Carnegie Mellon University’s Miller Gallery solo arts exhibition of The Yes Men, on display through February 15th, Yes Man Mike Bonanno recorded a podcast interview with Marge Myers, associate director of the Studio for Creative Inquiry.

He told her it was “in planning for about a year. It involved hundreds of different groups, so its not really the Yes Men’s paper. Its the paper of thousands of activists, dozens of writers wrote for it.” Asked about the distribution of the phony New York Times, Bonnano said, “a countless number of newspapers go out. About 1000 people volunteered in New York City alone. The volunteers were organized through an email list and text messaging. A lot of people signed up to participate not knowing exactly what they were going to be asked to do.”

You can hear more on my website, Radioactivegavin.wordpress.com but in this clip Marge Myers asks Bonanno about conflict of interest in the Real New York Times.

—

So you’ve heard about activists using parody to generate public access to their ideas. But increasingly in the past few years, news outlets have lazily relied on pre-packaged news, produced by representatives of various industries, without always clearly identifying the material to help viewers understand its origins.

The BBC policy on the use of video and audio news releases states, “Such material may purport to cover stories from an objective standpoint, but is usually slanted to promote the viewpoint of the supplier. We do not normally use any extracts from such releases if we are capable of gathering the material ourselves. If we do use such material for sound editorial reasons we should always ensure that it is clearly labeled on-air.”

In 2006, The Center for Media and Democracy released two multimedia reports on American television stations’ use of VNRs, based on 16 months of original research:

* “Fake TV News: Widespread and Undisclosed” was released on April 6, 2006 and co-authored by Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price. It tracks 36 different VNRs, identifying 77 TV stations across the United States that aired the segments.
* “Still Not the News: Stations Overwhelmingly Fail to Disclose VNRs” was released on November 14, 2006 and co-authored by Diane Farsetta and Daniel Price. It tracks 33 additional VNRs, identifying 46 TV stations.

The website Sourcewatch.org is a great source on the deceptive profit-driven fake news practice, highlighting a growing industry for PR companies who feed biased stories to news outlets.

But in April 2008 the New York Times published an expose on a government program of misinformation with serious legal and political implications. From early 2002 forward, Allison Barber and other Defense Department flacks did their best to turn some 75 media analysts into Pentagon “message force multipliers.” Corporate media presented the so-called experts often without

At the 2008 National Conference on Media Reform, hosted by Free Press, I sat down with Diane Farsetta and asked her about her research into the Pentagon Propaganda scandal, and the work of Allison Barber.

—

Author and University of Texas journalism professor Robert Jensen said in an interview on this show, ““We shouldn’t expect an institution to undermine its own credibility, and that’s what we would be asking the corporate media to do, to report on how they have become tools of propaganda for the government.”

Before there can be real accountability, real investigations need to happen, not a whitewash, no toothless rulings. Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein called for “a real and thorough investigation” by the FCC and the US Justice Department. Noting that “it took the FCC over two and a half years to issue a citation” in the Armstrong Williams payola pundit case, Adelstein stressed that “this investigation need not, and should not, take that long.”

Keep in mind, this pundit program was at its peak under the watch of Donald Rumsfeld but it continued under Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who President-elect Barack Obama is keeping in his cabinet. Senators John Kerry and Russ Feingold told the Government Accountability Office to do their job. The Pentagon Inspector General’s office is investigating itself. And Commissioner Adelstein also called on the Justice Department to determine whether the Pentagon pundit program violated federal anti-propaganda laws. “Congress has specifically outlawed the use of federal funds for covert propaganda,” he said.

Diane Farsetta told me accountability has to start with pressure from the grassroots.

You’re listening to Digital Crossroads
—

1. The day after the U.S. presidential election, Fox News reporter Carl Cameron gave an interview with Fox commentator Bill O’Reilly. During the interview, Cameron said that McCain’s advisors had told him about their unhappiness with Sarah Palin as a vice-presidential running mate. Citing anonymous sources within the McCain campaign, Cameron recited a litany of complaints, including their claim that Palin was so ignorant she didn’t know Africa was a continent.
2. A blogger who calls himself “Martin Eisenstadt” soon after stated that he was the anonymous source for Cameron’s story. However, the New York Times reported in an article titled A Senior Fellow at the Institute of Nonexistence that “Martin Eisenstadt doesn’t exist. His blog does, but it’s a put-on. The think tank where he is a senior fellow — the Harding Institute for Freedom and Democracy — is just a Web site. The TV clips of him on YouTube are fakes. And the claim of credit for the Africa anecdote is just the latest ruse by Eisenstadt, who turns out to be a very elaborate hoax that has been going on for months.”

Apparently, Fox News is standing by the original story.

—

Part of what is so exciting about the phony New York Times is the use of the familiar newspaper format to distribute real vision for the future of the country. It is like a map for society, of how to pressure the powerful, for example the NYTimes-se.com site has a story about reviving Civics education in schools, claiming the change happened as a result of organized school strikes around the country after a report was released showing a profound ignorance of government structure and citizens’ rights. Millions of Americans still have no idea the government and TV networks carried out propaganda at the highest levels, others think it is unavoidable, the way it has always been and the way it will stay. Fortunately dedicated people are fighting back with research, writing, organizing and even satire. As Diane Farsetta says, the people at the grassroots really do have the ability to influence the powerful in this country but the powerful structures of corporate media and federal bureaucracies are designed to centralize power and profit. Hopefully 2009 will be a year of clear vision for progress. And never underestimate the power of Fake News.

Digital Crossroads is produced in the studios at Boise Community Radio and airs on Radio Free Moscow and other community radio stations.

Barack Obama will be the 44th President of the United States. I’m mildly drunk in the very early hours of the morning. These are both achievements.

McCain just conceded, and now we’re all waiting on the victory speech.

That was a long two years. I am happy. Good luck to President Obama: and please, don’t disappoint too much.