LAPD and YouTube

On tuesday night the LAPD tasered a student in a library of UCLA 5 times, because he didnt have an ID to stay in the library. The student was an iranian-american and there is a lot of attention focused on this both from the student factions, and also the iranians. What better story than in these conditions, an american police brutalize an iranian student. Will Ahmadinejad comment on this?

But the bigger problem is police brutality and especially so in LA. I read the following article which pointed to 2 other incidences involving LAPD this week. Videos were taken and spread on youtube. The power of internet.

Btw here is the Digg story about it.

Self-Censorship

From Brinda's comment: "the media in the US is accused of self-censorship etc... what do you think about that?"

Well it is definitely true. In fact that is the reason why American people should not be blamed for the choices of their government because essentially their news is censored. Then the question becomes, who does the censorship? The government, the media itself?
It's a combination of both no? If the government has the attitude of either for us or against us, what does that do for free speech? Is it possible to even have free speech in such a climate?

Check out the following article that describes how the 'lack' of censorship in the Lebonan/Israel war a couple of months ago led to the final defeat of Israel. Similar thing happened in the Vietnam war right? Although I think the Iraq war is much more complicated because in addition to the US, you have the Iraqi factions that are waging war against each other. The civil war has muddied the waters, so it is difficult to blame US entirely.

So the bottom line for me is, the media does get censored but its censorship is the result of a combination of factors including that of its self.

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Btw if you get discovery channel, there is supposed to be a documentary by Ted Koppel on this sunday at 9pm e.t. on Iran. Should be good to watch.
I saw Koppel on the daily show last night and i really like his balanced views. Check him out here.

No Shame

Seems our favourite reality TV channel, Fox is going to air an interview with OJ Simpson called "O.J. Simpson: If I Did It, Here's How it Happened", where Simpson will describe how he would have killed his wife and his friend.....that is, assuming he did actually kill them, which of course he has been found not guilty of. He is promoting his book "If I did it...".

It is almost like he is admitting to the murders now when because of double jeopardy, he is guaranteed he can't be charged again. What is the point of this interview? I dont understand why OJ is giving this "unrestricted" interview and why Fox will air it. Does the world have no shame?

In the article it says:

In a video clip on the network's Web site, an off-screen interviewer says to Simpson, ''You wrote 'I have never seen so much blood in my life.'''

''I don't think any two people could be murdered without everybody being covered in blood,'' Simpson responds.

It is disgusting. More yet, it is disturbing.

Question: Racist PSP ads?

I was just reading a complaint post on digg about how EB Games had created this display of girl games which appears to be based on the assumption that women are only interested in barbies and cooking. Anyway they then started on how PSP ads were racists. Does anyone know what they are talking about?
anyway this was funny: Games for girls:

- Mega dishwashing
- Grand theft vacuum
- Cook simulator XXX

Procastination

Crikey I am a magnificent procastinator.
Tomorrow i must teach one of my advisor's classes (he is away next week) and the topic is security policies - so very very interesting. No no really... Have I convinced you? If so, do me a favor and convince me. My two least favourite topics I have to teach this week, monday and wednesday. Such luck.
So I procastinate any way i can. I even checked orkut. Yup.
It's too bad I am hampered by this dial up connection - I imagine you tube otherwise could have kept me entertained for hours.

Have others received a plethora of spam lately too? more than usual? The past month or so, possibly more so the past couple of days, I have been spammed-a-lot*. The number of bits wasted .. :-( If I was a resource-constrained device, that's a lot of wasted energy receiving.

What else. Not much. I have to return to the issue of globalization again. I still don't know if it is good or bad. Alvaro was saying something today about it being generally good but implemented bad? What were you saying again ALvaro?

By popular request, word verification has now been lifted. Leila khanoom that means you :-) Noone should say I don't listen in to my audience. I do i do.

ok back to policies. :^|

* I wasn't sure if anyone caught my Sir Mixalot reference, so i am being obvious. Did you get it?

Brinda's take on Borat

Below is a kind of review of Borat by Brinda :-) I am beginning to believe I might have had the wrong ideas about Borat...
Brinda's comment about tolerance of US is very interesting though.

Hey

I went and watched the movie - and came out thinking a fwe things

- The movie is not about Kazakhistan - its more about the US of A. The Kazakh journalist persona - is a ruse - and I think that if a viewer thinks that it is representative of Kazakhistan - then its really unfortunate ...

- He did poke fun at anti-semitism , homophobia and just at a lot of people

- Also despite all or some flaws in America - you realize how immensely tolerant it actually is ... especially the unscripted parts of the movie - I was trying to place it in another country - and you realize that it pretty much couldnt have happened anywehere else!

I even found the crowd at the movie theatre very interesting - cos it was a varied demographic - an dpeople were laughing at it all - even when it pokes fun at parts of who they are!

I was just wondering though if he could have gotten away with his pranks if he was not a white guy ...

My 2 cents..

Brinda

Btw I ended up reading a couple of interesting review of Borat here at metacritic. It has a score of 89. Gosh darn it, I hate to be wrong.. especially when i have been so vocal about it :-P

The Year of the Woman

I heard something interesting on the radio this morning, related to the election. Of course let me first say how relieved I am by the result - My pessimism over world politics and the elected governments would have known no bounds if the democrats had not gained control of the house and the senate. Which reminds me, I will have to find out the difference betweent he house and the senate in US.

anyhoo. The result of the election also made this year, the Year of the Woman, because of the number of women that got voted in. We have the speaker of the house who it seems has had 4 or 5 children (good god!) and a number of other states where it is the first time that women have won for the first time in history. And why has that come about? This part is interesting. They said:

- Women are an antidote to corruption
- Women get things done

Do you find that interesting as well? Did Bush make such a mess of everything that the idea of the woman president is getting closer by the minute? It seems that Hilary Clinton who already had NY state cinched, still spent $30 million on her campaign, causing people to think she was in fact laying her foundation for her presidency campaign.

Somehow I don't think Americans will yet welcome women presidents.

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Meanwhile you might be wondering why I haven't written in the past couple of weeks. Last week both Alvaro and my mum came to DC area for a conference. It was so much fun going to conference with both, Song was there as well. Anyway, would you say we are a recipe for family discount for the conference? :-) They both left last weekend, maman on friday and Alvaro on sunday, I mean monday! somebody missed their flight :-P but since back I have been busy with research and also an academic roundtable that is being held for ECE. Brinda, we miss you. I am helping Song get things done and actually we think it is going to be crowded. We got Baras and O'Shea and a bunch of other people interested and involved and ... well lets see what will happen. I am moderating the discussion with the help of Song. I don't know how i got involved. Song emailed me and said they wanted an ECEGSA outsider as the moderator and there i am. I ended up helping her alot more of course since i think our vision for the roundtable was more similar that her other helpers. The roundtable is today at 2-4pm. Wish me luck!! :-)