This morning I received an email from Change.org asking me the question:

Is The Washington Post Supporting Brothels?

At issue are those tiny little ads for massage parlors typically found on the sports pages (or in this case from page 64 of the 8 April edition of Cleveland Scene) of American newspapers.

Although we at Change.org are practitioners of new media, we still have an affinity for a few old media properties like The Washington Post. But we also call a spade a spade, and this week the co-founder of a leading anti-trafficking organization, Polaris Project, called out The Washington Post in an article on Change.org for its ethically dubious practice of indirectly profiting from brothels.

I see two issues here that appear casually linked, but which ought to be handled separately: first, the issue of trafficking in humans –no debate here, arrest convict and punish the scum responsible to the fullest extent of the law; and second, the issue of prostitution — I’m all for the legalization of prostitution, free, responsible and informed adults ought to be able to sell their bodies in any manner they wish.

By conflating the two, the Polaris Project muddies the waters. I don’t care if a person is forced pick grapes or perform oral sex, slavery is slavery. But we ought not to deprive those who want to pick grapes or perform oral sex of their chosen livelihood.

Finally, in a fascinating example of new media, Change encourages direct contact with Washington Post employees:

[I]f you want to use newfangled social networking technology to inspire some innovative employee activism, search your network on Facebook, find alumni at your college who work at the Post, and kindly ask them to tell their employer to do the right thing and stop accepting these ads immediately. You can search for The Washington Post employees you’re connected to on Facebook here.

Men Of Harlech

Men of Harlech stop your dreaming
Can’t you see their spear points gleaming
See their warrior pennants streaming
To this battlefield
Men of Harlech stand ye steady
It cannot be ever said ye
For the battle were not ready
Welshmen never yield
From the hills rebounding
Let these war cries sounding
Summon all at Cambria’s call
The mighty force surrounding
Men of Harlech on to glory
This will ever be your story
Keep these burning words before ye
Welshmen will not yield

For me this is the finest scene from any movie attempting to capture the terror of battle. I listened to Michael Caine speak yesterday on Talk Of The Nation about his career in film and I would have liked to have asked him about Lieutenant Gonville Bromhead’s reaction to the battle.

I must believe that there was an Evans or three in B Company, 2nd Battalion, 24th (2nd Warwickshire) Regiment of Foot.

She’s not the ship I served on, but her successor and 5th to bear the name. I finished my naval career in these same waters waiting to take on a different kind of pirate hunkered down in Tehran. But reading the news today still took me back nearly 30 years to the Gulf of Oman.

From Huffington Post:

The American destroyer the USS Bainbridge is tracking a U.S.-flagged ship that was hijacked by Somali pirates. The crew of the hijacked ship managed to retake control from the pirates, however pirates are still holding the captain hostage in a lifeboat.

Haze gray and underway,
Ever to sail into harm’s way.

1137: When You Love Someone Who Chokes You

Via Daily Dish…

[Update — 1501: and we have our first remix.]

It’s been a busy week in Wally World: the Universe’s source of cheap plastic crap. On The Writing On The Wal — the blog USA Today says should be on its readers’ radar — Jonathan Rees, Robert Feinman and I continue our work dedicated to drawing back the curtain on the Bentonvile Behemoth’s corporate disinformation and other flackery.

WHEN STUDENTS LEARN… I love it when teachers realize that getting students out of the classroom and into the real world provides a better education than the best books and lectures ever could. Like Wal-Mart : What Money? Who”s Better? Wal-Huh?. Keep reading…

A NEW WALMART IN THE ABANDONED WALMART… Jay Leno (I think) once quipped that: It”s finally happened. Starbucks just announced that it was opening a Starbucks inside a Starbucks. Well the good people of Nevada have seen the light and discovered the ultimate solution to all those abandoned Walmarts. Keep reading…

IT”S DEVELOPED ON INTEGRITY…? KFSM TV gets former Walmart CEO on tape and tosses a couple of softballs. Doesn”t anyone in broadcasting (or print for that matter) know how to ask a substantive question anymore? Ask the question succinctly, shut up and let the man talk. Keep reading…

THAT WAS FAST… On 21 December 2007, I wrote about Pollo Campero”s plans to open stores inside of Walmart. Then Pollo said, The venture begins next year with the company leasing out space to allow for 500 Pollo Campero restaurants inside their stores by 2012. Keep reading…

THE DANGER OF BIPOLAR REASONING… Chicago has been and remains the battleground for Walmart”s urban strategy. On one side are Mayor Richard Daily and Walmart. On the other side are the alderman of Chicago and the Service Employee International Union. Keep reading…

AT THE WALLY PLEX… There are sound stages on Hollywood”s back lots smaller than Bentonvile”s behemoths, so it”s no surprise that budding video talent has been sneaking cameras in at odd hours. And now for the midnight show at the Wally Plex featuring yfz450rider267. Keep reading…

LET”S NOT GET ALL GUSHY… Walmart does give away money and food and products. And that”s good. And I”m sure that the company gets lots of good publicity and local accolades from organizations that are the recipients of its largess. I”m happy for those organizations, I really am. Keep reading…

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING WALMART… The writer who turns in the story seldom gets to write the headline and in a rush, the editor at the copy desk doesn”t always read as deeply as they should before pounding out the headline. And when that happens, you get obvious errors. Keep reading…

A SLOW DAY AT WALMART… Clearly Denise suffers from horrible timing. Regular readers know that you can photograph anything in Walmart at 3 a.m. and there won”t be an employee in sight, let alone a security guard who is going to tell you to stop taking pictures. Keep reading…

ARE THE RUSSIANS DESPERATE…? I first posted about Walmart”s overtures to the Russians more than two years ago and the progress there has been glacial. But the drop in oil prices and the corresponding plummet in Russian cash may be making the Russians more willing to negotiate. Keep reading…

Avishai Mekonen writes:

The parents’ generation understood the importance of this project, dressed nicely and fully cooperated. The youngsters neglected it until I talked to them, when they admitted that because of their detachment from tradition they have had serious identity problems. They said they feel empty and humiliated when some policeman tells them: You are Ethiopian, you understand nothing.

Andrew Sullivan writes:

The only person responsible for these murders is Poplawski. But it’s a reminder that whipping up paranoia can lead to unintended consequences, especially as gun sales go through the roof in the wake of Obama’s election. When someone like Michele Bachmann talks about the Obama administration forcing people into re-education camps, or forcing a global currency on the US, and other insanities, she needs to know the tinder box she is busy throwing matches into.

Also at Blogger Interrupted.

Bob Dylan says:

It must be the Southern air. It”s filled with rambling ghosts and disturbed spirits. They”re all screaming and forlorning. It”s like they are caught in some weird web – some purgatory between heaven and hell and they can”t rest. They can”t live, and they can”t die. It”s like they were cut off in their prime, wanting to tell somebody something. It”s all over the place. There are war fields everywhere… a lot of times even in people”s backyards.

I don’t usually link to comments on my own posts, but we’re having an interesting discussion on The Writing On The Wal concerning Walmart’s recent touting of its $423 million gift to various charities in 2008. If charity, philanthropy and tzedakah interest you, join us to talk about Let’s Not Get All Gushy…

A glimmer of sanity emerges in Israel over what’s kosher for Passover.

From The Jewish Daily Forward:

[David] Cohen, a beer brewer in his 40s, is an Ashkenazic Orthodox Jew, yet he plans to eat a food shunned on Passover by most observant Ashkenazim. Rice – a key ingredient in sushi – is not in the biblically banned category of hametz, or leavened cereal grain. Religiously, if not taxonomically, it falls within the family of legumes that in Hebrew is known as kitniyot.

Sephardic Jews eat them on Passover, but Ashkenazic rabbis banned them centuries ago because they resemble leavened food when they swell up.

More and more foods have been classified as kitniyot in recent years, as Ashkenazi rabbinic positions have hardened across a wide expanse of Halacha, or traditional religious law. Of late, however, something of a rebellion has erupted among pockets of Modern Orthodox Jews who have decided to eat kitniyot.

“Why should we uphold a meaningless restriction when the Torah permits us to eat kitniyot?” Rabbi David Bar-Hayim of Jerusalem asked rhetorically in an interview with the Forward. Bar-Hayim made history two years ago by formally lifting the ban on kitniyot in the Holy Land. His authority is invoked among the growing ranks of new kitniyot-eaters like Cohen.

Why indeed.

1921: [Update — 1932: My bad.] Great profile of Obama”s Rabbi-in-law, Capers Funnye

1813: Clean up on Isle 4

In my continuing quest to Go Out From Egypt, I’ve considered Half-Priced Books as one way to profitably reduce my personal library. On Friday I decided to test the process by selecting four, first-edition hard-back books and one DVD to sell. What I wanted to know was the money I got worth my time, energy and gasoline to trek to Goldengate in Mayfield Heights?

The short answer is feck no!

Normally I would take these books to Mac’s Backs and receive credit equal to half the cover price.

The books were Mila 18 and The Haj, both by Leon Uris, Gone by Jonathan Kellerman, Beach Music by Pat Conroy and Peter Greenaway’s The Cook, The Thief, His Wife And Her Lover. The cover price on Mila 18 was $4.95, The Haj sold for $9.95. Gone was $26.95 and Beach Music, $22.95. I paid $19.95 for The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover .

I did the research at Powell’s and found that the books new, now would cost: $31 for Gone, $35 for Beach Music; new hard-back copies are no longer available for either Mila 18 or The Haj.

Here’s the real surprise, on Amazon the DVD, no longer available from the publisher, sells from a low of $94.97 to a high of $288.24.

Why? I have no feckin’ clue. The copy I have was played once, so it qualifies as all-but new and I don’t think it is all that great of a movie. Anybody have any ideas?

I put my five items on the counter and was called back some 10 minutes later and offered $1.50. Not each, but for all five. When I mentioned that the DVD was selling for a hundred bucks on Amazon the clerk just said they didn’t do online sales. (I have to wonder if I hadn’t checked first, and had decided to take my $1.50 and buy a cup of coffee, if the DVD would have ever made its way to the Half-Priced Books shelf.)

The experiment was interesting because it dramatically underscores the importance of buying local, selling local and keeping your money local. I’m so happy that we have Mac’s Backs.

From Britain’s conservative newspaper, The Telegraph:

Mrs Obama choked up as she took to the stage to speak to the pupils at Elizabeth Garrett Anderson School in Islington, north London.

Fighting tears at one point, she described her audience as “the future leaders of Great Britain and this world”.

She said: “Although the circumstances of our lives may seem very disengaged, with me standing here as the First Lady of the United States of America and you just getting through school, I want you to know we have very much in common.

“For nothing in my life ever would have predicted that I would standing here as the first African-American First Lady.

“I was not raised with wealth or resources or any social standing to speak of.”

She spoke of the importance of love, strong values, education and a “whole lotta hard work” as she described her childhood, and said: “You too, with these values, can control your own destiny, you too can pave the way.

“I am an example of what is possible when girls from the very beginning of their lives are loved and nurtured by people around them.

Via The Daily Dish…

And then there was this Summit Moment. Continue Reading »