The sad truth behind London riot →

As political and social protests grip the Middle East, are growing in Europe and a riot exploded in north London this weekend, here’s a sad truth, expressed by a Londoner when asked by a television reporter: Is rioting the correct way to express your discontent? “Yes,” said the young man. “You wouldn’t be talking to me now if we didn’t riot, would you?”

The TV reporter from Britain’s ITV had no response. So the young man pressed his advantage. “Two months ago we marched to Scotland Yard, more than 2,000 of us, all blacks, and it was peaceful and calm and you know what? Not a word in the press. Last night a bit of rioting and looting and look around you.”

Stuff White People Like: #134 The TED Conference →

One of the easiest ways to create something that white people will like is to create something that will allow them to feel smart but doesn’t require a large amount of work, time, or effort. There is, however, a catch. Whatever it is that you create cannot be a shortcut. You see white people like the idea of getting smarter quickly, but they don’t like the idea of people thinking that they are lazy. It is a bit of a paradox, but it does explain why white people only like Cliff Notes if they are part of some sort of hilarious college story about last-minute studying for an exam. And why they consider it highly unacceptable to use cliff notes or Wikipedia to get a rough understanding of a book you don’t want to read.

Unfortunately being able to create something that makes you feel smarter without having to do a lot of work has been very difficult. So only a few ideas have ever gained traction with white people, the most notable of which being documentary films and public radio. However, in the past decade a new item has been added to this very short list-TED Talks.

Why Would the ADL Honor Rupert Murdoch? →

It is a valid question that demands answers. Why would a prominent civil rights organization — one which is supposedly dedicated to fighting bigotry and discrimination — present an award to a man whose cable network profits from race-baiting and hatred?

On October 13, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the nation’s foremost Jewish civil rights organization, presented an award to media magnate Rupert Murdoch “for his stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against anti-Semitism,” according to a press release on the organization’s website.

In his acceptance speech, Murdoch — who of course is the CEO of News Corp, parent of Fox News — spoke of the “soft war” against Israel, and the “ongoing war against the Jews.” Perhaps the most eye-opening part of Rupert Murdoch’s speech was his assertion about the source of most of today’s worst anti-Semitism: the Left.

"Crowdsourcing Disaster Relief" →

On Thursday July 8, 2010, residents of Oakland took to the streets after a jury convicted police officer Johannes Mehserle of involuntary manslaughter of Oscar Grant, a 22-year-old unarmed black youth. Race-related riots are not new to California. But this time, the first people to learn about violent incidents tied to the protests weren’t riot cops — they were the Oakland residents behind OscarGrantProtests.com, a website that allowed people near the action to map incidents of violence and view reports from others. Established in a few days, OscarGrantProtests employs crisis mapping technology from a group of open-source developers called Ushahidi, who built the software to report violence in the aftermath of the 2008 disputed Kenyan presidential election.

My apologies for the original article (which is actually via TechCrunch, written by Luka Biewald, CEO of CrowdFlower, and Leila Janah, CEO of Samasource). Of its ten paragraphs, nine are devoted to explaining Ushahidi. The remaining, introductory paragraph (cited above), relates to Oscar Grant.

Ushahidi, as the article notes, was created to “report violence in the aftermath of the 2008 disputed Kenyan presidential election,” and has been used in the aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti — and more recently in the wildfires in Russia.

Where does the response to the murder of Oscar Grant fit among these responses to crises?

Are “race-related riots” a “natural disaster”?

Is protest against injustice a crisis?

Ushahidi was created in response to unrest, but does the aftermath of the Mehserle trial fit with responses to repression, earthquakes, and other crises? OscarGrantProtests.com seems more a tool for avoiding being a citizen, rather than crisis mapping.

And where is the relief? What is the relief?

‘Huffpo’ corrects ‘Times’ smear that Arabs don’t care about Palestinians →

If you wonder why the internet is gaining power, and the MSM are losing it, consider the politics of our Middle East policy (going back to Iraq) and the fact that the NY Times today runs the disgraceful Op-Ed by Israel lobbyist Efraim Karsh telling the Palestinians to fold, take any deal Israel offers, because no one in the Arab world cares about them, and it therefore falls to Huffington Post to correct Karsh’s misrepresentations with a great piece by James Zogby. This is a pattern. The newspapers echo rightwing/conventional wisdom on the issue; the internet offers balance, thoughtfulness.