i love LJ.

Scott Stapp of shitty Christian rock band Creed drove 2 hours to get some from a girl he met once in an airport bar, but the joke’s on him.

Check it out.

i made a few promo things.

I thought it would be fun to have magazine covers of this week’s update, as a flyer:

Print a copy of this week's cover flyer.


I also made a banner:


Post it on your LJ, myspace, xanga, or any web page:

<center><a href="http://www.rockmusicreview.com"><img alt="Rock Music Review" src="http://www.rockmusicreview.com/promote/earlandsecurity.gif" width="468" height="60" border="0" /><br>Rock Music Review</a></center>

more:
http://www.rockmusicreview.com/promote/

Legal Propoganda

Read this entry from throwingstardna. It makes me sick to my stomach.
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The administration has spent tens of millions of dollars on a coordinated campaign to spread misleading covert propaganda through Iraqi media outlets.

U.S. media manipulation efforts in Iraq, largely directed by the "Information Operations Task Force" (IOTF) in Baghdad, have been extensive. Officials not only planted "paid propaganda in the Iraqi news media and [paid] friendly Iraqi journalists monthly stipends," but have recently "intensified" the operations by purchasing an Iraqi newspaper and radio station to "channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece."

These actions apparently do not violate any laws. Yet according to the Los Angeles Times, the Pentagon's efforts "were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably 'bleeds' into the Western media and influences coverage in US news outlets." In other words, many of these articles will be picked up by our media and the international media and repeated, or used as "proof" that everything is great and that the Iraqis want us there.

Moreover, according to a recent expose by military analyst James Bamford, the IOTF closely resembles the Pentagon's Office of Strategic Influence (OSI), a short-lived operation shut down after strong resistance from Congress and military officials. OSI's functions "were apparently shifted to [the IOTF], deeper in the Pentagon's bureaucracy," Bamford wrote.

The "National Strategy for Victory in Iraq" released yesterday by President Bush included among its eight "strategic pillars" the importance of promoting "the vitality of a free press" by "working to promote civic understanding and enable Iraq’s public and private media institutions to flower." To further this goal, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development today pay contractors millions of dollars to help train journalists and promote a professional and independent Iraqi media</a>. Many of these programs specifically instruct foreign journalists "not to accept payments from interested parties to write articles and not to print government propaganda disguised as news."

In other words, the administration's propaganda program not only works against U.S. efforts to help bolster democratic reform and develop Iraqi civil society, but counteracts programs on which millions of taxpayer dollars have been spent.

South Africa ...gay marriage

South Africa's high court approves gay marriage

South Africa's highest court ruled Thursday it is unconstitutional to bar gay marriage, paving the way for this country to become the first in Africa to legalize homosexual unions.

Gay rights activists welcomed the ruling on a continent where homosexuality remains largely taboo.

In its ruling, the court gave the country's parliament a year to change the legal definition of marriage to include same-sex couples.

Even South Africa beats America to equality.

MSNBC