As our convoy departed Clarksville heading East down I-24, the rain slowly intensified.  By the time we reached Edwin Warner Park, we were met with a steady rain that showed no signs of stopping.  My first thought was that our participation in the Soldier Ride was going to be cut short due to the rain,  which would be disappointing to say the least.  As we staged our bikes and gear in a dry spot under a nearby pavilion, the vehicles just kept coming.  Walking to the registration area I quickly realized that we were not alone;  the rain had not dampened the spirits of the hundreds who turned out to ride with some of our Wounded Heroes.

After the National Anthem, Chaplain Glazner gave a blessing over the Ride, our soldiers and their families. We headed off into the rain.  The route selected by the Wounded Warrior Project Team simply could not have been more beautiful.  We rode through the neighborhood where many of the Country Music stars reside, and were periodically met by folks standing at the end of their drives paying their respects to our Wounded Heroes who led the way on this wet day.

The first leg of the ride took us to the fair city of Franklin Tennessee, where we were met by a large crowd and the Franklin Fire and Police Department.  Tears welled up in my eyes as this showed that America still does care; even though our media has done their level best in this Country to make it seem as if America no longer supported the war, or our Soldiers.

After a break of approximately 20 minutes,  and with many of us starting to get chilled, we  “saddled up,” and peddled off into the sunset rain.  Most of the riders decided to finish the 25 mile trek with some of our Wounded Heroes.  A few of us took a left and headed out to complete 52.71 mile trek.  I had thought of only doing 25 miles and struggled with whether to finish with our Wounded Heroes; or to take that left.  Since I had made a promise to those who had contributed to my 50+ mile ride, I felt that I had an obligation to finish the route regardless of the weather (I must admit there were times that I wondered just what had I been thinking).

The 50 mile route took us through the Natchez Trace, which was again some of the most beautiful country I had seen.  It was also some of the hilliest country in Tennessee that I had ridden on (not a good thing for a novice cyclist doing his longest ride yet).  Somehow I must have missed the note about the hills on the route.  Now folks, I can hold my own and believe myself to be in pretty good shape for 40 years of age, but these hills put the wood to me (country folks the meaning of this phrase).  There was one particular hill during the ride that I am sure has a name, I called it many which can’t be repeated here! I certainly thought that it would never end, and everyone, regardless of their level of cycling was out of the saddle and spinning for all they were worth.  I still don’t know how I managed to make it without getting off the bike, or passing out.

After conquering the hill from hell, I felt no other hill could ever match that one.  We stopped for a quick break at a small country store in Leapers Fork, and were again greeted by members of the local community.  I asked them about the remainder of the route, and a couple of them smiled to my dismay and stated, “‘oh there is only one more hill like that one.” NOOOOOOO!!!  Surely they were just joshing me! But at this point it was too late to cry over spilled milk, so we cycled on!  The hill that was still out there weighed on the three of us in my group, all of us dreaded facing another challenge such as the one we had already faced.  At the sight of any new incline, we wondered “Is this the hill?”

We never did figure out which hill was “the one,” on the back side of the route.  Possibly it was there, and we were just too focused,  or perhaps we were in a daze,  to realize that we had gone up it.  Possibly it was one that Kurt’s two flat tire stops  had given us the legs we otherwise would not have had to make it up “the hill.” Whatever, we never experienced another hill like the first.

Our ride was not a record shattering event, quite the contrary we were near the last in. Mainly due to mechanical failures that simply could not be avoided.  It does not matter though, we finished!  For that we were all proud both as individuals, and as a team.  Two of us had never ridden that distance on a in one day, and being that it was done in honor of our friend and comrade MSG James ‘Tre’ Ponder, that made the experience much more than these simple words can describe.

Special thanks to all of those who made the Soldier Ride Nashville 2009 possible.  While I do not know many of you, I know the vast amount of work makes events such as this come together.  To Leslie and the Girls – Tre’s memory lives on ladies.  Thank you for making the day ever so special by gracing us with your presence, It was great seeing you!

Thanks, to Tim Moore, the owner/operator of Bikes and Moore in Hopkinsville Kentucky. He is an avid supporter of the Wounded Warrior Project and the Soldier Ride.  Without Tim’s volunteer efforts to ensure that every cyclist with a mechanical issue was taken care of, many of the riders would not have been able to complete the ride.  Tim goes around the country to support, and ride in Wounded Warrior Bike Rides.

I am planning on training for some of the longer rides in the coming year.  Hopefully I can join Tim and others in Soldier Rides in other parts in the South, as it is such a worthy cause.  It is also a great opportunity to share with those who have overcame the adversity of  a life changing injury.  The ultimate goal will be a seven day ride spanning four states, in a couple of years!

I hope to see you all at next year’s Soldier Ride Nashville 2010.  I can guarantee you that you will never forget the ride, nor those who you will meet along the route.  To all who contributed to this worthy cause I say thank you. God bless our Soldiers, their Families and our Great Nation!

It’s interesting and highly entertaining to watch, and might give some people who support draconian copyright regimes reason to rethink their support.

Click here to view the embedded video.

• 0:00 Introduction, YouTube’s Big Numbers
• 2:00 Numa Numa and the Celebration of Webcams
• 5:53 The Machine is Us/ing Us and the New Mediascape
• 12:16 Introducing our Research Team
• 12:56 Who is on YouTube?
• 13:25 What’s on Youtube? Charlie Bit My Finger, Soulja Boy, etc.
• 17:04 5% of vids are personal vlogs addressed to the YouTube community, Why?
• 17:30 YouTube in context. The loss of community and “networked individualism” (Wellman)
• 18:41 Cultural Inversion: individualism and community
• 19:15 Understanding new forms of community through Participant Observation
• 21:18 YouTube as a medium for community
• 23:00 Our first vlogs
• 25:00 The webcam: Everybody is watching where nobody is (”context collapse”)
• 26:05 Re-cognition and new forms of self-awareness (McLuhan)
• 27:58 The Anonymity of Watching YouTube: Haters and Lovers
• 29:53 Aesthetic Arrest
• 30:25 Connection without Constraint
• 32:35 Free Hugs: A hero for our mediated culture
• 34:02 YouTube Drama: Striving for popularity
• 34:55 An early star: emokid21ohio
• 36:55 YouTube’s Anthenticity Crisis: the story of LonelyGirl15
• 39:50 Reflections on Authenticity
• 41:54 Gaming the system / Exposing the System
• 43:37 Seriously Playful Participatory Media Culture (featuring Us by blimvisible)
• 47:32 Networked Production: The Collab. MadV’s “The Message” and the message of YouTube
• 49:29 Poem: The Little Glass Dot, The Eyes of the World
• 51:15 Conclusion by bnessel1973
• 52:50 Dedication and Credits (Our Numa Numa dance)

For more info: http://mediatedcultures.net

If you missed seeing it, or if you wish to forward it to your email lists, You can watch Bill Moyer’s Journal:  Buying the war online.

How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?

Set your PVR’s and stock up on popcorn, because this is really gonna be can’t miss TV.

David Swanson, who saw an advance copy of the program, writes, “Spending that 90 minutes on this will actually save you time, because you’ll never watch television news again-not even on PBS, which comes in for its share of criticism.”

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On Wednesday, April 25 at 9 P.M. on PBS (check local listings), watch the premiere epidsode of Bill Moyer’s newest show on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal. Their first show will be “Buying the War,” a 90-minute documentary that explores the role of the press in the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq, it includes interviews with Dan Rather, formerly of CBS; Tim Russert of Meet the Press; Bob Simon of 60 Minutes; Walter Isaacson, former president of CNN; and John Walcott, Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers (now McClatchy).

In this clip from the premiere of Bill Moyers Journal on PBS, Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, talks about the reporting he was seeing and reading out of the beltway, and John Walcott and Warren Strobel of Knight Ridder newspapers (now The McClatchy Company), discuss their work burrowing deep into the intelligence agencies to determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war.

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Four years ago on May 1, President Bush landed on the aircraft carrier USS Lincoln wearing a flight suit and delivered a speech in front of a giant “Mission Accomplished” banner. He was hailed by media stars as a “breathtaking” example of presidential leadership in toppling Saddam Hussein. Despite profound questions over the failure to locate weapons of mass destruction and the increasing violence in Baghdad, many in the press confirmed the White House’s claim that the war was won. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews declared, “We’re all neo-cons now;” NPR’s Bob Edwards said, “The war in Iraq is essentially over;” and Fortune magazine’s Jeff Birnbaum said, “It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context.”

How did the mainstream press get it so wrong? How did the evidence disputing the existence of weapons of mass destruction and the link between Saddam Hussein to 9-11 continue to go largely unreported? “What the conservative media did was easy to fathom; they had been cheerleaders for the White House from the beginning and were simply continuing to rally the public behind the President — no questions asked. How mainstream journalists suspended skepticism and scrutiny remains an issue of significance that the media has not satisfactorily explored,” says Moyers. “How the administration marketed the war to the American people has been well covered, but critical questions remain: How and why did the press buy it, and what does it say about the role of journalists in helping the public sort out fact from propaganda?”

In “Buying the War” Bill Moyers and producer Kathleen Hughes document the reporting of Walcott, Landay and Strobel, the Knight Ridder team that burrowed deep into the intelligence agencies to try and determine whether there was any evidence for the Bush Administration’s case for war. “Many of the things that were said about Iraq didn’t make sense,” says Walcott. “And that really prompts you to ask, ‘Wait a minute. Is this true? Does everyone agree that this is true? Does anyone think this is not true?’”

In the run-up to war, skepticism was a rarity among journalists inside the Beltway. Journalist Bob Simon of 60 Minutes, who was based in the Middle East, questioned the reporting he was seeing and reading. “I mean we knew things or suspected things that perhaps the Washington press corps could not suspect. For example, the absurdity of putting up a connection between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda,” he tells Moyers. “Saddam…was a total control freak. To introduce a wild card like Al Qaeda in any sense was just something he would not do. So I just didn’t believe it for an instant.” The program analyzes the stream of unchecked information from administration sources and Iraqi defectors to the mainstream print and broadcast press, which was then seized upon and amplified by an army of pundits. While almost all the claims would eventually prove to be false, the drumbeat of misinformation about WMDs went virtually unchallenged by the media. THE NEW YORK TIMES reported on Iraq’s “worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb,” but according to Landay, claims by the administration about the possibility of nuclear weapons were highly questionable. Yet, his story citing the “lack of hard evidence of Iraqi weapons” got little play. In fact, throughout the media landscape, stories challenging the official view were often pushed aside while the administration’s claims were given prominence. “From August 2002 until the war was launched in March of 2003 there were about 140 front page pieces in THE WASHINGTON POST making the administration’s case for war,” says Howard Kurtz, the POST’s media critic. “But there was only a handful of stories that ran on the front page that made the opposite case. Or, if not making the opposite case, raised questions.”

“Buying the War” examines the press coverage in the lead-up to the war as evidence of a paradigm shift in the role of journalists in democracy and asks, four years after the invasion, what’s changed? “More and more the media become, I think, common carriers of administration statements and critics of the administration,” says THE WASHINGTON POST’s Walter Pincus. “We’ve sort of given up being independent on our own.”

“Buying the War” is produced by Kathleen Hughes. Written by: Bill Moyers and Kathleen Hughes. Edited by: Alison Amron. Executive Editors: Bill Moyers and Judith Davidson Moyers. Executive Producers: Felice Firestone and Judy Doctoroff O’Neill.

About Bill Moyers Journal

Ideas, Analysis, and Interviews
from Bill Moyers weekly on PBS
Fridays at 9 beginning April 27

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is supported by an extensive companion Web site at pbs.org/moyers where visitors can interact, give feedback and sign up for the Moyers podcast, which was listed in iTunes Best of 2006 People’s Choice top 100 new podcasts. After the broadcast, each episode will be available in its entirety for viewing online. The Web site is produced by Kristin Miller.

Funders for BILL MOYERS JOURNAL include: the Partridge Foundation, a John and Polly Guth Charitable Fund; the Park Foundation, dedicated to heightening public awareness of critical issues; The Herb Alpert Foundation; Marilyn and Bob Clements and The Clements Foundation; Bernard and Audrey Rapoport and the Bernard and Audrey Rapoport Foundation; Fetzer Institute; the Orfalea Family Foundation; the Public Welfare Foundation, and our sole corporate sponsor Mutual of America Life Insurance Company.

BILL MOYERS JOURNAL is a production of Public Affairs Television, Inc. and a national presentation of Thirteen/WNET New York.

The program includes a point-by-point description of the principles inherent in it and required for a media system that is truly reflective of and responsive to the needs and interests of the public.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Amongst these discussed are the inherent rights to free expression, and for access to the platforms for being able to receive that expression, particularly those whose accessibility is provide through “net neutrality” and well-funded local public access.

The program also features a brief history and overview as to the importance of media to the functioning of, if not the very existence of, a truly democratic society (including segments from the documentary film “Manufacturing Consent”).

Premiered on USTV on November 26th, 2006, Post picture was modified specifically for this posting.

Lets start it off with, Network: “A movie made 30 years ago that perfectly describes the situation today about television, news, and the mainstream media. It resonates louder and sounds truer today that it did when the movie was made.” (warning contains some adult language)

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Here’s a pro-net neutrality PSA that paints a grim future of the internet—if telecom and cable companies get their way.

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Big Media Hall of Shame, Which Corporate Media Mogul do you think has done the most, to pervert the free press in America?

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Senator Barbara Boxer revealed in a committee meeting on September 14, 2006, that the FCC ordered “its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.” (Audio and Video is not properly sync’d)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video clip of Al Gore, from the Altertnative MacTaggart Lecture given at this year’s MediaGuardian Edinburgh International Television Festival (MGEITF)

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Here is a clip from the film “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism”. Media analyst for FAIR Peter Hart discusses the effect of media consolidation on journalism.

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Another clip from the film “Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism”. Executive Director Digital Democracy Jeff Chester discusess big media conglomerates and how they dominate debate. … (more)

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Dave von Kleist (maker of 9/11 In Plane Site) explains why you can’t trust the mainstream media to tell you what you need to know, and he urges Americans to do whatever they can to take the media back and expose the truth about 9/11 and related issues. Personally, I think a better route than “taking back” the media is just simply to replace it. Youtube, Google Video, Yahoo Video, etc., we have the tools now to make the mainstream corporate media obsolete. Let’s do it.

This is raw interview footage, some of which appears in the documentary “One Nation Under Siege”

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Start off with a bang, eh? The problem of Corporate Rule.

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Globalization and the Media
Undercurrents explore how the media is involved in shaping public opinion during the ‘War on Terrorism’ and Globalization.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Text describing individual videos is the property of the uploader of the video.

“Can I get a myspace account? All my friends have one.”

It was only a matter of time before my grandchildren, girls ages 16 and 17, and a boy, 14, asked this question. “MySpace” has 67 million members posting photos, making mini-videos, browsing chat sites, posting poems or art, and connecting with friends.

My introduction to MySpace came through the MSNBC TV series on child predators who surf this highly popular site looking for vulnerable or curious teens. I watched the series with great interest, while asking the question “where were the parents when their teens were online?” “Did they ever check out where their kids are going online?”

With my teenage grandchildren begging for access, I decided to spend one hour randomly surfing MySpace and exploring its content. First, I looked over the posted pictures. While many were snapshots of ordinary people, many others showed young women in low cut tops or young men bare-chested, quite a few with suggestive names or provocative posing.

Browsing at random, I moved into the “Film” section, where I found Dancing Shakira shaking her bare midriff a la Christina Aquilera, Drop ‘em Girl (a teen) gyrating until her denim shorts fell down revealing her underwear, jump on it!:) with four teenage girls in bikinis wiggling around in the surf on a beach, Duchess the Teaser with blood-splattered bodies around a house on Christmas Day, and other sites called a little too drunk…, vibrator recall, and stupid and funny drunk. Okay, enough. Those were just a few of the first 100 film listings, and took me less than five minutes to find. There were thousands more.

I paused to browse the “Clubs” section, where in the midst of the innocuous I tripped over the MySpace Drinking Club, the Full Body Inspectors Club (with its Playboy-style crotch shot and strategic red thong), A Tribute to Those in Uniform with it semi nude girls on display, Dance Naked Party (self explanatory), Gansta Bitches, Trampfight and Retards. How offensive can this get?

Okay, time to move on.

Enter the “Groups” section. How nice. Habitat for Humanity, food services programs, international volunteers …aha… Non-Profits and Philanthropic, a special interest of mine … I clicked and up popped Barbara in bra and panties: click her icon and up pops an adult X-rated porn site. What kind of “philanthropy” does she offer? Out I went. No my kind of community service.

How about a peek at “Activities” and “Culture and Community Groups?” There I was greeted by the I Sleep Naked group, the Melissa Leslie site of semi nude shots, Elite Mates (again, skin magazine caliber photos), and titles including Skull F—-r, EyeC@ndy, Foreplay, StarF—s, and a Pro Marijuana site that mixed bags of pot with semi-nude models.

For me, though, the scariest site, was the “DDR”, Dance Dance Revolution, section. DDR is the hottest thing in arcade and video land for teens like my grandchildren, who dance and stomp to its patterned, pre-programmed music using a floor mat to track the accuracy of their moves. DDR would be a magnet for teens online. How bad could it be? Randomly clicking, I found Dancing Braless, a lengthy blog type piece on the merits of playing this game braless. That was followed by Practice Naked, a discussion board by young men and women about the discomforts of bouncing body parts in the nude. Add to that Playing DDR Stoned, and a really frightening title: Pull the Trigger and the Nightmare Stops. What that had to do with DDR — or anything — was beyond me. Four minutes of surfing DDR land and I was, again, more than ready to move on.

All of this was uncovered in one hour – sixty minutes – of site surfing at random.
My understanding is that individuals belonging to MySpace can “hide” their sites from others, can substitute avatars (alternate images) for their photos, and set up an “approved friends” list, all of which are supposed to reassure parents, ensure safety, and perhaps provide some shred of decency for young people using the site. Teens can punch in a name and zip code, and zero in on their friends fairly closely. So can a predator.

Adults can do whatever they want online and anywhere else, but the rules and the responsibilities are different when it comes to minors. Our children and their upbringing are our responsibility. Parents were once asked, in public service TV commercials, “do you know where your children are?” Parents need to ask that same questions even when their children are sitting in their rooms traveling through cyberspace. “Do you know where your kids are?”

Once online, the unsupervised curious can browse anything, anywhere on this site and many others in the cyber/social networks. While some MySpace sites clearly target older age and interest groups, and anyone over 18 is free to seek out and view whatever they want, there are no boundaries keeping young people, adolescents or teens, out of inappropriate or adult sites.

While I found many, many videos of pets, babies, family picnics and other harmless viewing, these innocuous features lay side by side with an equal amount of things I’d rather my grandchildren did not see. Browse MySpace and you will find, whether you want to or not.

The fact remains that once I logged onto MySpace, questionable and potentially dangerous sites were just a mouse-click away. I knew nothing about surfing the site, other than its popular reputation and the desire of my grandchildren to join their friends online there. I entered for the first time and left after my scheduled hour of exploration, appalled at what I found there. I can only imagine what curious teens might venture into.

In the wake of the MSNBC predator sting, MySpace has increased its security presence and has a lengthy list of “how to’s” for reporting and solving problems on its site. It also refers interested parents to a wealth of safety information on computer use for teens and children at safeteens.com or netsmartz.org. I explored both of these sites as well, and found practical information on internet contracts between parents and their children, safety tips for young internet users, and guidelines for parents about computer use.

Nonetheless, my computer remains in an office open to the living room in our home, where it is easy torandomly peek over a shoulder and see what’s being viewed online. If my grandchildren don’t want to have me looking over their shoulder from time to time, or even spot checking their e-mail, then they don’t really need to be online. My computer, like most, also has a setting allowing “blocking” of sites. MySpace was added to the list. And I will continue to be vigilant.

_____________Tips for MySpace (and other sites) Visitors____________

• Don’t forget that your profile and MySpace forums are public spaces. Don’t post anything you wouldn’t want the world to know (e.g., your phone number, address, IM screens name, pictures with identifying landmarks, or specific whereabouts). Avoid posting anything that would make it easy for a stranger to find you, such as where you hang out every day after school.
• People aren’t always who they say they are. Be careful about adding strangers to your friends list. It’s fun to connect with new MySpace friends from all over the world, but avoid meeting people in person whom you do not know. If you must meet someone, do it in a public place and bring a friend or trusted adult.
• Harassment, hate speech and inappropriate content should be reported. If you feel someone’s behavior is inappropriate, react. Talk with a trusted adult, or report it to MySpace or the authorities.
• Don’t post anything that would embarrass you later. Think twice before posting a photo or info you wouldn’t want your parents, your friends, your teachers or boss to see!
• Don’t mislead people into thinking that you’re older or younger. If you lie about your age, you are heading for trouble. MySpace will delete your profile if you lie about your age.