Medialternatives

SINCE we are still battling to get any credit for the 34000 pages we have served to the community, Medialternatives has had to syndicate via Google Syndication for gratis, in return for the prospect that t he company will allow us to join the Adsense programme. WordPress does not offer its own programme and users are expected to upgrade using WP Credits. CSSS style sheets are therefore unavaible for coding and we cannot achieve independent without the venture. More news about our RSS feed and how it affects you in our next update.

If you are browsing Medialternatives via WordPress, you can donate WordPress credits

Go to your blog: Site Admin >> Upgrades >> Gifts You must input the blog’s username or my email. The username for Medialternatives is davidrobertlewis, email is davidrobertlewis@yahoo.co.uk. Put the number of credits you want to donate to Medialternatives (5 credits = 5 dollars). The payment is made via Paypal or directly with credit card.

All we need to get a CSS editor is 15 credits. Once this is achieved, we can make Medialternatives sustainable through Google Adsense, it’s not asking to much, just a means to cover our expenses and Internet connection. WordPress credits sent to Medialternatives can make a difference to those living in the Global South. Perspectives, opinion, debate.

DESPITE the announcement of various stimulus packages intended to reboot the World Economy, the saga of boom and bust continues, spurred on by growing awareness of the structural inequalities that have been built into the so-called free-market. There is rising anger at the “pork-barrel” spending in the US to save industries mired in a bizarre addiction to debt that has lead to the absurdity of binge-spending, over-weight executives and complete disregard for value on the triple bottom line i.e., economics, ecology and social consequences.

It is as if the whole world, (that’s us) are all now being asked to fund the spending habits of a few executives and to pay the resulting bill for engaging in no-holds-barred capitalism, with more capital (an increase in the money supply) while half of the world lives on $1 a day.

The questionable Keynesian policies being rolled out by Big Government in the interest of Big Business ignores the simple problem – exactly what is it that is going to be stimulated, and what will the consequences be of saving the banks, corporates and industrial oligarchies in the West that have lead us all into the mess in the first place?

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Heavens, for the life of me, it would appear that the Independent Group and Media24 have deleted every article I have ever written for these two mainstream publishers, and the same goes for all of my writing done during the Struggle, under force majeur force majeure, in a State of Emergency and surrounding by sanctions, for the alternative press.

Of course this is not altogether true, and the problem is a lot more complex than a simple google search or query on flikr. Most SA publications were not actively online prior to 2001.  Hard thought it may be to comprehend in an era where the net is taken for granted, there was a time when there was no internet, at least in the way we conceive of it now, as the www.

South Africa has also been relatively slow to adopt the web in the same way as the USA and other place and is barely progressing towards Web 2.0. There is still only one Broadband Telco, and three mobile operators and the barriers to entry have meant ordinary South Africans have very little connectivity where it counts most, on the Superinformation Highway, and not down some back alley.

Most of the information available to the outside world is therefore hopelessly inadequate, biased and one-sided. Since my critics have greater bandwidth than me, they have prevailed by drowing out the signals that create a picture of who I am. I don’t intend to swamp them with appeals to correct the record. No what I am going to do is lobby Jimmy Swales, and the Creative Commons, to rectify the tragedy of South Africa’s alternative press.

Let’s get the South Press Archive online. Let’s make the Vrye Weekblad available to net-surfers. Let’s put Grassroots back where it belongs. Then you be the judge.

There are bout three years of contributions to the Cape Times which for all intents and purpsoses do not exist. Can one really draw an impression based upon the racist views of a white minority?  Would you trust the manufacturers of apartheid with the truth?
For those of you unable to access my “notable” writing, here are some links to current work available online.

Biophile

Refuting Gaia

Opposing Nuclear Energy

Nuclear Energy – Money hungry swindlers

Design Indaba

ReConstruction

SA Art Times

Here is the link to the sad and tragically misinformed discussion about my wikipedia page deletion, that’s the deletion of the David Robert Lewis page.

An earlier posting about Wikipedia Apartheid Denialism

Fresh Intelligence reports that US food company Subway announced it still supports Olympic Swimmer Michael Phelps, in spite of the growing fallout over Bong-Gate.In a statement, Subway says “Like most Americans, and like Michael Phelps himself, we were disappointed in his behavior. Also like most Americans, we accept his apology. Moving forward, he remains in our plans.”

Earlier Friday, there was speculation that Subway would drop him. On Thursday, The Kellogg Company announced it was dropping its sponsorship of Phelps.

Michael Phelps was suspended from competition for three months by USA Swimming in the wake of the photo that showed the Olympic record-setting champion inhaling from a marijuana pipe.

The Associated Press reports:

The sport’s national governing body also cut off its financial support to Phelps for the same three-month period, effective Thursday.
“This is not a situation where any anti-doping rule was violated, but we decided to send a strong message to Michael because he disappointed so many people, particularly the hundreds of thousands of USA Swimming member kids who look up to him as a role model and a hero,” the Colorado Springs-based federation said in a statement.

Just two weeks after announcing layoffs and salary reductions, One Laptop per Child is donating 5,000 of its XO laptops to the United Nations Relief and Workers Agency (UNRWA) to give to Palestinian children in the Gaza strip.

UNRWA operates 800 schools for Palestinian refugees in Jordan, Labanon, Gaza and the West Bank.

The XO laptop itself features a screen built to be easy to read in sunlight and the ability to operate without access to electricity. A 12-hour battery charged with solar power and a long-range wi-fi antenna are also built into the machine, which is designed to operate using less than 1 watt of power.

OLPC faced its share of obstacles in 2008, culminating earlier this month with the announcement, made by the nonprofit’s founder and chairman Nicholas Negroponte, that the organization had to lay off half of the staff and reduce salaries for the remaining 32 employees.

Negroponte, an MIT professor, founded OLPC in 2005 with the mission of providing $100 laptops to those couldn’t otherwise afford them. Instead of costing $100, however, the laptops have hovered around $200 each since OLPC first started production in November 2007.

Leading up to the restructuring, former director of security architecture Ivan Krstic resigned as a result of conflict among the organization’s goals and aims. Last January, former CTO Mary Lou Jepsen resigned to form a company that commercializes OLPC technology, like the screen and battery. And also last January, Intel Corp. resigned from the OLPC board of directors.

source: http://www.masshightech.com/

Turning Eagles into Doves

The Department of Peace (DOP) legislation will be introduced TODAY
into the House of Representatives by REP. DENNIS KUCINICH.

Please call your Congressional office in D.C. at 9am EST THIS MORNING to encourage your Representative to co-sponsor the DOP legislation.

For more info about your Congressional Representative, go to http://www.congress.org/congressorg/home/
and enter your zip code.

Your Representative’s office needs to call CATE VEITH in REP. KUCINICH’S office this morning TO CONFIRM CO-SPONSORSHIP at:
2445 Rayburn House Office Building,
District of Columbia 20515-3510
Phone: (202) 225-5871
Fax: (202) 225-5745

Hopefully, the bill # will continue to be HR808.

Check on C-Span today to follow Rep. Kucinich’s historic “dropping” of the Dept. of Peace bill into the Hopper. We do not know time of bill drop yet.
www.c-span.org

Thank you!

More info: http://www.thepeacealliance.org

Dear Medialternatives,

AS a signatory to a statement by 300 members of the South African community condemning the disproportionate use of force by the Israeli military in Gaza, and in particular the recent statements made by the JBD and Chief Rabbi, I feel emboldened to demand that Ebrahim I Bham, secretary-general of the Council of Muslim Theologians, also be censured for his statements literally calling for an armed struggle (or holy war) against Israel. Jews have a right to self-determination, and hard though it may be for some to accept, the Jewish state has a right to exist as much as Palestine or any other state.

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This is a letter sent to the City Electricity Department concerning a virtual disconnection/reconnection and the activity of a sub-contractor.

Last year a white notice warning me of disconnection for non-payment of my account, was shoved under my door. The same day four men in an unmarked vehicle arrived and without identifying themselves proceeded to enter the premises and threatened to remove my electricity metre with a screw-driver, demanded money and threatened me physically. I managed to dissuade them by threatening to call the police and they left.

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