"Led by a mild-mannered former librarian who stepped out of retirement to do what the corporate giants said couldn't be done, a bunch of everyday folks backed by $25 and $50 gifts have saved the Avalon Theater, one of the last grand places to take in a movie."

Three cheers for Bob Zich and Doug Jemal!

9:33:10 AM    

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Freedom on Iran's Airwaves (washingtonpost.com) "Contrary to what Jackson Diehl says in his op-ed article, dissident Iranian students remain in close and useful contact with the broadcast efforts the United States is aiming at Iran's young people. As we complete the transition to greatly increased programming aimed at Iran's under-30 audience, the voices of student protesters who use their cell phones to reach us are being heard daily on our broadcasts beamed into Iran. We are giving these brave young people what their own government denies them: a way to speak to their fellow citizens. Our new service will also increase news and current affairs programming by 135 minutes, to 315 minutes each day."

8:39:07 AM    

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Everybody loves me baby . . . "To know America is to love America?. Advertising maven Charlotte Beers is trying to sell the U.S. to the Muslim world, but nobody's buying it. [Salon.com] Here's a fun game: Combine the following quotation from this story with some article below and guess whether Muslims abroad are buying what she's selling. Here's the quotation:

According to Beers, America's information offensive is off to a grand start, putting out messages that are "believable and always true and accurate," she says. One of her first salvos was a series of mini-documentaries about happy American Muslims, designed to show Muslims abroad that the war on terror isn't a clash of civilizations.

Now, you have to guess which story below goes with this quotation, and you have to guess the reaction of Muslims to both. Tricky, huh!" [The Decline and Fall of the American Empire]

Sadly, we seem to be more committed to examining our propoganda than our policy.  Jackson Diehl argues recently in the Washington Post that our revisions to our broadcasts to Iran reflect this emphasis of style over substance, with American pop culture replacing substantive news. Anne Applebaum chimed in a short time later on the administration's neglect of democratic movements in Iran.

8:18:47 AM    

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