Tonight, while driving home from my corporate servitude in the city, I once again drove past this symbol of Peace which has shone in hope over lower Goldstream Road for at least the past three winters. You know it, that stretch between Ivory Jacks and the three point intersection of Sheep Creek, Gold Stream and Murphy Dome – what is it with Fairbanks that one road has two or three names?

Have any thoughts on that? Share them with "team Nader." Here's their email address.

Here's crooksandliars' take:

Last time around Nader was backed by Koch’s rightwing think tank corporate front group, Citizens for a Sound Economy (now FreedomWorks), so don’t be surprised this time when the billionaire-financed rightwing attack machine Freedom’s Watch backs him with their supposed $250 million dollar war chest. I’m just saying. CNN’s Abbi Tatton tells that Nader is saying that if he can “raise 10 million dollars and to rustle up enough lawyers to help him get ballot access, then he is definitely going to do this,” and we already know Ralph doesn’t have a problem with getting his back scratched by Republicans.

I know it's winter, but it's never to early to think about the mass murder of mosquitoes. One of my dirty secrets is that despite knowing that at best the idea is environmentally hubristic and at worst environmentally catastrophic, I want science to eradicate the mosquito.

Therefore I was delighted to see that science is indeed working on just that...and making progress! According to Wired, a biotech company in Britain has genetically engineered a male mosquito whose offspring will die before reproducing. The idea is to reduce populations of disease carrying mosquitoes so we won't be seeing franken-mosquitoes in Alaska any time soon...but one can always hope.

I was shocked the first time I heard this speech many years ago. This was not the King I was raised to image. Here was a man developing a very radical analysis of race, class, poverty and war in our society. Upon hearing this one of my first thoughts was "No wonder they killed him."

A couple of years ago I revisited this speech and replaced the word "communist" with "terrorist" and found that King's message still rings true today.

On 4 April 1967, King made his most public and comprehensive statement against the Vietnam War. Addressing a crowd of 3,000 people in New York City’s Riverside Church, King delivered a speech entitled "Beyond Vietnam." King pointed out that the war effort was "taking the young black men who have been crippled by our society and sending them 13,000 miles away to guarantee liberties in Southeast Asia which they had not found in southwest Georgia and East Harlem."

Although some activists and newspapers supported King's statement, most responded with criticism. King's civil rights colleagues began to disassociate themselves with his radical stance and the NAACP issued a statement against merging the civil rights movement and peace movement. King remained undeterred, stating that he was not fusing the civil rights and peace movements, as many had suggested.

For the full text and audio of the speech click here

The Press and The Allusions (allusions: obs. - a parable, metaphor)

I am sorry, but I have now become completely disillusioned with the American popular press, including National Public Radio. There is a long list of events, covered by the press, whose reporting has led to the current state of affairs wherein we now have a useless, rootless press, wandering about, trying to figure out what is real and what is not. Fairness and balance has trumped investigation and follow-up reporting of the truth. Here is a list of the same old tunes from which the press might take some instruction:

Rush Limbaugh compared the tearful Congressional testimony of Charlee Lockwood regarding global warming's effect on her community to the 70's era PSA commercial where:

the Indian, the Native American, sorry uh standing by the roadside as you know worthless Americans drive by on the way to their trailer parks and so forth uh and throwing trash out the window of their car. Native American...and a little tear starts rolling down his cheek over what white Europeans have done to his country. This stuff is oppressive.

Then Limbaugh took a call from a guest who said that everything was ok climate change wise, because Lockwood's ancestors came over on an ice bridge that no longer exists. Good to know, I guess.

Charlee Lockwood is an Inuit teen from St. Michael's Village who has become a leading force in demanding action to fight global climate change.

Read it and weep...

Once again it is "Beg-A-Thon" time on our local NPR affiliate. As I listen to this week's fund raising effort I hear continual lip service being paid to how important their listeners are. Of course I cannot hear that without my blood boiling when I recall the contempt and disregard General Manager & CEO Greg Petrowich showed members of the station's listening audience two years ago who protested his unilateral removal of several programs many valued for their non-mainstream perspective on the news.

I recall the summer afternoon when over 100 people turned-out on the University of Alaska campus to protest Petrowich 's autocratic managerial style. I was more than a little impressed that so many members of the community turned out -- for a community the size of Fairbanks, 100 protesters is nothing to sneeze at, that is unless you are Greg Petrowich.

I also recall when over 100 of us joined together during Beg-A-Thon that year and made a conditional pledge of over $40,000 to the station if Petrowich would restore the contested programing. But even then he would not budge.

It was this reticence and contempt, more than the actual cancellation of the news programs in question, that angered me with the decision. This is a pattern that has recurred in community after community across the nation as NPR affiliates have bent under pressure from political conservatives and corporations to limit the American people's access to perspectives on the news that does not kowtow to the corporate media line.

Today I called our local NPR affiliate and told them that as long as Greg Petrowich remanded Manager & CEO of the station I would continue to boycott donating during Beg-A-Thon.

We knew the Florida earmark seemed fishy, but doesn't this maneuver seem to have crossed the line even for Don? I mean, would your mother approve?

From TPMmuckraker: Rep. Don Young (R-AK) has taken the political art form to an ethically questionable level that even some experts in the trenches have never seen. In 2005, Young waited until after the House and Senate passed a transportation bill, but before the president signed it into law, to rewrite a passage that would have granted $10 million for an interstate in Florida. His new wording targeted the money to a much smaller, more specific project to connect Coconut Road to that interstate. It's an unpopular project in the area, but a boon for real estate developer Daniel Aronoff, who held a $40,000 fundraiser for Young in Florida just before the earmark appeared.

Young has refused multiple requests for comment from different publications on these, and related allegations. Once he made an obscene gesture at a New York Times reporter who approached him about the earmark. His spokeswoman did not get back to us today.

You may recall the property that Lisa Murkowski purchased from a long time friend and support for well below market value. Murkowski was forced to sell the property back after the negative publicity became more than she wanted to handle.

Too bad for Lisa, because as coincidence would have it, she had already secured $6 million from the federal government to build a road to that very property!

Read all about it... (Spoiler Alert: Gov. Frank was involved too!)

Don Young, Lisa Murkowski, Ted Stevens, Bill Allen, Vic Kohring, Pete Kott, and Bruce Weyhrauch are all discussed.

John Stohmeyer is quoted as saying "Favours for pals is just a way of life up here."

Ray Metcalfe is also quoted: Most producing countries tax oil at 70% to 90% of the net profits. Here we tax at 7%.

As is usual with The Economist, the last paragraph provides a slim silver lining to an otherwise damning article:

Both Mr. Young and Mr. Stevens are up for re-election in 2008. Democrats are lining up to run against Mr. Young. None has appeared yet to challenge Mr. Stevens, but that will change. And one thing is certain, Alaska's governor, Sarah Palin, who crushed Mr. Murkowski in the 2006 primary by pledging to break with the past, will call a special legislative session this autumn. Its sole purpose: to raise oil taxes.

When news of the FBI raid on Ted Stevens' home first hit, Katie Couric and the other Evening News reporters repeatedly mispronounced the company name of Veco in its report. (Hint: rhymes with Gecko)

After having a day and a half to prepare the story, it was clear that Couric and her crew hadn't bothered to talk to anybody who knew anything whatsoever about the unfolding scandal. Isn't that why they pay them the big bucks?

I haven't been able to find footage of the news cast (I actually saw it on tv!), but since the gaff indicates just how sloppy tv news has gotten, I thought I'd bring it up.

Holy Sh*t!

by Gary Schneider (may be reproduced free forever)

Once in the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, The great Sun Buddha in this corner of the Infinite Void gave a great Discourse to all the assembled elements And energies: to the standing beings, the walking beings, The flying beings, and the sitting beings even the grasses, To the number of thirteen billion, each one born from a Seed, were assembled there: a Discourse concerning Enlightenment on the planet Earth.

Dear Anonymous Heckler,

For more than a month you have been leaving confrontational comments on the Fairbanks Open Radio site. During that time you have been one of the most committed participants in our community. I'm pretty happy with the community response to your heckling -- no one seems to have gotten too angry, though in a perfect world replies to your posts might have been a little less condescending. For the rest of this letter I will try to be respectful, though it may be difficult because of the strong differences in our beliefs. The purpose of this article is to explain how I understand your criticism of the Fairbanks Open Radio site, so that you can correct any misunderstanding. I also hope this letter may pave the way to some common ground between you and the rest of the Fairbanks Open Radio community.

Thursday, April 19, 2007 By Kat Teraji (kattoy@verizon.net)

"Bury my heart at Wounded Knee, Deep in the Earth, Cover me with pretty lies - bury my heart at Wounded Knee. Didn't we learn to crawl, and still our history gets written in a liar's scrawl. They tell 'ya "Honey, you can still be an Indian d-d-down at the 'Y' on Saturday nights." -- lyrics to "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee," written by Buffy St. Marie

"The worst shooting rampage in American history…" "Massacre and Mourning, 33 die in worst shooting in U.S. History," and "Rampage called worst mass shooting in U.S. history." "What first appeared to be a single shooting death unfolded into the worst gun massacre in the nation's history." You've seen and heard these headlines and reports all week as the media provided non-stop coverage of the tragic shooting of 33 people at Virginia Tech University on Monday.