I was on hand for the festivities at Albany City Hall Saturday night into Sunday morning: New York is the sixth, and largest, state to legalize same-sex unions. Several other states are considering following suit.

Congrats to all of you couples! Scroll down to the bottom for my musical gift to you!

Six gay and lesbian couples from around the Capital Region were among the first in the state to legally wed under New York’s same-sex marriage law. Mayor Jerry Jennings and Judge Joseph Teresi officiated in Albany. This is what it looked outside City Hall around 11pm, an hour before things got underway...



Lights, cameras... ACTION!

When I first arrived at City Hall, I jokingly mentioned to Dori Marlin that it's been about three years since I last saw her out covering a story. "You're the third person who's told me that tonight," said she... No, she and Dan Levy weren't tying the knot... they were witnessing


Judge Teresi officiating the wedding of an African-American couple who had children with them. I wasn't able to find out who the kids were. Everyone was smiling most of the time, except during those "serious, solemn" moments! Here's the Times Union account of the evening... I mentioned in my radio report that gay rights and human rights activists hope the Empire State's same-sex marriage law will have nationwide impact - that it will impress lawmakers throughout the land, all the way to President Barack Obama. Gay marriage advocates now say they will push for Federal legislation that would require ALL states to recognize same-sex unions.

Mayor Jenning's longtime friends ("Super Secret Couple") Dale Getto and Barbara Laven were married by hizzoner. After the City Hall proceedings, they jumped in a stretch limo and headed up to Saratoga for celebration at Vapor! Congratulations, ladies!


Old chum Dan Levy from NewsChannel 13 takes a seat to jot down a few notes...

Albany City Councilman Anton Konev was on the scene to "witness history." This fellow attends more local events than Brian Scavo!


I love people! Comrades-in-arms Fox23 reporter and cameraman mugged for my smartphone as the crowd began leaving City Hall. Good job, guys!

And here's a musical gift for you Gay Couples! Ronnette's Ronnie Spector with substitute 'nettes Belinda Carlisle (Go-Gos) and Grace Slick (Jefferson Airplane) with the late great Clarence Clemmons on sax!



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#ssm Gay Marriage Albany Wedding Album

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One of China's most promising young gymnasts, Zhang Shangwu seemed destined for Olympic glory before his career ended in injury. He has been found begging on the streets of Beijing, prompting criticism of the country's Soviet-style sports system.

Sean Hoare, the former News of the World showbiz reporter who was the first named journalist to allege Andy Coulson was aware of phone hacking by his staff, has been found dead, the Guardian has learned.

Yemen Protests 2011

via Global Voices : 18 July 2011 20:40 GMT

This post also available in:

Español	· Protestas en Yemen - 2011
اردو	·

Young supporter for Yemen protests, Washington DC, USA. Flickr: Messay Shoakena (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).

Table of Contents

• Latest Global Voices Posts About Yemen
• Featured Global Voices Posts - Yemen Protests 2011
• Resources:
  • Twitter - Including live feed

State of NoVa | Va. aims to become Hollywood East

Washington Post (blog)- Jul 18, 2011- Sure, there are a lot of blogs and a lot of blah-blah-blah out there. But here at The State of NoVa, we've culled through a few hundred or so, and bring you our list of the Top 31 fun and fascinating blogs...

TechCrunch

Inbox Overload Begone: Taskforce Exits Beta, Goes Pro With Paid Version - Email is an essential part of our daily communication, but it can also be a real pain in the ass.

QUOTE OF THE DAY ::: This comes from the 'comments' section in a post appearing on Lisa Irby's blog ::: "On Google you can connect with people who are actively looking to solve their problem. But people don’t go to Facebook to solve problems. They probably go there more to avoid their problems."

NetActive 18 July 2011

Global warming nightmare?

Ocean Currents Speed Melting of Antarctic Ice

Stronger ocean currents beneath West Antarctica’s Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf are eroding the ice from below, speeding the melting of the glacier as a whole, according to a new study in Nature Geoscience. A growing cavity beneath the ice shelf has allowed more warm water to melt the ice, the researchers say—a process that feeds back into the ongoing rise in global sea levels. The glacier is currently sliding into the sea at a clip of four kilometers (2.5 miles) a year, while its ice shelf is melting at about 80 cubic kilometers a year - 50 percent faster than it was in the early 1990s - the paper estimates.

Continued »

Add to: | blinklist | del.cio.us | yahoo! | furl | rawsugar | shadows | netvouz

Tags: Columbia University, Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf


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A Major Glacier is Undermined: Ocean Currents Speed Melt of Antarctic Ice

Could it be that an anti-Assad activist realized that by using an attractive photo of a woman and pretending to be gay was a quick means of getting the western press to take notice?

UPDATE 10 June 2011 ::: Jillian C. York
Journalistic Verification, Amina Arraf, and Haystack

This is the second time I can recall Global Voices has been punk'd by a phony photo! First it was NEDA, whose picture still shows up on several big websites, including BBC.

Now, supporters of "A Gay Girl in Damascus" reportedly hijacked a photo of another woman to further their cause: On Wednesday, a London publicist said photos circulating are actually of Jelena Lecic, a Croatian woman who works as an administrator at the Royal College of Physicians in London. Lecic believes her identity has been used before by blogger Amina Arraf.

Because the blogger described herself as a Syrian-American with dual citizenship, American officials in Damascus and Washington have been seeking to verify her identity since she was first reported missing in a note posted on her blog by someone who identified herself as the blogger’s cousin.

Questions about Arraf's story arose when details when it emerged no one had met her in person. Theories are flying online, including allegations that Arraf and her online girlfriend, Sandra Bagaria, who raised the alarm about her arrest, are the same person (like Coffin and Kobayashi); or that Ms Lecic and Arraf are the same person, and Gay Girl in Damascus is an invention.

Screenshot of AA's "old blog" - hover and click to see the bigger picture!

Lecic called The Guardian to request her picture be removed from the newspaper's website, only to find it replaced with another photo of her. Ms. Lecic herself appeared on a BBC television program and insisted that she did not know the author of the Gay Girl in Damascus blog. She said the photographs appear to have been taken from her Facebook page.

As several bloggers have pointed out, the search for traces of Amina Arraf online on Wednesday also led to the discovery of a profile page registered in that name on the social network NetLog, by someone who described Hebrew as her native language. In a post on the Gay Girl in Damascus blog last month, the author wrote, in a discussion of her love of languages, that she had studied Hebrew and dreamed of one day becoming Syria’s ambassador to Israel.

Blogs have been used in the past as vehicles for experimental fiction. As questions about the identity of the Gay Girl in Damascus grew, Blogger Liz Henry recalled an elaborate hoax that had been carried out from 2001 to 2004 by a “middle aged guy named Odin Soli,” who wrote what turned out to be a fictional blog in the persona of a young lesbian. Ms. Henry added that Mr. Soli also won blog awards writing another fictional blog in the voice of “Acanit, a young lesbian Muslim girl with a Jewish girlfriend.”

The Washington Post says : "If A Gay Girl in Damascus is indeed a hoax, it would be an elaborate one. Arraf’s Facebook page reads like a who’s who of the Syrian opposition movement, and although none of the activists contacted had met her, all of them said they found it difficult to believe she wasn’t real."

What do YOU say?








Tags: Gay Girl In Damascus, Amina Arraf, Jelena Lecic, Global Voices





Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and Dave Lucas are properly cited. Permission to reprint any comments below is granted only for those comments written by Dave Lucas and staff.

Amina Arraf: Identity Thief? Gay Girl In Damascus HOAX!

Is this how Windy and Lainy would like to see yours truly?

Internet thugs, stalkers and hackers abound. Sometimes, as A-list blogger Michelle Malkin will attest, trouble at the hands of critics cannot always be avoided.

Oleg Kashin, special correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant and well-known blogger, was brutally beaten near his home in November 2010 [ru]. A video recording of the attack was subsequently published on the Internet [ru].

President Medvedev tweeted about the incident and said that the criminals should be found and punished. Important accounts of this attack on Kashin were described on Global Voices by Alexey Sidorenko.

In December, 2010 Kashin published an article “A beating on my beat” in the New York Times. He took part in an international conference beginning the same day as World Press Freedom Day, where he spoke to Global Voices (GV).

read more »





Tags: Олег Кашин, Oleg Kashin



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When Blogging Gets Ugly

The Life and Loss of Karen Woo, as shown on ITV, is a moving documentary of two lives caught up in the complexity of Afghanistan.

Karen was a constant reminder that happiness could only be reached if you make the most of who you are. ~ Camilla Schickova

The Karen Woo Foundation (karenwoofoundation.com) has been set up to help continue Karen's work providing healthcare to the most deprived communities in Afghanistan. Tributes to Karen from her friends and colleagues in dance can be found at theplace.org.uk/​karenwoo.

The Life and Loss of Karen Woo as seen on ITV 1, available in some countries on ITV player, where you can see some incredible footage of Karen talking, as if from the grave, about the dreams, ambitions and courage of a very ordinary girl who really put herself out there for what she cared about.

Karen’s personal Afghanistan blog can be read atwww.explorerkitteninafghanistan.blogspot.com

If you would like to make a donation to the Karen Woo Foundation please visitwww.karenwoofoundation.com

To find out more about Bridge Afghanistan, please visitwww.bridgeafghanistan.blogspot.com

Tags: Dr. Karen Wook, Karen Woo



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The Life and Loss of Karen Woo

Hope you enjoyed Mother's Day! You may have noticed that "Around The Blogosphere" has now become "NetActive" -

bbrian017 Brian

Scrapers and How to Deal with Them http://bit.ly/krAIPz

No, I'm not scraping content here- this type of post is called (for the un-initiated and un-informed) an AGGREGATOR:

A website, blog or software program that gathers (aggregates) and displays web content such as news headlines, blogs, and podcasts from multiple websites to a single location.

The bloggers from the collective student blog from Matanzas La Joven Cuba reflect [es] on their meeting with the US professor Ted Henken, who was informed by Cuban authorities that he could not return to the Island after conducting research on the Cuban blogosphere.

Lin Yixin (Shara Lin 林逸欣) performs Jolin Tsai’s (Cai Yilin) “舞娘 (Dancing Diva)” with the zither, violin, and piano simultaneously as a “one girl band”. It's racked up MILLIONS of views in just a few days on Youku and YouTube.

PeterThorneNews Peter Thorne NewsHub

[VIDEO] CHRISTIAN HEALTHCARE - new form of healthcare coverage that's saving families thousands every year? @ <http://bit.ly/es1mTX>

nailaha Naila Hamdy

by NadiaE

Egyptian newspaper Youm 7 launches English language website.http://bit.ly/kS3IUK #media #Egypt

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visite o blog da @ibleldorado ta muito legal!!!http://blogaodamocidade.blogspot.com/

Famous Bloggers

20 Link Building Methods and How to Use Them - We all know that Google insists on quality content and I support that, but we all know that links play a major role in website rankings.

NetActive 8 May 2011

Although I haven't been well the last few days, I didn't feel like sitting around the house or calling in sick to work, especially with President Bill Clinton scheduled to speak in Albany. You can barely see him in this fuzzy cellphone pic I snapped from the media area. (Hover and click on the pic for higher res shots taken by University photographer Mark Schmidt) Those up-close pix you see on TV and in the papers were taken from the same spot, by reporters and camera operators armed with telescopic lenses!


Wednesday night was very cold, with a icy wind and a touch of snow in the air as I headed out to the University campus. Although I arrived before the 7pm media check-in time, I parked what seemed like miles from the SEFCU arena. (Getting OUT of the parking lot later was tantamount to a 'Keystone Kops' episode. Authorities looped traffic around and back in a confusing fashion instead of allowing what should have been a relatively normal but bumper-to-bumper flow. It wasn't too bad for me, but many other drivers were frustrated!)

It is difficult when you have a prolific speaker like President Clinton to go through minutes and minutes of recorded audio and pick out highlights when the entire speech is in itself a highlight. I could have filled 20 minutes, but squeezed what I could into 4 and a half. Albany County Executive Mike Breslin was among regional officials attending the Clinton speech, which he called "an amazingly optimistic approach to where we are in the world today." And indeed it was. The spark of optimism burned thru each and every person who had sat in that auditorium as they made their way into the cold night. The words of change and hope for the future will stick in everyone's memory, I'm sure.

The Times Union mentioned one of the topics I had to pass on: the volatile situation in the Arab world right now. Clinton said he was concerned about Middle East because people try to hijack every revolution. He said democracy could flourish in those countries and praised the young people for risking their lives to bring it about peaceably. He closed the topic with a "wait and see" flavor applied... had the media been granted access to the President, I'm certain that would have been one of the items Mr. Clinton would have been asked a zillion questions about.

A 2010 Wall Street Journal/NBC news poll determined Clinton is regarded as the most popular politician in the United States.

PS - if anyone finds a "Bill Clinton UAlbany Transcript" link, please drop it in the "comments" area below! THANKS!

Tags: Bill Clinton at UAlbany, President Bill Clinton

Bill Clinton at UAlbany

We are Wisconsin, We are not Egypt

Turmoil, turmoil, turmoil!

This is really about the old way of doing things collapsing under what some call "the new normal."

Lots of "gruff stuff" going on as the Wisconsin situation stirs ripples in other states (including good ol' New York!) . It's all about those state budgets as well as Unions vs. Governors.

From what I've heard on the street and through talk radio, civil service employees, government workers and union officials are being targeted by the modern-day equivalent of the old "lynch mob." One thing I kept hearing was how kids are failing in school because schools are failing (think Albany High) while people are resisting the efforts to improve education in Albany (and other places) via Charter Schools...

We are Wisconsin, We are not Egypt

Here are some photos (via the Times Union website) of the weekend rally in Albany. Chanted at the rally: "We are Wisconsin!"

The crowd was bit rougher in Lansing, Michigan at a similar rally.

Here's an interesting snip from the TU Albany newspaper article:

The show of labor solidarity attracted activists for teachers, state workers and trades, as well as local political figures and activists. "It's no different to me than watching democracy spread across the Middle East," said Mark Walsh, president of the Troy Teachers Association, who said he came to the rally to show solidarity for people in Wisconsin and the middle class across the country. 'It's a fight and they're attacking the very fiber of this country and what makes it great. It's a democratic ideal. We have to be out there -- we have to do it now. We can't wait for anything else to come to us.'"

It is hard to gauge what MainStreamMedia is trying to get Americans to believe (if they are trying at all to steer thought) and then act upon regarding Wisconsin. There are many folks who worked all their lives expectiung to retire with a fat pension and free health care, now having the rug pulled out from under them by the real, true culprit: the economy.

From Wisconsin to Libya: Watch this all get worse as gas prices rise.

Wisconsin Debate Spurs Albany Rally... And More...