 |
Newest Blog Entries:
Glenn Greenwald: Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics
Glenzilla ..A new news show hosted by Julian Assange debuted yesterday on RT, the global media outlet funded by the Russian government and carried by several of America’s largest cable providers. His first show was devoted to an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, who has not given a television interview since 2006. The combination of Assange and a Russian-owned TV network has triggered a predictable wave of snide, smug attacks from American media figures, attacks that found their purest expression in this New York Times review yesterday of Assange’s new program by Alessandra Stanley.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, April 19, 2012
Democracy Now: Kony 2012 – Ugandans Criticize Popular Video for Backing U.S. Military Intervention in Central Africa
.. read Democracy Now transcript
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Sergey Brin: Web Freedom Faces Greatest Threat Ever
Posted by Michael Butler, Tuesday, April 17, 2012Atrios: THE ONE TRUE WANKER OF THE DECADE – Tom Friedman
as expected, Atrios ..[Friedman on Charlie Rose] - "I think it [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie ... We needed to go over there, basically, um, and um, uh, take out a very big state right in the heart of that world and burst that bubble, and there was only one way to do it ... What they needed to see was American boys and girls going house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, um and basically saying, "Which part of this sentence don't you understand?" You don't think, you know, we care about our open society, you think this bubble fantasy, we're just gonna to let it grow?.. read more
Well Suck. On. This.
Okay. That, Charlie, was what this war was about. We could've hit Saudi Arabia, it was part of that bubble. We coulda hit Pakistan. We hit Iraq because we could."
... [snip] ...
For years Friedman spent dithering about the war. Oh gee it wasn't going well, but the light at the end of the tunnel might be around the corner in another critical 6 months, leading me to coin the term Friedman Unit, or the F.U. It wasn't just Friedman of course. Basically every pro-stay in Iraq person would utter some version of "the next six months is critical" on a regular basis. For years I put these statements in my calendar, and six months later would remind the world that nothing had changed and we are still in Iraq and the stupid fucking fuckstick is still writing in your newspaper or on the teevee blathering about the next crucial six months. The state of the world is what it is in large part because people in positions of great power think this absurd buffoon of man is a Very Serious Person
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Dan Rather Was Right About George W. Bush
Fascinating. mbPosted by Michael Butler, Monday, April 16, 2012
Atrios: WANKER OF THE DECADE – 1st Runner Up, Fred Hiatt
Atrios ..Some years back I had a wee epiphany when I realized that, for the most part, we aren't supposed to to read the WaPo editorial page. It isn't actually for us. It's a means for certain elites to send messages to each other, a way for the "Gang Of 500" to take their battles public, to signal their interests and priorities. There are some exceptions to this, some columnists who write for readers, but for the most part it's simply a conversation by and for elites. If you're good enough, smart enough, and, doggone it, Fred Hiatt thinks you're important, there's no limit to the amount of bullshit you can have blessed by him. On his page is where the Washington Consensus is defended daily, truth be damned. Krauthammer. Broder. Hoagland. Kristol. Novak. Cohen. Lane. Cupp. Thiessen. Kurtz. Samuelson. Diehl. Kelly. Noonan. Will. Ignatius. Parker. Marcus. Milbank. Gerson. Some of these people are no longer with us, and I have no idea which ones Hiatt is really responsible for, but I'm a lazy blogger so I'll just throw them all in his column. Imagine assembling this collection of horrors, and being proud of itpretty sure Tommy Friedman will win this contest .. Atrios coined the term "Friedman units," i.e. (from Wikipedia): "One Friedman Unit is equal to six months, specifically the "next six months", a period repeatedly declared by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman to be the most critical of the then-ongoing Iraq War even though such pronouncements extended back over two and a half years" - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, April 16, 2012
Atrios: WANKER OF THE DECADE – 2nd Runner Up, Andrew Sullivan
Atrios/Eschaton ..While the horrible events of 9/11 predated, somewhat, THE ESCHATON DECADE, among the numerous consequences was the rise of the warbloggers. Sullivan had a longish media career, but was also one of the early bloggers. And after 9/11, General Sullivan enlisted in the Fighting 101st Keyboard Kommandos, otherwise known as the "warbloggers," whose primary mission was to fight America's most important enemy, the enemy at home known as "Americans." In the Sunday Times of London on September 16, 2001 (!!), Andrew had these lines: "The middle part of the country - the great red zone that voted for Bush - is clearly ready for war. The decadent left in its enclaves on the coasts is not dead -and may well mount a fifth column." This was 5 days after 9/11 (presumably written a couple of days before) .. As we get higher and higher on this list, I get more tired even as the wanking of the wankers becomes greater and greater.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, April 16, 2012
Atrios: Wanker of the Decade Countdown
Atrios/Eschaton is counting down the 10 worst wankers since he started his blog 10 years ago .. so far he's down to 4th runner upThe ESCHATON DECADE has been a pretty fucked up decade, a time when this country stopped even bothering to pretend to live up to many of its supposed ideals. We go to war and kill lots of people for no good reason, elites have eliminated any accountability for themselves for criminal wrongdoing, we've tortured and assassinated people, and the response to massive economic suffering and related criminal fraud has been to give lots of free money to the people who caused it all. And one premise of his blog is that all of this shit happens, in part, because of the fucking wankers who rule our public discourse. Paying too much attention to it every day can be bad enough sometimes, but reliving it all again is actually a bit painfulDiane Sawyer is 7th runner up for her Bush/Cheney-fellating Dixie Chicks interview .. I'll keep y'all posted on the top 3 wankers - mab .. read more
UPDATE: Wanker of the Decade 3rd runner up is .. [drum roll] .. Joe Klein
UPDATE #2: Someone at Daily Kos (ManOutOfTime) has a Guide to Atrios's Wankers of the Decade
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Friday, April 13, 2012
What We Saw at the San Francisco Marijuana Rally
On April 2, federal agents raided Oaksterdam University as well as the home of Richard Lee, Oaksterdam founder and the main supporter of Prop 19, California's 2010 initiative to legalize marijuana that received 46% of the vote. On April 3, several hundred people gathered at a rally at the San Francisco City Hall to protest the federal government's crackdown on medical marijuana dispensaries. On the City Hall steps, six of the eleven San Francisco Supervisors spoke out against the federal crackdown, as did representatives of the city council, the city attorney's office and the California State Legislature. Later in the day, protestors marched to the Federal Building a few blocks away and chanted "DEA go away" to a line of federal officers guarding the entrance. Approximately 2 minutes. Produced by Paul Feine and Alex Manning. Sent by Bill AltmillerPosted by Michael Butler, Thursday, April 12, 2012
Charles Davis: The liberal betrayal of Bradley Manning
Davis filling in for vacationing Glenn Greenwald in Salon ..Alyssa Rosenberg, a blogger for the Center for American Progress, declared her “main opinion of Bradley Manning” to be that “it sounds like he has pretty serious emotional problems and turned out not to be a particularly effective whistleblower.” .. Joy Reid, a Democratic pundit who often appears on MSNBC, likewise dwells on Manning’s alleged emotional problems and gayness .. In this case one might well ask: What if Rick Santorum said it? When the Nixon administration sought to discredit Ellsberg back in 1971, it played by the same book as Reid and other Obama loyalists unwilling to believe their president is persecuting a hero, breaking into his psychiatrist’s office in a vain attempt to uncover evidence of mental illness. Today, the liberal media does the government’s work for it .. the treatment of Manning – labeled “appropriate” by Obama; as “cruel” and “inhuman” by the UN special rapporteur on torture – threatens the mainstream liberal narrative about the American state. If a Democratic president is torturing a whistle-blower who primarily exposed atrocities authorized by his Republican predecessor, it’s almost as if . . . well, best not to think about that .. “There’s a long tradition of liberals, especially in the first few decades after the Cold War, of being opposed to, say, the vulgar witch-hunting, hysterical anti-communism of Joseph McCarthy,” says [civil rights attorney Chase] Madar, “but being supportive of the much more professional anti-communism of, say, Harvard University.”.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Wednesday, April 11, 2012
Glenn Greenwald: Oscar-nominated U.S. filmmaker Laura Poitras repeatedly detained at border
Glenzilla ..It’s hard to overstate how oppressive it is for the U.S. Government to be able to target journalists, film-makers and activists and, without a shred of suspicion of wrongdoing, learn the most private and intimate details about them and their work: with whom they’re communicating, what is being said, what they’re reading. That’s a radical power for a government to assert in general. When it starts being applied not randomly, but to people engaged in activism and journalism adverse to the government, it becomes worse than radical: it’s the power of intimidation and deterrence against those who would challenge government conduct in any way. The ongoing, and escalating, treatment of Laura Poitras is a testament to how severe that abuse is.. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Monday, April 9, 2012
Boston Globe – Taking back ‘Obamacare’: Can the president make an insult into a selling point?
Posted by Bill Swiggard, Monday, April 9, 2012Boston Globe – Scot Lehigh – Romney is clueless on who is ‘out of touch’
Posted by Bill Swiggard, Friday, April 6, 2012David Swanson: Catching Rachel Maddow’s Drift
Swanson on Firedoglake ..Two flatly contradictory claims toward the end of “Drift” sum up my ambivalent attitude toward the book. First, Maddow writes that “there are no examples in modern history in which a counterinsurgency in a foreign country has been successful. None!” Then, a few pages later, back on the theme of reckless spending, Maddow writes: “‘We don’t have any enemies in Congress,’ a senior defense official told me in 2011. ‘We have to fight Congress to cut programs, not keep them.’ And those are basically the only fights the Pentagon ever loses.” Well, except for every single counterinsurgency, every single war, the war on Iraq, the war on Afghanistan, the war on Pakistan, the war on Libya, the wars back to the start of the book in Vietnam. None of those nations are better off because of U.S. bombs. The United States is not better off because of having bombed them. The United States does not control them. They have not submitted to its will. Why not admit that the Pentagon always loses? Why not admit that its losses are crimes and must always be immoral and illegal in every instance? What does Maddow want us to do with a story of the dogs of war gradually going mad, if the story claims that those dogs provide a “service” and tend to “win”?excellent article + must read - mab .. read more
Posted by Mike Blaxill, Thursday, April 5, 2012
‘O.J. Is Innocent And I Can Prove It’: In New Book, P.I. William Dear Claims O.J. Simpson’s Son Was The Killer
Posted by Michael Hamilton, Wednesday, April 4, 2012New York Times – Richard Clarke: How China Steals Our Secrets
Posted by Bill Swiggard, Tuesday, April 3, 2012Nature of Self-Defeating Convictions
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 1, 2012Push to End Too-Big-To-Fail Goes Mainstream – Matt Taibbi
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 1, 2012Let’s Stop Big Media’s (B)AD Behavior – Bill Moyer
Posted by Michael Butler, Sunday, April 1, 2012Truthdig – Health Care: Conservatives Are Their Own Worst Enemies
Posted by Michael Butler, Saturday, March 31, 2012Murdoch Hacking Scandal Could Go Global, Threaten News Corp.’s Core TV Business – The Daily Beast
Posted by Michael Butler, Thursday, March 29, 2012FOCUS: Right-Wing Hate Groups Exploding in Size and Reach
Frightening, the implications of this growth of hate groups. They are both the under-belly and the obvious side to a most dangerous trend. Politically they are the beginning of the end of democratic society. No one Democrat, Republican or Blue, Red can ignore the peril of these movements. They will either end in Civil War or another type of Slavery. "You have a Republic, if you can keep It". mbPosted by Michael Butler, Sunday, March 25, 2012
