Kasztanka, Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski's favorite combat mare, was stuffed upon her death in 1927 and after World War II was destroyed, allegedly on the orders of Piłsudski's enemy, Marshal Michał Rola-Żymierski.
I'm not sure what the phenomenon is called: "street-steering?" The thing that happens when a journalist calibrates the range of responses to a question in man-in-the-street interviews, whether deliberately or subconsciously, according to her sense of where the acceptable limits of discourse lie. We're human, and it's reasonable to assume this happens, whether through avoiding interviewing certain persons, how she asks questions, or simply discarding some interviews altogether when the answers are not TV friendly. Or Youtube friendly, if you prefer.
Clearly I don't know if this is happening here, and possibly I pick on Lori Harfenist too much, but I wonder if people really have such sheepish views about a security state. Then again, maybe I'm sheepish too.
As is generally the case with Keiser Report videos, the first half is Keiser and Stacy Herbert's patter and the second part is an interview, this time with one Michel Bauwens, regarding the the advent of Bitcoin. Possibly you've heard of it before, an internet based currency, which Keiser seems bullish on.
It occurs to me that Bitcoin is a little like silver insofar as its status makes it vulnerable for the possibility that some groups may try to corner the 'market' in Bitcoin some day, should it start to gain serious traction.
I liked what Bauwens said, however, around 17:00-18:45, about how the problem with capitalism in its current manifestation is that it's based on the false assumptions of "pseudo abundance and artificial scarcity"(of natural and financial resources, respectively, although for the latter category he's also talking about the artifice of Intellectual Property as a construct...)
Uploaded by RussiaToday on Dec 4, 2011 Last month's attack by a NATO aircraft on Pakistani region that killed 24 soldiers has infuriated Islamabad. RT spoke to Hamid Gul, the country's former head of intelligence, about consequences the incident may have for US-Pakistani relations.
Pakistan won’t be getting an official "I’m Sorry" from President Obama anytime soon, the New York Times reports.
According to the paper, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, had urged the White House to have the president issue a formal video statement apologizing for this past weekend’s NATO airstrikes that killed two dozen Pakistani soldiers. But senior officials within the Defense Department overruled the idea, saying that the remorse shown by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other senior officials was enough for now until a full investigation into the international incident is complete.
The Times explains the possible political calculus behind the decision: "Some administration aides also worried that if Mr. Obama were to overrule the military and apologize to Pakistan, such a step could become fodder for his Republican opponents in the presidential campaign, according to several officials who declined to be named because they were not authorized to speak publicly."
When is an apology not an apology? On many, many occasions, and certainly when it needs to sound different to different sets of ears. I've noted before that US media coverage of foreign policy doings often seem designed to misdirect the casual viewer/reader/mindless consumer of news/whatever. As you likely know, Pakistan is the only majority Muslim country that does have nuclear weapons, and their people are generally pretty unhappy with that government for its apparent servitude to the US and NATO, even under normal circumstances, i.e., even before the NATO airstrike that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last month. But "the narrative", as people call these things nowadays, is mostly fixated on Iran and their more imaginary nukes, and that narrative is designed to agitate those casual news gobblers about how worrisome the Iranian threat is, even if it has never actually been demonstrated to exist.
But the news regarding Pakistan never seems calculated to worry Americans about the fragility of Pakistan's government, or US-Pakistani relations, nukes or no nukes. I am not clear why this is so, although I note it parallels the apparent lack of concern our state department has about antagonizing Pakistan. The NY Times article alluded to above suggests that Obama wanted to apologize to Pakistan, but was overruled by the defense department, so he didn't, or he just "kinda" apologized.
The effect is pretty bizarre, on many levels. We don't actually know that the Pentagon objected. That may also be an excuse, Obama's hand supposedly being forced, much as the advising offered by Summers and Geithner was used as an excuse to placate critics of BHO's dealings with the banks and the HAMP program and so forth. BHO had no problem standing up to McChrystal when the latter's Rolling Stone interview annoyed the narcissist-in-chief, so the idea that his hands are tied is risible. (Well, assuming he never ordered a deliberate attack on the Pakistani soldiers. If that were the case, I guess he'd have to worry about the Joint Chiefs turning him in to the Hague, although I find it hard to believe he'd really be that concerned. )
But on another level there's the brazenness of acknowledging that the upcoming election is more important than the Pakistani soldiers who were killed, which actually seems calculated to worsen relations with Pakistan. The acknowledgment is only via unnamed sources in an NYT article, so not many people here will pay attention to it, but it may carry more weight over there. I can't help but think about how top officials in our government have so much pomp and apparatus to protect them from seeming like careless blunderers or fiendish goons. The reporters covering the state department, and "administration officials" and all these people and things that mediate our perception, to prevent us from regarding them as cold-bloded jerks or idiots.
I can't help but think of Terry Jones, the Florida preacher with the wild looking mustache who burned the Koran, and how his behavior was actually pretty similar. He had the excuse of seeming a fool and not knowing any better, at least in some people's eyes. But the president and state department, et al are supposed to know better, right?
I'm also reminded of the incident in the summer of 1988, when the US Navy shot down a civilian Iranian airliner over Iranian territorial waters, killing all 290 people on board, including 66 children. The Navy said that the radar profile of the Airbus looked like that of an F-14 Tomcat fighter, a considerably smaller airplane, which the Iranian Air Force also operated, having purchased some in the 1970s when the Shah was in power. Eventually our government paid a settlement of a bit over 61 million dollars to Iran for the families of the passengers, albeit without an apology or acknowledging responsibility.
Iran Air 655 was shot down when Reagan was president, and the US paid a settlement in the mid 1990s during the Clinton administration, so it's reasonable to see a good bit of continuity in policy here, just as the George W. Bush administration started threatening Iran in 2002 with the notorious Axis of Evil speech, and this sabre-rattling has continued under Obama.
When I recently read up about Iran Air's fateful Flight 655, I found out that in March of 1989 Sharon Rogers, the wife of the USS Vincennes's captain, had her minivan firebombed in San Diego[1](It was registered in Captain Rogers's name.), but later the FBI ruled out the possibility that it was a terrorist reprisal. I've occasionally wondered over the years if the Lockerbie bombing in December 1988 was reprisal for the downing of Flight 655, and not in fact the work of Libya-affiliated terrorists. But then it was pinned on Libya, which was functional: Americans might be less likely to regard US government indifference to the deaths of Middle Easterners at our hands as responsible for tangible blow back, and less likely to seriously question our government's policies.
Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan who was convicted by the UK for the Lockerbie bombing, has always maintained his innocence[2] throughout the years, through his trial and prison sentence, which ended in 2009 when he was released early because of his deteriorating health. (Although the US is now trying to extradite him so he may go back to jail.[3] ) Incidentally the Jim Swires that al-Megrahi refers to in the video at the Telegraph article(below) was the father of one of the passengers who died at Lockerbie, and he also questions the official version.
At any rate, the "narrative" of unrepentance evidently has to continue in Pakistan. I linked to a snippet on CNN of Fareed Zakaria recently discussing the recent agressive rhetoric directed towards Iran. He also has an Op-Ed in Time discussing the attack on the Pakistani soldiers, "Friends without benefits" which bewails the inconvenience Pakistan's relationship with the US has caused--- to the US!
You wouldn't have thought anti-Americanism in Pakistan could get any worse, but last week NATO attacked a Pakistani army post, killing 24 Pakistani soldiers. Even before this episode, for which NATO expressed deep regret, it would be difficult to find a country on the planet that was more anti-American than Pakistan. In a Pew survey this year, only 12% of Pakistanis expressed a favorable view of the United States. Populist rage and official duplicity have built up even though Washington has lavished Islamabad with aid totaling $20 billion over the last decade.
Why the 'populist rage'? Why aren't the people more grateful for all the bombs and assorted weapons we offer their government? He goes on to compare the relationship between the US and Pakistan to that of a shopkeeper to the mafia:
The second argument is the one given by businesses when they pay off the Mafia: ‘We need to keep these guys as allies, or else they will become enemies.’ The problem with this protection racket is that it isn’t working. Admiral Mike Mullen finally said publicly what insiders have said privately for years: Pakistan’s army, despite getting over a quarter of its budget from Washington, funds and arms the most deadly terrorist group in South Asia.
Does Zakaria actually believe this rubbish? Does it really need to be pointed out that the US is by far the stronger party, and hardly comparable to a reluctant merchant humoring crime bosses leaning on him? He know US forces have been killing Pakistani civilians for years, and our relationship with them makes their position more precarious, as ordinary Pakistanis intensely resent our periodically killing their people in raids on alleged al-Qaeda camps, our insisting that they should be grateful and "see it our way" notwithstanding. Zakaria even says:
The Pakistani military holds to its worldview out of an ideological conviction that combines 19th century realpolitik with politicized Islam. But it also has a strong bureaucratic interest in regional friction. After all, with a win-win scenario in which peace with India results in prosperity for the region, why would Pakistan need a vast military that sucks up almost a quarter of the federal budget? The country’s military would end up looking like India’s— noninfluential, nonpolitical and well contained within the larger society
. The Pakistani military doesn't have to be saintly for the "strong bureaucratic interest in regional friction" argument to also apply to the Pentagon. In fact it's a pretty telling phrase, and sounds like a recurring theme of US foreign policy.
I don't believe that Americans are naturally more cruel, or naturally smarter, or naturally stupider, etc., when compared to people from Iceland, India, Pakistan and so forth. But our elites certainly have a culture of cruelty, and it seems you can't be part of that elite unless you support and continually reinforce that cruelty.
James Galbraith, professor at the University of Texas at Austin, notes that many economics institutions (especially journals and academic departments) are hierarchical and tribal by nature, and that sociology can exclude dissident views. Interviewed by Peter Leyden at King's College, April 2010.
I note that at around 4:20-4:30 he mentions the University of Missouri-Kansas City economics department, which is where Counterpunch's Mike Hudson teaches. Speaking of UMKC Econ:
L. Randall Wray, professor at UMKC, talks about Hyman Minsky, an American economist who, even in the relative stability of the 1950s, predicted financial collapse because of "speculative euphoria." Interviewed by Peter Leyden at King's College, April 2010. Uploaded by INETeconomics on Jun 8, 2010
Occupy Austin teach-in on Monday, Oct. 31 featured Roy Casagranda, Political Science Professor, Austin Community College, on "Major Changes Are Necessary"
Ok, this is pretty long, relative to our being accustomed to video clips embedded at blogs being 5 to 10 minutes tops, but when you can I encourage you to watch the whole thing. (His characterization of American liberalism is particularly interesting. Also, I think he's right that FDR was trying to save capitalism, and about why Warren Buffet wants his taxes to go up.)
I do have one minor quibble: Casagranda suggests it was the same group of people he characterizes as left-wing Christian activists in the '50s and early '60s who subsequently morphed into folks like the Moral Majority, et al, in the '80s, and I don't think that's correct. Even in the earlier era we had various right-wing social conservatives, although there's no question that the political impact of the Christian right is much stronger today. But as I said it's a minor point, and you should definitely watch this.
Uploaded by IOccupyFor on Nov 4, 2011: When Wisconsin Governor gave a speech at Chicago's Union League Club the morning of Nov 3rd, he has some unexpected guests: Stand Up! Chicago
I've heard of OWS protesters demanding free college tuition and demanding student loans being canceled, but I've never heard them demanding a 20 dollar/hour minimum wage as McLaughlin suggests they have, so I am skeptical. Have you heard or seen anything about this?
And here's a video of Naomi Wolf being arrested a week or so later[via Occupy Cyberspace, where she offers some comments about the events.]
And finally, here's snarky Sam Seder, "Prediction: Occupy Wall Street Will Outlast Erin Burnett's Show. Seriously." Uploaded by Seder on Oct 7, 2011. I tend to think he will be wrong, and the authorities will become more aggressive before the year is over, and this first round of OWS style protest will disperse, but we'll see.
This is that Reuters interview with Alan Simpson from June 30th at the Aspen Conference, when the debt ceiling faux debate was still going on. As I said, I think this is interesting because, by turns, he plays scandalous truth-teller and shifts back to shilling for collapse. (It takes a lot of brass to shill for 1890s style government, as he does in the debt commission report, and simultaneously attack the GOP for being unduly influenced by Grover Norquist.)
Obama was the worst thing that could have happened to American politics. Weak, venal, self serving, a habitual and incurable liar, Obama has almost single handedly wiped out what passed for the anti-war movement in America. Obama had a mandate and full support of the majority of Americans to overturn the past eight years of Bush policy but instead of a president who might have tried we got Obama. That opportunity is long gone thanks to Obama and will likely not return for many years.
Students staged a walkout from an intro Macroeconomics class taught by famed economist Greg mankiw, protesting his teaching that a minimum wage is inefficient, which they regarded as imposing a right-wing slant on his course.
A white man claims he was fired as manager of a suburban Panera Bread shop for repeatedly having a black man work the cash register instead of putting him in a less visible location and having "pretty young girls" be the cashiers.
Scott Donatelli contends in a federal lawsuit he was denied extra medical leave and was fired in September after double hip replacement surgery earlier this year. He claims the reason was that he bucked race-related personnel rules communicated to him by a district manager for Sam Covelli, a franchisee based in Warren, Ohio, about 80 miles northwest of Pittsburgh.
Earlier this year, Donatelli says, the district manager told him, "It's what Sam wants and what our customers want. They would rather see pretty young girls" at the cash register.
Some members of a bankrupt Orange County, Calif. megachurch are expressing outrage after fielding an email request for congregants to deliver food to waiting limos so that it can ferried to the founder's sick wife. The appeal comes weeks after a lawsuit charged that the founder of the Crystal Cathedral house of worship, Rev. Robert Schuller, and his family had been paying themselves lavish salaries and other benefits while the church was in financial straits.
Bloomberg reports that Bank of America is dumping derivatives onto a subsidiary which is insured by the government – i.e. taxpayers. Yves Smith notes: If you have any doubt that Bank of America is going down, this development should settle it...
Lori Harfenist("the resident") writes: "You know I wouldn't be doing my thing if I didn't have a little fun, but in all seriousness, I very much am in support of what these folks are doing."
Maybe this is true, but I'm skeptical; I've posted othervideos of Harfenist's before, generally appreciating them, but in at least one she comes across as a bit of a reactionary. Obviously she doesn't have to be supportive in her stance towards OWS to report on them, but I wonder if her interview subjects were mostly chosen to make OWS look like a bunch of flakes.
I get the impression this is a common establishment media tactic. I couldn't help but notice that lots of more clean-cut looking persons kept passing by in the background during the first 30 seconds while she talked to the guy who said he intended to stay until there was change or "the world blew up." The older man she talks to in the very next sequence suggests that the younger people who are there aren't in need of work, which sounds in context like a criticism of the first subject, who never mentions jobs, and the narrative sequence suggests he has all the time in the world. Finally, I would have been interested in seeing more of the person interviewed in 1:45-2:10, as he seemed articulate and thoughtful. (Note there's a jump cut in the middle of the segment which makes you wonder what was taken out.)
By contrast, there's this from Occupy LA from this past Saturday October 15th, uploaded by "wrestlingdivanewyork"
Look at those decadent Californians, trying to fool us by looking so...normal.
You know they're up to something.
wrestlingdiva:I heard them coming in, and had to catch this for you all to see, the estimate is there are 10,000+ people here.
Let me be clear: I'm not saying the "hippie-looking" and "flaky-looking" protesters are less important or that their views have less validity. It's just that the reporters seem to zero in on them as an editorial strategy designed to make OWS seem foolish, and it needs to be noted. It's not just Lori Harfenist by any means. Her report reminded me of the CNN clip from Erin Burnett I posted the other day, and if anything Burnett's piece seems even more brazenly slanted.
When it comes to reality shows or sports, the mass media can't get enough of funny outfits or goofy behavior. Why shouldn't they duplicate such priorities in their coverage of OWS? After all, the media's real job is to trivialize an important event and render it as disposable as they possibly can. What better way to do this than to use the same techniques they use to cover trivial, disposable events that are meant to be consumed like popcorn and then promptly forgotten...
also, Rob Payne mentions this from Pam Martens in Counterpunch:
I admire these kids. They're off their asses. Agitating. Arguing. Providing a living example. There's passion and feeling in their dissent. They're willing to be punished. It's easy to mock them, but how many of you would take their place? Primarily when the cops attack? [...] Our owners fear any rustling from below. They'll throw whatever they have at those unsatisfied with our paradise. There are signs that the Wall Street protests will expand nationally. If so, get ready for serious shit slinging.
Yet I have doubts. The class war from above demoralizes as much as it incites. Countless people have surrendered. Faded from view. To demonstrate or occupy corporate turf doesn't seem like a wise option. You'll get beaten and arrested. For what? Making mortgage payments is tough enough.
I've been checking Pollingreport.com for signs of any thing related to Occupy Wall Street. They have links dedicated to Nancy Pelosi, Chris Christie, "Is the Supreme Court too liberal?", "Kids of illegal immigrants", even "Is Social Security constitutional?" But Occupy Wall Street? Thus far, zilch.
There are, admittedly, some items that may be peripherally related: "Can you trust Washington?" and "Distribution of money and wealth" but these are summaries of older and unrelated polls. You'd think the establishment media was blithely unaware of 'OWS',(Ha!) but one assumes they've been hoping the kids would just go away. I'm not even sure how accurate it is to characterize them as all or mostly kids but either way they didn't just go away, at least they haven't yet. One assumes the powers that be have a certain patience threshold with respect to how long OWS may go on, but it hasn't been reached yet. They recognize it's in their interest to seem indifferent at this point.
Finally, CNN released a poll today about OWS, saying that roughly half the population has heard of the protests going on. If a poll conducted after this has been going on for over two weeks shows 49% of respondents still haven't even heard of "Occupy Wall Street", how many do you suppose were even aware of the various one-day demonstrations in D.C. over the years, whether related to the Iraq war or other things ? 20%? 15%?
(I mean the noncommercial ones of course, mounted by the A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition and their ilk, as opposed to those media spectacle faux demonstrations sponsored by Fox News or Comedy Central.)
It reminds me of the conceit of looking for "untainted" jurors for high-profile murder trials. I've always wondered about that, why it's supposed to be preferable to have incurious lunkheads as stewards of the juroring, or whatever you call it.
An ORC International Caravan Poll released Monday[pdf link] indicates that 51% of Americans say they've heard about the Occupy Wall Street movement, with 49% saying they haven't heard about the demonstrations, which started in New York City 24 days ago and have spread to cities across the country.
According to the survey, 27% say they agree with the movement's overall position on the financial system and social change, with 19% saying disagree with Occupy Wall Street on those issues. Fifty-four percent of those questioned have no firm opinion about Occupy Wall Street.
The pdf link CNN provides barely scratches the surface. Maybe there were many other questions. I'm curious how people's views correlate to age, whether or not they usually vote, to level of education, and obviously viz-a-viz employment status and income. The perennial drum-beating about how persons with bachelor's degrees making so much more over the course of a lifetime than high school grads has struck me as a bit fishy for some time, and I wonder about how those numbers are derived.
A detour, of sorts: Discussing Slavoj Žižek means you get to use diacritical marks, which is always fun. I've read people like John Caruso and BDR saying he's an overblown fraud, but have tried to reserve judgment because I haven't read any of his books, just an occasional essay in The Guardian or Counterpunch. But he comes across as a clueless, egocentric jerk in this linked 2 part Youtube video [via] of his visit to OWS from this Sunday. Why do the kids co-operate with his insistence that they repeat everything he says, like extras in The Life of Brian? So Fox News can make fun of them?
Herman Cain: "Don't blame Wall Street. Don't blame the big banks. If you don't have a job and you're not rich, blame yourself."
( And he's supposed to be one of the less wacky candidates.) I hope somebody asks him about the phenomenon of CEOs occasionally getting performance bonuses for trimming their workforces, in light of the above.
He's right though, that ultimately the Occupy Wall Streeters represent a critique of capitalism, but I suspect that now that the establishment media has their angle of "the liberal tea party", this critique will be increasingly difficult to discern for people watching on television. At any rate, it probably behooves us to mistrust our own reactions sometimes, when we are convinced
"the American People are so...[insert quality x]"
because the media often works to make us give up on each other.
John King USA|Added on September 29, 2011 CNN's Candy Crowley and panel members discuss a fake tweet about a hostage incident released by "The Onion." I think if you take satire too far you lose your Satire License.
But perhaps the biggest blow to civil liberties is what he has done to the movement itself. It has quieted to a whisper, muted by the power of Obama's personality and his symbolic importance as the first black president as well as the liberal who replaced Bush. Indeed, only a few days after he took office, the Nobel committee awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize without his having a single accomplishment to his credit beyond being elected. Many Democrats were, and remain, enraptured.
The FBI has received substantial criticism over the past decade -- much of it valid -- but nobody can deny its record of excellence in thwarting its own Terrorist plots. Time and again, the FBI concocts a Terrorist attack, infiltrates Muslim communities in order to find recruits, persuades them to perpetrate the attack, supplies them with the money, weapons and know-how they need to carry it out -- only to heroically jump in at the last moment, arrest the would-be perpetrators whom the FBI converted, and save a grateful nation from the plot manufactured by the FBI.
The financial crisis was not driven by materialism so much as by a desire to transcend material constraints.
To put it another way, far deeper than the desire for more "stuff" is the desire to overcome the limitations of the material world, of the human body and of death, and thus to be free from the scarcity and risk and dependence of a life that is materially based.
Maybe I'm missing something here. I don't understand what the difference is between materialism and trying to "transcend material constraints." I may write a bit more about this essay later.
NYT obit of her father, Charles Percy of Illinois, who died recently. Percy was one of the last liberal republicans, and Eisenhower's protegé. His daughter's 1966 murder is still unsolved.[via]
Tony Loudermilk: In 1971 I believe that Russia USSR had an enormous amount of silver overhanging the market. Perhaps after the indictments came down and Hunt was locked down from trading they were persuaded by Smiley's People to dump some of it onto the market???
2 hours ago · Lord McCracken: Might very well be. The unstated secret of the precious metals market is that AT ANY TIME they want, the world's major economies can crash them simply by dropping a couple of percents (even 1% with gold) of their own holdings onto them. (In the case of gold, the private market (the place where they get to price of gold from) only has 1% of the world's gold. The rest is held by governments. If those government were to decide to drop even 1% of their holdings into that market, it would DOUBLE the amount of gold there, and the market would IMMEDIATELY crash.)
Are any of these things true? How would I know? Still, it makes sense to be a bit skeptical of people flogging the collapse meme, especially when they also collect ad revenue for their web site from people selling silver and gold, or they themselves are touting a newsletter, or what have you.
All I know is, if Gorn had me cornered I'd fight back. Not because I think I'm as cool as Captain Kirk, I'm not, but because I don't think I could outrun Gorn after years of eating so much yummy processed food. Besides, America is where I keep all my stuff, and I don't trust that smooth talking Picard.
update: A kindly anonymous commenter shares this Wiki link regarding the world's gold reserves, wherein it states that governments hold approximately 18% of the world's gold.
If I assume the overwhelming majority of people watching football on television this weekend aren't doing so because they're coping with 9.11, but just because that's what they like to do on Sunday afternoons in September, I suppose I must be hating somebody, somewhere, for their freedom. Did the government and the news people make this kind of a fuss on December 7th, 1951? I'm not old enough to remember, and of course Yahoo! wasn't around in '51 to drape a black banner across their masthead, but my guess is no.
Even Saint Reagan, whom I am old enough to remember, didn't cry to the heavens in 1985 about the 10 year mark of our exit out of Vietnam, recalling those last helicopters which we threw into the ocean. I do, however, remember the fuss made in some quarters about his visiting the Bitburg cemetery on the 40th anniversary of the end of WWII, because of the SS troops buried there. Certainly it would have been more sensitive to visit a cemetery of Nazi conscripts.
I somewhat surprise myself by offering this, but in partial defense of Ronnie, maybe the general principle is correct and you are supposed to commemorate the dead of both sides in a terrible conflict. It's the decent and yes, Christian thing to do. Of course if this is true, I wonder when an American president will lay a wreath down at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or Wounded Knee.
Many people have been posting this video on Facebook today:
to everyone that can see this isnt just a BEER COMMERCIAL and that its a tribute to all the victoms on the plane, police officers, firemen and countless voluteers who lost their lives and thier family's God bless you to the rest of you fuckin unpatrioticheartless basterds you SUCK, im a firefighter and i wasnt even old enough to understand the impact of this when it happend but it still hurts to think about all the fellow brothers i lost if your smat enough to understand that then FUCKIN LEAVE ecfpd3965
Cornygirl2008, please let me know when you want to leave. I will personally buy you a one way ticket out of America with the provision that you will never return. In no way shape or form am I joking. Christa573
Two others:
They spent 100,000's of thousands of dollars to show this only once. Not for profit or company gain, but to express the sorrow they felt. As for the subhuman monsters that think 9/11 is some kind of joke, well I can't use those words here. The loss for all the faimilys of those who died that day is more than our hearts can stand. Condolences, from me and mine, to all of you. My God be with you aways. 1947gambler
Not only once anymore, they're showing it several times today during NFL games. They spent 100,000's of dollars because its a can't miss commercial that exploits a national tragedy to sell their product. MrG0dbar
The general trend of the comments crystallizes what I find so creepy about the commodification of 9.11 grief. It's as if scores of people are perversely jealous that they didn't lose anybody and want the voyeuristic pleasure, to enjoy feeling like they're a part of a larger experience other people are having, and want to have "a good cry." And the government and media are all too happy to encourage this impulse for their own ends, as if they're concerned that we're not emotionally stunted enough. (I also wonder if some people who actually did lose loved ones on September 11th might prefer less of this carrying on by others, that may needlessly refresh old wounds.)
Being susceptible to this manipulation doesn't make you a bad person, but that's like saying having deficient critical reasoning skills doesn't make you a bad person. Of course neither negates the value of critical thinking. It's tempting to think that we're collectively stupider than we were 50 or 100 years ago, but this is unlikely. P.T. Barnum made a nice living off of people like this, back in the day.
But, duh, you knew that, because you're cool. Of course some people are just sentimental and easily misled, and even smart people can be suckered by the culture-media message reinforcing machine that alternately tells you to remember some things and forget others. The barrage on your sensibility is endless. How do you resist the simulacrum? Reality and pre-corporate values are a glass of tepid water, and the drink they're offering is sweet and sexy and will make your breath minty fresh, lower your taxes and help you score with chicks.
I realize that the internet and social media have had a huge impact on our conceptions of privacy. Still, wanting to 'get in on the grief' so you can demonstrate how patriotic you are and prove your capacity for depth of feeling, whether to yourself or others, strikes me as sad in an altogether different way than intended.
Happy labor day. I've commented, in my own mildly obsessive-compulsive way, about the tendency that web site tenders seem to have of giving a story one name on the link at the main page, presumably to entice lure-able you, and another at the page of the the actual item.
It's tempting to decry the people at cnn.com for calling this story "Obama rallies union troops on Labor Day" on the home page, a la Fox News' frequent habit of labeling a centrist dem a republican in the graphics at the bottom of the screen, but maybe that would be taking this too seriously. Besides, it's a bit amusing. Hey Tea Partiers, hide the womenfolk, Obama's coming!
What's less amusing is not noting the mendacity of WTO BHO bragging of "cutting the payroll tax" and wanting to keep it cut, and not noting that he means cutting the revenue stream for social security. But maybe I'm just a nerd for thinking stuff like that matters.
Note the pairing of the controlled stimulus, cutting revenue for social security, with the uncontrolled stimulus of speaking to a traditional labor day get-together of union types. Months or years later, reporters and pols on both sides can point to this. If you lap it up, you must say to yourself, "What's wrong with me? Why, even union members support cutting revenue for social security!"
Although I recognize that Cole is a celebrated expert on the Middle East, I am leery of his myth-busting. Putting aside his discussion of Khaddafi's domestic politics, on which I don't feel qualified to offer an informed opinion, I recognize the counterfeit quality of his argument that the Europeans aren't after their oil because some companies that have a current stake in Libya's oil fields have lost some money since the war started. That's a little like saying that because some exploratory wells don't pan out that proves oil companies aren't trying to make a profit.
Colonel Qaddafi proved to be a problematic partner for international oil companies, frequently raising fees and taxes and making other demands. A new government with close ties to NATO may be an easier partner for Western nations to deal with. Some experts say that given a free hand, oil companies could find considerably more oil in Libya than they were able to locate under the restrictions placed by the Qaddafi government.
A problematic partner? I wonder what they are trying to say. I get the impression Elisabetta Povoledo of the NYT said "problematic partner" because she was trying to comply with the NYT manual on style. They must have such a manual, right? 'If you're trying to convey thing or idea x, say "problematic partner."' It's probably like their crossword, full of big words.
Now, another thought, and I know this is going to sound crazy, maybe even problematic: it occurs to me that one of the purposes of the Libya campaign was as P.R. to help justify the existence of NATO in the first place. Cole doesn't address this. Maybe he sees that as a given, the modishness of austerity notwithstanding.
I do agree with Cole, however, that the frequently bandied-about assertion that various states aren't "real countries" is bogus orientalism.
(I would add racism, as in the implied, "Why, we had a civil society and laws when they were living in mud huts..." Of course this assumption itself is also wrong sometimes.)
However I think his citing Alexander Cockburn's criticism is a bit off, and based on a misreading of Cockburn's argument, whether deliberate or accidental. I think Cockburn is saying the NATO countries might try to partition Libya for their benefit by force, not that the national identity Libyan people may feel is shakier and less authentic than that of Westerners, which seems to be what Cole thinks Cockburn is saying.
(That begs the question of whether having a strong national identity in fact makes you a civilized person, but that's a discussion for another occasion. My initial point in bringing it up is that I'm with Cole on the "it's not a real country" trope. Still, I never thought I'd see the day that CNN links to an article on Counterpunch!)
Narratives establish verisimilitude by including a wealth of believable details, and the plucky freedom-fighting rebels may well be on the verge of capturing the Libyan capitol, and they may well represent the authentic aspirations of the Libyan people. And it may be jealousy[1] on my part to note that this just looks like a guy in a hotel wearing a kevlar jacket talking into a camera, and for all we know he may be in Terre Haute or Akron.
Let me be clear, I don't actually question that reporter Matthew Chance really is in Tripoli. Nevertheless, the abstract, stage prop quality of this report seems emblematic of much of the reportage we've gotten about the NATO campaign against Libya, plucky rebels or no plucky rebels.
We're told the war is about this, or that, or something else, so it must be so. Humanitarian interventions are humanitarian interventions because we're told they're humanitarian. And they're interventions, so they can't be wars, and we're picking sides, and picking the right one, because the government says so, or Samantha Power says so, or some guy on TV says so, etc.
Could we be making things worse by interfering? As "Davidly66" pointed out recently,
"Denying the myth of American exceptionalism will quickly get you accused of blaming America for all the world's problems."
It takes belief in our exceptionalism, or at least insufficient skepticism of the justness of those with authority and power, to believe that we will inevitably choose the right side when we interfere in somebody else's conflict, that there is a clearly right (and wrong) side, that we should interfere, and that any accusations of nefarious ulterior motives are just mean-spirited and wrong(like for example, that we're stealing somebody else's oil.)
(Apparently the original title of this article, per the bookmark data, was
"Humanitarian intervention: Why is NATO bombing Libya but not Syria?"
Maybe this made the war-mongering quality of Kaplan's argument too obvious. I think it's also useful to note that "R2P" was originally described, according to the note at the bottom, as "right to protect" and later changed to "responsibility to protect." Kipling should have been Fred Kaplan's copy editor.)
[1]I say jealousy because several years ago, in 2005-2007, I tried to raise funds to go to Iraq and report on events there but was largely unsuccessful. The persons who helped me were very kind and decent, but it wasn't enough and frankly I went about it the wrong way; I should have attached myself to a graduate program in either journalism or film, and I failed to do this.
Pentagon Unable to Account for Trillions: interview with Stephen Glain
I've taken issue with interviewer Aaron Task before, and I note the on-screen graphic says that Glain(author of State vs. Defense: The Battle to Define America's Empire)wants the Pentagon's pension system reformed, so I'm curious of the nuts and bolts behind this and what Glain means by reform in this context. I can't help but be skeptical, wondering if it's another example of demonizing federal employees. ("Reform" seems to have rapidly become the new softer word for cutting something you were previously entitled to in mediaspeak.)
What about the pallets of US dollars being sent to Afghanistan they refer to? What are they for? I wish I could remember where I saw somebody suggest that the military has a semi-secret policy of bribing locals to not kill our soldiers.
At least they mention the expense of our many overseas military bases and wars. (Also, to credit Task when it's due, note that he points out that often Americans don't realize that we spend very little on foreign aid, or at least much less than is commonly believed.)
In the wake of the Fukushima meltdowns, some nations are looking to move away from nuclear power. But not China, which is proceeding with plans to build 36 reactors over the next decade. Now some experts are questioning whether China can safely operate a host of nuclear plants.
A complex and discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by the top 1% of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes.
...Ministers are drawing up controversial plans to remove benefits from those convicted of taking part in the riots that engulfed England last week, in a move Liberal Democrats and independent experts have condemned as counter-productive and overly expensive.
Officials in Number 10 and the department for work and pensions are putting together plans for the harsh punishment of those found guilty of even the most minor infringements during the riots after a public petition calling for such a move gathered nearly 200,000 signatures.
