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April 7th, 2005
12:02 pm - Dissenting Against Disinformation
Dissent and Disinformation
Both dissent from the outs and disinformation from the ins have changed.
Why is this so? Opinion or the more reliable term, policy advocacy, must be grounded in facts. In our mediated and technologically rich world, policy-relevant facts require some expertise to find and to evaluate. The media are supposed to have the technical means and evaluative judgment to do this job for us, but in large measure they do not. They are owned by the ins almost entirely and their labor force, the diggers and miners of facts on the ground, are for the most part on the side of the ins and no longer dig or mine, but open their collective mouths for the smooth spoons of the ins whose allies pay them. Moreover, their technical means and humint, to borrow a spook term, are being cut back and the money is more and more going to self-promotion and marketing.
The Facts speak for themselves. They do not favor a side, they favor the truth. Disinformationists, being inside, either create the facts or have the means to find them so they can hide them and invent seductive pseudo-facts. Dissenters, being outside, must work much harder to get at the ground of truth that unmasks the disinformation.
So both dissenters and disinformationists are faced with new challenges.
( Read more... )
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April 2nd, 2005
10:17 am - Popes, Presidents and Pageantry
Pope John Paul's demise have attracted world media attention. Reports from his doctors and spokesclerics, long shots of empty balconies, and most especially, close-ups of weeping rosary bead tollers have filled screens and pages. Retrospectives of his wide travels and recaps of his statements and stands, particularly during his true glory days as a brave defiant Primate in communist Poland, are pouring out of archives.
We don't hear much about John Paul's stoutly stubborn character when it comes to the full priesthood for women, clerical abuse of children, or a married clergy.
And we never heard much about his strong and thorough condemnation of the elective and punitive Iraq adventure.
( Read more... )
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April 1st, 2005
11:26 am - Exoneration is US
Ken Lay and George W. Bush are more than buddies, they are mutual role models.
As advertised we have a CEO presidency, whose top guy has an MBA and whose staff is focused on results with strict discipline. The whole Republican Party, alas, is known principally for its discipline. There is not only a line of the day, there is a strategic plan for the future closely held by a chosen few. And the bottom line is all-consuming. Republicans are amazingly honest and consistent in delivering what they have been paid to deliver. Not a single major contributor to the party and the president has not had its wishes met. Wall Street is about to get at least part of the huge bite they want from Social Security, mining and oil for all practical purposes run the EPA and the Bureau of Land Management. Even those who mainly faithfully contributed sure votes, the religious right, are dramatically being served in the Schiavo Affair. While all these shareholders are getting what they want, agencies are being gutted, the armed forces are being drained and broken, the poor, the elderly, the infirm are being robbed.
USA, Inc.
The shareholders are partisan contributors.
The company is bankrupt and has a pyramiding debt.
Just like Enron.
And just as Ken Lay did not know the terrible consequences of his policies because he was given false information, so too the President has never done anything wrong, nor have his top advisors. It was those incompetent and perhaps evil underlings who mislead them.
For Truman the buck stopped with him.
For Bush it is Don't Blame Me.
The CEO of USA, Inc.
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March 28th, 2005
02:34 pm - What Superpower?
Far from having killed irony, post 9/11 American politics is a feast of ironies and a carnival of contradictions. Many have noted how the Bush-Ashcroft-Gonzales-Rumsfeld axis of evil have shredded both domestic civil rights while spitting on international law as they are proclaiming freedom and democracy as both motivation and achievement!
Less noted is how they have reduced America's power and influence in the world. Of course they have forsaken the high ground of moral example which we had managed to shepherd through a number of foreign policy debacles, but I refer to the power and influence of the Sole Superpower, the clout of sheer physical intimidating force. Most ironically our Top Gun Texas Tough Guy has put us in a position of weakness.
( Read more... )
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March 24th, 2005
09:58 am - Fairness and Foul
Among the many public interest provisions in broadcast regulation deep-sixed by the Reagan Administration (although of course they were pikers compared to the Republican Wrecking Crew under Bush the Destroyer) was the Fairness Doctrine. Note it was a Doctrine, not a Rule. The idea was that over the course of a broadcast license, which was then a reasonable three years, a given radio or television station would air a variety of views on important public issues. Business management being what it is, this was interpreted in a mechanical way to be safe and to avoid thinking about public issues. It was misconstrued as Equal Time (something completely different: a rule affecting candidates for public office). Further, to save money and time, the variety of viewpoints was conveniently boiled down to radically opposed extremes: the Ku Klux Klan v NAACP; Flat Earthers v NASA Scientists. As a result of this, generations of Americans glued to their TV have grown up seeing controversy as a shouting match between fanatics — whereas controversy, in the long, long time before Prime Time, referred to a serious issue about which there was reasoned debate.
( Read more... )
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March 21st, 2005
09:42 am - True Lies and The Schiavo Law
The comatose Schiavo woman has evoked from Congress the most heartfelt and eloquent compassion we have heard in a long time. Even the few members who actually were concerned about the balance of powers and saw monstrous disproportion in involving Congress in this one case, a case requiring subtle technical knowledge and ethical wisdom far beyond politics, even they were passionately articulate.
No matter what your politics, the Schiavo case is a very sure horse to ride. The entire nation is fixed on the drama, as it had been when Princess Di was killed (even though not on our shores) and Bill Clinton’s fate was at Congressional mercy. I am reminded of the aftermath of 9/11 when Congressmembers stood on the Capitol steps, each holding a candle and singing, with real feeling, “God Bless America”.
Oh, the engagement and maturity and careful thoughtfullness of the Schiavo debate!
( Read more... )
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March 19th, 2005
07:09 pm - Killing at both Ends
It seems the media are soaked in death right now. Not the hundreds that suicide bombers kill, now almost on a daily basis; nor the daily toll of "collateral damage" in Iraq and Afghanistan and certainly not the growing death march of our own in the same zones of chaos and random killings. No, the media are focused on the death sentences of a man who killed his pregnant wife and of a woman in a persistent vegetative state for over a decade.
They report, we decide.
( Read more... )
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March 17th, 2005
04:50 pm - Alaska Grab
The Senate has given the green light to drill for oil in the Wildlife Refuge embracing the coastal plain.
If the companies go ahead, it will take them about ten years to supply us with about six months of our current annual usage (which is rising). Moreover, this location is a most daunting one to exploit and a real hardship for those stationed there. So why do it? For the same reason that the NRA and John Ashcroft passionately desire to keep the government from preventing anyone from buying an assault rifle. The Bush maladministrators know the limitations of Alaska and the dangers in having heavy weapons easily available. It is a question of their moral principles: to protect Wildlife Preserves and to regulate gun sales would be to give in to the liberal tree huggers and latte drinking sissies. This vote is a way to really stick it to liberals and it is the primary motivation. But like every other rape of the republic they perpetrate, it is a matter of necessary security. "Sorry," says the bully with a smirk, as he elbows you aside and dares you to do something about it.
It's past time for true patriots to do something about it and maybe more in the Congress should stand up and be counted. One can dream and hope.
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09:35 am - Dis-intelligent Design
The nomination of Paul Wolfowitz for the head of the World Bank suprised even those who were expecting something along the lines of Bolton for UN, Goss for CIA, and Negroponte for Grand Intelligence Poobah. These latter gentlemen are well known for their antagonism and even contempt for their new dominions. Goss lost no time in clearing out the old pros at Langley and we can be sure Bolton wil shake up the US Mission to UN and get rid of any crypto-multilaterists; Negroponte will be a sure bet for moulding gathered evidence to suit neocon fantasies. But at least these ideologues have some experience and knowledge of the agencies they are out to undermine. Mr. Wolfowitz seems to be truly a loose canon. Having proved he knows nothing about Defense or Iraq, he has given some window on his future job performance since his only foray into global economics, as others have pointed out, was to predict that Iraq oil revenue would pay for its occupation and rebuilding.
Adding this crowning outrage to past killer appointments and the firings of expert civil servants for daring to tell the truth to Congress, one sees something bigger than mere ideology or yahoo anti-intellectualism. It is a brazen display of contempt for idealism and anything good that has flowed from the enlightenment.
It would be bad enough if this wrecking crew at least were hard-headed pragmatists who would make America and the world safer at the sacrifice of some of our most cherished beliefs in freedom and equality. But they are also incompetent. There is no compensation, no upside, to this moral and political charade.
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March 15th, 2005
08:18 pm - Rumsfeld's War Machine
By 42 months after Pearl Harbor just about every Japanese Army had surrendered or had been wiped out and we occupied Okinawa. Forty days later we dropped the atomic bomb and hostilities ceased; Germany had already surrendered a full two months prior (5/1/45). This was done without a fully trained professional military and starting virtually from scratch. We had strong allies in Great Britain and her colonial troops (from India and Australia, principally) and in Russia. By ourselves we were outnumbered by the millions.
It is now 42 months since 9/11/01.
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March 12th, 2005
11:11 am - Busharama: Connecting the Real Dots by Following the Money
The internet, which has everything from macrobiotic soup to certified nuts, contains whole mountain ranges of facts and figures that document the incompetence and marginal malfeasance of the Bush team and that flatly contradict the Bush line of the day for every day he has been in office. Curiously, the internet also has oceans of claims, outraged jeremiads, and bizarrely inventive calumnies against his critics and opponents. I say curiously because they seem to “work” better. They are simple, they play to those old reliable baser instincts, and they, above all, are easy.
( Read more... )
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March 10th, 2005
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