Month: July 2010

Beinart uses the recent NAACP-tea party spat to advocate for class-based affirmative action:

Not only would class-based affirmative action focus remedial efforts on those African Americans and Hispanics who need it most, it would link their fortunes to those of white working-class kids, and undermine the racial-partisan polarization that has marked the Obama years. More white working-class kids at Harvard would mean an American educational elite less easily caricatured by Fox News, and more able to speak across the red-blue divide.

Kevin Drum agrees. With statistics like these on America's fast-disappearing middle-class, they're onto something.

“Unless Israel takes the initiative to achieve lasting peace, [I.F] Stone warned, there would be more wars or a spiraling weapons race in which Israel would become a beseiged and paranoid armed camp… Israel “cannot remain a western outpost in an Afro-Asian world casting off western domination”, he said. “No quickie military victories should blind it to the inescapable – in the long run it cannot defeat the Arabs. It must join them,” – Saul Friedman, ‘Debate Divides U.S Jewry’, Los Angeles Times, January 14 1968.

Cliché knows no genre:

(Hat tip: BF)

First Taiwan, now Brazil:

In his own [presidential] campaign, Mr. Serra has seemingly taken a page from Mr. da Silva’s playbook, vowing to increase significantly the number of families receiving subsidies and the amount of the payments. But he has also said that Mr. da Silva’s Workers’ Party had connections to the FARC. Mr. Serra’s running mate, Indio da Costa, even suggested that the Workers’ Party could be linked to drug trafficking, a comment that led a columnist in a Brazilian newspaper to call him “Serra Palin,” referring to the American vice-presidential candidate.

A reader writes:

You're right on just about everything you say about Journo-List, with one glaring, rather obnoxious (to me) misstep. You say, "This is your liberal media, ladies and gentlemen: totally partisan, interested in the truth only if it advances their agenda, and devoid of any balls whatsoever." While I can't disagree that the media is partisan and lacks any substantive cojones, it's silly to me to call them "liberals." These aren't liberals; these are Democrats.

Those in the media, particularly in print and television, already have proven to be as reactionary as Republican "conservatives." As there is little you find conservative about Republicans, there is little I find liberal about the reactionaries in the media.

Wiktionary has a great definition of the word "liberal" that gels with my understanding of the term: "Free from prejudice or narrow-mindedness; open-minded, open to new ideas, willing to depart from established opinions, conventions etc." What the Journo-List e-mails prove is that the supposed "liberals" were nothing like this. They were prejudiced against the Republican candidate (for good reason, but that's not the job of journalists); they were unwilling to depart from their groupthink; and most egregiously, they were (and obviously are) narrow-minded enough to put a political party and its candidate(s) ahead of their responsibility to the public.

Call them Democrats; call them irresponsible; call them cowards; call them incompetent and fucking impotent hacks. But one thing they aren't are liberals; no real liberal would ever be as opposed to the truth as these assholes were and are.

Maybe that's why they call themselves "progressives." By all means necessary ….

AdFreak files one for BrewDog:

… a Scottish craft brewery that has just released perhaps the most masculine product ever invented: a beer that contains 55 percent alcohol and comes packaged inside a taxidermied rodent. It costs £500 (about $760) per bottle and is called The End of History. PETA has yet to weigh in, but an Advocates for Animals rep calls the brew "a perverse idea" and adds: "People should learn to respect [animals] rather than using them for some stupid marketing gimmick."

A reader writes:

I was listening this morning to NPR discuss the Khmer Rouge trial. At one point they said, "Duch was often present during the brutal interrogations, where the detained were subjected to electric shock, mock drownings, and had their fingernails and toenails pulled out."  Italics are mine. When I heard that, I thought, "I wonder if they are talking about waterboarding?" Then, sure enough, I read your post where you quote the AP. 

NPR uses the word torture early in the story, but when it comes to description, we can't associate "waterboarding" with the word "torture", so now we call it "mock drowning".  One news outlet calls it torture, and one calls it "brutal interrogation".  Sad.

(Photo: A Cambodian nun lines up to attend the verdict in the trial of former Khmer Rouge prison chief of S-21, Kaing Guek Eav, also known as Duch, at the Extraordinary Chamber in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) in Phnom Penh on July 26, 2010. Cambodia's UN-backed war crimes court is set to give its verdict on Duch, in a step towards justice for the 'Killing Fields' atrocities more than three decades ago. By Tang Chhin Sothy/AFP/Getty Images.)

Now it's getting scary:

Randall Terry has announced a four-city series of demonstrations in South Carolina where protesters plan to “burn, hang, or beat” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) for his recent vote supporting Elena Kagan’s nomination to the Supreme Court. In a press release, Terry explains that the effigy tour is necessary because Kagan supporters are the “enemy” of God:

“If a man brings the enemy into your camp, he is helping the enemy; when he helps the enemy, he has become the enemy, and must be treated as such. Mr. Graham has betrayed God and innocent babies; we must treat him as a fraud and a traitor from this moment forth. “On a lighter note, since Mr. Graham uses babies as pawns in his game of politics, we will play some ‘games’ in front of his offices, such as ‘pin the flip-flop’ on the donkey, and beating a Graham pinata. We promise – it will be a lot of fun.”

The "female dog" thing is also a charming attempt to smear with a homophobic brush.

Schneier is astute:

An article from The Economist makes a point that I have been thinking about for a while: the modern technology makes life harder for spies, not easier. It used to be the technology favored spycraft — think James Bond gadgets — but more and more, technology favors spycatchers. The ubiquitous collection of personal data makes it harder to maintain a false identity, ubiquitous eavesdropping makes it harder to communicate securely, the prevalence of cameras makes it harder to not be seen, and so on.