Category: The Dish

Just censor the news. Bombings will now be banned from TV broadcasting; and US soldiers, on extra-long tours, are denied access to MySpace and YouTube.

Courtesy of Bill Maher:

A tide turning?

We take our victories in whatever size we can at the Daily Dish. From Michael Yon, who actually understands that an occupying army trying to quell an insurgency is probably not best advised to abuse and torture detainees:

We are making progress but the odds are still against us. We cannot take chances or play fast and loose with our own values. In addition to something immoral occurring, it could be the final straw for this war. All it would take is a weak leader behaving immorally, or a tired leader not recognizing the stress level of his soldiers and reacting accordingly, and we might have the proverbial straw that breaks this camel’s back.

This letter from General Petraeus deserves the widest possible dissemination. It should be published widely, and posted on every headquarters wall, and read aloud by every troop in Iraq and Afghanistan. We can pummel al Qaeda and other terrorists mercilessly and grind them into the dirt, but we cannot afford to turn local populations against us while we do it.

You can read Petraeus’ letter in full here.

It’s the second against Kurdish political leaders in a week. Al Qaeda is suspected. Patrick Laswell worries about an inside job:

This attack is significant in that it indicates a pattern of deliberate targeting of Kurdish government and political control. In my last visit to Iraqi Kurdistan, people went out of their way to tell me about corruption in the political process there. Although the KRG spokesmen are adamant that the attacks are driven by Al Qaeda, the possibility that dissatisfied Kurds are being exploited to aid attacks is very real. Government officials are seen as being corrupt from the top down in Kurdistan and by Kurds abroad. A higher casualty count could have been achieved at softer targets like the local markets. These two attacks on semi-hardened government facilities in four days strongly suggests that whoever is behind these attacks made a deal with Kurds infuriated by government failures and corruption.

Not all on-air gay men in news are unwilling to be frank and open about their sexual orientation. Here’s a handful of well-known faces from TV news who aren’t afraid to be honest about themselves and remain total professionals.

Clive Davis bucks the massive wave of plaudits and gives it a pan. (JPod put it up there with "Citizen Kane.") It’s on my list for when it comes out on DVD. (I try not to go to movie theaters any more. Too many people in them.)

The BBC is now in a major YouTube fight with the Super Adventure Club (aka Scientology) over an imminent documentary on their controversial methods and practices. Alas, at one point, the reporter completely lost it when a Scientologist accused him of bias. The reporter, John Sweeney, explained his outburst thus:

"I have been shouted at, spied on, had my hotel invaded at midnight, denounced as a ‘bigot’ by star Scientologists, brainwashed — that is how it felt to me — in a mock-up of a Nazi-style torture chamber and chased round the streets of Los Angeles by sinister strangers."

And that’s what led to this (a video promoted by the Super Adventure Club as part of its campaign against the documentary):

The BBC version of this story can be read here.

Professor Bainbridge is not looking for another good ol’ boy.

Through his movie lies and fictions, the man has changed Americans’ understanding of their own history.