Twitter as Voluntary Panopticon-as-Leisure
Twitter does not change things dramatically. But how can we even pretend to care about privacy acts and phone tapping, when we are constantly reporting our every movement to the world?
Hit & Run > The Friday Political Thread: No Recess!* - Reason Magazine
GILMORE | August 8, 2008, 7:14pm | #
and p.s. = “Smearing” Lou Dobbs is IMPOSSIBLE. The man is professional hyperventilating idiot who accuses farm workers of spreading leprosy and conspiring with MS13. You can’t “smear” a fucking arch-propagandist. This is a guy who dismisses any rational argument with crazy hyperbole that rivals the cutscenes from Starship Troopers….
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoDb3D7B2ZoUNLIMITED IMMIGRATION!!??!!!
He just spastically denies reality… for money and popularity! The fact that he has fans like you doesnt bolster his BS in any way. The fact that people point out his fallacious assertions is to be expected.
[Inline links added.]
I just feel compelled, COMPELLED! to quote this comment in it’s entirety because it is so fucking right on.
Unconvincing Quote Asshole of the Week
“The market is responding to the fact that we are here talking.”
- Arizona Rep. John Shadegg (R), crediting the House GOP protest for a drop in the trading price of oil.
see also Reason Blog
On September 23, 2001, President Bush signed an executive order authorizing the Treasury Department to “designate” individuals or entities believed to be supporting or “otherwise associated” with terrorism, in order to help shut down what Bush called “the financial foundation of the global terror network.”
Designations amount to a kind of economic embargo: anyone who does business with a designated person risks criminal or civil penalties. The Treasury Department can act more quickly than the police or the F.B.I., who may take action only after an investigation. By preemptively freezing a suspect’s assets, “the government does not have to watch these dollars continue to flow over a period of months or years as it investigates whether it will pursue criminal charges,” a department spokesman, Andrew DeSouza, told me.
Authorities also need less evidence for a designation than they would for prosecution, and they can rely on evidence that would not be admissible in a criminal trial. Matthew Levitt, who until last year was deputy assistant secretary for intelligence and analysis at the Treasury Department, says that designations involve “an extremely robust process. This is not something that can be done easily or willy-nilly.” But Lormel, who retired from the F.B.I. in 2003, says he would have been “hard pressed” to act on some of the material that Treasury officials used. “Oftentimes, I think they base their evidence on media stories or public-source information, whereas we would never use only that,” he told me.
—Annals of Surveillance: State Secrets: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
I am sure that this will all be lost on our Right Wing brethren, but this story is the about the rulebook that will lead a government to exploit and mistreat it’s citizens — a secret police force accountable only to the few at the very top of government is the formula for governmental decay.
You all will say, “If you have nothing to hide than you have nothing to fear,” as if only “criminals” or “bad” people have anything to worry, and indeed, all law-abiding, “good” people will be saved from those who want to harm us.
“We have nothing to fear about the future, because we intend to shape it, see.”
—President George W. Bush, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, May 2006
But this is how fascism starts: Someone with the power to “designate” gets offended by someone, or feels taken advantage of by someone, or otherwise gets pissed off by someone, or may feel that a group of people are different and deserve to be “designated”… and then six million people are exterminated.
Oh, get out, you say. That was an extreme situation caused by an insane dictator. Yes, well, America has enough checks and balances — I think — to prevent any such inhumanity from happening here.
But just wait a minute… You have all heard of, for generations in this country, people in “power,” from cops, judges, and district attorneys, to bank loan officers and voter registration clerks, who really did and still do “discriminate” — for generations. This historical fact can not be denied.
Who says that only those bigoted, ignorant jerks who discriminate — by denial, by ignoring, by over-charging, etc. — are within only the lower levels of society? Who says there are no bigoted, ignorant jerks in all three branches of our government? Wherever there are bigoted, ignorant jerks, they will discriminate.
When we have laws such as so many of those created by Executive Order by George W. Bush, laws enforced in secrecy and without accountability, we all really do have something to fear.
Secrecy and unaccountability in government is allowed only when the people do not say to their leaders, “If you have nothing to hide than you have nothing to fear, so tell us what you are doing!”
How many Right Wingers — like those who write best-selling rants — who despise “Liberals” and Democrats, who, if they had the power, would not “designate” some of those “Liberals” and Democrats that they think are hurting America?
How the Russert Test Failed America
The Russert Test was a disaster because it rewarded people willing to lie unabashedly on TV. They lied because they could not truthfully defend their positions. But Russert’s famed “gotcha” research couldn’t catch them. Much has been said this eulogizing week about Russert’s hard-working ways assembling the material in advance of the show. Old metal. When someone told a new lie on Meet the Press, such as when Dick Cheney flat-out denied he had ever said that intelligence confirmed the Al Qaeda/Iraq link, Meet the Press had no procedure for producing the contrary evidence. This would hardly have been difficult, given Google, an earpiece and a producer to do instant research. As it happened, NBC had the rebuttal to Cheney’s lies in its own archives, but it remained for The Daily Show to do the research.
I find the god-awfull fawning over Mr. Russert’s “Meet The Press” career nauseating. Okay, we have, in this country, a long-time tradition of only being kind in eulogies and obituaries — which actually does make sense and I would boldly say are a positive thing to societal civility.
However, the overwhelming coverage does us all more harm than good with its lack of critical thinking.
Conservatives are extremely well represented in every facet of the media. The correlative point here is that even the genuine liberal media is not so liberal. And it is no match—either in
size, ferocity, or commitment—for the massive conservative media structure that,
more than ever, determines the shape and scope of our political agenda.A Tom Tomorrow cartoon makes this point more cogently that I can in just four
panels simply by (implicitly) asking readers to undergo a thought experiment. What
if there really were a “liberal media”? Imagine, “an expansive network of left-wing
think thanks which are of course bankrolled by secretive left-wing financiers seeking
to advance their radical agenda.” Now imagine “blatantly left-wing cable news networks
and op-ed pages that then promote (left-wing) ideas relentlessly.” Had enough?
What about “angry liberals” debating these left-wing proposals with weak, mealymouthed
conservatives on the Sunday talk shows? Want more? How about an entire
universe of left-wing talk radio hosts spending endless hours devoting themselves to hammering these left-wing notions into the heads of tens of millions of listeners
across the land? Why, poor President Bush and Vice President Cheney wouldn’t have
a chance.
See the Tom Tomorrow cartoon: The Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.
Glenn Reynolds, Michelle Malkin, and Patterico have noted the apparent irony that the Associated Press quoted 154 words from one of Patterico’s blog posts soon after threatening bloggers for quoting fewer words than that from Associated Press stories.
If anyone doubts that we, as a society, are not only stumbling around in the dark, then read the comments to the above blog-post.
See more: The Volokh Conspiracy.
But this book here, The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, in it, I put together a case against George Bush that could result—it absolutely could result in his being prosecuted for first-degree murder in an American courtroom. I set forth the legal architecture against him, the overwhelming evidence of his guilt and the jurisdiction to prosecute him. And I say that if justice means anything at all in America, and if we’re not going to forget about these 4,000 young American soldiers who are in their cold graves right now as I am talking to you and who came back from George Bush’s war in a box or a jar of ashes, I say we have no choice but to bring murder charges against the son of privilege from Crawford, Texas.
Think Again: Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction: Did “Everyone” Agree?
During the second presidential debate in 2004, Bush claimed that everyone thought Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction before the invasion.
It ALWAYS pisses me off to hear people repeat that fucking falsehood.
Michelle Obama Says “Whitey” On a Tape
LIE: Rush Limbaugh says a tape exists of Michelle Obama using the word “whitey” from the pulpit of Trinity United
LIE: Blogger Larry Johnson writes “New and dramatic developments. This is a heads up. I’ll post the news Monday morning by 0900 hours.”
LIE: Proven GOP sleazemeister Roger Stone says he has “credible evidence that some indelible record exists” of a tape of Michelle Obama using the term “whitey.”
LIE: Blogger: “Tape was filmed between June 26th - July 1st 2004 in Chicago, IL at the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition Conference at Trinity United Church: specifically the Women’s Event.”
The NonSequitur » Envirocommunism
“Since gravity is a feature of theory, then the falling of any particular object is ‘theoretical.’”
— jcasey
Ron Paul: Very Gradual Emancipationist « The Edge of the American West
There are so many things wrong with this line of argument that I don’t even know where to start. Oh wait, yes I do. Let’s begin with: Lincoln didn’t go to war to “get rid of the original intent of the republic.” You have to know even less about history than Tim Russert — I wouldn’t have thought it possible — to say such a ridiculous thing. Or you have to be a bit too willing, eager even, to marry libertarian political ideology with neo-Confederate historical revisionism. Just to be clear: Lincoln went to war to preserve the Union. That’s it. End of story. Full stop.
So many categories to flag this one as!
The Secret History of Tree Spiking - Part 2
Friends of Trout Creek had been negotiating for a compromise, but when the spikes were discovered, PG&E angrily broke off negotiations. Things looked bad until Earth First!er Sequoia came up with a plan. She organized a protest in which people were asked to withhold $1 from their PG&E bills and mail in a green card to show public support for saving Trout Creek. PG&E received so many green cards that it backed down and agreed to save the whole grove with no compromise.
This is a valuable lesson,is it not?
The Secret History of Tree Spiking - Part 1 | The IWW and Earth First!
LP didn’t call the press right away, but when they did they had a field day. “Tree Spiking Terrorism,” screamed the headline in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat. And even though there was no evidence that Earth First! was involved, the Eureka Times-Standard proclaimed, Earth First! Blamed for Worker’s Injuries.” Mendocino County Sheriff Shea put out a widely quoted press release that was almost gleeful in its condemnation.
CNN.com - Transcripts
DOBBS: My next guest tonight is making some remarkable assertions about the causes of our recent violent weather. He says we face the manmade threat of terrorist hurricanes. He says Katrina, for example, was created by the Japanese mafia using Russian-made technology. I’m joined now by former TV weatherman and operator of WeatherWars.info., Scott Stevens.
Food of the Gods by Terence McKenna - Thom Hartmann’s “Independent Thinker” Book of the Month Review | BuzzFlash.org
The three primary drugs of our culture — caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol — are ubiquitous. As are other drugs McKenna takes aim at — sugar, chocolate, and television.
And, says Terence McKenna, they’re the wrong drugs for us to be using. Or at least some of us.
SPLCenter.org: Broken Record
But there’s one thing Lou Dobbs won’t do. No matter what others report about the movement, Dobbs has failed to present mounting and persistent evidence of anti-Hispanic racism in anti-immigration groups and citizen border patrols.
Democracy Now! | Harvey Wasserman on New Ohio Voting Report: “The 2004 Election Was Stolen… Finally We Have Irrefutable Confirmation”
So, here we have—finally we have a Democratic Secretary of State, who took—spent $1.9 million of state money, hired Battelle, which is not exactly a progressive organization, to study it, and found that every single method of voting, pretty much, except for, you know, marking paper ballots, was corrupted in the 2004 election.
Democracy Now! | Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People
ALADDIN OPENING MUSIC: Oh, I come from a land, from a faraway place, where the caravan camels grow, where they cut off your ear if they don’t like your face. It’s barbaric, but, hey, it’s home.
