September 2008

Wrong Again! Twice!

I've made a few mistakes lately and it's time to 'fess up. I was wrong about the Azizabad massacre, and I was wrong about the Wall Street bailout, too. Oops.

You can read more here or comment below.

Split Indecision: Canada Surges In Multiple Directions Simultaneously

There's a federal election coming in Canada, and the anti-war "third parties" (New Democrats and Greens) are gaining ground fast on the pro-war "major parties" (Liberals and Conservatives) ...

You can read more here or comment below

Derrick Shareef, Garbage Can Grenadist, To Be Sentenced Tuesday

Derrick Shareef is scheduled to be sentenced on Tuesday. He faces life in prison.

Shareef was arrested in December of 2006, after trading a pair of car stereo speakers for a package he thought contained four grenades, a handgun and some ammunition.

According to documents released by the FBI at the time, Shareef was planning to attack holiday shoppers at CherryVale Mall in Rockford, Illinois, by detonating grenades in garbage cans there on the Friday before Christmas.

You can read more here or comment below.

Is Our "Financial Crisis" A New 9/11? Chumps Think So, And I Do Too

I've seen a remarkable number of mentions of 9/11 in connection with the current so-called "financial crisis". Most of them have come from people who seem to have no knowledge of or interest in what actually happened on 9/11. And yet they all seem to "get" the parallel. How odd. Or maybe not.

You can read more here, and/or comment below.

UPDATE: The deal's about to go down, and here's another post on the same theme: "Congratulations! We Just Spent $700B On Toxic Waste"

Alex Jones Interviews Jim Marrs

on "The Rise of the Fourth Reich".

I've posted something about it here.

Liberty and the News

Liberty and the News
McJ's picture

Canada's first convicted terrorist

We bagged our first terrorist, proof that Canada is doing it's part to fight the GWOT. We just convicted a witless teenager "for something that someone else might have been doing without [his] knowledge".
Do we all feel safer now?

From the Galloping Beaver:


Canada's first convicted terrorist
http://thegallopingbeaver.blogspot.com/2008/09/canadas-first-convicted-t...

Yesterday the first person in Canada was found guilty of "participating in terrorist activity" under Canada's new anti-terrorism laws. A teen at the time of his arrest, he faces up to 10 years in prison. G&M :

"Despite the fact there was no evidence that he planned, or even knew about, any specific plot, he was found guilty of participating in a terrorist group.

Despite the marginal nature of the case, Canada's security agencies are buoyed that a terrorism conviction is finally on the books. “All of the folks on this file are really breathing better on it ... It's a big confidence builder,” said Senator Colin Kenny, who heads a committee that probes national-security agencies.
Experts added that the weaknesses in the case illustrate how strong the law is.
"The ruling may indicate that ‘participation in terrorism' becomes the favoured charge, much as ‘material support for terrorism' has south of the border,” University of Toronto law Professor Kent Roach said of a charge laid in dozens of U.S. cases."

After the ruling, the prosection's main witness, Mubain Shaikh, spoke to reporters.
As the RCMP mole who was paid $77,000 to set the group up for arrest, later demanding a further $300,000, Shaikh provided the group with its only weapon - a 9mil handgun. He convinced our reluctant teen to attend the training camp by telling him it was a religious retreat:

"I don't believe he was a terrorist," Shaikh said. "I don't believe he should have been put through what he was put through. But that's our system." Shaikh said he did not believe that the defendant was aware of the group's violent plans."

At the trial : CBC :

"Shaikh said the accused was invited to the training camp under false pretences.
Having recently converted from Hinduism to Islam, the accused was eager to learn. So Shaikh told him the camp was a religious retreat where he would learn about the faith and also test physical skills, as laid out in the Koran.
Shaikh said the accused never heard a word of alleged plans to blow up buildings or behead the prime minister."

As Hysperia put it: "Charged for something that someone else might have been doing without your knowledge"

No matter. Finally we have our first anti-terrorism act conviction in the war of terror.

Journalist heal thyself: Walter Lippmann's "Liberty and the News" revisited

Liberty and the News

Walter Lippmann (1889-1974), nearly 35 years dead, towers over American journalism just as the Washington Monument towers over the National Mall. His influence stretches, like a shadow, from near the beginning of the 20th century to its end and beyond. Lippmann surely never saw a personal computer and probably never dreamed of the Internet. Nevertheless, his thought shapes much of the content that professional journalists post on the World Wide Web. High-minded amateurs who set up blogs in revolt against “mainstream” journalism -- many of whom probably never heard of Walter Lippmann or are but vaguely aware that there was once such a person – labor under the influence of Lippmann. Their work, their ideals, their ideas in part are shaped by him if they know it or if they don't. In sum, it is impossible to overstate Lippmann's influence on American journalism and it is good when something happens that recalls journalism's attention to the life and to the thought of Walter Lippmann.

The latest such thing is a reprint of Lippmann's first book, Liberty and the News (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press; 2008; 118 pp; $16.95). The original work was published in 1920. This latest edition is updated inasmuch as it features a new Foreword by Ronald Steel and an Afterword by Sidney Blumenthal.

Neither Steel nor Blumenthal squeezes any fresh juice out of Lippmann's book. To treat the modern writers fairly, however, one allows that after three generations of academic journalists and hordes of gradgrinds have pored over Liberty and the News with microscopic intensity it would require genius of a rare order to find and extract even one drop of additional meaning from Lippmann's text.

Ronald Steel, for his part, gives us a Foreword that is learned, lucid, concise and useful. Steel needs less than eleven pages to background readers on the book. He puts Lippmann's thoughts in context and mentions a few of the author's most salient ideas. In so doing, Steel captures and hones the attention of readers who might otherwise be unaware of Lippmann's import and therefore reluctant to stroll for two or three hours through the author's supple-but-sonorous, vintage prose.

Readers who take that brief hike are rewarded, for it's likely that many of those who today yell loudest about bias in journalism have no idea that, almost 90 years ago, thoughtful people were deeply concerned about the same problem. Moreover, it may be that those who shout loudest today are so busy shouting about bias in journalism that they're unaware of other rotten spots in the craft.

Lippmann called attention not only to bias but to those other rotten spots as well, all of which he contended are mere symptoms of problems much deeper and more profound – problems that, being rooted in human nature itself, threaten to belie Enlightenment ideals such as truth, justice, democracy, and scientific government. At the peroration of Chapter 1, for example, the author got up on his hind legs to ask what verdict history will lay upon a nation that, professing a belief in government by the will of the people, was content to make decisions about government on the basis of 'facts' reported by a class of people who were notorious, professional liars. (Liberty and the News, 8 )

Chapter 2 hits just as hard while asking more and deeper questions. Here Lippmann stumped for a new definition of the word 'liberty' that might serve us better than the definition we now employ. “A useful definition of liberty,” he wrote, “is obtainable only by seeking the principle of liberty in the main business of human life, that is to say, in the process by which men educate their response and learn to control their environment. In this view liberty is the name we give to measures by which we protect and increase the veracity of the information upon which we act.” (L&N, 40)

This writer sees Liberty and the News as the expression of a conflicted genius. On the one hand, Lippmann knew that democracy and scientific government depend absolutely on unrestricted access to accurate information. “There can be no higher law in journalism,” he wrote, “than to tell the truth and shame the devil.” (L&N, 7) On the other hand, Lippmann knew that the rivers of information from which Americans drink all flow from a poisoned fount. Human nature, he knew, drives some journalists to lie about the facts in exchange for money, position, prestige. Other journalists, afflicted with a more insidious form of the same disease, unknowingly turn fact into falsehood by filtering fact through a fabric of personal perception, be that perception enlightened or benighted.

The late Hunter S. Thompson once observed that “journalism is a low profession.” Reading Liberty and the News, one sees that Lippmann would have agreed with Thompson but yet held fast to a higher truth, namely: There is no other way forward.

Democracy depends upon access to good information. Not to put words in anyone else's mouth, this review observes that there's more to the story than just that. Civilization itself cannot long endure where truth is absent, where nothing is real, where everyone knows that no one can be trusted. Civilization is not some mere contract that can be broken with impunity and the mess cleaned up by lawyers. Civilization describes a trajectory: the more we know, the more we can trust, the farther away from superstition and barbarism we move. The reverse is also true: the less we know, the less we can trust, the farther we fall back toward superstition and barbarism. Lippmann understood that if the truth must be told, then someone must do the telling. We must have journalism, he concluded, and so journalism must be reformed.

Lippmann used Liberty and the News to call for objective truth in journalism but did not stop there. Though he preferred that journalism be self-regulating, he plainly believed that government regulation of journalism might prove necessary. “The regulation of the publishing business is a subtle and elusive matter,” he argued, “and only by an early and sympathetic effort to deal with great evils can the more sensible minds retain their control. If publishers and authors do not face the facts and attempt to deal with them, some day Congress, in a fit of temper, egged on by an outraged public opinion, will operate on the press with an ax. For somehow the community must find a way of making the men who publish news accept responsibility for an honest effort not to misrepresent the facts.” (L&N, 45)

Lippmann also suggested the creation of impartial national and international news bureaus staffed by the finest reporters in the profession. His assertion that “it would be a great gain if the accountability of publishers could be increased” (L&N, 44) implies a belief that a license to practice journalism would not be out of order. He advocated better education for journalists and marveled that those who cannot be led to tell the truth cannot be locked in jail: “If I lie in a lawsuit involving the fate of my neighbor's cow,” he wrote, “I can go to jail. But if I lie to a million readers in a matter involving war and peace, I can lie my head off and, if I choose the right series of lies, be entirely irresponsible. Nobody will punish me. . . .” (L&N, 24)

“At any rate,” Lippmann concluded, “our salvation lies in two things: ultimately, in the infusion of the news-structure by men with a new training and outlook; immediately, in the concentration of the independent forces against the complacency and bad service of the routineers. We shall advance when we have learned humility; when we have learned to see the truth, to reveal it and publish it; when we care more for that than for the privilege of arguing about ideas in a fog of uncertainty.” (L&N, 61)

There is much more worth having in Liberty and the News and, for those who think seriously about what Lippmann wrote, there is much to carry away. To read in this book the carefully arranged thoughts of the finest mind in 20th century journalism – a mind shaped in what was then one of the world's best schools (Harvard), where it was polished by the likes of George Santayana and William James – is by itself worth the price of admission.

The nadir of Princeton's reprint of Liberty and the News is Sidney Blumenthal's Afterword.

This review does not object to Blumenthal's short list of Lippmann's sins. Among others Blumenthal mentions: “His immersion in politics while holding forth as a disinterested observer. . . .” (L&N, 63) Blumenthal's account of Lippmann's ultimate failure, of his ideals being “traduced, trampled and trashed” (L&N, 64) by journalists and journalism is wholly pertinent. But then Blumenthal throws in a lively and factual account of events leading up to the mess in which we presently find ourselves, starting with press coverage of 'Tailgunner Joe' McCarthy and ending with the outrageously un-American behavior of the press during the outrageously un-American administration of George W. Bush.

It is at that point that this writer objects to Blumenthal, who was himself a player in the public-relations effort of the Clinton administration. The Clintons, as the whole world knows, ran one of the most prolific lie factories on record. Sidney Blumenthal's experiences and observations from inside that rats' nest would have made a juicy addition to his otherwise fine Afterword. Sadly, his experience and his observations get no mention here. Blumenthal's account focuses entirely on Republicans, the Republican Party, and the Bush administration. Having an opportunity that cries out for a mea culpa, Blumenthal passed and gave us a theya culpa.

I suppose this is all too much: why make such a fuss over a measly afterword? I'm making a fuss anyway because I see that, with this Afterword, Blumenthal personifies the state of mainstream journalism. Having helped (during the Clinton administration) bring the profession to ruin and (at the end of Liberty and the News) having rhetorically interred the ideas and ideals of journalism's foremost saint, Blumenthal stands clueless amid the carnage and expresses an idiot's hope for the future: “. . . journalism may yet be revitalized,” he wrote, “as part of a general reawakening of American democracy that discovers new forms of expression and forces new debate to achieve its ends.” (L&N, 87-88)

What rot! After airing Lippmann's dirty linen, Blumenthal cannot bear to bare his own spotted shorts. Ever the good Democrat, he cannot set aside his political bias and tell us – or even mention – a tale of the Clinton spin machine. One wonders if Blumenthal is pathologically unconscious of the truth about the Clinton White House and one suspects that if we forget about Walter Lippmann and rely upon the likes of Sidney Blumenthal to lead us down the path to democracy, the Blumenthals of this world will lead us to something else.

There may yet be a "reawakening of American democracy," and new media may appear. “New forms of expression,” however, will never appear. The root form of expression must be and therefore always has been language: spoken, written, manual, transmitted to the brain by hot, throbbing hormones – any medium of human communication, any “new form of expression” will ultimately rely upon language or communication will not occur. Any medium of human communication, any “new form of expression” used by liars will lie to us just like the media, just like the “forms of expression” we've already got.

Jesus taught: “. . . know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32) Lippmann knew that lesson: Liberty and the News is his testament. Blumenthal, it seems, is vaguely aware of the argument. At the conclusion of his Afterword, he quotes James Madison: “A popular Government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.” (L&N, 88)

Were Blumenthal properly armed (Thank you, Mr. Madison.) he might see Lippmann's effort and its failure as a tragedy, exactly in the mode of Oedipus Rex or Antigone. He might also have pointed practitioners – especially youngsters – to an irony of a spiritual sort that Lippmann's thought and career impart: Those who come to journalism determined to change the profession will fail and will instead be changed by the profession in ways they will not like. Those who come to journalism determined to tell the truth, if they remain committed to truth-telling, will change the profession over time whether they meant to change it or not. That irony aside, a "reawakened American democracy" (if ever one appears) will enact regulation that "forces new debate" because it rewards truth-telling and punishes the lie.

The Princeton edition of Liberty and the News is great stuff. Journalists, those who aspire to journalism, useful citizens of any democracy have every reason to read Walter Lippmann. Speaking strictly to journalists: Liberty and the News gives old hands an excuse to reminisce their college days; rookies get something new to stretch their minds; everyone gets something important (for a change) to argue about when they're drunk.

The Terror Morphology Continues

If you dig into modern terrorism for a while, you will eventually begin to notice two different trends that are almost always happening simultaneously.

Often they are happening so subtly that if you keep digging for a while longer you can almost stop noticing them, as they become part of the background noise.

But you never quite get used to that noise, and sometimes it makes itself evident in jarring ways, as it has done recently for me.

Read the rest here: Double False Flags, Shifting Sands: Warrior Nominated For Peace Prize

... or comment below:

McJ's picture

The Latest Reality Game: Let's Play "WALLSTREET BAILOUT"

I don't know anything about this congresswoman from Ohio but she in on fire over this latest $700 billion 'cash for trash' scheme the wall street big boys are peddling to congress.

"Let's play Wallstreet Bailout" here.

And for your further viewing pleasure...

"They want mama to make it all better" here.

Update:laughing out loud laughing out loud


From RAW Story
Published: Tuesday September 23, 2008
Viral e-mail forward mocks Wall Street bailout
http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Viral_email_forward_mocks_Wall_Street_0923...
As retrieved from the Washington Post and numerous other sources, a satirical e-mail frames the proposed $700 billion Wall Street bailout as a Nigerian 419 scam. The author is unknown:

Dear American:

I need to ask you to support an urgent secret business relationship with a transfer of funds of great magnitude.

I am Ministry of the Treasury of the Republic of America. My country has had crisis that has caused the need for large transfer of funds of 800 billion dollars US. If you would assist me in this transfer, it would be most profitable to you.

I am working with Mr. Phil Gram, lobbyist for UBS, who will be my replacement as Ministry of the Treasury in January. As a Senator, you may know him as the leader of the American banking deregulation movement in the 1990s. This transactin is 100% safe.

This is a matter of great urgency. We need a blank check. We need the funds as quickly as possible. We cannot directly transfer these funds in the names of our close friends because we are constantly under surveillance. My family lawyer advised me that I should look for a reliable and trustworthy person who will act as a next of kin so the funds can be transferred.

Please reply with all of your bank account, IRA and college fund account numbers and those of your children and grandchildren to wallstreetbailout@treasury.gov so that we may transfer your commission for this transaction. After I receive that information, I will respond with detailed information about safeguards that will be used to protect the funds.

Yours Faithfully Minister of Treasury Paulson

Short But Not Too Sweet

I've got a series of short disconnected posts coming soon and I suspect that if we discuss them all here in the same thread, it will make more sense than posting separate threads about each of them.

We can start with this "shocking" bit of "news":

Late Breaking: Joe Biden Is A Maverick, Too!

and then there's this:

Execution In Iraq: Murder Charges Against Three Army Sergeants, None Against Those Who Sent Them There

and this:

Iranian President Says What TV Pundits Can't: American Empire Is Almost Over

There's more coming, as soon as I can swing it.

Bush Tells UN To Unite Against Terrorism And Tyrrany

The twice-unelected president and smirking multi-front war criminal George W. Bush told the United Nations on Tuesday that the world must unite against terrorism and tyranny, according to the AP via MSNBC.

USA Today says Bush told the UN it must prevent terrorist attacks from happening.

Unfortunately, the world's top diplomats have already decided that Bush is a buffoon, and as usual they weren't paying any attention.

If they had been, Bush would have been led away from the podium in handcuffs, and taken straight to the guillotines.

McJ's picture

I wonder what the PTBs are going to be needing these for?

Portable PRISON CELLS unloaded in PROVO, UTAH
(Scroll down to see pictures)
http://www.fourwinds10.com/siterun_data/government/new_world_order/news....

NJT:
I was going to post these pictures here but they were way too big.
Is there a way to make them smaller when posting using
[a href='http://address.jpeg' /[/a][img src='http://address.jpeg' /][/a] ...Note: [ used for < smiling

Also, OT but when I click 'more' under Recent Blog Posts it just gives me the same page again - is it just me?

Pakistan's 9/11

This is horrible ... and unless I miss my guess, it's gonna get a lot worse in a hurry.

I've put up a second post on the same subject but I won't start a second comment thread.

I intend to devote more coverage to this attack as soon as I am able, so please stay tuned.

Winter's Troubles...

...the story sounds almost as fishy as some of these govt. 'official versions'. wink

Anyways, WP, assuming you have XP on one of the machines,

Start->Programs->Accessories->Accessibility->On-Screen Keyboard

Hard to believe someone with your intelligence couldn't have figured something like that out yourself. All the more fishy...

McJ's picture

What's Up With The Hurricane Ike Coverage

I had originally meant this to be a forum post (where it most likely belongs) but it was so long I decided to post it to my blog. smiling

Has anyone else noticed the lack of post Ike coverage on the CMSM?

My daughter and I watched much of the CNN coverage of the approach and landing of Hurricane Ike last Friday night/Saturday morning. On Saturday when it was reported that a military task force (that had been pre-positioned before the hurricane hit) was headed to the Houston area I half joked that once they got there the press coverage would be shut down. We kept checking sporadically during the rest of the weekend and into Monday to see the extent of the damage but there was very little coverage. Are we missing coverage of Ike up here in Canada? CNN programming for the remainder of the weekend was revolving reruns of the Sarah Palin/Joe Biden biographies plus a couple of other ridiculous political yak fests by assorted pundits. They had probably 10 - 20 reporters positioned around the hardest hit areas on Friday and after Saturday morning all they had to broadcast for the rest of the weekend was reruns of the previous week's presidential news?
Last night I did a bit of checking for internet coverage. There are lots and lots of stories in the print media but most that I read seemed to be of the boiler plate variety listing statistics and paraphrasing the same points over and over again. There are a handful of survivor stories with more trickling in today. A commenter on one of the articles I read (sorry can't find the link again sad ) was convinced there was a media blackout on post Ike coverage. She said that her sister's house was under 20 feet of water yet the news was only reporting a surge of 6 -12 feet in the area where it was situated.

Drug War Dummies

In states along the Mexican border, American journalists are going crazy with fear of the drug war that rages in Mexico and, increasingly, in the United States. Today's editorial in the Tucson Citizen tells the story:

"Whether shot, beheaded, mutilated or bombed, at least 2,680 Mexicans have been slain by drug cartels this year. Citizens, law enforcement and government officials are deeply alarmed - and that's just on our side of the border. In Mexico, they're terrified.

"It's our issue, too," the writer claims, "because Mexico is our next-door neighbor and because we cannot allow its democratic form of government to be destroyed.

The writer goes on to rave about murders, beheadings, kidnappings, corruption, police murdered, hand grenades, rocket launchers, "powerful automatic weapons," and narcoterrorism generally. The writer bewails the fact that the violence is spilling over onto our side of the border and finally concludes: "Our government must do everything possible to help beat back the drug cartels - for both nations' sake."

It's all a load of manure. The Tucson writer is informed by and repeats lies about drugs, the drug market, and the drug war that have become boringly familiar to all of us who, at one time or another, were into the counterculture and the drug scene. Those lies are so boring, in fact, that I won't bother to refute them here. Instead I will only say that if you believe in capitalism and the free market and the Bill of Rights but yet support the drug war and believe our Uncle Sam can actually win it, you should go and see a psychiatrist because you have problems that logic will only aggravate. Maybe the shrink will give you some (ahem!) drugs (ahem!) that will relieve your symptoms or at least render you harmless.

Perhaps the most stupid lie in that Tucson editorial is the line about saving democratic government in Mexico. Never in all of history has Mexico been a democracy. Mexico has always been governed by the richest of its elites, who -- ever since Pancho Villa scared the dog shit out of them for 13 years (1910-23) -- act through the president of Mexico in ways that usually -- but not always -- show citizens the semblance of a democracy. For nearly the whole of the 20th century, the Mexican government held an election every six years in which Mexicans got to vote for candidates who all belonged to the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI).

That started to change in Y2K, when Vincente Fox became the first Mexican president elected from an opposition party since 1920. The current president of Mexico is Felipe Calderon. Calderon, even though he belongs to an opposition party (National Action Party, or PAN), seems a throwback to high-handed presidents "elected" by the PRI. Calderon's election in 2006 was widely regarded as fraudulent. The whiff of corruption follows Calderon wherever he goes. His government is challenged even now by opposition groups that periodically send hundreds of thousands of people into the streets to thwart one or another of his antidemocratic initiatives. Under Calderon, Mexico was all but ungovernable even before he became an ardent participant in Uncle Sam's insanely murderous and corrupt drug war.

If governments by Calderon and his ilk are governments we must save, I wonder why we didn't save the government of Mikhail Gorbachev. In Gorby's old Soviet Union, you know, citizens every few years got to vote on a slate of candidates who all belonged to the Communist Party. Speaking strictly of democratic elections, the former Soviet Union ran a system exactly like the system that the PRI ran in Mexico. Americans who claim that Mexico was a democracy must therefore allow that the former Soviet Union was a democracy. Americans who oppose George W. Bush on the grounds that he was never elected should for exactly the same reason oppose Felipe Calderon.

All of those who fear what's happening in Mexico should take note of what's happening in Colombia these days. In Medellin, Colombia -- once the cocaine capitol of the world and home to Pablo Escobar -- where in bygone days five or six hundred people were shot and killed on the streets every month, the shooting has stopped. Just last night I watched The Travel Channel's galloping hedonist, Anthony Bourdain, chomp chorizo in streetside restaurants where five years ago he'd have been shot to death inside of five minutes. How is Bourdain able to do that today?

Those who can add two and two know the answer is simple: Bourdain can do an unescorted gourmand's tour of Medellin these days because Medellin is no longer a hub of cocaine transportation. Those who made cocaine shipping their business have moved their operation to Mexico, where people now undergo torments exactly like the torments that formerly plagued the people of Colombia. And if by some miracle the crooks are driven out of Mexico, they'll simply go somewhere else. Who knows? They may even go back to Colombia now that the heat is off down there. . . .

So why should Americans save the corrupt and wildly unpopular government of Mexico? Why should we bleed more blood and spend more treasure to fight the so-called War on Drugs, which, as I've already pointed out, is both insane and unwinnable? We had better instead do all we can to end the prohibition of drugs in America. Spend all the money in the world to pay for all the cops and guns and prisons you can buy, you couldn't do nearly as much to end drug crime as that one, simple, inexpensive piece of legislation would do.

back soon

I am still having major trouble with hardware and software issues, none of which are even worth talking about, about let alone blogging. But they are making everthing difficult, especially blogging. So I have to deal with them first.

I will rejoin you as soon as possible. In the meantime please feel free to post anything that might be interesting, on this thread or elsewhere.

Back to the fold

*

I wanna talk today about a sad phenomenon, that happened in France just a few hours ago. It is very much about freedom of speech, even though no one will actually say it, because most believe in The Truth. A few days ago, a famous (in France) French stand-up comic, Jean-Marie Bigard mentioned Loose Change on a radio show, saying it was now absolutely certain that the two planes never crashed in the buildings, that they were actually still flying, and of course, that Bin Laden has been dead for a pretty long time.

The radio excerpt in French. You won't understand anything.

The last part, we can all get behind, ever since the CIA started authenticating audio tapes and Bhutto said on video Bin Laden was murdered. Unfortunately, that did not matter much to the rest of the journalist elite. Who got up in arms, talking about how Bigard had “gone nuts”, or went antisemitic, or how he was always a poor comic anyway, etc. Everyone who wanted to defend the official version seemed only able to demonize Bigard. I must say I don’t find him especially great, to the contrary. I think he’s a right-wing moron. But he’s an honest moron. He won’t try to fuck with you, I like that.

The troubling thing about Bigard’s intervention was, in my view, his certainty. He did not express the possibility of a disagreement. He was more like: “Hey, have you heard? It’s like that! It’s certain!” Does Loose Change induce such an attitude in people ? I haven't seen it yet. I thought this was more about opening a door to doubting and investigating, by showing pictures and stuff. Nevertheless, this is not a problem worthy of anything close to outrage, much less career-destroying, and this was indeed not the actual problem the journalists had with the person they now call the "looney".

Because another similar case occurred before, with the French actress Marion Cotillard. In some interview a few years ago, on Paris Première, she expressed doubts about the official version of 9/11. She said she had a tendancy to believe in the plot theory. That she thought people were lied to on a great many things. She mentioned stuff that she saw on the internet, and also talked about the incoherent collapse of WTC7 in a few minutes. She also expressed doubts on whether we really walked on the moon. “I’m wondering, and I don’t believe everything I’m told, that’s for sure.”

Here’s the video of the conversation, still in French, still won't understand.

This was ‘followed’ (the video was brought up right during the Oscars, a timing very similar to the Wright controversy, that is: years later) by the very same campaign of insults, derision, and humiliation. It doesn’t matter then, how you express your thoughts, whether you simply say you don’t believe what you’re told, or you assert your views and say that’s the reality. What matters is you crossed a red line, and you will suffer for it.

Both Bigard and Cotillard have released statements downplaying their position. Bigard asked for forgiveness and said he would “never again express any doubts.” It is hard to see if this is sarcasm, but I take it it’s not. In any case, he plays the entire world for fools, as he was all but certain. It was never about doubts. Cotillard, on the other hand, simply argued that she had been misunderstood. In both cases, people who simply did not believe and said so, had their lives and careers threatened, and then gave in and ‘apologized’. Once again, simply because they did not believe in something. That's the sad news. And this is supposed to be the free world. Someone break these guys' legs and pick their pockets quick, so they know what's actually intolerable.

Being as I am a subscriber of the internet-based investigation team, Arrêt sur Images, which analyses the media and is pretty good at it, I was able to see first-hand the kind of reactions you get from ‘official-theorists’, in the forums dedicated to those articles dealing with Bigard’s statement. Almost none of them will talk about facts. They will only resort to psychology: you’re crazy, you’re an antisemite, you’re an anti-american, you’re an elitist who’s using fantasy scenarios to feel superior, you’re always skeptical of everything and you can’t help it, etc…

All this behavior is nothing new to our own WP. Check this post from last year on Robert Fisk. And read the reactions, they’re gonna ring a bell:

« Robert Fisk Goes Nutter » “What a stark-raving lunatic! Madness! Madness! Madness!” “Moonbat At Large!“

Beyond the similarity, you can also feel the urge to demonize. He’s CRAZY CRAZY CRAZY! You could almost picture them screaming at their screens, punching on their keyboards, their face beet-red. I don’t know if Robert Fisk made any excuses later on. I hope he went Cheney on them, if you know what I mean.

And if you’re like me, then you know that this has also happened recently to… Jeremiah Wright ! That’s right! (Note: I’m French okay? These puns are fresh to me) And again, WP has all the goods you need, right there. There are of course plenty of other posts about Wright on his blog, but I’m sure you can find them on your own.

The reason why I’m bringing up Wright is that Arthur recently made a pretty good point relating to all those personal attacks that happen all the time and that always imply some guy defending a red line by attacking another guy’s personality/sanity. I wanna offer an extract from his essay titled, “Death Match: Follow the money – and follow the military bases”:

An example may help to clarify certain of the issues that concern me. It's a useful example, because it presents the problem in a fairly extreme form. In the fall of 2007, there was a huge to-do about Pete Stark's comment that Bush sent American troops to fight in Iraq to have their "heads blown off for the president's amusement." Here, I'm not interested in the public spectacle that ensued, which predictably forced Stark to apologize. That spectacle falls into the category of public pretense that I just recently discussed once again.

But consider the nature of Stark's remark. At some point in the future, I intend to discuss how everyone in American life now views him or herself as a professional psychologist, fully credentialed and able to diagnose every psychological malady at a distance of thousands of miles, without benefit of ever talking to the subject even once. We saw this kind of thing on full display in the reaction of many people to the Wright-Obama controversy. I offered some comments about a post by Digby that I found especially shocking on that subject, and most of her post is at the far edges of idiotic. But I haven't yet noted this remark of Digby's: "But Wright's latest round of media appearances have not seemed to me to be any kind of defense of liberalism or the black church or even Black Liberation Theology so much as one man's desire to deny a rival his destiny." Obama's "destiny"? Is it preordained, written in the stars as it were? Pity the person who thinks in such bathetic terms. Out with you -- and perhaps off to the reeducation camp -- if you dare to deny Obama his destiny! The Democratic apologists, who fear an original thought or a sustained attack on American exceptionalism more than they fear Jack the Ripper bearing down on them with a fully-loaded arsenal of the sharpest knives ever manufactured, did succeed in driving Wright underground and entirely out of the primary. O brave progressives!

But on what basis, pray tell, does Digby conclude that Wright viewed Obama as a rival (her italics)? To use one of certain liberals' own favorite put-downs: this is making shit up, because the shit in question happens to aid your argument of the moment. This kind of faux-psychology is irresponsible in the extreme, and it should be deeply insulting, not only to the person so "diagnosed" (read: attacked and dismissed), but to any adult capable of minimal thought. I suppose it may be possible that Wright viewed Obama as a rival, but neither Digby, nor you, nor I nor anyone else knows that in the absence of Wright's confession on the point, or before spending considerable time talking to the man. But note the further effect of this attack and dismissal that parades as a psychological diagnosis: it demeans the man, and it means that you do not have to engage the argument. And beneath the surface, dualism makes its appearance once again; the diagnosis means that Wright has bad motives and is a bad man, at least in part. It is therefore a good thing and a valid response to ignore the substance of what he had to say.

One person has wondered on those forums over at Arrêt sur Images, why is it that those who believe in the official theory are so aggressive? Why do they use so many insults? Why do they ask things like “Well, why don’t you deny the Shoah while you’re at it!?” But he too used psychological diagnosis on them (and I denounced it), so it seems that as Arthur explains, this is much more deeply rooted, and much more widespread than he thinks. In any case, you should read Arthur’s essay.

* Picture found here.

Sheep is Missing

Sheep is Missing

Just some picture I needed for a post.

A sheep is missing

A sheep is missing

VOAT FOR ME ... er ... VOAT FOR US!!

Back in the days ... when I was a kid, some of the older kids -- teenagers hoping to avoid the draft, probably -- wore red, white and blue patches that simply said "VOAT".

I thought it was perfect in a multilayered way.

It appeals to the semi-illiterate segment of the electorate.
It gently mocks the electoral system.
And so on...

Those patches inspired the title of this post.

~~~

Some of our favorite blogs have been nominated in the Bloggers Choice Awards which are now open.

You can click here to register, after which you can ...

click here to vote for Chris Floyd's blog, Empire Burlesque

and/or click here to vote for Gandhi's blog, Bush Out

and/or click here to vote for Larisa Alexandrovna's blog, At Largely

and/or click here to vote for WP

and/or nominate your own favorites ...

and/or use the comment thread to tell us about your other favorite blogs...

More Screwed Now Than Ever Before

I can't shake the feeling that we're more screwed now than ever before, though it seems hardly anyone agrees with me.
You can read more here or comment below.
newjesustimes's picture

Tales from the nuclear black market

I came across this blog post after a friend mentioned the Tinners family to me.
An engineer is on trial in Germany for allegedly attempting to help Libya develop a nuclear bomb. But the network the man was allegedly part of was under surveillance by intelligency agencies, with the CIA getting involved early on.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,560131,00.html

I thought it was interesting reading, especially in the context of some of the stories WP has followed regarding domestic terrorists and the people behind them.

The Biggest Lie Of All

I happened to be walking through the living room while my wife was watching Laura Bush address the Republican National Convention, and I actually heard the First Lady say this:
George is using America's influence to lift up lives around the world. Millions of children are protected from malaria by mosquito nets the American people provide. In Afghanistan and Iraq, 50 million people are now living in freedom. And let's not forget President Bush has kept the American people safe.
Four simple clear sentences punctuated by lots of applause. Let's look more closely, shall we?
You can read more here or comment below.
newjesustimes's picture

Different Day, Same Shit

Why is it that everywhere the US military goes, the people don't welcome them with flowers and candy? Those of us who pay attention have noticed the double talk regarding "success" in Iraq, and the nearly non-stop calls for American withdrawal by every legitimate (or otherwise) Iraqi representative.

Now (again) we direct our attention to Afghanistan. It seems almost likely that children, civilians, and wedding parties are used as shields/ targets by military forces specifically because of the headlines they garner;

Foreign and Afghan forces killed five children in two separate incidents Monday, further inflaming tensions in the country over the killings of civilians by troops from the U.S. and other countries.

http://news.yahoo.com/story//ap/20080901/ap_on_re_as/afghanistan

newjesustimes's picture

Every Picture Tells a Story, don't it

Sometimes I wonder who to believe. Other times it's more obvious. In either event I find the political use of information fascinating.

The following documentaries deal with the 2002 coup attempt in Venezuela. More specifically the second documentary deals with the first documentary.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHPPpL9z9GE
The Revolution Will Not be Televised (English subtitles)

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3378761249364089950
THE REVOLUTION WILL NOT BE TELEVISED lies


If you've got the time I encourage you to watch and leave comments / opinions. Thanks!
admin's picture

hugo chavez

hugo chavez

Hugo Chavez

H, a French comic series

I subbed part of an episode and uploaded it on my own blog.

This post is dedicated to my English-speaking readers. All this time, I've been subbing English videos, with the exception of Les Nuls' movie (a project that I give up on, for now), and now I'm finally working for your pleasure..

H, for Hospital, is a French comic series from the late 90s. Although the scenery is a hospital, it is really all about the comedy. You won't find anything like ER, or Grey's anatomy, or Dr. House.

Without further ado, here's a subbed piece from Episode 3, The Manuscript.