Notice, too, how he doesn't answer the young man's question (which is highly pertinent) but bypasses it to tout his work (with Joe Lieberman) in establishing the 9-11 commission, instead.
And this is the man who would lead the US?
And this time, it's all about Teh Stoopid in Venezuela. Or at least, AP would slyly insinuate that Venezuela is the one with the stupidity problem.
Mysterious deaths among the Warao "Indians" along the Orinoco river, which just so happens to be Venezuela's richest oilfield region. AP seems to have fingered bat rabies as the culprit, though the (US-based) medical researchers they cite only say the natives "described symptoms consistent with" the disease. Meanwhile, you really have to wonder what stupid questions the AP reporter asked of the Venezuelan health minister to get her to respond like this:
Perez said it was irresponsible to suggest there has been a lack of government help. She said officials have repeatedly visited the area this year to investigate.
Of course, the AP prefers to put the accusation of no-government-help in the mouths of "some indigenous leaders", without naming or quoting a single one. Translation: Venezuelan government too stupid to look after those Injuns they claim to care so much about.
Then there's this odd little snippet:
Javier Hernandez manages the small zoo at Caracas' General Francisco de Miranda Park. He said Monday that 29-year-old Erick Arrieta violated park rules by letting the Asian python out early Saturday.The biology major was found strangled to death, with a snake bite on his left wrist.
Translation: Venezuelan students too stupid to look after Asian pythons.
And then there're these two items about how Venezuela is supposedly "not co-operating" in the War on Drugs. Translation: Venezuelan people too stupid to stop gringos shoving Colombian coke up their noses.
Here's a novel thought for the AP: Why isn't the US government addressing the demand side, without which the (COLOMBIAN) supply side of this problem wouldn't exist? Translation: AP too stupid to get onto the real story.
Backed by national guard troops and cheering crowds, government representatives moved in on three Cemex plants at the stroke of midnight Monday, the end of a 60-day deadline set by President Hugo Chavez for imposing state control over Venezuela's largest cement maker.Chavez has long criticized Venezuela's private-sector cement makers for high prices and tight supplies that he says have hampered government efforts to build housing for the poor. Pro-nationalization supporters who had gathered outside a Cemex facility in eastern Venezuela sang the national anthem while fireworks exploded overhead, according to news reports.
Of course, this being reported in the Denver Post, someone still felt duty-bound to note for the sake of "fairness and balance":
But Mexico's ambassador to Venezuela, Mario Chacon, made his displeasure clear. Chavez's hard line with Cemex, one of Mexico's most admired companies, has irritated the conservative administration of Mexican President Felipe Calderon."As a government, we respect Venezuela's decision, but we are obligated to look out for the interests of our companies," Chacon said. "We believe there has been discriminatory treatment against Cemex, and we don't understand why."
Good job, D-Post. Now go back to sleep. You've got a Dem convention coming up to report on. And you need your beauty rest, especially since you got scooped on the secret prisons in your city, built specially for the occasion.
Oh, look. The Wall Street Journal seems to have twigged to the fact that their leading "expert" on Latin America, Mary Anastasia O'Grady, is nothing more than a discredited hack parachuted in from the Heritage Foundation to promote far-right "values" at the expense of honesty and reality. So now they're handing the job of slamming Chavecito off onto a new guy. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Mr. Travis Pantin and his stirring rendition of recycled manufactured outrage, "Hugo Chavez's Jewish Problem".
Right away, you can see that Mr. Pantin is one for the loaded language: "preaching a gospel", "blessedly unvoiced", "decisively rejected", "dictator for life", "wild rhetoric and diktats", "by fiat", and oh yeah, that wonderfully well-worn phrase, "questions about his emotional and mental stability."
What a pity that the language-loading Mr. Pantin has only been skimming the surface, and it shows. If he'd sat through as many hours of Chavecito's speeches in Spanish as I have, he'd realize that most of the Venezuelan president's language consists not of "gospel", "wild rhetoric and diktats" OR "fiats", but of quiet, well-reasoned, informative and calm discourse that would put an Oxford don to shame. That's one thing that impresses me about Latin American politicians: despite their "fiery" reputation up here, when you pay closer attention to them, the first thing you notice is the contrast between not only them and the media's reporting of them, but also between them and our own politicians. We Canadians, for example, have a reputation for politeness, yet there is more scandalous language and violent gesticulation in our own mostly-white House of Commons during a single Question Period than there ordinarily is in Miraflores Palace in the space of a month. But you'd never know it from the way Chavecito gets covered in the English-language press. The only time anything he says ever makes the whore media up above the Rio Grande is when it's something that can be spun somehow as outrageous (usually by taking it way out of context), or just outrageously funny, like the time he first caught my attention by poking some badly needed fun at Condi the Shoe Queen--who is, as he says, a woman disastrously out of her depth (and never more so than when writing derivative drivel about the Czechs). And when he called Dubya the devil, I knew he was joking (something the whore media is curiously reluctant to admit), but also that there was an element of truth to it--a truth that the Travis Pantins of this world are overpaid to obscure.
But maybe I'm being too harsh on the WSJ's new boy? Hmm, you be the judge:
Continue reading "The Wall Street Journal's "Jewish Problem"" »
Verdammt noch mal. You'd think a German newsmagazine could, in the interests of journalistic integrity, at least get its own country's history right. But Der Spiegel is now so far up the ass of neo-con Washington, it's even rewriting that...and in an interview with, of all people, the Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki:
SPIEGEL: Germany, after World War II, was also liberated from a tyrant by a US-led coalition. That was 63 years ago, and today there are still American military bases and soldiers in Germany.
Funny, but as I recall, the liberation of Germany occurred not "after World War II", but at the moment when the tyrant suicided in his own Berlin bunker. It was the liberation of the concentration camps that took place after the war ended; crucial distinction there, since not all of Germany was a concentration camp. And the coalition in question was not led by the US, which entered the war three years later than the original coalition leaders, Britain and France. The US didn't get into the war until attacked by Japan at Pearl Harbor. And they are not the ones most widely credited with Hitler's suicidal discouragement; that would be Russia.
That's an awful lot of revisionist lies the slick Spiegel interviewer told right there in the first sentence. What about the second one, about US military bases and soldiers? Well, there are still some (68,000 at last count), but most are gone. First there's no more need for them (Germany can police her own damn Nazis, thankyouverymuch), and second, Donald Rumsfeld--a source of shame to his German relatives--threatened to pull all the remaining ones in a grotesque form of economic retaliation for Germany's pacifist stance on Iraq. The ones still there aren't protecting Germany from tyranny; they're just there to provide operational support...to the war on Iraq. So that one is, at best, only a half truth, expressed to a disingenuous end.
I guess Der Spiegel, whose name means "The Mirror", really lives up to it. The paper just reflects...not reality, but what Washington thinks: that the sovereignty of other nations doesn't matter, but that Neo-Con America's will is supreme. So supreme, in fact, that history has to be rewritten in deference to its current war plans.
Schade!
If you haven't seen this video yet, you simply must. In the space of five minutes, you get to see how Christopher Hitchens saw the light on waterboarding in an undisclosed location somewhere in North Carolina. Not only does he admit that it IS torture, he also admits that it's not "simulated" drowning, it IS drowning--of a particularly terrorizing kind. And it takes him just a few seconds to "break". He flings away the metal object (poetically called a "dead man's handle") that the torturers have given him to signal--simply by dropping it--that he can't take the torment anymore. It all looks so unceremonious, which makes you wonder how long anyone can withstand such a treatment.
Here's Hitchens in his own words:
Continue reading "17 seconds to moral clarity with Christopher Hitchens" »
Remember how I said the newly elected leftist president of Paraguay was by no stretch of the imagination a moderate, and even posted proof?
Well, guess what the Dissociated Press's own hilariously named Christopher Toothaker wrote. And if you guessed "complete bullshit", pat yourself on the back--you are absolutely correct!
Paraguayan President-elect Fernando Lugo was all smiles as he and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez embraced, talked of a revolution for the poor and pledged to build a united Latin America.But as the former Roman Catholic priest ended a three-nation tour Thursday that also included visits to Venezuela's leftist allies in Bolivia and Ecuador, political analysts predicted he will take a less radical approach to governing.
Here, let Editor and Publisher clue you in:
In her Sunday column this week, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell responds to charges of improper money-making from special-interest groups against two of the newspaper's stars, David Broder and Bob Woodward. The allegations were carried in the current issue of Harper's by Ken Silverstein, the magazine's Washington editor.Both Broder and Woodward recently took buyouts from the paper but remain as contract workers.
The Post Stylebook's ethics and standards section says only: "We freelance for no one and accept no speaking engagements without permission from department heads." Howell observes: "Broder and Woodward did not check with editors on the appearances Silverstein mentioned."
Continue reading "Ever wonder why I call them media whores?" »
Human Rights Watch has totally screwed the pooch where Venezuela is concerned.
I know, they're supposed to be a serious human-rights organization, but it's kind of hard to take seriously an organization that gets used so often to promote the State Dept.'s war plans over actual human rights (such as the fundamental right not to be killed by Washington's allies, for example). And every so often, they betray their true nature with hysterical press releases that might as well have been written by Andres Oppenheimer or Simon Romero. They'd be great comic fodder, if only people learned to take them the right way--namely, with a truckload of salt on top and a whoopie cushion underneath.
The part of this particular one that makes me laugh loudest is this nifty juxtaposition right here:
They still think this is about autonomy and "states' rights". Someone kindly clue them in, please.
Oh wait, I spoke too soon...here's Evo:
Morales has dismissed all three referendums as illegal "surveys" by conservative opposition groups hoping to cripple his government."It's not a problem of autonomy," Morales said Sunday. "The problem is that they can't accept that an Indian from the countryside is their president."
Nevertheless, the president made a rare trip Friday to Pando's capital of Cobija to deliver a new fleet of ambulances and announced a US$6 million infrastructure project.
Once more, Evo nails it.
Unfortunately, this is buried about 2/3 down in the piece, which is obviously slanted in favor of the bogus "autonomists", if the amount of space it devotes to them and their lies is any indication. (Well, that and the general tone of sympathy: Big land-owners need "protection" from having their idle estates handed over to the campesinos? Be still my bleeding heart.)
They don't mention this, either--which happened during another ambulance-delivery visit. Probably because it would make the "pro-autonomy" and "states' rights" crusaders look like shits.
Nope, can't have those people showing their true colors in the lamestream media, can we?
...in response to a guy named Ed, from Miami, who tootled all the lines we know only too well from the loco anti-Chavez contingent, plus one new one: "Bush is a populist."
WTF???
Well, I couldn't let that stand, so I fired off:
Here's how to do it, if you're a 24/7/365 "news" channel on cable TV:
Step 1: Hear right-wing flying monkeys screeching about how "liberal" you are.
Step 2: Panic and hire a second-string conservatard radio bloviator (who is also a walking, talking human hemorrhoid).
Step 3: Watch credibility, followed closely by ratings, go down, down, down.
Step 4: Panic some more and hire another second-string conservatard, this one from a third-rate conservatard channel. Oh and did I mention he's also a former White House press flack who quit not because he had cancer but because he wanted to make more money?
Step 5: Watch credibility and ratings go comma comma down dooby doo down down.
Way to go, Chicken Noodle Network. Keep circlin' that drain and pray it doesn't suck you down. After all, a proven formula for failure will work differently if you follow it twice, right?
Ahem. Now that I have your attention:
As usual, you learn a lot from your ol' Uncle Jay.
Yes, you read that correctly. Dubya, that great champion of freedom, is a would-be censor, making sure the people of the United States stay in the dark about what's really happening in Iraq. Here's the video:
Ahahaha...I think I know why he doesn't want you to see this. The Iraqis want the Dems to win, and they like both Hillary Clinton AND Barack Obama. They have nothing good to say about the situation the war has plunged their country into. And it is SO OBVIOUS from this that the Iraqis are not the backward stupidheads BushCo wants us to believe they are.
"The neurologist Oliver Sacks tells of a ward of aphasic patients listening to President Reagan giving a speech on television. Although unable to fully understand his words, the patients compensated by being particularly sensitive to his tone and inflections, which they found farcical. A patient with a right hemisphere lesion who could not judge tone was also present. She concentrated on Reagan's exact words--which she too found ridiculous. Sacks concluded from this that it takes a fully working brain to be deluded by politicians."
--Alice W. Flaherty, The Midnight Disease
Talk about your "no shit, Sherlock" moments. How long did it take them to realize that unequal distribution of wealth is a major killer?
Economic growth does not necessarily translate into improvements in child mortality, major new research suggests.Ten million children still die every year before their fifth birthday, 99% of them in the developing world, according to Save the Children.
A study comparing economic performance with child mortality reveals that some countries have not translated wealth into improvements across society.
Survival is too often just a "lottery", said Save the Children's David Mepham.
He said that even the poorest countries can cut child mortality by following simple policies, but at the moment "a child's chance of making it to its fifth birthday depends on the country or community it is born into".
Keith Olbermann spells it out clean, clear and cold:
And that's why I love Keith Olbermann.
...at least, I think I have. For all those who doubt that racists--not just skinheads, but all of them--talk in code, here...bone up on the latest, courtesy of the National Post.
It was a routine e-mail from the boss sent to congratulate a junior prosecutor in Houston, Tex., who had won manslaughter convictions against an intoxicated driver."He convicted Mr. Sosa of a double intoxication manslaughter, got a weak jury to give him 12 years in each, and then convinced Judge Wallace to stack the sentences," Harris County assistant district attorney Mike Trent wrote in an office-wide memo. Then came the odd part: "He overcame a subversively good defence by Matt Hennessey that had some Canadians on the jury feeling sorry for the defendant and forced them to do the right thing."
The e-mail was sent in 2003 but came to light only this month as part of an unrelated controversy with his office, forcing Mr. Trent to defend himself against accusations of bigotry -- not because he offended the people of Canada, but because "Canadian" has apparently become a code word for blacks among American racists.
Continue reading "Well. Now I've TRULY heard everything..." »
"What I dislike most about the trickle-down democracy argument is the dishonor it pays to all the people who fought, and fight still, for genuine democratic change in their countries, whether for the right to vote, or to have access to land, or to form unions. Democracy isn't the work of the market's invisible hand; it is the work of real hands....Real democracy--true decision-making power in the people's hands--is always demanded, never granted."
--Naomi Klein, Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate
"Granted that the 19th century was the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy, this does not mean that the 20th century must also be the century of socialism, liberalism, democracy. Political doctrines pass; nations remain. We are free to believe that this is the century of authority, a century tending to the 'right ', a Fascist century."
--Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism
(So much for the idea that fascism is of the left, eh Jonah?)
Gol-dang, if that Osama isn't the most talkative spook or the most animated corpse you've ever seen. Now that everyone is talking about his death (thank you, Beni!), he has to pipe up via audiotape and claim that the rumors of his demise are premature...
Most of the 56-minute tape dealt with Iraq, apparently al-Qaida's latest attempt to keep supporters in Iraq unified at a time when the U.S. military claims to have al-Qaida's Iraq branch on the run.The tape did not mention Pakistan or the assassination of Benazir Bhutto, though Pakistan's government has blamed al-Qaida and the Taliban for her death on Thursday. That suggested the tape was made before the assassination.
Or by someone who isn't in fact Osama.
This is hardly the first time we've seen an impostor being fobbed off as him. Or heard one, come to that. Apparently, since we aren't overly familiar with his voice (are you? I'm not), and all Arabic-speakers are supposed to sound alike to our western ears, we are meant to take it on faith that if a Pentagon "expert" says it's him, it must be him. Never mind that the Pentagon has had a problem with Arabic translations, since it refuses to let perfectly qualified gay people do the job even in the face of an acute shortage.
So...how are we to know if this latest "Osama" is, in fact, the real Osama? Or, come to that, if any of the rest of them were?
...and neither does he, nor any of his lackeys, have the slightest concept of a little thing known as reading comprehension.
Think Progress has ferreted out the real source of Dubya's antipathy to embryonic stem cell research--a total misinterpretation of an improbable scenario from Aldous Huxley (read aloud to him, of course, by one of his loyal flunkies, since Dubya can't be bothered to bestir himself):
...and for some strange reason, the above image was the first thing that came to my mind after reading this:
CNN: What do your initials stand for? Crap, Nutjobs and Nitwits? I mean, just look at the shit you print--and the shit you reprint. Granted, this crappy editorial is bylined to Investor's Business Daily, which explains a lot. Including the language:
High oil prices do squeeze the poor. But oil companies do not control them. Dictators such as Chavez do. Eighty percent of the world's oil is held by inefficient state oil companies. Venezuela is one of the worst, producing its oil with scab labor since a 2003 strike, and it has also confiscated at least $1 billion in U.S. oil assets since then. Some industry analysts estimate that Chavez adds as much as a third of the cost to world oil prices. No wonder he wants someone else, like Big Oil, blamed.
What ludicrous conclusions this fool jumps to! Big Oil companies don't set prices--but Chavez does? Where do they get THAT? Last time I looked, they are the price-setters. (When it's not the Wall St. traders, that is.)
Continue reading "CNN: Have I told you lately that I loathe you?" »
Oh, the Venezuelan opposition...they seriously think no one will catch them in a lie. That their carefully contrived media campaigns against Chavecito will go off without a hitch. But as it happens, the ever alert Mario Silva (who hosts La Hojilla, VTV's media-whore-watch show) has caught them out in at least three big, fat whoppers:
In case you haven't guessed, the three lies are:
Give Sunsara credit, she never backs down. And she brings out the ugly bitch who is never far below the surface of one carefully bleached mediablonde:
BTW, get how the students cheer when the World Can't Wait protestors interrupted Tortureboy Gonzales. I bet that's more applause than Bush's Little Tejano ever got in all his slimy career. And FUX could not edit that out! I bet that was especially galling.
As for "good news out of Iraq", Sunsara missed a golden opportunity to get a good laugh at Ms. Dark Roots' expense. I'd have said something like "Yeah, I hear Blackwater's making a killing there--literally!" But she did stick to her guns, which is not easy to do with a barking mad harpy like Ingraham trying to ridicule her (and failing miserably.)
Or so they say everytime they refuse to give him airtime.
"They", of course, being the lamestream media. Even PBS and NPR (supposedly the long-haired intellectuals of the US broadcasterati) are constantly begging off because, supposedly, Chomsky hasn't got "concision" (translation: soundbite-ability).
There's only one problem with that excuse: It's bullshit.
As you can see (in little more than three minutes!), Chomsky can so give good soundbite. The only problem with his soundbites is that they say things the lamestream media types don't want us to hear. They're not for the faint of heart (or feeble of mind.) If you're hard of thinking, they will force you to think hard.
Go on. Read Chomsky. Hear him talk. Get addicted. What have you got to lose but your phony comfort zone?
Well, I guess if he calls himself ugly, it must be okay for Reuters to do it too. (The "quotation marks" make it all right, you know.)
Hugo Chavez calls himself ugly and his looks earned him the nickname "Goofy" in the military, but the president's image is changing -- he is now considered one of Venezuela's sexiest men.A poll said on Thursday the fifth-most desired man is Chavez, whose large nose, protruding lips, forehead mole and gap in his front teeth are easy fodder for caricature artists in a South American nation obsessed with beauty.
Watch the video, then sign the petition.
Oh, ho hum...where have I heard this dreary refrain before?
Gunmen have opened fire on students returning from a protest in Caracas against Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's planned reforms.Several people have been reported injured during the clashes, including at least two by gunfire.
The students were protesting against plans to remove presidential term limits, the subject of a referendum.
Thousands had marched peacefully to the Supreme Court and filed a demand for the vote to be suspended.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the students as they returned from the march, prompting scenes of chaos as students fled.
One witness told the Reuters news agency that after the initial violence supporters of Mr Chavez drove through the area on motorbikes and shooting into the air.
National Guardsmen had been posted along the march route to stop clashes between protesters and Chavez supporters.
Okay, now who says history never repeats? Once again, this does not pass the most basic of sniff tests. Let's tally up the similarities to the last time this happened, shall we?
Continue reading "Carmonazo II: The Oppos Strike Back (Again)" »
It may be more than a year away, but Americans already think they know what the big issues of the 2008 presidential election will be.On the thousands of web pages, acres of newsprint and hours of airtime already devoted to the long race to the White House, two subjects get most attention: how and when to end the war in Iraq and how healthcare should be paid for.
But another issue is gaining prominence, one which is of much greater significance to the rest of the world.
Indeed, it is one that could have profound implications for the global economy.
The issue is free trade.
President Bush devoted his most recent weekly radio address to lauding the benefit America gets from free trade deals.
"Millions of American jobs depend on exports," he said.
"More exports support better and higher-paying jobs - and to keep our economy expanding, we need to keep expanding trade."
You know the crapaganda whores are hurtin' when a lamestream newsman gets so thoroughly shishkabobbed by a fake-news comedian. I don't imagine many people will buy Chris Matthews's book after seeing this...except for shits and giggles.
Well, if you're Gallup, you'll blame it on the phrasing of the question and/or the dumbness of your sample population, and thus discount the obviously disquieting (to a capitalist!) answers they give you:
On many issues affecting day-to-day life, Venezuelans are nearly twice as likely to associate socialism with positive outcomes, as they are to associate them with capitalism. When Gallup asked respondents whether "more freedom to think the way one wants" better describes socialism or capitalism, 43% say socialism, compared with 26% who say capitalism. Venezuelans share similar views about under which system there is more peace and social calm (44% for socialism vs. 23% for capitalism), and under which system there is less crime (42% for socialism vs. 22% for capitalism).A similar pattern emerges on issues related to governance. Forty-three percent of Venezuelans say the country has more sovereignty under socialism, while 24% say this is true of capitalism. The same holds true on the issue of corruption, with 42% saying corruption gets fought under socialism, while 21% say this happens with capitalism. Forty-four percent perceive more justice for people under socialism, compared with 21% who perceive this about capitalism.
Actually, this dovetails rather nicely with The Secret Government, don't you think?
Awww, aren't boy crushes just so darn cute?
Just a pity that Steve Huntley's hagiography of the CIA's latest little plaster saint is all holus-bolus, unquestioning bullshit. Here's the real poop on Leopoldo Lopez, the not gutsy, but gusty (as in full of wind) mayor of Chacao. First, from George Ciccariello-Maher at Counterpunch:
In response to the Venezuelan governments non-renewal of RCTV's broadcasting license, a concession which expired on May 27th at midnight, a new student movement emerged that has since grabbed headlines domestically and internationally. Thousands took to the streets, some marching peacefully and some squaring off against the police with rocks and bullets, all in the name of "freedom of expression." But it's worth asking: who are "the students," and what do they represent? In recent days, it has become clear that these student mobilizations have been, in fact, largely directed and supported by sectors of the opposition, all in an effort to provoke, in Chávez's own words, a "soft coup" against the revolutionary government. The opposition's strategy vis-à-vis this student movement has consisted of two fundamental elements, both of which could only be executed mediatically. But now, after being revealed and discredited, that strategy is rapidly disintegrating.Firstly, opposition parties made a clear decision to stay out of the spotlight, emphasizing the "independent" and "spontaneous" nature of the student protests. Beyond anything else, this gesture proves the degree to which the opposition has been discredited, garnering a reverse Midas touch through years of poor decisionmaking and supporting coups. From the beginning, the government was arguing that opposition politicians were behind the student mobilizations, and so when government-run channel 8 covered one of the early student demonstrations in Plaza Brion in Chacaito, the headline read "opposition demonstration disguised as a student demonstration."
This claim was perhaps justified by the appearance at the demonstration of Leopoldo López, mayor of opposition stronghold Chacao, formerly of far-right party Primero Justicia, which he more recently abandoned in favor of Manuel Rosales' nominally social democratic Un Nuevo Tiempo. Opposition news channel Globovisión countered with the thoroughly unconvincing claim that López, 36 years old and an established politician, was a "youth leader." López himself wouldn't help the situation when at a press conference he "accidentally" called for the students to employ "non-peaceful" tactics (he later claimed that he had meant to call for "non-violent" forms of protest).
Could you please put me through to Dr. George Lakoff? I have a really bad case of brainwashing I'm trying to overcome.
New research confirms that repetition of "myths" and slogans helps lodge them in the minds of the public and that refuting them often leads only to the public remembering falsehoods better. Instead, they tell us that "education campaigns with an 'affirmative' message," even if it is a negative message, are far more effective in defeating an adversary's frame.University of Michigan social psychologist Norbert Schwarz has done experiments showing that people remember things they hear repeated often enough, regardless of its source, and even if it's from a single source.
"Hearing the same opinion from several sources is more influential than hearing it only once from one source. This is as it should be," he wrote in an email exchange with HarperIndex.ca. "But, as we showed in a recent paper, hearing it multiple times from the same source is nearly as influential. 'A repetitive voice sounds like a chorus.' So a single person or small group can create the impression of broad consensus through sheer repetition."
Continue reading "Hello, operator? I think I've been framed." »
Really. It took them HOW long to figure out that George Orwell was not a (gasp) COMMUNIST?
MI5 did not believe George Orwell was a mainstream communist despite monitoring the socialist writer for more than two decades, records have revealed.A Scotland Yard Special Branch report in January 1942 said the author of 1984 had "advanced communist views".
However, an MI5 officer responded that Orwell "does not hold with the Communist Party nor they with him."
I've gotten so much crapaganda from the lamestream media in my inbox lately. All of it about how the Venezuelan opposition is feeling persecuted lately.
Um, you might want to start learning how to spell PROSECUTED, lamestreamers, because anyone who supported the April 11 coup by showing up at Miraflores the next day to support the illegal "provisional government" of Pedro Carmona--and maybe make money or get jobs off it--is definitely complicit in high treason and should therefore NOT be eligible for US citizenship. Let alone of a preferential fast-track variety while real refugees are turned away. No, the only asylum these people deserve is the mental kind, because their thinking is clearly delusional. It's pretty obvious to anyone not mentally impaired that the coup was not democratic but antidemocratic--every democratic institution was declared null and void for two days, and every freely elected official's legal status was blatantly disregarded. Many elected Chavistas feared for their lives and had to go underground or be "arrested" in what amounts to REAL persecution. (And they didn't flee on luxury yachts to Curacao, either.)
And as a glance at the timeline of that coup will clearly show, the entire thing was all about money, money and more money. (It will also show that the army, still under Chavez's orders, took pains not to use violent measures against the opposition even when it was most justified in doing so.)
But then again, being lamestream, mainstream US media people just don't grasp little nuance-y things like that. Nor will they give you an honest look at the "democratic" Venezuelan opposition. They much prefer to reprint whatever PR bullshit comes into their office over the wires. It saves them having to report and do any digging of their own, you see. (And it also saves them from all risk of having to go off the message the State Dept. wants Americans to get.)
So of course, I figured Chavecito must be doing something right again, and indeed he is. But you have to be able to read Spanish, and keep your eye on oil and money, to know just how right. So, with no further ado, here's a little something from Aporrea:
Continue reading "Why they're howling for Chavecito's blood" »
A half-hour video exploring the use of napalm (which nobody calls it anymore, but which in fact it is) at Fallujah.
You can't make this shit up.
Some South American countries are at a crossroads because they falsely believe their only choice is between socialism or the American style of capitalism, Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Tuesday.Speaking at the Canada-Chile Chamber of Commerce in Santiago, Chile, Harper said Canada will play a bigger role in Latin America and the Caribbean, but one that is different from what the United States plays.
"Too often some in the hemisphere are led to believe that their only choices are — if I can be so bold to say — to return to the syndrome of economic nationalism, political authoritarianism and class warfare, or to become, quote, just like the United States," Harper said, in what appeared to be a reference to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. "This is, of course, utter nonsense."
The language could be from a Vanity Fair profile of any number of highly strung celebrities. The subject is described as insecure, malignantly narcissistic and driven by a need for adulation. Behind the public displays of arrogance and petulance lurks a fear of not being liked.Barbara Streisand? Paris Hilton? Step forward Hugo Chávez, the president of Venezuela, as depicted in a psychological profile commissioned by the US air force.
According to this analysis, the regional rivalry between Washington and Caracas is less about oil, geopolitics and ideology and more about Mr Chávez's desire to feel good about himself.
"The arrogant certainty conveyed in his public pronouncements is very appealing to his followers. But under this grandiose facade, as is typical with narcissistic personalities, is extreme insecurity," wrote Dr Jerrold Post, the director of the Political Psychology programme at George Washington University and a veteran CIA analyst.
Continue reading "Uh oh, Washington is projecting again..." »
And speaking of ways Dick can kill, get a load of what he's done to his own fucking job description:
You can always tell what side a newspaper is on by how they choose to present any given story. Take this, for example, from the Washington Post...the paper that has the dubious distinction of having bogged down in complacency since its Watergate glory days:
It was a tiny gesture of protest: a dozen college students flagging down cars for an hour on Embassy Row this month, wearing symbolic white gags across their mouths and holding up posters that quoted Albert Camus and Walt Whitman on the importance of free speech.But the anger of these Venezuela-born young people -- furious at the shutdown of a popular private TV channel in Caracas -- reflected the fast-rising political fervor that is gripping Venezuelan immigrants in the United States after years of private frustration over the tightening revolutionary grip of President Hugo Chavez.
Continue reading "Washington Post sinks into the oil-soaked swamp" »
Don't they know that Hinterlaces is NOT a reliable pollster? This is not the first time they got an awful lot wrong. I wonder if their tabulation formula is a simple matter of inverting the real numbers; it seems that if you want to know the real picture, you have to turn theirs upside down.
Someone please send Angus Reid this story, in which a certain professional fibber is forced to tell the truth, way down at the bottom:
A survey of 1,500 people in seven Venezuelan cities, by the polling firm Hinterlaces, found that 53% of respondents supported Chavez and 38% were opposed to him.Meanwhile, only 10% of those surveyed said they backed the opposition movement ... which was rejected by 83%.
"There is a new political panorama in the country," Hinterlaces director Oscar Schemel remarked to IPS. "The people see the opposition as a class of politicians stuck in the past, who want to maintain their privileges and who are neither working for the interests of the people nor coming up with a viable alternative to Chavez' programme."
Regardless of what any polling firm with known opposition ties may say, the truth is this: The opposition lacks fresh ideas. It is in a self-made death spiral, and Chavez is still NOT regarded as a dictator, no matter how badly some soap opera junkies crave their eMpTV. Angus Reid needs a hard reality check about lies and damned lies.
And speaking of damned, you may want to inform them of the lies of Penn, Schoen and Berland, too.
You better kiss my boots for this, people, I had to go all the way to Cuba to get it.
(Well, all right--to Granma.)
Throughout the world, many countries have adopted sovereign decision to not renew [broadcast] concessions or to allow them to expire. For example:Peru, in April 2007, decided to shut down two television channels and three radio stations for incompliance with its Radio and Television Law, expired licenses and utilization of non-homologous equipment.
Say, who is the president of Peru? A communist? Nope...Alan Garcia. The "neo-liberal" darling of the newspaper neo-cons.
Continue reading "More untold news about TV licence revocations" »
From the Stranger Than Fiction Department, this little article on Ray Bradbury in the alternative LA Weekly--in which the author claims his most famous novel is "misinterpreted":
Bradbury still has a lot to say, especially about how people do not understand his most literary work, Fahrenheit 451, published in 1953. It is widely taught in junior high and high schools and is for many students the first time they learn the names Aristotle, Dickens and Tolstoy.Now, Bradbury has decided to make news about the writing of his iconographic work and what he really meant. Fahrenheit 451 is not, he says firmly, a story about government censorship. Nor was it a response to Senator Joseph McCarthy, whose investigations had already instilled fear and stifled the creativity of thousands.
This, despite the fact that reviews, critiques and essays over the decades say that is precisely what it is all about. Even Bradbury's authorized biographer, Sam Weller, in The Bradbury Chronicles, refers to Fahrenheit 451 as a book about censorship.
Bradbury, a man living in the creative and industrial center of reality TV and one-hour dramas, says it is, in fact, a story about how television destroys interest in reading literature.
Compare and contrast the following videos:
This was taken at today's big anti-imperialist march in Caracas. As you can see, the screen is split four ways. This is to show the size of the crowds in four well-to-do, opposition-dominated neighborhoods.
The interviews are with students at the Andres Bello Catholic University. According to Aporrea, the university's rector is an oppositionist with a heavy hand. These young adults have turned out to show (and tell) that they will not be intimidated, and that they are in solidarity with the revolution, the poor, and one another.
As you can see, the affair went off peacefully, without a hitch--but WITH a lot of music, dancing and a big ol' booty-shake.
Now, what has the other side been up to?
Well, Rosario Dinamitera has something interesting for us:
Hmmm...I wonder. Seeing as Alan Garcia of Peru isn't making any noises about socialism, unlike a certain Chavecito of Venezuela, I can't see it happening. Can you?
Peru's parliament has granted emergency powers to President Alan Garcia in order to deal with drug trafficking and organised crime.Congress overwhelmingly approved the move but around 20 Congressmen walked out of the session before the vote.
President Garcia has promised not to abuse the powers, which are valid for the next 60 days.
He will only have the power to rule by decree on nine specific types of crime, most of which relate to trafficking.
Continue reading "Will the international media call THIS president a tyrant?" »
...in reference to the Coultergeist:
The word is "herm". Or at least it sounds like it. Poor George, he's so confused.
This must be the first of those many exploding wingnut heads I predicted a while back.
Well, sweetie, I'm not sure...but I think it's the sound the wheels of a car make when they hit a dead animal lying on the double yellow line in the middle of the road.
The only funny thing here is the name of his stupid TV show. Chavez has already granted himself the power to enact so-called "revolutionary laws" by decree (i.e., naked tyranny), and now he's trying to smother not just the opposition but his own allies. He evidently wants no opposition and no dissent whatsoever, even from those who are inclined to support him. It's a move to one-party rule, the rule of one man, himself.Hello, President? Goodbye, liberty and democracy.
Continue reading "Auntie Bina, what's a "Moderate Voice"?" »
From, of all places, the Jerusalem Post, a rare moment of rationality, Chavecito-wise:
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, who maintains warm ties with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahamadinejad, said Friday in a television interview that he opposed Ahmadinejad's call to "wipe Israel off the map.""I don't agree with [Ahmadinejad's] statements…I don't support causing harm to any nation," Chavez declared.
It doesn't last long beyond that, but hey, I'll take what I can get. At least this time, they put it up at the top, instead of burying it near the bottom as usual.
The dark side of the Internets reveals itself yet again.
Internet site Wikipedia has been hit by controversy after the disclosure that a prominent editor had assumed a false identity complete with fake PhD.The editor, known as Essjay, had described himself as a professor of religion at a private university.
But he was in fact Ryan Jordan, 24, a college student from Kentucky who used texts such as Catholicism for Dummies to help him work.
...by a man she called a faggot. Her puss may be sour, but revenge sure is sweet:
A video is worth a thousand words. And dollars, too. Prominently featured on John Edwards' presidential campaign Web site is a video of conservative commentator Ann Coulter insulting him. And with just a mouse click you can hear the invective and get a chance to donate at the same time.On Friday, Coulter, a writer and columnist known for provocative remarks, told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington: "I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word 'faggot,' so I -- so kind of an impasse, can't really talk about Edwards."
The Edwards camp is now seeking to capitalize on the slur by soliciting $100,000 in "Coulter Cash" to "show that inflaming prejudice to attack progressive leaders will only backfire."
Continue reading "Coultergeist's scrawny ass gets owned..." »
Um, yeah. Riiiiiight. From Aporrea:
On Tuesday, February 6, the Supreme Tribunal of Justice will hold a constitutional hearing to determine whether the collective rights of citizens were violated by RCTV (Channel 2).The articles in question are numbers 46, 54, 83 and 108 of the Constitution of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, which were violated by means of "pornographic advertising and advertising of prostitution", broadcast daily in the early morning hours.
The action was filed by attorney Juan Ernesto Garantón Hernández in 2006 on behalf of the civil association, the National Front of Bolivarian Attorneys, and citizens from various other social organizations.
Continue reading "You call this "freedom of the press"? You call this "moral"?" »
"We had a deadly weapon: the media."
--Vice-Admiral Hector Ramirez Perez, on the coup of April 11, 2002
As Hugo Chavez's mandate widens, and his Bolivarian Revolution deepens, we're bound to see more rubbish about him in the English-language media. There's even a predictable twist to the latest: an attempt to appeal to leftist egalitarianism, as espoused by most readers of the UK Guardian. But it relies on "facts" from sources which are notably removed not only from the Left, but from reality altogether. The piece's author, Francisco Rodriguez, uncritically repeats the wildest accusations of rightists with all the usual axes to grind. He tosses out a shamelessly self-referential nugget of dummy data, which he published at Foreign Policy, a rightist Washington propaganda website:
Um...this is news? I knew he was doin' it from the moment