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Despite the similarities between the conflicts in Iraq and Darfur, "the violence in the two places is named differently. In Iraq, it is said to be a cycle of insurgency and counter-insurgency; in Darfur, it is called genocide. Why the difference? Who does the naming? Who is being named? What difference does it make?"

Perhaps if White westerners are perpetrators, we must name it "insurgency/counterinsurgency", but if the "bad guys" are Arabs, we name it "genocide" - this makes it a morality play, a simple story of good v evil.

The Crying Indian (1974) Watch it here. As I predicted in my review of the Gore film, the conservatives will not engage the film's arguments en totale. Gore's two or three quibbl-ible points are then used to brand him as a propagandist on par with Hitler and Goebbels--literally. And this did not appear on Rush Limbaugh, but on CNN (Yes, spare me your yawns;there's a difference)! Click here for the story. Now that's the kind of public discourse worthy of a healthy democracy...

(crossposted at Daughter of Liberty)

As if displaced New Orleans residents haven't suffered enough, they now face disenfranchisement if satellite voting sites are not established outside of Louisiana and if the city's municipal elections are not postponed. (They are currently scheduled for 22 April.) So far, state officials are slow in responding, and so-called Attorney General Gonzales has outright refused to help. (Too busy with the Inquisition, I guess.)

But, if you're waiting to hear this through the MSM, don't hold your breath. The only major paper in which I have found anything remotely about the issue is in the Chicago Sun-Times, which shifts the spotlight to Rev. Jesse Jackson's calling for a march. Not that I'm against his plan. In fact, it would help to bring some attention to this urgent matter. However, the MSM is usually eager to make a media circus of people like the good reverend while diverting attention from the REAL issue. In this case, American citizens are in danger of losing their right to vote.

The saga of the four Christian peace activists taken hostage by the Iraqi Resistance several months ago, one of whom was killed by the captors, and three of whom were recently “freed” by “coalition” forces under highly suspicious and mysterious circumstances, is a study in the interconnections and the complicity between imperialist propaganda and media distortions.

The media expect the former captives to be grateful to the “coalition” forces. What, exactly, are they to be grateful for? Are they supposed to be grateful to the ultimate causes and creators of their suffering, not to speak of the suffering of millions of Iraqis?

The media have offered a false paradox: Opponents of war have been freed by soldiers. But there is no paradox here. As long as there are wars, there will be active opponents of war, who themselves are more likely than the average non-participant to become a victim of war. Hence providing an opportunity for the warmongers to “rescue” them and try to justify the unjustifiable. Had there been no war on Iraq, would any of this have happened?

One of the problems with politically progressive people is that, themselves being decent people, they often misinterpret the real meaning of what the other side says, because they are unable to comprehend just how indecent and structurally corrupt the other side is. Hence progressives naively tend to give credit to the other side where credit is not due, because they cannot see that what looks and sounds good is not necessarily good in reality. In brief, they often fail to perceive the actual quality of what is right in front of their eyes. By the way, by “the other side” I don’t just mean conservatives. To me, most “moderate” liberals are also an integral part of "the other" camp -- they are the "good cops" to the conservatives' "bad cops," so to speak.

Hey Ya'll

I started a 'Live' Streaming Radio and Podcast site called BZoO HomeGrown Radio (formerly Blogosphere Zoo). We feature alternative programming. Currently we feature Independent Music and Spoken Word along with talk and interview shows.

We are looking for someone that would like to have their own Political Show. You would need to be familar with audio, recording and podcasting. We would like to present a show focused on environmental, social and humanitarian rights and the up and coming elections.You would want to create your own talk show with a variety of guest. It would be at least weekly and present 30-60 minutes. Other than that the show would be completely yours to create.

If you're interested please contact me at cafeRg@gmail.com. Please include a sample audio preferably MP3.

http://weirdwally.blogspot.com

Watch Out for New STD!

New STD: Gonorrhea LectimThe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued a warning about a new virulent strain of SexuallyTransmitted Disease.The disease is contracted through dangerous and high-risk behavior.The disease is called Gonorrhea Lectim and pronounced"gonna re-elect him."Many victims contracted it in 2004, after having been screwed for the past four years.Cognitive characteristics of individuals infected include: anti-social personality disorders, delusions of grandeur with messianic overtones, extreme cognitive dissonance, inability to incorporate new information, pronounced xenophobia and paranoia, inability to accept responsibility for own actions, cowardice masked by misplaced bravado, uncontrolled facial smirking, ignorance of geography and history, tendencies towards evangelical theocracy, categorical all-or-nothing behavior.

In response to the Daily Mirror revelation about a Memo in which Bush discusses bombing the Al Jazeera HQ in Qatar, some Al Jazeera staffers have set up an unofficial blog titled "Don't Bomb Us" (http://dontbomb.blogspot.com). Here is a post:

These are the men and women who bring you the news at Al Jazeera. We have a diverse staff complement. Our people are made up of dozens of nationalities...Come and have a look at who we are (here is our flickr photoset). We are not afraid of your threats - we are journalists. And there thousands like us around the world. You may be able to kill some of us - but you will never kill us all.

I'm wondering why the US blogsphere is so silent on this Memo? Or am I just not looking in the right places?

Crossposted from The Republic of T.

I resisted posting about this picture last night, even as it rocketed around the blogosphere last night. Though it appeared at an opportune, and perhaps auspicious moment, I held off because I couldn't help wondering about the veracity of the picture. After all, I've been fooled before, by embarassing photos of Bush that later turned out to be fake. But this one comes from reputable source (Reuters) so there may this really is a picture of president Bush, writing a note to Condi requesting a bathroom break.

John Cleese didn't write The Revocation of Independence nor has he ever read it to an audiencet.  SA much shorter, 4-item version was written by Alan Baxter of Rochester, NY in November 2000 and posted to an internal newsgroup hosted by his employer.  There are many versions (I think the latest has 15 items), each funnier than the one before it.  I recommend you go to the Urban Legends website - www.snopes.com and have a look.

This morning I turned on my Sirius satellite radio to tune in to Air America Radio 143 and Morning Sedition, which has been my usual morning routine since December of last year, yet the strangest thing happened, it was gone. In it's place was duplicate programming from Sirius Left which usually resides one channel down the dial at 143. Now I have to say, the only reason I purchased Sirius was to get Air America. Of course I have greatly enjoyed the other programming but the main purpose was Air Amercia. So, after fumbling through their website to find a customer service number I called up Sirius only to be told that Air America decided to drop Sirius to go exclusively with XM. WTF?You have to understand, there is a significant investment in equipment involved in purchasing satellite radio. At the time I purchased my stuff Air America was only on Sirius and had been since their inception. This means that with their dropping of Sirius they have likely abandoned a good portion of their listenting audience. Read, there are alot of pissed off people across America this morning! If you are one of those people I suggest you join me in contacting the Air America Corporate offices to voice your concern (contact info below).

Why should you get to know Tim Frazier? Well, read on!

This mouthpiece/stooge of the Bush administration (well, technically, "head of radioisotope power systems at the Energy Department") has been given the unenviable task of selling to the public a very confusing decision: creating 330 pounds of plutonium-238, a hundred times deadlier isotope than plutonium-239 which is central to many nuclear weapons. The primary use of plutonium-238 is for exploring deep space where solar power is inaccessible. However, the government acknowledges that some of it may be used for secret missions.

What the hell Bond villain crap are they up to now? Russia has an agreement with the United States to export the stuff, but only if not used for military reasons. And now the United States is running out of its own supplies.

Crossposted from The Republic of T.

Here’s something that I came across via the Project for the Old American Century. I’ve written before about conservatives citing discredited, pseudo-scientific studies, but now they’re apparently making them up whole cloth when it suits their purposes.

Case in point, Bill O’Reilly cites a study during his Fox News show claiming that the institution of marriage has collapsed in Sweden since that country legalized same-sex marriage. It’s complete with B-roll footage of same-sex marriage being performed somewhere (presumably Sweden, if you believe O’Reilly), and he even goes so far as to call the statistics — something like 65% of Swedes are not married — “irrefutable.”

Crossposted from The Republic of T.

What’s wrong with TV news? Heh. Where do I begin? I’ve mentioned before, I stopped watching television news somewhere between 9/11 and the build-up to the war in Iraq. First it was because I didn’t want to see any more gratuitous footage of the WTC attacks/collapse. Then it morphed into being sickened by utterly unquestioning, uncritical coverage of the build-up to and rationales for Iraq. Well, there’s something out there that might change my viewing habits in the future.

Now for full disclosure. Independent World Television (IWT) is one of our clients at work, but not one that I’ve done a lot of work with. They were the subject of two diaries on Kos this weekend, and I’ve been meaning to post about them myself. Here’s a bit about what they want to do.

I haven’t listened to Air America for quite some time. I listened to the streaming audio when it first came out last year. It was funny and it exposed the lies of the Bush administration, but I already knew much of this. I would much rather listen to Rush Limbaugh and learn what the next issue the conservatives would start blogging about. I could get a head start with the poorly researched facts that he would tell to his conservative audience. When I got tired of Rush then I would listen to Bill O’Reilly and see what spin he could put on the administration’s Gospel teachings.

Well, the AM radio failed on my car and I couldn’t pick up AM radio inside my office building. So, I was stuck listening to NPR for the longest time. I tried to listen to Rush and Bill online, but they wanted me to pay for it. Hey, I thought they were lucky enough to get me to listen to their commercials for crap that I’d never buy why would I pay to hear them?

We’ve been over this before.

A few weeks ago, a coworker of mine alerted me to some footage of a CNN interview (show on The Daily show) in which a right wing representative rattled off some rather shocking, and rather wrong-sounding statistics on how likely children in homes with gay parents are to be sexually abused. That was bad enough, but what was worse is that no one questioned or called her to back-up her assertion. I jumped on it. The Wall Street Journal jumped on it. Now the gay press is finally picking it up. From a Southern Voice “action alert.”

Eric Alterman for The Nation has recently written an excellent article on the Bush Administration’s manipulation of the media and its control of the access to information:

Bush's War on the Press

Journalists, George Bernard Shaw once said, "are unable, seemingly, to discriminate between a bicycle accident and the collapse of civilization." How odd, given the profession's un-equaled reputation for narcissism, that Shaw's observation holds true even when the collapsing "civilization" is their own.

Make no mistake: The Bush Administration and its ideological allies are employing every means available to undermine journalists' ability to exercise their First Amendment function to hold power accountable. In fact, the Administration recognizes no such constitutional role for the press. White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card has insisted that the media "don't represent the public any more than other people do.... I don't believe you have a check-and-balance function."

Art Meat Blog is the name of the Free Art for Bloggers service I started.  Basically I am compiling all of my sketches, cartoons and doodles in one place for others to use on their blogs and posts.  Simply copy and paste the coding under any image you'd like to include.

Why?  Why did I do this?  Often times when I get onto sites like PBA or KOS I get overwhelmed by text and don't know where to even start reading.  I thought adding some color form and texture to the web wood be a good thing.

Enjoy them :)

Update, sorry for the wrong link, should be fixed now.

Cross-posted from The Disgruntled Chemist

They're at it again, changing the text of AP stories to suit their political agenda. I thought this was supposed to be illegal...

From the Associated Press article, as reprinted in the San Diego Union-Tribune, and the Chicago Tribune, and the Indianapolis Star, or the Boston Globe, or ...well, you get the picture:

The PBA could use a little humor...

This is pretty damned funny. Hat tip to Randi Rhodes.