August 2009
24 posts
If you see light at the end of the tunnel (Spotify... →
If you see light (if you see light)
At the end of the tunnel (at the end of the tunnel)
It might just be (it might just be)
Because you’re dead
Light at the end of the tunnel, by Roy Zimmerman.
Hugo Chavez and the private media →
Salim Lamrani, a French academic and journalist, criticises Reporters Without Borders and the international media’s handling of the story of several Venezuelan radio stations being shut down.
RWB and the media multinationals have carefully concealed the truth in order to mislead public opinion and present the most democratic government in Latin America (Hugo Chavez has faced 15 electoral...
Britain & Canada's assault on Kyoto →
An utterly brilliant, and equally shocking, piece by Solomon Hughes on Canada’s tar sands industry and the response from the British government.
[E]xtracting the oil [from tar sands] is a bit like trying to make lollies from beach deposits left by distracted children — you need to go through a lot of sand and a lot of energy before you can reform the spill from those dropped ices into a...
WatchThe Myth of American Exceptionalism — Howard Zinn
Lonelysandwich: IKEA abandons Futura for Verdana →
“It’s like trying to get served alcohol in Dubai down there.”
– Thomas Salmon
Season of Travesties: Freedom and Democracy in... →
[In Iran, a]s in Lebanon, the electoral system itself violates basic rights. Candidates have to be approved by the ruling clerics, who can and do bar policies of which they disapprove. And though repression overall may not be as harsh as in the US-backed dictatorships of the region, it is ugly enough, and in June 2009, very visibly so.
One can argue that Iranian “guided...
“Not so long ago… Bush was telling us that we would be betraying the American...”
– Robert Fisk
Back to the Future in Torture Policy →
This process of impunity is leading Washington back to a global torture policy that, during the Cold War, was bipartisan in nature: publicly advocating human rights while covertly outsourcing torture to allied governments and their intelligence agencies. In retrospect, it may become ever more apparent that the real aberration of the Bush years lay not in torture policies per se, but in the...
Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much! Ain't war hell?
"How to lose friends and alienate people" →
According to Avigdor Lieberman… Israel’s poor international image is its most pressing problem. That he could help matters by not being such a racist bastard doesn’t seem to have occurred to him, but he does have a point.
If you’re interested in the Middle East, the Heathlander blog deserves a place in your RSS reader.
"The Guardian, climate and advertising." →
Messrs Cromwell and Edwards of MediaLens send an open email to the Guardian’s George Monbiot.
Let’s accept for a moment that you are right when you say “I haven’t found an acceptable alternative” to the model of advertiser-supported mass media. So why continue focusing on this “unpleasant but apparently inescapable fact of life”? What does it matter if...
Apollo or Extinction →
Ecocide, or perhaps biocide, or perhaps omnicide, would be an act exterminating not just all humans, but the entire circle of life on planet Earth itself.
An asteroid impact, or certain kinds of disruptions of our sun, or perhaps other cosmological cataclysms could probably pull all those off without even breaking a sweat. And our sun in any case has an expiration date, some 4 or 5 billion...
“Coups happen because very wealthy people want them and help to make them happen,...”
– Robert White, former U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and current president of the Center for International Policy.
“The government forgets that George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning and not a...”
– Chris Huhne
“His parents have asked us to make clear he was not turned into a fireball.”
– The Sun
Tomgram: Are Afghan Lives Worth Anything? →
You’d have to make a desperate effort not to know that Michael Jackson (until recently excoriated by the media) had died, and you’d have to make a similarly desperate effort to know that we’ve knocked off one wedding party after another these last years in Afghanistan. One of these deaths — Jackson’s — really has little to do with us; the others are, or...
How myths are made – Bad Science →
In his Bad Science column for the Guardian today, Ben Goldacre looks at how falsehoods and distortion can spread widely. Specifically, he’s writing about Steven A. Greenberg’s analysis of distortions in scientific papers, and how they spread.
What’s described in the column sounds very familiar, and is clearly applicable to uncomfortable truths and annoying facts (for elites),...
Back up your data →
marco:
Do you have a computer?
Do you care about any of the files you’ve ever saved? Music you’ve bought from iTunes? Documents you’ve written? Pictures you’ve taken?
[…]
The only way to secure your data is to back it up.
I cannot stress this enough: BACK UP YOUR DATA.
I’d been mulling over getting an external HDD to use with Time Machine for a while, and as soon as I read this I...
“Obama has cultivated a style of presenting himself as engaging and friendly, and...”
– Noam Chomsky: Little difference between Obama, Bush in substance. (via Instapaper)