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Tuesday, Mar 11, 2003

stormin' norman

"That is a big statement, but I can offer this much immediately: At the root of flag conservatism is not madness, but an undisclosed logic. While I am hardly in accord, it is, nonetheless, logical if you accept its premises. From a militant Christian point of view, America is close to rotten. The entertainment media are loose. Bare belly-buttons pop onto every TV screen, as open in their statement as wild animals' eyes. The kids are getting to the point where they can't read, but they sure can screw. So one perk for the White House, should America become an international military machine huge enough to conquer all adversaries, is that American sexual freedom, all that gay, feminist, lesbian, transvestite hullabaloo, will be seen as too much of a luxury and will be put back into the closet again. Commitment, patriotism, and dedication will become all-pervasive national values once more (with all the hypocrisy attendant). Once we become a twenty-first-century embodiment of the old Roman Empire, moral reform can stride right back into the picture. The military is obviously more puritanical than the entertainment media. Soldiers are, of course, crazier than any average man when in and out of combat, but the overhead command is a major everyday pressure on soldiers and could become a species of most powerful censor over civilian life."

not so suddenly susan

long susan sontag interview on booktv.

a life in pictures

"a borderless space provides the opportunity to build a collective memory with a people who have no national archive. Images and recollections serve as testimony to the long and suppressed history of the Kurds."

Monday, Mar 10, 2003

Hawks Gone Wild: Vol. 1

atrios asks you to Name That War! a new reality show soon to be saturating the airwaves.

pennitent

the first effort at blogging your way to congress?

liner notes

"The element of tragedy here is arguably implicit in the whole imperial project. Ever since Rome conquered and partitioned Gaul, the best-known colonial precept has been divide et impera�"divide and rule." Yet after the initial subjugation the name of the task soon becomes the more soothing "civilizing mission," and a high value is placed on lofty, balanced, unifying administration. Later comes the point at which the colonized outgrow the rule of the remote and chilly exploiters, and then it will often be found convenient for the governor or the district commissioner to play upon the tribal or confessional differences among his subjects. From proclaiming that withdrawal, let alone partition, is the very last thing they will do, the colonial authorities move to ensure that these are the very last things they do do. The contradiction is perfectly captured in the memoir of the marvelously named Sir Penderel Moon, one of the last British administrators in India, who mordantly titled his book Divide and Quit.
"

good luck

"This is not the news as Brit Hume construes it or Dan Rather intones it. In a "Showdown: Iraq," Blix-is-nixed, pack-my-trench-coat-honey testosterone media age, Amy Goodman and her radio show, "Democracy Now!," beam in as if from some alternative left galaxy."

org.org

"Dot-org politics represents the latest manifestation of a recurrent American faith that there is something inherently good in the vox populi. Democracy is at its purest and best when the largest number of voices are heard, and every institution that comes between the people and their government -- the press, the political pros, the fund-raisers -- taints the process. ''If money is what it takes to get attention, we'll do that,'' Pariser says. ''But we'll do it the grassroots way.''

Pariser says that he and other organizers are less political propagandists than ''facilitators'' who ''help people to do what they want to do.'' Even the structure of moveon.org -- more than a million members and only four paid staff members -- embodies the idea that a simple and direct line connects scattered individuals and the expression of their political will. With an interactive feature on the Web site called the Action Forum, members regularly make suggestions and respond to the staff's and one another's ideas. Automated reports are generated by the server every week, moveon.org's staff looks at the top-rated comments -- and somehow, out of this nonstop frenzy of digital activity, a decision gets made. And, in a sense, no one makes it. Dot-org politics confirms what Tocqueville noticed over a century and a half ago: that Americans, for all our vaunted individualism, tend to dissolve in a tide of mass opinion."

secreting secrets

"An employee at the top-secret Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has been arrested following revelations in The Observer last weekend about an American 'dirty tricks' surveillance operation to win votes at the United Nations in favour of a tough new resolution on Iraq."

hedging his bets

saw this bill moyers interview with author chris hedges the other day. very persuasive perspective from someone who has been covering wars for many years.

"HEDGES: Our whole civil society is being torn apart. Once again, as is true in every war, the media parrots back the clich�s and jingles of the state. Imbibes and promotes the myth. In wartime, a press is-- the press is always part of the problem.

And that we are about to engage in that ecstatic, exciting, narcotic that is war. And that if we don't get a grasp on the poison that war is, then that poison can ultimately kills us just as surely as the disease."

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