Here's a curious thing. Alley Insider has found that Fox News photoshopped (sorry, Adobe, I mean altered an image with Photoshop or perhaps some other image-altering tool) photos of people who, presumably, they don't like.
Christopher Hitchens has changed his tune on whether or not waterboarding is torture - after trying it out for himself.As if detecting my misery and shame, one of my interrogators comfortingly said, “Any time is a long time when you’re breathing water.” I could have hugged him for saying so, and just then I was hit with a ghastly sense of the sadomasochistic dimension that underlies the relationship between the torturer and the tortured. I apply the Abraham Lincoln test for moral casuistry: “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong.” Well, then, if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
Pick up the August issue of Vanity Fair, read the article and you can even watch the video.
Jim Webb wants to be Obama's vice-president. While the Wikipedia page is informative, it won't paint the picture that 23/6 ("some of the news, most of the time") has painted with its rundown of Webb's vital statistics. The quote from one of his novels, at the bottom, is... memorable.
The Carpet Bagger Report has an amusing little find about some people's use of auto-replace. Here's an excerpt:But the American Family Association’s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word “gay” in the articles with the word “homosexual.” I’m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.
The problem, of course, is that “gay” does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle reported this morning that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had “fixed” the article.
Hilarity ensues.
They are all monsters, that's the point. The show is for children, don't forget. They are monsters the kids don't have to fear. The show's message for kids was "We know you're sometimes afraid of monsters, but not all monsters are bad.
Sometimes monsters can be cute and cuddly and quirky and funny. Elmo's a monster and he has such a cute giggle! These are the good monsters.
Not like the monster sitting next to you on the sofa, watching the TV. Not like the monster WHO TOLD YOU FOR THE LAST TIME TO STOP CRYING.
Not like the monsters who kick your toys and curse under their breath. Not like the monsters who say you stole their youth and take pills because YOU'RE DRIVING ME CRAZY. Not like the monsters who meet strange men at the door and leave you home alone. Not like the monsters who hit with their hands, or their words. Not like the monsters who come into your room at night stinking of whiskey and sweat, with madness in their eyes and a belt in their hands.
On Sesame Street, the monsters have not HAD ENOUGH, and they aren't doing it FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.
Your monsters are not brought to you by the number 4 or the letter M. Your monsters don't want you to come and play, they want you to LEAVE THEM ALONE.
Cookie monster is safe, and so are Elmo and the Count. Even Oscar and Bert are your friends even if they are bit grouchy or fussy. Your monsters think our monsters are harmless.
To them.
Your monsters bought you a Tickle-Me Elmo doll, didn't they? They bought it to JUST SHUT YOU UP ALREADY. So they let you play with Elmo and make him laugh and giggle. But Elmo doesn't just laugh and giggle. Elmo loves you, and he listens.
And he records.
And soon, Elmo is going to tell you exactly what to do.
A pretty good updated version of the famous old capitalist pyramid (below). The difference between the two shows the difference between the realities of capitalism (and socialism as a reaction to it) in the days of Marx and today. (Click here for a larger version of the new one.)
I believe the most important difference is the globalisation of the economy and the corollary outsourcing of poverty. While in the 19th century, one could, say, take you by the hand and lead you through the streets of London...
...and see the people suffering at the bottom of the capitalist heap, these days you can only really see them on TV, and even then you have to go out of your way to find out about it, and even then there's such a long causal string between your actions and their suffering that you don't feel responsible or potent to do anything about it. Part of that is the media, of course, which is why us Westerners are so happy to be wedged in between the soldiers and the police.
Missing from this new pyramid, I think, are the politicians, who should be standing just behind the police, as I don't think they're quite represented by the guy at the top (at least in New Zealand; the US is a different matter).
Here's the old discrete-nations pyramid:
If the World Could Vote is one of those sites that tell us what everyone supposedly already knows. In this case, it's that the whole world would rather have Obama as president of the US than have McCain. It's not a new trend. After the 2004 election, there was a spate of sites featuring Americans apologising to the rest of the world for the results. There was even a bag company that included an apology in their exports to France.
In general, the developed world is to the left of US politics. Up and to the left, if you add an axis representing, say, literacy or education. And you'd expect New Zealand to follow that same trend. But here's the curious thing. New Zealand is one of the few countries that favour McCain over Obama.
In his, we join Thailand (96% McCain), Venezuela (100% McCain) and Kenya at 100% McCain, which presumably says more about Venezuelans and Kenyans who have the money to afford a computer that anything else.
And that's it. Human-rights paradises Israel and Indonesia are split down the middle. Israel's split probably shows, more than anything, the level of education of Israelis, as they've apparently seen through the Republican spin that Obama wants to single-handedly destroy their country. Haaretz, a particularly good Israeli newspaper, commented on this even before Obama had finalised the nomination, in an interesting editorial. Probably more on that later, as the Obama smears are downright fascinating (as is Obama's response to them.)
So, why are online Kiwis more in favour of McCain than Obama? It's not a huge majority - 55% - but it stands out in contrast against the votes of other Western countries (Australia around 90% Obama, UK 92% Obama, etc.) Any simple answer is likely to be simplistic, but there has to be something to explain the anomaly. I doubt it's a matter of racism, since our neighbourly International Home of Racism is sitting at 90% Obama.
I'm not going to speculate on it further - I'm more likely to chat about it on Thursday's Wire show on bFM, around 1.30pm. But someone with their finger more firmly on the pulse might have some suggestions.
A clip from one of my new favourite shows, Snuff Box, with Matt Berry (Sanch from Garth Marenghi's Darkplace).
Having been on the receiving end of accusations of racism for my criticism of Israel's appalling treatment of its indigenous people, and being acquainted with many people who make no distinction between Jewish people and the actions of the Israeli state, I'm always very glad to be able to point out that not all Jewish people support Israel's actions. Further, there are non-Jewish Israelis (just as there are Christian and Jewish Palestinians). And, finally, not all Israelis support their government's actions.
Of course, the majority of Israelis do support their government's treatment of the Palestinians, to varying degrees within a spectrum that most in the international community finds abhorrent. I'm not qualified to say why, but I suspect it's a combination of compulsory military service and parental conditioning. It's true that most Israelis support their government's actions, just as it's true that most Israeli chicks are intensely gorgeous.
Anyway, last weekend one Israeli peace group, Gush Shalom, marched against the occupation. They took photos. You can see them by clicking on the word: shalom.
More mesmerising than Neave TV, WikipediaVision shows where anonymous edits to Wikipedia are being made, almost in real time, and what is being edited. And there goes the rest of my day.
Towards the end of his time in government, Secretary of War Donald Rumsfeld had a chat about Iraq with military analysts about basically how bad things were going. A recent mass Freedom of Information Act application managed to get thousands of documents and audio files from the Pentagon, and so we can listen to the whole damn thing if we want to.
Fortunately, Newsvine's jfxgillis has gone through and pulled out some of the more interesting clips, along with his own analysis. You can read his commentary and hear the clips at Liquid Lunch with Donald Rumsfeld. Here's an excerpt:
...the questioner prods him back on topic by asking, "Politically, what are the challenges because you're not going to have a lot of sympathetic ears up there [on Capitol Hill]?"More commentary at Prison Planet, if you like.
Rumsfeld's answer is nothing short of stunning. No, not the part where he claims Bush is a "Victim of his success." That's just stupid. And no, after hearing his previous insult to the American public, his condemnation of us because "we don't have the maturity" to recognize the threat of terrorism--the further we get from 9/11, the less and less... he trails off. But that's not shocking, nor is his doomsday scenario, all things considered.
So let's summarize. According to Rumsfeld and his media sycophants, America has real problems: We're weak-willed, we're immature, we're forgetting what happened, and oh my God, we've elected Democrats to Congress. So, what's the "Correction" for those problems? Listen to him:
Another 9/11 attack.
Paul Neave, a British flash designer, has made my day with Neave TV. He recommends a "deep-seated urge to be totally bewildered", which fortunately I possess, and I was not disappointed. Random clips from shows and movies from around the world, switching channels with every click.
I was subjected first to some Russian talkshow with a dancer in an electronic suit that played electronic music with every move of his body; then a clip from a Godzilla film; then Dave talking to HAL in 2001; then the ever-wonderful Rejected animation. I had to stop there, because I could see this seriously eating into my work productivity.
Nice work, Paul Neave.
A quick note - there's no obvious way to stop it besides navigating away from the page or closing the tab, but Neave's included a "back to the intro page" option on the TV's right-click menu.
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