So, um, what exactly are these tiny balls of cells going to be doing for all of eternity?*In the months before the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, British intelligence had secret meetings in Amman, Jordan, with Habbush, chief of Saddam’s intelligence network. Habbush demanded a safe way out, if-and-when the U.S. invaded. Habbush repeatedly told the British that Saddam had no WMD; all programs had ended in the 1990’s; and the book says the Bush White House didn’t want to hear it - and didn’t want to hear more reports on what Habbush was saying.If Suskind's account of this can be corroborated - and there must be a full investigation from Congress - there is no option but to impeach.
The U.S. invaded in March ‘03. Habbush was ready. He slipped out of Baghdad with the help of U.S. intelligence and into Amman…
In October ‘03, CIA paid Habbush $5 million as part of his resettlement. By then, the White House had finally thought of a way to use Habbush. … The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq — thus showing, finally that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda… The letter also mentioned suspicious shipments to Iraq from Niger set up with al Qaeda’s assistance. The idea was to take the letter to Habbush and have him transcribe it in his own neat handwriting on a piece of Iraqi government stationery, to make it look legitimate. CIA would then take the finished product to Baghdad and have someone release it to the media.
Suskind says he spoke on the record with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction. Nonetheless, his book relates, Bush decided to invade Iraq three months later — with the forged letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam bolstering the U.S. rationale to go into war.Update: May as well count this towards that slam dunk case (h/t Think Progress)
By the end of 2005, those defending the regime of torture were no longer seeking primarily to protect the search for valuable intelligence. They were fighting for its survival, in the face of considerable evidence of the failure of SERE and other programs, because they feared being prosecuted should the program be halted and exposed. Even releasing detainees whom they knew to be entirely innocent was dangerous, since once released they could talk. “People will ask where they’ve been and ‘What have you been doing with them?’” Cheney said in a White House meeting. “They’ll all get lawyers.”Update II: I was planning on writing a seperate post today commenting on Glenn Greenwald's recent post 9/11 anthrax attacks posts, but this one is relevant to the Suskind allegation.
Given everything that has happened over the last seven years -- not just with the anthrax attacks but with countless episodes of Government deceit and corruption -- it's astonishing (and more than a little disturbing) how many people are willing, even eager, to assume that the Government's accusations against Ivins are accurate even without seeing a shred of evidence to support those claims.When it comes to finding out how it came to be that domestic anthrax attacks - mailed to "liberal" figures - which originated from a military lab were used to help sell an invasion of Iraq despite those anthrax letters having nothing to do with Iraq; and when it comes to investigating whether or not the White House attempted to retroactively fabricate evidence linking al Qaeda and Iraq - is it possible that as a nation we might take an interest in such matters that is equal to, at least, that which we take in Britney Spears or the children of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt?
When you add on to that the magnitude of this case and the ample reasons for error and deceit -- it's the first lethal bioterrorism attack on the U.S., one which, according to the Government itself, originated at a U.S. Government facility, perpetrated by a U.S. Army scientist, that was then used by numerous factions inside the Government and out to ratchet up fear levels and falsely blame Iraq and/or Al Qaeda for the attacks and, thereafter, was blamed on someone who appears to have been completely innocent -- what minimally rational person would be willing to assume that the Government's uncorroborated,unexamined, untested claims are accurate?
Our interest here is the revelation that Egypt will attack the revived state of Israel, which will them be under the control of a false Messiah. This man will probably be a Jew who works closely with the world dictator who will them come to power in Rome.I got the quote at this site, which has numerous other excerpted quotes from the book. As I noted in the edit I made to the previous post, given that Lindsey has been proven wrong about his predictions for 30 years now, he may have revised his views somewhat since having written this.
The host, "Wallace Theodore," begins by saying that the live broadcasts of both of Carpathia's press conferences and his speech were replayed throughout the evening on all the news channels. "You've become a popular man in this country seemingly all at once," he says.Carpathia smiled. "Like anyone from Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, I am amazed at your technology. I --"The Romanian = Roman bit might work a little better if Nicolae's surname were not taken from a mountain range that's nowhere near Italy, or if there were any truth to the idea that many Romanians are ethnically Italian, but such inconvenient facts don't matter as much as the requirements of the Bible Prophecy Antichrist Identification System, which calls for a Roman Antichrist.
"But isn't it true, sir, that your roots are actually in Western Europe? Though you were born in Romania, are you not by heritage actually Italian?"
"That is true, as it is true of many native Romanians. Thus the name of our country. But as I was saying about your technology. It is amazing, but I confess I did not come to your country to become or to be made into a celebrity. ..."
Since the begginning of this decade, population policy as been hijacked by shortsighted ideology. Leaders of the U.S. religious right have called for ending U.S. support for family planning. While that has not happened entirely, the Bush administration has slashed aid to the U.N. Population Fund and recommended large cuts in direct U.S. funding of family planning services. It's hard to think of a single more misguided policy; it runs directly against American interests in the reduction of conflict and terror, as well as against the support of economic development and environmental sustainability more generally.Not to mention it is an effort by a patriarchal authoritarian faction to reduce the reproductive rights of women; which itself tends to be part of a larger pattern of restricting the rights of women in general. (See The Fundamentals of Extremism for an extended discussion of the subject.)
This morning, I heard an astonishing interview on WNYC that discussed a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) draft document that was just leaked. This document proposes to redefine nearly all forms of birth control, especially birth control pills, as a form of abortion and allows any federal grant recipient to obstruct a woman's access to contraception [PDF]. Considering that roughly half of all American women use birth control pills, I think this is a shocking proposal that, if enacted, will change modern American society as we know it.
[snip]
Since it is impossible to determine whether an egg has been fertilized, this means that a woman can never prove that she is not pregnant. As a result, it will be legal to block women's access to a tremendous variety of health services, treatments and medications under the guise that they "might possibly cause abortion." Not only that, but this will shut down access to family planning, will remove contraceptive equity from health insurance plans, and will allow pharmacists to refuse to fill women's birth control prescriptions. Further, this also blocks rape survivors from being provided with emergency contraception to prevent an unwanted pregnancy.
This HHS proposal will penalize the more than 500,000 medical institutions that rely on federal medicaid funds, and even entire states, if even one woman is provided with birth control pills or access to medical treatments, such as treatment for cancer and other life-threatening illnesses, that might potentially cause "abortion" to occur.
Hey, Bill O'Reilly. Did you know that the racist madman above advocating infanticide (and tacit genocide) is a columnist at Townhall.com? You know, the place that Mary Katherine Ham - the guest you bring on, when ever you're calling someone you don't like a Nazi or the KKK, to say how mean and nasty "liberals" are while also saying how the folks at Townhall don't tolerate hate like Daily Kos does - works? And guess what else - he's been a guest at various Fox News programs on more than a few occasions.
You know, I have pretty low expectations for the sort of rhetoric that I expect to hear from AM pundits like Reagan, but this is one of the most frankly disturbing and horrific things I've ever heard uttered by any of them. I am so dismayed that someone can go on the air and say things like this to an audience of millions and get paid very well to do so. Shame on Townhall, Fox News, Human Events, News Max and whatever other organizations provide this eliminationist bigot a forum to spread such disgusting hate.
Joss Whedon's Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Sci-fi geeks will already be familiar with Whedon's work, but for those not in the know, Whedon is the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly, and the upcoming Dollhouse.
The feature is a quirky musical about the aspiring super-villian Dr. Horrible (Neal Patrick Harris of Doogie Howser, M.D. fame) trying to win the heart of Penny (Felicia Day from Buffy), a girl from his laundrymat, and defeat his rival Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion from Buffy and Firefly). It was created during the writer's strike last year and was shot in 6 days.
So how long do you think it will be before this sort of conspiratorial extremism becomes regular mainstream fodder? This may originate with extremists, but it is only a matter of time before Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and Sean Hannity are speculating about the mysterious deaths surrounding Obama like they still do with the Clintons.Well, it's still up in the air on how long it will be before the AM dial is buzzing with speculation about deaths surrounding Obama, but the mainstreaming of Obama as Anti-Christ seems to be in full gear.
Obama's world tour provided a foretaste of the reception he can expect to receive. He will probably also stand in some European capital, addressing the people of the world and telling them that he is the one that they have been waiting for. And he can expect as wildly enthusiastic a greeting as Obama got in Berlin.You'll notice that Lindsey doesn't think Obama is the Anti-Christ, which, like Hagee, seems to be a quirk of his bigotry. He thinks the "False Prophet" of the Anti-Christ will be a Jew (or at least he did in the book)**
The Bible calls that leader the Antichrist. And it seems apparent that the world is now ready to make his acquaintance.
At this point the religious framework of the radical right intersects with its conspiratorial view of politics. The tribulation will be the era of the Antichrist, Satan's final instrument in his struggle to defeat God in the battle for control of the world. Rightists see the federal government falling more and more under the control of malevolent forces. In this context one can understand why George Bush's popularization of the phrase "new world order" at the time of the gulf war was a political gaffe. He meant, of course, a reinvigoration of the system of collective security envisioned by the drafters of the United Nations Charter. But to some, the phrase "new world order" refers to the imposition of the Antichrist's rule. Important segments of the evangelical mainstream have endorsed this view. Pat Robertson in his 1991 book The New World Order uses the phrase as a code word for a diabolical plot, which he describes with anti-Semitic over-tones. The fact that "new world order" has taken on conspiratorial associations for Protestants outside the radical right is seen by rightists as a validation of their own worldview.This McCain ad is downright irresponsible and dangerous.
For the radical right, the "new world order" involves a conspiracy in which the United Nations plays a central role. While it may seem odd to attribute great power to so ineffectual an organization, the right regards the UN as the instrument through which national governments will be destroyed, enabling the Antichrist to gain control of the world. Since any government associated with the UN is deemed to be part of the Antichrist plot, the national government is illegitimate. The right concludes, finally, that groups and localities must defend themselves militarily against an alien, hostile state which is seeking to uproot the Constitution in favor of "one-world government."
From the 80s cult classic Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon
I just noticed that my pick for greatest fight scene ever in the history of cinema made it as a nomination for Best Fight Scene Ever at The Geek blog of the BrisbaneTimes. Go ahead and nominate your favorite fight scene.
This morning, Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) held a press conference to express their “pleasure” about President Bush’s statement this morning regarding what he described as “encouraging news from Iraq” and “the success of the surge.”America was not attacked by Iraqi insurgents on 9/11/01. Lieberman is echoing the same propaganda of the White House front group Freedom's Watch.
Lieberman then announced that he and Graham would do their part in celebrating the surge by introducing a resolution in the Senate “recognizing” its “strategic success” in “the central front in the war on terror.” Then, Lieberman went slightly off course, not seeming to recognize just who attacked the United States on 9/11 and from where:LIEBERMAN: That’s why Senator Graham and I are introducing a resolution recognizing the strategic success that the surge has achieved in a central front — the central front of the war on terror against the enemies who attacked America on 9/11/01, and expressing our thanks to our troops who’ve made that success possible.
Iran gives fuel to the Manichean and paranoid world view: if the mighty United States is losing in Iraq it must be because we haven't gone to war with the meddling Iranians who can be blamed for our failures in Iraq. Since we are fighting in Iraq against the Evil of "Islamofascist" terrorists ("they attacked us" on 9/11, says White House front group Freedom's Watch) then we must go to war with Iran as a necessary part of the War on Terror and anyone who says otherwise has forgotten 9/11 or doesn't want the United States to win the "war on terror." Manichean warriors cannot or do not distinguish between al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, Baathists, Shia, Sunni, Iranian mullahs, etc. - they are all the Terrorists. They are all "Islamofascists" and we are in a world war against Them because "they" attacked us on 9/11.
Anxious about paying for the health care you need? No wonder. Health care costs continue to climb, and most companies are requiring employees to pay a larger and larger share. Many of us worry that we won't be able to pay all our medical bills following a major illness or injury.
The Cover America Tour, sponsored by Consumer Reports Health, will roam the country this summer, putting faces on the flaws in our broken health care system. At every stop, we'll videotape Americans talking about the challenges they've experienced getting the affordable, high quality health care they need.
We want to make sure that politicians promoting solutions listen to your voice, not just the voices of the big money lobbyists representing the health care industry.
Stewart: You'll rubber stamp?In reality, Congress is now Democratically controlled and has been so since Jan. 07 (one would presume the the Speaker of the House would be aware that her party is, in fact, the majority party). And it was, in fact, this Democratic Congress which just rewarded President Bush for illegally voiding the 4th Amendment for the entire nation by giving him precisely the powers he wanted and by denying citizens access to the courts to protect their rights by granting telecom companies retroactive immunity for helping the government to illegally spy on them - something which President Bush was unable to obtain from the previous Republican Congress.
Pelosi: No rubber stamp. And in terms of, say, for example, domestic surveillance, no president, Democrat or Republican should have the power that this president wanted to have. So it isn't -- and the Congress of the United States has to assert its prerogatives. And this Republican Congress has been a rubber stamp for so long, but that will change.
And, by the way, one thing she says is undoubtedly true: the Democratic congress will give President Obama a much harder time than they ever gave Bush. No rubber stamps, that's for sure. The only time Democrats ever put up a fight is against their own.That certainly was the case made by Walter Karp in Liberty Under Siege. And recall the asymmetry of Democrats who voted to censure Bill Clinton for lying about a sexual affair with another adult not voting to censure George W. Bush for lying about illegally have authorized spying on American citizens.
"Rational response" by Greydon Square
This week's episode of Skepticality features a discussion with Square.
"There's a whole category of mass killers who are seeking vengeance against a group of people who they feel are taking away their birthright, their opportunities, and making it difficult to succeed," says Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, author of "Extreme Killing." "They don't see themselves as criminals, but ... as striking a measure of justice, winning one for the little guy. This case may show that [Jim Adkisson] perceived that society has been bending backward to favor disenfranchised groups so they're trying to get some justice for their own victimization."And from a post I wrote about propaganda in relation to the estate tax
Police say Mr. Adkisson, an unemployed mechanical engineer, left a note listing his own inability to find a job as one reasons for his attack. He also railed against the Unitarian Universalist denomination as being "liberal," including the church's advocacy for gay rights. The FBI is investigating the shooting as a hate crime.
"This is not just violence in a vacuum," says Brian Levin, professor of criminal justice and director of the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. "When they perceive themselves to have played by the rules, they will lash out indiscriminately not just at innocent people, but innocent people who symbolize what they believe has done them wrong."
Our tax system has been rigged to flow wealth upwards to the richest 1 percent of the country like Niagra Falls in reverse, yet the middle class, feeling the squeeze of an increased tax burden, votes to restore a system of wealth transferance that harkens back to feudal aristocracy. I expect that in the future anthropologists are going to look back on this "Death tax" craze like we look back on witchcraft crazes. Funny thing is those served as a means of redirecting people's attention away from the source of their troubles, too. In the words of anthropologist Marvin Harris:andThe principal result of the witch-hunt system was that the poor came to believe that they were being victimized by witches and devils instead of princes and popes. Did your, roof leak, your cow abort, your oats wither, your wine go sour, your head ache, your baby die? It was the work of the witches. Preoccupied with the fantastic activities of these demons, the distraught, alienated, pauperized masses blamed the rampant Devil instead of the corrupt clergy and the rapacious nobility.The conservative movement's Devil is the "tax and spend" Liberal. The Limbaugh's Youth I was talking to calls them Socialists. Saint O'Reilly, savior of Christmas, prefers S-P.
And unless the Democrats stand up and start developing a narrative explaining what's happening to the country, we're going to have economic mad Hatters like Grover Norquist telling the public that the principle behind the estate tax is the same one that was behind the Holocaust.I listened to Sean Hannity's radio program today for approximately two minutes and was informed by Hannity - whose book Let Freedom Ring was found in Adkisson's home - that:
And as things get tougher for the average American, with the Democrats having failed to explain to them what's happening, they're already going to know which witches to burn.
If a Democrat becomes president expect to have our public discourse overtaken and overwhelmed with the most extreme, insane, and rotten attacks and smears from the conservative movement that you can possibly imagine ...Ok, now from Media Matters
...
Belief that Bill Clinton was the anti-Christ was a principal belief of militia movement extremists. If either Obama or Clinton becomes president look for a resurgence in the patriot movement, with these folks going off into the woods, stockpiling weapons, and preparing to wage war with the anti-Christ.
But excluding some sort of national catastrophe, the real threat is not going to be them. (Although the families of those killed by Timothy McVeigh might beg to differ.) The bigger threat is the one Hofstadter recognized, that this kind of endless mindless drivel that comes from the Drudge-Hannity-Limbaugh axis of misinformation will create a political climate in which rational pursuit of our well-being and safety is impossible.
SUSSMAN: You know, emperor of the world. You hit it on the head, my man. Now, I will wax religy for just a moment. As I was watching that speech, I could have sworn [Obama] was running for Antichrist.And from Orcinus
[snip]
This is what we're looking for in terms of the Antichrist. That's what he's running for, in my opinion.
Slowly but surely, the old extremist right of the 1990s -- the ones who saw Bill Clinton as the New World Order Antichrist and formed militias to stop him -- has been crawling back out of the woodwork in response to Obama's looming presidency.So how long do you think it will be before this sort of conspiratorial extremism becomes regular mainstream fodder? This may originate with extremists, but it is only a matter of time before Rush Limbaugh, Neal Boortz, and Sean Hannity are speculating about the mysterious deaths surrounding Obama like they still do with the Clintons.
Now they're replaying one of their old favorites: the fake "body count" e-mail. Gavin M at Sadly, No! has the details
[snip]
The source of these mails is indeterminate. But you may recall that the similarly spurious "Clinton body count" e-mails that flooded our inboxes in the '90s was the product of the black-helicopter militia crowd:
Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals "who are ruining the country," court records show.Did that sanctimonious windbag even address this tonight? No, of course not. But this is the same fool who has been saying over and over again that he fears violence resulting in death is going to occur because of the supposed hatred being fomented at Daily Kos or HuffingtonPost.
...
Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."
Adkisson told Still that "he could not get to the leaders of the liberal movement that he would then target those that had voted them in to office."
...
Inside the house, officers found "Liberalism is a Mental Health Disorder" by radio talk show host Michael Savage, "Let Freedom Ring" by talk show host Sean Hannity, and "The O'Reilly Factor," by television talk show host Bill O'Reilly.
O'Reilly uses a vast majority of his political commentary to frame liberals as a dangerous threat to American citizens. To achieve this, O'Reilly does much more than simply describe readers of liberal websites as 'Nazis.' He renames them 'Secular-Progressives' or 'S-Ps' and then proceeds to equate these terms with supposed guerrilla programs to seize control of the United States.Maybe this killer was just trying to "bring horror into the world of" liberals like O'Reilly said he wants to do with "S-P"s.
The rhetoric against goverment no longer predominates the airwaves. Now, the biggest target of talk radio is liberals, who have been deemed the "enemy within." How long might it be before we see the results of the seed of hate that is being planted by the people who "joke" about the elimination of liberals?Do you think the commenter who on 4.10.08 responded to my post linked above about former O'Reilly Factor guest host Michelle Malkin loving the hate-mongering of friend of the O'Reilly Factor Ann Coulter (bold emphasis mine):
Adkisson targeted the church, Still wrote in the document obtained by WBIR-TV, Channel 10, "because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of media outlets."And given his reading list, it's easy to see where Adkisson got the idea that Democrats are losing the "war on terror" and that the media is biased for "liberals." This is standard dogma of the conservative movement. Case in point and case in point.
Under the Bush tax cuts, the 400 taxpayers with the highest incomes - a minimum of $87 million in 2000, the last year for which the government will release such data - now pay income, Medicare and Social Security taxes amounting to virtually the same percentage of their incomes as people making $50,000 to $75,000.
Those who are thorough going progressives hold to American democratic ideals on just about all issues. They are the bedrock of our democracy. But, when seen metaphorically on a left-to-right scale, the bedrock of our democracy is on one side - the "extreme left." The left-to-right scale metaphor makes it look like the bedrock of our democracy is "extreme." And conservatives have been characterizing defenders of traditional American ideals like civil liberties, the welcoming of immigrants, and public education as extremists.
Accordingly, the left-to-right scale metaphor creates a metaphorical "center" with about a third of voters located between the two "extremes" - even though their views vary every which way and don't constitute a single mode of thought at all.
Metaphor is a normal, and mostly unconscious, mechanism of thought. It is sometimes harmless, and at other times can be used for good or ill. The left-to-right scale metaphor is not harmless. It is being politically manipulated to the disadvantage of American democratic ideals.
When Jesse Helms died last month, there was a discussion about Helms in an online email group of prominent liberal Beltway journalists, and one participant asked whether the Left has any equivalent to Jesse Helms, and a well-known "liberal" journalist responded: "Yes -- the ACLU extremists." Time's Joe Klein said last year that objections to the Senate's warrantless eavesdropping bill were merely "fodder for lawyers and civil liberties extremists" -- a phrase which GOP Rep. Pete Hoekstra then praised in National Review.It would seem that a significant portion of our political press have turned into relativists. Given that Jesse Helms was a racist bigot who sought to deny civil rights to a portion of American citizens and the ACLU is a non-racist organization dedicated to preserving the civil rights of all American citizens, the only measure by which both can be considered "extreme" is if you're judging commitment to either cause. In which case, it certainly is a sad reflection on the state of political discourse in America that not really caring all that much about the rights guaranteed Americans in their Constitution and Bill of Rights is considered being "moderate."
On today’s Brian and the Judge radio show, Fox News host Brian Kilmeade twice confused Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Osama bin Laden — within five seconds. Even after catching himself, Kilmeade immediately makes the mistake again:It's fairly easy to see how Kilmeade made this mistake. B Obama and Osama B sound sort of the same so when one is thought about networks of association in the brain activate the other. Then you have the Afghanistan part which also activates brain association with Bin Laden.KILMEADE: Michael, first off, is Bin Laden — excuse me, uh, is Osama — uh, is Barack Obama right when he says the central location of the war on terror is in Afghanistan?
STEIN: I want -- I'm glad you brought up this Denver thing. I don't like the idea of Senator Obama giving his acceptance speech in front of 75,000 wildly cheering people. That is not the way we do things in political parties in the United States of America. We have a contained number of people in an arena. Seventy-five-thousand people at an outdoor sports palace, well, that's something the Fuehrer would have done. And I think whoever is advising Senator Obama to do this is bringing up all kinds of very unfortunate images from the past.You know what I find scarily authoritarian? The President of the United States of America asserting the right to abrogate any law or the Constitution itself as a matter of national security at his discretion. I find the President asserting the right to designate American citizens "enemy combatants" and then lock them up indefinitely scarily authoritarian. I find the President and his lawyers saying that national security concerns make previous law obsolete and therefore torture is now legal scarily authoritarian. And I find the totalitarian illogic of this administration scarily authoritarian.
BECK: Well, yeah, you know what? I've been -- I've been saying that we're headed towards a Mussolini-style presidency forever.
STEIN: Well, I think --
BECK: I mean it's crazy.
STEIN: It's a scary situation. I mean, I think he has to recognize some bounds on his own ego. I understand politicians are politicians because they have ego deficit problems and they try to cure them by having lots of worshipand adulation and adoration. But 75,000 people screaming at an outdoor arena, that's just too much. It's just -- it's scarily authoritarian.
In fact the "libertine crisis" began when, in 1619 at Toulouse, an itinerant teacher of philosophy and medicine called Giulio Cesare Vanini was burned at the stake. His crime was "atheism" (but also, by implication, homosexuality). His name became a byword throughout Europe for atheism and the "naturalism" that accompanied it - that is, the view that nature is the ultimate reality and source of all things.That is certainly a Socratic sounding death.
Vanini started as a monk, studying theology and medicine in Italy before travelling throughout Europe, working as a tutor or secretary in noble households. He got into trouble for homosexuality and for killing a man in a brawl, and therefore escaped to England for a time, where he abjured his Catholicism. On returning to France he earned his keep by giving private lessons. In Toulouse, an ardently orthodox city, one of his pupils denounced him for teaching that men had no souls but died as other animals did, and that the Virgin Mary was an ordinary woman who needed to have sex in order to get pregnant. The city authorities decided that he was attracting too many youths to his lectures, so to get rid of him they put him on trial and condemned him to death. While being led to the stake Vanini cried out in his native Italian, "I die cheerfully as befits a philosopher!"
Halliburton's aversion to the government was cast aside in 1962, when the company bought out Brown and Root, a Texas engineering and construction firm with a political past. Brothers George and Herman Brown had built their company through government contracting, thanks in large part to their connections to a young Texas Democrat named Lyndon Johnson. Johnson played a critical role is shuttling legislation through the House of Representatives to guarantee Brown and Root's first big project, a dam in the Texas Hill Country. And Brown and Root's contributions played a critical role in Johnson's first big political triumph. In his tumultuous run for Senate in 1948, which resulted in a razor-edge victory, Brown and Root made sure that several grocery bags filled with thousands of dollars quietly made their way to Johnson's campaign. As Johnson rose politically, Brown and Root rose financially. The company won an impressive list of federal contracts, from military bases abroad to shipbuilding during World War II to the Johnson Space Center in Houston. By 1969 Brown and Root had become the largest contruction company in the nation, with sales of 1.6 billion.
The Vietnam War gave Brown and Root its final boost to the top. After being bought out by Halliburton, Brown and Root joined a consortium of four companies in Vietnam that built $2 billion worth of airfields, hospitals, and military bases between 1965 and 1972. By 1967 the General Accounting Office (GAO) had faulted the "Vietnam builders" for massive accounting lapses and allowing thefts of materials. Brown and Root became a target of antiwar protesters, who dubbed the company Burn and Loot. The controversy even prompted a denunciation from a young Republican congressman from Illinois, an exact echo of the remarks that Democrats would make about the same company forty years later. "Why this huge contract has not been and is not now being adquately audited is beyond me, " he said. "The potential for waste and profiteering under such a contract is substantial." The congressman's name was Donald Rumsfield.
I'd encourage you to click the 3 Quarks Daily link above, as it excerpts an article which explains further.
Via normblog, the Russians are having a national poll on who's the greatest Russian of all time. The first of the two front runners, Nicholas II, was a racist and a bigot who regularly blamed Jews for his governments failings and incited pogroms throughout the empire. The other, Joseph Stalin, developed the model for a totalitarian regime that murdered countless millions.
One of the easiest mistakes to make when judging a threatening movement is to perceive it as being more unified and monolithic than it really is. So let’s do a little speculating here. Let’s suppose the Religious Right gains long-term control of the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of the federal government and accomplishes its common agenda ...And as James Madison put it (bold emphasis mine)
Would the victors then all clap each other on the back and live happily ever after in Taliban America? Maybe they would. But recalling what we know about the dominance drives and prejudices of Double Highs, wouldn’t a subsequent Catholic versus Protestant struggle for control be just as likely? Coalitions last only as long as the common enemy [e.g. godless "liberals" or S-Ps] does, and few things provoke animosity the way religious differences do among the very religious. And if the Protestants subdued the Catholics, would that be the end of religious warfare, or the beginning of the next round? After all, Baptists and Pentecostals don’t really like each other all that much.
The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it. Who does not see that the same authority which can establish Christianity, in exclusion of all other Religions, may establish with the same ease any particular sect of Christians, in exclusion of all other Sects.
The problem with the New Yorker cover is that it isn't satire. It isn't satire because it quite simply is an accurate representation of the way that authoritarian movement conservatives view Barack and Michelle Obama. If I didn't know better I'd assume it was a cover of Newsmax or National Review or something.Jonah Goldberg writes (bold emphasis mine):
What I find interesting about the New Yorker cover is that it's almost exactly the sort of cover you could expect to find on the front of National Review. Roman Genn could do wonders with that concept. Of course, if we ran the exact same art, the consensus from the liberal establishment could be summarized in words like "Swiftboating!" and, duh, "racist." It's a trite point, but nonetheless true that who says something often matters more than what is said — and, obviously, that satire is in the eye of the beholder.Meanwhile, Alonzo Fyfe at Atheist Ethicist has written about the subject.
The vast majority of the people who will see the cover of the New Yorker magazine will not think too deeply about it. They will glance at the cartoon, which will generate an instant emotional reaction. They will then attach that emotion to Barak Obama and, over the next four months, interpret further information through the lens that this cartoon generated.And Chet Scoville at The Vanity Press has written a post which makes a point nearly identical to the one I made, except he articulates it better (not surprising given that he's a English professor)
This instant, unreflective, shallow interpretation of the cartoon for a lot of people will be the idea that the Michelle and Barak Obama hold pro-terrorist/anti-American sympathies who are trying to gain control of the White House. The cartoon ends up reinforcing the very ideas that the author intended to ridicule.
A portion of the U.S. population actually believes all of those things about the Obamas. The New Yorker cover does not work as satire because there's no exaggeration. Because everyone always references Swift on occasions like this, let me just point out that nobody thought that the solution to Ireland's troubles was to start eating children. "A Modest Proposal" worked because it was a logical exaggeration of what people actually believed: namely, that free markets were the way to go and that people should be seen primarily as resources (haven't come too far since then, have we?). But the New Yorker cover reflects things that people actually say, and inAnd
many cases have come to believe. That's a different set of circumstances altogether. Because it's styled as an in-joke for the cognoscenti (as New Yorker cartoons usually are), it does not make itself clear to those who are outside its orbit. In other words, like most in-jokes, it reinforces both the self-satisfaction of those already in the know and the misunderstandings of everyone else.
It might have been effective satire, say, forty years ago when this sort of paranoia was confined to blurry mimeographs produced in someone's basement -- when there was in fact something hidden that would have wilted upon being exposed to a critical mass media. That, however, is not how things are anymore.Precisely. Which is why I wrote in the comments that:
The New Yorker considers the cover self-evidently absurd, but were the self-evident absurdity of noise machine smears sufficient to rebut them then they wouldn't be as effective as they are.An image like this is going to activate the networks in people's brains that will play on any prejudicial fears they have without doing anything to change those beliefs.
Plus, we have a media that has granted legitimacy and normalcy to views that are self-evidently absurd. Millions of people take seriously Rush Limbaugh when he says that Osama bin Laden is a Democrat, while the New York Times magazine does a white-wash cover story on him. Ann Coulter can talk about needing to kill John Lindh so that "liberals" know they can be killed too and she gets a white-wash cover story in Time magazine.
KERRY HALL: She had been working on a conveyor belt. She was grabbing boxes. And she didn't want to get behind in her work so she tried to grab two boxes at the same time and her right arm ended up getting caught in the conveyor belt. It grabbed her arm, broke her arm and amputated the tip of her, uh, one of her fingers.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ: you know, she gets rushed to the -- to the hospital, uh, you know, she doesn't know what's going on…
KERRY HALL: While she was at the hospital she says the plant nurse came and visited with her and fed her but also told her that she was expected back for the next shift. Patrick Scott: So she wound up going to work and saying that she was -- wanted to go home. She had asked to go home, that she was crying at work because she couldn't deal with the pain of the physical loss of her finger and her broken arm and the pain of having your body altered.
NARRATOR: Jaime Hernandez worked at Columbia Farms. He saw Cornelia Vicente the day after her she returned to work. The next day when she got there she went around, trembling, sad, crying like she wasn't even there. She wasn't there. Physically yes, but in her thoughts no. She was out of it, gone. I felt like crying with her.
NARRATOR: The Columbia Farms log revealed that Vicente would spend over nine weeks on what it known as "job transfer," given tasks away from the conveyor belt.
KERRY HALL: She said at one point they asked her to sweep and she said it was -- she described it as an impossible task given her broken arm and the pain she was feeling.
NARRATOR: When the reporters compared Vicente's account of her injuries and her medical records with what House of Raeford Farms had reported to regulators they found the company had mentioned the broken arm…but not the amputation.
KERRY HALL: That wasn't noted on this.
NARRATOR: And, the OBSERVER would report, because Vicente didn't miss a complete shift, the accident wouldn't have to be counted as a lost-time injury.
KERRY HALL: She was on job transfer for 64 days. No days away from work.
The need for social reinforcement runs so deeply in authoritarians, they will believe someone who says what they want to hear even if you tell them they should not. I have several times asked students or parents to judge the sincerity of a universitystudent who wrote arguments either condemning, or supporting, homosexuals. Butsome subjects were told the student had been assigned to condemn (or support) homosexuals as part of a philosophy test to see how well the student could make up arguments for anything, on the spot. Other subjects were told the student could chooseto write on either side of the issue, and had chosen to make the case she did.And from earlier in the same chapter
Obviously, you can’t tell anything about the real opinions of someone who was assigned the point of view of her essay. But high RWAs believed that the antihomosexual essay that a student was forced to write reflected that student’s personal views almost as much as when a student had chosen this point of view. In other words,as in the previous experiments, the authoritarians ignored the circumstances and believed the student really meant what she had been assigned to say--when they liked what she said. Low RWAs, in comparison, paid attention to the circumstances.
They particularly had trouble figuring out that an inference or deduction was wrong. To illustrate, suppose they had gotten the following syllogism:From Media Matters
All fish live in the sea.
Sharks live in the sea..
Therefore, sharks are fish.
The conclusion does not follow, but high RWAs would be more likely to say the reasoning is correct than most people would. If you ask them why it seems right, they would likely tell you, “Because sharks are fish.” In other words, they thought the reasoning was sound because they agreed with the last statement. If the conclusion is right, they figure, then the reasoning must have been right. Or to put it another way, they don’t “get it” that the reasoning matters--especially on a reasoning test.
This is not only “Illogical, Captain,” as Mr. Spock would say, it’s quite dangerous, because it shows that if authoritarian followers like the conclusion, the logic involved is pretty irrelevant. The reasoning should justify the conclusion, but for a lot of high RWAs, the conclusion validates the reasoning. Such is the basis of many a prejudice, and many a Big Lie that comes to be accepted.
On the July 14 broadcast of his nationally syndicated radio show, G. Gordon Liddy said of the image of Sen. Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, on the July 21 cover of The New Yorker: "It's got Obama in his Muslim dress with a turban, and he's there with his wife. His wife has a 'mad at the world' afro, circa 1968, she -- she's got bandoliers and an assault weapon, and there in their fireplace is burning the American flag. The New Yorker finally got it right."And also from Media Matters
In a July 13 online poll, the conservative website WorldNetDaily.com asked readers to "[s]ound off on the New Yorker's cover with turban-wearing [Sen. Barack] Obama, gun toting wife [Michelle Obama]" by choosing one of 12 options, including the factually baseless options: "Funny, because there's some truth in it" and "The image isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family." While the New Yorker said in a press release that its cover "satirizes the use of scare tactics and misinformation in the Presidential election to derail Barack Obama's campaign," for a majority of respondents to WND's poll, the cover apparently provided support for their false perceptions of Obama's religion and patriotism: As of 10:07 a.m. ET on July 14, the most popular option in the poll -- selected by 60 percent of WND respondents -- was "The image isn't too far from the dangerous truth about the Obama family." The second-most popular option was "Funny, because there's some truth in it," which was selected by 11 percent of respondents.The Mirriam Webster dictionary definition of satire
1: a literary work holding up human vices and follies to ridicule or scornThe problem with the New Yorker cover is that it isn't satire. It isn't satire because it quite simply is an accurate representation of the way that authoritarian movement conservatives view Barack and Michelle Obama. If I didn't know better I'd assume it was a cover of Newsmax or National Review or something.
2: trenchant wit, irony, or sarcasm used to expose and discredit vice or folly
