You are currently browsing the monthly archive for November 2012.
My workshoppe of elves occasionally sends me content of the awesome variety. I share this atheist tidbit with you today. :)
Bach’s music uniquely visualized by Stephen Malinowski.
Reading though threads on abortion always raises my blood pressure, but it is worth it for gems like this:
Dianne:
“Either it is okay to abort, or it is okay to rape”
Occasionally I shock people by saying that all anti-choice men are, on some level, rapists. Many never complete the act of rape personally*, but they are all of the rapist mentality. There’s no real difference between a man who will tell a woman that she doesn’t have the right to control how her uterus is used and one who will say that she doesn’t have the right to say how her vagina is used.
*Though, of course, if they vote for “pro-life” politicians, they are effectively participating in the sexual assault of numerous women.
Project Unbreakable is well worth your eyeball time.
Religious magic comes in so many wacky flavours. The Religious Antagonist interviews people who have found their senses and can give us an inside look at the belly of the beast.
This is the good part of an article off the Media Lens website –
the piece gets a bit loopy so if you want to read the rest please follow the link provided. The most important idea is one mentioned by Noam Chomsky, his observations give structure to the question “What is the rationale behind the choices our media makes?”
The Mystery of the Missing Clocks – By: David Edwards
The truth peeks out at us from the most unexpected places. It can be seen, for example, in the empty spaces where one might otherwise hope to find a clock in shops. The average retailer doesn’t approve of customers clock-watching – they might realise they have something more important to do and cut short their shopping trips.
Noam Chomsky crafted a small skeleton key to understanding the world:
‘The basic principle, rarely violated, is that what conflicts with the requirements of power and privilege does not exist.’ (Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Hill and Wang, New York, 1992, p.79)
Chomsky argues, for example, that George Orwell’s Animal Farm and 1984 were embraced as great novels, and standard school texts, not because they were particularly profound, but because they attacked the Soviet Union:
‘Fame, Fortune and Respect await those who reveal the crimes of official enemies; those who undertake the vastly more important task of raising a mirror to their own societies can expect quite different treatment. George Orwell is famous for Animal Farm and 1984, which focus on the official enemy. Had he addressed the more interesting and significant question of thought control in relatively free and democratic societies, it would not have been appreciated, and instead of wide acclaim, he would have faced silent dismissal or obloquy.’ (Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy, Hill And Wang, 1992, p.372)
Hans von Sponeck raised a mirror to our society in his book A Different Kind Of War – The UN Sanctions Regime In Iraq (Bergahn Books, 2006). In meticulous detail, he described how American and British policymakers had knowingly caused mass death through sanctions in Iraq from 1990-2003:
‘At no time during the years of comprehensive economic sanctions were there adequate resources to meet minimum needs for human physical and mental survival either before, or during, the Oil-for-Food Programme.’ (p.144)
The effects were catastrophic:
‘The [US-UK] hard-line approach prevailed, with the result that practically an entire nation was subjected to poverty, death and destruction of its physical and mental foundations.’ (p.161)
This being the key reason why ‘the number of excess deaths of children under five during 1991-8 was between 400,000 and 500,000’. (p.165)
I have interviewed von Sponeck several times. He could hardly be more rational and restrained, hardly better qualified to comment – he ran the UN’s oil-for-food programme in Baghdad from 1998-2000 before resigning in protest at the effects of sanctions. His book, published three years after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, could hardly have been more topical. But it has never been reviewed by any UK newspaper. It has been mentioned once, in a single paragraph, in a single mainstream article in the Independent.
Thus we find empty spaces in the Guardian, the Independent, the Times and the Telegraph where detailed, positive reviews and interviews analysing von Sponeck’s ‘clock’ should have been. We need to know the time – shops are there to help, are they not? And we need to know how and why our government caused the deaths of half a million children in Iraq. But there are no clocks to be found – just empty space!
“Since Israel’s brutal 21-day assault on Gaza in the winter of ’08-’09 (dubbed by Israeli politicians as Operation Cast Lead) that led to over 1,400 Palestinian deaths – of which 930 were civilians including many women and children – followed by its deadly raid on a civilian Turkish ship headed to Gaza in June 2010 that resulted in nine casualties and dozens injured, many Palestinians as well as their advocates in the West have spoken of a significant “sea change” in the western media’s once hegemonic support for Israel. However, since this latest military operation began – already claiming more than 30 lives and injuring hundreds – evidence of any changing tide has been scant.”
Well we need to have *some* happy news from the occupied territories no? It can’t always be more innocents dead and heavy handed state oppression can it?
“Some mainstream liberal media outlets have discussed the imbalance between the rocket launches from Gaza resistance groups and the attacks executed by one of the mightiest armies in the world. While some may take this as a sign of newfound “support” or “empathy” for Palestinians, this is precarious logic. If Hamas’ rockets were to become more powerful, as they are proving to be, will these outlets retract their critique of Israel’s actions? Or is support for Palestinians contingent on them remaining “victims” and will vanish at any sign of their resistance becoming more powerful or effective?”
Perspective is always so important. The farcical Fox News is readily distinguishable as propaganda, but are we ready to see the propaganda function of other media organizations, the BBC for instance.
“A focus on “who started it?” consumes the mainstream media’s discussion on the latest violence, leading commentators to discuss timelines as though they were opinions rather than verifiable facts to consider and, to a one, even getting that wrong, with media outlets from NPR to the NYT declaring that Israel’s – rather than Hamas’ – strikes were retaliatory.
Meanwhile pundits feverishly try to tease out a political motive to explain Israel’s latest massive assault on Gaza. So far, the realpolitick most commonly alluded to is the impending Israeli election, scheduled for January 22, giving Prime Minister Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak strategic reasons for timing an assault on Gaza now.”
Defending the nation is always a great political platform to run on, even when you are the aggressor.
“When it comes to looking behind the scenes of Israeli military assaults on Gaza (or Lebanon), there is always a general hoping for a promotion, a politician looking for votes, and an arms dealer making profits, but the rationale that enables that triumvirate to enact the lethal policies we are seeing play out in Gaza right now is the same one that allows the Israeli government to calculate how many calories each Palestinian in the Gaza Strip needs to survive, and to then intentionally allow fewer trucks and supplies in to meet that need. And it’s the same rationale that motivates the Israeli occupation authorities to prevent construction in Area C of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, to encourage widespread drug addiction in Area B, and to make near-daily incursions into Area A to arrest political leaders, activists and journalists.
It’s the rationale of a coloniser, who wants land but not the people on it.
The other pervasive rationale has been that Israel is “testing” the Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt as well as, to a degree, President Obama in his second and last term in office.”
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
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