December 2010
Most Influential Religious Figures of 2010 →
“A publisher is (or was, in 1971) a commercial, nationally-rooted media firm...”
– Clay Shirky
The Top 10 Science Books of 2010 →
“The first thing we need to recover is the knowledge that peace is a result and...”
– Scot McKnight
leftish asked: I just wanted to say THANKS for your VERY IMPORTANT posts! I try to always reblog them, and often feel frustrated that a cute animal pic will get 2000 reblogs, but your very excellent contributions get just a few...keep up the awesome work, thanks!!
Julian Assange on WikiLeaks, War and Resisting...
AMY GOODMAN: We turn back to our special on WikiLeaks and to another interview with Julian Assange. After interviewing him in July in London after the release of the Afghan war logs, we interviewed him in October, again in London, after WikiLeaks published some 390,000 classified U.S. documents on the war in Iraq. He began by talking about the revelations in the documents.
JULIAN ASSANGE: These documents cover the periods of 2004 to the beginning of 2010. It is the most accurate description of a war to have ever been released. Within them, we can see 285,000 casualties. That’s added up, report by report. That’s each casualty, where it happened, when it happened, and who was involved, according to internal U.S. military reporting.
Now, looking at particular groups of casualties, we can see, for example, over 600 civilians killed at checkpoint killings, including 30 children, previously—mostly previously unreported, that three-quarters of those killed at checkpoint killings, according to the United States military itself, were civilians, and only one-quarter, according to the U.S. military internal reporting, were insurgents.
We see 284 reports covering torture or other forms of prisoner abuse by coalition forces, covering 300 different people. We see over a thousand reports of torture and other prisoner abuse by the Iraqi state itself, many or most of those receiving no meaningful investigation. I heard in your introduction that the Pentagon claims that the Iraqi government is responsible for this, but in international law, it is the person or government or organization that has effective control that is responsible. And certainly, before the technical legal handover from the Coalition Provisional Authority to the Iraqi government, it is clear that the United States and other coalition forces were the effective, legally responsible group for those. We see in the United Kingdom, Phil Shiner and his group Public Interest Lawyers, Amnesty International, and in New York, Human Rights Watch, calling for investigation and, in some cases, lawsuits against coalition forces for wrongful death.
“When I was the rabbi of the Jewish community in Berlin under the Hitler regime,...”
– Joachim Prinz
Why the Rich Are Getting Richer →
If there is a flaw in their telling of this grim tale, it is that Hacker and Pierson perhaps underestimate the actual discontent of the American middle class over the period they discuss. In the 1960s and 1970s, Americans came increasingly to distrust their government, and not without reason. Their leaders had led them into a distant war that proved unwinnable and tore the country apart; a...
Why the Rich Are Getting Richer →
If there is a flaw in their telling of this grim tale, it is that Hacker and Pierson perhaps underestimate the actual discontent of the American middle class over the period they discuss. In the 1960s and 1970s, Americans came increasingly to distrust their government, and not without reason. Their leaders had led them into a distant war that proved unwinnable and tore the country apart; a...
Fred’s Op Ed →
Dear Mr. President:
As you know, you are well and truly hated by the people FDR’s generation called “the malefactors of great wealth.” They have found ways to divert an appallingly large fraction of our nation’s treasure to their pocketbooks and they are afraid you won’t let them go on doing that.
These are not decent, honorable people, Mr. President. Your one great mistake since you were...
“We find ourselves in the position of survivors of a shipwreck clinging to a life...”
– Frank Schaeffer
Migrant farm workers: Fields of tears →
At a time of high unemployment, many Americans are convinced that these aliens take American jobs. As a test, this summer the United Farm Workers (UFW), the main agricultural union, launched a campaign called “Take Our Jobs”, inviting willing Americans to work in the fields. In the following three months 3m people visited takeourjobs.com, but 40% of the responses were hate mail, says Maria...
“Always remember to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
– George Washington
“The broad pattern is clear: the more that governments have worried about...”
– Brad DeLong
“The broad pattern is clear: the more that governments have worried about...”
– Brad DeLong
Agreeing with The Four Agreements →
1. Be impeccable with your word. In a sense, social constructivists are correct about words creating reality. We act on what we tell ourselves is real. Albert Ellis encouraged us to screen our self-talk for negative, irrational chatter. So, what kinds of words to you use when you describe reality? Do you lie and say hurtful and poisonous things about yourself and others? Not healthy! To be...
Agreeing with The Four Agreements →
1. Be impeccable with your word. In a sense, social constructivists are correct about words creating reality. We act on what we tell ourselves is real. Albert Ellis encouraged us to screen our self-talk for negative, irrational chatter. So, what kinds of words to you use when you describe reality? Do you lie and say hurtful and poisonous things about yourself and others? Not healthy! To be...
Migrant farm workers: Fields of tears →
At a time of high unemployment, many Americans are convinced that these aliens take American jobs. As a test, this summer the United Farm Workers (UFW), the main agricultural union, launched a campaign called “Take Our Jobs”, inviting willing Americans to work in the fields. In the following three months 3m people visited takeourjobs.com, but 40% of the responses were hate mail, says Maria...
“That so many Christians today believe the Bible is largely devoid of scientific...”
– The Genesis Question: Scientific Advances and the Accuracy of Genesis
meth-truck asked: I absolutely adore how you always put lifelong texts and quotes. I can never think up any good ones but you can! How do you do it and what inspires you to plan the text and just say it. What gives you ideas?
“…hardly a day goes by without some intellectual or journalist or other member of...”
– Blog Theory
“Always remember to guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.”
– George Washington
15 Things You Should Do in 2011 →
Move. Even if that means just parking further away from your office and hoofing it to the front door. I hesitate to use the word “exercise”, since that word has negative connotations for people. Here it is in a nutshell: Moving is good. It gets your dopamine levels up in your brain. It makes you feel good. The end.
Turn off your TV. You are exposed to violence and just plain sadness and...
“It’s the end (or perhaps when you read this, beginning) of another year. Wait a...”
– Culture Making
The Top 10 Science Books of 2010 →
Electrifying Language →
The world’s first technology for writing was invented not by poets or prophets or the chroniclers of kings; it came from bean counters. The Sumerian cuneiform script—made up of symbols incised on soft clay—grew out of a scheme for keeping accounts and inventories. Curiously, this story of borrowing arithmetical apparatus for literary purposes has been repeated in recent times. The prevailing...
1 tag
Americans Spent $584.3 Billion This Christmas →
That’s a record and is up 5.5% from last year. On Christmas presents. For one another. If you do some simple math and consider that Evangelical Christians are 20% of the population and they spent proportionally to everyone else, that would have that group spending around $120 Billion. On Christmas presents. For family and friends. Almost $200 for every man, woman, and child in America (see...
“Digg is something that users perceive less immediate than Twitter and less...”
– The Fall of Digg
“The first thing we need to recover is the knowledge that peace is a result and...”
– Scot McKnight
Deficit Hypocrisy →
On Dec. 22, just before they left town for the holidays, House Republican leaders released new budget rules that they intend to adopt when they assume the majority in January and will set the stage for even more budget-busting tax cuts.
First, some background: Under pay-as-you-go rules adopted by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2007, tax cuts or increases in entitlement...
Deficit Hypocrisy →
On Dec. 22, just before they left town for the holidays, House Republican leaders released new budget rules that they intend to adopt when they assume the majority in January and will set the stage for even more budget-busting tax cuts.
First, some background: Under pay-as-you-go rules adopted by Democratic majorities in the House and Senate in 2007, tax cuts or increases in entitlement...
“These days, apologists for the south deny vehemently that what the southerners...”
– Helena Cobban
David Swanson's 'War is a Lie' →
The reasons for the now actually counter-productive nature of warfare are several. But the three I would focus on are:
(1) The fact that war wagers have progressively lost the capacity they once had to control the information environment, which throughout the 20th century became increasingly multi-faceted and globalized. That trend has accelerated in recent decades and cannot be reversed—...
leftish asked: I just wanted to say THANKS for your VERY IMPORTANT posts! I try to always reblog them, and often feel frustrated that a cute animal pic will get 2000 reblogs, but your very excellent contributions get just a few...keep up the awesome work, thanks!!
“These attacks by unmanned aircraft may have succeeded in eliminating hundreds of...”
– US Drone Attacks Are No Laughing Matter, Mr. Obama
Our Structural Unemployment Has Not Yet Risen... →
The recession has been over for more than a year now, but so many people are out of work that it doesn’t feel like much of a recovery…. Why have new jobs been so hard to come by? One view blames cyclical economic factors: at times when everyone is cautious about spending, companies are slow to expand capacity and take on more workers. But another, more skeptical account has emerged, which...