Slashdot Mirror
Lauren Weinstein: If MTV Calls, Hang Up
Lauren Weinstein writes "Usually when one gets a call to participate in a news-oriented television program, subterfuge isn't a worry. But in the brave new world of 'newsertainment' -- a blurring of news and entertainment -- you really need to watch your back. Herein is the sordid tale (posted last night to Dave Farber's "IP" list) of what recently happened to me -- and my narrow escape -- when Viacom/MTV Networks came calling, asking for my help to educate the world's youth about important topics (in this case, the scourge of spam). Be warned. It could happen to you!"
None of those are classic American mistakes. You will hear shit like that everywhere English is used.
I just found this article about the show (which gets off topic at the end but the first bit is related). (I KNOW I KNOW IT'S FROM gopusa.com BUT JUST CLICK IT AND READ)
They must have had a bad brainstorming session or something... shouldn't they have been "interrogating" a government official about, oh, I don't know, all of the same stupid shit that CROSSFIRE and HARDBALL are getting their panties in a bunch about?
That sounds like a fantastic concept for a show, in fact, it's unfortunate they had to blotch it with this shit.
You've been taking the Bush/Fox propaganda a little to seriously.
I'm pretty sure the U.S., Britain and the Jews started the war with the Arabs about 50 years ago when they kicked the Palastinians out of their homes and homeland after World War II. Everything since then has just been a continuation with variations.
"as surely as we were at war with fascism in 1943"
I'm pretty sure we are still fighting Fascism today though its appearing in the form of the Republican party today. I'm pretty sure the true conservatives in the Republican party are aghast at the things their party is doing lately. You forget Hitler was democraticly elected and seized power by using the legislature he controlled to pass laws that slowly eliminated all opposition. Its coming in slow motion but if Bush gets another four years, he has another Republican Congress and especially if there is another big attack on the U.S. you will be living in a velvet gloved police state.
I'll tell you what. I propose we really "support our troops". Let's start flying them home tomorrow starting with the ones that were supposed to fly home months ago before Rumsfeld figured out his Army was to small to fight the fight Cheney and Wolfowitz picked. That would be really supporting our troops. I'm guessing 90% of them have had enough of Iraq, and the civilian leadership that got them in to that little hell holed based on one lie after another. If I manage to implement my plan and get them home I wager I'd get more votes from the troops than George will this November.
Let's make it clear, me supporting the troops, is supporting the good men and women in the military doing their job. Its not supporting the war, not the chain of command, not the few that have grown fond of killing and torturing.
Something interesting I heard on CNN this morning. Apparently the new interim prime minister of Iraq was one of Saddam's thugs and assassins in the 70's. They had a falling out and Saddam tried to have him ax murdered but he lived and switched sides to join the payroll of MI5 and the CIA. He was suggesting martial law as the best solution to the on going violence a couple days ago, which would make him dictator. I'm guessing the U.S. squandered $200 billion dollars and over 800 of our troops, which I support with all my heart, to replace one dictator with another. When that happens the absolute last rationale Bush had for this little quagmire to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to the little brown ragheads, as God put him on this Earth to do, will be just one more lie.
@de_machina
I'm pretty sure the U.S., Britain and the Jews started the war with the Arabs about 50 years ago when they kicked the Palastinians out of their homes and homeland after World War II.
Guess again. The 1948 partition plan called for a Jewish state about half the size of the present state of Israel with ridiculously convoluted borders. Why convoluted? Because the borders were drawn to enclose Jewish settlements and avoid Arab settlements.
How did the Arabs, who were going to get the lion's share of the Levant in the partition plan, react? By attacking the Jewish settlements. The Jews defeated the Arab aggressors and, since peaceful partition had been rejected, took their state by force.
The same basic thing happened in 1967, and again in 1973.
There were no "Palestinians," incidentally. There has never been a nation-state called "Palestine." At the time, the people who live in what we now call "Palestine" were Jordanians and Egyptians.
But please don't let the facts get in the way of your desperate desire to blame it all on the Jews. Hell, why not go all the way back? Blame it all on Sarah. It was Sarah who ordered Abraham to cast Hagar and her son Ishmael out of their house, after all. It was Sarah who wanted Isaac to be Abraham's only son. If you want to blame somebody, blame Sarah.
I'm pretty sure we are still fighting Fascism today though its appearing in the form of the Republican party today.
Right, because key planks in the Republican party platform include the abolition of the Constitution, wars of expansionist aggression on our northern and southern borders, and the extermination of millions of people in the name of racial purity.
Oh, wait.
Its coming in slow motion but if Bush gets another four years, he has another Republican Congress and especially if there is another big attack on the U.S. you will be living in a velvet gloved police state.
I'll repeat my offer: tin-foil hats, 3 for $9.99. Going fast. Get 'em while you can.
Let's start flying them home tomorrow...
Like I said: you don't propose that we support the troops. You propose that we surrender. Sorry, but I'm not willing to coexist with Islamism, with religious totalitarianism, with terrorism as official state policy. Better war than that.
I'm guessing 90% of them have had enough of Iraq
Ever been there? Ever talked to the troops serving in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in South Korea, in Germany, in the Philippines? I've been there. (Not to all of those places, but to some.) I've talked to the troops. I've shared meals with them.
I don't recall anybody saying that they've had enough of Iraq. I don't recall anybody saying that they wanted to give up. I recall lots of tearful recollections of home, lots of well-worn photographs of wives and husbands and sons and daughters. But to the last, they told me that they will stay where they are assigned as long as it takes to defeat the enemy, to defeat the ideology that wants to enslave the world under the iron fist of Islamism. Because they don't want their children to grow up in that world. They don't want their children to have to watch another 9/11 on television or out their windows.
Apparently the new interim prime minister of Iraq was one of Saddam's thugs and assassins in the 70's.
Heh. Check your facts again. Allawi was a member of the Baath party in the 1960's, but left the party during the coups of the late 60's and early 70's. He was never a thug or an assassin.
He was suggesting martial law as the best solution to the on going violence a couple days ago, which would make him dictator.
Sigh. Your understanding of the intricacies of government is truly dizzying.
Would it kill you, I mean seriously, would you actually DIE if you read more than just the headlines in your morning paper? Would it kill you to read the whole story, and to understand the facts and the context?
When that
I write in my journal
"I don't recall anybody saying that they've had enough of Iraq. "
h tm l
l aw i/index_np.htmli ew_article.html?a rticle_id=a9c8ef8fa5a90b9c13f58a840f933f39
m l
Just what I read in the papers. Maybe you get a different story from soldiers cloaked in anonymity versus those who are sitting in a mess hall and risk retaliation if they are overheard complaining:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0707/p02s01-woiq.
"Some frustrated troops stationed in Iraq are writing letters to representatives in Congress to request their units be repatriated. "Most soldiers would empty their bank accounts just for a plane ticket home," said one recent Congressional letter written by an Army soldier now based in Iraq. The soldier requested anonymity."
Soldiers unhappy about being Iraq have apparently been carefully screened away from congressional delegations and the president when he was there in favor of the cheerleaders.
You may recall some soldiers were openly critical of Rumsfeld right after the invasion and they were hammered.
"Heh. Check your facts again. Allawi was a member of the Baath party in the 1960's, but left the party during the coups of the late 60's and early 70's. He was never a thug or an assassin."
Uh, I did check the facts. This was what a reporter from the New Yorker was saying on CNN this morning. Here are some other references.
http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/29/al
http://jobs.ncmonline.com/news/v
He did leave the Baath party in the early 70's when the Iraqi secret police tried to assasinate him. No one seems to know the reason for his falling out but it turned him from hunter to hunted.
"There were no "Palestinians," incidentally. There has never been a nation-state called "Palestine."
Bullshit, there has been a Palastine and Palastinians for millenia. The only reason there wasn't a nation state especially in the 20th century is that it was under colonial occupation by the Turks and then the British after World War I. From the UN history
"After looking at various alternatives, the UN proposed the partitioning of Palestine into two independent States, one Palestinian Arab and the other Jewish, with Jerusalem internationalized (Resolution 181 (II) of 1947). One of the two States envisaged in the partition plan proclaimed its independence as Israel and in the 1948 war expanded to occupy 77 per cent of the territory of Palestine. Israel also occupied the larger part of Jerusalem. Over half the indigenous Palestinian population fled or were expelled. Jordan and Egypt occupied the other parts of the territory assigned by the partition resolution to the Palestinian Arab State which did not come into being."
It leaves out one of the main reasons the Palastinians fled, the massacre of 250 Palastinians at Deir Yasin led by none other than Menachem Begin.
Try reading an alternative view of history for a change:
http://www.counterpunch.org/ignatiev06172004.ht
@de_machina
I'll take your word for it but I'd have a hard time believing the Post would hire a reporter...
Did I say that I work for the Post? I damn well better not have.
Yea, how many years ago was it since a stockpile has been destroyed in Iraq.
Well, considering a munitions dump containing chemical artillery shells was blown up about three weeks ago, I'd say that it's been zero years. The ISG has been finding one or another prohibited weapon, weapons system, or weapon component every few weeks now since the fall of Baghdad. Why hasn't it made the news? Because, as I've said before, we've yet to find that gallon jug with the tag that reads "SADDAM'S SARIN-- HANDZ OFF!"
Sure haven't been any since the invasion.
Saying it's not true doesn't make it untrue.
The fact that it has to be confirmed implies it still has to be investigated.
Sure. So?
Not sure it particularly proves anything if there were Al Qaeda in Saddam's army unless he new they were there.
Oh, okay. I understand your position now. You don't care that Saddam Hussein assisted al-Qaida, as long as he didn't do it, you know, a lot. Is that what you're saying?
I write in my journal
You are saying the ISG found some EMPTY chemical shells in a dump and blew them up, right?
Among other things, yes. Artillery shells that (1) Iraq was not allowed to have, (2) Iraq agreed to turn over in 1991, and (3) Iraq swore up and down until the very DAY of the invasion that they didn't have.
But there's more. ISG also found the stuff that goes in the shells. See, what you put in artillery shells are liquids called "binary agents." These agents mix when the shell is fired and produce a chemical weapon. For example, if you put methylphosphonic difluoride, isopropyl alcohol, and isopropylamine into an artillery shell and fire it, what you get on the other end is sarin gas.
ISG found huge quantities of methylphosphonic difluoride and isopropylamine/isopropyl alcohol solution.
Add it up and what did Iraq have? Chemical weapons. Which they swore they didn't have.
(It doesn't begin and end with sarin. ISG found precursors to VX, tabun, and mustard as well.)
But wait! That's not all! ISG also found 500 tons of unprocessed uranium at Iraq's main uranium storage facility south of Baghdad. Uranium that, again, Iraq SWORE they did not have. They also found equipment for turning unprocessed uranium into weapons-grade enriched uranium. All they needed to do was screw in a couple of fittings, flip the switch, and start producing enriched uranium.
The Iraqis evidently thought they wouldn't get caught if they stored the uranium and the centrifuge equipment hundreds of miles apart. And for a while they were right. But those ISG guys are tenacious.
If they are empty then no one, including the ISG and CPA cares, nor should you.
Excuse me? The presence of a SINGLE EMPTY CHEMICAL ARTILLERY SHELL anywhere inside Iraq would have been sufficient to declare that country in material breach of the 1991 cease-fire and UN Security Council resolutions. Those terms said that Iraq would declare and produce ALL chemical weapons, among other things. Yes, that includes chemical shells, with or without reagents in them.
It also includes things like ballistic missiles. Iraq was prohibited from possessing or developing ballistic missiles with a range greater than 90 miles. What did they do to comply with that prohibition? Why, they designed, tested, and manufactured the al-Samoud 2, of course, a ballistic missile with a range greatly in excess of 90 miles. (Including, you guessed it, chemical warheads. They hadn't figured out how to perfect those yet, thank God.) Al-Samoud 2 was in ACTIVE PRODUCTION until the DAY of the invasion. In fact, we have videotape of an al-Samoud 2 missile being carried through Baghdad on a truck to a launch facility somewhere south of the city. It's right there on the back of a flatbed under a tarp, plain as day. On videotape. Day one of the invasion.
But that's not all. Saddam covered his bets. In addition to building al-Samoud 2, Iraq also made arrangements with the DPRK to purchase the medium-range Nodong 1 missile, a weapon with a range of nearly TEN TIMES the 90-mile limit.
But because they didn't actually launch any of these at Washington, the ISG and the CPA don't care and neither should I. Right?
If you actually think the ISG has been finding and blowing up dumps full of loaded chemical shells and just not telling the world
No, they're telling. Read the reports. There's no secret information here. No conspiracy, no cover-up. Just some incredibly ignorant people who haven't taken the ten damn minutes to read the reports for themselves.
They've admitted the yellowcake from Niger story was bullshit
Nope. As I already explained, some folks believe that ONE of the documents related to that investigation was forged. The British, in contrast, stand behind all the documents. And that one document wasn't even critical. It was just corroborating evidence. So even if it was forged, the evidence is still overwhelming.
And, also as I've already pointed out, there'
I write in my journal