1. The best short summary I’ve seen:
“29 Engineers: Only Explosives Can Explain 9/11 World Trade Center Destruction”
http://www.ae911truth.org/downloads/29_Structural-Civil_Engineers_2009-0…
2. “The End Game in Iran: Four Ways the Crisis May Resolve”
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20090618/wl_time/08599190535600
3. “The great English philosopher Elizabeth Anscombe was another who recognized the wickedness that had been done in our name. In 1956, while a research fellow at Oxford, she protested vigorously against the university awarding an honorary degree to Harry S. Truman. She wrote an unforgiving pamphlet setting out her reasons for believing that the former president should be reviled rather than honored. Like Dorothy, she was not too sissy to use scorn as a weapon:
I have long been puzzled by the common cant about President Truman’s courage in making this decision [to drop the bomb]. Of course, I know that you can be cowardly without having reason to think you are in danger. But how can you be courageous? Light has come to me lately: the term is an acknowledgement of the truth. Mr. Truman was brave because, and only because, what he did was so bad. But I think the judgment unsound. Given the right circumstances (e.g., that no one whose opinion matters will disapprove), a quite mediocre person can do spectacularly wicked things without thereby becoming impressive.”
http://amconmag.com/article/2009/may/18/00009/
4. “Why U.S. Neocons Want Ahmadinejad to Win
The only people happier than the Iranian elites over Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s apparently stolen election win Friday, were the neoconservatives and other hawks eager to block any efforts by the Obama administration to moderate U.S. policy toward the Islamic republic.
Since he was elected president in 2005, Ahmadinejad has filled a certain niche in the American psyche formerly filled by the likes of Saddam Hussein and Muammar Qaddafi as the Middle Eastern leader we most love to hate. It gives us a sense of righteous superiority to compare ourselves favorably to these seemingly irrational and fanatical foreign despots.
Better yet, if these despots can be inflated into far greater threats than they actually are, these supposed threats can be used to justify the enormous financial and human costs of maintaining American armed forces in that volatile region to protect ourselves and our allies, and even to make war against far-off nations in “self-defense.”
Such inflated threats also have the added bonus of silencing critics of America’s overly-militarized Middle East policy, since anyone who dares to challenge the hyperbole and exaggerated claims regarding these leaders’ misdeeds or to provide a more balanced and realistic assessment of the actual threat they represent can then be depicted as naive apologists for dangerous fanatics who threaten our national security.”
http://www.alternet.org/world/140707/why_u.s._neocons_want_ahmadinejad_to_win/
5. “ACLU, Ron Paul’s Campaign for Liberty sue TSA over ‘illegal’ detention”
Former chief IMF economist Simon Johnson has another great post today:
Writing in the New York Times today, Joe Nocera sums up, “If Mr. Obama hopes to create a regulatory environment that stands for another six decades, he is going to have to do what Roosevelt did once upon a time. He is going to have make some bankers mad.”
Good point – but Nocera is thinking about the wrong Roosevelt (FDR). In order to get to the point where you can reform like FDR, you first have to break the political power of the big banks, and that requires substantially reducing their economic power – the moment calls more for Teddy Roosevelt-type trustbusting, and it appears that is exactly what we will not get.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2009/06/simon-johnson-we-need-trust-buster-like.html
7. “Ground the Airbus?”
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14025
8. “The Washington Post, Dan Froomkin and the establishment media
The Washington Post’s firing of Dan Froomkin reveals much about the modern establishment media. Froomkin was one of the very few journalists working for an establishment outlet who understood and practiced the function of journalism. That is why he had a history of tension with the Post. Froomkin is everything that a political journalist is supposed to be — and everything that most of them are not. That’s why he was an aberration — and, to them, an unpleasant one. Just look at the record.
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To be a real establishment journalist (objective), you’re not allowed to say when one side is lying — even when they are. All you’re allowed to do is repeat what both sides say and leave it at that (Colbert: ”The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Just put ‘em through a spell check and go home”). Froomkin — unlike David Gregory — believes that reporters should actually point out when the Government is lying. That’s what he did. That’s why, to The Post, he wasn’t a real reporter but, rather, an “ideologue.” That’s the sickness of American journalism in a nutshell.
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This is how warped and broken our establishment media is, and it is a big part of why it is dying. Froomkin was one of the very few journalists in the establishment media who practiced real journalism rather than banal stenographic servitude to the political establishment , and for that reason was disliked by Post functionaries like John Harris; considered a leftist, biased ideologue; and deemed someone who undermined their imaginary “credibility.” How many other columnists does the Post have whose firing would spark the level of anger or even interest that Froomkin’s has? And how can The Post justify firing one of its most popular and unique commentators when it continues to serve as a factory of trite, extremist neoconservative propaganda?
At the Post, Froomkin stated when government officials were lying; applied skepticism to claims from politicians; believed journalists should do more than mindlessly recite what each side claims; and treated politicians on all sides equally. In a minimally healthy political culture, those would be the bare requirements for being called a “journalist.” In the establishment media culture we have, those traits disqualify you from the term and, if they persist, get you fired.
Then there’s Froomkin’s freakish, exotic belief that journalists should be adversarial to and skpetical of the claims of government officials, especially when it comes to matters of war and national security. See his superb guidelines for press skepticism of government claims (“You Can’t Be Too Skeptical of Authority”); his criticisms of the establishment media for uncritically reporting Bush claims about the Iranian threat; his blistering critique of the failures of the media in the run-up to the Iraq War; and his criticism of Tim Russert’s protection of political power. Skepticism towards — rather than mindless repeating of — the claims of the political establishment is almost as severe a sin in modern journalism as pointing out when government officials are lying.
And then, most ironically (given John Harris’ accusations that he’s not objective), is Froomkin’s insistence on treating all politicians the same — subjecting all political leaders to adversarial journalistic scrutiny rather than declaring himself on one side or the other and spouting standard partisan talking points. He couldn’t be pigeonholed as reflexively pro-Bush or pro-Obama — i.e., he has intellectual and journalistic integrity — and therefore confused the mind-numbing little formula used to simplify and deaden our political debates.
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Post writers disliked Froomkin because he pointed out the radicalism and deceit of the Bush presidency and (both with his words and actions) highlighted their profound failure to do so, and because the neocon-Right complained about him to the Post. As Brad DeLong put it: “The ‘why’ is easy: he made too many people at the Post who were busy writing about how Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons or how there is more sea ice than there was a generation ago or how ‘opinions on shape of earth differ’ look foolish.” Fred Hiatt was one of the most extreme enablers of Bush radicalism, and so it is hardly surprising that he fired Froomkin despite its being completely contrary to the efforts of the Post to survive as a financially sustainable entity.
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The Washington Post does more to advance neoconservative ideology than The Weekly Standard, the American Enterprise Institute and Commentary combined. But Post columnist Charles Krauthammer — and so many like him — fantasize that they’re surrounded by a Liberal Media that oppresses, persecutes and silences them. Just ponder the levels of delusion and self-pity necessary to believe that.”
