<![CDATA[White House Ringers Redux | Metafilter]]>
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Category: Impolitic
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She makes sense
<![CDATA[Arianna’s Blog: Post-Election Buzzkill: Why Iraq Is Still A Debacle
Posted 25 minutes, 39 seconds ago on February 2, 2005
From this week’s column:
It was a great moment. A Kodak moment. And unlike the other Kodak moments from this war — think Saddam’s tumbling statue and Jessica Lynch’s “rescue” — this one was not created by the image masters at Karl Rove Productions.
But this Kodak moment, however moving, should not be allowed to erase all that came before it, leaving us unprepared for all that may come after it.
I’m sorry to kill the White House’s buzz — and the press corps’ contact high — but the triumphalist fog rolling across the land has all the makings of another “Mission Accomplished” moment.
Forgive me for trotting out Santayana’s shopworn dictum that those who forget the past are doomed to repeat it but, for god’s sake people, can’t we even remember last week?
Read the column here.
I would never have thought I could agree with Arianna Huffington consistently.]]>
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I'll be there
<![CDATA[Join in a State of the Union BackChannel Chat, Tonight | Personal Democracy Forum:
I usually blog the SotU, but I’ll be tuned into Micah’s IRC, too.]]>
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Brooks: Stepping Out of the Tar Pit
<![CDATA[The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Stepping Out of the Tar Pit:
And, proving that Bushies do smoke crack, here’s David Brooks calling up the ghost of Whittaker Chambers to walk the streets of Baghdad…. The election was inspiring, but its results are far from certain. What’s striking about the analogy to Chambers is that Brooks goes to great lengths to emphasize how hard his journey from communism to conservatism was (it wasn’t very hard for many leading neocons, by the way), which is the opposite of having a democracy handed to you by an occupying force.]]>
<![CDATA[The New York Times > Opinion > Op-Ed Columnist: Many Unhappy Returns:
Social Security privatization is like trying crack, at least is you trust the Bush team’s numbers….]]>
<![CDATA[New Media Musings: Curry on the next stage of podcasting:
Fortune: Just as blogs are challenging mainstream media, ex-MTV veejay Adam Curry predicts that podcasts will take on radio and satellite. Curry and partners plan to launch a podcasting network.
For a guy who has argued that podcasting should not be corrupted by money, Adam Curry sure seems bent on making a company run on podcasting revenues. You should hear what fees he asks for meetings. The problem I have with a lot of the purists on blogging and this new version of audio distribution (seems to me Don Katz came up with this idea about 11 years ago—I was there) is that they are willing to take large fees for their insight but refuse to admit others can and should be able to make small fees for actually doing the production work….]]>
<![CDATA[Boing Boing: High schoolers on free speech:
A new study reveals that far too many US high school students don’t seem to understand the meaning of free speech, aren’t taught about the First Amendment, or simply don’t care. A few choice excerpts from the AP story:
…When told of the exact text of the First Amendment, more than one in three high school students said it goes “too far” in the rights it guarantees. Only half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely without government approval of stories…
Three in four students said flag burning is illegal…
About half the students said the government can restrict any indecent material on the Internet.
Who is teaching these kids? Link
I was having a conversation with my wife about how kids are graded based on their willingness to stay inside well-defined lines just last night. What the hell have we done when our kids are less rebellious than a senile babushka in Stalinist Russia?]]>
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FT.com – Geldof laments role as celebrity campaigner:
Sir Bob Geldof has found himself at the centre of controversy again after the outspoken pop star and agitator revealed he was often “profoundly” bored by Africa – the continent whose problems he has done so much to bring to the attention of the wider world.
The Irish-born singer, who 20 years ago launched Live Aid to assist famine-stricken Ethiopia, told Britain’s Radio Times magazine “the pace of change is far too slow and Africans excuse their own complicity in exactly the same way as our politicians”.
Sir Bob, noted for his earthy language, said he was as blunt with African leaders as he was “with our lot”, but that he “knew the consequences of saying ‘fuck off’, so I’m more patient”.
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<![CDATA[Smart Mobs: Manuel Castells, Open Source, Tech of Cooperation:
Manuel Castells’ address at the World Social Forum addresses open source production methods as a technology of cooperation.
(Thank you, Henrique!)
Conventionally, in a capitalist economy, property is the right to exclude others from the use of a good or service. In open source, property is configured fundamentally around the right to distribute, not to exclude. The source code for open source is published and distributed for the use by anyone who wishes. And because the source code is known, users can modify it, and can modify or generate new applications. Free source code is open, public, and non proprietary. This new form of property, that is entirely contradictory with the usual regime of intellectual property rights, is supported by a governance system that holds together a community of producers. It is based on human motivation to work within this logic and is supported by an evolving set of organizational structures to coordinate behavior.]]>
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Archives: The New York Times
<![CDATA[Archives: The New York Times: U.S. ENCOURAGED BY VIETNAM VOTE; Officials Cite 83% Turnout Despite Vietcong Terror
Dave Winer points to this historical reality. News always sounds good the day it breaks.]]>