Not Letting The Facts Get In The Way of Attacks on Candidates and Whistleblowers
Increasingly, politics is a game driven by often-invented beliefs and myths that are firmly detached from facts and their interpretation.
The parties and their factions live not only in parallel universes but worlds of information that are driven mostly but what they think will work in pandering to their bases and the public.
Even as progressives complain that Barack Obama has moved right even if he occasionally talks left, the hard-core right-wing see him a black revolutionary shaped by Reverend Wright’s black liberation theology with allusions to Malcolm X and Kenyan communists thrown into the mix to “prove” their case.
Never mind that Obama threw his one time mentor Wright under the bus in 2008, or that his policies rarely speak of the needs of a black community suffering under the burden of high joblessness, foreclosures and growing poverty.
In fact, real black revolutionaries like Cornel West and so many others find the president…
American Airlines Boots Woman From Flight For “Offensive” Pro-Choice T-Shirt
Reports David Ferguson on RAW Story:
A woman traveling home from an abortion rights seminar was detained and forced off an American Airlines flight Tuesday because the captain and crew found her T-shirt “offensive,” according to the blog RH Reality Check. The woman, who asked not to be named, was wearing a T-shirt with a slogan made famous by Oklahoma state senator Judy McIntyre (D), who marched earlier this year to protest Oklahoma’s “fetal personhood” law, carrying a sign that read, “If I wanted the government in my womb, I’d fuck a senator.”
The woman, who detailed her experience in an email to RHRC blogger Jodi Jacobson, said she was sleeping for most of her first flight with a shawl covering her shirt. ”Right before we were set to land the flight attendant from first class approaches me and asks if I had a connecting flight? We were running a bit behind schedule, so…
Anonymous Online Speech: Soon To Be Banned In New York?
Illustration: Helodrgt (CC)
WTF Albany? Remember the authors of the Federalist Papers? Victoria Bekiempis writes in the Village Voice:
Legislation is pending in Albany that would make illegal anonymous online commenting, City & State tweeted this morning. Looks like Wired was among the first to report on the measure.
The bill’s backers, according to the mag, want to curtail “mean-spirited and baseless political attacks” and “spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity.”
The legislation would make New York-based websites, such as blogs and newspapers, “remove any comments posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agrees to attach his or her name to the post.”
The measures would also apply to messages on social networks and message boards or “any other discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages,” Wired points out, and requires that sites offer “a contact number or e-mail address posted for…
High School Teacher Tells Student He Can Be Arrested for Criticizing President Obama (Video)
Via LiveLeak:
Google’s Moog Doodle
Back in 1999 when The Disinformation Company was just a couple of years old, we released a compilation CD called “Best Of Moog: Electronic Pop Hits From The 60’s & 70’s.” The project allowed us to collaborate with inventor of the Moog synthesizer (and many would say the founder of electronic music), Robert Moog, who wrote the liner notes and MC’d our release party in New York.
Bob passed away in 2005, but today Google is honoring his 78th birthday with one of its famous doodles, this time an interactive virtual Moog synth.
It’s lot of fun, check it out at Google, and for a guide to playing it, visit Moog Music’s Quick Start Guide.
United States Justice: 2,000 Convicted Then Exonerated Over 23 Years
Reports the AP via CBS News:
More than 2,000 people who were falsely convicted of serious crimes have been exonerated in the United States in the past 23 years, according to a new archive compiled at two universities.
There is no official record-keeping system for exonerations of convicted criminals in the country, so academics set one up. The new national registry, or database, painstakingly assembled by the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law, is the most complete list of exonerations ever compiled.
The database compiled and analyzed by the researchers contains information on 873 exonerations for which they have the most detailed evidence. The researchers are aware of nearly 1,200 other exonerations, for which they have less data.
They found that those 873 exonerated defendants spent a combined total of more than 10,000 years in prison, an average of more than 11 years…
Andy Caffrey Plans To Smoke Marijuana on the Steps of the U.S. Capitol (If Elected)
Interesting report from Austin Johansen on death and taxes:
Andy Caffrey is a 54 year-old candidate running for Congress from California’s 2nd District. Aside from the Crocodile Dundee-esque hat and his sweeping, silver ponytail, Caffrey is a fairly unassuming man in the state of California. He’s tired of both Republicans and Democrats, loves his country and has his own ideas to make improvements, which is more than some politicians can say. He also takes pride in being a part of the Green Movement … in more ways than one *cough cough.*
In the 1991 Oakland Firestorm, Andy “lost everything.” He writes on his website that he spent five years as a homeless man and suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder following his sister’s suicide. His ailment led him to become a prescribed medical marijuana patient, and he’s on the campaign trail to make his defense of its medicinal use perfectly clear … or a little…
Auction House Claims It’s Selling a Vial of Ronald Reagan’s Blood
Perhaps in a future post-apocalyptic America, this will be a holy relic. Remember ask yourself, “WWRD”? As Greogory Katz reports in the Associated Press:
A Channel Islands auction house says it’s selling a vial that allegedly contains blood residue from Ronald Reagan — a move denounced Tuesday by the late U.S. president’s family and his foundation.
The vial being auctioned online was used by the laboratory that tested Reagan’s blood when he was hospitalized after a 1981 assassination attempt in Washington, the PFCAuctions house said.
Reagan’s son Michael condemned the auction but said he was confident it was not his father’s blood.
“Whatever’s in the vial — could be mouse blood — it’s certainly not Reagan blood,” Reagan said in a telephone call from Los Angeles. “And what an outrageous thing to do to (Reagan’s widow) Nancy and the family. I hope the world calls on this organization to cease and desist because it’s…
The Strange Story Of Nazi Jazz
Jazz aficionados may think they know cool jazz, bebop, hard bop, and every other style, but what about Nazi bop? Though they had already passed laws criminalizing “Jewishly gloomy lyrics”, drum and horn solos, “Negroid excesses in tempo”, and plucked bass lines, the party realized that dance music was needed to reach the masses. Via Smithsonian Magazine:
Hitler’s propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels’ strangest effort was the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: a Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra [headed by] Karl “Charlie” Schwedler, an employee of the German Foreign Ministry, who discovered he had a talent for crooning.
As “Charlie,” Schwedler—who at least posed as a convinced Nazi—penned lyrics that generally followed a fixed pattern. The first verse of each song would remain untouched, perhaps in the hope of luring in listeners. But the remainder of the lyrics would veer wildly into Nazi propaganda and boasts…
Quebec: The Empire Strikes Back
Zig Zag writes on the Vancouver Media Co-Op:
Provincial and city governments in Quebec are resorting to repressive new laws in an effort to defeat the student mobilization, which has rocked that province for the past three months. Faced with strong and militant resistance by thousands in the streets, on May 18 Montreal passed a by-law banning the wearing of masks during protests. If convicted, people could be fined $3,000. This comes as the federal government prepares to amend the Criminal Code making it an offense to wear a mask during a riot or unlawful assembly (Bill C-306), with a maximum 10 year prison sentence if convicted.
On the same day as Montreal passed its anti-masking by-law, the Quebec government passed emergency legislation aimed directly at the student mobilization but affecting civil rights in general, “Bill 78: A Law Allowing Students to Receive the Education Provided by the School Which They Attend.” It contains 36 articles,…
The Marco Rubio Bilderberg Conspiracy
Marco Rubio. Photo: Gage Skidmore (CC)
The power elite has chosen the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. According to the Infowars crowd anyway. Kenneth Vogel stirs things up at Politico:
Mitt Romney isn’t very far into the vice presidential selection process. But according to a dedicated band of conspiracy theorists, the pick is all but a lock: Sen. Marco Rubio.
That’s the current thinking among a worldwide collection of activists who are obsessed with the secretive Bilderberg Group, an alternating roster of global power players who loom as large — if not larger — in the online fever swamps of the fringe as the Trilateral Commission or the Council on Foreign Relations.
The Bilderberg Group, which takes its name from the Dutch hotel where it first gathered in 1954, exists solely to bring together between 100 and 150 titans of politics, finance, military, industry, academia and media mostly from North America and Western Europe once a year…
Waiting For Armageddon (Video)
Americas 50-million strong Evangelical community is convinced that the worlds future is foretold in biblical prophecy — from the Rapture to the Battle of Armageddon. This astonishing documentary explores their world — in their homes, at conferences, and on a wide-ranging tour of Israel. By interweaving Christian, Zionist, Jewish and critical perspectives along with telling archival materials, the filmmakers probe the politically powerful — and potentially explosive — alliance between Evangelical Christians and Israeli alliance that may set the stage for what one prominent Evangelical leader calls World War III.
Congressmen Seeks To “Lift” U.S. Propaganda Ban on Americans
There was a ban on propaganda? “Propaganda that was supposed to target foreigners could now be aimed at Americans, reversing a longstanding policy,” writes Michael Hastings at BuzzFeed Politics:
An amendment that would legalize the use of propaganda on American audiences is being inserted into the latest defense authorization bill, BuzzFeed has learned.
The amendment would “strike the current ban on domestic dissemination” of propaganda material produced by the State Department and the Pentagon, according to the summary of the law at the House Rules Committee’s official website.
The tweak to the bill would essentially neutralize two previous acts—the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987—that had been passed to protect U.S. audiences from our own government’s misinformation campaigns…
Who Creates Jobs (and Other Critical Questions)
Tom Matlack writes on The Good Men Project:
The web is abuzz with TED’s decision not to let a former Amazon.com investor make his case for middle-class job creation. Meanwhile Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg gets ready to watch his $20 or so billion become liquid when his company opens trading this morning. The French and Greeks have elected liberal leaders who campaigned against austerity as the answer to the Euro debt crisis. And here in the United States the general election is kicking into high gear with the Romney campaign releasing this ad yesterday in key swing states.
Let’s try to get a few things straight here before resorting to mud slinging.
1) Any way you slice it we have a debt problem threatening to kill us.
Government spending here in the United States and across much of the developed world is completely out of control. As of March 2012, debt held by the public was…
White Births No Longer a Majority in U.S.
Note that the non-white U.S. population will still remain a minority for several decades. What will be the implications of a multi-racial (future) America? Reports the AP via the Christian Science Monitor:
For the first time, racial and ethnic minorities make up more than half the children born in the US, capping decades of heady immigration growth that is now slowing.
New 2011 census estimates highlight sweeping changes in the nation’s racial makeup and the prolonged impact of a weak economy, which is now resulting in fewer Hispanics entering the US.
“This is an important landmark,” said Roderick Harrison, a former chief of racial statistics at the Census Bureau who is now a sociologist at Howard University. “This generation is growing up much more accustomed to diversity than its elders.” The report comes as the Supreme Court prepares to rule on the legality of Arizona’s strict immigration law, with many states weighing similar…
9-Year Old Counter-Protests Westboro Baptist Church With ‘God Hates No One’ Sign
This kid is a genius. Mark Memmott reports on NPR:
Patty Akrouche says she’s “never been prouder” of her 9-year-old son, Josef Miles, than she was this past weekend.
As Akrouche wrote on her Facebook page, she and Josef were on the campus of Washburn University in Topeka when they encountered some of the protesters from the tiny Westboro Baptist Church, which has gained notice in recent years for protesting against homosexuality, abortion and other issues outside the funerals of military veterans and celebrities.
Westboro’s followers are infamous for their signs that — using an F-word we won’t repeat — say ‘God Hates [Homosexuals].’
“Josef was determined to make his own statement so we went to the car and with pencil and his sketch pad, he made up his own little sign that reads ‘GOD HATES NO ONE,’ ” his mom wrote…
The (Not) Censored TED Talk on Income Inequality
You can read all the hubbub about this from Noah Kristula-Green on Daily Beast. And here a small bit of TED curator Chris Anderson’s reason (see full explanation here) on why the video was not initially posted:
At TED this year, an attendee pitched a 3-minute audience talk on inequality. The talk tapped into a really important and timely issue. But it framed the issue in a way that was explicitly partisan. And it included a number of arguments that were unconvincing, even to those of us who supported his overall stance. The audience at TED who heard it live (and who are often accused of being overly enthusiastic about left-leaning ideas) gave it, on average, mediocre ratings … Our policy is to post only talks that are truly special. And we try to steer clear of talks that are bound to descend into the same dismal partisan head-butting people can find every day elsewhere in the media.
Judge for yourself here:
Greece’s Neo-Nazi Golden Dawn
Photo: Ggia (CC)
After austerity follows fascism. Neni Panourgia writes on Al Jazeera English:
By now, nearly everybody has been exposed to the phenomenon of Golden Dawn (Chrysi Avgi in Greek), the neo-Nazi organisation that received almost 7 per cent of the vote in the Greek elections of May 6.After the initial shock, the question “How is this possible?” was followed by the legitimate worry: “Are Greeks becoming fascists?” Some commentators on various blogs (many of them from northern and western Europe) even left messages urging the Greek electorate to feel shame, the deeper the better, for this unsightly and frightening development.
But let’s set a few things straight. First of all, Golden Dawn, despite its recent claims, is indeed a neo-Nazi party. Their ideology, which they describe on their website as “Popular and Social Nationalism”, gives their precise coordinates within Nazi ideology.
So do the origins of their party, which was founded by Nikolaos…
Noam Chomsky on President Obama’s Performance and Occupy Wall Street (Video)
The right-wing blogospere is having a field day with Chomsky saying, “I don’t usually admire Sarah Palin, but when she was making fun of this ‘hopey-changey’ stuff, she was—she was right. There was nothing there.” However, he follows that statement with, “And it was understood by the people who run the political system. So it’s no great secret that the U.S. electoral system is mainly public relations extravaganzas….” which, one assumes, would apply to Sarah Palin as well.
Watch the entire interview at Democracy Now! and full transcript here.
Ron Paul Halts Presidential Race, But Not His Quest for Liberty
Hard-core Ron Paulers probably won’t like the criticism in the later part of this article, and it’s hard to disagree with the economics of his campaign presented here, but the tone of the article starts out surprising warm from someone in the mainstream media. As Andrew Rosenthal writes in the New York Times:
Ron Paul announced today that he will no longer spend campaign money to compete in states that have not yet voted, which is probably wise. Mr. Paul has spent around $34 million so far to accumulate 104 delegates. That’s $326,923 and change per delegate.
So, I thought, he’s dropping out. Or at least “suspending” his bid, a semantic difference that allows politicians to go on raising money while not actually doing any campaign work. But no, Mr. Paul said in an email to supporters that he will continue accumulating delegates to the Republican National Convention in August. “Moving forward,…
