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Archive for August, 2005
Blaming the victims of Hurricane Katrina
As the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina keeps looking worse and worse, I think it’s important to take a look at those who are still trapped in the city, and the media’s portrayal of them. First, here’s a great piece of writing from Cherie Priest called Disjointed thoughts on the socio-economics of disaster: Look at the […]
Never trust the Americans
Back in 1989, a bomb exploded in an airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, and 270 people were killed. Years later, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed Al Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent, was convicted of the bombing, and he’s now serving a life sentence in Britain. The problem is that a CIA agent apparently planted a key piece of […]
Nice priorities, Mister President
New Orleans may well be destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. There’s a roundup of coverage going on over at Making Light. So what does President Bush do? He gets live coverage of what is supposed to be him talking about the upcoming disaster, and then spends the majority of the time talking about Iraq. He’s such […]
Lower and lower
President Bush’s approval ratings have now dropped into the 30s. George W. Bush’s overall job approval ratings have dropped from a month ago even as Americans who approve of the way Bush is handling his job as president are turning more optimistic about their personal financial situations according to the latest survey from the American […]
Yet another step toward the police state
From the New York Times, via Making Light: Foreign citizens who change planes at airports in the United States can legally be seized, detained without charges, deprived of access to a lawyer or the courts, and even denied basic necessities like food, lawyers for the government said in Brooklyn federal court yesterday.
Is the end in sight?
On Sunday the New York Times published a piece by columnist Frank Rich called “Someone Tell the President the War Is Over.” Nothing that happens on the ground in Iraq can turn around the fate of this war in America: not a shotgun constitution rushed to meet an arbitrary deadline, not another Iraqi election, not […]
On the 60th anniversary of Hiroshima
This seems like an appropriate article to link to on this terrible anniversary: In the weeks following the atomic attacks on Japan almost 60 years ago, and then for decades afterward, the United States engaged in airtight suppression of all film shot in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the bombings. This included footage shot by U.S. […]
Replacing GWOT with GSAVE?
Over on AlterNet, there’s a great analysis by George Lakoff of the recent decision by the Bush administration to stop talking about the “global war on terror” and start using the term “global struggle against violent extremism” instead. The war frame is all-consuming. It takes focus away from other problems, from everyday troubles, from jobs, […]
