Letters to the Editor
Pohjola
Published Letters: 31
-
Salon should scrutinize added value of Glenn Greenwald
[Read the article: Blog news]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Subscribed Salon Premium because outstanding writing of Glenn Greenwald. I suppose many others did same for the same reason.
I suppose also that traffic of the salon.com domain has increased because of Glenn Greenwald moving here.
Salon has mechanisms to turn increased attention of readers and other interest groups to straight money. Salon should scrutinize added value of Glenn Greenwald and steer part of the increased money to develop blog of one of our time most important writers.
It is somewhat telling of Salon organization, that GG must ask money of his readers. Salon should take care better of their gems.
-
Paul R's fabulous deconstruct of libertarian ”philosophy”
[Read the article: Brit Hume is a "journalist"; Keith Olbermann is "partisan"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Paul R:
"One way or another, the libertarian philosophy is based on what works best for those in privileged positions in privileged societies--or those who strongly identify with same, whether through wish-fulfillment fantasy, or other psychological mechanisms."
Studying work and organizational psychology. One of the coursebooks ”Muutospuhe” studies organizational life from the postmodern angle (in finnish – translation mine) :
”Organizational transition can be considered as rhetorical argumentation examined discoursive. In that case attention will be paid to how influential decision-makers succeed in presenting the changes in the surprising ways as if other alternatives would not be except as necessary also as unavoidable. This way the decision-makers harness the external factors and events inside the organisation as the foundation of their own fancies and their needs. In spite of the fact that this way the changes often proved to have been even harmful afterwards and quite troubling. The change can indeed be considered as a linguistic construction with the help of which the different actor quarters try to improve their own position.”
It is probably safe to suppose that in the society also the ones in a good position try to improve their own position with well financed linguistic constructions.
-
Comey Testifying Before Senate Judiciary
[Read the article: Various items]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://judiciary.senate.gov/webcast/live.ram
-
Off Topic: The Young Chickenhawks
[Read the article: The great right-wing fraud to repudiate George W. Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The Angry Rakkasan, 101st vet, with a tour in Afghanistan and another in Iraq has a Daily Kos diary "The Young Chickenhawks":
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/6/5/2030/83070
He writes:
"Now, prior to the days when Republicans had yet to break the U.S. military, chickenhawks had a valid argument against the fairness of the term. But now—not so much. Glenn Greenwald summed it up nicely earlier this year:" and quotes GG...
-
Jesselyn Radack's takes here:
[Read the article: The al-Marri decision]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]http://writ.news.findlaw.com/commentary/20070618_radack.html and
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2007/6/18/53337/5489
-
The Definitive Guide to authorian mindset
[Read the article: Tucker, Jonah, Elizabeth and Jillian]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps there are people reading this thread who don't know that John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience is based on the research of Dr. Robert Altemeyer of the University of Manitoba, a social psychologist specializing in the psychology of authoritarianism.
Now professor Altemyer's book "The Authoritarians" is online:
http://home.cc.umanitoba.ca/~altemey/
-
FYI steeplebob; ways out by Sara Robinson
[Read the article: Tucker, Jonah, Elizabeth and Jillian]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"We need to stop this. We have gone on too long assuming that our right-wing opponents are, in all times and places, unchangeable and unchanging. Yes, their arguments are confoundingly short on evidence and fact. Yes, their logic loops are closed up so tight as to be frustratingly impervious to reason. Yes, they absolutely do mean to do us -- and our democracy -- grievous harm. Here's the good news. That Great Wall that separates our little reality-based community from The Fantasyland Next Door is not a monolit..."
This is how Sara Robinson of Orcinus (http://dneiwert.blogspot.com/) starts excellent series of essays where she studies possible moments of exodus for authoritarians. What you described in your post is one way out that Sara Robinson also has recognized:
- Cracks In The Wall, Part I: Defining the Authoritarian Personality
- Cracks In The Wall, Part II: Listening to the Leavers
- Cracks in the Wall, Part III: Escape Ladders
- Tunnels and Bridges, Part I: Divide and Conquer
- Tunnels and Bridges, Part II: Nothing to Fear But Fear Itself
- Tunnels and Bridges, Part III: A Bigger World
- Tunnels and Bridges, Part IV: Landing Zones
- Tunnels and Bridges: A Short Detour
Links of the series can be found from frontpage of Orcinus.
-
Excellent and to the point analysis
[Read the article: The tragic collapse of America's standing in the world]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]GG: "...values a source of inspiration, the ideals it espoused a source of widespread respect."
Agreed from Northland (Pohjola is a location in Finnish mythology and is usually translated as Northland in English). This blog represents well those values and is great inspiration also.
The challenges of our time contain often a global point of view - there is a need of the world also to enjoy spirited American leadership such as Al Gore...
-
College Republican Chickenhawks Get Busted
[Read the article: The Weekly Standard's "9/11 Generation"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Discussion of Max Blumenthal's video in the Daily Kos:
www.dailykos.com/story/2007/7/22/4291/04659
This is a diary of The Angry Rakkasan, he was infantry officer, with one tour in Afghanistan and another in Iraq.
-
Ongoing war - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
[Read the article: More on Zelikow, the BGR firm and Allawi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Naomi Klein argues that we are losing the economic incentive for peace.
From the transcript of Klein's speech on Democracy Now! (www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=07/04/02/1345218):
"It’s certainly a disaster for the Iraqi people. It's certainly a disaster for US taxpayers. But what we have seen -- and it’s extremely clear if we track the numbers -- is that the worse things get in Iraq, the more privatized this war becomes, the more profitable this war becomes for companies like Lockheed Martin, Bechtel, and certainly Blackwater.
You can have generalized mayhem, you can have wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, threats of nuclear war with Iran, a worsening of the Israeli occupation, a deepening of violence against Palestinians, you can have a terror in the face of global warming, you could have increased blowback from resource wars, you can have soaring oil prices...
When you can create such a booming economy around war and disaster, around destruction and reconstruction, over and over and over again, what is your peace incentive?
And then you had the post-modern privatization, which was the idea that the US military was actually going to war, the US Army was going to war, to loot itself, which is a post-modern kind of innovation, right?"
-
Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia
[Read the article: More on Zelikow, the BGR firm and Allawi]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good article "Baghdad Year Zero" by Naomi Klein, www.informationclearinghouse.info/article6930.htm