I agree perartee is both interesting and informative. When you make 50% of your posts about her rather than the topic and a half dozen others do the same at the same time it leaves little left for the topic. It just gets lost.

I'm just an appliance driver myself and still trying to figure out how to get this thing to go to the refferenced site when this thing blocks it because of the pop-ups at that site.

Refering to my first post tonight: How can I get others to just look in on columns like Glens when most really believe they are getting real reporting from the stenographers. Its nice to have a place to go like this but talking amoung ourselves doesn't accomplish anything. As long as the corporations own both the government and the media I kep feeling a bit lonely watching thing go down hill and Obama acting like he is Bush 44.

I don't know who's making the world's heroin right now, but perhaps drug eradication is only meant to be something we pay lip service to, but woe to the government that actually tries to do it for real. I mean, drugs never provided the unmarked bills for our covert wars. The only people who believe that are the tin hats and those who missed the Iran Contra hearings.

You don't? I just told you, Afghanistan supplies 93% of the world's heroin, with Helmand producing 50% of that. And the Taliban stopped production for 7 months. They had stockpiled, it's a known fact. No, there's no nefarious CIA angle or Iran-Contra Richard Secord involved. It's the Taliban. Using connections in the Gulf States and elsewhere provided by al Qaeda. And the warlords. All the stuff that goes North or East on the way out of Afghanistan profits the warlords. You know, guys like General Dostum and Ismail Khan and that guy in Kunduz.

There are two groups of people that the Afghans can't stand. They can't stand them so bad, that's why they asked for the ISAF program originally. They are the warlords, and the Taliban. And the CIA made sure they ended up with the former, while the ISI made sure they ended up with the latter. And the icing on the cake was the U.S. Air Force proving to the Afghans nobody gave a shit whether they survived the peace.

But you don't have to believe any of that, it's much nicer on the Manichaean couch and potato out on one of two extremely simplistic denigrations of the 'little people' in their 'tribal culture': The neocon version in which the whole country are bad guys who snort terrorism with their Islam, or the non-interventional fascists who believe that the Afghans want the Taliban and heroin more than anything in the whole wide world. And who cares what the Afghans really want? Neither the neocons nor the supposed anti-war people will give it to them. It's one of those 'brown people don't deserve it, and beside the economy' kinda things.

of you guys (omooex, wayne b) make valid points, certainly. You know, it's a funny thing when considering what's serious, what isn't, what should be, what isn't.

Wayne, you say

Referring back to my first post, I need ideas on how to spread the word to those who think they are getting real info from the media.

This, I appreciate. But is responding to bernbart obstructing this? You're free to pass along GG's initial column to all and sundry, aren't you?

But talking among ourselves will never accomplish anything.

This is definitely true; but I deliberately go out of my way--as do you, I'm sure--to let others know of a reality that exists out there, the one they're not aware of.

Omooex:

The big shame is that a conversation that could well have been interesting on what are drivers of ethics in a profit-generating American journalism--why a McClatchy has better reporting quite a bit more often than other big mainstream papers, turned into an intramural contest between the NYT and McClatchy

this, too, is valid.

Let me say something here about myself; I'm a simple fellow, but a guy who enjoys humor and lightheartedness, as well as serious discussions about serious matters. These things aren't mutually exclusive. Indeed, I think they're mutually inclusive for the serious among us. So, okay, I think that we needn't be sober-sides all the time; we can have a bit of fun, too; and by engaging in the latter, we do not somehow denigrate the former.

This is how I see it.

I don't know how you came to this site but you seem to be completely confused about it's purpose. Every script writing workshop has to work with an 'antagonists' or it doesn't work at all. I try my best and also Glenn - but it is not our fault that there are so many 'protagonists' lately and the 'antagonistic' side is so weak. But Glenns blog is still one of the best script writing workshops around!!

The black and white contest was disappointing given the really incredible amount of intelligence that is on regular display here

It was not our finest hour. To be fair, I've been in worse pile-ons, but it still seems to me we're spending more time havng flamewars around here than we used to. That may not be objectively true, but it feels that way. The brief Greasemonkey killfile caesura was nice, but ultimately unsustainable.

It's really great that we get the occasional heterodox commenter who's both intelligent and stubborn enough to stand their ground against the inevitable pushback. But they're few and far between.

I have been suggesting a blogring among the folks who comment here regularly, with the idea of trying to prolong interesting, on-topic conversations. I don't want to give up the comments section, but too many of us (and I do include myself in the first person plural) find it too easy to give in to the desire to blow off steam by flaming trolls.

Some of that is inevitable, and like almost everything is fine in moderation. But it can go overboard sometimes.