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thinkahol *

Climate of Fear: Jim Risen v. the Obama administration - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com - 0 views

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    [Barring unforeseen events, I'm going to leave this post at the top of the page for today and tomorrow, as I think the events it examines, rather in detail and at length, are vitally important and merit much more attention than they've received] The Obama DOJ's effort to force New York Times investigative journalist Jim Risen to testify in a whistleblower prosecution and reveal his source is really remarkable and revealing in several ways; it should be receiving much more attention than it is.  On its own, the whistleblower prosecution and accompanying targeting of Risen are pernicious, but more importantly, it underscores the menacing attempt by the Obama administration -- as Risen yesterday pointed out -- to threaten and intimidate whistleblowers, journalists and activists who meaningfully challenge what the government does in secret. The subpoena to Risen was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, and then revitalized by Obama lawyers.  It is part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ accuses of leaking to Risen the story of a severely botched agency plot -- from 11 years ago -- to infiltrate Iran's nuclear program, a story Risen wrote about six years after the fact in his 2006 best-selling book, State of War.  The DOJ wants to force Risen to testify under oath about whether Sterling was his source.
thinkahol *

Another Slap on the Wrist for Wall Street - 0 views

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    This is one of the best examples we've had yet of the profound difference in the style of criminal justice enforcement for the very rich and connected, versus the style of justice for everyone else. This scam that Chase, Bank of America and UBS were involved with was no different in any way, really, from old-school mafia-style bid-rigging scams.
thinkahol *

The Argentine Model - Truthdig - 0 views

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    While politicians from Athens to Washington are pushing through devastating austerity programs, Argentines voted in droves Sunday to re-elect their populist, welfare queen of a president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner. Fernandez is the widow of Nestor Kirchner, who died a year ago after winning the award for world's best husband (Nestor decided not to run for re-election so that his wife could take a turn). But before he left office, Nestor Kirchner infuriated global elites by defaulting on Argentina's $95 billion foreign debt. Greece, facing an external debt load five to six times that amount, has decided instead to severely cut back on public spending while it works with other governments to address its debt crisis. Argentina, on the other hand, pumped money into subsidies and social programs. And while the rest of the world has been circling the drain, financially speaking, Argentina's economy has been booming, with GDP growing last year by more than 9 percent. There are a lot of learned fellows who don't approve of the economic policies of Nestor and Cristina Kirchner, but the undisputed result in the short term is a thriving economy and a landslide re-election.  −PZS
Emilia Lamb

Postage Meters Shipping & Tracking Solutions in St Louis - 0 views

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    Shipping System (ESS) is a one-of-a-kind cloud-based shipping application that enables users to make smart shipping choices. The functionality allows users to choose a carrier at the best price and create shipments straight from their desktop-no matter where the user is located.
Jerry Chavez

Reliable Business Directory Site - 1 views

I have a small business that I have been trying to market online. I also tried posting my business profile for free at Business Directory Philippines. And you know what? Availing their free busines...

started by Jerry Chavez on 06 Dec 12 no follow-up yet
Gerald Payton

Perfect Way to Boost Employees' Self-Esteem - 1 views

I have been working with David Ferrier for two months now and with his expertise, he was able to help me boost the confidence of my team. He was great because he actively motivated my staff to exce...

started by Gerald Payton on 22 Oct 12 no follow-up yet
yosefong

Are you're Asking Yourself, "Where Can I Find a Notary?" - 2 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

Where Can I Find a Notary

started by yosefong on 29 May 12 no follow-up yet
clariene Austria

What You Need to Know about notary search - 1 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

started by clariene Austria on 02 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
clariene Austria

What You Need to Know about texas notary - 1 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

started by clariene Austria on 02 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
clariene Austria

What You Need to Know about how to find a notary - 1 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

started by clariene Austria on 02 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
clariene Austria

What You Need to Know about where to get notary services - 1 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on FindNotary. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary or...

started by clariene Austria on 02 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
Arabica Robusta

West 86th - The Administration of Things: A Genealogy - 0 views

  • “If men never disagreed about the ends of life, if our ancestors had remained undisturbed in the Garden of Eden, the studies to which the Chichele Chair of Social and Political Theory is dedicated could scarcely have been conceived,” Isaiah Berlin told his audience at Oxford when he assumed that position in 1958. Philosophy was at its best when it was being contentious, especially when it was being contentious about the meaning and purpose of our common existence. Too much agreement was an abdication of its ethical responsibility
  • The task of philosophy was not to settle disputes, but to unsettle them, to encourage them, to keep them going. For it was only through disputation that we could resist the rule of experts and machines, the bureaucratic-technocratic society foretold by Saint-Simon and championed by Marx and Engels, a society in which we replace the “government of persons by the administration of things.”
  • Louis de Bonald pointed to the hard choices that the state would have to make. “In the modern state, we have perfected the administration of things at the expense of the administration of men, and we are far more preoccupied with the material than the moral,” he wrote. “Few governments nurture religion or morality with the same attention that they promote commerce, open communications, keep track of accounts, provide the people with pleasures, etc.” 12
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  • All history, Comte argued, is a history of class struggle. Not the struggle between master and slave, lord and serf, bourgeois and proletarian—that was still a couple decades away—but the struggle between two classes of phenomena: “critical” phenomena that contributed to moral and political decay and “organic” phenomena that promoted individual and social regeneration.
  • The objective was to protect against arbitrariness in all of its manifestation. Earlier political thinkers had tended to associate arbitrariness mainly with absolutist governments, but for Comte any form of government was susceptible so long as it rested on “metaphysical” rather than “positive” principles.
  • Engels believed that the obsession with detail that had characterized utopian socialism—its compulsion to work out every last aspect of future social organization—is precisely what made it so utopian.
  • When, at last, it becomes the real representative of the whole of society, it renders itself unnecessary. As soon as there is no longer any social class to be held in subjection; as soon as class rule, and the individual struggle for existence based upon our present anarchy in production, with the collisions and excesses arising from these, are removed, nothing more remains to be repressed, and a special repressive force, a State, is no longer necessary.
  • “I think it was Trotsky who used a very plain but very telling metaphor,” the historian Isaac Deutscher told graduate students in a seminar on bureaucracy at the London School of Economics in 1960. “The policeman can use his baton either for regulating traffic or for dispersing a demonstration of strikers or unemployed. In this one sentence is summed up the classical distinction between administration of things and administration of men.”
  • Our hasty genealogy of the “administration of things” must conclude with its latest, and quite possibly last, iteration: Bruno Latour’s “Parliament of Things,” or Dingpolitik. Initially proposed in his book We Have Never Been Modern (1991), then extended in a massive exhibition and accompanying catalog, Making Things Public (2005), Latour’s program has attracted a growing number of partisans in the world of political theory
Konstantinos

Democracy versus Republic? - 0 views

We live in a republic (a group of states that are self governing under the umbrella of a centralized or federal government). The type of system we employ is a representative form of democracy (mean...

democracy republic distinction

started by Konstantinos on 30 Jul 12 no follow-up yet
Markus Potter

Notary mobile - 4 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on notary mobile. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search by notary...

started by Markus Potter on 16 May 12 no follow-up yet
Markus Potter

Where to get notarized - 4 views

If you are asking yourself "where can I find a notary," we obviously believe the best place is right here on where to get notarized. We make finding a notary near you extremely simple. Just search ...

started by Markus Potter on 16 May 12 no follow-up yet
barrybcollinss

US economy surprisingly grows at 2.8 percent annual rate over summer, best showing in a... - 0 views

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    WASHINGTON –  The U.S. financial system expanded at a 2.8 % once-a-year charge from July as a result of September, a stunning indication of toughness forward of the 16-working day partial authorities shutdown. Exports rose, firms stocked up, property construction increased and point out and regional governments used at the swiftest rate in four years.
Bakari Chavanu

Amazon.com: Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free eBook:... - 0 views

  • Question: What inspired, or should I say drove, you to write Idiot America? Charles P. Pierce: The germ of the idea came as I watched the extended coverage of the death of Terri Schiavo. I wondered how so many people could ally themselves with so much foolishness despite the fact that it was doing them no perceptible good, politically or otherwise.
  • Question: Is there a specific turning point where, as a country, we moved away from prizing experience to trusting the gut over intellect? Charles P. Pierce: I don't know if there's one point that you can point to and say, “This is when it happened.” The conflict between intellectual expertise and reflexive emotion—often characterized as “good old common sense,” when it is neither common nor sense—has been endemic to American culture and politics since the beginning. I do think that my profession, journalism, went off the tracks when it accepted as axiomatic the notion that “Perception is reality.”
  • Question: What is the most dangerous aspect of Idiot America? Charles P. Pierce: The most dangerous aspect of Idiot America is that it encourages us to abandon our birthright to be informed citizens of a self-governing republic. America cannot function on automatic pilot, and, too often, we don't notice that it has been until the damage has already been done.
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  • To this day, we have a political party—the Republicans—who, because it embraced a “movement of Conservatism” that celebrated anti-intellectualism is now incapable of conducting itself in any other way. That has profound political and cultural consequences, and the truly foul part about it was that so many people engaged in it knowing full well they were peddling poison.
  • Charles P. Pierce: Look at the political opposition to President Obama. “Socialist!” “Fascist!” “Coming to get your guns.” Hysteria from the hucksters of Idiot America is still at high-tide. People are killing other people and specifically attributing their action to imaginary oppression stoked by radio talk-show stars and television pundits. That Glenn Beck has achieved the prominence he has makes me wonder if there is a just god in heaven.
  • "Idiot America" is great, informative book about concepts we see everyday. Also, many of the 1-star reviews are likely biased because of some of the political and religious topics noted. I think this book is definitely a full, 5-star book.
  • The author notes "The 3 Great Premises: and applies them to many instances in this book: 1. Any theory is valid if it moves units (rating, and making money). 2. Anything can be true if it is said loudly enough. 3. Fact is what enough people believe (the Truth is what you believe).
  • POLITICAL TALK RADIO: One set of rules noted by a professor studying radio discourse: *Never Be Dull *Embrace willfully ignorant simplicity *The American public is stupid; treat them that way *Always ignore the fact and the public record when it's convenient
  • TELEVISION: "Television is an emotional medium. It's entertainment, not analysis or reasoned discourse."
  • But to someone willing to take the time to read it, this book tells people what practically everyone should know about American politics -- that the American people are being sold a sob story about how experts are an elite that is keeping them from being The Best Damn Nation In The World. (In that regard, one should definitely read "The Paranoid Style In American Politics" by Richard Hofstadter -- it's over four decades old, but saw from the very beginning what has come into full bloom now with the barking lunacy of the American Right.)
  • The main problem with this book is this: the people who are likely to read it already know most of the story, and are mostly getting background information, and the people who won't read it are like the six reviewers I mentioned in my intro -- determined to ignore its stories and insights as "bias" because their politics and faith won't let them look outside the cloister.
  • He lays the blame at the feet of various ideology-driven entities, with special attention given to the same corporate-media war cheerleaders who happily passed on Bush's lies about Iraqi weaponry to a somnolent public, and who, in the name of putting "balance" over reality, treat specious creationist nonsense and hard scientific fact as if both had equal validity. Highly recommended!
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