Advertising overload
A Netherlands arts group, Studio Smack, put together this video which provides a stark look at all the logos and advertising one is exposed to going throughout a normal daily routine.
On the death (again) of Osama bin Laden
Those who are uncomfortable with cognitive dissonance or so-called conspiracy theories might be better off skipping this post. Those who seek to understand the machinations of our government however, are encouraged to read on. Firstly, let me clearly state that I disapprove of the manner of this killing. Extrajudicial assassinations are an anathema to a society that claims to live by the rule of law. Numerous voices are loudly praising this decision to kill bin Laden rather than capture him, supposedly to save the fragile American public from the rigors of a trial. They claim that a trial would have been "too controversial", as if that had anything to do with the law or its application. Either we believe that laws matter or we don't. Either we believe that there is justice available under our system of laws, or we do not. In this case, it's clear that we do not trust our own system of justice to arrive at the "right" conclusion. Implicitly, this suggests that we are hoping for a kangaroo court, already convinced of the guilt of the accused based upon the mere say-so of our government. When the president can order someone to be killed, with no oversight or evidence presented, we no longer a democratic system of checks and balances. We have an emperor, a tyrant, relatively benign though he may appear to be. I argued much the same in the case of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed last year. [More . . . ]
How bad is the Gulf? How bad is American media?
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has endorsed Arab news organization Al Jazeera as offering "real news", superior to ersatz U.S. news which is full of commercials, talking-heads and soundbites that are "not particularly informative to us." Perhaps that explains a part of the reason why U.S. audiences are largely unaware of the continuing ecological disaster in the Gulf of Mexico in the aftermath of BP's Deepwater Horizon blowout last year. Al Jazeera, on the other hand, brings us this story of sickness and death on the Gulf Coast.
[caption id="attachment_16980" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Eco-terrorism in Gulf of Mexico. Image via Leoma Lovegrove (creative commons)"][More . . . ][/caption] "I have critically high levels of chemicals in my body," 33-year-old Steven Aguinaga of Hazlehurst, Mississippi told Al Jazeera. "Yesterday I went to see another doctor to get my blood test results and the nurse said she didn't know how I even got there." Aguinaga and his close friend Merrick Vallian went swimming at Fort Walton Beach, Florida, in July 2010. "I swam underwater, then found I had orange slick stuff all over me," Aguinaga said. "At that time I had no knowledge of what dispersants were, but within a few hours, we were drained of energy and not feeling good. I've been extremely sick ever since."
The sanctity of contracts
Daily Show host John Stewart eviscerates those asking teachers and other unions to make sacrifices in the name of cutting the budget deficit, especially when those same people (literally!) did not ask the same from Wall Street bankers following the trillions of dollars of bailouts and easy money:
Humanitarian crisis vs. ulterior motives
Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, after which followed decades of brutal repression and violence directed at the Timorese people. Hundreds of thousands of Timorese have died as a result of the conflict, whether killed outright or as a result of disease and hunger. In one incident alone, known as the Dili Massacre, hundreds of people agitating for independence for East Timor were massacred as Indonesian soldiers opened fire. There was no intervention by the United States, and in fact, we continued to sell weapons and train the Indonesian military. There are no known oil reserves credited to East Timor, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA). Whatever resources do exist are mired in competing claims with Australia.