Glenn Greenwald exposes the lies of Wired

After more than a year, Wired has finally published most of the chat logs between Bradley Manning and government informant Adrian Lamo. As Salon's Glenn Greenwald points out in his detailed analysis, Wired withheld this information as part of a cover-up:

[T]he controversy was over Wired's obvious concealment of matters outside of the scope of Manning's personal issues, ones that were plainly relevant to newsworthy matters and, in particular, to Lamo's claims about what Manning told him. The concern was that Wired was concealing material to glorify and shield its source, Poulsen's long-time associate Adrian Lamo, in a way that distorted the truth and, independently, denied the public important context for what happened here. Wired's release of the full chat logs leaves no doubt that those concerns were justified, and that Wired was less than honest about what it was concealing.

Continue ReadingGlenn Greenwald exposes the lies of Wired

Is this painting obscene?

I'm in London on vacation, enjoying many of the museums, including London's National Gallery.   Today I spotted the following painting, which is part of the National Gallery's collection: This is a painting by Palma Vecchio (painted around 1520).  The art gallery is open to all ages, including small children, and there were plenty of young children in the vicinity of this painting today.  The description next to this painting announces that the woman displays a "sensuous beauty" characteristic of Roman courtesans. Frankly, I find the woman in Vecchio's painting to be quite fetching, and I find the painting itself to be most excellent. To my eye, it is not in the least obscene.  But seeing it today made me think of Janet Jackson's "nipple" incident at the Superbowl XXXVIII.  What an incident that was, ending up with a fine of more than 1/2 million dollars for the TV network, and America ending all up bent out of shape because somehow . . . somehow . . . the sight of Ms. Jackson's nipple harmed children.   I strongly disagree with the attitude that the naked human body should be seen as perverse.  I have never seen any evidence that any child has ever been harmed by seeing a nipple; I've never seen any scientific evidence suggesting that it is harmful to view a nipple, despite millions of protests to the contrary (As to why so many Americans are so terrified about the public viewing of female nipples, I have a theory). Seeing this painting reminded me of  Dan Dennett's comment that people in American don't believe in God, but they believe in belief.    Likewise, we don't really believe that children are harmed by mere nakedness, but we believe in the belief that children are harmed by mere nakedness. If we  Americans really believed that mere images of nakedness and sexuality harmed children, we'd pass a law to remove quite a bit of art from our own museums, and we'd also take down quite a  bit of our suggestive advertisements currently on billboards and storefronts. It's incidents like Jackson's that make me think that we Americans are not even capable of having meaningful conversations anymore, unless the topic is sports, TV, movies, or consumer electronics. On important issues we'd rather yell at each other in tribal ways.

Continue ReadingIs this painting obscene?

Lies are easy; truth is painstaking

Here is perhaps the biggest challenge facing democracy today: Telling lies is often much easier than establishing the truth. This parallels physical construction, where destroying a building is much easier than building it. I'm going to pick on conservatives here, because this is where the problem most often and most saliently occurs these days (consider the track records of FOX News, for instance, or Michelle Bachmann). When conservatives lie (or palter or recklessly repeat falsehoods), it takes substantial time and effort to set the record straight. That work of setting things straight often involves tracking down primary sources, and it often requires rehabilitating the credibility of the smeared parties. When this repair work is done well in writing, it involves lots of research, ample linking and especially clear writing. The work required to damage truth is so much less than maintaining truth that I would propose that the smear campaigns run by 5% of the population are usually capable of incapacitating the other 95%. I'd like to point to a recent example from Missouri, where Dana Loesch, an entirely unself-critical conservative radio host affiliated with the Tea Party, in concert with other conservatives, spewed lies that almost cost two university professors their jobs. Both the lies and the truth have been well-documented by Adam Shriver of St. Louis Activist Hub. Shriver goes well beyond getting the facts straight in other articles he has written--he has given important context to the facts--something that a major St. Louis newspaper failed to do. Setting the record straight also required excellent work by Amy Goodman of Democracy Now. So the battle goes on, and the forces of truth will be fighting at a major disadvantage because they carry the burden of establishing the truth. They will be working longer and harder to keep things accurate, and even when they successfully document and refute the lies of conservatives (as they did here), there will be no time to celebrate, because those who intentionally lie, or who are reckless with the truth, will have moved on to promulgate new falsehoods.

Continue ReadingLies are easy; truth is painstaking

Governor Perry and the “Save America” Zoo

Governor Rick Perry, who may or may not be running for president on the Republican ticket (any day now we may—or may not—get an announcement) has put out a call for a great big Texas style get-together prayer meeting.  He has a passel of preachers coming to harrangue about the problems of America. There’s only a couple of problems with the guest list and what it says about Perry. He has one preacher who said that Hitler was sent by god to force all the Jews back to Israel (part of the Grand Design). Another insists that not one more permit be issued for another mosque anywhere in the United States. We have another who claims that the reason Japan’s stock market crashed was because the Emperor had sex with the sun goddess. Still one more claims that demons are being released through the good works of people who are doing those good works for all the wrong reasons. [more . . .]

Continue ReadingGovernor Perry and the “Save America” Zoo