More rifts today in the NYT as they cover the plight of Egypt’s rich.
“The protesters are against us,” [a rich person] added. “We hope President Mubarak stays because at least we have national security. I wish we could be like the United States with a democracy, but we cannot. We have to have a ruler with an iron hand.”
Previously the feudal lords of Northern Pakistan have it hard.
Whereas they were ‘fissures’ in Peshawar, it’s a ‘widening chasm’ in Egypt.
I’m watching an interesting documentary about remix culture that has interviews with Greg Gillis of Girl Talk (pictured), Cory Doctorow, Negativland and Lawrence Lessig. It’s on Hulu, which I think is progressive of them, but I’m sure you can get it other places as well.
Wikileaks has obtained sickening video of a US Apache helicopter killing a bunch of unarmed men and then wounding children in a van in Baghdad in the summer of 2007. The children were denied care at US military hospitals and taken instead to an Iraqi hospital.
Some quotes from the men on the radio:
Look at those dead bastards. Nice.
And, when Saeed, the Reuters journalist, is wounded, struggling to get up off the curb
All you gotta do is pick up a weapon
Or, apparently be rescued, because when a van shows up with children to take him to the hospital, they flatten it.
Well that’s their fault for bringing their kids into a battle.
NYT coverage at the time and now, after the release of the video.
Update 4/7: Here’s an excellent analysis by the Medium Lobster at Fafblog
Update 7/8: Bradley Manning, the whistleblower, now faces up to 52 years in military prison.
At the top of the “Most Emailed” list on the NYT is a fairly standard report about how the Texas State Board of Education is changing its curricula to deemphasize Darwin and the ‘separation of church and state’ etc etc (so hard to get upset about this stuff anymore!) but this one part toward the end caught my eye:
In economics … they also replaced the word “capitalism” throughout their texts with the “free-enterprise system.”
“Let’s face it, capitalism does have a negative connotation,” said one conservative member, Terri Leo. “You know, ‘capitalist pig!’”
Yes! Yes I do. Wise move. In Austin NBC affiliate KXAN’s report, you can see another one of the legislators using that language.
In related news, the Insight Center released a report showing, among other things, that the median net worth of all our single black female free-enterprisers ages 36-49 is just: five dollars. And that was before the recession.
Via Scats.
So, it’s been almost a year since I signed up for Google advertising on the right side of this humble blog. Year One earnings statement below:
No one told me you have to actually click on the ads to make money! I’m going to take that as a sign of the intelligence of my readership.
Look for the ads to be disappeared in a future update.
I noticed in this somewhat creepy NYT piece about recent branding changes that the company formerly known as Blackwater USA is now (since February) known as: Xe Services LLC. How forgettable a name is that?
Spokeswoman Anne Tyrrell said there was no meaning in the new name, which the company spent over a year to arrive at in an internal search. [WaPo]
No mention of Blackwater on their new website, not even on About Us. BlackwaterSecurity.com is not working, BlackwaterUSA.com is now USTraining.com.
Anyway, marketing WIN. The word (Xe) is like memory kryptonite. I can’t even remember it and I’m still writing the post about it. I guess sometimes losing mindshare is the goal. Also see: Altria.
Minnesotans today can breathe a sigh of relief, now that 6th District Republican congresswoman “Michele Bachmann” has revealed herself to be an elaborate performance-art hoax.
No stranger to outlandish and “guerilla-style” art projects, the openly-gay [Trinity] Ohm said she created the Bachmann character as part of her ongoing mission to use experimental performance art to “confront issues of gender, patriarchy, and the mainstreaming of authoritarian politics in America.” Previously, Ohm was best known for her video art project “Tyrannosaurus Sex,” a five-hour video, which featured a nude Ohm, with a latex phallus attached to her forehead, making, then destroying balloon animals…
Read the full story at Dear Leader.
I know I said no politics on this blog but it’s late and my resistance is weak.
Point is, I want to support Bill Keller’s latest initiative to reduce his organization’s carbon footprint. Here’s some superfluous language I suggest they might cut out of tomorrow’s paper—actually this whole story:
Taliban Exploit Class Rifts to Gain Ground in Pakistan
The Taliban have advanced deeper into Pakistan by engineering a class revolt that exploits profound fissures between a small group of wealthy landlords and their landless tenants, according to government officials and analysts here.The strategy cleared a path to power for the Taliban in the Swat Valley, where the government allowed Islamic law to be imposed this week, and it carries broad dangers for the rest of Pakistan, particularly the militants’ main goal, the populous heartland of Punjab Province.
Uh, so they’re going to side with the corrupt landlords! You have to admire their commitment to demonstrating their position in nearly every word of the lede. If this were neutral, it could have been titled something like “Taliban Seen as Engineering Revolt in Remote Area of Pakistan” or “Taliban’s Dictum Appeals to Pakistan’s Rural Working Poor” or something (these are their words). But no, we have “exploit” (how dare they?) and “class rifts” (my favorite) right there in the title. Class rifts? Talking about “class” instead of “poverty” makes it seem like the difference is part of the natural order. “Rifts” reinforces that. To my ear, “rifts” connects with the “fissures” below, like it’s a geologic rock formation.
Now of course I’m not a fan of any religious extremists, nor of bloody uprisings, but what’s the story here? It’s that there is a society of people (poor Pakistanis living in a remote northern corner of the country 100 miles north of Peshawar) who have been enduring an untenable hardship for a long time, and that they joined a cause that promised to improve their lives. At the expense of “about four dozen landlords” [aka oligarchs]. The story goes on to say just that only a few paragraphs down.
But in the Times’s language, it sounds like these criminals are subverting the very laws of nature to “advance” their vast armies in a linear fashion toward the dreaded soft target of Punjab.
Taliban don’t give the poor people money, they offer “economic spoils.” I suppose they have to because listen to the heartbreaking plight of the exiled oligarchs:
A landlord who fled with his family last year said he received a chilling message last week. His tenants called him in Peshawar, the capital of North-West Frontier Province, which includes Swat, to tell him his huge house was being demolished, he said in an interview here.
The most crushing news was about his finances. He had sold his fruit crop in advance, though at a quarter of last year’s price. But even that smaller yield would not be his, his tenants said, relaying the Taliban message. The buyer had been ordered to give the money to the Taliban instead.
The story ends on that. Chilling indeed.
ZOMG epic fail with the Tropicana rebranding.
After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars.
… several of Tropicana’s competitors appear to have benefited from the misstep, notably Minute Maid, Florida’s Natural and Tree Ripe. Varieties within each of those brands posted double-digit unit sales increases during the period …
They announced Feb 23 that they were going back to the old packaging.
Via Gawker
I love this idea, and not just because it involves cats. Legalese is obnoxious! For example the recent Sleeping Beauty thing.
It’s one of those petty annoyances that we put up with every day, like why can’t I copy songs back from my iPod onto my computer?
Update 2/15/2010 This program works pretty well for that…
