Monday, March 31, 2003
French's Mustard: Eat me! I'm not French!. Mustard-maker goes on the PR offensive amid nationwide fits of wartime anti-France fervor:
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:28:23 PM -
"The only thing French about French's Mustard is the name," the company announced. The mustard-maker said it felt obliged to hire a PR company to set the record straight after some media reports suggested it was being -- or should be -- boycotted because of its "French" links. A report on CNN apparently showed one restaurant replacing French's mustard with a Heinz product. "For the record, French's would like to say there is nothing more American than French's Mustard," it said, referring to its New York origins.Link, Discuss, (via TKblog) [Boing Boing Blog]
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:28:23 PM -
So loud sound the drums of hate.... A Pyrrhic victory in a catastrophic "March of Folly"? - historian Barbara Tuchman asked: why do leaders persist in pursuing catastrophic policies? Regardless of Baath regime executions of Iraqis, the Islamic world will witness mainly "American Atrocities" - and be outraged by gruesome images, on Al Jazeera and elsewhere, of every single child killed by American bombs. Iraqi tactics - of suicide bombing, ambushes, and faked surrenders - will erase the civilian/combatant distinction, leading to more and more incidents like this (to be televised to an appalled Islamic world): and all this merely a foreshadow of what may be urban warfare on a scale seldom seen in the 20th century. Grozny comes to mind. Mainstream US media asserts that the solution for the whole "miscalculation" is just more US troops
But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by Rumsfeld, Powell, and the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread, drawing in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the destabilization or the takeover, of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a Nuclear miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.
If only this were "South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny. [MetaFilter] - Posted by Richard Chlopan - 1:21:27 PM -
But the war is tailor made to provoke tribalistic, Pan-Islamic fury (and corresponding, furiously tribalistic US patriotic support for war). Escalation is in the air: statements by Rumsfeld, Powell, and the US State Dept. indicate an awareness that the current war could spread, drawing in Syria and Iran. Consequences also could include the destabilization or the takeover, of nuclear armed Pakistan, by Islamic militants, and a Nuclear miltarization across a wide region, from Iraq to Japan.
If only this were "South Park: The Movie", where the onset of Armaggeddon can be stopped by an heroic act of sacrifice by Kenny. [MetaFilter]
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 1:21:27 PM -
Atwood: America is selling itself out. Margaret Atwood, Canadian literary star and author of "The Handmaid's Tale," wrote a stern open letter to the USA in yesterday's Globe and Mail. The war isn't what's got her upset, though: it's the Bush Administration's exploitation of the war to undermine the civil liberties that define America as the city on the hill, the democratic proving ground to which all other democracies can aspire.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:31:11 PM -
You're gutting the Constitution. Already your home can be entered without your knowledge or permission, you can be snatched away and incarcerated without cause, your mail can be spied on, your private records searched. Why isn't this a recipe for widespread business theft, political intimidation, and fraud? I know you've been told all this is for your own safety and protection, but think about it for a minute. Anyway, when did you get so scared? You didn't used to be easily frightened.Link Discuss (Thanks, Greg!) [Boing Boing Blog]You're running up a record level of debt. Keep spending at this rate and pretty soon you won't be able to afford any big military adventures. Either that or you'll go the way of the USSR: lots of tanks, but no air conditioning. That will make folks very cross. They'll be even crosser when they can't take a shower because your short-sighted bulldozing of environmental protections has dirtied most of the water and dried up the rest. Then things will get hot and dirty indeed.
You're torching the American economy. How soon before the answer to that will be, not to produce anything yourselves, but to grab stuff other people produce, at gunboat-diplomacy prices? Is the world going to consist of a few megarich King Midases, with the rest being serfs, both inside and outside your country? Will the biggest business sector in the United States be the prison system? Let's hope not.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:31:11 PM -
No Matter How Bad It Is, It's Lots Worse Than You Think © 2003, John H. Farr Every day brings more outrages. Every day it's another over-the-top insanity. One of these mornings I'll be able to tell you some good news, but not just yet. Take a gander at this and tell me why we're not impeaching the entire executive branch:
"US Soldiers in Iraq Asked to Pray for Bush" [FarrFeed]
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:23:22 PM -
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 12:23:22 PM -
A sig that spread like wildfire. People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die. If you've been hanging around the net for a while, chances are you've seen this in someone's sig. In fact, it's so frequently quoted that it makes finding Jim Davidson's original post in alt.folklore.urban just a bit difficult to find -- but it's worth looking for! It sits in the middle of an interesting debate about how poisonous plutonium is, spurred on by the rumor(?) that it's one of the "most toxic poison[s] known to man." Deadly poison, Los Alamos Scientists, levitating hemispheres of metal... all it really needs to round it out is true love. [MetaFilter]
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:58:41 AM -
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:58:41 AM -
'TIME-TRAVELER' BUSTED FOR INSIDER TRADIN. Hey, it has to be true. It was on the Internet. Remember it was published in Weekly World News. Always check The Urban Legends Pages when in doubt. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:48:03 AM -
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:48:03 AM -
Quotes of the Times
The best thing Maureen Dowd has written in years: "We're stunned to discover that the local population treats our well-armed high-tech troops like invaders. Why is all this a surprise again? I know our hawks avoided serving in Vietnam, but didn't they, like, read about it?"
Garry Wills: "Bush has been very good at fooling the American people into thinking that Saddam Hussein was behind the attack on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington."
[EdCone.com] - Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:44:04 AM -
Why Can't Reporters Do a Better Job? - Brad DeLong.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:38:31 AM -
The Economist seems to be slipping lately in the quality of its economic reporting. One reads paragraphs like: Taxing Times: ...Economists are divided about the wisdom of slashing taxes in this way, without trying to balance the books. Last month, around 450 economists, including ten Nobel laureates, openly criticised the tax-cut plan: in response, the White House quickly marshalled support from economists who took a different view. Mr Bush has been arguing that his tax cut will itself have a beneficial impact on economic growth, and that as a result the deficits projected under current methods will turn out to be overly pessimistic... And one wants to scream. What "...economists who took a different view..."? Alan Greenspan--number one Republican economist--who says that now is definitely not the time to cut taxes? Douglas Holtz-Eakin--until two months ago Chief Economist at Bush's Council of Economic Advisers--who, now that he heads the Congressional Budget Office and is out from under Karl Rove's message discipline, politely says that it is "not obvious" why anyone would think the tax cut would have a beneficial effect on growth? Bush's own ex-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who says that shoring up Social Security would be much better than more tax cuts? The fact that the CBO--controlled by Republicans for a decade now--thinks that the dynamic scoring argument is a big fat zero? The fact that the Bush Administration cannot hold a significant fraction of its own appointees "on message" after they leave the Administration is a powerful and important signal that its "analytical judgments" are simply lies. Yet the Economist prefers to turn it into a "he said, she said" story--leading the average reader without copious spare time to conclude that this is just another random political dispute that outsiders cannot untangle. When I get annoyed enough to get in the face of reporters (not, I hasten to say, from the Economist) who I think fail to carry their weight, and ask them why they do this--why they turn everything into a Point-Counterpoint bald recital of positions, rather than helping guide their readers to understand what is the better argument, or the near-consensus position, I tend to get one or both of two responses:Just like everyone esle, 90% of the reporters are incompetant (Sturgeon's Law). I do like the reasons given, especially the clues one. Yeah that helps. And what if the editor removes the important clues? What a way to run a newspaper! But it is true that Ari will make them sit in the back if he doesn't like the way they ask their questions. As any press secretary is wont to do. Status is very important for the press at the White House. [A Man with a Ph.D. - Richard Gayle's Weblog]
- I can't do my job without White House cooperation: if I call them liars, they'll shut me out--then I won't be able to write any stories, and my editors will fire me. I have to keep my sources tamed.
- Besides, there are clues scattered in the article that a careful reader can use to understand what is really going on.
- Posted by Richard Chlopan - 6:38:31 AM -
