From CNN’s story about Lindsay Lohan’s interview with Jay Leno:
She blamed her youth on her bad choices.
Lohan to Leno: I’ll be back with an Oscar! – CNN.com
I’d blame her youth on her parent’s bad choices, but that’s just me.
John P. Avlon has it right today:
…”Not intended to be a factual statement” is an instant dark classic, a triumph of cynicism, capturing the essence of Michael Kinsley’s definition of a gaffe in Washington: when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
No wonder “people are taking their comedians seriously and the politicians as a joke,” as Will Rogers once said and Colbert increasingly embodies. But we can’t keep depending on comedians to be the voices of sanity.
And don’t be fooled. There are real costs to this careless courtship of the lowest common denominator. Without fact-based debates, politics can quickly give way to paranoia and hate. Our democracy gets degraded.
Americans deserve better, and we should demand better, especially from our elected representatives. Empowering ignorance for political gain is unacceptable.
Colbert vs. Kyl and spread of ‘misinformation’ | CNN
Hear ye to that! <emphasis mine>
This from the Latest News section of the Independent Online just now:
Well Nick, what do you say to that?
Pawn recently reached out to friend and ex-patriot T, now living in Mozambique, for her opinion on the current events in Egypt. T is an international teacher, and has taught in Los Angeles and Thailand, before living and teaching in Cairo for some time. This was her response:
Great to hear from you. Yes, J and I are glued to the news everyday. I think it is absolutely necessary for the people to fight against Mubarak. He has been a tyrant and a merciless dictator for too long. It is a shame that some people will get hurt, but I agree with the revolt and think that Hosni should resign.
I think it is amazing that social networking can possibly be the unifying factor for many people throughout Africa. Here in Mozambique when we had the riots last fall, people were being organized by text messages, until the government cut off all cell phone service. That was the only way to squelch it.
Many Africans in countries with corrupt governments have needed a way to organize and join together to fight and be heard, now facebook, text messages, have reached the common man, the economies have been increaing and the technology has become available to the masses.  Just last month there were protests in Tanzania for the first time in twenty years and it was all organized through texts.
Again I don’t want to see people get hurt and looting and destroying property is horrible but If you mistreat people for long periods of time, you can’t help but expect them to fight back violently. I just hope that the international community puts enough pressure on Mubarak so that he will actually step down. I’m worried about my Egyptian friends of course, and concerned for their safety, but I know they are ready for the regime to be toppled.
This just in:
Controversial graffiti artist and Mobarak’s friend Banksy to act as mediator.”The embattled president of Egypt has confirmed through a Facebook entry and through the state-run Nile TV that he is willing to open his door to negotiations with the leaders of the rival parties under two conditions.
“First is for the immediate halt of the street protests in the city of Cairo and Alexandria and second is for President Mubarak’s friend and a popular graffiti artists, Banksy”… to mediate between the parties.
Egypt’s Mubarak Opens Door to Negotiations, Requests Banksy | Newsflavor
Tonton Macoute c1976 by Gèrard Bruny
Here’s an interesting thing Pawn heard on the BBC last night on an episode of The Strand, the arts and culture show of the World Service. The first story was about a new anthology of Haitian fiction called Haiti Noir. The interview, with the editor, was quite interesting. The episode is here:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00cgkp8
The segment in question is the first one.
One thing I found interesting was the editor, Edwidge Danticat’s, explanation of the title. In Creole, “noir” in addition to meaning “black” as in traditional French, also means native, familiar, one of us, as opposed to “blanc” which is taken to mean a foreigner. But it also, in fiction, has the meaning with which we associate it.
But the other thing which really got my attention was her explanation about historical appropriation of traditional stories, such as the Tonton Macoute, by the state. In traditional Haitian Creole lore, the Tonton Macoute (Uncle Gunnysack) is a form of boogeyman, who walks the streets after dark and kidnaps children who stay out too late. After disbanding the Hatian army and police forces, upon gaining power, François “Papa Doc” Duvalier organized his own, ruthless, security force. The citizens quickly named it the Tonton Macoute due to their habit of disappearing those who ran afoul of the regime.
Anyway, this whole idea just struck such a chord with me, the idea of a frightening instrument of the state getting named after a fairy tale character. This immediately made me think, what does Janjaweed mean? To me the Janjaweed militia, known for their effortlessly ruthless attacks on innocents in Sudan represent the very worst of thugish behavior. To what, I wondered, does that name owe its legacy? I looked it up, and it means, literally, “ghostly riders,” fro Jin “spirit” jawad “horse.” Or, more popularly, “Genie on a horse.” Again, a perhaps childish visage, a genie, who rents the fabric of a displaced community.
Perhaps most striking to me is that the implication of the fairy tale is that a well behaved child need not worry, it is only if you stray that the Tonton Macoute, the Janjaweed will swoop in, throw you in his gunnysack or across his horse, and spirit you away to someplace far away from your family and your comfort and your warm bed. You bad, bad child!
So, that is what I was left to ponder as I tried to return to my own warm, comfortable slumber.
This morning I went to the book seller and bought the book.
The Times has an article on their news blog, The Lede about Private First Class Bradley Manning, he who took a Wikileak on the Department of State. At the end of the post is included his current reading list. I thought you might want to read up:
“Decision Points,†by George W. Bush
“The Critique of Practical Reason†and “The Critique of Pure Reason,†by Immanuel Kant
“Propaganda,†by Edward Bernays
“The Selfish Gene,†by Richard Dawkins
“A People’s History of the United States,†by Howard Zinn
“The Art of War,†by Sun Tzu
“The Good Soldiers,†by David Finkel
“On War,†by Carl von Clausewitz.In “The Good Soldiers,†Mr. Finkel, a Washington Post reporter who was embedded with an Army unit in Iraq in 2007, described in detail the killing of two Reuters employees by fire from American helicopters. The same episode was shown in graphic video shot from the helicopters posted on YouTube in April by WikiLeaks.
Politico tells us that Former UN Ambassador John Bolton is mulling a Presidential run. Here’s his rational:
John Bolton eyes 2012 presidential run – Molly Ball – POLITICO.com
Now that’s a stirring fund raising platform, “Stranger things have happened!”
Bolton, who has the reputation of being the most bellicose member of an over testoseroned, über-bellicose Bush foreign policy team, Politico claims, “whose reputation, at least on the right, is as a speaker of unfiltered truth to power.” On the right, perhaps, but everywhere else he’s known more as as a speaker of power to truth. Part of that whole Might-Make-Right American Exceptionalism thing.
Want to lose a little sleep? How about a Palin/Bolton team for 2012? She can see Russia from her porch, and he has a nuke aimed at it.
Sleep tight…
Bernie Madoff (left) and Sonja Kohn (right)
Irving L. Picard, the trustee seeking redress for victims of the Madoff financial collapse has just filed suit seeking over $19 billion from Sonja Kohn, an Austrian banker he accuses of conspiring with Madoff in the whole house of cards. Looking at their photos, Pawn posits that this is an understatement. I believe they are, in fact, either fraternal twins or clones!
“In Sonja Kohn, Madoff found a criminal soul mate, whose greed and dishonest inventiveness equaled his own,†the trustee, Irving L. Picard, said. Soul mate indeed! Have they ever been seen in the same place at once?
This from the Times today makes one proud of our Foreign Service. An excerpt:
Cables about Kazakhstan’s high-living leaders are written in a satirical tone worthy of Borat, the fictional (and wild) Kazakh played in the movie by Sacha Baron Cohen.
One described Kazakhstan’s defense minister turning up drunk for a meeting with an American official, “slouching back in his chair and slurring all kinds of Russian participles.†He explained that he had just been at a cadet graduation reception, “toasting Kazakhstan’s newly-commissioned officers.â€
The memo concluded: “Who was toasted more — the defense minister or the cadets — is a matter of pure speculation.â€
From WikiLemons, Clinton Tries to Make Lemonade | The New York Times
Pawn compliments Secretary Of State Clinton on her so far masterful handling of the whole leak situation.
Far less palatable is the performance of Sen. Joseph “Useful Idiot” Lieberman, whose harassment of Internet and other businesses has led to the eviction of WikiLeaks from Amazon’s servers, PayPal’s payment processing, and a host of other services. These firms seem suddenly to have decided that reporting from purloined documents is now against their terms of service, although they gladly provide the same services for their media partners, such as the Times, the Washington Post, and others, whose content they host, payment they process, or electronic editions are provided on their Kindles.
Shame of these big businesses of the Internet for revealing how unfree it really is.
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