Nationalism and Ideology

Hwang Woo-suk has become a celebrity in South Korea for his recent revolutionary work on human genetics which he now admits the majority of was fabricated. Hwang's fall from grace has been traumatic for Koreans leading many to defend the scientist by volunteering to donate eggs and pulling advertisements from media outlets that even dared to announce his mea culpa.
The event reminds me of the crash of an Egyptian airliner in 2001 that most Egyptians denied the culpability of the pilot which the evidence clearly pointed to as at fault.
I don't want to point just to feereneers here given that the people in the US act in the same way on a regular basis but the disaese of nationalism and other forms of faith are surely a disease that can lead to all types of conspiracy theories and irrationality. How many people believe in angels in the US?

An aside here: when I was "researching" this post I found this oddball site on pictures of plane crashes. Why exactly would one create such a site?

Wanted: Propagandists

Extravagant pay, free travel, lots of praise from our leaders and unlimted budgets. Please read the following pamphlet and see if you want to join our team. Here's an excerpt:

"The Reichspropagandaleiter then turned to the attitude of the rest of the world to the new Germany, and the resulting propaganda tasks. If the world is against Germany and shows no understanding for the nature and needs of the German people, propaganda must seize the world's ear and combat boycotts and encirclements."

Raymond Carver

Raymond Carver explained.

Bullshoot!

Bush takes on war critics claiming intelligence was faulty but the war was just anyway. Among the many lies of this presidency this is probably the biggest.

Bush claims:
"Many intelligence agencies judged that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and it's true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong," said Mr Bush in the speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington.

Many? You mean Britain and Israel? The countries that thought eliminating Saddam Hussein was a good idea? The best intelligence at the time was the UNSCOM regime which was littered with US spies or people who were on the US payroll. UNSCOM said that Iraq had claimed to have destroyed most of its WMD but they needed more time to snoop around in Iraq's affairs. It turns out that Iraq was actually exagerating the weapons it had TO DETER THE US! This is known to be the case because after the invasion the US was unable to find any WMD's.

The fact of the matter is the Bush administration used intelligence to hype WMD's and tried to link Iraq to 9/11 to scare the feeble American public into war.

Bush claims:
"Saddam was a threat, and the American people and the world are safer because he is no longer in power,"

The fact of the matter is Saddam was certainly not a threat to the US! At the time of the invasion he wasn't even a threat to the Kurds in his own country because the US and Brits were fyling over the country and bombing people at will. How exactly was Iraq a threat to the US? Was the Iraqi Air Force, Army or Navy going to invade the US? No, at the time all had been destroyed. The opposite is actually true of the latter part of the statement, we are all, including Iraqis, more unsafe because Iraq, like Afghanistan in the 1980's, is a breeding ground for all types of Jihadis.

Here's a summary of the road to war.

You Know Your In Trouble When....

you pander to the right with holocaust denial!

I have some trepidation even doing this but obviously it is necessary if a head of state is spouting such nonsense, what was the final solution?

WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?

THERE IS A WAR GOING ON! A WAR ON CHRISTMAS GOD DAMMIT!
Hilarious debate about another "war."

Outlaw State?

CIA abductions are occuring on a regular basis. Imagine if say Cuba were to kidnap known enemies of the regime living in Miami or any other place for that matter and took them to say North Korea where they were tortured or held? I wonder what the response in the NY Times would be?

Media Given Permission to Talk About War Dead

In a speech yesterday baby Bush claimed 30,000 Iraqis had been killed in Iraq in this round of war with Iraq. A flood of media coverage has followed. Why exactly does this only become a story when a civilian presses the President on the question? The Lancet, a respected British medical journal, has estimated the dead at 100,000 by the way. The British government, run by the pious Tony Blair, estimates 10,000.

Listen above to the story from the US apologist from the Brookings Institute. He notes that the increase in a thousand deaths a month due to murder since the invasion are not included in the death count.

Journalists on the Payroll

The Pentagon has been on a spending binge for the last 50 years. The intellegence agencies also. Journalists have always been in on the payola. In Iraq it seems the Pentagon could not find enough positive stories so they paid millions for stories more to their liking. Here's a bit on some of the "journalists" that have thought it their patriotic duty to get paid by the CIA and such.

Chileans Likely To Vote in "Socialist" Today

Maybe the first women head of state for a major country ever in the hemisphere.

Murtha As Mouthpiece of the Brass

Cockburn posits the top Generals have had it with Iraq and picked Murtha to deliver the message.

Catcher in the Rye

25 years ago today I was 15 and up at 4 AM heading to hockey practice in Bergen County NJ around 10 miles from Central Park when I heard that John Lennon had been killed. I was physically shaken. I was currently in a post Beatles Plastic Ono Band stage and rock and roll was at the center of who I was at the time. I still think about that moment on a regular basis. For me John was the Joe Strummer of my youth even though Joe Strummer was actually the Joe Strummer of my youth, I didn't realize this till I was in my 20's. I still can't handle listening to Double Fantasy without thinking about my late teens.

Here's an interview with my hero of the time. (Besides Jimmy Carter)

Do you have an Aztec problem?

What every homeowner should know.

Here's Why the Debate on "Flawed Intelligence" Leading to the Invasion of Iraq is Hooey

Actual BBC headline "US Vietnam Intelligence Flawed." This is the infamous Vietnamese "attack" on the United States in the Gulf of Tonkin which led to a blank check for the war. An incident every high schooler knows was cooked to sell the war. On the whole now many more people see through the bull. This is a good thing.

Whose Says Stereotypes Don't Hold True?

Einstein Speaks

Hear Albert Einstein explain his famous equation.

John Murtha Smokes Crack

What else can explain his bizzare statements about the war in Iraq? Listen to this interview where Vietnam, first Gulf, Bosnia, second Gulf war supporter makes the bizzare statement that the US will withdraw US troops by November of 2006. Now I hope for the sake of Iraqis and US troops that the anti-war movement swells and forces the US government to withdraw. But realistically speaking, if this happens I will eat all of my shoes.

No MLK

Obama waxes DLC on the war in Iraq.

Time Travel

Inevitably each year the topic of time travel comes up in class. This year I found a graphic that explains it well.

Art Speigelman

Saw Art Spiegelman speak last night at UW-Milwaukeeon the history of comics and his latest work on 9/11. Witty, rapid fire historical analysis and a non didactic style explaining the developments in comics since the beginning. Mad Magazine is his main inspiration! Best line of the night, I paraphrase, describing 9/11 and the Iraq war, Al-Queda and co. started a fire in NYC and George Bush poured oil on it to put it out.