or Powell's or me• • •
"Mike and Jon, Jon and Mike—I've known them both for years, and, clearly, one of them is very funny. As for the other: truly one of the great hangers-on of our time."—Steve Bodow, head writer, The Daily Show
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"Who can really judge what's funny? If humor is a subjective medium, then can there be something that is really and truly hilarious? Me. This book."—Daniel Handler, author, Adverbs, and personal representative of Lemony Snicket
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"The good news: I thought Our Kampf was consistently hilarious. The bad news: I’m the guy who wrote Monkeybone."—Sam Hamm, screenwriter, Batman, Batman Returns, and Homecoming
January 10, 2008
Recent TomDispatch
Repress U
How to Build a Homeland Security Campus in Seven Steps
By Michael Gould-WartofskyFree speech zones. Taser guns. Hidden cameras. Data mining. A new security curriculum. Private security contractors… Welcome to the new homeland security campus
From Harvard to UCLA, the ivory tower is fast becoming the latest watchtower in Fortress America. The terror warriors, having turned their attention to "violent radicalization and homegrown terrorism" -- as it was recently dubbed in a House of Representatives bill of the same name -- have set out to reconquer that traditional hotbed of radicalization, the university.
Building a homeland-security campus and bringing the university to heel is a seven-step mission...
The $100 Barrel of Oil vs. the Global War on Terror
The Bush Legacy (Take Two)
By Tom EngelhardtConsider the debate among four Democratic presidential candidates on ABC News last Saturday night. In the previous week, the price of a barrel of oil briefly touched $100, unemployment hit 5%, the stock market had the worst three-day start since the Great Depression, and the word "recession" was in the headlines and in the air. So when ABC debate moderator Charlie Gibson announced that the first fifteen-minute segment would be taken up with "what is generally agreed to be… the greatest threat to the United States today," what did you expect?
As it happened, he was referring to "nuclear terrorism," specifically "a nuclear attack on an American city" by al-Qaeda (as well as how the future president would "retaliate"). In other words, Gibson launched his version of a national debate by focusing on a fictional, futuristic scenario, at this point farfetched, in which a Pakistani loose nuke would fall into the hands of al-Qaeda, be transported to the United States, perhaps picked up by well-trained al-Qaedan minions off the docks of Newark, and set off in the Big Apple. In this, though he was surely channeling Rudy Giuliani, he managed to catch the essence of what may be George W. Bush's major legacy to this country.
The Planet as a GWOT Free-Fire Zone
—Jonathan Schwarz
Posted at January 10, 2008 06:48 PMThe Domino Theory of Democracy!
When the citizens are all knocked over, 'democracy' is pretty much a dead issue.
In The GLOBAL WAR on terror, EVERY place on the GLOBE is a possible battleground, in the courtroom legal sense. (If it were THE GREAT WAR on terrorism the one might expect limited battlezones, in the legal sense.)
Posted by: Mike Meyer at January 10, 2008 09:44 PMIn The GLOBAL WAR on terror, EVERY place on the GLOBE is a possible battleground, in the courtroom legal sense. (If it were THE GREAT WAR on terrorism the one might expect limited battlezones, in the legal sense.)
Posted by: Mike Meyer at January 10, 2008 09:44 PMThe first link is broken. (Also, I think it should be where the second link is instead of at the top, as I'm not going to decide to click on a link before I've read the excerpt to it.)
Posted by: Noumenon at January 11, 2008 01:13 PMIt's about 5 years late to start worrying about loose Paki nukes.
Here's a video students of the subject will find amusing:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_66zJszyjCI
