.Ysengrimus
Iraq War
Prior to the war, the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom claimed that Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) posed a threat to their security and that of their coalition/regional allies.[49][50][51] In 2002, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 1441 which called for Iraq to completely cooperate with UN weapon inspectors to verify that Iraq was not in possession of WMD and cruise missiles. Prior to the attack, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) found no evidence of WMD, but could not yet verify the accuracy of Iraq's declarations regarding what weapons it possessed, as their work was still unfinished. The leader of the inspectors, Hans Blix, estimated the time remaining for disarmament being verified through inspections to be "months".[nb 2][52][53][54][55] Background[edit] Iraq disarmament and pre-war intelligence[edit] UN weapons inspections resume[edit] Yellowcake uranium[edit]
.Naomi Klein: Corporate Branding
Excerpted from No Logo (10th Anniversary Edition) by Naomi Klein, reprinted by The Guardian. In May 2009, Absolut Vodka launched a limited edition line called "Absolut No Label." The company's global public relations manager, Kristina Hagbard, explained that "For the first time we dare to face the world completely naked. We launch a bottle with no label and no logo, to manifest the idea that no matter what's on the outside, it's the inside that really matters." A few months later, Starbucks opened its first unbranded coffee shop in Seattle, called 15th Avenue E Coffee and Tea. This "stealth Starbucks" (as the anomalous outlet immediately became known) was decorated with "one-of-a-kind" fixtures and customers were invited to bring in their own music for the stereo system as well as their own pet social causes -- all to help develop what the company called "a community personality." Clearly the techniques of branding have both thrived and adapted since I published No Logo.
Blogger bares Rumsfeld's post 9/11 orders | World news
Hours after a commercial plane struck the Pentagon on September 11 2001 the US defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, was issuing rapid orders to his aides to look for evidence of Iraqi involvement, according to notes taken by one of them. "Hard to get good case. Need to move swiftly," the notes say. "Near term target needs - go massive - sweep it all up, things related and not." The handwritten notes, with some parts blanked out, were declassified this month in response to a request by a law student and blogger, Thad Anderson, under the US Freedom of Information Act. Anderson has posted them on his blog at outragedmoderates.org. The Pentagon confirmed the notes had been taken by Stephen Cambone, now undersecretary of defence for intelligence and then a senior policy official. "He was responsible for crisis planning, and he was with the secretary in that role that afternoon." "The secretary said his instinct was to hit Saddam Hussein at the same time, not only Bin Laden.
Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World
How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World, by Francis Wheen (Harper Perennial, £7.99) It has been fashionable in higher intellectual circles - the self-proclaimed higher intellectual circles, that is - to declare the end of the Enlightenment project. To rely on reason, we are told by tenured professors at institutes of further education, is tantamount to anything between relying on a horse and buggy to get around town and endorsing the Nazis' scientific approach in the concentration camps. It might not matter too much - it may be a scandalous trahison des clercs, but who cares what the clercs say anyway? Quite a few influential people care; that's the problem. Certainly, rationality is beleaguered these days. That our leaders for the past 25 years or so have been as cretinous as anyone else who believes there are fairies at the bottom of their garden is not exactly consoling.
The Media, the crisis, and the crisis in media
The financial crisis and a series of aggressive wars have demonstrated beyond doubt how prevailing forms of media ownership in the west serve to buttress the power of elites and marginalise alternatives to the status quo. In his new book, The Return of the Public, Dan Hind argues that a system of public commissioning, which gives citizens the power to decide which issues are the subject of journalistic investigation, has the potential to reframe the terms of debate and make policy-making more democratic and accountable. Writing in the early days of the twentieth century the great anti-imperialist J.A. Hobson complained that a ‘small body of men’ had secured popular support for an aggressive war in South Africa ‘by the simple device of securing all important avenues of intelligence and using them to inject into the public mind a continuous stream of false and distorted information’. The Boers, in modern parlance, were terrorists. Voltaire put it somewhat more succinctly - Go massive. 1.)
The Skeptic's Skeptic
Science values data and statistics and champions the virtues of evidence and experimentation. Those of us “viewing the world with a rational eye” (as the new descriptor for this column reads) also have another, underutilized tool at our disposal: rapier logic like that of Christopher Hitchens, a practiced logician trained in rhetoric. Hitchens—who is “leaving the party a bit earlier than I’d like” because of esophageal cancer, as he lamented to Charlie Rose in a recent PBS interview—has something deeply important to offer on how to think about unscientific claims. Although he has no formal training in science, I would pit Hitchens against any of the purveyors of pseudoscientific claptrap because of his unique and enviable skill at peeling back the layers of an argument and cutting to its core. We would all do well to observe and emulate his power to detect and dissect baloney through pure thought. If God created the eye, then how do creationists explain the blind salamander?
