Palestine: 1920-2007

This week's The New Republic has a great article on the end of Palestine (free signup required to access full article).

Reasons to forego that Masters in Library Science

Once again, the real journalists over at Wired have brought attention to the abuses of power our government gets away with on a daily basis. The whole National Security Letter thing, by which the FBI can "request" private information about individuals without getting a court authorization, scares me pretty bad. They've been using them indiscriminately to illegally obtain phone, library and email records, and so far it seems only the Librarians have been standing up to them. Let me say this: if the FBI looks up my library records (which they might have; I've been to Israel which is technically in the Mideast and still can't get on a plane without extra scrutiny) they would find some sketchy-sounding books. Last semester I took out Che Guevara's "Guerrilla Warfare", a book called "Small Wars" by a 19th century British army major, and at least four other books with "guerrilla" right in the title. I'm sure that, looking at my internet records, they'd find that I read military and defense-oriented blogs, and my reading on Wikipedia might turn up searches for Cordite and Gelagnite, both WWI-era explosives. They don't seem to need much evidence to do what they want, so for all I know they've already tapped my phone.

Of course that's paranoid. I know that. But then, considering that I do get "randomly" selected for extra screening every time I fly (and I'm a scrawny little white Jew, by the by) I wonder what else about me they check. I mean, if they're willing to take a couple of Librarians to court, what else might they do? Not only that, there's apparently a 5-year jail term for speaking out when such a thing does happen to you. So we may never know how many people stood up to the lawbreakers. It's a tragedy. (or is that travesty?)

You can't lick this Dick

It's official: Dick Cheney is still a hypocritical scumbag. The same guy who leaked the identity of a covert CIA operative for political gain is now refusing to let the National Archives inspect his office and review his handling of classified materials. Get this: the NA is doing this on the orders of Bush, and Cheney's rationale for refusing is that the VP office is not part of the executive branch! It'd be funny if it wasn't so sickening.

It's too bad the Democrats are spineless ninnies, because if there was ever a need for an impeachment, it's now. It should start with Bush, and not stop until every single administration official has testified under oath about all the laws they've defied and all the lies they've told to keep their jobs. Send 'em all to jail, for a long long time. And not club fed either, I want to see these guys end up at Sing Sing with Tyrell for a room mate. It'd restore my faith in justice to see a few rich old white guys in with the victims of racial profiling.

Fight Authority

I'm a member of a public interest lobbying group called "Downsize DC' (here) and, although I don't agree with everything they do, I appreciate their willingness to address the hard issues that miss with the mainstream media. Exhibit A: what did the government do on September 11, 2001, after the attacks took place? What was the response? Some widows from New Jersey asked, and here is a full-length documentary on their odyssey. It's surreal, but well done and non-partisan.

Full disclosure

There's been a lot of discussion about the extent to which bloggers are considered members of the press. I took some journalism classes last year, and if my fellow students in those classes are indicative of the greater population of journalistic professionals, then I'm not entirely sure that I want to be considered a member of that fraternity. Besides, I live in a part of the world where things rarely explode and have no intention of traveling to one where they do. I'm not much of a reporter. Although having the protections of one would be nice.

What I do is read way too much news and way too many history books. So, for reasons of narcissistic self-gratification, I intend to regurgitate some of the better bits of reporting with selected bits from the better history books. And if anything interesting happens in New England, well, I just might happen to be in the area.

If you're looking for wishy-washy, feel-good, lets-hold-hands-and-sing-"kumbaya" liberal perspective, you won't find it. You also won't find the arrogant, anti-intellectual, god-chose-me neo-conservative perspective. I don't trust the government any more than I trust mob rule or the corporatocracy. I just think there's better ways to do everything, and we as Americans have always been good at improvising and improving. Hence our position on the precipice. If we hadn't done so well to get here, we wouldn't have so far to fall if we screw up now.