May 2012
14 posts
The New York Times: Secret ‘Kill List’ Proves a... →
This was the enemy, served up in the latest chart from the intelligence agencies: 15 Qaeda suspects in Yemen with Western ties. The mug shots and brief biographies resembled a high school yearbook layout. Several were Americans. Two were teenagers, including a girl who looked even younger than her 17 years.
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Wired: Inside Moammar Gadhafi’s Secret... →
After all the cruelties she had endured as a child, Tawati could deal with the insults directed at her. But it stunned her when, in August 2010, some of her private email exchanges with other dissidents somehow got leaked to Hala Misrati, a notorious TV propagandist and one of the Electronic Army’s apparent leaders. How had her accounts been compromised, she wondered?
The answer, though she...
“In the white Melburnian mind, the southern border of the city is Bourke Street,...”
– Stuff White People Like - The Melbourne Version: Meeting at Melbourne Central instead of Flinders Street
Ouch, that is devastatingly accurate.
Today I managed to get myself a posse on my university’s Facebook “Stalker Space” after taking part in an internet argument instead of editing an essay.
“Progressives and urbanists need to move beyond their romance with central...”
– Matt Yglesias, ‘The Rent Is Too Damn High’ (via alcaniz)
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“At all times and all places, since the beginning of the state and of class...”
– Kevin Carson, ‘Dump the Statist Monkey Off Your Back.’
Paul Keating: Uhlmann impertinent, off point →
His technique is to have the pap set question to hand. And as the interviewee responds, he speaks over the top of them to demonstrate an aggressive credential. This is broadly to conceal the fact that he is unable to follow an answer in a discursive way - to grow the conversation in a manner that is both informative and elucidatory.
The whole tone is invariably accusatory – a tabloid device...
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WatchThe Trials of Henry Kissinger. ”About the war crimes of the American diplomat”
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Slate: Why Big Macs Are Cheap in Argentina →
[T]he real state of Argentina’s currency is visible in the rising price level, since the country engages in a lot of trade. The government, however, insists that the inflation rate is considerably lower than independent observers say. The Big Mac Index is one well-known international check on government number-fudging, and the Economist’s editorial line is very hostile to the kind of...
April 2012
20 posts
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Mark Latham: The curse of Labor’s union links →
Unfortunately, the HSU imbroglio is just the tip of the iceberg. Most Labor-affiliated unions siphon off substantial amounts of members’ funds to fight factional battles and internal elections. ALP funds are also used improperly for these purposes. Other sinecures, most notably superannuation boards, have been used to ensure that union officials can turn public duty into private profit. Do not...
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David King, citing Jeremy Scahill: The US Proxy... →
The first bombing under President Obama took place on the 17th of December in 2009, in the small town of Al Majala, Abyan province [2]. At the time of the attack, the Yemeni government claimed responsibility for it, proudly stating that it had killed 46 Al Qaeda operatives. As was later uncovered by Yemeni journalist Abdulelah Haider Shaye, the bombings were in fact carried out by the US Navy,...
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ABC News: Black Saturday arsonist jailed for... →
A former Victorian Country Fire Authority (CFA) volunteer has been sentenced to 17 years and nine months in jail for killing 10 people by deliberately lighting a bushfire on Black Saturday.
This is incredibly sad. A ‘mildly mentally ill’ man throws a cigarette butt out of his car window, becomes convinced that it was still alight — and hence that he started the Black Saturday...
“To be governed is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted,...”
– Pierre Joseph Proudhon, “The General Idea of the Revolution” (1851)
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Nate Thayer: Freelancers’ Vital Role in... →
[T]he key role played by “foreign” freelance journalists in providing the backbone of international coverage highlights the importance of the principle of a press free from the influence of any government. Many, if not most, of those who gather information for the American-owned press are not American. And many of those who read or view the American-owned press are not American. And for those...
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The Onion: U.S. Military Desperate To Be Handed... →
ARLINGTON, VA—Reportedly fed up with complicated and protracted operations overseas, top Pentagon officials acknowledged this week they were desperate to be given just one straightforward, no-nonsense military engagement they could really knock out of the park. ”Given all these messy, ambiguous conflicts we’ve been fighting against enemies you can’t even put your finger on,...
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“The modern advocates of the authoritarian view of ‘Asian values’...”
– Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom (p.239-40)
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“[The essence of certain ‘East Asian values’ claims] is that at...”
– Simon Springer in his book Cambodia’s Neoliberal Order. He goes on to quote Amartya Sen in Development as Freedom (1999, p. 233-34):
there is clearly a tendency in America and Europe to assume, if only implicitly, that the primacy of political freedom and democracy is a fundamental and...
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“People will pay for a news media product that they value. If there are enough of...”
– The former Financial Review Group CEO Michael Gill in his Inside Story piece “How the AFR’s ‘disastrous’ paywall delivered the goods.”
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“Read more. Write more. Train more. Keep your head down and don’t worry...”
– Jim Wendler’s letter of advice to his younger self
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C4SS.org: "Forget About It?" Not On Your Life! →
David B. Grusky shares an insight generally ignored by the center-left: The real problem of inequality is not inequality of after-tax income resulting from an inequitable tax system, but the inequality of pre-tax income generated by the economic system itself (“What to Do About Inequality?”)
Income inequality results, not — as in the standard liberal narrative — from a highly competitive...
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“The way in which journalism is rewarded is part of the problem. They give...”
– David Simon, behind the scenes of the last season of The Wire
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ABC News: Single currency flagged for Australia... →
The Australian and New Zealand productivity commissions are seeking public feedback on the idea of having a single currency for the two countries.
The commissions have been asked to look at ways to build a closer economic relationship between the two countries.
Monetary economics should not be a tool for “relationship building.” If anything they should be broaching the idea of...
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J.Hurt — Where’s the Love?
March 2012
8 posts
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VOA: Cambodian Opposition Leader Blasts Tribunal... →
Cambodia’s opposition leader in exile is criticizing the country’s government, accusing it of blatantly interfering with attempts to prosecute crimes committed by the Khmer Rouge. Sam Rainsy told VOA’s Khmer service Thursday that officials in the government of Prime Minister Hun Sen “fear a serious investigation.” “Any serious and in-depth investigation would...
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WatchLondon Pirate Radio (via colleenchen)
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Eung Nary & Pan Ron — Srey No (The Lady...
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The Economist: On “the narrative” in political... →
Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, has coined a useful term, “Möbius strip journalism”, which he defines as “Reporting on an event the meaning of which is determined by how the event is reported. When the narrators speak of ‘the narrative’ as something that goes of itself.”
I share Mr Rosen’s frustration with political journalists’ habit of...
Vanity Fair: A Tour of Dubai's "Terror Terminal" →
We are told that the situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating, but some signs in Terminal 2 indicate otherwise. I see more and more and businessmen from the region heading to Kabul, suggesting a booming economy underneath all that war news. I often bump into brave health workers, returning from a short holiday, proud of the progress they see in Afghanistan, a place that has suffered so much....
February 2012
8 posts
“My basic argument is that in an economy where the majority of people are...”
– Matt Yglesias on his The Rent Is Too Damn High (via ilyagerner)
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“Take, for example, a small restaurant in a single-use district - say, the...”
– James C. Scott channelling Jane Jacobs in “Seeing Like A State.”
“What Bode was saying was this: ‘Knowledge and productivity are like...”
– Richard Hamming, via Gwern.net: Spaced Repetition
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Unknown Artist — Blue Basket (Khmer Folk)
“The conquerors of our days, peoples or princes, want their empire to possess a...”
– Benjamin Constant. “On the Spirit of Conquest and Usurpation.”
“[With the legalization of drugs] I see America with half the number of prisons,...”
– Interview with Milton Friedman on the Drug War (via The Trunk)
WatchPich Sophea — Out Pass Out (a.k.a Cambodian “My Humps.”)