Link round-up for 14 December 2014
Some American conservatives find something to like about ISIS.
Anti-suffragette propaganda posters reveal primitive attitudes of barely a century ago (found via Mendip).
It's a good thing we have Green Eagle to report on these mass right-wing revolutionary upheavals, otherwise we'd never notice them.
Should we just roll with it and replace the cops with ED-209?
Right-wingers seem kind of gloomy about the future.
Steve Jobs suffered from Stockholm syndrome.
If this is true, it's the best news I've heard in a long time.
Here's more on that Montana legislature dress code.
The US abortion rate is down, but not because of the anti-abortion movement.
Next month a passel of delusionals will gather in Louisiana to ask their imaginary friend to smite us.
Here's some history of the ideological roots of terrorism in the US, which will make your hair stand on end.
Ken Ham's stupid Noah's Ark project has bungled its chance for subsidies from the state of Kentucky.
If you haven't read McCain's great speech about the torture report, here's the whole thing. Republic of Gilead has a round-up of other right-wing responses.
Never "doxx" (destroy the online anonymity of) your opponents, even if they're bigots (found via Snowstorm 13 (NSFW tumblr)).
This anti-gay billboard achieves epic fail (found via Republic of Gilead).
The US lags far behind other advanced countries in vacation time.
Where Islam is concerned, Salon promulgates a lot of rubbish.
Sorry, grabbers, gun rights have more public support than ever before.
Elizabeth Warren is leading the fight on the budget.
Marijuana is becoming legal in more and more places -- here are some tips on using it safely (found via TYWKIWDBI). Oh, and please sign here.
E-mails among Florida Republicans reveal their deception and subversion on gerrymandering.
The exuberant blasphemers of Femen go after the Pope, Islam, and Sean Hannity.
Brits stage a sit-down protest against their conservative government's idiotic new porn rules.
Pope Francis has very reactionary views about women (found via a comment from Ahab).
Paul Krugman explains how the Greek economic crisis is driven by austerity and arrogance, and how the world has learned the wrong lessons from it (found via Frank Moraes, whose evaluation of Germany is right on target, so far as its leadership is concerned).
Greenpeace idiotically damages Peru's ancient Nazca lines during a protest, and faces well-deserved prosecution.
Atheists are being attacked and persecuted in Islamic countries, suggesting that we're becoming enough of a presence there to worry the religious nuts.
Dear Japanese nationalists: go fuck yourselves (heartily seconded). More here.
Here's an animal that weighed seven times as much as a T-rex.
posted by Infidel753 at 7:46 AM
6 Comments:
I know I'm hard on Germany, and I'm not sure where the hyperbole ends and what I really think begins. However, the German media (and thus the German people) are fully behind the government policies. It's very much like what goes on in America: the power elite tell the people things that flatter them. It isn't surprising that the people believe them. In their case, it is about noble German bankers. In our case, it is about how rectal rehydration isn't torture because we're "exceptional!" So my national criticisms do not come from on high, but from way, way down below.
the German media (and thus the German people) are fully behind the government policies
Not all of them. I don't know if you know any Germans personally, but some of them are good people. I'm sure a lot of Germans reject the government line on Greece and austerity just as a lot of Americans reject the CIA line on torture.
I liked the Tumblr comment about doxxing, which made a very important point. This seems quite timely, as I recently came across a post by some blogger or another, I think she's called "SkepChick" or something, stating that she's perfectly fine with doxxing people she doesn't like on the grounds that her enemies are so evil that exposing them to unlimited harassment by random strangers seems like a fair and just punishment. Her comments were in defense of her recent decision to publicise the work phone number of a doctor at a hospital because the latter made a joke on an online forum, admittedly in poor taste, about one of this blogger's friends. Because that's what hospitals really need, having any number of callers taking up their precious time complaining about what a staff member does in her off hours. All seems a wee bit vindictive to me, but perhaps I'm just too immersed in misogynistic ignorance to understand how doxxing can be harnessed as a force for the greater good.
Scott: I'm glad others get this. Justifying extreme, scorched-earth tactics against opponents on the grounds of those opponents' supposed depravity sets of some of the same alarm bells to me as the recent arguments by some conservatives justifying torture. There are lines that shouldn't be crossed.
I give McCain props when he deserves it. His remarks on torture really hit it out of the park.
Of course, my Facebook feed was filled with people posting pictures of the Twin Tower burning with captions like "Waterboarding is fine with me" or some variations of approval for torture juxtaposed with a picture of 9/11, as if that automatically justifies it.
Tommykey: And of course from Pakistan to Morocco there are probably millions of people looking at the news of the torture report and saying, "terrorist attacks on the US are fine with me -- now."
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