Hypocrisy on internet freedom

Glenn Greenwald lists some of the hypocrisies of the US government when it comes to internet freedoms.

He leads off with the one concerning cyberwarfare. While the US government condemns it, it does nothing when Israel openly boasts about using it against Iran.

So as is the usual pattern, it is never the principle that determines what is right and wrong but who is doing it.

Film review: Good Hair (2009)

Hair is an important issue in the black community, getting way beyond the level of attention that people of other ethnicities give it. I first became aware of this fact a long time ago back in Sri Lanka as a student when I first read The Autobiography of Malcolm X (1964). As a young man of the streets, he adopted the then common practice of ‘conking’ (straightening his hair) and he vividly describes his first experience. As he became radicalized he decided that this attempt to adopt the hair styling of white people was a symbol of how much black people had internalized their sense of inferiority and subservience and he went back to his natural look. The 1960’s was probably the high point of black acceptance of their natural hair. Nowadays it seems like the black community, especially women, has gone back to accepting straight hair and to even see it as desirable. One wonders what Malcolm X would have thought about this development.
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How the US treats its citizens/Glenn Greenwald fundraiser

Glenn Greenwald continues to highlight the plight of US citizen Gulet Mohammed in Kuwait, which I wrote about before.

The Kuwaiti government was willing to release him provided he had a ticket for a direct flight to the US. His family provided it and he was taken to the airport where he was denied boarding with no reasons given, presumably because the government has put him on a no-fly list. If you leave the US, they put you on the list so you cannot return. Since the list is secret, you do not know why you were put on it and how to get off it.

Gulet Mohammed is a Muslim so the government assumes that no one will make a fuss. For others, they use different methods, such as harassing you at the port of entry with lengthy questioning and taking away your computer and any electronic devices each and every time you return, as is happening to WikiLeaks supporter Jacob Appelbaum

This is what the US government under that great Democratic constitutional scholar Barack Obama does to people it does not like.

Glenn Greenwald is holding a fundraiser to enable him to continue his work. As readers would know from the many, many times I link to him and quote him, I consider him to be one of the most important political commentators and defender of civil liberties in the US right now. If I had to identify one blogger whom I consider to be essential, it is Greenwald.

You can see that he is very uncomfortable asking for this support. Please support him if you can.

China flexes its muscles

On the eve of his visit to the US, Chinese leader Hu Jintao has basically called for the replacement of the US dollar by the Chinese Yuan as the reserve currency, at least initially for China. He also sharply criticized the Fed’s quantitative easing policy. I discussed both topics last week.

When this is coupled with China’s test flight of its new stealth fighter while US Defense Secretary Robert Gates was visiting them, these are indications by China of its intention to challenge the US as the world’s leading power.

The media as a model of how a modern oligarchy operates

A well-functioning oligarchic system usually operates smoothly and largely openly and without a hierarchical structure. It achieves its goals by setting up filters that weed out those who do not support its agenda and rarely requires overt intervention to achieve its goals.

I discussed earlier how the major filter was the high cost of entry in the modern media world that meant only rich people or organizations could create a big megaphone for their views. Only someone like Rupert Murdoch, for example, could create a new major network like Fox News. The high cost of entry came into being over a century ago and was a result of market forces and technological advances and the adoption of a business plan that depended largely on advertising for revenues.
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Clichés

As someone who reads and writes a lot, I have got attuned to the rhythm of words. When someone uses a cliché, it is as jarring to me as a sudden wrong note in a piece of music.

I personally try to avoid clichés as much as possible and in trying to be alert to them, I started keeping a list of those that I hear that immediately trigger a negative response in me. Here is my list so far:

Speak truth to power
Last time I checked (when used in a sarcastic way)
Think outside the box
When the rubber meets the road
Hit the ground running
A perfect storm
Connect the dots
Light at the end of the tunnel
Start with a clean slate

Anyone else have phrases that grate on the ears (itself a phrase that is on the edge of entering clichedom) that they want to add to this list?