In February, PBS and AOL launched
Makers, a video archive containing personal stories and anecdotes told in the first person by women, many of whom have sparked groundbreaking changes in American culture.
[more inside]
posted by zarq
on Oct 4, 2012 -
3 comments
In the two years building up to the government’s NHS reform bill, the BBC appears to have categorically failed to uphold its remit of impartiality, parroting government spin as uncontested fact, whilst reporting only a narrow, shallow view of opposition to the bill. In addition, key news appears to have been censored. The following in-depth investigation provides a shocking testimony of the extent to which the BBC abandoned the NHS.
posted by infini
on Oct 2, 2012 -
19 comments
"Liberals have not always been very good at communicating why liberalism works. There’s many reasons for this, but part of it is that it can be hard to defend the obvious from an absurd and deceptive attack. For half a century you had to be a crank to oppose what Roosevelt accomplished; liberals got out of the habit of arguing for their beliefs.
I hope this page will help. Liberals don’t need to apologize for their vision of how American society should work. Liberalism saved American capitalism and democracy, defeated Naziism, created a prosperous middle class, and benefited every sector of society, from the back streets to Wall Street. " Mefi's own Zompist (
previously) on
Why Liberalism Works.
posted by The Whelk
on Sep 30, 2012 -
109 comments
US calls Assange 'enemy of state'. The US military has designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks as enemies of the United States - the same legal category as the al-Qaeda terrorist network and the Taliban insurgency.
Declassified US Air Force counter-intelligence documents, released under US freedom-of-information laws, reveal that military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or WikiLeaks supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy", a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death.
posted by jaduncan
on Sep 26, 2012 -
234 comments
When Satire Conquered Iran: [NYR Blog] Molla Nasreddin, an early twentieth-century Azerbaijani magazine that “attacked the hypocrisy of the Muslim clergy, the colonial policies of the US and the venal corruption of the local elite, while arguing repeatedly for Westernization, educational reform, and equal rights for women.”
[more inside]
posted by Fizz
on Sep 22, 2012 -
10 comments
As
internal leaks from the Romney camp suggest a campaign in serious disarray, and
poll-of-polls meta-analyses show him with little time to recover his position before November, Mother Jones has acquired video from a private Romney fundraiser at which the candidate said of Obama supporters:
There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. Ezra Klein puts aside the
political ramifications and
crunches the numbers about who does and doesn't pay income tax in America.
The Romney camp responds to the leak.
posted by gerryblog
on Sep 17, 2012 -
5817 comments
According to Adorno, in psychoanalysis only the exaggerations are true. If you wished to characterize the Democrats and the Republicans in terms of true exaggerations, you might say that the Republicans have become the Party of Psychosis while the Democrats have become the Party of Neurosis. The Republicans are psychotic because they have lost contact with reality, and orient their behavior not toward realities but toward fantasies. The Democrats are neurotic because they are aim-inhibited, as an old-fashioned shrink might say: their anxieties, hang-ups, and insecurities mean that they can’t attain satisfaction, since in a basic way they won’t even allow themselves to know what they want.
posted by j03
on Sep 12, 2012 -
65 comments
Les Mis + political parody = One term more Soon Election Day will dawn,
We were meant to hold this seat!
At the ballot box of freedom,
Unemployment's in retreat!
Now the battle lines are drawn,
And Detroit's back on its feet!
Will you take your place with me!
The time is NOW the vote is NEAR!
One Term More!
posted by badego
on Aug 23, 2012 -
14 comments
"America may well be in a fateful decline. But given that the country has survived a civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, 9/11, and the quagmires of Vietnam and Iraq, is our current crisis proportionate to the doomsday hysteria—or have we lost perspective?"
Frank Rich, columnist for
New York Magazine, explores the recurring phenomenon of declinist panic and our national tendency to burnish the past in
"Mayberry R.I.P."
posted by shiu mai baby
on Aug 22, 2012 -
89 comments
Right now Baltimore, MD plays host to
FemmeCon, a biannual gathering for those who "seek to explore, discuss, dissect, and support
Queer Femme as a transgressive, gender-queer, stand-alone, and empowered identity and provide a space for organizing and activism within Queer communities". Some of the issues faced by queer femme culture include
femme invisibility in larger queer culture, the
lack of non-stereotypical role models,
being classed 'femme' by default, dismissal as
"too much", as well as intersectional issues of femme with
race,
gender, and
disability. In the meantime, femme subcultures such as
tomboy femme,
hard femme, and
FEMME SHARKS as well as
femmes in specific regions come together for
inspiration,
expression,
power,
creativity and support from each other - as well as from
appreciative butches.
posted by divabat
on Aug 18, 2012 -
111 comments
Twiplomacy is the first-ever global study of world leaders on Twitter. The governments of almost two-thirds of the 193 UN member countries have a presence on Twitter: 45% of the 264 accounts analysed are personal accounts of heads of state and government, but just 30 world leaders tweet themselves and very few on a regular basis.
This study shows that while the social network invites direct interaction between users, few world leaders take advantage of this opportunity to develop connections.
posted by infini
on Aug 18, 2012 -
16 comments
Financial Markets, Politics and the New Reality:
"Louis M. Bacon is the head of Moore Capital Management, one of the largest and most influential hedge funds in the world. Last week, he announced that he was returning one quarter of his largest fund, about $2 billion, to his investors, [saying] it is impossible to make money when there is heavy political involvement, because political involvement introduces unpredictability in the market… Adam Smith and David Ricardo, who modern investors so admire, [never] used the term "economics" by itself, but only in conjunction with politics; they called it political economy… The investors' problem is that they mistake the period between 1991 and 2008 as the norm and keep waiting for it to return."
posted by the mad poster!
on Aug 9, 2012 -
36 comments
McSweeney's will list 90 reasons, a day at a time over the next 90 days, on why you should vote for Barack Obama in November. Today was the
first.
posted by Isadorady
on Aug 8, 2012 -
205 comments
