Howard Zinn X2, from 2009

'Howard Zinn: relying on charity from the rich'

A Youtuber, mr1001nights, writes:

"From a talk I recorded at Harvard's JFK school of government in March, 2009, on a break from recording Thomas Ferguson for my documentary Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Politics"

*****

and,from jpreeeter, "Howard Zinn on President Obama Recieving Nobel Peace Prize"

"The honorable author, historian, and social activist, Howard Zinn, taped at Lower Cape TV on Cape Cod 10/9/2009 commenting on President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace prize."

"A Vision of Students Today"

Michael Wesch of Kansas State calls his class "digital ethnography"; there's also a longer (about 1 hr) version of this video, which I hate to say I find kind of repetitive.

Bad For Democracy- Dana D. Nelson

Dana Nelson is a professor at Vanderbilt, and I believe Bad for democracy is her second book. Her publisher sent me a copy some time back, and unfortunately I've been busy with other matters, so I've just started on it. It does look promising, discussing the history of popular representations of the role of the president in US society, which she regards as generally anti-republican, in the classical sense, and far more often geared towards representing the president as the prime mover of government upon whose shoulders all power and responsibility lie, a phenomenon she terms presidentialism.

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Does the US Spend Too Much on Foreign Aid? - Peter Singer

cross-posted at Dead Horse.

Tiny little dots and other points of interest

Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe calls UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown "a little tiny dot on this world",

Alexander Cockburn, Counterpunch:Did the Elites Want MLK Dead

via the Christian Science Monitor: Abdullahi Ahmed an-Naim:The Islamic state is a dead end.
I don't know too much about this guy, but he seems more serious than, say, Irshad Manji who, in her eagerness to cozy up to characters like Glenn Beck, often strikes me as a sort of Muslim Uncle Tom.

also: Turkish scholars aim to modernize Islam's Hadith


Avedon Carol: "Back in 1967, someone named Arthur Miller (no relation) wrote an article on the dangers of giant national data bases to personal privacy, published in The Atlantic. It was a real find for a poster at Modern Mechanix - as Cory Doctorow agrees, it got everything right, and could easily have been written today."

Think Progress:"Pentagon employee erases mention of homosexuality on dead soldier’s Wikipedia page."

(Andrew Sullivan writes: “I can see why outing someone who is alive and closeted is unethical; inning someone who is dead and was out is a function of utterly misplaced sensitivity, rooted in well-intentioned but incontrovertible homophobia.”)

Mitch Ratcliffe, ZD Net: Creeping totalitarianism: The NSA, personal data and you


And, oh yeah: Bush insists he wasn't out of the loop viz-a-viz approving the torture memos.

"As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged."
-- Justice William O. Douglas, Supreme Court justice

Barzun at 100

And...today(11.30) is Jacques Barzun's 100th birthday. The TIME cover is from 1956, and the inset photo(courtesy incidentlights.com) is from 1997. Incidentally Barzun settled in my home town, San Antonio, when he retired in 1996. I used to know a guy whom I like to call Lothar Scruggs, who served as a research assistant for him not so long ago. (Barzun has continued(continues?) to crank out books well into his 90s, even though he retired from publishing and teaching.)

If you are reading this Lothar, you should look ole Barzun up and get him a cake or something, and maybe some Sprite. I mean, if you haven't already. I'll bet he'd like to hear from you.

Barzun was fully "alert to the irony of aging," commenting from experience that: "Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing."

Age of Reason by Arthur Krystal in The New Yorker, October 22, 2007, p. 103

via Wikipedia's Barzun entry.

and a Jacques Barzun interview on Charlie Rose, here.

briefly

Psychological warfare, according to Paul Linebarger of the School of Advanced International Studies, is a continuous process not controlled by laws, usages, and customs of war — covert, often disguised as the voice of institutions and media — a non-violent persuasion waged before, during, and after war.

Most countries, notes Linebarger, suffer from ideological confusion—an instability of basic beliefs. “In states anxious to promote a fixed mentality, the entire population lives under conditions approximating the psychological side of war. Allegiance in war is a matter of ideology, not of opinion.” Coordinated propaganda machines, he observes, include psywar, public relations, general news, and public education. “Psywar,” he warns, “has in private media facilities, in an open society, a constantly refreshed source of new material that, when selectively censored, can prevent non-governmental materials from circulating.”

As Kalle Lasn, publisher of Adbusters Magazine said when interviewed in the July 2001 issue of The Sun, “It’s impossible to live a free authentic life in America today …Our emotions, personalities, and core values have become programmed.” Lasn, a former advertising executive for thirty years, understands the power of propaganda as advertising. He also understands the keys to undermining this corrupting influence—persistent ridicule, and appeals to conscience.

from "Principles of Psywar," Jay Taber




I've wanted to discuss Ahmedinejad's recent reception at Texas A&M Columbia University, but Rob, John Caruso, and Dennis Perrin("Booga Booga") already do so pretty well.