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Showing posts from June, 2013

Recent Foreign Policy History Does Not Deserve the Name "Realist"

One of Josh Marshall's readers comes up with the following scheme : What I find most compelling about the Snowdon affair is what it says about changing generational attitudes toward foreign policy—in particular, I feel that it’s the first major salvo in Generation Y’s war on realist foreign policy. Edward Snowdon and I are the same age; our adolescence sits squarely between the fall of the Soviet Union (8 years old) and the events of 9/11 (18 years old). During that time, without the bipolar rivalry that overshadowed much of the twentieth century, American culture shifted toward a greater emphasis on issues that assumed global cooperation, such as environmentalism and humanitarianism, and placed significant value on cross-cultural exchange. (I’m thinking of shows like Captain Planet, in which an international, multi-ethnic team of kids thwart rapacious corporate villains). Furthermore, it was always assumed that the United States, secure in its position as the world’s sole sup

Why the Statist Lickspittle Press Is Digging into Glenn Greenwald's Business History

Glenn himself reports on what's happening : I was not particularly surprised when I received an email last night from a reporter at the New York Daily News informing me that he had been "reviewing some old lawsuits" in which I was involved – "old" as in: more than a decade ago – and that "the paper wants to do a story on this for tomorrow". He asked that I call him right away to discuss this, apologizing for the very small window he gave me to comment.  Upon calling him, I learned that he had somehow discovered two events from my past. The first was my 2002-04 participation in a multi-member LLC that had an interest in numerous businesses, including the distribution of adult videos. I was bought out of that company by my partners roughly nine years ago. I've always loved the movie Enemy of the State , in my opinion maybe the best action movie ever made, and there's a great rant from Jon Voight's character in that film that perfectly en

Michael Hastings, RIP

This is horrible . In trying to figure out why it hit me so hard, aside from the usual factors like his youth (he was 33) and our shared profession, I keep returning to a general affinity of attitude. Hastings seemed to think that everyone in a position of authority is full of shit until proven otherwise, and I think that's a thoroughly healthy perspective. Other than that, there's not much else to say than this, from my dad : That was years ago now, but I can still oppress myself with the thought. Our brightest stars will fall. Their endings will be undeserved, unexpected, catastrophic. There will be neither repentance nor justice; only the arbitrary and inevitable. That shining promise may wink out in a one car roll-over or be driven like a piton into the cold white granite cleavage of Mother Mountain, at any moment and without reason. You may hopefully discern some evolving purpose through the sorrow; detect some overarching plan at work that will ultimately give mean

Perspective

UPDATE: I put together a tarted-up version of this post on Medium , just for funsies. Josh Marshall has a strange and interesting post on Edward Snowden and leaks generally. It's hard to know where to start, but let's begin with how Marshall explains his feelings about the Bradley Manning case: For me the story starts with the Bradley Manning case. This story has been going on for years and though I generally haven’t written much about it, when I have, I’ve made clear that I don’t see Manning as a hero or a whistleblower or really anything positive at all. At best I see him as a young and naive kid who got way in over his head. When I first heard about the Manning case - or first understood that Manning was the likely source of the Wilileaks trove - I was frankly surprised that anybody saw him as a whistleblower. Perhaps due to the novelty of the Internet we don’t really have a lot of past analogues for the Manning type. We’re used to spies who give secrets to foreign g

Two Things

I wrote something . Also this is a pretty good track:

Pretty Much, Yeah

"...my basic belief is that aside from civil liberties issues, the security/surveillance state industry is just a giant grift, a big scam there to enrich certain communities in Northern Virginia. That it is a net good is bullshit, that it makes us "safe" is bullshit, and that "making us safe," as opposed to perpetuating its own existence and fattening the wallets of its members and those that play along, has much to with anything that goes on is bullshit." -- Atrios .

I Wrote Something on Medium

Check it out . Medium is a rather strange new blogging platform thingy. Seems like they're pushing up their rollout, as me and a bunch of others got invites. No real reason to use it except for the butter-smooth interface, which for me is reason enough, on occasion at least. It's a nice break from the Monthly's clunky-ass 2006 version of Movable Type.

The Most Depressing Paragraph Ever Written

"I'm not saying that in some reverse-psychology, "this is a test," I'm-being-superficially-discouraging-but-really-think-you-will-make-it sense. I'm saying it in the "you will try and are far more likely to fail than to succeed" sense. In the time it took you to read the last paragraph some 48-year old was laid off by The Village Voice, and they're smarter than you and have lived ten times what you've lived and can write so much better than you I actually almost feel bad for you, and now they're on the same job market trying to scramble for the same shitty 10-cents-a-word gig recapping a show about couponing for the AV Club in the hopes that they can bang out some soul-destroying tedious bullshit so that a pack of talentless losers in the comments can pick their words apart from the safety of their beige plastic cubicles as they try to distract themselves with pop culture for long enough to keep their all-devouring self-hatred at bay. Yo