Ex-patriots?

What about the Americans? There is no real way to find out how many U.S. citizens are fighting in Lebanon and Gaza right now. 2400 of the soldiers are so keen on Israel that they came there especially for the purpose of joining Israel's army - 120 of them from the U.S. and Canada. In the article, the soldiers from the U.S. are described as "the most patriotic, the most 'poisoned'". Poisoned? Are we talking toxins? Of sorts. Israeli military slang refers to people who take their roles seriously as "poisoned soldiers" - perhaps because they're the ones who really drank the [famous trademarked drink]?

Now, I fully realize that Israel requires military service from all Jews living in it (actually, all non-Arabs), so that if you happen to be an American living there, you can't really get out of the service. But wouldn't you think that going to a foreign country expressly for the purpose of volunteering for a foreign army - to which the soldiers swear their allegiance - would be an expatriating act?

Thursday Open Thread

Post away rowdies. Hey, listen up, by providing you with open threads, we hope that you will only post comments elsewhere that are ON TOPIC. I am seriously contemplating a policy of deleting anything posted off the open threads that has nothing to do with the subject at hand. For some reason I just find it rude.

Wednesday Open Thread

We may be a small blog, but we're in good company. Move over AP and NYTimes. We're on the move!

It's as easy as riding a bicycle

A long, long time ago (okay it was June 15th), Congressman Gil Gutknecht (R-MN) stood in the House and proclaimed: “Members, now is not the time to go wobbly. Let’s give victory a chance.” Then a month later he took a trip to the war zone:

“The condition there is worse than I expected,” he said. “... I have to be perfectly candid: Baghdad is a serious problem.”

Gutknecht went on to compare Iraq to a child learning to ride a bicycle, saying:

" America needs to be willing to let the country suffer some bruises as it attempts to take charge of its own affairs. “I think it’s time to take off the training wheels of their bicycle,”


Finally, someone stops listening to the Whitehouse spin and actually goes and sees for himself. And his mind is opened. Let's hope and pray that more of the kool-aid drinkers will take an honest look for theirselves...for the sake of the children.

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

Dear Mr. President

I thought one way I could contribute to this blog is to publish my letters to the President and other officials. This is my most recent letter to the President.


Dear President Bush:

I am writing to you because I am having difficulty understanding what seems to me to be two contradictory messages you have given recently.

On July 19, 2006 you vetoed the stem cell research bill stating that you did not want to destroy life in the name of science. Meanwhile the conflict between Isreal and Hizbollah continues to rage on and you refuse to call for a ceasefire unless a "lasting peace" could be achieved. In essence, you are allowing life to be destroyed in the name of peace.

I would be very interested to hear how you can hold these two statements together. Because it seems to me that you are saying that no death is to be tolerated in the laboratory, but hundreds of civilian deaths on a battlefield that includes kitchens and nurseries is legitimate.

Sincerely,
RevPhat

I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live...Dt. 30:19b

HERE IT IS FOLKS

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Welcome, unruly mob, to unrulymob.blogspot.com. If everyone accepts the name, this will be the new home of Les Enragés. Take off your trousers and make yourselves at home. I hope you like what I've done to the place. I took the liberty of cutting and pasting from sans' own template to provide a familiar look for everyone, and to give links to sans' favourite causes, band of brothers, net neutrality, etc. So far my limited knowledge of HTML (actually I think XHTML is being used here) hasn't caused any major crashes. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best. On my to-do list: registering the blog with haloscan, technorati, and that cool mapstat thingabob. In terms of formatting, I've already done more here than on my own blog that is now 6 months old. But as I say, I only copied and pasted from sans' code, so the effort was minimal.

Why Sans Has So Many Fans

The ever-growing superthread of comments to sans-culotte's July 23 post here is clear evidence of how well liked he is by a wide variety of people who share his general worldview. I would like to provide some insight into why this is so.

Like many others, I first encountered sans, not through his excellent and often unique work on his own blog, sans-culotte.org, but through his comments on Americablog, where he has been an active participant for some time. In an instance I mention in the thread below, he went out of his way to provide technical advice on how to post links to a relative newcomer (Mike in Philly) , and did so without condescension or haughtiness. As it happens I am in a position to give a concrete example of his unique and endearing presence on Americablog.

[-note: the above reference to 'the thread below' is to comments on the original blog this post was written on, now defunct. -SBT]

On June 30, 2006 John Aravosis posted this item on Americablog: Bush Stands Rebuked which deals with the very important Hamdan v. Rumsfeld Supreme Court decision. The entire blogosphere on both the left and right was discussing this, so it was a no-brainer for Aravosis to do so too. In fact the issue was so hot that I decided not to post anything about it on my own blog because I thought there was little I could conceivably add to what was already out there; on any issue like this, involving a legal decision, you really don't have to read much more than Glenn Greenwald's Unclaimed Territory to get a good picture of what's going on.

First let's quantify Aravosis' effort on this post.
-He wrote one sentence: "Great analysis of th Supreme Court decision from the Wash Post:"
Not even a grammatically complete sentence, and he didn't bother to correct the typo on the word 'the.'
-He provided one link to one article.
-He provided an 'extract' from the article, consisting of paragraphs 1,2,3, and 6.
No commentary, no analysis, and no further participation in the thread were forthcoming. His glorious job done, he turned his back and walked away from the most important issue in probably a month, giving it no further consideration.

About 27 minutes later, sans-culotte joins the thread for the first time with this. (Open in a new tab in firefox or a new window if you still, for some ungodly reason, subject yourself to IExplorer.) Now, I like etymologies (word origins) so I might not be a good judge of this comment, but it shows something about sans I find unique. He goes onto the path less taken, and finds something of interest there to share with others. Furthermore, its not just the raw material but what he does with it. From 'rebuke' to its Germanic root in "busche" - to chop wood, then to Bush's name and his penchant for clearing brush, a brilliant synthesis. I thought it was so good I saved a link to the comment # (which is why I can go back to this a month later.)

For my money, at this point sans-culotte has already contributed more of unique value to this blogpost than its author, JA. But if you look at the comment thread from 12:27 to 1:27 am., here's what you'll see: A total of 12 comments by sans-culotte, with 9 links. This is out of a total of 35. Another 5 comments are in response to something sans-culotte has said. So he has taken over almost half of the comment thread. But not in a way anyone could possibly object to, even Aravosis at his most hissy-fittest. Here's a play-by-play for that one hour period.

-12:59: ha ha - is in response to an audio link posted at 12:55. This encourages others to post, and helps keep the thread alive and vibrant.

-1:05: -off topic but interesting Repug-bashing item about Bob Ney's staff quitting, with links to Roll Call and TPM - if you follow the link to Ney's statement it is redolent with prevarication

-1:06 - laughing emoticons in response to cowboyNEOK -once again encouraging others, and 'rallying the troops.' Boy, any politician with an ounce of grey matter would give up his arm to have such an effective supporter.

-1:14 - reprints bulk of a 10 month old AmericaBlog post - great anti-Repug ammunition - Catapulting the propaganda, sharing talking points that other participants can use. sans the campaign manager. -provides link, of course. credit where credit is due.

-1:15 - More strokes for 2fortheshow - rallying the troops

-1:21 - In response to question by Kim Chi, sans googles Karen Hughes' name, provides links to info. Acting as a research assistant to others. Both links are to hours-old posts.

-1:23 - morale-building response to Sharona's rather defeatist 1:21 comment.

-1:34 - link to salon article indicating that Guantanamo interrogators were trained by torture experts. Building evidence for a possible future warcrimes trial. Very lawyerly.

-1:43 - Now apparently responding to DKarma's 1:35 comment, expands on his 1:23 explanation re: impact of Hamdas decision - succinct, informative, upbeat

-1:47 - Responding to Fernando's 1:42 comment 'Bush stands and puked', sans pulls out a story about Bush Sr. projectile vomitting on the Japanese Prime Minister. - very funny, good bash, with link provided.

Have I made my point yet? Read the whole thread, even after sans leaves at 2:12 am, for the tokens of admiration and respect from other commenters, including Gregory Lyons, Fernando, Mike in Philly, and Reality Check. I already told you one reason Mike in Philly is a big fan. The rest probably all have similar stories.

TAGS: Sans-culotte, Blogger, Americablog, Comments

Get Unruly Button

If you like Les Enragés.org so much that you would like to link to us, we have a button available to put on your blog or website. Just copy/paste the following code into your template, anywhere in the sidebar you think appropriate.

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If you want to implement the button using a widget, you can get one HERE.

The unruly mob interrupt their endless clamour for justice long enough to shout, "Merci Beaucoup, nos amis." That means thank you, friends in the language of the bloody revolutionary streets of Paris. Please sign our unruly fans' guest list in comments. We'll check your site out, and add you to our blogroll too.

Defining the Lie

OK, we might as well start at the beginning. When we use the word "lie", this is what we mean:

Lie. noun, verb

noun:

1. A false statement deliberately presented as being true; a falsehood.
2. Something meant to deceive or give a wrong impression.
   

verb:

verb, intransitive~

1. To present false information with the intention of deceiving.
2. To convey a false image or impression: Appearances often lie.

verb, transitive~

1. To cause to be in a specific condition or affect in a specific way by telling falsehoods: You have lied yourself into trouble.

TAGS: Lie, Definition, Future Reference

Feature: The Media in Amerika

NOTE: The following is a feature 'work in progress' which we will be updating on a semi-regular basis.
In this indispensable Robert Parry essay from Consortium News (April 20, 2005), the decades-long project by the Right to take over America's newsmedia is detailed. Some excerpts;

In the mid-1970s, after the U.S. defeat in Vietnam and President Richard Nixon’s resignation over the Watergate scandal, American progressives held the upper-hand on media. Not only had the mainstream press exposed Nixon’s dirty tricks and published the Pentagon Papers secrets of the Vietnam War, but a vibrant leftist “underground” press informed and inspired a new generation of citizens.
The Right concentrated on gaining control of the information flows in Washington and on building a media infrastructure that would put out a consistent conservative message across the country. As part of this strategy, the Right also funded attack groups to target mainstream journalists who got in the way of the conservative agenda.
The Left largely forsook media in favor of “grassroots organizing.” As many of the Left’s flagship media outlets foundered, the “progressive community” reorganized under the slogan – “think globally, act locally” – and increasingly put its available money into well-intentioned projects, such as buying endangered wetlands or feeding the poor.
Meanwhile, through the 1990s, the conservatives poured billions of dollars into their media apparatus, which rose like a vertically integrated machine incorporating newspapers, magazines, book publishing, radio stations, TV networks and Internet sites.
As the 1990s wore on, mainstream journalists adapted to the new media environment by trying not to offend the conservatives. Working journalists knew that the Right could damage or destroy their careers by attaching the “liberal” label. There was no comparable danger from the Left...Once five Republicans on the U.S. Supreme Court blocked a state-court-ordered recount and handed Bush the White House, both mainstream and conservative news outlets acted as if it were their patriotic duty to rally around the legitimacy of the new President...The protect-Bush consensus deepened after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks as the national news media – almost across the board – transformed itself into a conveyor belt for White House propaganda.

So there you have it. Since the fall of Nixon, the right has poured billions of dollars into the creation of a monolithic media apparatus, while the liberals have wasted their time and money on foolish projects like feeding the poor and saving the planet.
There is no mystery as to why the right, the GOP and their corporate sponsors are doing this. Nixon's downfall was not due to the vigilance of the Constitutional 'checks and balances' of the Congress and Supreme Court. Nor did the FBI or the CIA lead an investigation leading to Nixon's demise. In fact these entities acted as willing co-conspirators and can probably be relied on to conspire with whoever occupies the White House, the bootlicking attack dogs of their political masters. No, Nixon fell to the aggressive actions of an independent press that, like the White House tape system, no longer exists.
Only a miracle or a mass uprising of an enraged public will dislodge the current criminals from their place of power. (..To be continuously expanded.)

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Related Posts:
The Truth About the Mainstream Media
Olbermann Nails It
The Path to Truthiness
That Damned Liberal Media
TAGS: media bias, politics, truthiness

Comment Policy

... Such As It Is.

Here's the deal.

Ultimately this IS our blog, and we can do what we want. Any comment is subject to editing or deletion for any reason whatsoever. †(see below)

If you think that our deleting or editing your comment is censorship, get your own blog and post whatever you like. We are under no obligation to disseminate your bile, vitriol, spew, or whatever else you may wish to post.

Commercial spam will of course be deleted forthwith. We also will not tolerate copy/pasting of entire articles into our threads. That's plagiarism, and shows a profound disrespect for the author of the article and the legitimate (in that they interact with the other commenters) users of our comments interface.

Rule of thumb. If you come here to post YOUR screed, but are demonstrably not reading the blog, nor the comments of others, you are not welcome.

We don't mind off-topic comments as a rule. In fact, I personally love it when readers share LINKS (with a brief description and/or excerpt) regarding something that caught their eye while browsing around. It saves me and the other mobsters time, and we might even find material for a post in there. You can pretty much consider any thread an open thread around here. We do.

What we don't like - no make that really, really detest, it pisses us off - and what may earn you a deletion or even banning if you persist, is ad hominem attacks, whether they be directed against individuals or identifiable groups. Absolutely forbidden.

In case you don't know what ad hominem means, it is Latin for 'against the person.' In other words, it's perfectly OK to dispute someone's argument or position, even their 'facts' if you find them questionable. That is fair discourse, and we promise you will never be edited, deleted or banned for disagreement, so long as you limit yourself to civil debate. Besides, if you have a valid point to make, with arguments and/or facts to back it up, there is no need for juvenile name calling. You would only be making yourself look foolish.

You are allowed to criticize other commenters for behavior (like for instance making ad hominem attacks) that you find objectionable. If we agree with you, we'll deal with the situation. Just be aware that we don't have site monitors or anything like that, nor are we ever likely to.

Disagreement is a healthy and necessary thing in a free society. You may have noticed that the unruly mob is inclusive, not ideologically homogeneous on any axis - political, religious, whatever. So we won't assume that you hate any of us just because we don't march in lockstep on whatever issue. Please return the sentiment. And we sincerely hope you appreciate that this is a place where you don't have to 'go along to get along.'


A huge hat-tip to NosyBear Demon for this graphic guide to elevating the discourse. If you stick to techniques shown near the top of the pyramid you'll be doing yourself and the rest of us a big favor. Yourself mostly because you won't come across looking like an asshat (heh heh.)The rest of us because when someone relies on the lower techniques it isn't just offensive by itself, but it precludes you actually stating an opinion of your own that can be argued against. Trying to argue with such has aptly been described as like nailing jelly to a wall. You may also find this helpful:

The Argument Clinic

Furthermore, since this is after all an unruly mob, and each of our members has their own ideas of how things should be, be advised that the rules may be different depending on the author of the post. That is part of the deal between us as bloggers. So where my posts will allow pretty much any kind of language you want to use, others may not. †You may have curse words edited out of your comments some times, but not others.

Unruly enough for you?

And finally, please don't feed the trolls. It only encourages them.