Andy’s whereIstand Blog

Wonkette covered the Austria poster sex scandal, and has soem boss pictures totally worth taking a look at.

This has been Andy D.

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• [Open Thread]

It’s true thast Anderson Cooper when he started out, and then when he got his job at Channel One Classroom News he was always putting himself in the most dangerous assignments like Serbia and Rwanda, but he’s a Vanderbilt - there’s nothing left for the rich and idle to do but thrill seek. He just happened to make a whole career out of it.

Now we got this sixteen-year-old Ft. Launderdale student jetting off to Iraq unbeknownst to his parents even to practice some "immersion journalism:"

It begins with a high school class on "immersion journalism" and one overly eager — or naively idealistic — student who’s lucky to be alive after going way beyond what any teacher would ask.

As a junior this year at a Pine Crest School, a prep academy of about 700 students in Fort Lauderdale, Hassan studied writers like John McPhee in the book "The New Journalism," an introduction to immersion journalism — a writer who lives the life of his subject in order to better understand it.

Diving headfirst into an assignment, Hassan, whose parents were born in Iraq but have lived in the United States for about 35 years, hung out at a local mosque. The teen, who says he has no religious affiliation, added that he even spent an entire night until 6 a.m. talking politics with a group of Muslim men, a level of "immersion" his teacher characterized as dangerous and irresponsible.

The next trimester his class was assigned to choose an international topic and write editorials about it, Hassan said. He chose the Iraq war and decided to practice immersion journalism there, too, though he knows his school in no way endorses his travels.

First off: what the crap?! Second: imerssion journalism? We haven’t seen that since Vietnam. Maybe a little with the Sarejevo and Kosovo bombings, but that two-mile-distant nightvision-green blip bombing is hardly immersion. And it is the standard.

Dood’s ambitious, but also retarded.

I fear for the future?

This has been Andy D.

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• Has the invasion of Iraq been successful?

So I just read Maureen Dowd’s book Are Men Necessary? on a lark. I liked the title. The writing itself was lazy rarely ever going past quoting the staff of The New York Times, where Ms. Dowd works, and making generalizations on the most rudimentary of scientific conjecture. Also the ideas presented were one’s I had mostly thought about already on my own. It was still a pretty good read even if the pop-culture references were Dave Chappelle and Sex in the City - heavy. As a counter-balance, I am now reading The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists by Neil Strauss. It’s pretty interesting as narrative account of picking up women, but both books bring up issues I have always been interested in human sexuality and love.

Biologists will go on forever in uncomplicated vulgarisms on the Discovery channel soundbytes about how there is a biological imperative for men to spread their seed as far and wide as possible and women have the same imperative to seek a mate who is loyal, capable of raising offspring, etc. Vulgar simplifications based on observation of the natural world, and assumption. Any explanation that continues to frame men as pigs afraid of commitment and women as overbearing, needy nags. Dowd at least tries to call bullshit on this despite her whack presentation of biology, Strauss just hints that these pickup artists know how to get what they want, they just end up being wrong about what they want.

Recently I went out on one of the few sharking-for-sex nights out I had ever attempted. And to be honest I was really just along for the ride with two doods who are major players of The Game. I had recently found out about a requited crush elsewhere - that had to put the moves on me - and wasn’t looking for any one-night stands. Ever the participant-observer, though, I drank and danced and watched my two cohorts as they partied through the night either heading for a lay, a fight, or both. All exchanges were either jokes or stories about past exploits. I had none to share. But at one point, one of the doods I was with confided that he’s no longer fulfilled by the conquests. They all ring empty. He was about to swear-off women.

After this excursion, I began this most recent reading, wondering if guys really do shark just for sex and if women really do, well whatever they do. I now hypothesize that men aren’t just looking for sex, they are looking for love, but conflate love and sex way more than women do. So sex is like the entry point of love for men, and this kind of seeking can get out of control very quickly and easily. I think the entry point of love for women is different, and more hidden, and this is what the seduction artists in Strauss’s book are looking for while also getting what they want.

It’s telling that Strauss begins his book with one of the best Pickup artists in the world having a near-suicidal break-down over a woman. This lends credence to the Dowd’s assertion of a more publicly transparent male emotional life - male hysteria.

Well, the latest researchers quoted in the CNN bit "What Men, Women Want on the Web" see pattern internet use along gender lines as a telling sign of gender-specific desires and behaviors. It’s should be noted that Strauss entered the world of Seduction artists via online chat rooms:

Internet users share many common interests, but men are heavier consumers of news, stocks, sports and pornography, while more women look for health and religious guidance, a broad survey of U.S. Web usage has found.

The study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project to be released on Thursday finds men are slightly more intense users of the Web. Men log on more frequently and spend more time online. More men also have access to quick broadband connections than do women.

"Once you get past the commonalities, men tend to be attracted to online activities that are far more action-oriented, while women tend to value things involving relationships or human connections," said Deborah Fallows, a research fellow at Pew and author of the report.

A larger number of men surf the Internet for pleasure, with 70 percent acknowledging they go online to pass time, compared with 63 percent of women. Men are more likely than women to listen to music, view Webcams and pay for digital content.

 

 

 

Maybe there is truth here, but it is being heedlessly uncomplicated by these graphs. Sure men like porn, and that is the main business of the internet. Porn is like candy for your soul - it’s really sweet but if overdone tends to rot things, like teeth and fantasy lives/imaginations.

But its a visual thing - biologists like to tell us how much more visual men are than women. Women tend to value human connection on the internet? This research does nothing but promulgate the cultural assumptions we’ve had all along. This is not new and it is not good science.

As an anthropologist, I am totally skeptical of any science being applied to humanity, however. We are so much more complicated, and the subject/object matter is just too close.

I don’t know about game, but the assuming the rules need to stop.

This has been Andy D.

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• [open thread]

Actually these guys give Vultures a good name:

Forty-nine people have been indicted in a scam to pocket Red Cross hurricane relief funds and more indictments are expected, according to Justice Department officials.

Authorities said 22 people working for a Red Cross contractor at a call center in Bakersfield, California, filed false claims, and by involving family members and friends, brought the number of people under indictment to 49.

"I’m really surprised people in this day and time would try to take advantage of the system that’s intended to help those in need," said Jackie Smith, whose brother-in-law was named in the indictment on charges of wire fraud.

 

 

Really? Even in this era of Social Security with a big red target painted on it Ms. Smith. Open your Naive eyes. Ripping off Fake Red Cross accounts is entirely possible, even probably. When the government doesn’t care enough, as Kanye West observed, why wouldn’t opportunists swarm while the guard isn’t watching? Bush Corp. has let tons worse happen on its watch. Scum bags can smell their own.

This has been Andy D.

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• Are available resources being used wisely under the circumstances?

Bush seems to be brazen with his admission of authorizing wiretaps of questionable legality right after 9-11, but it is heartening to see that some courts aren’t going to stand for it.

The NYT reports in it’s article "Defense Lawyers in terror Case Plan Challenges Over Spy Efforts" that

The expected legal challenges, in cases from Florida, Ohio, Oregon and Virginia, add another dimension to the growing controversy over the agency’s domestic surveillance program and could jeopardize some of the Bush administration’s most important courtroom victories in terror cases, legal analysts say.

Bully for them! The usual spokesmen and scapegoats are defending the proto-Patriot Act Orwellian behavior as justified and necessary:

Trent Duffy, a spokesman for the White House, declined to comment in Crawford, Tex., when asked about a report in The New York Times that the security agency had tapped into some of the country’s main telephone arteries to conduct broader data-mining operations in the search for terrorists.

But Mr. Duffy said: "This is a limited program. This is not about monitoring phone calls designed to arrange Little League practice or what to bring to a potluck dinner. These are designed to monitor calls from very bad people to very bad people who have a history of blowing up commuter trains, weddings and churches."

He added: "The president believes that he has the authority - and he does - under the Constitution to do this limited program. The Congress has been briefed. It is fully in line with the Constitution and also protecting American civil liberties."

The problem comes of course when such actions are not taken into account during the trial, an institution which can even be stripped of purpose when people are labeled enemy combatants. And what’s to stop the Bush Administration from becoming the Nixon Administration? These paranoid Republicans. Many of those this program was used against are American Citizens, and no Executive Power can take that away or should be able to circumvent a trial.

Due Process Bitches:

Disclosure of the N.S.A. program has already caused ripples in the legal system, with a judge resigning in protest from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court last week. The surveillance court, established by Congress in 1978 to grant warrants in terrorism and espionage cases, wants a briefing from the Bush administration on why it bypassed the court and ordered eavesdropping without warrants.

Oh King George, I can’t wait for you to fall from your wicked throne of lies. That would be a sweet lyric for a totally boss speed metal song

This has been Andy D.

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• [open thread]

The biggest jibe Europeans (mostly the French) can throw at the US (besides simply pointing out the current Administration) is saying something about how we are all prudes in public, holdovers because of our roots in Puritan beginnings.

Apparently sex is still pretty much a joke within the EU as well:

Spoof posters depicting Britain’s Queen Elizabeth having sex with the U.S. and French presidents that are displayed across Vienna are causing embarrassment just days ahead of Austria’s taking over the EU presidency.

The images show two naked female models wearing masks of President George W. Bush and the queen, and a male model with a President Jacques Chirac mask, positioned as if they are having sex.

Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel appealed to the artists to withdraw the images, according to a spokeswoman quoted by the APA news agency.

Part of a series called "euroPART" that features art created by artists from all 25 member countries of the European Union, the posters were meant to "reflect on the different social, historical and political developments in Europe," said art project 25peaces, which commissioned the posters.

Well I see the point if it’s all Tony Blair sucking Bush’s cock over the War on Terror, and the "Axis of the Willing" is quite apropos of such consensual nation sex.

Way I see it, like Hemmingway, all wars are basically the rich and the leaders of the world unable to solve their differences and send the poor populace to fight it out. They might as well be depicted as fighting the battle in the bedroom.

This has been Andy D, Love is a Battlefield.

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• [Open Thread]

Gab calls MisterE out on some important contradictions - calling Christianity both shitty and misinterpreted.

This is a fuzzy assertion to make on MisterE’s party, and Gab notes the problems of not unpacking this seeming contradiction.

Were I to make the assertion MisterE does that

Christianity is just a shitty, poorly thought out, misunderstood, misinterpreted branch of Judaism. We, as a western civilization, are 100% based on a Jewish foundation.

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• MisterE
• Gab
• [open thread]
• Should public displays of religious content be permitted?

And the Iraqi political system is styling itself in the wake of the US Military PR campaign. All that freest press money can buy, to the NYT again:

"They have made it impossible for us to compete," said Mr. Kifai, a stocky, talkative Shiite candidate who spent his entire $50,000 war chest on the posters and has nothing left. "This is not democracy."

It is democracy, but in a distinctly Iraqi style. This country is in the final days of a campaign that is at once more ruthless and more sophisticated than anything yet seen here.

Candidates have been killed, even as slick television spots run throughout the day, showing office-seekers who soberly promise to defeat terrorism and revive the economy. Cellphone users routinely get unexpected text messages advertising one candidate or another. Thousands of posters decorate the capital’s gray blast walls, including one that shows a split face - half Saddam Hussein, half Ayad Allawi - in a blunt effort to smear Mr. Allawi, a former prime minister, and his secular coalition.

"Who does this man remind you of?" the poster asks.

In a sense, it is the first full-scale political contest here since the fall of Mr. Hussein. The Sunni Arabs, who largely boycotted the January election, are now campaigning fiercely, and voter turnout is expected to be considerably higher as a result. All told, 226 political groups will compete in the elections, representing more than 7,000 candidates.

The winners will form Iraq’s first full-term government since the war began, and face the task of unifying an increasingly fractious and violent nation. Any American plan to reduce troop levels will depend on the success of that effort.

Ah, I can almost smell the graft of campaign contributions, and they do NOT smell as good as baklava. Smear campaigns: not just for Democrats and Republicans any more.

This has been Andy D.

whereIstand Tags

• Has the invasion of Iraq been successful?

Again with the Military PR campaign. "Based on the information available at the time of the invasion" - well that doesn’t seem to matter anymore now that it is fully exposed that a good deal of information since the invasion has been fabricated as propaganda for the American "liberation" cause. Now, leave it to wiser minds than mine to decide when PR just becomes lies. Check in NYT article "Military Information War Is Vast and Often Secretive:"

"We call our stuff information and the enemy’s propaganda," said Col. Jack N. Summe, then the commander of the Fourth Psychological Operations Group, during a tour in June. Even in the Pentagon, "some public affairs professionals see us unfavorably," and inaccurately, he said, as "lying, dirty tricksters."

The recent disclosures that a Pentagon contractor in Iraq paid newspapers to print "good news" articles written by American soldiers prompted an outcry in Washington, where members of Congress said the practice undermined American credibility and top military and White House officials disavowed any knowledge of it. President Bush was described by Stephen J. Hadley, his national security adviser, as "very troubled" about the matter. The Pentagon is investigating.

But the work of the contractor, the Lincoln Group, was not a rogue operation. Hoping to counter anti-American sentiment in the Muslim world, the Bush administration has been conducting an information war that is extensive, costly and often hidden, according to documents and interviews with contractors, government officials and military personnel.

The campaign was begun by the White House, which set up a secret panel soon after the Sept. 11 attacks to coordinate information operations by the Pentagon, other government agencies and private contractors.

In Iraq and Afghanistan, the focus of most of the activities, the military operates radio stations and newspapers, but does not disclose their American ties. Those outlets produce news material that is at times attributed to the "International Information Center," an untraceable organization.

Now call me cynical - no seriously, call me that, I deserve it - but if our government truly has Iraqi Democratic interests at heart, and a free press would certainly be crucial to that, then how do we trust that the same sort of influence hasn’t been exercised on our own media outlets? Of course it has! I’ve mentioned the difference between the Vietnam coverage and the Desert Strom One coverage. Embedded, muddy reporters terribly close to some scared ambivalent soldiers and actual gunfire versus the night vision air strikes a mile removed. The press has been horribly complicit with military pressure. And to our detriment. The need for secrecy and opacity regarding military operations to avoid another Geraldo incident and the need for salience to keep those in power in our democracy under strict scrutiny is out of balance. It’s stuff like this that just shouldn’t stand.

This has been Andy D.

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• Based on the information available at the time of the invasion of Iraq, was it justified?

Getting beat up for Darwin - hot damn! I think if the Academic factory has anything boss going for it, besides over-charging students for increasingly under-valued educations, it’s that at least it remains one environment that ideas -however unpopular - should be able to flourish and fierce debate should find a safehaven. So when a teacher is censured and then subsequently physically attacked, I worry for the future just a little bit more:

A college professor who drew sharp criticism for comments deriding Christian fundamentalists over "intelligent design" said he was forced out as chairman of the university’s religious studies department.

Paul Mirecki, who remains a professor at the University of Kansas, said he had no choice when he signed the resignation letter, typed on stationary from the dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

"The University penalized me and denied me my Constitutionally protected right to speak and express my mind," he said in a written statement Friday for the Lawrence Journal-World. He said his career had been ruined and his speaking engagements canceled.

On Monday, Mirecki was treated at a Lawrence hospital for head injuries after he said he was beaten by two men on a country road. He said the men referred to the creationism course. Law enforcement officials were investigating.

Damn - you’d think he was insulting Scientology or something. I didn’t know ID commanded such thuggery. Let’s hope those black eyes don’t keep Mirecki talking sense.

This has been Andy D.

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• Does a belief in evolution necessarily contradict a belief in Creation?