“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.
Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”
Katrina vanden Heuvel: Science, yes. But don’t forget the poor
In a speech to the National Academy of Sciences shortly after taking office, President Obama, while faced with a teetering economy, vast numbers of unemployed and uninsured, and two seemingly endless wars, nonetheless paused to embrace a vision of the future. He spoke of President Lincoln’s commitment to science and innovation, even in the midst of great turmoil and uncertainty. . . . . .
So it came as no surprise, then, that a central theme of President Obama’s State of the Union address last week was the modern extension of Lincoln’s commitment to science and innovation and of his insistence that we add “the fuel of interest to the fire of genius.” . . . . .
But while Lincoln was committing himself to the advancement of science and innovation, he remained focused on ending the nation’s more immediate and immobilizing crises. President Obama must do the same; it is today’s job market, not tomorrow’s, and the victims of our historic chasm between great wealth and deep poverty, that deserve his primary focus now.
We live in a country with nearly 15 million unemployed, and many millions more underemployed. A country where job creation can barely keep pace with population growth, where for a staggering number of people, the pain of recession continues without any real relief. These are people who cannot wait for a decade-long economic transformation; they need relief – and jobs – now.
And yet, with more Americans now mired in poverty than at any time in the last 40 years – a record 47 million – the president did not include a single mention of poverty or the plight of the poor in his speech.
Laura Flanders: Killing the Internet Not Just a Problem in Egypt
As we speak, Egypt is struggling with a near-total Internet and communications shut-off, and not just Egyptians are grappling with the implications. Can the flow of social media information to an entire country simply be cut? Apparently, yes. And that’s not just an Egyptian concern.
It’s very much an American concern, in that a US-based company seems to be the maker of the Internet off-switch. As Tim Karr of Free Press notes, the US company Narus was founded in 1997 by Israeli security experts. Based in Sunnyvale California, Narus has devised what business fans call a “social media sleuth.”
As boosters put it: “Narus is the leader in real-time traffic intelligence for the protection and management of large IP networks…. Used by the world’s service providers and governments, Narus has developed and patented state-of-the art algorithms to detect network anomalies and manage unwanted IP traffic. Additionally, Narus has the unique ability to precision target and fully reconstruct all types of IP traffic, including e-mail, Web mail and instant messages.”
Maureen Dowd: Bye Bye, Mubarak
If only W. had waited for Twitter.
And Facebook. And WikiLeaks.
Revolutionary tools all, like the fax machine in the Soviet Union.
The ire in Tahrir Square is full of ironies, not the least of which is the American president who inspired such hope in the Middle East with his Cairo speech calling around this week to leaders in the region to stanch the uncontrolled surge of democracy in the Arab world.
Egyptians rose up at the greatest irony of all: Cleopatra’s Egypt was modern in ancient times and Mubarak’s was ancient in modern times. The cradle of civilization yearned for some civilization.
President George W. Bush meant well when he tried to start a domino effect of democracy in the Middle East and end the awful hypocrisy of America coddling autocratic rulers.
Amy GoodmanWhen Corporations Choose Despots Over Democracy
“People holding a sign ‘To: America. From: the Egyptian People. Stop supporting Mubarak. It’s over!” so tweeted my brave colleague, “Democracy Now!” senior producer Sharif Abdel Kouddous, from the streets of Cairo.
More than 2 million people rallied throughout Egypt on Tuesday, most of them crowded into Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Tahrir, which means liberation in Arabic, has become the epicenter of what appears to be a largely spontaneous, leaderless and peaceful revolution in this, the most populous nation in the Middle East. Defying a military curfew, this incredible uprising has been driven by young Egyptians, who compose a majority of the 80 million citizens. Twitter and Facebook, and SMS text messaging on cell phones, have helped this new generation to link up and organize, despite living under a U.S.-supported dictatorship for the past three decades. In response, the Mubarak regime, with the help of U.S. and European corporations, has shut down the Internet and curtailed cellular service, plunging Egypt into digital darkness. Despite the shutdown, as media activist and professor of communications C.W. Anderson told me, “people make revolutions, not technology.”
Greg Mitchell: Why Julian Assange Hates the ‘New York Time
As many know, Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, wrote a piece for his paper’s Sunday magazine this past week (actually it’s just an extract from their new book) critical of Julian Assange, even mocking him. WikiLeaks (presumably Assange) quickly called it a smear in a tweet and there was much made of the falling out between the paper, one of WikiLeaks’ media partners since last June, and Assange. Yet today, on NPR, Keller gave credit to WikiLeaks for fueling the recent revolt in Tunisia (and by extension, Egypt).
So what sparked the rift with Assange?
For one thing, Assange was upset that the Times refused to link directly to the WikiLeaks site. Then there was a shaky profile last summer of Bradley Manning.
As it had promised, The New York Times, the day after the release of the megaleak on Iraq, published a lengthy profile of Assange on its front page, written by John Burns (left) and Ravi Somaiya, and including the interview with the WikiLeaks leader over lunch at an Ethiopian restaurant in London the previous week. During that sitdown, when asked about finances and other non-content issues, Assange had responded by calling such queries “facile,” “cretinous,” and from “kindergarten.”
Even though the same newspaper had collaborated with WikiLeaks on its most recent two megaleak packages, and was still covering the latest one heavily, this profile was notable for its harsh tone and criticism of Assange . . . .
Robert Dreyfuss: Iranium: ‘Wanna See Somethin’ REALLY Scary?’
Back in 1983, in the opening scene of the movie The Twilight Zone, as the echoes of the plaintive song “The Midnight Special” hung in the air, Dan Aykroyd turns to his passenger with an evil grin and says, “Wanna see something really scary?”-and then turns into a monster.
Yesterday, at the Heritage Foundation, a passel of neoconservative would-be Aykroyds showed up in a new film, Iranium, and one by one they each took a turn at scowling and saying, in effect, “Wanna hear something really scary?” As ominous music played in the background, Jim Woolsey, Harold Rhode, John Bolton, Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney and many others-including a cadaverous Bernard Lewis, doing what appeared to be an impression of Ernest Borgnine, tried their best to scare viewers about Iran’s supposed plot to destroy Israel, the United States and the rest of the civilized world.
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