“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.
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Norman Solomon: Oiling the War Machinery, From Oslo to Heathrow to Washington
In Oslo, the world’s most important peace prize has been hijacked for war.
In London, government authority has just fired a new shot at freedom of the press.
And in Washington, the Obama administration continues to escalate its attacks on whistleblowers, journalism and civil liberties.
As a nation at peace becomes a fading memory, so does privacy. Commitments to idealism — seeking real alternatives to war and upholding democratic values — are under constant assault from the peaks of power.
Normalizing endless war and shameless surveillance, Uncle Sam and Big Brother are no longer just close. They’re the same, with a vast global reach.
Henry A. Giroux: America’s Descent Into Madness
America is descending into madness. The stories it now tells are filled with cruelty, deceit, lies, and legitimate all manner of corruption and mayhem. The mainstream media spins stories that are largely racist, violent, and irresponsible -stories that celebrate power and demonize victims, all the while camouflaging its pedagogical influence under the cheap veneer of entertainment. Unethical grammars of violence now offer the only currency with any enduring value for mediating relationships, addressing problems, and offering instant pleasure. A predatory culture celebrates a narcissistic hyper-individualism that radiates a near sociopathic lack of interest in or compassion and responsibility for others. Anti-public intellectuals dominate the screen and aural cultures urging us to shop more, indulge more, and make a virtue out of the pursuit of personal gain, all the while promoting a depoliticizing culture of consumerism. Undermining life-affirming social solidarities and any viable notion of the public good, right-wing politicians trade in forms of idiocy and superstition that mesmerize the illiterate and render the thoughtful cynical and disengaged. Military forces armed with the latest weapons from Afghanistan play out their hyper-militarized fantasies on the home front by forming robo SWAT teams who willfully beat youthful protesters and raid neighborhood poker games. Congressional lobbyists for the big corporations and defense contractors create conditions in which war zones abroad can be recreated at home in order to provide endless consumer products, such as high tech weapons and surveillance tools for gated communities and for prisons alike.
In one sense Glenn Greenwald’s being gay has nothing to do with the work he’s done as a journalist and commentator, including the revelations of government surveillance he’s helped bring to light in recent months. On the other hand, as he’s stated himself, growing up gay has given him a keen awareness of injustice, and certainly that’s true with regard to a government collecting personal information about its citizens. More than that, Glenn’s being gay seems to have been used against him in recent months. One lurid report in June about his past involvement in an LLC that had a business interest in a gay porn company seemed like a ridiculously feeble attempt to dirty him up by using homophobia as a weapon.
Now Glenn’s relationship is being drawn into the spotlight, as his partner David Miranda, a Brazilian citizen, was detained for nine hours over the weekend at London’s Heathrow airport on his way from Berlin back to Rio, where he and Glenn live together. David was detained under Britain’s Terrorism Act and had his laptop, phone and all of his data confiscated and not returned, after he was held for almost half a day with the possibility of arrest. That’s an attack on every one of us who are journalists, and frankly, every one of us who are in relationships, gay or otherwise.
Eugene Robinson: Arbitrary, and Uncalled For
For all who believe in colorblind justice-and want to see fewer African-American and Hispanic men caught up in the system-there are two items of good news: a judge’s ruling ordering changes in New York’s “stop and frisk” policy and Attorney General Eric Holder’s initiative to keep nonviolent drug offenders out of prison. [..]
Ending the presumption that African-American and Hispanic men are beyond redemption would be a powerful legacy for the first black president and the first black attorney general to leave behind.
Steven Simon: America Has No Leverage in Egypt
EGYPT has entered a dark tunnel, and it is difficult to say when, and in what condition, it will emerge.
Many Americans, in the meantime, are outraged that the Obama administration has not exerted its supposed leverage, in the form of military aid, to pressure the Egyptian army to restore a democratic form of government.
But it is time for some realism about that leverage. A yearly sum of $1.3 billion may seem persuasive, but this money has always been intended to secure foreign policy outcomes, not domestic political arrangements that the United States favors.
Paul Buchheit: The Scariest Man in America
Scary because he claims “We don’t have the power to coerce anybody” while providing massive funding to organizations that attack public education, social programs, worker salaries, business regulations, and the environment.
Scary because he refers to himself with words like ‘integrity’ and ‘principles’ while saying “I want my fair share — and that’s all of it.”
Scary because he declares, “I want my legacy to be…a better way of life for…all Americans.” Here is some of the legacy of Charles Koch: [..]
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