Showing posts with label Resources. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Resources. Show all posts
Monday, September 28, 2009
Excellent Counterterror Blog
Following a link at the superb Counterterrorism Blog, I came across this site, The TerrorWonk Plus, which so far seems very promising indeed. The latter appears to adhere to the same standards of clear, well-sourced, intelligent analysis, crisp writing, and a refreshingly non-partisan frame that have made the Counterterrorism Blog a regular stop in my daily World Affairs crawl. I'll be adding it to the list, based on what I've seen so far, and recommend interested parties do the same. Naturally, should this change for some reason, I'll update this post.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Somali Strike
Yesterday's Special Forces strike on a car bearing a top al Qaeda operative in Somalia appears to have been a slam dunk. Target killed, body retrieved for positive identification (along with the possibly quite substantial intelligence to be gained from his kit and co-decedents), no casualties, and no collateral damage.
It is important to maintain a low-profile but steady tempo of operations in this theater. AQ has a substantial presence, linked with the corrupt rubble of warlords and wan shadows of 'government,' almost certainly partaking to a non-trivial degree of pirates' booty. Full-scale attacks on those pirates' shore facilities would be geopolitically problematic to say the least. However, targeting a distributed set of nodes in their network, along with more effective maritime countermeasures could take us a long way. Stemming the spread of AQ's influence abroad, while making life difficult for those who would disrupt the flow of international trade (which can ill-afford the added stress), and thus enforcing global rule sets in the very darkest heart of the Gap is what I would call a win-win-win.
As for the obligatory scold from al-Reuters about the threat of reprisals for this strike...what can I say. They don't like it when you shoot at them. It gets in the way of their carefully crafted plans for killing people and taking their stuff.
Not insubstantial props are owed to President Obama for signing the Executive Order which greenlit this mission. I really would like nothing more than to see much more of this sort of seriousness on matters of security from him.
It is important to maintain a low-profile but steady tempo of operations in this theater. AQ has a substantial presence, linked with the corrupt rubble of warlords and wan shadows of 'government,' almost certainly partaking to a non-trivial degree of pirates' booty. Full-scale attacks on those pirates' shore facilities would be geopolitically problematic to say the least. However, targeting a distributed set of nodes in their network, along with more effective maritime countermeasures could take us a long way. Stemming the spread of AQ's influence abroad, while making life difficult for those who would disrupt the flow of international trade (which can ill-afford the added stress), and thus enforcing global rule sets in the very darkest heart of the Gap is what I would call a win-win-win.
As for the obligatory scold from al-Reuters about the threat of reprisals for this strike...what can I say. They don't like it when you shoot at them. It gets in the way of their carefully crafted plans for killing people and taking their stuff.
Not insubstantial props are owed to President Obama for signing the Executive Order which greenlit this mission. I really would like nothing more than to see much more of this sort of seriousness on matters of security from him.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Banging my head on the wall isn't helping as much as I'd hoped...
[By Mr.Hengist]
It's been a disappointing POTUS campaign on all fronts, and an excruciatingly long one at that. This dull, throbbing headache-of-an-endless-campaign provides for an occasional break from the monotony with a burst of sharp, stabbing pains which linger long past the original offense. This past Saturday we were provided with, not one, but two such insults.
Let's begin with Barack Obama (and please forgive the ellipses, as this is an AFP quote and the transcript of this event in Roseburg, Oregon, on Saturday May 17, 2008, is not available on the remarkably unhelpful official Barack Obama 2008 website.):
Well. Yikes. I suppose it goes without saying that I don't expect foreigners to give me the OK on any of these things. In point of fact, the thought had never occurred to me that their opinions on these matters should be of any concern to me. Probably the Europeans think my car is too big, but I think their clown cars are absurdly small; they literally make me laugh, but I wouldn't presume to tell them to stop embarrassing themselves and get a normal American-sized car. They can bicycle to work like the Chinese for all I care, but that's my point - I just don't care what they drive, but apparently what they think about my car matters a great deal to Obama. Since most people in the world can't afford a car their opinions of my car are almost certainly irrelevant, because when economies develop and people get their hands on disposable income, they invariably buy - cars, and big ones if they can afford them. My home is kept at a comfortable temperature? Most of the rest of the world can't afford indoor climate control, their stoic disapproval of my comfort notwithstanding, and the same rule that applies to cars also applies to indoor climate control. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping of his examples is that the rest of the world disapproves of how much we eat. Obama would, therefore, as POTUS...
... what? Where was he going with this? What are we to take away from this, in terms of what policies he would try to implement as POTUS? This kind of stream-of-consciousness blathering tells us more about Obama's general worldview than it does about his actual intentions made manifest. We could play games and try to imagine what laws he would try to get enacted (Food Police! see how easy and stupid it is?) or what policies he would implement such that America would finally get the pats-on-the-back for which he seems to yearn. I lose patience with that quickly; I try not to play "fill-in-the-blanks" when it comes to an opponent's arguments, and I discourage it in others. This lack of specificity is a liability to which Obama and his supporters should be made to own-up, but instead Obama vaguely hums a tune and his supporters sing along.
Obama's gripes are sufficiently vague that his adoring fans can project on him their own dreams, and that seems to be the point. His followers get the message in the form of a kabuki semaphore: I am a transnational progressive citizen of the world. This may qualify him as First Citizen of the World, but it disqualifies him as POTUS.
Next up, we have also-ran Boo Hoo Hillary, speaking to Kentuckians on the same day:
It's hard to know what to make of this since investments by American petroleum companies in alternative energy are already being made (by way of examples, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, etc.). Although having one Democrat candidate make actual proposals is a welcome contrast to the fuzzy feelgoods of Obama, the problem here is that the actual proposal actually reeks. American petrochemical companies are already "playing" and the SEF would mandate how much they'll have to invest in their own programs or have the difference confiscated by the Congress. For two years only, she promises, a "fee" (which most assuredly is NOT a TAX, youbetcha!) will skim "excess profits" without any new taxes on American taxpayers, if you can believe that - and apparently some people do.
All of this is predicated on those "excess profits" which so offend Liberals, Socialists, Communists, and a variety of assorted fans of a command-economy, so let's ignore the fact that someone who had a serious shot at being the POTUS actually used the anti-capitalist term "excess profits" and give the proposals two seconds of thought.
(tick-tock) There - done: What would happen if these companies were to rebalance their balance sheets so that profits return to Hillary's y.2000-2004 target levels and they do it by simply increasing their reinvestments in petroleum energy? As an unfunded program, SEF would be DOA, that's what. Unless, of course, Hillary was lying, and she'd make up for the shortfall with a "fee" on taxpayers. Ah, well, it's all moot - Hillary crossed the Rubicon, burned the bridges behind her, and will apparently go down with the ship, but I'm hoping that doesn't happen before there's a vicious floor-fight at the convention in Denver.
You'd think I'd be grateful that McCain throws the term "market-based" into his Climate Policy, but it just reminds me that he actually has a "Climate Policy" which includes Cap and Trade to combat Climate Change, and my headache just gets that much bigger.
It's been a disappointing POTUS campaign on all fronts, and an excruciatingly long one at that. This dull, throbbing headache-of-an-endless-campaign provides for an occasional break from the monotony with a burst of sharp, stabbing pains which linger long past the original offense. This past Saturday we were provided with, not one, but two such insults.
Let's begin with Barack Obama (and please forgive the ellipses, as this is an AFP quote and the transcript of this event in Roseburg, Oregon, on Saturday May 17, 2008, is not available on the remarkably unhelpful official Barack Obama 2008 website.):
"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK."
Well. Yikes. I suppose it goes without saying that I don't expect foreigners to give me the OK on any of these things. In point of fact, the thought had never occurred to me that their opinions on these matters should be of any concern to me. Probably the Europeans think my car is too big, but I think their clown cars are absurdly small; they literally make me laugh, but I wouldn't presume to tell them to stop embarrassing themselves and get a normal American-sized car. They can bicycle to work like the Chinese for all I care, but that's my point - I just don't care what they drive, but apparently what they think about my car matters a great deal to Obama. Since most people in the world can't afford a car their opinions of my car are almost certainly irrelevant, because when economies develop and people get their hands on disposable income, they invariably buy - cars, and big ones if they can afford them. My home is kept at a comfortable temperature? Most of the rest of the world can't afford indoor climate control, their stoic disapproval of my comfort notwithstanding, and the same rule that applies to cars also applies to indoor climate control. Perhaps the most jaw-dropping of his examples is that the rest of the world disapproves of how much we eat. Obama would, therefore, as POTUS...
... what? Where was he going with this? What are we to take away from this, in terms of what policies he would try to implement as POTUS? This kind of stream-of-consciousness blathering tells us more about Obama's general worldview than it does about his actual intentions made manifest. We could play games and try to imagine what laws he would try to get enacted (Food Police! see how easy and stupid it is?) or what policies he would implement such that America would finally get the pats-on-the-back for which he seems to yearn. I lose patience with that quickly; I try not to play "fill-in-the-blanks" when it comes to an opponent's arguments, and I discourage it in others. This lack of specificity is a liability to which Obama and his supporters should be made to own-up, but instead Obama vaguely hums a tune and his supporters sing along.
Obama's gripes are sufficiently vague that his adoring fans can project on him their own dreams, and that seems to be the point. His followers get the message in the form of a kabuki semaphore: I am a transnational progressive citizen of the world. This may qualify him as First Citizen of the World, but it disqualifies him as POTUS.
Next up, we have also-ran Boo Hoo Hillary, speaking to Kentuckians on the same day:
"I'm proposing new legislation that would create a Strategic Energy Fund that will invest in developing and deploying clean and alternative energy -- homegrown energy. We can create this fund without new taxes on the hardworking Americans who are paying more at the pump, but from the windfall profits of the oil companies that just announced the largest earnings of any companies in the history of the planet. We'll tell them to play or pay -- to invest in alternative energy themselves, or to pay a portion of their excess profits from the spike in oil prices into the Strategic Energy Fund."
It's hard to know what to make of this since investments by American petroleum companies in alternative energy are already being made (by way of examples, Chevron, ExxonMobil, ConocoPhillips, etc.). Although having one Democrat candidate make actual proposals is a welcome contrast to the fuzzy feelgoods of Obama, the problem here is that the actual proposal actually reeks. American petrochemical companies are already "playing" and the SEF would mandate how much they'll have to invest in their own programs or have the difference confiscated by the Congress. For two years only, she promises, a "fee" (which most assuredly is NOT a TAX, youbetcha!) will skim "excess profits" without any new taxes on American taxpayers, if you can believe that - and apparently some people do.
All of this is predicated on those "excess profits" which so offend Liberals, Socialists, Communists, and a variety of assorted fans of a command-economy, so let's ignore the fact that someone who had a serious shot at being the POTUS actually used the anti-capitalist term "excess profits" and give the proposals two seconds of thought.
(tick-tock) There - done: What would happen if these companies were to rebalance their balance sheets so that profits return to Hillary's y.2000-2004 target levels and they do it by simply increasing their reinvestments in petroleum energy? As an unfunded program, SEF would be DOA, that's what. Unless, of course, Hillary was lying, and she'd make up for the shortfall with a "fee" on taxpayers. Ah, well, it's all moot - Hillary crossed the Rubicon, burned the bridges behind her, and will apparently go down with the ship, but I'm hoping that doesn't happen before there's a vicious floor-fight at the convention in Denver.
You'd think I'd be grateful that McCain throws the term "market-based" into his Climate Policy, but it just reminds me that he actually has a "Climate Policy" which includes Cap and Trade to combat Climate Change, and my headache just gets that much bigger.
Friday, April 11, 2008
Why Not Study War Some More
(orig. Posted 4/10/08, on MySpace)
OK, so here are some more responses to the Petraeus/Crocker testimony before the Senate and House. Mainly, they boil down to the notion (not a new one for me, mind you, but driven home with fresh force) that most people do not have the faintest understanding of the military, its mission, methods and mindset. As I’ve repeatedly groused in the past (and doubtless will do in the future) the activities of our military in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere tend to be presented in the most superficial and tendentious manner imaginable...when those activities are presented at all (i.e., "good news is no news").
Thus, you’ll get reports about "violence" and Casualty Numbers, entirely unaccompanied by any reporting of what the military was actually doing at the time (routine patrol? hot-fire engagement of armed terrorist cells? IED blast while en route to build or repair another school/water treatment plant/medical clinic?), how people were killed/wounded (firefight? roadside bomb? sniper?), which people were killed (enemy vs. coalition forces), and, perhaps most importantly, whether or not the objectives of any given operation were achieved.
In other words, all you get from the Body Count Media is a vague sense that a lot of mayhem is happeing, with no clear point, and with no end in sight. Sound familiar?
As I try and assess what is going on in any given theater of our military’s operations (and those of our allies), there are a few sites to which I go to try and gain a broader perspective than would be available to me in the MSM.
On the principal that it is generally best to go straight to the horse’s mouth, one could always go to several sites sponsored by the military itself, such as the Pentagon/DoD’s web site, as well as the site for the Multi-National Force, Iraq. I know, I know, I can hear you now: "Why should I dignify those jingoistic Government Propaganda sites with any of my time?" Uh-huh. In case I haven’t been tediously clear by now, I am not proposing that you single-source anything. However, it is useful to begin with a sense of how the military is presenting its goals and methods and progress and setbacks (yes, they do report setbacks), before going on to compare those narratives to other sources and drawing your own conclusions.
Speaking of going straight to the horse’s mouth, over the last few years, there has been an explosion (pardon the pun) of "Milblogs." This is just what it sounds like: people in the military, frequently on active deployment, blogging right from their AO ("Area of Operations"). This is an unprecendented opportunity for the rest of us to have a glimpse --free from the editorial priorities of those who "report from the front" -- of what our Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are thinking and experiencing. These can be very frank and earthy (as you’d expect), so not always safe for work!
Trouble is that there are so many of them, and not all of them are especially interesting or edifying reading. A good place to start is on Milblogging.com, where you could go to the "Top 100 Favorite Milblogs" section (scroll down a bit). A couple of my own faves are: Blackfive, the Mudville Gazette, and Acute Politics.
I have found these to be a useful reality check against the overly bleak (from the Left) and overly rosy (from the Right) reports of our military’s morale and performance. Some of these blogs can be very critical of the government and its policies (leading to some stunningly wrong-headed and thankfully short-lived efforts to shut them down).
Now, I did deliver a doubly-deserved diss to the frequently fatuous flatulence of most "embedded reporters" (Credit: brave enough to ride along with our troops through the scrum. Demerit: not brave enough to deviate from the "It’s All Going To Hell" narrative their editors demand). However, they are most decidedly not created equal. There are at least two independent reporters who ride along with our military though the very thick of it, and who write with an eloquence and objectivity which is simply unmatched in MSM World. They are Michael Totten and Michael Yon. Their articles tend to be long, and highly detailed and lush with striking photos. I highly recommend them. Also, if you do like what you see, I encourage you to drop a little something in the tip jar (PayPal), as this is what finances their journalistic trips for the most part, and thus keeps them free from the editorial biases of the big News Outfits. I’ve contributed and consider it money very well spent.
Pulling back the focus from the grunt’s-eye view to the broader strategic picture, there are a number of sites which I have found to be indispensible. Here they are, in no particular order:
The Long War Journal, edited by Bill Roggio and published by the non-profit Public Multimedia, Inc. It offers wide-ranging reports and editorials and podcasts covering all theaters of the Long War, from Indonesia to Minnesota to Paris, to the Middle East. Tight, efficient writing and well-sourced reports make it an invaluable resource for keeping track of the twists and turns and victories and setbacks in the Global Conflict in which we are engaged. It may also prove useful for those of you who are still trying to decide if we are engaged in any such thing!
By the by, Bill Roggio is also a contributor and co-founder of the recently-launched Iraq Status Report page, which is meant to serve as a "one-stop shopping" site for the good, bad, ugly, etc. on Iraq. It is rapidly becoming my favorite site for an initial daily pass at the news from Mesopotamia. So far, so highly recommended (and I’ll let you know [like how I talk as if anyone is actually reading this? Wacky fun.] if it drops in quality or veers too sharply in a supportive/critical direction).
Threats Watch is another highly useful site. From their "About" page:
ThreatsWatch.Org was established in 2005 as the means to disseminate information on national security threats in an accessible, interactive and contextually aware form. In 2007 ThreatsWatch.Org became the web-based publication of the Center for Threat Awareness (CTA), a 501(c)3 tax-exempt corporation whose mission is to increase public awareness of threats to national security and liberty.
Its daily briefings and "Rapid Recon" sections are especially useful in tracking evolving threats and responses.
Global Security.org is a dizzying trove of information on matters of...well...Gobal Security. It can be a bit overwhelming, but eminently worth bookmarking due to its value as a research site. How they manage to make such a staggeringly comprehensive resource available for free (as opposed to Stratfor) is a mystery to me, but I’m grateful.
OK, I’m up on a hard break here, so I’ll let this be. I’ll likely be back to update this post sometime.
News To Me
[Originally posted on MySpace: 3/12/2006]
OK, so I am demonstrating my supreme laziness by making this entry a simple cut-and-paste from the blog over at my professional MySpace.
Still, it seemed a potentially useful thing for me to do, given some of the conversations I’ve had with some who might read this (and the Extreme Puzzlement and Consternation which those conversations have inspired!). Rather than blathering for hours at social gatherings, I thought it would be courteous to give folks a window into some of my sources and methods of gathering info, then let them draw their own conclusions. Gods know, the trip to my own current perspective on things has been a long and strange one!
So, do brew a fresh pot of coffee and have a gander (or a goose. Whatever.). Hope it’s useful.
******************************************
NEWS TO ME
NEWS TO ME (UPDATED: 9/6/07)
Category: News and Politics
Category: News and Politics
Sorry, gang; this is gonna be a LOOOONG one.
This may seem an odd sort of entry to find on a psychologist’s blog. What does being an educated consumer of the media with respect to matters of policy and politics have to do with mental health,you might understandably ask. Good question.
A big part of the work of psychotherapy is helping people sift the rational and useful from the irrational and unproductive, so their responses to their environments can track more adaptively with the shifting sands of reality. It’s all part of being a more fully conscious occupant of the universe, whether viewed from the perspective of the privacy of our own minds, the landscapes of our relationships, or the marketplace of ideas in the broader world. Really it’s all of a piece.
And yet, for some time now, I’ve been watching a curious phenomenon: People whose politics lean to the Left cry out that the MSM (MainStream Media: TV News, Newspapers, and the big magazine outlets, like Time and Newsweek) is Conservative-controlled, while those on the Right wail about a "Liberal Media." It’s a chin-scratcher and no mistake!
Political views have become toxically polarized (American politics have always been a rough-and-tumble business, to be sure, but I’m forced to conclude that the current state of affairs, with each side of the aisle dug in and glowering at the other, seemingly unable to give a millimeter, is a wholly new and altogether poisonous development). "Political debate" has largely degenerated into a brutal exchange of talking points and attack ads, and what used to be called "common ground" is rapidly turning into a radioactive wasteland. Those who are brave or foolhardy enough to wander into that no-man’s land (like John McCain or Joe Lieberman) can find themselves declared Ritually Unclean, and banished to a kind of political leper colony. It’s a hard thing to watch!
And right in the thick of it sits the MSM. To paraphrase an old truism in news circles: We don’t report on all the buildings that aren’t burning. Another form of the same thought is "If it bleeds, it leads." It is the MSM’s job to stay in business. Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. The trouble is that the need to show growth at the next quarterly stockholders’ meeting creates a dizzyingly competitive market, where the news cycle is 24/7, while the average attention span is (to quote Dennis Miller) that of a ferret on a double espresso. Moderation does not keep our fingers away from the remote.
And so, the media will tend to create a narrative into which they will plug (or ram) a string of disconnected "facts," in order to paint the most eye-catching picture possible. You can see where the first casualty of such a process will be context. No matter how seemingly self-evident might be the meaning of what someone says during any given sound bite, the true meaning and intent will usually lie in what gets said before and after that slice. Yet that is precisely what gets lost in most MSM reporting. Indeed, I’ve been forced to conclude that the sources from which most people get their information about the world amount to little more than a gigantic controversy engine, tuned to our most base fears and rages and appetites, and shaping our collective consciousness into ever-more violent spasms of ill-informed arm-waving. It is very unfortunate, not to mention undignified!
So, what is a body to do? In my travels on the Wide Wild Web, I have stumbled across some useful islands of reason and (relative) sanity, which have helped me to develop a "third ear" when consuming news segments, and better check their facts and judge their merits (or the lack thereof!).
The first group I’ll pass along to you are some non-partisan information sites. These help sift the wheat from the chaff from the sticky bits of fertilizer which come in stuck to the stalks.
The second group deals with blogs (short for "Web Logs"), the last true frontier (so far) in the media landscape. Usually labors of love (or rage. Or paranoia. Or sheer tomfoolery), these volunteer journalists are free to comment, weigh, sort, and generally blab about everything from golf to baking to the metallurgical properties of pogo-stick springs from the mid seventies. Not to mention politics.
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: This seems as good a place as any to add http://thenewsrightnow.com/ This is a very handy complilation of the headlines of a variety of MSM publications, as well as a selection of leading blogs on the Left and Right. It’s my new home page, and a great place to start one’s News Crawl.
Update: 10/27/2010: Deal links at the site. Pity.
First, the basics:
www.factcheck.org should be a frequent stop (especially during any given election year, when the manure flies fast and furious!). I’ve found extremely few examples of bias here, and those (pretty subtle) errors have not usually been limited to one or the other end of the political spectrum. It’s also searchable, so you can look around for some of the nonsense which has been spewed about with regard to your political chestnut of choice (like, say, a search for Halliburton or WMD...).
www.snopes.com This is a well-known site which specializes in the carefully researched (they show their work!) confirmation or debunking of a host of urban legends, "well-known facts" and other bits of informational flotsam which can lodge in our brains, masquerading as Truth. It is a fantastically useful resource, from double-checking those URGENT VIRUS WARNING emails that choke our in-boxes, to the scuttlebutt about some politician, issue, etc. which can get passed around like...well... a virus, and ultimately turn out to have no basis in fact...but usually long after the damage is done.
http://www.vote-smart.org/ Project VoteSmart is an incalculably valuable resource for opening up the book on the ACTUAL policy positions, voting records, contribution portfolios, affiliations, etc. for any given politician/candidate (it’s so useful, indeed, that I keep a collection of their brochures in my waiting room. Feel free to grab one; I just ordered more!). Don’t let lobby groups and their attack ads on either side tell you what a candidate stands for. Check it out for yourself.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ A splendid companion to VoteSmart, which focuses more exclusively on the money trail for any given candidate. Wanna know who’s been taking heaps of cash from Big Oil, or Greenpeace, or whatever else might be your boogieman of choice? Here’s your spot.
(Fun game: Sit down and watch a few campaign ads, then follow them up at the above sites, and count the ways you would have been spun, manipulated, and straight-up duped if you hadn’t investigated for yourself!)
And now, on to BLOGS!
It takes a little (okay, a lot) more work to skim the Blogosphere for the stories behind (and above, and below, and around) the stories you’ll get from the MSM, but the payoff is a MUCH more nuanced and fleshed-out appreciation for the issues which inform those stories.
But which blogs to read (there are thousands upon thousands!)? One of the best ways to build your blogroll is to find entries which move
and interest you (say, something somebody sends you [see below!], or that gets linked in an article somewhere else, or maybe the link to the blog page of someone who makes a particularly on-point comment in the discussion of an article you read somewhere). Click on the "Main" or "Front" link on that entry, to get you to the blog’s front page, and read a few more of that blogger’s entries. If you still like what you see, bookmark it...then go on to see what blogs they read (usually a list along the side of the page), and repeat the procedure. Over time, the best blogs tend to rise to the top, and get linked to from more and more other blogs, so if you start seeing the same name again and again, odds are it’s worth a click.
Naturally, this process can be a mite time-consuming, so I was really happy to find the following links to various blogs on the left and right, with brief blurbs/reviews of each. I’ve also added a few of my own faves....
Here’s a page with reviews of some blogs which lean, to varying degrees, Leftwards:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2358
And here’s one which reviews some which lean, again, to varying degrees, to the Right:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2854
Actually, I would add a couple to this second list:
http://www.tigerhawk.blogspot.com/ A pro-war but generally non-rabid site with some thoughtful commentary on tactical and strategic matters.
http://rantingprofs.typepad.com/ A devastatingly on-point daily deconstruction of the MSM’s coverage of the War and related matters, from a professor of Communications Studies at UNC. Leans in a pro-war direction, but you needn’t agree with this to draw useful (and at times infuriating) information about the ways in which media stories get spun, decontextualized, generally distorted, and otherwise buggered beyond usefulness.
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: Unfortunately, the Prof stopped ranting last year, and hasn’t returned. The archives are still up, though, so somebody’s paying the bills, and they are definitely worth a read.
And here’s a couple from what I would call the Center, though, of course, the location of that elusive fulcrum is a notoriously moving target!:
http://windsofchange.net/ This is my first stop every day in my blog crawl. I simply cannot overestimate the value of their frequent and comprehensive briefings on matters related to the realm of foreign policy. Although leaning in a moderately pro-war direction, this site is all-too ready to take the Bush Administration and other sectors of the USGov to task when they step in it. The writing is balanced and wide-ranging (and occasionally hilarious). This site is one of the best examples of the value of the Blogosphere that I can point to. Check it often!
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: Alas, in the last few months, WoC has slipped, as several of the writers have gone on to other projects. The posts are not nearly as frequent, nor as balanced and comprehensive. This is not to say that it’s not worth checking, but it no longer merits the glowing endorsement I gave it when I originally posted this.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/ The Belmont Club is one of my favorite blogs. Their thoughtful commentaries on a variety of topics take a reasoned, generally quite moderate perspective on military, Intelligence, and diplomatic matters, with a generous helping of historical analysis and the occasional Tolkien reference. I’ve found many of these commentaries to be quite wise and useful in providing historical and geopolitical context (there’s that word again!) on the stories of the day (including many of the ones you’re not likely to see reported in the MSM at all).
http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/ This guy usually impresses me by how directly up the middle he tends to fly. He’s like a bull detector when one or the other end of the spectrum (or both) gets too exercised about a given issue. Useful.
http://www.liberalsagainstterrorism.com/drupal/
Sorta-Center-Left foreign policy discussions. Liberal-friendly, but not afraid to be a tad hawkish. Not exactly entry-level, in that they go into some detail of the politics of the Middle East and other hot spots. But it rewards the effort with some pretty thoughtful analysis (particularly useful with all the dense political wrangling now going on in the new Iraqi government, which the MSM is all-but-guaranteed to oversimplify or just plain get wrong).
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: This site also appears to have suffered over time, with very infrequent entries, and some problems with the formatting. Doesn’t look like anyone’s minding the store as of this writing. Pity; it was pretty good. That’s just how it goes in the blogosphere, though.
That’s about all I have the energy for right now. I hope these links prove useful, particularly as we move toward mid-term elections. It truly is a crying shame that it should take this much work to gather balanced, comprehensive information, when the survival of a democracy is so vitally dependent on its citizens’ capacity for critical, well-reasoned decision-making (any journalism majors out there, please take note!). But there it is.
This may seem an odd sort of entry to find on a psychologist’s blog. What does being an educated consumer of the media with respect to matters of policy and politics have to do with mental health,you might understandably ask. Good question.
A big part of the work of psychotherapy is helping people sift the rational and useful from the irrational and unproductive, so their responses to their environments can track more adaptively with the shifting sands of reality. It’s all part of being a more fully conscious occupant of the universe, whether viewed from the perspective of the privacy of our own minds, the landscapes of our relationships, or the marketplace of ideas in the broader world. Really it’s all of a piece.
And yet, for some time now, I’ve been watching a curious phenomenon: People whose politics lean to the Left cry out that the MSM (MainStream Media: TV News, Newspapers, and the big magazine outlets, like Time and Newsweek) is Conservative-controlled, while those on the Right wail about a "Liberal Media." It’s a chin-scratcher and no mistake!
Political views have become toxically polarized (American politics have always been a rough-and-tumble business, to be sure, but I’m forced to conclude that the current state of affairs, with each side of the aisle dug in and glowering at the other, seemingly unable to give a millimeter, is a wholly new and altogether poisonous development). "Political debate" has largely degenerated into a brutal exchange of talking points and attack ads, and what used to be called "common ground" is rapidly turning into a radioactive wasteland. Those who are brave or foolhardy enough to wander into that no-man’s land (like John McCain or Joe Lieberman) can find themselves declared Ritually Unclean, and banished to a kind of political leper colony. It’s a hard thing to watch!
And right in the thick of it sits the MSM. To paraphrase an old truism in news circles: We don’t report on all the buildings that aren’t burning. Another form of the same thought is "If it bleeds, it leads." It is the MSM’s job to stay in business. Nothing wrong with that, as far as it goes. The trouble is that the need to show growth at the next quarterly stockholders’ meeting creates a dizzyingly competitive market, where the news cycle is 24/7, while the average attention span is (to quote Dennis Miller) that of a ferret on a double espresso. Moderation does not keep our fingers away from the remote.
And so, the media will tend to create a narrative into which they will plug (or ram) a string of disconnected "facts," in order to paint the most eye-catching picture possible. You can see where the first casualty of such a process will be context. No matter how seemingly self-evident might be the meaning of what someone says during any given sound bite, the true meaning and intent will usually lie in what gets said before and after that slice. Yet that is precisely what gets lost in most MSM reporting. Indeed, I’ve been forced to conclude that the sources from which most people get their information about the world amount to little more than a gigantic controversy engine, tuned to our most base fears and rages and appetites, and shaping our collective consciousness into ever-more violent spasms of ill-informed arm-waving. It is very unfortunate, not to mention undignified!
So, what is a body to do? In my travels on the Wide Wild Web, I have stumbled across some useful islands of reason and (relative) sanity, which have helped me to develop a "third ear" when consuming news segments, and better check their facts and judge their merits (or the lack thereof!).
The first group I’ll pass along to you are some non-partisan information sites. These help sift the wheat from the chaff from the sticky bits of fertilizer which come in stuck to the stalks.
The second group deals with blogs (short for "Web Logs"), the last true frontier (so far) in the media landscape. Usually labors of love (or rage. Or paranoia. Or sheer tomfoolery), these volunteer journalists are free to comment, weigh, sort, and generally blab about everything from golf to baking to the metallurgical properties of pogo-stick springs from the mid seventies. Not to mention politics.
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: This seems as good a place as any to add http://thenewsrightnow.com/ This is a very handy complilation of the headlines of a variety of MSM publications, as well as a selection of leading blogs on the Left and Right. It’s my new home page, and a great place to start one’s News Crawl.
Update: 10/27/2010: Deal links at the site. Pity.
First, the basics:
www.factcheck.org should be a frequent stop (especially during any given election year, when the manure flies fast and furious!). I’ve found extremely few examples of bias here, and those (pretty subtle) errors have not usually been limited to one or the other end of the political spectrum. It’s also searchable, so you can look around for some of the nonsense which has been spewed about with regard to your political chestnut of choice (like, say, a search for Halliburton or WMD...).
www.snopes.com This is a well-known site which specializes in the carefully researched (they show their work!) confirmation or debunking of a host of urban legends, "well-known facts" and other bits of informational flotsam which can lodge in our brains, masquerading as Truth. It is a fantastically useful resource, from double-checking those URGENT VIRUS WARNING emails that choke our in-boxes, to the scuttlebutt about some politician, issue, etc. which can get passed around like...well... a virus, and ultimately turn out to have no basis in fact...but usually long after the damage is done.
http://www.vote-smart.org/ Project VoteSmart is an incalculably valuable resource for opening up the book on the ACTUAL policy positions, voting records, contribution portfolios, affiliations, etc. for any given politician/candidate (it’s so useful, indeed, that I keep a collection of their brochures in my waiting room. Feel free to grab one; I just ordered more!). Don’t let lobby groups and their attack ads on either side tell you what a candidate stands for. Check it out for yourself.
http://www.opensecrets.org/ A splendid companion to VoteSmart, which focuses more exclusively on the money trail for any given candidate. Wanna know who’s been taking heaps of cash from Big Oil, or Greenpeace, or whatever else might be your boogieman of choice? Here’s your spot.
(Fun game: Sit down and watch a few campaign ads, then follow them up at the above sites, and count the ways you would have been spun, manipulated, and straight-up duped if you hadn’t investigated for yourself!)
And now, on to BLOGS!
It takes a little (okay, a lot) more work to skim the Blogosphere for the stories behind (and above, and below, and around) the stories you’ll get from the MSM, but the payoff is a MUCH more nuanced and fleshed-out appreciation for the issues which inform those stories.
But which blogs to read (there are thousands upon thousands!)? One of the best ways to build your blogroll is to find entries which move
and interest you (say, something somebody sends you [see below!], or that gets linked in an article somewhere else, or maybe the link to the blog page of someone who makes a particularly on-point comment in the discussion of an article you read somewhere). Click on the "Main" or "Front" link on that entry, to get you to the blog’s front page, and read a few more of that blogger’s entries. If you still like what you see, bookmark it...then go on to see what blogs they read (usually a list along the side of the page), and repeat the procedure. Over time, the best blogs tend to rise to the top, and get linked to from more and more other blogs, so if you start seeing the same name again and again, odds are it’s worth a click.
Naturally, this process can be a mite time-consuming, so I was really happy to find the following links to various blogs on the left and right, with brief blurbs/reviews of each. I’ve also added a few of my own faves....
Here’s a page with reviews of some blogs which lean, to varying degrees, Leftwards:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2358
And here’s one which reviews some which lean, again, to varying degrees, to the Right:
http://www.qando.net/details.aspx?Entry=2854
Actually, I would add a couple to this second list:
http://www.tigerhawk.blogspot.com/ A pro-war but generally non-rabid site with some thoughtful commentary on tactical and strategic matters.
http://rantingprofs.typepad.com/ A devastatingly on-point daily deconstruction of the MSM’s coverage of the War and related matters, from a professor of Communications Studies at UNC. Leans in a pro-war direction, but you needn’t agree with this to draw useful (and at times infuriating) information about the ways in which media stories get spun, decontextualized, generally distorted, and otherwise buggered beyond usefulness.
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: Unfortunately, the Prof stopped ranting last year, and hasn’t returned. The archives are still up, though, so somebody’s paying the bills, and they are definitely worth a read.
And here’s a couple from what I would call the Center, though, of course, the location of that elusive fulcrum is a notoriously moving target!:
http://windsofchange.net/ This is my first stop every day in my blog crawl. I simply cannot overestimate the value of their frequent and comprehensive briefings on matters related to the realm of foreign policy. Although leaning in a moderately pro-war direction, this site is all-too ready to take the Bush Administration and other sectors of the USGov to task when they step in it. The writing is balanced and wide-ranging (and occasionally hilarious). This site is one of the best examples of the value of the Blogosphere that I can point to. Check it often!
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: Alas, in the last few months, WoC has slipped, as several of the writers have gone on to other projects. The posts are not nearly as frequent, nor as balanced and comprehensive. This is not to say that it’s not worth checking, but it no longer merits the glowing endorsement I gave it when I originally posted this.
http://pajamasmedia.com/richardfernandez/ The Belmont Club is one of my favorite blogs. Their thoughtful commentaries on a variety of topics take a reasoned, generally quite moderate perspective on military, Intelligence, and diplomatic matters, with a generous helping of historical analysis and the occasional Tolkien reference. I’ve found many of these commentaries to be quite wise and useful in providing historical and geopolitical context (there’s that word again!) on the stories of the day (including many of the ones you’re not likely to see reported in the MSM at all).
http://www.danieldrezner.com/blog/ This guy usually impresses me by how directly up the middle he tends to fly. He’s like a bull detector when one or the other end of the spectrum (or both) gets too exercised about a given issue. Useful.
http://www.liberalsagainstterrorism.com/drupal/
Sorta-Center-Left foreign policy discussions. Liberal-friendly, but not afraid to be a tad hawkish. Not exactly entry-level, in that they go into some detail of the politics of the Middle East and other hot spots. But it rewards the effort with some pretty thoughtful analysis (particularly useful with all the dense political wrangling now going on in the new Iraqi government, which the MSM is all-but-guaranteed to oversimplify or just plain get wrong).
UPDATE, 9/6/2007: This site also appears to have suffered over time, with very infrequent entries, and some problems with the formatting. Doesn’t look like anyone’s minding the store as of this writing. Pity; it was pretty good. That’s just how it goes in the blogosphere, though.
That’s about all I have the energy for right now. I hope these links prove useful, particularly as we move toward mid-term elections. It truly is a crying shame that it should take this much work to gather balanced, comprehensive information, when the survival of a democracy is so vitally dependent on its citizens’ capacity for critical, well-reasoned decision-making (any journalism majors out there, please take note!). But there it is.
We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the secret sits in the middle
And knows.
-Robert Frost
But the secret sits in the middle
And knows.
-Robert Frost
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