"...it's a case of the perfect being an enemy of the planet."

Get over this attack on "perfect" aka passion. It is not the (0.00 / 0)

same as Utopian rigidity. It is corporate propanganda.

I did a piece yesterday on the movie "Defiance".  The two Jewish brothers had different ways of dealing with fighting the Nazis in the Belerussian forests in order to survive.  One joined the Russian guerrilla brigade and killed them.  The other kept a band of a 100 refugees alive in the forest using his blunt skills to keep a commune - ity together. Not afraid to shoot somebody between the eyes, he none the less hated violence.  

Meanwhile the Jews in the Minsk ghetto who did not join them in the forest and thought they would survive a "work camp" all died.

We who see how the Shock Doctrine aka class warfare deal is now in full view do not want to be Good Germans.  We are defiant.  We have not yet been tested like Tulia and Zus Beilski.  I hope I never am.  But I won't give up.

Have you read the Matt Taibbi piece in Rolling Stone?  Matt is following in the very large footsteps of I.F. Stone and William Greider.  A real reporter.  Goldman Sachs is a monster and speculation won't be stopped. Check out why Kucinich and De Fazio didn't vote for it.  Check out what happens to the EPA.   And as much as I enjoy Paul Krugman's style and clear headedness, he's still a free market fundamentalist.

With fascism now in complete control, you will soon have to change the name of your blog to "What's Left of the West".

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by: Feral Cat @ Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 15:08:46 PM UTC

Godwin's theory... (0.00 / 0)

(A) A carbon tax is unworkable. No one knows how you would even go about doing it, let alone selling it to voters and Congress. Won't happen. Ever. You'd have better chance saving the planet by fitting cars to run on unicorn pellets.

There are problems with cap-and-trade, but I'm afraid a carbon tax is Utopian rigidity.

(B) Did you actually call Taibbi a "real reporter"? I'd call him an excellent social commentator...but a "real" reporter? Since when did hyperbolic pieces of pop New Journalism, creating simplistic good/evil dichotomies, ever get labeled "real" journalism? Sy Hersh just rolled over in his grave, and he's not even dead yet.

(C) Did you really compare folks who actually want to reduce carbon emissions in a meaningful way and immediately to Holocaust victims? Really?

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by: Jay Stevens @ Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 15:41:23 PM UTC

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Sy Hersh reports after the fact. (0.00 / 0)

But he does do real reporting by cultivating a host of sources.  I just wish he warned us ahead of time like William Greider. Yes, Greider, the former Rolling Stones reporter and journalist and author.  
And yes, Taibbi is a real reporter.  His work with Mark Ames and Yasha Levine is Russia was dangerous and spot on.  Real reporters interview people other than the powerful.  Real reporters and journalists like Naomi Klein, Jeremy Scahill, Greg Palast, and William Greider talk to ordinary people, shop foremans, Nike factory workers, etc to dig deeper beyond the managed democracy.  Of course, what all these people have in common is the ability to really write.  Why? Because they don't pull their punches to stay in the good graces of the powerful.  There is a reason that Glenn Greenwald and Amy Goodman received the I.F. Stone Award.  It's because they have  guts.

And, NO, I did not compare people who want to reduce carbon emissions to Holocaust victims.  I said that I hoped I was never tested in such a huge way as to have to decide how to survive being hunted down like an animal. The horror of Nazism in these movies made me physically ill to the point where I don't want to watch them.  But I must.  I must look at evil and why villagers would turn against villagers.  "Why" I said to my husband. "Why would the neighbor go killing his Jewish neighbor?"  "Power", the rancher answered, "Power".

We may not yet be tested in such an obvious way, But each and every day we are tested in small ways. Each and every day, we can lose or gain a little more soul.

 

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by: Feral Cat @ Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 16:53:11 PM UTC

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Taibbi... (0.00 / 0)

My take on Taibbi is that he's got a set of preconceived notions about the way the world works (which doesn't mean he's wrong, btw) and he does research and writes pieces so that it affirms his worldview. I enjoy reading him -- but I don't think he's always right. Especially in this idea that Wall St. is salivating over a cap-and-trade bill. Based on what I've read around the 'net, it seems that's a strategy by righties to peel off support for the bill. I mean, if speculators are so hot for a bill, how much lobbying have they done for it?

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by: Jay Stevens @ Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 17:18:35 PM UTC

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In depends on how you define "preconceived notions". (0.00 / 0)

As I said, Taibbi and Ames were in Russia in the 1990s when The Shock Doctrine was in full effect.  Ames sounded like the Hunter Thompson character who lived a life of excess, but Taibbi.... http://www1.dragonet.es/users/...

While Ames became known through an article published in the Moscow Times ("The Rise and Fall of Moscow's Expat Royalty") it was Taibbi that provided the weight and credibility when he defected from the same paper. As Ames says with regard to (top)

his jealousy of Taibbi, ".. The eXile's popularity really began to take off, and since I was strapped in for the ride, I had to be grateful to Taibbi for that.

So Taibbi has experience with free market wheelers and dealers and understands the Summers and Harvard connection with the hedge funds and Goldman Sachs.

Most World Bank loans to Russia went straight back to their [American] consultancies

This is not preconceived or notions.

eXile journalism seems to cause as much irritation as its "Death Porn" section and pornographic club guide but it did report on the bizzare world of Moscow in the mid 1990s.

I had a co worker of theirs on my radio show, Yasha Levine, who reported on Moscow night life by driving a cab.  Yasha is now living in Victorsville, California and reporting on the economic meltdown and racial tensions and writes for "Wired".  

What you are doing is having an opinion about Taibbi. That's fine.  But I think it is worth it to really dig into his background and read his books.  "Spanking the Donkey" was hilarious and right on about the posturing of politicians.  Nobody was spared.  No great man theory for Taibbi.  

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by: Feral Cat @ Wed Jul 22, 2009 at 17:59:54 PM UTC

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I was in Russia... (0.00 / 0)

...in the 1990s and regularly read the Moscow Times, even had connections in the paper. I was there. I saw "capitalism" on the ground at work in Moscow. Hell, I was a victim of it, living on a fixed income of Russian rubles.

I don't disagree with a lot that Taibbi wrote on Goldman Sachs -- tho' I would expand it all of the financial sector.

What I do object to is that a lot of folks judge the Waxman-Marke bill by what they read in that Taibbi article. There are definitely things to object to in the bill (doesn't reap enough revenue from the auction of carbon credits, say), but the bottom line is an 85 percent reduction of 1995 carbon emissions by 2050.

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by: Jay Stevens @ Sat Jul 25, 2009 at 19:29:18 PM UTC

[ Parent ]