“The ‘Chechnya’ special operation has infected the whole country, which is becoming more and more beastly and idiotic. The value of human life was already very low in Russia, and now it has slipped to almost nothing. We have all reached the depths, like the unrescued Kursk [the sunken submarine]. And there’s no order for rescue.”
– “A Small Corner of Hell: Dispatches from Chechnya” by Anna Politkovskaya (University of Chicago Press, 2003)

One hundred twenty-six journalists have been killed in Iraq, many of them native to the country. We don’t mean to slight them, but we’ve chosen one from elsewhere to represent all journalists whose lives are imperiled. Full story »

On Wednesday, I “officially” became a journalist. Through the encouragement of several of my fellow Scrogues here, and my work on a number of issues that I’ve published here, I was accepted for membership by the Society of Environmental Journalists and received notice of my acceptance Wednesday.

It’s an absolutely wild feeling, a strange combination of elation and apprehension. It’s my first real step toward following my passion – writing – and if that step was toward journalism instead of fiction, then that means my need to write has become more encompassing than I anticipated a few years ago. My blogging, combined with finally self-publishing my first “short” story in December, makes me feel like I’m actually making progress toward being an honest-to-the-gods writer. My utter lack of progress on this goal for many years had bothered me a great deal. Full story »

The last three or four years have seen a veritable explosion in New Wave- and ’80s-influenced bands. A few of these groups have found ways to take their influences and move their music forward (The Killers, Interpol, Franz Ferdinand, The Strays), while most of the rest remain captive to the sounds of the bands they so clearly love.

But damn, some of the latter crowd are so good at it that I hardly mind how derivative they are. I mean, fantastic takes on things I’ve heard before are better than uninspired new efforts, right?

I recently tripped across one such example, Sweden’s The Mary Onettes. Full story »

- by Deborah Levinson

Like many liberals, I’ve never had a high opinion of Fox News, but even I was willing to believe they tried to adhere to some journalistic standards. And apparently, they do – except that they’re using the same standards as The Onion.

Yesterday, Fox posted a scaremongering story entitled Scientist: Terrorists May Use Robots in Future Attacks. The story relies on the incredibly lazy “journalism” of simply reporting on a press release and embellishing it with a few facts the reporter no doubt gathered by typing the word “robot” into Google.

But personally, my favorite part of this story is the accompanying photo (shown here). Full story »

Opening night for NBC’s new Millennial-targeted series, Quarterlife, was an unparalleled disaster.

The drama series which made headlines about its transition from internet to TV, “Quarterlife,” succeeded in being a flop in its NBC debut Tuesday night, having the worst ratings in at least 20 years, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The brazilian-dollar question now becomes: what happened?

More at Black Dog…

Michael R. Bloomberg, mayor of New York, has come out again and said that he’s not running for president, and that he won’t run even if we beg, and that he’ll support whichever candidate abandons party orthodoxy and works for real national solutions in a guest commentary in the New York Times today.

Sigh.

I’d hoped he’d run. Full story »

Spoiler Alert: If you don’t want to know who wins the 2008 presidential election, please don’t click on the video link below.

If you haven’t already heard about it, Comcast doesn’t just block subscribers from using BitTorrent, it also blocks the public from even complaining about it in public:

Comcast’s spokespersons admitted it paid people to do the same for a hearing on the company’s actions regarding its interference with peer-to-peer file-sharing services such as BitTorrent. The placeholders not only held spots in line, but also crowded into the hearing itself, preventing more than 100 attendees — many of whom had come to speak against Comcast — from getting inside. Full story »

Well, slap me nekkid and hide my clothes – March 4 is right around the corner.

For those of you damn Yankees who can’t be expected to know your ass from a doorknob, Democratic caucuses in the Great Lone Star State are a whole nuther thing entirely. Full story »

Years ago, when Bosnia-Serbia-Kosovo was aflame, I found myself tuning out the conflict because of difficulty tracking all the warring factions. Afterward, I read a book on the subject, Michael Parenti’s “To Kill a Nation: The Attack on Yugoslavia” (Verso, 2002). However illuminating, after about a week I’d forgotten who was who. My only consolation was that 99 percent of Americans understood even less.

When the US invaded Iraq, the protagonists stood in sharp contrast. Then the Shiites and Sunnis divided and replicated.

You hear the term “Balkanization” applied to Iraq. True, it may split into smaller states. But the expression can also be used to describe how the division into factions results in a political scene too confusing for the average person. Full story »

In 1990, Congress revised the Clean Air Act to enable utilities to use market efficiencies to lower sulfur dioxide (SO₂)pollution from power plants. In response to this cap-and-trade system, utilities have reduced SO₂ pollution by 30% more than the federal government required. A similar mechanism has been suggested for reducing carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions. Earlier this month the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released their analysis of three alternatives to reducing CO₂ emissions, and their conclusion was that a carbon tax was the most efficient method, not the oft-touted cap and trade system. However, as is so often the case, the devil is in the details, rather than in the executive summary. Full story »

I watched this on the news and thought, “She just lost the male divorcé vote.”

Full story »

After the sad event that was John Edwards ending his run for president, I wondered what he would do with himself next. While Clinton and Obama furiously courted him for a blessing, he and his wife, Elizabeth, have largely remained quiet and kept their own counsel. Until now.

Yesterday both John and Elizabeth committed their still-formidable political muscle behind a different campaign–joining the effort to withdraw from Iraq by tying it to our looming recession.

Full story »

Well, duh.

Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee on Monday endorsed a proposed Colorado Human Life Amendment that would define personhood as a fertilized egg.

Of course, Preacher Huck hasn’t stopped to ponder all the practical and logistical nightmares this kind of silliness would engender. For instance:

• If my wife is pregnant, can I claim Unborn, Jr. as a tax exemption?
• Does this make the legal drinking age 20 years, 3 months? Full story »

I’ve been following the comment thread on Mike’s Nader post. Which, of course, set me to thinking about the comment thread on my post here. And that put me in mind of a thought.

To wit: has there ever been anything in the history of American politics that could touch, for sheer hate-fuck participatory democracy theater, a hypothetical general election showdown between Ralph Nader and Ron Paul?

Man, I’d pay to see that.

Of course, I’d then pack up and move to another country. Or planet, if possible….

Guest Scrogue Josh Nelson is a blogger, activist, and avid news junkie. He is currently the Online Grassroots Coordinator for a large environmental non-profit. He blogs primarily at The Seminal, where he is an editor. In his spare time he enjoys arguing on the Internet, spending time with good people and talking politics. He can be reached at josh@theseminal.com.

For my first (and hopefully not last) post at Scholars & Rogues, I want to highlight an individual who is both a scholar and a rogue who could use some help.

Last week, esteemed professor and free culture scholar Lawrence Lessig announced two new projects. Watch this video, in which Lessig introduces the two projects. Full story »

Once is a film that deserves more, so much more. A truly independent effort built around music and characters whose authenticity simply bursts off the screen and fills your heart, this movie was so real in its violation of all things Hollywood that it was almost hard to watch. I kept waiting for the goddamned formula to kick in, and it never did, and the absence of the fix made me jittery. Shame on me. Full story »

Something I haven’t had the time to understand is why everyone seems to think that the floor fight at the Democratic National Convention of 1968 was so bad. I heard tonight an interview of the Governor of Michigan (and superdelegate) who said that everyone wanted the candidate decided before the convention in Denver – Obama, Clinton, and all the party big-wigs.

So, someone care to enlighten me why having a messy but democratic fight for delegates is worse than having a coronation, especially if the superdelegates end up in a position to overturn the popular vote? It makes no sense to me.

Perhaps the most disingenuous word a journalist can deploy is seemed. My newsroom godfather taught me that the use of seemed, seems or other forms of the word means the reporter is guessing, that the reporter has found no clear evidentiary link between Fact A and Fact B.

In its now highly ridiculed story about Sen. John McCain’s relationships with lobbyists, particularly with Vicki Iseman, The New York Times used seemed twice:

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest. [6th graf]

One of his efforts, though, seemed self-contradictory. In 2001, he helped found the nonprofit Reform Institute to promote his cause and, in the process, his career. It collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in unlimited donations from companies that lobbied the Senate commerce committee. Mr. McCain initially said he saw no problems with the financing, but he severed his ties to the institute in 2005, complaining of “bad publicity” after news reports of the arrangement. [31st graf]

To seem means to be judged to be; to appear to be true, probable, or evident; or to appear to be something. As a transitive verb, seem is used to suggest uncertainty — not, as The Times failed to do, tie one set of facts to another set of facts and thus conclude with certainty we gotcha.
Full story »

So by now you’ve probably heard that Ralph Nader is once again making a third run for the presidency. It pains me to have to say it, but Nader is making a terrible mistake and further tarnishing his legacy. He should not run.

Let me begin by emphasizing how much I admire Nader and all he has done. As a consumer advocate myself, I probably would not have the career I do if it wasn’t for him. His work on everything from auto safety to the corporate takeover of modern politics should be an inspiration to anyone who wants to stand up for the little guy. I read his book, supported his presidency, and when compared to the stiff mannequin that was Al Gore in 2000 and the incipient stupidity of Dubya, I pulled the lever for him.

But this isn’t 2000. It’s a very different world, and Nader simply refuses to recognize that.

Full story »