So Tell Me, Who Are You?

Ohh, a poow wittle NYT columnist got his feewings hurt, again, about us anonymous bloggers. Never mind the fact that the NYT joyfully quotes 'anonymous' sources all the time that lie and lie and lie to them, just so they can have 'access' to people that lie to them? Hmmf!

Anonymity and the Dark Side of the Internet

Read the whole thing if you want, but all you need to know is that Stanley Fish, wrote a book called "There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech and It’s a Good Thing, Too."

Yet somehow he gets the free speech to declare there shouldn't be free speech. Hmmf again, because no one just gives me the right to have a giant megaphone like the NYT, because it's only wittle fwoks who can't afford a GIANT MEGAPHONE.
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In related news:
The Queen of Liars, Judith Miller, who helped drive a nation into war with her stenography and lies gets all upset that someone who revealed the truth is getting more press than her:

Reporter behind WMD claims calls Assange ‘bad journalist’

A former [Judith Miller] New York Times reporter assailed for her incorrect reports about Iraq's purported weapons of mass destruction is criticizing Julian Assange for being a "bad journalist."
[...]
Miller once defended her reporting with the argument that it is not a journalist's job to verify -- only to report inform readers of what they had been told.

I think that's the definition of a stenographer.

And just for facts sake, Wikileaks has vetted the leaks; when the US MIL and State dept refused to help, they went to the NYT, The Guardian and other papers. It was not a dump of 250,000 US State Dept cables, it's been a very careful release of only 2500 cables ... so far.

Judy, Judy, Judy, has more excuses, but that's a tale for a different day.

[insert The Who footage here]

And Iran . . .

A lot has been said about the Wikileaks cable dump. Bill Kristol, the dumbest smart guy on the planet, even said:

Why can't we use our various assets to harass, snatch or neutralize Julian Assange and his collaborators, wherever they are? Why can't we disrupt and destroy WikiLeaks in both cyberspace and physical space, to the extent possible?

Sounds like movie tough guy talk for kill Assange.

Funny though, Kristol also says this:

Yesterday on Fox News, top neocon Bill Kristol broke through all the media noise about WikiLeaks’ release of U.S. diplomatic cables and came up with his top headline: that the U.S. should forget about Middle East peace and attack Iran.

KRISTOL: The world really did not want Iran to get the nuclear weapons and Iran’s neighbors in particular don’t want Iran to get nuclear weapons and they’d like us to act to prevent it.

They’re not worrying about Israeli settlements on the West Bank or the Arab street disliking an attack on Iran. They understand that Iranian nuclear weapons would change the balance of power in the Middle East and call them to go nuclear. It would be an incredible setback for all American efforts to check the spread of radical Islam and terror and further nuclear proliferation in Middle East and around the world. That’s the headline.

Iran is a country with a special relationship with the US that too many too often forget. It didn't start with the hostages in '79. In fact, that, and virtually every gesture made by them toward us stems from this little event that Juan Cole discusses:

It should be remembered that then Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh angered Washington in the early 1950s by nationalizing Iranian petroleum. Eisenhower slapped sanctions on Iran and destroyed its economy. Washington at that time thought Mosaddegh was a pinko, though in fact he was a relatively conservative aristocrat. At the height of the crisis, Mosaddegh wrote a letter to Eisenhower, which was ignored. Ike had the CIA overthrow the elected, parliamentary government of Iran and install the Shah as a megalomaniacal dictator. So the tradition of letter-writing by Iranian leaders at times of tensions with Washington isn’t replete with successes. Of course, the Iranians took revenge for the heavy-handed US interference with their form of government. They made an Islamic Revolution in 1978-79, and more recently elected Ahmadinejad. What Washington wouldn’t do to have that nice Mr. Mosaddegh back.

In-freakin'-deed. That's some modest diplomacy right there.

And now the obligatory Flock of Seagulls Youtube. I worked a show with them in '83, the were charming, funny, a joy to work with. And Mike Score, the dude with "the hair" was the nicest of the bunch.