Episode 1201
The future of liberal policing.
Jul 13 2020
If you look at what people sort of senior levels in the BBC have said about this, it's this idea that the BBC needs to be a calm space where people, when they surface from their echo chambers, can find reliable information and not feel like they're being attacked for their views. But the problem with that is, first of all, not all echo chambers are equal. Um, you know, social media increasingly has been colonized by far right ideas and rhetoric and propaganda. The other problem is that that only works if the kind of the impartial balanced space that you are providing as the alternative is actually doing the job it should do, which is to tell the truth. On a key issue of the day, the Gaza War, the BBC has not been able to kind of tell the truth about what's happening in as clear and focused away as as we need it to.
Daniel Trilling returns to discuss his new Equator piece, "Inside the BBC’s Gaza Fiasco: How the world’s most trusted media organisation fell apart."
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Ben Freeman
Dec 2
A Trillion Dollar War Machine Keeps Americans Poor and at War / William Hartung & Ben Freeman
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Jul 2 2020
Posted by Matthew Boedy
Welcome to the Moment of Truth: the thirst that is the drink.
Who put the pube in Reince Pubis? Who put the baa in Barr, the fly in Flynn, the rump in Trump? Who put the scales on Scalia? Who put the pomp in Pompeo?
Pompeo, Pompeo, Secretary of State, the pompous, pumped-up Pompeo. Pompeo distinguished himself at West Point, by graduating first in his class. That is, he distinguished himself by leaving. They were so excited about him leaving that they made him go first. He was not the cutest, nicest girl at school. Although, hefty comedian Jeff Garlin famously had a routine where he contrasted his physical form with the words “I’m a pretty little girl.” “I’m a big fat man,” he would say, and then, “I’m a pretty little girl.” And how the audience would howl in amusement.
Pompeo, pompous, pumped-up. From the French, pompier, fireman. The French find firemen funny. I don’t know why. I think there’s a rumor that all firemen are stupid. The Parisian fire department is a branch of the armed forces. Pompeo is a branch of the armed forces unto himself. Who put the pump in Pompeo, inserted it in his puckered purple portal and puffed him up to such pompous proportions? Probably some pompier.
Pompeo. Pompeo indeed. As noted above, he is not undistinguished. He’s an accomplished scholar and former athlete. Like Bob Barr, the Attorney General, Pompeo had an impeccable record, when viewed from afar. Both Barr and Pompeo are tools of Jesus the Conqueror, Jesus the Dictator, Jesus the One Who Graces the Mighty Chosen with the Divine Right of Kings. Y’know, the evil Jesus. The asshole Jesus. The Jesus who wants the US to inflict upon its foreign prisoners waterboarding, stress positions, sleep deprivation, temperature extremes, rape, threats to their families, electrocution, and of course, rectal feeding. Rectal feeding, it also turns out, is exactly the way they pump the pomp into Pompeo. One day Pompeo might pop, from all the pomp pumped into him.
Pompeo opposes abortion even in cases of rape. He opposes gay marriage, and any rights protecting gay and trans persons from discrimination. He, of course, opposes the closing of the prison at Guantanamo, because it’s such an idyllic paradise for rectal feedings. Just imagine him, sitting on the veranda overlooking the Bay, enjoying a rectal feeding as the sun sinks below the horizon.
When it came... read more