micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Thursday, January 22, 2004
My beloved Spartans picked up their first win of the season outside of East Lansing last night, beating Northwestern, 73-61. Maurice Ager was splendid with 24 points, including six 3-point shots. Another road game is next, against Purdue Sunday afternoon. *** Matthew Barganier's "America 2004" is a great synthesis of art of criticism. As close to a must read as anything could be. "Barry Crimmins responds to the 2004 SOTU Address" is also very strongly recommended. From the not entertaining but still most certainly wroth reading is Amnesty International's "North Korea: Suffering in silence." I doubt sending a message to Kim Jong-il will do much good, however. Of course the same is true of messages to the elected leaders of most "free" countries. *** "Afghanistan's religious authorities have reimposed a ban on television broadcasts of artistic performances by women after a 20-year-old clip of a woman singing without a headscarf ignited a battle between moderates and traditionalists," Hamida Ghafour writes in a January 16 Telegraph story. On a related note, this January 19 Scotsman story by Borzou Daraghahi is interesting: As Americans flood Iraq’s airwaves with radio stations playing harmless Western and Arab pop tunes, the young are turning elsewhere for their musical inspiration.Here is a different version of the story. *** Chalmers Johnson on "America's Empire of Bases." *** I probably shouldn't respond to this flood of fatuity from Jonah Goldberg: For Bush to have lied, he had to have known that there were no WMDs, right? It's not a lie unless you know the truth. If you say something you think is true that later turns out to be false, we don't call that a "lie," we call that a "mistake."No. The Bush Administration repeatedly said that they KNEW that Saddam's regime had weapons of mass destruction. Maybe they honestly believed that was the case, but if they did not know it to be true, they were lying. This isn't difficult to grasp, although perhaps that is the reason some hawkish bloggers buy Goldberg's argument. *** Robert Higgs on the defense budget. *** "The United States will move all of its troops out of metropolitan Seoul over the next three years without reducing the total number of forces in South Korea, both countries have agreed," David Briscoe of the AP writes in a story from this past Saturday. *** "American law enforcement officials said Friday that they were trying to determine whether the Pakistani government was involved in a plot by a South African businessman to export trigger devices that could be used for nuclear weapons," Eric Lichtblau writes in a January 16 New York Times story. *** Ran HaCohen on "The Syrian Threat." Via HaCohen's article I cam across "Self-Hating Israel-Threatening LIST," which is far more depressing than funny. David Corn of The Nation and USA Today on Bush's SOTU speech. *** Eugene Hernandez and Karl Beck of indiewire.com report that Bob Odenkirk "plans on co-directing 'The Mr. Show Movie' with longtime collaborator and "Mr. Show Movie" co-writer David Cross." *** *** *** A January 14 georgewbush.com blog entry carries the headline "NBC News: Bush-Cheney Grassroots 'Unparalleled in Political History.'" The post focuses on an NBC News article by David Gregory. georgwbush.com apparently draws their headline from this graf, which they quote: Legions of Bush-Cheney organizers are canvassing the country registering new voters in battleground states and signing up volunteers for help with voter turnout — a ground game that Bush advisers claim is unparalleled in political history.So in fact it is not something that NBC News said but rather something that "Bush advisers" have reportedly told NBC News. I know this isn't a big deal but it seems like it is something that an at least half-way organized campaign would be able to avoid, unless they really did want to deceive. Of course I'm fine with this since it creates more jokes about last year's State of the Union gaffe. *** |