News Reel

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on "formidable evidence" asserting his innocence and "horrendous violations" of his rights, defense attorneys said in federal court papers filed this week.

In a U.S. District Court brief, Sirhan's lawyers also say that an expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.

-- Michael Martinez at CNN


Back in the very pre-digital days, the writer A. J. Liebling famously remarked that freedom of the press was guaranteed only to the man who owned one. Nowadays, of course, freedom of the press belongs to anyone with Internet access, from the information guerrillas of WikiLeaks to the blogger next door. The democratization of media has diminished the authority once held — and sometimes abused — by a few big newspapers and broadcasters. In many ways this has enriched society, creating a great global buffet of information and opinion, pooling the knowledge of the masses and providing an almost instantaneous reality check on the conventional wisdom.

The consequences have not all been happy, though. The easiest way to stand out in such a vast crowd of microbroadcasters is to be the loudest, the angriest, the most outrageous. If you want that precious traffic, you stake out a position somewhere in oh-my-God territory and proclaim it with a vengeance. Global warming is a hoax! Vaccines make you sick! Obama is a Muslim! In vanquishing the conventional wisdom, sometimes it seems we have vanquished wisdom itself.

-- Bill Keller at NYT


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve.

Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an anarchist,” he said, “you couldn’t get a date.”

-- Carl Zimmer at NYT


Livejournal, Russia's main blogging platform and a hotbed of opposition thought, came under DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack, an action many bloggers linked to Sunday's vote. The platform last came under large-scale attack in April. "These attacks are against multiple journals worldwide, several of which are political in nature," the group said at the time.

-- ONTD/Guardian


CAIRO — Iranian protesters shouting “Death to England” stormed the British Embassy compound and a diplomatic residence in Tehran on Tuesday, tearing down the British flag, smashing windows, defacing walls and briefly detaining six staff members in what appeared to be a state-sponsored protest against Britain’s tough new economic sanctions against Iran.

The attack was the most serious diplomatic breach since the traumatic assault on the United States Embassy after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, expressed outrage over the attack, saying Britain held Iran’s government responsible and promising “other, further, and serious consequences.”...

Of the three nations Iran’s leaders loathe the most — Israel, the United States and Britain — only Britain maintains an embassy in the country, making it an easy target.

-- NYT


Franker than ever as he announced plans to retire from Congress, Barney Frank told Abby Goodnough in The Times that Gingrich was “the single biggest factor” in destroying a Washington culture where the two parties respected each other’s differing views yet still worked together.

Newt is the progenitor of the modern politics of personal destruction.

“He got to Congress in ’78 and said, ‘We the Republicans are not going to be able to take over unless we demonize the Democrats,’ ” Frank said.

-- Maureen Dowd for NYT

News Reel

Los Angeles (CNN) -- Sirhan Sirhan, convicted of the 1968 assassination of presidential candidate Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, should be freed from prison or granted a new trial based on "formidable evidence" asserting his innocence and "horrendous violations" of his rights, defense attorneys said in federal court papers filed this week.

In a U.S. District Court brief, Sirhan's lawyers also say that an expert analysis of recently uncovered evidence shows two guns were fired in the assassination and that Sirhan's revolver was not the gun that shot Kennedy.

-- Michael Martinez at CNN


Back in the very pre-digital days, the writer A. J. Liebling famously remarked that freedom of the press was guaranteed only to the man who owned one. Nowadays, of course, freedom of the press belongs to anyone with Internet access, from the information guerrillas of WikiLeaks to the blogger next door. The democratization of media has diminished the authority once held — and sometimes abused — by a few big newspapers and broadcasters. In many ways this has enriched society, creating a great global buffet of information and opinion, pooling the knowledge of the masses and providing an almost instantaneous reality check on the conventional wisdom.

The consequences have not all been happy, though. The easiest way to stand out in such a vast crowd of microbroadcasters is to be the loudest, the angriest, the most outrageous. If you want that precious traffic, you stake out a position somewhere in oh-my-God territory and proclaim it with a vengeance. Global warming is a hoax! Vaccines make you sick! Obama is a Muslim! In vanquishing the conventional wisdom, sometimes it seems we have vanquished wisdom itself.

-- Bill Keller at NYT


CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Steven Pinker was a 15-year-old anarchist. He didn’t think people needed a police force to keep the peace. Governments caused the very problems they were supposed to solve.

Besides, it was 1969, said Dr. Pinker, who is now a 57-year-old psychologist at Harvard. “If you weren’t an anarchist,” he said, “you couldn’t get a date.”

-- Carl Zimmer at NYT


Livejournal, Russia's main blogging platform and a hotbed of opposition thought, came under DDoS [distributed denial of service] attack, an action many bloggers linked to Sunday's vote. The platform last came under large-scale attack in April. "These attacks are against multiple journals worldwide, several of which are political in nature," the group said at the time.

-- ONTD/Guardian


CAIRO — Iranian protesters shouting “Death to England” stormed the British Embassy compound and a diplomatic residence in Tehran on Tuesday, tearing down the British flag, smashing windows, defacing walls and briefly detaining six staff members in what appeared to be a state-sponsored protest against Britain’s tough new economic sanctions against Iran.

The attack was the most serious diplomatic breach since the traumatic assault on the United States Embassy after Iran’s Islamic Revolution in 1979. Britain’s foreign secretary, William Hague, expressed outrage over the attack, saying Britain held Iran’s government responsible and promising “other, further, and serious consequences.”...

Of the three nations Iran’s leaders loathe the most — Israel, the United States and Britain — only Britain maintains an embassy in the country, making it an easy target.

-- NYT


Franker than ever as he announced plans to retire from Congress, Barney Frank told Abby Goodnough in The Times that Gingrich was “the single biggest factor” in destroying a Washington culture where the two parties respected each other’s differing views yet still worked together.

Newt is the progenitor of the modern politics of personal destruction.

“He got to Congress in ’78 and said, ‘We the Republicans are not going to be able to take over unless we demonize the Democrats,’ ” Frank said.

-- Maureen Dowd for NYT

1984 (2,3) Keep the Small Rules

Julia and Winston have to pick their moments carefully. Beyond the difficulty of finding times and places where they can be free to get naked and do their wild thing, it is challenging just to be able to meet and talk like boyfriend and girlfriend.

_ _ _

There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past one another without a sign, because a patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous, it would still have been difficult to find time to meet. Winston's working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer, and their free days varied according to the pressure of work and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones. She even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-time munition work which was done voluntarily by zealous Party members. So, one evening every week, Winston spent four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in a draughty, ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.

-- 1984

1984 (2,3) Keep the Small Rules

Julia and Winston have to pick their moments carefully. Beyond the difficulty of finding times and places where they can be free to get naked and do their wild thing, it is challenging just to be able to meet and talk like boyfriend and girlfriend.

_ _ _

There were evenings when they reached their rendezvous and then had to walk past one another without a sign, because a patrol had just come round the corner or a helicopter was hovering overhead. Even if it had been less dangerous, it would still have been difficult to find time to meet. Winston's working week was sixty hours, Julia's was even longer, and their free days varied according to the pressure of work and did not often coincide. Julia, in any case, seldom had an evening completely free. She spent an astonishing amount of time in attending lectures and demonstrations, distributing literature for the junior Anti-Sex League, preparing banners for Hate Week, making collections for the savings campaign, and such-like activities. It paid, she said, it was camouflage. If you kept the small rules, you could break the big ones. She even induced Winston to mortgage yet another of his evenings by enrolling himself for the part-time munition work which was done voluntarily by zealous Party members. So, one evening every week, Winston spent four hours of paralysing boredom, screwing together small bits of metal which were probably parts of bomb fuses, in a draughty, ill-lit workshop where the knocking of hammers mingled drearily with the music of the telescreens.

-- 1984

Quote of the Day

“I hated school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something really wrong with you.”

-- Stephen King

Bah, if you did not suffer a morbid case of acne and were not too short or too fat, I am sure it could be quite fun and satisfying. Not that I would know.

Quote of the Day

“I hated school. I don’t trust anybody who looks back on the years 14 to 18 with any enjoyment. If you liked being a teenager, there’s something really wrong with you.”

-- Stephen King

Bah, if you did not suffer a morbid case of acne and were not too short or too fat, I am sure it could be quite fun and satisfying. Not that I would know.