Freyburg

Internet smart guy Clay Shirky recently gave a lecture about how big changes are masked by a calming influence until societies are ready to adapt. He points to gin as the dampening effect of the Industrial Revolution, with most Britain drunk and surly until they stopped seeing urbanism as a threat and started seeing it as an asset. Same with television, which narcotized a public faced with one-way communication and nuclear deterrence. Now we’re in a two-way age, with blogs and Wikipedia and Youtube, and we’re growing into a world where participation will be the norm, not the exception. Neat stuff.

“Nixonland,” a new book by Rick Perlstein, looks like an interesting tome about how Nixon was both a reflection of and answer to the state of America in the late Sixties. It also points out that Nixon did succeed in calming an incredibly tumultuous time in the US, when the country was tearing itself apart from within. Compare that to today, when we have an arguably worse president but a relatively stable social and political atmosphere.

Not that I ever trusted Billy anyway, especially amongst the womenfolk, but it’s interesting to see how the conquering hero of the Democrats has sunk a few pegs due to the (shock! horror!) tendency of the Clintons to play dirty in order to get re-elected.

Vanity Fair isn’t just George Clooney covers and Oscar parties, it’s also some pretty damn fine journalism, including this article detailing the legal wranglings and outright villainy of the Bush administration as they moved to change the old rules regarding interrogation, ignored the Geneva conventions and legalized torture.

The always excellent Frontline has pulled out the stops for the fifth anniversary of the War in Iraq with a huge documentary entitled “Bush’s War,” detailing the build-up from 9/11 onwards, the initial invasion and the continued bloodshed in Iraq today. It’s long, but worth the watch. Unfortunately, PBS hasn’t quite gotten the glory that is embedding video just yet, so you’ll have to head to their page to check it out.

In an interview last week with an ABC correspondent, Dick Cheney’s response to the point that the American public doesn’t support the war in Iraq was simple…”So?” Mickey Edwards of the Washington Post, long a Cheney supporter, has had enough of this open contempt of the public interest, and he says so in the Washington Post.

One of the more surreal clips in the CBC Archives.

America is known as one of the most innovative, entrepreneurial places on the planet…or at least it used to be. The subprime mortgage crisis, along with a shaky economy and a war that’s been a colossal money sink, have given pause to the thought that the US is the financial titan of yore, as seen in this article in Slate.

Guinea-Bisseau is one of the poorest places on earth, but the arrival of the cocaine trade a few years ago has transformed it into a narco-state for the Colombian drug elite. A truly weird tale of greed and economics.

Foreign Policy has an interesting post up on their blog detailing how McCain’s Super Tuesday win marks the end of an era for far right American conservatives. The mood of the country just won’t fit anymore with the divisive ways of Geroge Bush and Co., and the backlash can already be seen in Rush Limbaugh’s attacks on MCcain and Ann Coulter’s statement that she’d rather vote for Hillary. I’m personally happy to see the country swing to the left, even if McCain ends up becoming president. It can hardly be any worse than the last eight years .