While it feels a little odd to hop on to LJ merely to post political links, it's a better venue for broadcasting information to friends than mass-emailing, which i can't really bring myself to do
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What that report says about Obama and S.A. (and foreign policy in general) fits the impression I got after reading what he published in the journal of the CFR. Namely, his foreign policy position-generator is "What would JFK do?", which would have been considered fairly progressive in 1960. It turns out to give generally the same answer as "What would Bill Clinton do?" (his default position-generator on domestic issues) except in 2008 it adds "make the military bigger" where Clinton made it smaller in the mid-1990's. At least in foreign policy, "change" seems to mean "back off Bush, return to the bipartisan consensus" that's in turn been obsolete for just about 20 years. So an improvement, but a retrograde one that seems likely to end in a slightly less miserable failure.
This is the first time i've seen coverage of the Obama campaign that's actually been even-handedly critical, as opposed to exaggeratedly pro- or con-. That probably says more about my own meagre media habit than it does about the media in general, but still - it was nice to get some non-hype views on the subject. I'd still much rather him than McCain, however, though that goes without saying...
I formerly gave McCain some little credit for being aware of the existence of the Geneva Convention, but it turns out he only knew the part about torture. It also says you have to treat prisoners as either (a) P.O.W.'s or (b) criminals with due process rights. The Supreme Court recently ruled the government can't get out of this just by keeping them in Cuba, and McCain said it was one of the worst decisions in the history of the court. So screw him.
Still, either way, I get the sense neither of these guys knows much about, say, UNASUR, or any number of other important features of the world. It's nice to suppose that people will eventually be edumacated enough on such things by means of the internet that the President must also be edumacated, and not just Law school.
I did some work for them a few years back, when they were using the name 'Independent World Television' -- 'The Real News' is a little cheesy. Overall it reminds me a lot of Democracy Now!, who I also worked for, and are just as disorganized internally. The project is largely run by Paul Jay, formerly of the CBC TV show CounterSpin, if you ever watched that. Like Democracy Now!, for now it's more op-eds and interviews, as opposed to long-term investigative reporting, which is much more expensive to produce.
Anyways, it's neat how the age of YouTube has made things like this feasible. Yay interwebs.
ah, that's interesting to know - i just stumbled upon them today and didn't realise they had longer roots, and Canadian ones, at that. I never saw CounterSpin, but i never really watched TV past grade 9 or 10...
The name is a little cheesy, yes - their web page lists them as being a project of IWT, which i now know the expansion of thanks to your post - i guess they're trying to hold on to both names at once, or something. Well, here's hoping they don't fall apart - i'd love to see them (or someone like them) be able to do more high-profile reporting.
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Still, either way, I get the sense neither of these guys knows much about, say, UNASUR, or any number of other important features of the world. It's nice to suppose that people will eventually be edumacated enough on such things by means of the internet that the President must also be edumacated, and not just Law school.
Reply
Anyways, it's neat how the age of YouTube has made things like this feasible. Yay interwebs.
Reply
The name is a little cheesy, yes - their web page lists them as being a project of IWT, which i now know the expansion of thanks to your post - i guess they're trying to hold on to both names at once, or something. Well, here's hoping they don't fall apart - i'd love to see them (or someone like them) be able to do more high-profile reporting.
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