Moving towards fascism?

From Germany in the 1930s to China in the 80s and 90s, all dictators or would-be dictators target newspapers and their journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already. The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of US journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf, a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened “critical infrastructure” when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the US is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the US military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon independent reporters and camera operators from organizations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC.

Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

We won’t have a shutdown of news in modern America because it’s just not possible. But we can have a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What we already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it’s not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can’t tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

Obama = Hitler! Proof inside!

hahahaahhaahahhaa

Jesus fucking Christ…When will Fox “News” ever learn? Better yet, when will Fox “News” ever be canceled? The right-wing media have nothing left and our now trying to conjure up some bull shit propaganda to link Obama to Hitler. And if that isn’t enough, Fox “News” also had the balls to make fun and criticize the Obama staff for “not being able to use Google” when they, apparently, fail to do so as well. The Victory Column was built in 1864; sixty-nine years BEFORE Adolf Hitler came into power! It has nothing to do with World War II, Hitler, or the Nazis. Nothing! This is terrible, TERRIBLE reporting, and gives journalism as a whole a bad name. But then again, you can’t really expect anything else from Fox “News.” It’s just really sad that people actually believe this stuff…

Just scrolling through some of that video’s comments made me want to rip out my eyeballs, grind them together, eat them, and then shove scissors through the sockets.

Fox “News:” TV’s greatest comedy channel.

Mobile bloggin’: the future is now!

Well look at me, blogging on my iPhone. I was just checking out some free apps in the App Store here on my phone when I found the one from WordPress.

So now that I can blog from anywhere in the world, you’ll probably see a bunch of short, pointless posts about something tasty that I just ate or whatever dumb thing I had just done. But that’s what this is about. I’ll save the big stuff for when I don’t have to use two thumbs to type…

Mobile bloggin’ is the future!

July 11th – The Day That Shall Live In Infamy

Ok, so after seven hours of waiting in line outside of my local AT&T store (I was number 11 in a line of about 40 by the way) it’s finally here. My brand new 16gb Black iPhone. I’m going to skip all the adjectives that have roughly the same meaning as “awesome” and just talk about its gaming qualities.

I’ve only bought one game so far: Super Monkey Ball (obviously.)
I’ll probably get around to getting Bomberman too.
Here are a couple pics I took:

The home screen

Super Monkey Ball in the App Store

And here’s a video of me playing a bit of Super Monkey Ball:

I’ve downloaded a few free apps and paid for the MLB.com one (I love baseball.) Using the App Store on the phone is simple and quick; using either Wi-Fi or 3G. Once you select to download it it’s thrown onto the home screen with a status bar underneath it. Once that’s done you just tap it and it loads pretty much immediately. I haven’t experienced any long load times so far.

I’ll rate the apps I’ve downloaded so far on a scale of 5 with a note or two on each one:

AIM – 5 stars! This application is pretty much perfect. It’s nothing like using AIM on any other cell phone; it’s almost everything you get with the PC version.

MySpace Mobile – 5 stars! If you like MySpace then this is for you. It gives you most of what you find on the site in a quick and easy application.

FaceBook – 3 stars. I would have liked to see more of the FaceBook features on here. You can’t even view or leave wall posts…

Loopt – 3 stars. It seems like it would be terrific if more people used it. It works well but it’s basically worthless unless you have friends who use it too.

BoxOffice – 5 stars! This app is just like walking up to an actual box office. It has EVERYTHING a moviegoer could ask for.

MLB.com At Bat – 5 stars! If you like baseball you must get this app. It’s the only one I have so far that I needed to pay for, but it’s worth all $4.99 it cost. It gives you all the scores and box scores from yesterday’s games, scores and what’s going on in today’s games, and times for tomorrows games. It even has in-game video highlights that are uploaded just a couple minutes after they happen in the game. You can view these using either Wi-Fi or 3G, which is the way it seems to work for everything, and it’s really awesome.

So far, the only complaint I have is the difference in video quality between Wi-Fi and 3G. I can understand that Wi-Fi quality would be better, but the difference is more substantial than I had anticipated. 3G video is still viewable though, by my standards at least.

Hello world!

“Welcome to WordPress.com. This is your first post. Edit or delete it and start blogging!”

Does anyone like this initial, obligatory post from WordPress? I don’t know about you, but that last part is pretty damn exciting. It’s just so, well, inspirational! I feel so motivated to go out and conquer the world now. But then again, this song has that same effect.

Anyway, my name is Mike Pelletier and this is my blog. I’ll be writing just about whatever comes to mind on here; reviews, articles, and my daily adventures primarily.

So I hope you enjoy whatever you read, and don’t forget your questions and comments are welcome!