Fellowship of Punditry

Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

Cul Heath

Mick Arran

Jeffrey Barbose

Inspector Lohmann

Eric M. Fink

Michael Lane

Rep. Mark B. Cohen

The Fellowship is accepting new members. Inquire within.

The Sages

  • David Weinberger
  • Jon Lebkowsky
  • Jay Rosen
  • Rebecca MacKinnon
  • Nova Spivack
  • Dan Gillmor
  • Jim Moore
  • Lawerence Lessig
  • Ed Cone
  • Jeff Jarvis
  • Joi Ito
  • The Titans

  • Talking Points Memo
  • Oliver Willis
  • Burnt Orange Report
  • Jim Hightower
  • Wonkette
  • Political Animal
  • The-Hamster
  • Matthew Yglesias
  • Pandagon
  • Altercation
  • Informed Comment
  • Donkey Rising
  • The Decembrist
  • Buzz Machine
  • Orcinus
  • Brad Delong
  • Eschaton
  • The Left Coaster
  • Pacific Views

    Distinguished Colleagues

  • Tom Burka
  • The American Street
  • wood s lot
  • Rox Populi
  • Scratchings
  • Blond Sense
  • Cut To The Chase
  • Bad Attitudes
  • Rook's Rant
  • Dohiyi Mir
  • Stout Dem Blog
  • A Violently Executed Blog
  • American Leftist
  • Easy Bake Coven
  • Southerly Buster
  • Abuddhas Memes
  • ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES
  • Post-Atomic
  • Van Ramblings
  • Friends of the Fellowship

  • Texas Native
  • Chuck Currie
  • To The Teeth
  • Radically Inept
  • In Dark Times
  • Serial Blogonomy
  • The Bone
  • Public Domain Progress
  • Alien Intelligencer
  • Research Associates

  • Blogged In the Desert
  • One Fine Jay
  • Jessica's Universe
  • Selective Amnesia
  • In Grown Brain Stem
  • Immolation.org
  • Somewhere over the rainbough
  • Politikult
  • Political Puzzle
  • Dear Free World
  • Twenty Something
  • Thom:WebLog
  • Random Act of Kindness
  • A Skeptical Blog
  • The Common Man
  • Progressive News

  • The American Prospect
  • World Press Review
  • Alternet
  • In These Times
  • Common Dreams
  • Media Channel
  • History News Network
  • MOJO.COM
  • Tom Paine
  • Z-Magazine
  • Breaking News

  • Associated Press
  • Reuters
  • BBC Newswire
  • World NEws

  • The Guardian (UK)
  • The Independent (UK)
  • The Financial Times (UK)
  • Pravda (Russia)
  • La Monde Diplomatique (France)
  • Arab News (Saudi Arabia)
  • The Age (Australia)
  • China Daily
  • The People's Daily (China)
  • The Korea Herald
  • Think Tanks

  • RAND CORPORATION
  • CEIP
  • The CATO Institute
  • Center for America Progress
  • Federation of American Scientists
  • Progressive Policy Institute
  • Council on Foreign Relations
  • The Brookings Institution
  • The Foreign Policy Association
  • Blogging Resources

  • Principia Cybernetica
  • The Fallacy Files
  • Fact Check
  • 50 Ways To Improve Your Blog
  • Poynter Online's Writers ToolBox
  • News Thinking
  • The Scout Archives
  • WebReference.com
  • Into the Blogosphere
  • George Orwell

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

    In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act.

    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.

    But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

    Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

    Whatever is funny is subversive, every joke is ultimately a custard pie... a dirty joke is a sort of mental rebellion.

    In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.

    All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome.

    At fifty everyone has the face he deserves.

    Most people get a fair amount of fun out of their lives, but on balance life is suffering, and only the very young or the very foolish imagine otherwise.

    John Stuart Mill

    Conservatives are not necessarily stupid, but most stupid people are conservatives.

    The amount of eccentricity in a society has generally been proportional to the amount of genius, mental vigor, and moral courage it contained. That so few now dare to be eccentric marks the chief danger of the time.

    The general tendency of things throughout the world is to render mediocrity the ascendant power among mankind.

    Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

    A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

    Mark Twain

    Don't let schooling interfere with your education.

    All generalizations are false, including this one.

    A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read.

    Get your facts first, then you can distort them as you please.

    Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.

    The Public is merely a multiplied "me."

    Only kings, presidents, editors, and people with tapeworms have the right to use the editorial "we."

    Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

    Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet.

    Don't go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

    Winston Churchill

    The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.

    I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals.

    Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.

    Never hold discussions with the monkey when the organ grinder is in the room.

    Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.

    However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

    In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.

    Otto Von Bismarck

    When you want to fool the world, tell the truth.

    I have seen three emperors in their nakedness, and the sight was not inspiring.

    Never believe anything in politics until it has been officially denied.

    Be polite; write diplomatically ;even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

    Voltaire

    A witty saying proves nothing.

    If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated.

    When he to whom one speaks does not understand, and he who speaks himself does not understand, that is metaphysics.

    I have never made but one prayer to God, a very short one: "O Lord make my enemies ridiculous." And God granted it.

    To succeed in the world it is not enough to be stupid, you must also be well-mannered.

    Doubt is not a pleasant condition, but certainty is absurd.

    It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.

    The best way to be boring is to leave nothing out.

    Karl Marx

    Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as masturbation to sexual love.

    All I know is I'm not a Marxist.

    The writer may very well serve a movement of history as its mouthpiece, but he cannot of course create it.

    Monday, June 28, 2004

    IMPORTANT: Everyone read this South Korean's message.

    By Nick

    Link to Kevin Kim

    Fellow blogger,

    I am sending this message to the bloggers on my blogroll (and a few other folks) in the hopes that some of you will print this, or at least find it interesting enough for comment. I'm not usually the type to distribute such messages, but I felt this was important enough to risk disturbing you.

    As some of you may already know, a wing of the South Korean government, the Ministry of Information and Culture (MIC), is currently clamping down on a variety of blogging service providers and other websites. The government is attempting to control access to video of the recent Kim Sun-il beheading, ostensibly because the video will have a destabilizing influence. (I haven't seen the video.)

    Many Western expat bloggers in Korea are in an uproar; others, myself included, are largely unsurprised: South Korea has not come far out of the shadow of its military dictatorship past. My own response to this censorship is not so much anger as amusement, because the situation represents an intellectual challenge as well as a chance to fight for freedom of expression. Perhaps even to fight for freedom, period.

    South Korea is a rapidly evolving country, but in many ways it remains the Hermit Kingdom. Like a turtle retreating into its shell, the people are on occasion unable to deal with the harsh realities of the world around them. This country is, for example, in massive denial about the atrocities perpetrated in North Korea, and, as with many Americans, is in denial about the realities of Islamic terrorism, whose roots extend chronologically backward far beyond the lifetime of the Bush Administration. This cultural tendency toward denial (and overreaction) at least partially explains the Korean government's move to censor so many sites.

    The fact that the current administration, led by President Noh Mu-hyon, is supposedly "liberal"-leaning makes this censorship more ironic. It also fuels propagandistic conservative arguments that liberals are, at heart, closet totalitarians. I find this to be a specious caricature of the liberal position (I consider myself neither liberal nor conservative), but to the extent that Koreans are concerned about what image they project to the world, it is legitimate for them to worry over whether they are currently playing into stereotype: South Korea is going to be associated with other violators of human rights, such as China.

    Of the many hypocrisies associated with the decision to censor, the central one is that no strong governmental measures were taken to suppress the distribution of the previous beheading videos (Nick Berg et al.). This, too, fuels the suspicion that Koreans are selfish or, to use their own proverbial image, "a frog in a well"-- radically blinkered in perspective, collectively unable to empathize with the sufferings of non-Koreans, but overly sensitive to their own suffering.

    I am writing this letter not primarily to criticize all Koreans (I'm ethnically half-Korean, and an American citizen), nor to express a generalized condemnation of Korean culture. As is true anywhere else, this culture has its merits and demerits, and overall, I'm enjoying my time here. No, my purpose is more specific: to cause the South Korean government as much embarrassment as possible, and perhaps to motivate Korean citizens to engage in some much-needed introspection.

    To this end, I need the blogosphere's help, and this letter needs wide distribution (you may receive other letters from different bloggers, so be prepared!). I hope you'll see fit to publish this letter on your site, and/or to distribute it to concerned parties: censorship in a supposedly democratic society simply cannot stand. The best and quickest way to persuade the South Korean government to back down from its current position is to make it lose face in the eyes of the world. This can only happen through a determined (and civilized!) campaign to expose the government's hypocrisy and to cause Korean citizens to rethink their own narrow-mindedness.

    We can debate all we want about "root causes" with regard to Islamic terrorism, Muslim rage, and all the rest, but for me, it's much more constructive to proceed empirically and with an eye to the future. Like it or not, what we see today is that Korea is inextricably linked with Iraq issues, and with issues of Islamic fundamentalism. Koreans, however, may need some persuading that this is in fact the case-- that we all need to stand together as allies against a common enemy.

    If you are interested in giving the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture a piece of your mind (or if you're a reporter who would like to contact them for further information), please email the MIC at:

    webmaster@mic.go.kr

    Thank you,


    Kevin Kim
    bighominid@gmail.com
    http://bighominid.blogspot.com
    (Blogspot is currently blocked in Korea, along with other providers; please go to Unipeak.com and type my URL into the search window to view my blog.)

    PS: To send me an email, please type "hairy chasms" in the subject line to avoid being trashed by my custom-made spam filter.

    PPS: Much better blogs than mine have been covering this issue, offering news updates and heartfelt commentary. To start you off, visit:

    http://marmot.blogs.com/korea/
    http://jeffinkorea.blogs.com/
    http://aboutjoel.com/
    http://oranckay.net/blog/
    http://kimcheegi.blogs.com/
    http://gopkorea.blogs.com/flyingyangban
    http://rathbonepress.tblog.com/
    http://blog.woojay.net/

    Here as well, Unipeak is the way to go if you're in Korea and unable to view the above blogs. People in the States should, in theory, have no problems accessing these sites, which all continue to be updated.

    PPPS: This email is being cc'ed to the South Korean Ministry of Information and Culture. Please note that other bloggers are writing about the Korean government's creation of a task force that will presumably fight internet terror. I and others have an idea that this task force will serve a different purpose. If this is what South Korea's new "aligning with the PRC" is all about, then there's reason to worry for the future.



    -------------------------------------------------------
    Note from Nick: So I followed up on a the Korean bloggers that I cited yesterday. Most bloggers track back links, so I assumed a few be curious as to why a Texan cited them. I was trying to find out two things:

    1. To see if I cited their ideas out of context, or misunderstood what they were talking about.
    2. To see if I could help the Korean bloggers in anyway.

    I might have caught an echo from Big Hominid(I think I caught him through a anonymous web portal):
    First off, I may have cited something out of context:
    Instead of pulling random quotes from an English-language blog out of context, a Korean Netizen might be motivated to read an entire blog post, from start to finish, and would then come away with a better overall idea of where the Westerner was coming from
    .

    How Diplomatic my friend! As an act of good will, I've spread your letter. We shall see if it spreads through the American Blogosphere.

    If I am the "Blogger Who Shall Not Be Named", you responded to my post with:
    Yes, overall, there doesn't seem to be much interest in our plight in the Western (read: American) blogosphere, so I think BWSNBN is on to something. This is unfortunate. I hope more America-based bloggers take the meme and run with it.


    I hope so too friend, I'll check back with you. Lets open dialogue, give me some sort of sign, e-mail me, or address me at your site. (also google the name "Netpolitik" and read the report from the Aspen Institue that this site is named after. You'll find it quite helpful in begining this fight, and it will give you an idea of why I maintain this blog). Please, let me know if there is any way I can help you or fellow South Korean Bloggers in the short-term. South Koreans can rest assured that Americans believe very strongly in freedom of thought (though our Government may not reflect that). You have one American who is prepared to do whatever he can help you.

    Nick Lewis
    Austin, Texas U.S.A
    E-mail: LewisNAC@Hotmail.com

    posted by Nick at 6/28/2004 08:54:00 PM |

    Comments:
    Drop on by and browse through a huge archive of joke

    This is one of the many jokes i found amongst the many joke categorys:
    A man walks into his favorite bar and saw a bum panhandeling. The bum asked if the man could spare a dollar. The man replied "If I give you money are you going to use it to buy liquor?" The bum said he would not, so the man asked "If I give you money are you going to use it for gambling?" Again the bum said he would not, so the man asked "Would you come home with me so I can show my wife what happenes to someone who doesnt gamble or drink?"
     
    .














    Hi, seeing as you accept anonymous blogging I thought I would send you this info about online gambling from a guy at work. His blog features free roulette strategy and he has made a fortune from online gambling.

    The Online Casino Startup Bonus

    When choosing a trustworthy online casino there are many factors you need to consider. Just because one of the great number of online casinos existent today has impressive graphics, games and offers a wide diversity of bonuses, it doesnt mean its a fair and licensed one. Of course, such cases are rare, and, since today there are hundreds of reputable virtual casinos one can choose from, the most important criteria when deciding which one to play at is what they offer.

    The first bonus you can get when you first open an account at a casino is the sign up bonus most casinos offer, an encouraging bonus of at least $25, but it may often be higher than $500. Some casinos even match your first deposit, meaning they double it, for free.

    Many casinos also offer hundreds of dollars worth bonuses for new players and, if you're the one who brings other friends to the casino, things are even better than that. Most casinos offer a refer a friend bonus and, the more friends you have, the more fortunate you will get. For each friend you refer to the casino, you will get up to $1000, for each friend that they refer, you'll earn up to $300 and, furthermore, for each person that your friend's friends refer, you will earn up to $100. Once you are confident that particular casino is a reliable one, bring as many of your friends as you can to the casino and you'll have all the reasons to enjoy their games. The only thing you need to pay attention to afterwards is to handle the money wisely and not risk it all in a single bet, however confident you may be.

    And most casinos give you an alternative to this. They offer you the chance to practice for free at first, and they also give you money to do that, so, it's practically free and you have nothing to lose. When you find the right casino you'll know it from the first time you play there. From then on, they will remind you how important you are to them by giving you special bonuses every month. These bonuses are somewhere around $100 and even higher and they reward you for being a loyal customer. These casinos also offer the so called comp points that accumulate throughout the course of the games you play and at certain points they turn into real money and, depending how long you have been playing at that casino, you may win lots of money.

    The most important bonuses casinos offer are the jackpots and prizes you can win at their games. Casinos reward players with millions of dollars each day for their gaming skills. Tournaments and regular casino games are most profitable for gamblers. Only one progressive jackpot, for one single game of slots, for instance, can be of over $ 2 million. And it's only a matter of seconds and a bit of luck to win it.

    Most casinos don't need a special occasion to give bonuses. They offer bonuses for the players third and fourth deposits, for being loyal to the casino, or just for being at a table at a certain time. So, it’s only a matter of finding the right casino and from there on, bonuses will keep coming to you. The only problem is that if you don't have a proper money management you won't treasure what you win, it will go away as easily as it came. We may all want those bonuses, but do we know what to do with them and how much of it we should risk in our next bet?


    A guy at work recommends the following Casino Gaming Sites, (the trick is to sign up to each and get your startup bonuses) once you have played each one for a while you will get to know which one suits your style of play and which is therefore the most profitable one for you.


    as follows:

    CASINO CLASSIC


    PLAY65.COM


    888.COM


    CASINO-FOR-ME


    SPORTING ODDS CASINO


    PARTY POKER.COM


    ALSO CHECK OUT THESE COOL ONLINE BINGO SITES - PERFECT TO KEEP YOUR MUM/GRANNY HAPPY!!


    BINGO BOUDOIR


    BINGOLICIOUS


    TWO FAT LADIES BINGO









    .
     
    Get a $50 plus $50 free poker bankrolls. Blog bet365 with 100's of players online. Startup money and funding cash.
    Free start bankroll are involved for any black and white people. So Poker blog and you can find all possible bonuses for turkey and dominicana.
    Detailed reviews for the top platform. Stay away from poker pages, be sure that you friendly online and have nice freeroll.
    Good poker sponsorship and free blog rules.
    As alvays welcome.
     
    No deposit offered from mate bankrolls free cash for start play for madagaskar and finland players.
    Teraz najwięcej bez mozliwości depozytu obwych i darmowy free roll code password. Vulcan poker i Titan to potentaci gry w liczebności nijakiej i jakosciowej.
    Odbiur poker bonus jest wskazany dla przykładowo inne platformy karcinej w promocji omaha no limit albo zawzięcie bierz darmowy bonus dla większych i mniejszych zielonkawych bonusów w te turnieje.
    Muszisz sobie zdać sprawe że poker jest dojrzalszy gdy świeci słońce. Zatem bez depozytu jest wiele promocji party poker i full tilt.
     
    Get smooking ultimate bet sponsorship for all nation.
    Party poker room offering huge 100% Bonus up to 500 dollars Free. So don't be small with online gaiming today.
    players enjoy an array of exciting bankroll without deposit cash as international start up money.
     
    The Republic of Korea, or South Korea,sportsbook consists of the southern half of the Korean peninsula in East Asia and many islands lying off the western and southern coasts.bet nfl The largest island, Jeju, has the highest mountain in South Korea at 1,950 meters (6,398 feet).http://www.enterbet.com The terrain is mountainous, though less rugged than that of North Korea
     
    During the first two decades of Korea's economic boom, there
    was little attention paid to the damaging effects of rapid
    industrialization on the environment.costa rica vacation rentals It was not until the 1980's
    that Korea began paying close attention to the environment, but the
    problems have arisen so quickly, that the Korean government has not
    been able to manage all of them.
    http://www.meadbrown.com
     
    http://costa-ricafishing.com/
    To bring you all up to speed, the Korean government has been aggressively working to prevent internet users in Korea from seeing footage of the beheading of Korean contractor, Kim Seon Il. http://costa-ricafishing.com/
    The following is the text of a letter written by Kevin Kim, of Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms. Kevin is a fine Korea blogger with a wide variety of interests, but I thought his open letter was well worth posting and very much worth reading. For those of you who taking blogging as even mildly relevant in informing your worldview, I would encourage you to read the letter and respond how you see fit.
    http://costa-ricafishing.com/
     
    Costa Rica FishingTo bring you all up to speed, the Korean government has been aggressively working to prevent internet users in Korea from seeing footage of the beheading of Korean contractor, Kim Seon Il.Costa Rica Fishing The following is the text of a letter written by Kevin Kim, of Big Hominid's Hairy Chasms. Kevin is a fine Korea blogger with a wide variety of interests, but I thought his open letter was well worth posting and very much worth reading. For those of you who taking blogging as even mildly relevant in informing your worldview, I would encourage you to read the letter and respond how you see fit.
    Costa Rica Fishing
     
    Post a Comment

    About US

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.usImage Hosted by ImageShack.usImage Hosted by ImageShack.usImage Hosted by ImageShack.us

    "Netpolitik is a new style of diplomacy that seeks to exploit the powerful capabilities of the Internet to shape politics, culture, values, and personal identity. But unlike Realpolitik — which seeks to advance a nation’s political interests through amoral coercion — Netpolitik traffics in “softer” issues such as moral legitimacy, culturalidentity, societal values, and public perception." - The Rise of Netpolitik

    PUN-DIT (n) : A learned man; a teacher; a source of opinion; a critic: a political pundit.

    Recent Posts

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us

    Nick: IMPORTANT: Everyone read this South Korean's message. |

    archives

    Birthplace of The Progressive Blog Alliance

    Image Hosted by ImageShack.us
    Leave a comment here to join.

    The Bots