Media and Technology

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PETA Teams Up With Glenn Beck to Bash Al Gore
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 5:39 PM.

I know it's easy to get jealous when someone's got an Oscar, a Nobel, and some pretty big job titles on their resume, but really, the Gore bashing has got to end.

The New York Times took a swipe at Al Gore and his new book this week and now Glenn Beck and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk are teaming up. In some ways it is a perfect match between two people who seem to thrive on generating controversy.

Beck chastised Gore for not giving up meat eating altogether (even though he's admitted to cutting back a lot) and told him it was time for soy milk and tofurkey. Then he invited Newkirk on the show to tag team even though Beck admitted that he doesn't agree with a thing PETA says. Although he did give PETA and the NRA a shout out for not catering to special interests (huh?), so I guess Newkirk should feel good about that.

I know that PETA's main task seems to be to get people really pissed off, but I still think it's a shame to see Newkirk sinking so low as to cozy up to Glenn Beck. The truth is though, what they're talking about is actually a tough issue. There's a lot of really good evidence that eating meat -- at least the way we mostly do it in factory farms -- is bad for the planet. If you've ever seen a factory farm (or smelled one) that would probably seem like a no-brainer.

But there's also some good evidence pointing out that growing soy -- at least the way we do it but slashing rainforests and piling on the pesticides -- is actually bad for ecosystems, water, climate and the whole shebang. And some of that soy we area eating (actually in the US 87 percent of it is genetically modified), some of it is being used for biofuel and some of it is being fed to livestock. But mostly all of it is an environmental disaster.

Umbra Fisk from Grist breaks down a lot of the research and writes:

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Right-Wing "News" Site Falsely Claims Fort Hood Shooter "Advised Obama Transition"
Posted by Staff, Media Matters for America on November 6, 2009 at 4:03 PM.

WorldNetDaily falsely claimed that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan "advised Obama transition" in the headline of an article by Jerome Corsi highlighting his listing as a "participant" in a report for the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University's Presidential Transition Task Force. However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that "the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition" -- indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008. Moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 "Task Force Event Participants" in the report's appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a "member" of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP'd for several of the group's open events.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Right-Bloggers React to Fort Hood Exactly as Expected
Posted by Roy Edroso, Alicublog on November 6, 2009 at 10:26 AM.

FIGHTIN' KEYBOARDERS CALLED BACK INTO ACTION. We'll probably be reading a lot of idiotic stuff about Fort Hood, but it'll be hard to top this from Robert Stacy McCain:

The people who want to kill you are not Tea Party protesters or accountants from Saranac Lake, N.Y. They're not Kentucky populists or Belgian radicals. 

Anyone who wants to distract you from real dangers by telling you to fear this week's pet bogeyman -- global warming! creationists! Ron Paul! -- is not your friend. They are fools and liars who cannot be trusted. They are objectively evil.

The only through-line I can detect in this incoherent gush is this: Liberals are trying to distract you so their friend the Arab terrorist can kill you. So don't shit your pants like they want you to -- shit your pants like Robert Stacy McCain wants you to!

There are other contenders. For example, there's Linda Chavez at Commentary, who attempts to portray President Obama's delivery of planned remarks to a Native American affairs conference before announcing the Fort Hood situation as the equivalent of "President Bush’s 'Pet Goat' moment on 9/11." First of all, Obama was, in the face of crisis, taking care of business rather than, as our last President did, shitting his pants; second, how refreshing to hear a conservative acknowledge there was something weird about "President Bush’s 'Pet Goat' moment on 9/11."

There will be plenty of small-time nutcakes making fools of themselves (like Mad Americans Club, which raves "Obama wants to honor these type of actions with a United States Stamp! USPS New 44-Cent Stamp!!! Celebrates Muslim holiday," apparently referring to this), but the more well-known and respectable rightbloggers are soiling themselves as badly as any of those.

The reason's simple, and the same as it was during 9/11: they think soiling oneself is a sign of patriotism, and consider those who pants are not full of shit to be traitors.

Report: Hasan Snapped Under Weight of Bullying, Anxiety Over Deployment
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

It goes without saying that the usual suspects would view the tragic events at Fort Hood as an act of terror inspired by "jihadism." A soldier, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, reportedly shouted "God is great!" before opening fire on soldiers awaiting deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If one is already inclined to see terrorists lurking beneath one's bed, naturally that's a neat end to the story, and supports whatever simplistic notions about Islam and terrorism one might hold.

Yesterday, as the first sketchy reports started filtering in, I thought that an organized act of political terror was about the least likely scenario to have gone down. (This didn't prevent me from thinking, 'oh, this is not going to go well' when the Major's name was released.)

And as it turns out, unless you're reading Right-wing blogs this morning, it does in fact  appear to be a case of an individual snapping under a variety of stresses.

ABC:

Fort Hood shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, wanted out of the Army after being constantly harassed by others in the military and was called a "camel jockey," his family said.

As Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq, he was suffering from some of the same stresses that he was trained as an Army psychiatrist to treat.

Although the 39-year-old had just been promoted to major in May, his family says he had hired a lawyer to help him get out of the Armed Forces.

"Apparently became very disgruntled in the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced that to a lot of his colleagues," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)...

...After the 9/11 attacks, his cousin says he was the target of constant harassment from others in the military. His tormentors called him a "camel jockey," said his cousin, Nader Hasan. He wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.

While the bullying irritated Hasan, Nader Hasan believes his upcoming deployment is what set him off. The cousin said, "My mom is his mom… and we didn't know he was being deployed until we heard it on the news today."

The whole thing is obviously an incredible tragedy. But as Mark Ames -- who wrote the book about this kind of rage-killing -- points out on the front, this was anything but an isolated incident. All kinds of people "go postal."

That this one happened to be a Muslim and a soldier with strong feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only gives those who were already so inclined an opportunity to use a profound tragedy to impugn an entire faith.

Jon Stewart Gets Teary-Eyed Over the Plight of Glenn Beck's Internal Organs
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 7:27 AM.