A Wrinkle in Time

I think I'm getting too senstive to media stupidity (mediacrity?).

Just saw Asieh Namdar of CNN Headline News do the Global News Minute. GLOBAL NEWS MINUTE? Is it just me, or is this another one of those little signs that American exceptionalism has gone *way* too far? We can cover most of the important events in the rest of the world in a MINUTE? I guess an average of a bit less than a third of a second per country isn't bad, right? (60 sec/~150 countries).

A friend of mine pointed out a while ago, echoing Noam Chomsky I think, that if you want to find out what's really going on in the world, read the Wall Street News. They will have the best, most impartial news coverage (not editorial, mind you) because business people need real information to make decisions; only having access to the propaganda you're complicit in is bad for business. (The Economist, for example, has some of the best, most detailed information on Cuba, warts and beauty all the same, but it's available only to those subscribed to their costly economic intelligence reports.)

On an utterly different note, anyone wonder, what with all the talk of democracy these days, what we're still doing having Guam, the US Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico (am I missing any?) under our administrative control? Sure, they have local governments, but these governments don't even have states' rights to protect them from a federal bureaucracy they're not voting members of (ignoring here my beef that states' rights are often misused to maintain the status quo).

How do we justify it? Well, largely, we don't. I'd say a very very low number of people can find these places on a map, much less explain their administrative relationship with the US (i.e. we are effectively "benevolent", if nominally hands-off, dictators in these countries... I mean territories). But the beautiful way to keep their occasional rumblings of independence off the radar is to strip it of rhetorical similarity to the US' revolutionary cry. They are not taxed federally; so there is no "taxation without representation!"

A nice tactical move, but a completely morally bankrupt one. Who are we to preach democracy when we still have several former colonies that are neither sovereign, nor have federal voting rights or voting members in the federal government?

Sigh. Someone please tell me where I'm wrong on this one. Ex-Girlfriend of the J Continuum was regularly quite exercised about the treatment of her Island (should be) Nation of Puerto Rico. (Not least of which: original testing of The Pill was done in part in Puerto Rico, in conjunction with their policy of tying many Puerto Rican womens' tubes, with or without their knowledge. Between these two parts of "La Operacion" -- the attempt to cure PR's ills with so-called population control, many women ended up chemically or physically sterilized. CHEMICALLY STERILIZED? For god's sake.)

J