[Artwork by ALEX FINE] COMMON DREAMS: Seymour Hersh says that Dick Cheney headed a secret assassination wing and the head of the wing has just been named as the new commander in Afghanistan. In an interview with GulfNews, (the Persian Gulf’s largest daily English language newspaper published from Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates) on May 12, 2009 Pulitzer prize-winning American investigative journalist, Seymour Hersh, said that there is a special unit called the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) that does high-value targeting of men that are known to be involved in anti-American activities, or are believed to be planning […]
TICKET GIVEAWAY: A Man Called Josh
UPDATE: Phawker has two tickets to give away to the first reader to email us at feed@phawker.com. Please include a daytime phone number. Good luck! Five and a half years ago, before he was the darling of NPR, Josh Ritter walked onstage as opener to Erin McKeown at the TLA, and he did it unplugged. Not just acoustic, but completely unelectrified—so the always-rowdy bar crowd was miraculously hushed into silence to hear Ritter’s uncommonly beautiful Americana. From there, the room was hooked, many of them learning his soft lyrical twists and plaintive melodies for the first time. Since then, thousands […]
ALERT: Driving-While-Cellphoning Ban In Full Effect
INQUIRER: The price for driving and dialing goes from zero to $75 today in Philadelphia as city police begin enforcing the new cell-phone ban on city roadways. It’s not just motorists who will earn the fine as of today for using a handheld cell phone in motion – those traveling by bicycle, skateboard, scooter, or skates will as well. Hands-free devices are still legal. Police have been issuing warnings for the last month, after Mayor Nutter signed the law in April. Police spokesman Lt. Frank Vanore said officers gave out “hundreds” of pink warning cards to drivers they observed using […]
WORTH REPEATING: Rogue Nation
ANDREW SULLIVAN: Palin, as Sam Tanenhaus ably demonstrates in his review of “Going Rogue,” is not a joke candidate. Neither is Cheney. They represent a real populist and authoritarian option for a declining power. In the face of a bewilderingly changing world, they stand for white America, the extension of its power across the globe, the elevation of torture as a core American value, the permanent Israeli occupation of the West Bank, and American occupation of client states like Iraq and Afghanistan. They represent a contempt for addressing climate change, and an indifference to debt – both Palin and Cheney […]
CHARLOTTE GAINSBOURG + BECK: Heaven Can Wait
Charlotte Gainsbourg – Heaven Can Wait from Charlotte Gainsbourg on Vimeo.
POTUS Orders More Cowbell For The Endless War
ASSOCIATED PRESS: After months of debate, President Barack Obama will spell out a costly Afghanistan war expansion to a skeptical public Tuesday night, coupling an infusion of as many as 35,000 more troops with a vow that there will be no endless U.S. commitment. His first orders have already been made: at least one group of Marines who will be in place by Christmas. Obama has said that he prefers “not to hand off anything to the next president” and that his strategy will “put us on a path toward ending the war.” But he doesn’t plan to give any […]
DAILY NEWS: An Obamacare Explainer
DAILY NEWS:The U.S. House already has passed a sweeping health-care bill, and the Senate narrowly voted Nov. 21 to open debate on its own measure, crafted by Majority Leader Harry Reid. If the Senate approves a bill and the two houses of Congress work out an agreeable plan, we could have the most significant new domestic program enacted since Social Security. “I think we’ll see a bill passed, and there’s a pretty good chance of including a public [insurance option,” said Pennsylvania’s newly Democratic Sen. Arlen Specter. “We have to take one step at a time.” The battle will be […]
NPR FOR THE DEAF: We Hear It Even When You Can’t
FRESH AIR From 1967 to 1969, Tommy and Dick Smothers challenged the censors at CBS and the political establishment who tried to tame their wildly popular — and politically left-leaning — show, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour. The brothers lost their show, but later won a battle in court. TV critic David Bianculli joins host Terry Gross to talk about the legendary comedy duo who tackled political issues and censorship.Based on extensive interviews with the Smothers Brothers and other key players, Bianculli describes the siblings’ lives both onscreen and behind the scenes in a new book, Dangerously Funny: The Uncensored […]
SPORTO: En Eff Hell
BY MIKE WOLVERTON SPORTS GUY When it comes to sports, I almost always fall into the “traditionalist” camp. And, truly, I like the tradition of Detroit and Dallas hosting Thanksgiving Day games. But there is no disputing that it is an unfair advantage. Every year, Dallas gets a 9-day layoff coming into the season’s stretch drive. Usually their game after Thanksgiving will be against a team on six days of rest. This is an advantage, and so is the fact that the Cowboys are at home for the Thanksgiving game. This means that their opponent on short rest must travel […]
WORTH REPEATING: The Death of ‘Uncool’
BRIAN ENO: We’re living in a stylistic tropics. There’s a whole generation of people able to access almost anything from almost anywhere, and they don’t have the same localized stylistic sense that my generation grew up with. It’s all alive, all “now,” in an ever-expanding present, be it Hildegard of Bingen or a Bollywood soundtrack. The idea that something is uncool because it’s old or foreign has left the collective consciousness. I think this is good news. MORE
KIA GREGORY: Still Hard Out There For A Pimp
INQUIRER: Forty-three minutes past midnight, a crackle pierced the summer air. For a moment, Leroy Lewis, perched on a concrete wall beside a rowhouse in his Juniata Park neighborhood, talking to two friends, dismissed the sound as leftover fireworks. When Lewis, 19, turned to look, he saw a young man, his baseball cap tilted low, moving from the alleyway across the narrow street, pointing a gun, hunting. “The next shot was me looking at him,” Lewis recounted later. “I just seen a whole bunch of fire.”Lewis took off, dipping behind parked cars, as bullets cut through his stomach, his buttocks, […]
EARLY WORD: God Save The Queen
[“Death Of Cleopatra” by GUIDO CAGNACCI] INQLINGS: Cleopatra, comin’ atcha. Next year, the Franklin Institute will be the first stop in a traveling exhibition about the enigmatic Egyptian queen. “Cleopatra: The Search for the Last Queen of Egypt,” opening June 5, follows the FI’s 2007 blockbuster “Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs,” which National Geographic, the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, and the European Institute for Underwater Archaeology also had a hand in. Cleopatra (69-30 B.C.) was Egypt’s last pharaoh before the Romans stepped in to conquer. The Romans later tried to rewrite history and destroy all traces […]
GAYDAR: My So-Called Life
BY AARON STELLA Welcome back, folks. This chapter of my life story marks the eleventh of its kind. Upon each recounting, I am required to dredge up buried memories that I rarely visit. Recently, however, the impact of my past has become gruesomely clear. There is much left to be done, from what I can see—but I shall be better for it in the end. For those of you who haven’t been following along, you can read the whole story beginning to end after the jump. But for now, onward and upward. So, picking up where I left off last, […]