The wilders over at Game of Thrones
don't have a ton of taboos—incest!, etc—but it seems they finally ran
into something that displeased their overlords at HBO. Namely: defacing
the image of former President George W. Bush, which no one would have
noticed, except the show creators had to go and brag about it in the DVD
commentary. Sci fi site io9:
If
you keep your eyes peeled when King Joffrey takes Sansa Stark to gaze
upon the spiked head of her dead father around 12 minutes in, you'll
notice that one of the heads looks slightly familiar. Show creators
David Benioff and D.B. Weiss explained in their DVD commentary (from
Season 1, episode 10) that the decapitated head is actually George Bush.
This was discovered by redditor SidIncognito. Read more 
From the Huffington Post:
WASHINGTON -- A critical document from President Barack Obama's free
trade negotiations with eight Pacific nations was leaked online early
Wednesday morning, revealing that the administration intends to bestow
radical new political powers upon multinational corporations,
contradicting prior promises.
The leaked document
has been posted on the website of Public Citizen, a long-time critic of
the administration's trade objectives. The new leak follows substantial
controversy surrounding the secrecy of the talks, in which some members of Congress have complained they are not being given the same access to trade documents that corporate officials receive.
"The outrageous stuff in this leaked text may well be why U.S. trade
officials have been so extremely secretive about these past two years of
[trade] negotiations," said Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen's
Global Trade Watch in a written statement.
Click on the Huffington Post link above to read the whole article.
There was always something about this guy's facile pronouncements about culture that got under my skin. Now I know why. This article is by Yasha Levine from exiledOnline.
Is Malcolm Gladwell America's Most Successful Propagandist and Corporate Shill?
Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as
propaganda, but works more subtly. The master of this nuanced approach
is Malcolm Gladwell.
"I'm necessarily parasitic in a way. I have done well as a parasite. But I'm still a parasite." -- Malcolm Gladwell
In the vast ecosystem of corporate shills, which one is the most
effective? Propaganda works best when it is not perceived as propaganda:
nuance, obfuscation, distraction, suggestion, the subtle introduction
of doubt—these are more effective in the long run than shotgun blasts of
lies. The master of this approach is Malcolm Gladwell. Read the rest here.
