links for 2010-06-04

We all know about Afghanistan – a poor and predominantly Muslim nation that's never really made it out of the Middle Ages, right?

Well, it turns out that's simply not the case: retconning Afghanistan as a backward barbarian enclave has probably been useful for the global psyops propaganda machine

Wojtek was a Syrian Brown Bear adopted by the 22nd while they were stationed in Persia. Wojtek proved to be the ultimate office pet for these war-weathered Poles, eating with them, drinking booze with them, sleeping in their barracks and trekking with them all the way from Persia to Palestine. Once the 22nd was ready to ship for Italy, Wojtek had two options: go home, or get a job. Sure enough, young Wojtek answered his call of duty, and officially enlisted in the Polish Army as a Private.

"Information wants to be free" has the same relationship to the digital rights movement that "kill whitey" has to the racial equality movement: a thoughtless caricature that replaces a nuanced, principled stand with a cartoon character. Calling IWTBF the ideological basis of the movement is like characterising bra burning as the primary preoccupation of feminists (in reality, the number of bras burned by feminists in the history of the struggle for gender equality appears to be zero, or as close to it as makes no difference).

Simultaneously, most of the small businesses along the Gulf coast, which have nothing to do with the oil industry, have been crushed. Someone explain to those people how they shouldn't sweat it — their businesses are just small sacrifices in the grander scheme of unregulated capitalism on the march. Clear the way, Mr. Gump with your shrimp boat, the free market has to drill, baby, drill. Didn't you hear? The "era of big government" ended back in the 1990s. You obviously didn't get the message, so, you know, buh-bye.