THREE DOTS

Marc Weisblott was one of blogland's savviest culture commentators, but he quit blogging. So said I on Monday. He read the item and on Tuesday began posting again. This time he's calling his posts radio weisblogg, "news and commentary about the evolution of AM/FM etc." Have a look while it lasts. You'll see what I meant. ...

The Burlington Free Press, in Vermont, was the first daily newspaper I worked at (as a feature writer). They even put me to work writing the occasional editorial. This item, "Banned in Burlington" (via Poynter), would have caught my attention anyway. But it's particularly lousy news for someone who was proud to work there once upon a time. ...

This op-ed piece also grabbed my eye: "Improve the CIA? Better to abolish it." It's from February in the San Francisco Chronicle, but very timely in view of George Tenet's testimony earlier this week before the 9/11 commission. And it's by the historian Chalmers Johnson, the same guy who wrote with chilling prescience in "Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire," a year before the 9/11 attacks:

Terrorism by definition strikes at the innocent in order to draw attention to the sins of the invulnerable. The innocent of the twenty-first century are going to harvest unexpected blowback disasters from the imperialist escapades of recent decades. Although most Americans may be largely ignorant of what was, and still is, being done in their names, all are likely to pay a steep price -- individually and collectively -- for their nation's continued efforts to dominate the global scene. Before the damage of heedless triumphalist acts and the triumphalist rhetoric and propaganda that goes with them becomes irreversible, it is important to open a new discussion of our global role ...

Has the damage become irreversible? Johnson thinks so, as noted earlier this week.