Browsing PBH By Articles

Six Of The Worst Conservative Moral Hypocrites

Scandals are nothing new in politics but as of late, the purveyors of indecent acts have often been those who had previously most vociferously demonized and chastised others for their ‘immoral’ behavior. Here’s a list of seven of the worst “do as I say but not as I do” offenders:

6. Larry ”Happy feet” Craig

Larry Craig both loves and hates naughty boys

While serving as a Republican senator for Idaho, Craig was arrested for attempting to solicit some man lovin’ in a bathroom stall from an undercover police officer at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Craig was a long-standing opponent of gay rights and gay marriage, and voted against homosexuality being included in hate crimes legislation. Even funnier (and weirder) in retrospect is the quote he offered to Tim Russert in 1999 in the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal:

“The American people already know that Bill Clinton is a bad boy – a naughty boy. I’m going to speak out for the citizens of my state, who in the majority think that Bill Clinton is probably even a nasty, bad, naughty boy.”

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To An Astounding April: The Best Of PBH Network In April

It’s been quite an April for the PBH Network: over 5 million visitors, our first (record-setting!) 500,000 visitor day, and over 3,600 fans on Facebook. With such a great month, we wanted to recap the best performing content from April from across the PBH Network:

5. What Happens When A Hippie Gives You 30 Hits Of Acid

Our unnamed protagonist — a worker at a local coffee shop — describes how he would leave out food for the homeless, only to have his generosity repaid one fateful evening by a local hippie who proceeded to put 30 hits of acid into his mouth. What would follow was an incredible journey told brilliantly by the narrator.

4. Dam Goats!
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Let’s Get Personal

It’s been a while since I’ve done something like this. Back when ProseBeforeHos got started in 2005, it existed as an outlet for personal musings without a direction or purpose. Up until 2008, we were lucky to get 100 hits a day.

With a little perseverance and a lot of internet addiction, ProseBeforeHos developed into 5 different sites that would form the PBH Network. By April 2010, we hit a new marker of over 2 million visitors in a month. This April, we surpassed 4 million visitors a month.

Needless to say, I never imagined this happening, as I had always thought that PBH would be a hobby-horse as I meandered through life. Now, PBH has become a full-time commitment, not only for me, but a couple of other people. Truth be told, it’s really intimidating and isolating, and I still haven’t found a way to explain what we do to others (what do you do when the most serious website you run is called ProseBeforeHos?).

I want to say thanks especially to Kit — the intrepid PBH co-founder, contributor, and all around tech wizard — for his help in this transformation, our fans and visitors for enjoying our content, and everyone else that’s been along for the ride. We have some really exciting things going on with PBH that we hope will improve the experience of using our sites and increase the community and caliber of the PBH Network. Thanks again everyone.

Always,
Alec

Subjection And Local Rule In A Unipolar World

The Title: An Empire of Failed States by Alfred W. McCoy, Brett Reilly, and Tom Engelhardt on Antiwar.com.

The Text: Imperial powers hedge their bets. The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt. While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out—thank you, WikiLeaks!—that the U.S. government was shuttling far smaller amounts (millions, not billions) to various “American government-financed organizations” loosely connected with Congress or with the Democratic and Republican parties. Some of that money, in turn, was being invested in “democracy-building campaigns” aimed at teaching young Egyptian activists how to organize a movement against their autocratic ruler, how to make the best use of social networking sites, and so on.

In other words, in Egypt (and elsewhere in the Middle East), Washington was funding both the autocrats and the young activists who opposed them and who, in Egypt, would be crucial players in the Tahrir Square movement that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak. As one of those activists told the New York Times, “While we appreciated the training we received through the NGOs sponsored by the U.S. government, and it did help us in our struggles, we are also aware that the same government also trained the state security investigative service, which was responsible for the harassment and jailing of many of us.”
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The Hypocrisy Of American Involvement In Libya

NATO, with America at the helm, is becoming increasingly involved in Libya under the guise of a humanitarian mission to protect the intentional killing of civilians opposed to the Libyan government. President Gaddafi has proven he is willing to murder his own people in order to stay in power and his removal from power may bring about a more democratic government and open society. However, what are the real reasons America and its allies have become so invested in Libya, given the unrest, uprising, and repression going on across the Middle East?

Consider the following: recent statistics place the civilian death toll in Libya at approximately 6,000. However, there are far worse scenarios in which the US did nothing and current humanitarian situations where the US continues to do nothing. In the early 1990’s, the Rwandian genocide claimed the lives of 800,000 people (20% of the countries population at the time), and yet we did nothing. It took 5 years of civil war and several years of on-the-ground reporting of massacres in Yugoslavia for NATO to act decisively. Meanwhile, regimes across the Middle East (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Kuwait, and Yemen) have had massive protests that have ended with respective armies mowing down unarmed civilians. What has suddenly motivated the US and its allies to consider the Libyan situation worthy of active intervention?
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