Journalists’ Recent Work Examined Before Embeds
By Charlie Reed – Stars and Stripes
As more journalists seek permission to accompany U.S. forces engaged in escalating military operations in Afghanistan, many of them could be screened by a controversial Washington-based public relations firm contracted by the Pentagon to determine whether their past coverage has portrayed the U.S. military in a positive light.
Internet companies and civil liberties groups were alarmed this spring when a U.S. Senate bill proposed handing the White House the power to disconnect private-sector computers from the Internet.
They’re not much happier about a revised version that aides to Sen. Jay Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat, have spent months drafting behind closed doors. CNET News has obtained a copy of the 55-page draft of S.773 (excerpt), which still appears to permit the president to seize temporary control of private-sector networks during a so-called cybersecurity emergency.
Many media outlets have misfired about guns. Countless newspapers and television networks — from CBS to MSNBC — have misreported that conservative protesters are threatening President Obama with guns at public events. It hasn’t happened.
In Portsmouth, N.H., a man carrying a gun, William Kostric, joined an Aug. 11 health care protest. This was blocks away and hours before Mr. Obama’s town-hall meeting in that city. Mr. Kostric was given permission to be on church property where the protest occurred and was not at the place the president visited. What most of the coverage left out was that Mr. Kostric didn’t carry his gun only for the protest; he legally carries a gun with him all the time for protection.
Charles Jaco was the CNN reporter famous for covering the 1990 Persian Gulf War. The first part of this video shows the stage set he was on, and he was clowning around with fellow CNN staff. The Saudi Arabian “hotel” in the background were fake palm trees and a blue wall in a studio. This clip was leaked by CNN staff.
“In a little time [there will be] no middling sort. We shall have a few, and but a very few Lords, and all the rest beggars.” ~ R.L. Bushman
“Rapidly you are dividing into two classes – extreme rich and extreme poor.” ~ “Brutus”
Americans think that they have “freedom and democracy” and that politicians are held accountable by elections. The fact of the matter is that the US is ruled by powerful interest groups who control politicians with campaign contributions. Our real rulers are an oligarchy of financial and military/security interests and AIPAC, which influences US foreign policy for the benefit of Israel.
The Obama administration will largely preserve Bush-era procedures allowing the government to search — without suspicion of wrongdoing — the contents of a traveler’s laptop computer, cellphone or other electronic device, although officials said new policies would expand oversight of such inspections.
The policy, disclosed Thursday in a pair of Department of Homeland Security directives, describes more fully than did the Bush administration the procedures by which travelers’ laptops, iPods, cameras and other digital devices can be searched and seized when they cross a U.S. border. And it sets time limits for completing searches.
“Suddenly Afghanistan is in the news, and commentators on the right as well as the left are taking note. Tony Blankley, former chief aide to Newt Gingrich and editor of the Washington Times, joins Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuval and Pat Buchanan in comparing Obama to LBJ – a chief executive with an ambitious liberal domestic program dragged down by his commitment to a losing war….”
Obama is keeping his eye on the prize – the Nobel Prize, that is, as a reward for brokering a Middle East “peace” deal. Unfortunately, he’s doing it on the backs of the Palestinian people – and the rest of us, as well.
“Men sleep peacefully in their beds at night because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
George Orwell’s truth comes to mind as one reads that Eric Holder has named a special prosecutor to go after the “rough men” who, to keep us sleeping peacefully at night, went too far in frightening Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the engineer of the September massacres.
by Matthew Cardinale – IPS Interpress News Service
ATLANTA, Georgia (IPS) – A case brought by election integrity advocates in Georgia claiming that unverifiable electronic voting, or E-voting, is unconstitutional could spell trouble for the controversial practice, as it heads to the Georgia Supreme Court for a ruling.
E-voting first started in Georgia. In 2002, the state became the first to use the Diebold AccuVote TS-R6 machines statewide after then-Secretary of State Cathy Cox entered into a 54-million-dollar agreement with Diebold.
About 50 million U.S. citizens used some kind of E-voting technology in the 2008 election cycle.
The Federal Trade Commission is threatening to use antitrust and copyright laws to shut down the New Media – and save “mainstream” journalism
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which usually concerns itself with “consumer protection” issues, is now taking an interest in the journalism industry. The financially strappedNew York Timesreports:
“The commission is planning two days of workshops in December – titled ‘From Town Criers to Bloggers: How Will Journalism Survive the Internet Age?’ – to examine the state of the news industry.”
Fewer than one crime is solved by every 1,000 closed circuit television cameras, the Metropolitan Police, Britain’s biggest police force, has admitted.
The study revealed serious concerns about the effectiveness of the cameras as a crime fighting tool Photo: PA
Each case helped by the use of CCTV effectively costs £20,000 to detect, Met figures showed.
Critics of Britain’s so-called ’surveillance society’ said it raised serious concerns over how police forces used CCTV cameras to fight crime.
Britain is one of the most monitored countries in the world, with an estimated four million cameras nationwide.
Churchill, Hitler, and the Unnecessary War: How Britain Lost Its Empire and the West Lost the World by Patrick J. Buchanan (New York: Crown Publishers, 2008); 518 pages.
Of all the wars the United States has fought, World War II is the most universally celebrated. It was the “Good War,” despite being the bloodiest in world history. Only in the Civil War did more Americans perish. But World War II is seen as the best example of the nation mobilizing completely and righteously to combat evil itself.
Morning routine: On a normal morning I get up before 7 a.m. and get my six papers at the end of the driveway. The Mrs. has the coffee on, and we read the papers with MSNBC on the kitchen television. Then I head downstairs to my basement office, where I write.
How he wrote speeches: Nixon would tell me what he wanted to say. I’d take notes and write so many drafts that the speech ended up more him than me. With Vice President Spiro Agnew, I’d write it and he’d read it. Reagan would send you most of his material. He was a speechwriter.
Thomas Paine’s familiar exhortation forms the centerpiece of a small but potent exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery honoring his tumultuous life. Paintings, engravings and documents trace the rise and fall of this itinerant revolutionary, the most radical of the early American patriots who deserves to be better known.
“He has been compared to Michael Moore and Pat Buchanan,” says curator Margaret Christman. “He was a polarizing figure during his lifetime.”
By Kelley Beaucar Vlahos – The American Conservative Magazine
Toxic exposure torments soldiers long after their tours end.
Retired Sgt. Michael Maynard can no longer feel his feet. He began to notice the problem four years ago while working as an air-traffic control specialist in the Army. After a year at Camp Taji in Iraq, Maynard took off his boots one night and found that a hot piece of metal had slipped inside—hot enough to tear away his skin. Somehow he hadn’t felt it.
The last person to see Syed Mehmood Hashmi as a free man was his friend Mohammed Haroon Saleem, who on June 6, 2006, drove Hashmi to London’s Heathrow Airport, walked him to the security checkpoint, and watched him hoist his bag and head for the gate. But Hashmi never made his flight. At passport control, constables pulled him from the line and told him they had an extradition warrant on behalf of the US government. He was to be charged with aiding Al Qaeda.
“The America I know and love is not one in which my parents or my baby with Down syndrome will have to stand in front of Obama’s ‘death panel’ so his bureaucrats can decide, based on a subjective judgment of their ‘level of productivity in society,’ whether they are worthy of health care. Such a system is downright evil.”
Of Sarah Palin it may be said: The lady knows how to frame an issue.
And while she has been fairly criticized for hyperbole about the end-of-life counselors in the House bill, she drew such attention to the provision that Democrats chose to dump it rather than debate it
Glancing over the New York Times Book Review Sunday, one finds three of the top four non-fiction best-sellers were written by conservatives — columnist Michelle Malkin, talk-show host Mark Levin and Fox News contributor Dick Morris.
At No. 10, in its 40th week on the list, is Bill O’Reilly’s memoir.
No. 1 best-seller in paperback: Glenn Beck’s “Common Sense.”
Moreover, the altarpiece of the transformational presidency, universal health insurance, is on life support, as huge crowds pour into town hall meetings to denounce it. Responding to the protests, the Obamaites have dumped the end-of-life counselors (aka “Death Panels”) and declared the government option expendable.
Was the 'Good War' Unnecessary?
by Anthony Gregory – Antiwar.com
Of all the wars the United States has fought, World War II is the most universally celebrated. It was the “Good War,” despite being the bloodiest in world history. Only in the Civil War did more Americans perish. But World War II is seen as the best example of the nation mobilizing completely and righteously to combat evil itself.