New York Times // Current

Verizon: How Much Do You Charge Now?

From the Desk of David Pogue: Starting next week, Verizon will double the... more

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Ruling on Katrina Flooding Favors Homeowners

NEW ORLEANS — A federal judge found Wednesday evening that poor maintenance of a... more

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Blackout of Blackwater? Fox News Reports on ACORN and Bow-gate instead

"On November 10th, former Blackwater Worldwide executives admitted to secretly approving $1 million in bribes to Iraqi officials to silence criticism and purchase support after 17 civilians were fatally shot in Baghdad in September 2007.

So when I woke up this morning, I flipped through the morning news cycle, and what did I find?

Fox News had a new ACORN video they wanted to break.

Really. I couldn't make this up. This story lasted nearly 10 minutes and there was no reporting on the Blackwater scandal.

There was not a single mention of Blackwater or Xe, the company's new name, at any point the day after the story broke, according to transcripts. In fact, according to reports, Fox News Sunday spent a considerable amount of time discussion a photo of President Obama bowing before Japanese Emperor Akihito while failing to mention the Blackwater story even once.

Conversely, Fox News Sunday spent a total of 18 minutes discussing the ACORN tapes after Fox News broke that story in September.

Glen Beck has spent no time discussing the Blackwater case, while dedicating countless hours to ACORN coverage over the course of a few months. This pattern is reflected throughout the network.

Blackwater, which has been paid $1.4 Billion by the U.S. government since 2004, was denied an operating license by the Iraq government in March of 2009 in light of mass public outcry against the group after the Nisur Square shootings.

From the New York Times:

"At midday on Sept. 16, 2007, a Blackwater convoy opened fire on Iraqi civilians in the crowded intersection, spraying automatic weapons fire in ways that investigators later claimed was indiscriminate, and even launching grenades into a nearby school. Seventeen Iraqis were killed and dozens more were wounded."

Now, four former employees have admitted that Gary Jackson, Blackwaters president at the time, approved a series of bribes totally $1 million- that's $1 million of American tax dollars- to be paid to Iraqi officials to keep them in good favor.""On November 10th, former Blackwater Worldwide executives admitted to secretly... more

MyRealPolitik
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Obama Skirts Chinese Political Sensitivities in Visit

BEIJING — Whether by White House design or Chinese insistence, President Obama has... more

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What Could Possibly Be Worse Than A Virus?

Once a predator uses your Internet connection to go to into the bowels of the web,... more

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L'articolo del New York Times sull'enorme pattumiera galleggiante nell'Oceano Pacifico è stato finanziato dalle micro donazioni dei lettori, iscritti al sito web dei giornalisti free lance Spot.us.

Shock per la scoperta di un vortice di rifiuti grande due volte la Francia nel bel... more

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Gourmet, goodbye

The global crisis of newspaper has a new victim: Gourmet Magazine. Now there's a... more

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Gourmet, addio

La crisi mondiale dei giornali ha avuto un'altra vittima eccellente: Gourmet Magazine.... more

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Got a Sugar Daddy?

Are mom and dad footing the bill? Or are you independent from their means? YPNation... more

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Iraq's bomb detectors are useless?

Getting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security forces in Iraq are using bomb detecting "wands" that the Pentagon thinks are useless. All those checkpoints that are supposed to keep Iraq's cities safe from car bombs might not be having much of an effect at all.

From the NY Times:
"The Iraqis, however, believe passionately in them. “Whether it’s magic or scientific, what I care about is it detects bombs,” said Maj. Gen. Jehad al-Jabiri, head of the Ministry of the Interior’s General Directorate for Combating Explosives. Dale Murray, head of the National Explosive Engineering Sciences Security Center at Sandia Labs, which does testing for the Department of Defense, said the center had “tested several devices in this category, and none have ever performed better than random chance.”

Iraq is in the middle of a delicate transition period. Things have begun to seem more stable, less violent. US troops have pulled back to their bases, out of the cities. And blast walls in the capital have even come down. But with recent bombings in Baghdad - bomb detection is a really critical part of maintaining security. The New York Times described the wands as working on the "same principle as a Ouija board" - by the power of user suggestion.

From the NY Times:
"On Tuesday, a guard and a driver for The New York Times, both licensed to carry firearms, drove through nine police checkpoints that were using the device. None of the checkpoint guards detected the two AK-47 rifles and ammunition inside the vehicle. During an interview on Tuesday, General Jabiri challenged a Times reporter to test the ADE 651, placing a grenade and a machine pistol in plain view in his office. Despite two attempts, the wand did not detect the weapons when used by the reporter but did so each time it was used by a policeman. “You need more training,” the general said."

On the Current News Blog: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/05/iraqs-bomb-detectors-are-useless/

The story in the NY Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/middleeast/04sensors.html
Image: http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2009/11/04/world/04sensors_CA1.htmlGetting caught up on this story from yesterday in the NY Times: Apparently security... more

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40,000 Schools Instead of 40,000 Troops

Dispatching more troops to Afghanistan would be a monumental bet and probably a bad... more

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23 days ago
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A Real War on the Press

For a genuine presidential war on the press, see the one FDR waged in the 1930s.

How touchy can you get?

The White House fires a few pop-guns in the direction of Fox News Channel, and suddenly everybody from Louis Menand in The New Yorker to Michael Scherer in Time to Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post is heralding the Obama administration's declaration of war on Rupert Murdoch's cable station.

The direct declaration came not from Barack Obama, but underlings Anita Dunn, who called Fox the communications arm of the GOP; David Axelrod, who said Fox isn't really a news station; and Rahm Emanuel, who invoked the president's views to say, "It's not a news organization so much as it has a perspective." The closest His Obamaness has come to criticizing Fox on the record was in June, when he complained of "one television station that is entirely devoted to attacking my administration."

o get a genuine picture of what a war on the press looks like, you can't fan the pages of Nexis for grouchy things George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or even Richard Nixon said about reporters, newspapers, and networks. You've got to go back to the 1930s, when President Franklin D. Roosevelt raged against the press like noisy clockwork.

Roosevelt's fury couldn't have been more displaced, in part because newspapers and reporters received him like a conquering hero after his 1932 election, reports Graham J. White in his 1979 book, FDR and the Press:

The initial victory of Franklin Roosevelt over the Washington press was swift and glorious. Demonstrating a virtuosity that amazed them, the new president took the Capital correspondents by storm, winning, from the outset, their affection and admiration; securing, over the crucial early stages of the New Deal, their allegiance and support.

Roosevelt especially disliked "interpretive reporting," which Time and Newsweek were popularizing, writes Betty Houchin Winfield in her 1990 book, FDR and the News Media. Roosevelt recoiled when a reporter asked him what interpretive angle the president would take if he were to write a piece about the Democratic Party's 1934 landslide victory. "I think it is a mistake for newspapers to go over into that field in the news stories," Roosevelt said. His prescription for what reporters should do for readers: "Give them the facts and nothing else." (One can almost see Dunn and Axelrod giving Fox the same advice.)

The president reserved his greatest disdain for press proprietors, whom he blamed for what he considered unfair and distorted coverage. "It is not the reporter" who is responsible for "colored news stories and the failure on the part of some papers to print the news," Roosevelt said in December 1935. "It goes back to the owner of the paper."For a genuine presidential war on the press, see the one FDR waged in the 1930s.... more

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New York Times Narrows Losses

The New York Times Co. narrowed its losses in the most recent quarter, though the... more

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San Francisco to Vote on Immigration Reporting Policy

SAN FRANCISCO — The San Francisco board of supervisors is expected to vote Tuesday... more

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The New York Times to eliminate 100 newsroom jobs

The New York Times reports today that the paper will cut 8 percent of its newsroom... more

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The Daily Talk in Liberia

In Monrovia, Liberia few can afford to buy newspapers, electric power is scarce, and... more

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FBI Veteran Executive Calls For Special Counsel Investigation, Prosecutions in Sibel Edmonds Case

An 18-year Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Manager for the FBI has called for a Special Counsel to be appointed to investigate the allegations of FBI translator-turned-whistleblower Sibel Edmonds. John M. Cole, who now works as an intelligence contractor for the Air Force, made his comments during an audio interview released late last week with radio journalist Peter B. Collins.

He also offered a detailed insider's look at the concerns among high-level officials inside the Bureau as Edmonds' disturbing allegations began coming to light back in 2002, before they would be quashed for seven long years by the Bush Administration's unprecedented use of the so-called "State Secrets Privilege" to gag her.

Earlier last week, following the publication of a remarkable American Conservative magazine cover story interview with Edmonds --- detailing a broad bribery, blackmail, and espionage conspiracy said to have been carried out between current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials and covert operatives from Turkey and Israel, resulting in the theft and sale of nuclear weapons technology on the foreign black market --- Cole had been quoted by the magazine confirming one of Edmonds' key allegations.

"I am fully aware of the FBI's decade-long investigation of" Marc Grossman, he said in response to the AmCon article/interview. Grossman had served as the third-highest ranking official in the Bush State Department and was alleged by Edmonds in the interview, and in a sworn, video-taped deposition a month earlier, to have been the U.S. ringleader for a massive Turkish espionage scandal reaching through the halls of power and into top-secret nuclear facilities around the country to the benefit of allies and enemies alike. Cole said that the FBI's counterintelligence probe "ultimately was buried and covered up," and that he believes it is "long past time" for an investigation of the case to "bring about accountability."

In his subsequent interview with Collins last week (audio and text excerpts posted below) Cole elaborated on those comments in much greater detail, noting that Edmonds has been "one hundred percent right on the money, on the mark" and confirming the existence of an "ongoing and detailed effort by Turkey to develop influence in the United States" through various illegal activities.

"Yes, I can confirm that," Cole told Collins, "That's true."

The FBI veteran executive also offered an insider's account of the panic that ensued inside the highest echelons of the bureau following Edmonds' first disclosure of information in 2002, recounting how an executive assistant director admitted to him at the time, just after the story first broke, "Well, all I know is that everything that Sibel is stating is true. I read her file. Everything she stated is, in fact, accurate."
Cole further describes how the concerns about Edmonds ultimately led to the Bush Administration's two-time use of the Draconian "State Secrets Privilege" in hopes of keeping her extraordinary information from becoming public. "Everybody at headquarters level at the bureau knew that what she was saying was extremely accurate."

"I know they didn't want her to go out and speak about it at all," Cole revealed, "and I know they were trying to figure out ways of keeping this whole thing quiet, because they didn't want Sibel to come out."

He also offered information which directly counters one of the criticisms of Edmonds' allegations as frequently offered by skeptics. Namely, that as a short time FBI contract translator --- even though she was tasked to review some seven years of counterintelligence wiretaps made from 1996 to 2002 --- she couldn't have had enough understanding of the full scope of the investigations to understand what was really going on.
More...An 18-year Counterintelligence and Counterterrorism Manager for the FBI has called for... more