New York Times // Current TV

Oliver Stone Responds to New York Times Attack

The following letter was sent to The New York Times: Larry Rohter attacks our film,... more

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News: Afghanistan: Worse than a nightmare

Read what New York Times columnist Bob Herbert has to say about the Afghanistan war.... more

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News: Bodies found beheaded. 4 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan

4 U.S. troops killed in Afghanistan. Bodies of Afghan civilians found beheaded.... more

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News: We get blown up and then ambushed by the Taliban

Helmet cam coverage of Taliban attack on U.S. convoy... more

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News: Video of the Afghanistan war the media doesn't care about

The mainstream media in the United States has written off the Afghanistan war, but as... more

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BP Oil Spill Kills its Largest Victim Yet

On Tuesday, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ship spotted the 25-foot... more

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Tony Nominations Prove the Musical Has Lost Its Voice - NYTimes.com

Couldn't Agree More!... more

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USA: Acronym for United States of Assassinations? : Veterans Today

What the United Nations independent investigator on extrajudicial killings would like is for countries that employ surprise drone attacks to first prove they have attempted to capture or incapacitate suspects. The investigator, Philip Alston, issued a 29-page report Wednesday that the New York Times termed “Highly Critical” of such attacks by the U.S. and, says the Associated Press, “called on countries to lay out rules and safeguards for carrying out the strikes.” By going after terrorist networks, Alston warned, the U.S. example “could quickly lead to a situation in which dozens of countries carry out ‘competing drone attacks’ outside their borders against people ‘labeled as terrorists by one group or another,’” Charlie Savage reported for the Times. “I’m particularly concerned that the United States seems oblivious to this fact when it asserts an ever-expanding entitlement for itself to target individuals across the globe,” Alston is quoted as saying. “This expansive and open-ended interpretation of the right to self-defense goes a long way towards destroying the prohibition on the use of armed force contained in the U.N. Charter,” Alston pointed out.

Alston can demand restraint all he likes but the administration of Nobel Peace Prize recipient Barack Obama is not apt to listen. Obama has dramatically stepped up such attacks by the CIA over the occasional sorties resorted to by his predecessor. Washington’s thinking appears to be, Why should U.S. troops risk storming some alleged terrorist hideout when a CIA operator in far-off Langley, Va., needs only to manipulate a computer screen to have a drone wipe them out?

Reasons against using the drones include the possibility there may be innocent persons in the same building as the alleged terrorists. Only a week ago the military conceded its own drone operators called in an airstrike in February that killed 23 Afghan civilians, including women and children. Another argument against drones is that the alleged terrorists have no opportunity to surrender or to get a jury trial. The U.N.’s Alston also warns that for CIA operators thousands of miles from the point of attack “there is a risk of developing a ‘PlayStation’ mentality to killing.” Yet another argument against the drones is that the survivors of those killed regard such attacks as cowardly and each successful (from the CIA’s viewpoint) air strike only increases the public’s resolve to resist the U.S. occupation. Friends and relatives of the slain innocents turn bitterly against the U.S. This situation, by the way, is nothing new. U.S. and British air attacks on German facilities in occupied France during World War II were frequently so off target that the French Resistance pleaded with the U.S. to stop the bombing and to let them take out the Nazi targets from the ground, even at great risk to themselves. Sadly, 70,000 French civilians were killed by Allied aerial bombardments gone awry. “So far,” says international legal authority Francis Boyle of the University of Illinois at Champaign, “all CIA drone attacks have been murders, assassinations, and extrajudicial executions–a grave violation of international human rights law, the laws of the countries where the attacks took place, and of US domestic law.” Boyle added, “All CIA drone strikes in Pakistan are criminal and a grave violation of international human rights law.”

While the laws of war apply to insurgents engaged in armed combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, Boyle says, they do not apply “when they are sleeping at their homes with their families.” Moreover, “it appears that the Pentagon’s use of drones has serious problems of discriminating between civilians and insurgents engaged in armed combat, (resulting in a seriously disproportional ratio between allegedly dead insurgents and civilian casualties) which raises the issue of war crimes accountability.” In about his first 10 months in office, President Obama okayed at least 41 drone strikes in Pakistan that killed between 326 and 538 people, many of them “innocent bystanders, including children,” according to a study by the non-profit New America Foundation of Washington, D.C. Example: on his third day in the White House, Obama sanctioned two strikes, the second of which mistakenly struck the home of a pro-government tribal leader that killed his entire family, including three children, one as young as five. “The point is,” Louise Doswald-Beck, a professor of international law at the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland, told the AP, “innocent people have been killed, this has been proved over and over again.”

Civilian casualties raise the issue of whether remote controlled drones “can ever be used in a manner consistent with the laws of war in actual war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan,” Boyle says. “I suspect that…the Pentagon has consigned this ‘wet-work’ to the CIA,” Boyle added, because “they have a long history of doing it, especially in Operation Phoenix during the Vietnam War. The CIA is an organized and ongoing criminal conspiracy under international law and US domestic law. Does the Pentagon want to or intend to become the same?” he asks.

The CIA’s key role in carrying out what academic critics call international crime, raises troubling questions about who actually is running the United States of America. It should be recalled that Obama—who was employed after graduating Columbia University as a business writer for CIA-front Business International Corp.—wrote a letter to the CIA on April 16, 2009, that stated, “It is a core American value that we are a Nation of laws, and the CIA protects and upholds that principle under extraordinarily difficult circumstances every day.” “Laws?” When Obama has declined to prosecute CIA thugs for torture (in violation of U.S. law) and who obstructed justice by destroying taped recordings of torture sessions! By contrast, Pentagon jailers accused of torturing in the Middle East have been tried and convicted. Bluntly, CIA officials appear to be above the law. The bottom line today is that CIA officials seated at computers in Langley, Va., can decide who lives or dies most anywhere on the planet without regard for international law or fear of prosecution from Obama’s Justice Department. And we have a president formerly employed by the CIA who is empowering its crimes, including assassination, which Webster’s defines as “to kill suddenly or secretively, especially to murder a politically prominent person.” (Italics added.)What the United Nations independent investigator on extrajudicial killings would like... more

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'Fit to Print' Trailer

Trailer from the film 'Fit to Print,' a documentary on the newspaper industry.

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Twelve (Imperfect) Ways to Clean the Gulf

It’s been nearly seven weeks since oil from BP’s deep-ocean Macondo well began gushing into the Gulf of Mexico. Over that time, the public has, understandably, become increasingly frustrated with industry and government efforts to prevent damage to wildlife and wetlands. There is the growing sense — reflected in last week’s discussion of using nuclear weapons to stop the leak and a viral video about using hay to sop up the mess — that somehow, somewhere there are more innovative and effective measures for containing and cleaning up the oil.

But I can tell you, based on 21 years’ experience analyzing and observing oil spills, that the best minds in the business are already doing all they can. No special techniques that would work well to clean up the oil in this situation aren’t being tried or planned. There simply are no foolproof solutions.

Once oil spills into water, responders must race against time and the forces of physics, chemistry and biology to minimize the harm to life in the sea and on land. Oil spreads quickly into a hair-thin sheen and begins to evaporate, dissolve and travel with the winds and currents. Strategies to chemically disperse the oil, vacuum it away, sponge it up, burn it or divert it from especially sensitive areas all have their benefits — and their drawbacks.

So decisions about how to respond to a disaster of this magnitude involve evaluating the tradeoffs and the net long-term benefits to the environment. Efforts to spare marsh birds may hurt fish; a wetland may be protected, but only by diverting oil to a sandy beach; attempts to clean up the oil may involve trampling marshes or polluting the air.

The best strategy, of course, is to prevent spills in the first place. The second best strategy is to do everything possible to clean them up. And that seems to be what is happening.

The chart below summarizes the various cleanup efforts being undertaken or proposed in the gulf and along the coast.

— DAGMAR SCHMIDT ETKIN, an environmental risk consultant, who is advising the State of Louisiana and Mobile County, Ala., on the BP spill

IDEAS FOLLOW---
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/31/opinion/20100606opchart.html?ref=opinionIt’s been nearly seven weeks since oil from BP’s deep-ocean Macondo well... more

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Soccer Academies’ Ugly Side

The new cover story in The New York Times Magazine, “How a Soccer Star is Made,” is a long and detailed article about the intense training that has grown up around youth soccer academies in Europe and what American soccer organizations can learn from their way of doing what has become very big business.

[Dutch soccer team] Ajax puts young players into a competitive caldron, a culture of constant improvement in which they either survive and advance or are discarded. It is not what most would regard as a child-friendly environment, but it is one that sorts out the real prodigies — those capable of playing at an elite international level — from the merely gifted.

From a very early age — sometimes even before a boy has even started school — these players’ careers are contracted, licensed and traded — or in the typical parlance of the sport, bought and sold.
As the New York Times reports:

No one pretends that its business is other than what it is. “We sold Wesley Sneijder for a ridiculous amount of money,” [trainer Olav] Versloot said. “We can go on for years based on what he was sold for.”
...
[British team] Fulham, like Ajax, is often a seller of talent. It recently sold a 20-year-old to Manchester United for seven million pounds, or more than $10 million. “It’s a little ugly talking about the financial terms,” [Coach Huw] Jennings said. “I don’t like to do it. It feels not too far off from the slave trade.”

With an estimated 10,000 boys being trained by clubs in England alone, the demand for young players — in quantity, at least — may be greater than the number of interested UK youth.

Jennings said that his scouts, in response to the “unsuitability of the indigenous population of Britain” — children who are too sedentary and spend their time with video games — were increasingly focused “on the inner city of London, among Africans, Eastern Europeans and Caribbeans.”

But the outreach extends beyond the immigrant communities of inner city London. European clubs have long been scouring the globe looking for the best talent. Six of the last ten FIFA World Players of the Year Awards, for instance, have gone to European club players who hail from either Argentina or Brazil. But increasingly, the sport’s fastest rising stars are coming from Africa.
Recently, I returned from the continent where a generation of kids drawing inspiration from the rags to riches stories of players like Didier Drogba, who was born in Ivory Coast but has since become an international superstar while playing for Chelsea in England.
Even Drogba’s injury, which may keep him out of the World Cup, won’t stop poor boys who grew up playing soccer in dirt fields from wanting to be like him.
For an upcoming episode of Vanguard, “Soccer’s Lost Boys," I travelled to Africa and Europe to examine the dark side of this growing network of recruitment, and to track down the ambitious young African players whose dreams make them an easy target for shady scouts. Unlike European academies where players pay very little to train, these kids’ families are bilked of their meager savings with promises that their boys could be the next Drogba.
What happens after that—boys abandoned along the way, often without any money, papers, or ability to return home to their families—is the tragic, ugly underbelly of the beautiful game.
Watch the trailer for “Soccer’s Lost Boys,” premiering on Current TV on Wednesday, June 16, at 10/9c, after the jump: The new cover story in The New York Times Magazine, “How a Soccer Star is... more

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Megan Fox Hot New York Times Magazine Photoshoot (MQ)

Megan Fox Hot New York Times Magazine Photoshoot (MQ)... more

celeb_gossip
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2 years ago
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“AWOL Bush” NY Times Coverup Revealed, President “Runs Away” During Vietnam War : Veterans Today

FLASHBACK: When the NY Times ignored gaping holes in candidate Bush’s war record... more

Monkey_Films
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2 years ago
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There’s No Voter Insurrection — Americans Are Poorer, Unemployed, and Not Fired Up About Politics « SpeakEasy

It is in the nature of the 24-hour news cycle to dissect each and every vote, poll... more

Monkey_Films
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YouTube's Weirdest Cooking Videos

A new TV network called "The Cooking Channel" launches Monday, but instead... more

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2 years ago
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8 comments

Breaking news: Wait until your read what our military is planning to do next in the Middle East

The New York times is reporting Tuesday that our military commanders are laying out... more

BillCorcoran
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2 years ago
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60 Public Pianos to be placed all over New York City

Touring internationally since 2008, “Play Me, I’m Yours” is an artwork by artist Luke Jerram.

From 21st June – 5th July, 60 upright pianos will be distributed across New York City by Sing for Hope. Located in public parks, streets and plazas the pianos will be available for any member of the public to play and engage with. Their website (http://www.streetpianos.com/nyc2010/) is made for you to post and share your films, photos and stories about the pianos. While documenting each piano’s journey, the website will connect the pianos with their individual communities across the city. Following the artwork, the pianos will be donated to local schools and community groups.

Play Me, I’m Yours is being presented simultaneously in London and New York. Connect here with the street pianos across the Atlantic.

http://www.streetpianos.com/nyc2010/

The street pianos project grew out of a disaster. Sky Orchestra is an performance artwork of mine that involves playing music in surround sound from 7 hot air balloons. Drifing over a city at dawn the aim is to inspire the publics’ imagination as they lie at home in their beds. In 2007 we were commissioned to perform over Birmingham and we’d promised the city council we’d reach an audience of 100,000 people. We all turned up to perform but the MET office got their weather prediction wrong and it was too windy to fly. We had to pay all the pilots and musicians for this failed attempt and had no artwork to show for it. With most of the budget blown, I had to think of a new artwork in just 3 weeks, that would reach 100,000 people. Play Me, I’m Yours is that artwork.

Play Me, I’m Yours was designed to act as a catalyst for strangers who regularly occupy the same space, to talk and connect with one another. Listening to this BBC world radio service programme, it seems to be working.

Disrupting people’s negotiation of their city, the pianos are also aimed to provoke people into engaging, activating and claiming ownership of their urban landscape.

The pianos have also levered many hidden musicians from out of the woodwork. It has become apparent that there are hundreds of pianists out there who don’t have access to a piano to play. ‘Play Me I’m Yours’ provides access to musical instruments and provides musicians an opportunity to share their creativity by performing in public.

Like Facebook, the street pianos, together with this website, provide a interconnected resource, an empty blank canvas, for the public to express themselves and share their creativity.Touring internationally since 2008, “Play Me, I’m Yours” is an... more

SageRockandRoll
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Diaspora: The Student-Made, Privacy-Respecting Facebook Alternative

As Facebook completes its Galactic Senate-to-Imperial Empire transformation, four... more

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Graphic: Facebook's Ludicrously Complicated Privacy Settings

Facebook has 50 settings with more than 170 options...just for privacy. The absurdity... more

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Jason Alper: New York Times Review

Borat’s Designer Redresses Art from CULTURE By KATHLEEN EGAN... more

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