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Mainstream Media

January 12, 2005 - 2:17pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

Anonymous Comrade writes

"An Eminence With No Shades of Gray"

Michael Powell, Washington Post

[Originally appeared in May, 2002. This post forwarded from Dan Clore, ainfos"

.]

Cambridge, Mass. — The talk is of terrorism and the terrible delusions of the
powerful, and of the real bottom line of Sept. 11. Which the famous professor explains this way:

"The atrocities of Sept. 11 are quite new in world affairs,
not in scale and character, but in target. The United States
exterminated its indigenous population, conquered half of
Mexico, and carried out depredations all over. Now, for the
first time since the British burned the White House in [the
War of] 1812, the guns have been directed the other way."

Our professor is being a touch provocative here, no? He glances sideways at you, through silver-rimmed glasses,
and smiles. If you listen closely, he seems sure he can
penetrate the fog.


"This is not complicated," he says in that softly insistent
voice. "You can be a pure hypocrite or you can look at
events honestly."

December 29, 2004 - 10:00am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

'Terror Trial' Could Turn on Three Defendants' Risky Move to Testify

Larry Neumeister, Associated Press

NEW YORK — In a calculated risk rarely seen in a federal courtroom, three defendants accused of helping a convicted terrorist communicate deadly messages to overseas followers spent several weeks on the witness stand testifying in their own defense.


Their gambit will now be put to the test.


After nearly six months of testimony, closing arguments were set to begin Wednesday in the trial of civil rights lawyer Lynne Stewart and her two co-defendants, all of whom were members of a legal team that represented imprisoned Egyptian Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman in the 1990s.

December 14, 2004 - 4:11pm -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"Poll: Over 50% of Germans Equate Israeli Defense Force with Nazi
Army"
Etgar Lefkovits, Jerusalam Post"

Six decades after the mass extermination of six million Jews in the Holocaust by Nazi Germany, more than 50 percent of Germans believe that
Israel's present-day treatment of the Palestinians is similar to what the
Nazis did to the Jews during World War II, a German survey released this
weekend shows.

December 12, 2004 - 11:25am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"Over 5,500 Deserters: We Won't Go To Iraq"

CBSNews.com


The Pentagon says more than 5,500 servicemen have
deserted since the war started in Iraq.


The CBS TV news program "60 Minutes" Wednesday found several of these deserters
who left the Army or Marine Corps rather than go to
Iraq. Like a generation of deserters before them, they
fled to Canada.


What do these men, who have violated orders and oaths,
have to say for themselves? They told Correspondent
Scott Pelley that conscience, not cowardice, made them
American deserters.

December 6, 2004 - 9:35am -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"A 'Plague of Artists' Is a Battle Cry for Brooklyn Hasidim"

Tara Bahrampour, New York Times

Several weeks ago Mikey Weiss, an electronics store owner with an
overgrown blond Mohawk, was visited in his shop on the north side of
Williamsburg, Brooklyn, by a couple of men in mink hats.


"These two Hasidic guys, dressed as Hasidically as you could possibly
dress, came in and asked me what kind of people live in this
neighborhood," Mr. Weiss said, adding that he told them the area was
largely populated with people in their 20's and 30's, including many
artists.


"They said: 'Artists! That's it!' " he recalled. "They said, 'We want to
hear about these artists we've heard are moving to our neighborhood.'
They asked: 'Are they noisy? Do they cause trouble?' "

December 5, 2004 - 3:54pm -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"He Was a Communist For Dutch Intelligence"

Andrew Higgins, Wall Street Journal

ZANDVOORT, Netherlands — As secretary-general of the Marxist- Leninist Party of the Netherlands, Chris Petersen traveled the globe during the Cold War, wowing Communist leaders with his revolutionary zeal and anticapitalist diatribes.


"I could make speeches for hours and you would think that Mao Tse-tung himself had been my teacher," recalls the now-retired party chief.


The Chinese Communist Party was so impressed, it regularly gave the ranting Dutchman the full red-carpet treatment in Beijing: banquets in the Great Hall of the People, an audience with Mao, envelopes stuffed with cash and tributes in the People's Daily. Albania's Communists were also big fans.


Now, with communism all but dead, the Dutchman has decided to come clean: Both he and his party were a sham.

December 4, 2004 - 1:52am -- nolympics
News
Mainstream Media

"BBC Reputation Hit by Bhopal Interview Hoax"
Matt Wells and Randeep Ramesh, The Guardian

The BBC's worldwide reputation for accuracy took a blow yesterday after it broadcast an interview with a hoaxer who claimed to offer a $12bn settlement to the 120,000 surviving victims of the Bhopal disaster.

Hopes were raised in India when the BBC's international news channel, BBC World, interviewed a man identified as a representative of Dow Chemical, which now runs the Bhopal plant after taking over Union Carbide.

He said Dow accepted full responsibility for the world's worst industrial disaster, which has claimed the lives of 20,000 people over the past 20 years, and left many more with chronic health problems.

But it soon emerged that Jude Finisterra was a hoaxer who has targeted Dow Chemical in the past. His interview, which was picked up and reported internationally, was shown twice on BBC World, and on BBC television and radio in Britain, before it was pulled.

December 1, 2004 - 12:58pm -- jim
News
Mainstream Media

"Canadian Probe Over Aired Arab Slurs:

Arafat Mourners Derided on MSNBC"

Antonia Zerbisias, Toronto Star

The all-news MSNBC, which recently got the go-ahead for unrestricted access to Canada's digital dial, may have run afoul of our hate laws when its Imus In The Morning advocated dropping a bomb on Palestinians to "kill 'em all."


Both the RCMP and the federal broadcast watchdog are on the case, investigating complaints from some two dozen Canadians.

November 29, 2004 - 12:55pm -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Mainstream Media

"Georgia Goes Full Throttle With Privatization:

Former Soviet Republic Hopes Sales Will Raise More Than $1 Billion"

Selina Williams, Wall Street Journal


As Georgia celebrates the first anniversary of its bloodless revolution, its leaders are telling foreign investors that nearly everything is for sale.

Airports, seaports and the country's entire telecommunications network are among 1,800 state-owned assets that will go on the block in the former Soviet republic over the next two years.

November 28, 2004 - 9:58pm -- nolympics
News
Mainstream Media


"Press Routinely Undercounts U.S. Casualties in Iraq"

Editor and Publisher



As the toll of Americans killed and wounded in Iraq in November approaches record levels for one month in this war, is the press only telling part of the story?

The Pentagon's latest official count, provided on Wednesday, listed 1230 American military killed in Iraq and another 9300 U.S. troops wounded in action. How seriously? More than 5000 of them were too badly injured to return to duty. More than 850 troops were reported to have been wounded in action in Falluja so far.

But this only scratches the surface of the total toll.

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