20 February 2008
News and Comments - 02/20/08
Posted by Joy Bischoff under: What's News .
Many of you share articles and we appreciate your contributions. We want to provide a convenient place for those articles, also comments that you are not sure where else to put.
8 Comments so far...
Cameron Says:
20 February 2008 at 8:35 am.
Ahmadinejad: Israel filthy bacteria
In yet another verbal attack against Israel, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the Jewish state a “filthy bacteria” whose sole purpose was to oppress the other nations of the region.
Jafari: If attacked, Iran will target US Forces in neighboring countries
“The world powers established this filthy bacteria, the Zionist regime, which is lashing out at the nations in the region like a wild beast,” the Iranian president told supporters at a rally in southern Iran.
“[Israel] won support [from the other nations] which created it as a scarecrow, so as to keep the people of this area under control,” Ahmadinejad said.
Referring to the assassination of Hizbullah terror chief Imad Mughniyeh, the Iranian leader said that Israel “uses terror as a threat every day, and afterwards is happy and joyful.”
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1203343707673&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull
Cameron Says:
20 February 2008 at 8:45 am.
Journalist Who Exposes U.N. Corruption Disappears From Google
NEW YORK — How big do you have to be to earn the wrath of the United Nations and Internet
When Lee received the e-mail from Google, he responded immediately, noting that Inner City Press had been accredited by the U.N. and was mentioned frequently in other media as an important U.N. watchdog.
A Google representative answered that Inner City Press would be restored to the Google News service as usual, but that the process might take “a couple weeks,” according to Lee. Still, from Feb. 13 on, Inner City Press stories stopped showing up on Google News, something Google attributes to a technical error.
“We acknowledged our misunderstanding … but it takes time for the restoration to occur,” Stricker said. “The glitch will be resolved as soon as possible. We’re working on it.”
The reaction to the de-listing, however temporary, has been furious. The non-profit Government Accountability Project lambasted the company, calling Inner City Press “the most effective and important media organization for UN whistleblowers.”
“We’re alarmed,” said Bea Edwards, GAP’s international-program director. “The question is, is what user sent the complaint? And it’s probably not too hard to guess. We would guess the complaints came from the UNDP.”
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,331106,00.html
“The sad story about Google is that they’re shutting people up and not doing a good thing for society by only defending their business interests,” he said. “They have a responsibility to society in letting people speak out. And I’m not surprised that those U.N. agencies are trying to hide.”
Google refuses to reveal who sent the complaint against Inner City Press, citing privacy concerns.
Lee, who hasn’t stopped writing his U.N. exposes despite the temporary de-listing, said that he’s taken aback by the lengths to which, according to him, an international organization ostensibly dedicated to world peace will go to silence a critic as obscure to the general public as himself.
“It’s a little weird,” he said. “I guess they’re just so unused to being covered like a public organization.”
Cameron Says:
20 February 2008 at 8:52 am.
This was a very interesting article. We have been watching the media turn on McCain. I hope you guys mind me taking this much space but I can’t help myself. I want the whole thing.
Media Discover McCain’s Temper
Tuesday, February 19, 2008 4:38 PM
By: Ronald Kessler Article Font Size
Now that John McCain is the presumptive Republican nominee for president, the mainstream media’s honeymoon with the maverick Republican senator may be over. One story that has suddenly found favor is on McCain’s temper.
Reporters who cover McCain have long been aware of his sometimes explosive outbursts, but until now, that’s been a secret they have kept to themselves.
In this column, I first discussed McCain’s temper in July 2006. Yet it was not until the week of Super Tuesday, when it became clear that McCain would be the Republican nominee that The Washington Post, Newsweek, The Associated Press, and finally The New York Times suddenly burst forth with stories on McCain’s temper and off-color remarks.
The Times’ story said that in talking with reporters, McCain has referred to Brooke Buchanan, his own spokeswoman, as “Pat Buchanan’s illegitimate daughter.” He also has described her as “bipolar,” “a drunk,” “someone with a lot of boyfriends,” and “just out of Betty Ford,” a reference to the rehab clinic.
Until now, the media have ignored McCain’s temper and controversial remarks largely because he gives the press access and is a liberal on some key issues. A Dec. 13, 1999 profile of McCain in Time magazine actually admitted that reporters sometimes cover for him by not reporting controversial things he tells them on the record “because they don’t want to see him flame out and burn up a great story.”
In contrast, when he was in the race, the media never failed to beat up on Mitt Romney over his religion and his much-exaggerated flip-flops. After Romney won in Michigan, the AP’s Ron Fournier wrote: “The former Massachusetts governor pandered to voters, distorted his opponents’ record, and continued to show why he’s the most malleable — and least credible — major presidential candidate.”
As for McCain, “The man who spoke hard truths to Michigan lost,” Fournier said. “Of all the reasons John McCain deserved a better result Tuesday night, his gamble on the economy stands out.”
When the Romney camp last month released a “Top 10” list of McCain’s outbursts, no media outlet ran them. Now that Romney is out of the race and McCain is the Republican standard bearer, the media are perfectly happy to go after him to boost Barack Obama’s chances. As a TV network reporter told me, the mainstream media love Obama, and reporters are accused by their editors of bias if they propose critical stories about him.
Republican Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi, who has known McCain for more than three decades, has said his endorsement of Romney was prompted partly by his fear of how McCain might behave in the Oval Office.
“The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine,” Cochran said about McCain. Cochran has had second thoughts and is now strongly supporting Senator McCain.
For those of us who are aware of how quickly America would become more vulnerable to a terrorist attack if a Democrat entered the White House and began stripping away the tools needed to uncover plots, McCain is by far the best presidential candidate. Al-Qaida’s goal is to wipe out America with a nuclear attack. If that were to happen, every other issue would become meaningless.
Presumably, the media’s sudden focus on McCain’s temper will lead him to cool it in the future. But the spectacle of the mainstream media ignoring McCain’s temper and then, after he becomes the presumptive nominee, quickly following each other like lemmings to write about it, tells a lot about their often-corrosive influence on the democratic process and why more and more Americans now look to other outlets for their news.
E.E. Says:
20 February 2008 at 10:24 am.
This is a great article about McCain. The press is snotty for holding out on this until Mitt was out but I am still glad to see the truth coming out about McCain.
Cavetrollhead Says:
20 February 2008 at 12:20 pm.
OK I got one for you but I will just post the link.
US Mom arrested and awaiting trial for smuggling “spark plugs” to be used for nuclear weapons.
Cameron Says:
20 February 2008 at 3:45 pm.
Here is part of an article in USA Today that goes along with the one yesterday. Things don’t look very good:
WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve on Wednesday issued a downbeat assessment of the economy, predicting growth this year will be far slower than forecast just last fall, while inflation and unemployment will be higher.
The forecast was released in conjunction with the minutes from the Fed’s Jan 29-30 meeting, at which Fed policymakers said they were growing increasingly worried about the economy, and “several” officials noted there was a very real possibility of an actual downturn.
“Several participants noted that the risks of a downturn in the economy were significant,” the minutes of the meeting held January 29-30 said.
The risk of both slower growth and higher-than-anticipated inflation — as underscored by a separate report Wednesday showing rising consumer prices — puts the Fed in a bind as it tries to keep the economy from listing. The Fed has made deep interest rates cuts in the past six months to try to spur growth.
Hank Says:
20 February 2008 at 5:32 pm.
I guess I’d better hide some tuna under the bed, either that or hide myself. Things are looking a little shaky for the future.
Cavetrollhead Says:
21 February 2008 at 1:20 am.
I am not sure I buy that the economy is turning down. The debt is horrific of course. That is a huge concern.
But I think this is spin. When Obama wins the election, he will get credit for turning around an economy that was going to turn around anyway. Just like Clinton inherited a good economy in 92 but people gave him credit.
We need to pay off the debt, but if the economy isn’t doing better by November year I will be surprised.
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