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And, yes, I DO take it personally

Monday, January 31, 2011

Today or tomorrow, Mubarak will step down

yeah, well, what the hell do i know... it's just a gut feeling...
Egypt's most prominent democracy advocate took up a bullhorn Sunday and called for President Hosni Mubarak to resign, speaking to thousands of protesters who defied a curfew for a third night. Fighter jets streaked low overhead and police returned to the capital's streets — high-profile displays of authority over a situation spiraling out of control.

Nobel Peace laureate Mohamed ElBaradei's appearance in Tahrir, or Liberation, Square underscored the jockeying for leadership of the mass protest movement that erupted seemingly out of nowhere in the past week to shake the Arab world's most populous nation.

"seemingly out of nowhere...?" you gotta be shittin' me...! this has been building for the thirty years of mubarak's reign and has been catalyzed by wikileaks, tunisia and dozens of other recent events and incidents... who does the associated press think they're bullshitting...?

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Wednesday, May 07, 2008

Yangon, Myanmar, the Category 3 cyclone, and a death toll of over 100,000

look at the escalation of the headlines...
More than 200 dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills over 350 in Myanmar

Hundreds feared dead in Myanmar cyclone

Cyclone kills nearly 4000 in Myanmar: state TV

Myanmar: Death toll more than 15000

this morning...

US envoy: Myanmar deaths may top 100000

i've been watching al jazeera's coverage of the horrific disaster... when they post the video clip, i will get it up here as an update...

from ap...

Hungry people swarmed the few open shops and fistfights broke out over food and water in Myanmar's swamped Irrawaddy delta Wednesday as a top U.S. diplomat warned that the death toll from a devastating cyclone could top 100,000.

The minutes of a U.N. aid meeting obtained by The Associated Press, meanwhile, revealed the military junta's visa restrictions were hampering international relief efforts.

Only a handful of U.N. aid workers had been let into the impoverished Southeast Asian country, which the government has kept isolated for five decades to maintain its iron-fisted control. The U.S. and other countries rushed supplies to the region, but most of it was being held outside Myanmar while awaiting the junta's permission to deliver it.

Entire villages in the Irrawaddy delta were still submerged from Saturday's storm, and bloated corpses could be seen stuck in the mangroves. Some survivors stripped clothes off the dead. People wailed as they described the horror of the torrent swept ashore by the cyclone.

"I don't know what happened to my wife and young children," said Phan Maung, 55, who held onto a coconut tree until the water level dropped. By then his family was gone.

i have a terrible feeling that the 100,000 death toll is going to go much higher...

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Thursday, April 17, 2008

"I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent." So don't go screw up again, y'hear...!

about goddam time...
Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein was reunited with family and colleagues Wednesday, ending more than two years in U.S. military custody after Iraqi judges dropped all legal proceedings against him.


Tearful relatives rushed to embrace Hussein, who had been given just a few hours' notice of his release. He thanked co-workers and supporters around the world who had worked on his behalf.

"I have spent two years in prison even though I was innocent. I thank everybody," said Hussein, 36, looking healthy and dressed in a brown traditional Iraqi robe.

this is a fitting follow-on to the previous post... our fascist leaders want to make sure that everybody knows that you can be forced to give up two whole years of your life, even though you're completely innocent, just because somebody THINKS there's some remote chance you did something, or, even more terrifying, they KNOW you didn't do anything, they're just making a point...

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Friday, May 04, 2007

Continuing to push Bushco spin, context-free journalism hits a new low

condi meets with syria, shuns iran, the u.s. anti-iran propaganda machine grinds on, and neither the washington post nor the associated press bother to reference relevant events that only happened a month ago...

wapo headline...

Projectile Bomb Attacks Hit Record High in Iraq
U.S. Says Weapons Are Made in Iran

a.p...
The United States accuses Iran of secretly trying to develop nuclear weapons as well as funneling money and weapons [to] the Shiite militias responsible for much of Iraq's violence.

but since both condi and manouchehr just so happened to be in sharm el-sheikh at the same time, do you think they could have seized the opportunity...? oh, no-o-o-o-oooo...

a.p...

"There was no direct meeting [between Iran's Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice] but they were in the same room and they were discussing the issues," said Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.

wapo...
Senior Bush administration officials said that she would not hold a widely anticipated meeting with Iran's foreign minister, but that the United States plans to hold direct talks with Tehran in the near future.

however, after the white house and congressional republicans united in a talking point assault on nancy pelosi's trip to syria a few weeks ago, we now have this...

wapo...

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice met here Thursday with her Syrian counterpart in the first high-level talks between the two governments in more than two years.

[...]

Officials said the decision to end the U.S. isolation of Syria and Iran -- which the administration accuses of facilitating insurgent and militia violence in Iraq -- was made in Washington in the days leading up to the conference.

[...]

Acknowledging a change in policy, officials characterized it as a response to direct appeals from the Iraqi government and emphasized that it should be seen in the context of the conference.

and what's missing from both the a.p. and the wapo stories...? not only no mention of nancy pelosi, but, as i posted the other day in reference to a wapo op-ed, ALSO no mention of...
either the republican house member, david hobson, who traveled with pelosi or the republican house delegation, robert anderholt and frank wolf, who preceded her or the republican congressman, darrell issa, who followed her...

then, after ignoring the recent congressional efforts to reach out to syria, the wapo grabs one more opportunity to quote bush administration spin by including this pathetic state department attempt to add its OWN version of context by reaching all the fracking way back to the carter administration...
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said in Washington on Thursday that the last U.S.-Iran "direct high-level meeting . . . that was substantive" was when President Jimmy Carter visited Iran in December 1977, before the revolution.

and, to add insult to injury, after grabbing the state department's reference to carter, the wapo neglects to mention that none other than jimmy carter HIMSELF voiced support for pelosi's trip...
Former President Jimmy Carter expressed his support for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's trip to Syria, rejecting White House criticism of the visit.

"I was glad that she went," Carter said Wednesday. "When there is a crisis, the best way to help resolve the crisis is to deal with the people who are instrumental in the problem."

ok, look... i'm just an old fart, sitting around, blogging away, and it took me all of 30 minutes to put this post together, a post which, imho, contains more context than the combined resources of the washington post and the associated press could muster... is it because i'm smarter...? is it because i did more research or have access to more information...? we all know the answers to those questions - HELL, NO...! so why is the context missing...? there can only be one reason... THEY DIDN'T WANT TO PUT IT IN... and why not...? now, THERE'S the big question... we could sit around and speculate all day on why, but the fact remains, it's not there, and anyone reading these stories is missing a huge amount of relevant information - and that is a complete disgrace...

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Saturday, March 10, 2007

Claims of "unintentional" Patriot Act abuses "are not credible"

an aclu news release via raw story...
"Claims that the FBI’s reported Patriot Act abuses were the “unintentional” result of outmoded computer systems and human error are not credible, the American Civil Liberties Union said today, citing evidence that agents contracted with phone companies to obtain customer records and later sought to cover up the illegal requests," the ACLU press release stated.

According to the ACLU, "The report also shows that the FBI is issuing hundreds of thousands more National Security Letters than ever imagined, and that tracking of the NSLs is sloppy, resulting in thousands of innocent Americans being entered into databases that are shared with numerous U.S. agencies and foreign governments."

anybody who buys the "unintentional" horseshit is working with a couple of bricks shy of a load...

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Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Why is THIS still being moved as "NEWS?"

as of wednesday afternoon, yahoo news and the ap are still moving this as news...
Group: Gore a hypocrite over power bill

Al Gore, a leading voice in the fight against global warming, is being called a hypocrite by a conservative group that claims his Nashville mansion uses too much electricity. But a spokeswoman for Gore said the former vice president invests in enough renewable energy to make up for the home's power consumption.

The next day, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research put out a news release saying Gore was not doing enough to reduce his own consumption of electricity.

yes, the story now carries gore's response, but, considering it was never "NEWS" in the first goddam place, i'd like to know why, as of wednesday, 3:50 p.m. est, it still is being carried in the top 7 yahoo news stories, particularly with such a sensationalist and misleading headline...



and, oh yeah, it also doesn't bother to mention keith olbermann's excellent debunking...



if the democrats had organizations around the country working 24/7 on new, sensational, and largely vacuous ways to smear national republican figures, i would bet, along with atrios, they wouldn't have 1/100th the media exposure...

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Sunday, February 18, 2007

The Lone Ranger, Tonto, and the Senate Iraq resolution - a headline sampler

nyt...
Senate Rejects Renewed Effort to Debate Iraq

wapo...
Iraq Vote In Senate Blocked By GOP

juan cole...
Senate Comes Close to Condemning Iraq Escalation

iht...
Senate Democrats fall 4 votes short in bid to force Iraq debate

all fairly reasonable, right...? but, true to form, here's the ap...
GOP foils Dems' bid to repudiate Bush

actually, i'm not entirely sure why i have such a negative reaction to the ap headline, but i do... for some reason, it strikes a very discordant tone for me, conjuring up images of a turn-of-the-century melodrama where the villain ties the heroine to the railroad track because she can't pay her rent, and the white knight, dudley do-right, rides in to save the day... so, here's the evil, mustachioed villain (the dastardly dems) trying to tie the embattled lone ranger (george bush) to the railroad track (the iraq resolution), when tonto (the faithful repubs) appears in the nick of time to save the lone ranger's whitebread hide... is it just me, or am i having a sunday morning hallucinatory flashback...?

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