This blog is now read by more machines than humans: RSS robots, spam-laying insectopoids, echoes of blog-gathering .edu projects. This essentially is the state of affairs that all human activities w
Cleaning Up the Nation
Austin Bay:
If Air America were a conservative radio network its corrupt funding trail and cynical abuse of a poverty program would be front page news at the NY Times and full-time mega-scandal at
Rank Materialism
Freedom. I am now the proud new owner of a Gateway 6020GZ laptop, perfect for students and others with limited means. I can now go into a Starbucks or a Barnes & Noble and look like I'm doing some
Fallujah Fonda
Uh-oh. From the Telegraph comes this exciting news:
Jane Fonda is returning to anti-war activism and embarking on a cross-country tour to call for an end to US military operations in Iraq.
Acros
John Pilger: Partner in Terrorism
In an outrageous piece of terrorist propaganda appearing on the cover of today's New Statesman, John Pilger puts the blame for the 7/7 London attacks not on the terrorists, but rather on Tony Blair:
Pronoun Trouble
Media spin about the latest DHS terror alerts:
Warnings were issued on Sunday from what was said to be "new" information, though officials now say al-Qaeda gathered it up to four years ago.
As NBC says if you haven't seen the episode before, it's "new" to you. Al Qaeda gathered most of this material 3-4 years ago, according to the most recent reports, but the fact that Al Qaeda gathered it at all is new to US intelligence. I think there's an attempt in the media to confuse this so that people come away from these stories thinking that US intelligence had this information 3-4 years ago.
In fact the BBC quote above is deceitful. Look at it. What does "it" refer to? Information. But in the instance where "information" is used, it refers to the information, new to US intelligence, that Al Qaeda gathered information. When "it" is used later in the same sentence, it supposedly refers to that same information gathered about Al Qaeda, but they're pulling a switcheroo. "It" actually refers to the information gathered by Al Qaeda. By the way the sentence is constructed, they're trying to make you think that "information" and "it" refer to the same thing, but they don't.
This is just politics as usual for the media and the BBC. The object of course is to portray these terror alerts as politically motivated, bringing great political troubles upon George Bush.
CNN is also playing it a little loose with their "New terror warning based on pre-9/11 info" link. Again, it sounds like US intelligence that dates from pre-9/11, rather than Al Qaeda's intelligence gathering that dates from then.
Update: Here's Reuter's version:
The warning that key U.S. financial centers may be attacked by al Qaeda was based largely on three-year-old information, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said on Tuesday, but some intelligence dated from January and he insisted the threat was still real.
It's quite deceptive. The fact that an alleged Al Qaeda operative had information on specific potential targets in the US is not three years old, as this story would have you believe. It's a week old.
Compare these stories to the stories about the "ignored" bin Laden PDB. The press has no shame.
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