Category: News

What the heck. Let’s play hookey.

Greenwald has an interesting piece today on the Uighers. He references an article from the NYT this morning which reports:

The Chinese state news agency reported Monday that 156 people were killed and more than 800 injured when rioters clashed with the police in a regional capital in western China after days of rising tensions between members of the Uighur ethnic group and Han Chinese.

The casualty toll, if confirmed, would make this the deadliest outbreak of violence in China in many years.

So, it being Monday (laundry day), I wandered off on another google-chase.

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with World and U.S. News.

1 Obama heads to Moscow for "reset" summit

By Matt Spetalnick, Reuters

Sun Jul 5, 4:09 am ET

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

1 Iraq declines offer of U.S. help with reconciliation

By Andrew Quinn, Reuters

2 hrs 31 mins ago

Media Reform Information Center

In 1983, 50 corporations controlled the vast majority of all news media in the U.S.

…

in 2000, the number had fallen to six. Since then, there have been more mergers and the scope has expanded to include new media like the Internet market. More than 1 in 4 Internet users in the U.S. now log in with AOL Time-Warner, the world’s largest media corporation.

In 2004, Bagdikian’s revised and expanded book, The New Media Monopoly, shows that only 5 huge corporations — Time Warner, Disney, Murdoch’s News Corporation, Bertelsmann of Germany, and Viacom (formerly CBS) — now control most of the media industry in the U.S. General Electric’s NBC is a close sixth.

http://www.corporations.org/me…

http://www.corporations.org/me…

TMZ . . .

Michael Jackson suffered a cardiac arrest earlier this afternoon at his Holmby Hills home and paramedics were unable to revive him. We’re told when paramedics arrived Jackson had no pulse and they never got a pulse back.

Michael Jackson had problems, we all know about the scandals, but he was a gentle soul and an immensely talented artist.  Thank you, Michael, for giving the world this song . . .

It has been an amazing week in Iran, and you are no doubt seeing images that would have been unimaginable just a few weeks ago.

For most of us, Iran has been a country about which we know very little…which, obviously, makes it tough to put the limited news we’re getting into a proper context.

The goal of today’s conversation is to give you a bit more of an “insider look” at today’s news; and to do that we’ll describe some of the risks Iranian bloggers face as they go about their business, we’ll meet a blogging Iranian cleric, we’ll address the issue of what tools the Iranians use for Internet censorship and the companies that could potentially be helping it along, and then we’ll examine Internet traffic patterns into and out of Iran.

Finally, a few words about, of all things, how certain computer games might be useful as tools of revolution.

From the Washington Post :

federal judge yesterday sharply questioned an assertion by the Obama administration that former Vice President Richard B. Cheney’s statements to a special prosecutor about the Valerie Plame case must be kept secret, partly so they do not become fodder for Cheney’s political enemies or late-night commentary on “The Daily Show.”

Ugh.  But it gets even better.  

But career civil division lawyer Jeffrey M. Smith, responding to Sullivan’s questions, said Bradbury’s arguments against the disclosure were supported by the department’s current leadership. He told the judge that if Cheney’s remarks were published, then a future vice president asked to provide candid information during a criminal probe might refuse to do so out of concern “that it’s going to get on ‘The Daily Show’ ” or somehow be used as a political weapon.

snip

Fitzgerald, in a 2008 letter to Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) cited by CREW, drew a distinction between interviews that he conducted under standard investigative secrecy rules and the meetings he held with Bush and Cheney. Fitzgerald said “there were no ‘agreements, conditions, and understandings between the Office of Special Counsel or the Federal Bureau of Investigation’ and either the President or Vice President ‘regarding the conduct and use of the interview or interviews.’ ”

So the Change You Can Believe In administration is arguing, with an apparent straight face that this isn’t a cover up of treason by Richard Bruce Cheney, that’s a 1st amendment issue.  Let me calm down and try to suss this out.  

The claim made originally by war criminal Bradbury, that the Vice President may not participate in a criminal probe in which he is himself the prime suspect, because Jon Stewart might make fun of him.  Not because he may incriminate himself.  And we can’t know about this, not because it might provide proof that Cheney is a criminal, but because in the future, when a Vice President breaks the law, he may, out of a fear of embarrassment, not cooperate with criminal investigations against him.  

From the AP, we learn about two men who were arrested in a drug sting in New York City.  The problem?  The two men arrested committed no crime and the officers who falsified the report and prompted the arrest were, themselves, arrested.

A case of a few bad apples?  Not anymore…

Weekend News Digest is an Open Thread

Now with 29 Top Stories.

1 New ministers back UK’s Brown but fate uncertain

By Avril Ormsby, Reuters

2 hrs 37 mins ago

(also Also diaried at dkos.)

Despite what has been at times a cluster-fuck of an investigation (see below the fold), the murder trial is on.

The BART police officer caught on video shooting and killing 22-year-old Oscar Grant while Grant laid face-down on the ground, will stand trial for murder in Oakland.

After hearing seven days of testimony since May 18, Superior Court Judge C. Don Clay said prosecutors had presented ample evidence to show that (ex-BART police Officer Johannes) Mehserle could be found guilty of murdering Oscar Grant, 22, at the Fruitvale Station in Oakland.

Video of Grant’s January 1, 2009 killing has been widely distributed on the internet.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.  ~David Carradine

Actor David Carradine, star of the 1970s TV series “Kung Fu” who also had a wide-ranging career in the movies, has been found dead in the Thai capital, Bangkok. A news report said he was found hanged in his hotel room and was believed to have committed suicide.

I can’t tell you the number of times I began a story with a plan for where it would go, only to discover that the plan isn’t going to work.

The stories sometimes seem to write themselves…but other times, the research seems to do the writing instead; this being one of those times.

When the production of this story began it was with the intention of trying to explain what should be the “controlling authority” in terms of defining torture, a precedent set by the European Court of Human Rights, or Title 18 of the United States Code.

Having reviewed both statute law and numerous judgments in law courts worldwide as well as the recent Senate Judiciary Committee testimony of Professor Jeffrey Addicott, and having conducted an interview with Dr. Addicott personally, I’ve come to two rather surprising conclusions:

It may not really matter whether waterboarding is torture…and although neither I nor Dr. Addicott might have seen it coming, it’s starting to appear that he and I might agree on one thing:

Waterboarding, whether it’s torture or not, is a war crime.