The Agonist - News Guidance

I Confess, I Read The Times

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 06:45:52 -0800

But, then, you-all suspected that, with my links to Times articles.
This week, Gail Collins has written two columns that lead me to believe that she has reached the "sometimes you just have to laugh" stage. I'll sample each one and give links.
after the break...

The first is "Hark! The Voters Speak!", published November 4, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/05/opinion/05collins.html

In Ohio, citizens marched to the polls on Tuesday and voted to allow gambling casinos in the state. This was obviously a message to President Obama that independent voters are not happy with the way the health care bill is going.
Also, we have heard a lot about the fact that Corzine’s campaign made sport of his rather chunky opponent, Chris Christie. It was not until Wednesday morning that it became obvious that Christie’s victory was actually an outcry by average, pudgy Americans against a president who has to continuously battle against a tendency to lose weight.

The second is "Weekend Sports Lineup", published November 6, at
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/opinion/07collins.html?_r=1&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1257602925-LPyNxS6WUtiMLGLdlqiODw

Here we are at the big Health Care Bill Weekend! ...
Meanwhile, there’s nothing but confidence and serenity among the right-wing tea-party types. They cannot get over the triumph in upstate New York, where thanks to their really extraordinary efforts, a completely safe Republican seat went to the Democrats. Think how far their movement has come! Only a few months ago, they barely had the power to disrupt a town meeting. And soon they will be able to destroy anything in their path, including their own party, like conservative locusts.

"All I know is just what I read in the newspapers." - Will Rogers

UNAP sources falling over each other to report the wrap

Sun, 26 Jul 2009 02:30:05 -0700

Content thieves, be warned: The AP isn’t sitting idly and taking your shit anymore.

While the 'protect, point and pay' new registry will make it easier to target blogs that distribute content through automated systems, it will not alert the AP when others manually rewrite stories or excerpt passages.

Agonistas can rest easy:

"It's not DRM," said Jane Seagrave, SVP for global product development at the AP. "It's CMI, copyright management information. It carries metadata about the story, it carries rights information and it carries a tracking beacon, a way of reporting back what's been found."

Aware that Facebook's Beacon initiative has turned "beacon" into a synonym for privacy invasion, Seagrave acknowledged that "beacon" is not a great word to describe the system. "It's not the same [as what Facebook did]," she said. "There are no cookies attached. We're not after personal information at all. What we're trying to find out is where the information is being used rather than who is using it."

Seagrave characterized the news registry as a business-to-business system designed to deter large-scale copying of AP content rather than individual bloggers who cut and paste a few too many paragraphs from an AP story. "It's not aimed at people who use part of stories periodically," she said. "It's aimed at being affirmative about how we allow our content to be used."

Bring on the court cases, the hackers, the divisions within AP but in the end the call is that to read all the news, we should have to pay to read the news. Back in June this was AP's position.

Media Watchdog List: to see if your news sourse is lying to you...

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 10:39:04 -0700

With the mainstream media in apparent terminal meltdown and the nascent new media machine still trying to find its feet, it’s getting hard to know who to trust when it comes to obtaining the facts surrounding the current news stories. Only a couple of days ago someone asked me who they could trust in terms of unbiased reporting, and I had to confess I was stumped.

So it occurred to me that it might be useful to provide a short list of resources you can use in order to cross-check and reference topical news stories from around the world, so as to try and get a picture of what’s truth and what’s agenda driven reporting. Even with this list, you’ll have to educate your brain to discriminate between the lines, but it may help. Good luck and remember one thing – at the end of the day we’re all just puppets of that big ole PR machine in the sky.

Oh and if you have any other authoritative sources to add, please comment with them.

Media Lens. UK based media watchdog checking on media bias. Sporadic but important although the focus seems to be mostly skewed in favour of foreign affairs reporting. Excellent resource though nevertheless.
Sourcewatch. We’ve mentioned them before, but worth another look. A wiki format publicly editable encyclopedia of agenda agents affecting the news. Includes people, organisations and govt and activist groups shaping what we read, see and hear. Gold star.
News Sniffer. Online service monitoring websites for stories which are altered subsequent to publication. Focusing on BBC and other UK sites. New but useful.
Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting. Veteran US media watchdog site, active, dedicated, opinionated and self funded.
FactCheck.org. US political fact checking service which monitors the accuracy of statements by politicians and pundits to unveil inaccuracy, deception or ignorance. Valuable.
News Trust. A laudable effort to allow for community monitoring and rating of topical news stories du jour. Let down a little by its search for commercial sponsorships and licensing funding.
FairSpin. Another community rated news filter, which aims to unmask bias and agenda in news reporting from the mainstream media. A easy to use interface and integration with Facebook and Twitter make this a useful tool in the search for truth (whatever that is!)
PR Watch.org. Run by the Center for Media and Democracy, this veteran service keeps tabs on those peddlers of agenda, the PR agencies. One for astroturfing hunters everywhere.
Media Monitors Network. Global media monitoring service which offers a refreshingly international viewpoint on ‘hot topics’.
Skewz. New site pushes the US polarized political debate front and center by allowing visitors to tag stories in a graphical ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ manner. The votes offer an interesting overview of the news, but the presentation lends itself to an entertainment format rather than more factual knowledge.
SpinSpotter. Another one we’ve mentioned before, this new service puts the spin watch in the hands of the web browsing public. If you spot something biased, just mark it with the browser bookmarklet and add your viewpoint for others to read.
Stinky Journalism.org. The name says it all really. Aims to reveal inaccuracies and bad factual reporting in the mainstream press. Media ethics champions rampant!

Defense Attorneys In Lawless Juarez Besieged on All Sides

Sun, 01 Feb 2009 02:12:17 -0800

William Booth | Ciudad Juarez | Feb 1

WaPo - It is common for lawyers everywhere to cover their office walls with diplomas. The Mexican criminal defense attorney Salvador Urbina is making a different statement. His walls are hung with swords -- a hundred sabers, daggers, cutlasses and Japanese katanas, the blades kept sharp.

The weapons are real, but Urbina no longer sleeps in the city where he practices law. It is far too dangerous. He now spends his nights across the border in a bland suburb of El Paso and commutes to the deadliest city in Mexico each morning. After he began receiving death threats, Urbina got his family out. He will not discuss the specifics of the threats.

"But I know that they can come for me at my office at any time," Urbina said quietly. "They can come and get me just like they got the Escobedos.

New York City Gay Bloggers take on more Activist Tones

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:52:00 -0700

Excerpt from story at EDGENEWYORK.COM link below:

http://www.edgenewyork.com/index.php?ch=news&sc=local&sc2=features&sc3=&id=74039

by Cody Lyon

The blogosphere has expanded in popularity - and influence - in recent years with a variety of news, activism and even entertainment sites. The Web site "Best Gay Blogs" currently lists roughly 2,000 active gay blogs from around the world. And around 100 of these are in New York.

"[A successfully gay blog] is really about building a unique community of like-minded individuals to share thoughts, passions and dreams," Best Gay Blogs managing editor Chad Williams said....

..."I am energized by politics and often have to blow my top," Lady Bunny said as she noted her blog is often the place where she eventually has to find the lid on her wig. "Americans are so dumbed down and gossip orientated."

She further pointed to declining newspaper sales. Tabloids, on the other hand, continue to gain in popularity. And Lady Bunny stressed her blogs and others like hers can continue to capitalize upon this trend.

"The mainstream media is so full of lies and distortions that we need the unfiltered information which comes from some of these blogs" she said. "Unfortunately too many gay men have the body of Gods and the brains of 15-year-old school girls. So I try to mix in some politics with more entertainment-oriented posts to trick them into caring about issues other than Jennifer Aniston’s new hair style."

How often do you visit the newswire?

Sat, 26 Apr 2008 10:45:30 -0700

Karl Rove on Obama (FOX Transcript)

Sun, 02 Mar 2008 19:41:40 -0800

Washington, DC | Feb 2

Always helpful to watch the master of guile at work

Fox - "FOX NEWS SUNDAY" HOST CHRIS WALLACE: We got a sneak peek this week at what a general election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama would sound like, especially on foreign policy.

To get a better idea of how Republicans will go after Obama or Clinton, we're joined by former White House adviser, architect of two presidential election victories and now, most important of all, FOX News contributor Karl Rove.

And, Karl, welcome back.

FORMER WHITE HOUSE ADVISER KARL ROVE: Thanks, Chris.

WALLACE: Let's assume for the moment that Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee next Wednesday. In general terms, and we'll get more specific, how should John McCain go after Obama?

What are things that he could do to Obama in a general election campaign that Hillary Clinton couldn't do in the fight for the Democratic nomination?

ROVE: Well, the most important things he needs to do are not connected with Obama. Let's come back to those.

But what he needs to do with Obama is treat his words as serious. She's been dismissive of his words. McCain needs to treat them as serious. And he needs to not point just to the thinness, but he needs to point to the values, views and actions that those words would lead or have led Obama to.

Second of all, he'd need to draw attention to the gap between the rhetoric and the reality. Obama makes two very important claims. He appeals to the desire of Americans to see their leaders in Washington come together in bipartisanship, but he's not done that in the three years that he's been in the Senate.

In fact, on many votes where there is a bipartisan agreement, out there in the group of dissenting Democrats is Obama.

And then he makes the claim that tough issues require leadership. In fact, he made a very dramatic statement in the Wisconsin speech, Wisconsin victory night speech, in which he had a litany of issues that were important and required leadership.

And McCain is going to be able to say, and should say, "You're right, those require leadership, and I've been providing it. You haven't been." So at the end of the day, he, McCain, creates an image of himself as a reform-minded leader strongly who has worked across party lines and will tackle these big issues.

WALLACE: Let's break this down. That's a really good overview, but let's talk specifically about Iraq. Here is how Obama fired back at McCain on the war in Iraq. Let's look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: John McCain may like to say he wants to follow Usama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: And if we look at the latest poll, voters oppose that war in Iraq by almost 2-1.

So, Karl, if it comes down to a question of whether to keep fighting in Iraq, which is McCain's idea, or to begin, and pretty quickly, to pull out, which Obama says, doesn't Obama win?

ROVE: No, because Obama's position is, "I'm for withdrawal from Iraq regardless of the consequences and the conditions on the ground."

The American people don't like this war. But they do not like the idea of withdrawal without paying attention to the conditions on the ground. They want the military commanders to say what we can and should do. They don't want politicians to do it.

There was another poll this week that I think said 15 percent of the American people believed in unconditional withdrawal from Iraq.

So if this becomes a battle between a guy who says, "Look, whether you like whether we got -- whether you agreed with us going there or not, we're there, and the question is should we stay there and win and pursue the right policy, or should we withdraw without condition and suffer the consequences," and a candidate who says, "I'm for withdrawing without regard to what the conditions are," John McCain will win that argument.

WALLACE: All right. But Obama has found a clever way to link the war in Iraq to our domestic problems with the economy here at home. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: We are spending $12 billion per month. That is money that we could be spending here in the United States, rebuilding our infrastructure, building schools, sending kids to university.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: If he's able to define Iraq in terms of where do you spend that $12 billion, on the battlefield over there or on infrastructure and social programs here, doesn't Obama win?

ROVE: Well, Obama -- it's a good argument for Obama, but I'm wondering where it goes, because it really is a very neo-isolationist argument. It basically says, you know, "We should not be involved in the world because of the consequences to the budget here at home."

Well, we were not involved in the world before 9/11, and look what happened. Look at the cost to the American economy after a terrorist attack on the homeland. We lost a million jobs in 90 days after 9/11.

If we were to give up Iraq with the third largest oil reserves in the world to the control of an Al Qaida regime or to the control of Iran, don't you think $200 a barrel oil would have a cost to the American economy?

So you know, it's a cute thing in a primary. I'm not certain over an 8-month general election that you can make the argument that we ought to take a look at every foreign policy commitment in the United States and measure it on the basis of the number of dollars that we've got there.

I happened to be in Los Angeles on Monday, and somebody had heard Obama say this to me, and they were Democrat, and at dinner they said, "I'm worried about that, because does that mean he's going to be looking at our support, for example, for the state of Israel and looking at it in terms of what could we be doing at home with those dollars?"

And it was a nice line, but I'm not certain how durable a line it necessarily is.

WALLACE: All right. What about the economy itself? I mean, the sort of cliche is people vote for peace and prosperity.

McCain is defending an unpopular war. As for the economy, let's take a look at a recent poll which shows that 66 percent, two-thirds, of Americans think the country already is in a recession.

How does McCain counter Obama not only on the war but now also on a Republican economy?

ROVE: Right. Well, first of all, what will matter really is the state of the economy in the fall.

In the early part of 2000, for example, the economy was in pretty good shape. But by the fall, people had a sense that there was a slight deterioration. That helped Bush over Gore.

So the question is what's the economy going to be in the fall. And if it's bad in the fall, this is going to be a real problem for McCain.

Then the question gets to be what are you going to do about it. And I'm not certain that we know how that debate is going to play out yet. We're starting to see the outlines of it, McCain saying, "I want to keep taxes low, I don't want to raise taxes, I want to keep spending in check, I want to do something to help the people who are losing their jobs."

We have -- at least in Ohio, we have Obama taking the perspective that trade agreements, NAFTA and other trade agreements, are bad for our economy, and we need to do something about these big corporations that are offshoring jobs.

And we'll see how that plays out over the next eight or nine months. I'm not certain that an isolationist or a protectionist or a populist campaign necessarily works as well in a general election as it does in a primary.

WALLACE: All right. Let's talk about the magic word in this campaign, and that is change.

ROVE: Right.

WALLACE: McCain will be 72 this fall. Obama will be 47, and he's already playing that card. Let's watch.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: I respect John McCain, but he's tied to the politics of the past. We are about the policies of the future. He's the party of yesterday. We want to be a party of tomorrow.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WALLACE: I mean, you've not only got rhetoric, you just have the images of the two guys up there on a stage in a debate against each other.

One looks like he could be the other guy's father or, conversely, the other guy's son. How does McCain fight that?

ROVE: Well, first of all, every presidential election is about change. I mean, let's not kid ourselves. This is not a new word in a presidential election. Every election, presidential election, is about change because every presidential election is about the future, not the past.

This is a problem for McCain. He's 72 -- will be 72 by the election. He's got a vigorous, young opponent on the other side. And we'll have to see how that plays out. There's nothing that he can do to make himself younger than Obama.

The question is can he make himself more -- can he make people more confident in his leadership and his experience and his ability than Obama can.

Obama has the other side of the equation, which is he's got to do more to shore up to the "I'm up to the job."

I thought it was interesting, incidentally -- you'll notice that in this particular segment, Obama said -- you know, Obama's taken -- early on was saying, "We honor John McCain for his 50 years of service to America." He started in Wisconsin -- started dropping the 50 years.

I think it's because probably somebody inside the group focus- grouped it or inside his campaign focus-grouped it or tested or somehow woke up to the fact that that was a little -- you know, sort of that was blowing up in their face.

That was a little insulting to say 50 years to try and make it appear that he was way over the hill when, in reality, a lot of people reacted negatively.

WALLACE: We're running out of time. I want to hit a couple of last final points quickly.

A speaker at a McCain rally this week talked about, repeatedly, Barack Hussein Obama. The Tennessee Republican Party talks about support for Obama from anti-Semites and anti-Israel people.

I know McCain has denounced this. You're shaking your head. But if you don't have your fingerprints on it, is this kind of talk out in the bloodstream of the American politics helpful?

ROVE: Look, the Hussein -- using his middle name helps Obama. It doesn't hurt him. So anybody who wants to help John McCain would stop using...

WALLACE: Explain that.

ROVE: Well, because I think people look at it and say, "Hey, look, that's one step too far. You're trying to leave an implication that he is a Muslim when I know he's not."

And I think it -- you know, a lot of times attacks in politics fail -- in fact, they turn into a negative for the person who's doing the attacking -- because people think it's gone too far. And this, frankly, goes too far.

Now, having ties to Louis Farrakhan and his anti-Semitic comments -- you know, people have a reasonable -- that's a reasonable question. "Well, do you agree with him or do you renounce him? Do you reject him?"

But this idea of getting up there and using the guy's middle name in order to imply something about him is -- it goes too far.

WALLACE: All right. We've got 30 seconds left. What are the chances that this conversation is completely irrelevant and that Hillary Clinton ends up upsetting him?

ROVE: Well, she could. She's going to -- it looks like she'll do well in Ohio. The question is how close does she get in the popular vote in Texas.

I noticed a very interesting thing. Obama is spending this weekend, part of this weekend, in Rhode island. He's trying to take the state. It was expected to be hers. I think he's trying to go for three out of four. ...

OECD stats analysis... the WTF moments...

Thu, 14 Feb 2008 21:27:00 -0800

Just stumbled across New Zealand in the OECD a bunch of "compare countries" graphs set up by the NZ stats department using OECD stats.

A few "Huh? WTF!?" moments in it....

For example...

* US has, by far, the largest GDP AND by far the largest _public_ expenditure as a portion of GDP on health... but really cruddy returns by every measure in the report. Huh!?

* NZ has too high an imprisonment rate, but the US is crazy off the scale. WTF!? Up with you guys?

* US has second highest attainment of upper secondary education....

* but is _way_ down the scale on student literacy rates.

* Germany total tops the websites per capita rankings.

* US is amazingly low in the exports per capita yet 2nd highest in GDP per capita. Tell me again why exports are so important?

* NZ the labour led stereotyped socialist state... has lowest goverment outlays as proportion of GDP. WTF!?

Project Censored Top 25 Under and Unreported Stories of 2008

Sun, 09 Sep 2007 06:37:16 -0700

This year’s list of stories is released. Many are known to Agonist’s readers, however there are some surprises. Worth a quick click to view and scan. One that I have followed over the past year and noticed that there was a news blackout on the mass arrest of over 30 thousand individuals in massive sweeps nationwide, coordinated by the Feds.

Why would the Feds round up 30 thousand people, and not release statistics on the arrest, trumpeting Bush's muscle to rid the streets of miscreants.

One of the stories, #6 Operation FALCON Raids:

“Operation FALCON presents the first time in US history that all of the domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government. The implications for American democracy are quite profound.
Operation FALCON serves no purpose except to centralize power and establish the basic contours of an American police state. It is not an effective way of apprehending criminals.”

Project Censored

"Project Censored is a media research group out of Sonoma State University which tracks the news published in independent journals and newsletters. From these, Project Censored compiles an annual list of 25 news stories of social significance that have been overlooked, under-reported or self-censored by the country's major national news media."

Google News to Host Wire Service Stories

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 10:41:31 -0700

Juan Carlos Perez | August 31

IDG - Google Inc. took another step Friday in its continued attempts to improve its relationships with wire services, when it announced a program to host full articles from news agencies on Google News pages.

Google News, a site in which Google aggregates links to articles published on news outlets' Web sites, is generally valued by publishers who make money from online advertising and as such benefit from the traffic Google News sends to their sites.

But Google News has been a tougher sell for wire services, which generally make money by licensing their content to newspapers and magazines, and not by attracting readers to their own Web sites.

Dumbing down Wiki - Look who's changing their own Wikipedia entries

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 23:38:29 -0700

Times Online

A new website built by an American technology student has uncovered the lengths that companies apparently go to improve their public image by tweaking their entries on Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia that - famously - “anyone can edit”.

The WikiScanner site, developed by Virgil Griffith, a researcher at the California Institute of Technology, reveals changes to the online encyclopaedia by linking edits back to the computers from which they emanate using each computer’s unique IP address.

Mr Griffith, 24, says he created the site "to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organisations I dislike" - a mission he may well have succeeded in.

Among those he alleges have been updating their entries are Wal-Mart, the world’s largest grocer, AstraZeneca, the drugs giant, Britain's Labour Party, the CIA and the Vatican.

In one example he gives, a computer linked to an IP address registered to the Dow Chemical company is seen to have deleted a passage on the Bhopal chemical disaster of 1984, which occurred at a plant operated by Union Carbide, now a wholly-owned Dow subsidiary.

WikiScanner cannot identify the individuals altering Wikipedia articles. It can show only that an edit was made by a person with access to an organisation’s network.

"Technically, we don't know whether it came from an agent of that company, however, we do know that edit came from someone with access to their network," Mr Griffith says on his site.

Don't miss linking to Wired's favourite Catches Wikis unleashed including Tulsa church Creationists rewrites of the "Origin of Species" article to say it is an "arguably mostly fictional" work. They also add completely fictional claims that Darwin argued that "There are no limitations to natural selection" and "All species evolved through natural selection from a single cell that lived 3.6 billion years ago", and U.S. government (Department of Energy) justifying the war in Iraq. It was a success as no nuclear devices were found. Apparently they changed their mind as this entry was deleted by the same source 5 h later. Then there's my personal all-time favourite ugly company Occidental Petroleum who simply obliterated those embarrasing corporate links to the Soviet Union, Libya, the Love Canal and the Cano Limon Massacre and substituted stuff from the latest PR brochures Oxy Edits

Tomorrow's Headlines and Blogposts Tonight

Tue, 17 Jul 2007 00:00:40 -0700

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 16, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
Police, Protesters Clash in Oaxaca
Cunningham report portrays entangled panel
Brown Meets Merkel On First Trip Abroad As British Premier
Strong quake hits Japan/Nuclear reactor damaged
Business, Finance and the Markets:
Tax Receipts Pare Treasury Sales as Foreigners Flee
News Corp. Reaches Tentative Agreement To Buy Dow Jones
Pimco Favors Japanese Mortgage-Backed, Inflation-Linked Bonds
Private Equity Gives More to Republicans
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
Menendez Reacts To Coming GOP Iraq Filibuster
Who’s Smoking What?
The phones, the keyboards, the streets
When All They Understand Is Fear or Force

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 12, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
Lawmakers unveil industry-backed climate bill
A serious browser vulnerability, but whose?
FCC chief backs some open access in airwave auction
On EU Tube (LOL!), Sex Sells (Duh!) And here's EU-Tube
Sting Reveals Security Gap at Nuclear Agency
Business, Finance and the Markets:
Whole Foods Chairman Engaged In Sock-Puppetry
Latin America's answer to the World Bank and IMF
Levi's may be dressed up to go public
How Bond Yields Pinpointed the June 2007 Market Top
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
Obama's National Security Policy
Resistance is Futile
Report: Defense Department's No-Bid Contracts Put "Troops In Iraq At Risk"
Amateur Hour At the NYSE: Odd Lot Data Is Bullish

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 11, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
U.S. Senate panel moves to cut off funding for Cheney in flap with Dems over executive order
Russia ready to consider to send peacekeepers to the Palestinian territories
Military Intelligence: Iran will cross nuclear threshold by 2009
Business, Finance and the Markets:
Bond bears turn tail in subprime scare
US Dollar Reeling as Euro Hits Record High
China’s trade surplus hits fresh record
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
Iraq War Claims McCain
Quote of the Day ~ Ehud Olmert on Peace
He can't even pretend

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 10, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
A salve amid Darfur woes: better midwives
Bush Erects Another Stonewall Against Accountability
Will Turkey Invade Northern Iraq?
Business, Finance and the Markets:
U.S. Rebound May Be Bumpier Than Fed Expects as Credit Tightens
CBOT, Chicago Merc to merge into biggest financial exchange
Inflation: Much Talk, Little Action
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
DC Madam's Phone Records Out - One Republican Senator Down Already
Webb Stepping Up On Excessive Troop Deployments
Lowlights from a Shallow Breathing Presidency

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 9, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
U.S. Diplomat Hints at Delay for Kosovo Independence
Iran media accused of trying to oust president
US building up Guam base
Business, Finance and the Markets:
Moody’s slams private equity
Dow Jones Makes Late Push To Find Other Buyers
Underwater ARMs ?
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
Clinton Did It, Too
Build up in Lebanon
More Al Qaeda and Stenographers - Iran and The UK

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow July 2, 2007:
Global and National News Headlines:
Putin Proposes Broader Cooperation on Missile Defense
British terrorists conspired in bombs plot - security officials
US diplomat found dead in Cyprus: state radio
Finance and the Markets:
Will the Real Employment Data Please Stand Up?
Dollar Near Record Low Against Euro on Contrasting Rate View
Bear to Revamp Risk Control in Funds Unit
Blog Posts and Op-Eds of Note:
The Dispensable Nation? by Brent Scowcroft
Michael Gordon trains his stenographer weapons on Iran
A (positive) German shock?
Clinton Gets Impeached - Libby Goes Free

Global News Headlines:
Poll of Democrats reveals Gore could still steal the show
German Scientists Develop New Approach to Treating AIDS
Ex-Mossad agent found dead in UK
Finance and the Markets:
Goldman Loses Asia-Pacific Prime Brokerage Share, Survey Says
Cracks In Credit
Pollution Credits Stoke Trader Hiring Wave at Banks
Worthy Blog Posts of the Day:
Michael Moore denied entry into the NYSE
UK's Brown About To Spurn Pro-Iraq Stance
The GOP: Grand Obstruction Party

Global News Headlines:
Environment and US policy top global fears
Building a Bug to Harvest Oil
U.S. Govt Appeals Enemy-Combatant Ruling
Lawmakers say black market in arms technology could be in business without A.Q. Khan
Finance and the Markets:
Market's Jitters Stir Some Fears For Buyout Boom
When mainstream analysts compare CDOs to “subslime” and “six-inch hooker heels”…
"Why China Will Not Cave to Pressure over Trade Imbalance"
I'm No Fortune Teller
Worthy Blog Posts of the Day:
Oily character
Stabbing and Backs
aWol Making Nixon Look Good
Lucy Fossil To Tour U.S.

Global News Headlines:
Gazans stock up on petrol and food as fuel supplies run dry
EU citizens want referendum on treaty
In Ethiopian Desert, Fear and Cries of Army Brutality
France Votes
Domestic Politics:
Judge won't delay sentence for Libby in CIA leak case (See Bill Moyers scathing critique, here.)
Seymour Hersh Profiles General Taguba
Staking His Campaign on Iowa, Edwards Makes a Populist Pitch to the Left
American Soldiers Return Home To Broken Health Care System
Finance and the Markets:
GE And Pearson Discuss Bids For Dow Jones
In Tax Fight, Blackstone Has Friends on the Hill
Call for end to quarterly guidance
Worthy Blog Posts of the Day:
Stay Classy, Conservative Blogosphere
The Neocon Bait And Switch
A gigantic post on what to do now
Iran: How's That Centrifuge Program?

Here are the stories impacting the world tomorrow:
Global News Headlines:
North Korea Transfer Raises Hope
Palestinian Split Deepens; Government in Chaos
Takeover by Hamas Illustrates Failure of Bush's Mideast Vision Helluva headline from the WaPo, no less!
Chinese Grads 'Go West' to Serve in Provinces
Accidental Allies in Russian Politics
Negroponte to press Musharraf
Somalia peace hopes hit again
Domestic Politics and Worthy Blog Posts of the Day:
Gonzales Meeting With Aide Scrutinized
Great Moments In Journalism
Matthew Yglesias: Fallows on Gerson
Denying The Narrative on Iran
Why Did the Soviet Union Collapse?
Finance and the Markets:
Tax Boost Sought For Buyout Firms Planning IPOs And from the FT: Blackstone faces Senate challenge on IPO
More Trouble in Subprime Mortgages And a related story here: Rising Rates Start to Squeeze Consumers and Companies
FTC Examines Web-Ad Deals Involving Microsoft, Yahoo

Finance and markets:
Bush to Defy Lawmakers Over Yuan
U.S. Bond Yields Climb, Hitting A 5-Year High

Politics:
Senate Energy-Bill Debate Begins, With Lobbyists Poised to Enter Fray
Rove Aides Helped Respond to Firings, E-Mails Show

And the Middle East:
European Union Split on Solution to African and Iraqi Refugee Influx
Secret UN report condemns US for Middle East failures
Palestinian Battles Raise Fears of Coup And Civil War

And a few blog posts to peruse with your morning coffee:
Glenn Greenwald on Joe Lieberman: Various items
Eric Martin on Teh Stupid
Newhoggers on John Edwards - the man and his party
Gideon Rachman on Will China really overtake America?
And finally, is it Time to Sell Apple? I'd buy slightly in the money LEAPs here with risk capital. Good risk/reward profile.

Eric Idle comments on the FCC and court ruling

Tue, 05 Jun 2007 21:20:36 -0700

And a few other things and people.

via OGM

Covering US coverage

Sun, 25 Feb 2007 06:21:02 -0800

Andrew Stroehlein | February 20

Reuters - Those who need to follow US television news will already be familiar with the Tyndall Report, which monitors the all-important nightly network newscasts of the three big networks. Well, Andrew Tyndall has just radically revamped his website and unveiled it online today.

Rather than a weekly, the site has been relaunched as a daily Weblog complete with embedded links to the video packages discussed. That search page contains comparative figures for the number of segments on various subjects.

The Agonist - News Guidance

I Confess, I Read The Times

UNAP sources falling over each other to report the wrap

Media Watchdog List: to see if your news sourse is lying to you...

Defense Attorneys In Lawless Juarez Besieged on All Sides

New York City Gay Bloggers take on more Activist Tones

How often do you visit the newswire?

Karl Rove on Obama (FOX Transcript)

OECD stats analysis... the WTF moments...

Project Censored Top 25 Under and Unreported Stories of 2008

Google News to Host Wire Service Stories

Dumbing down Wiki - Look who's changing their own Wikipedia entries

Tomorrow's Headlines and Blogposts Tonight

Eric Idle comments on the FCC and court ruling

Top 25 Censored Stories of 2007

Covering US coverage