Thursday, May 05, 2005

News from outside the New York Times

We'll note an Associated Press story from The Independent, "Blast hits British Consulate in New York:"

Two small explosions outside the British Consulate in New York caused slight damage to the building early today but no one was injured.
The explosions occurred about 3.50am (8.50am BST) and apparently originated in or near a cement flower box outside the consulate in midtown Manhattan, said police department spokesman Noel Waters.


Via BuzzFlash, Marcia e-mails to highlight this op-ed from The Seattle Times. The op-ed is written by Amy Goodman and her brother David Goodman and is entitled "Why media ownership matters:"

We see reporters in the cockpits of war planes, interviewing pilots about how it feels to be at the controls. We almost never see journalists at the target end, asking people huddled in their homes what it feels like not to know what the next moment will bring.
The media have a responsibility to show the true face of war. It is bloody. It is brutal. Real people die. Women and children are killed. Families are wiped out; villages are razed. If the media would show for one week the same unsanitized images of war that the rest of the world sees, people in the U.S. would say no, that war is not an answer to conflict in the 21st century.
But we don't see the real images of war. We don't need government censors, because we have corporations sanitizing the news. A study released last month by American University's School of Communications revealed that media outlets acknowledged they self-censored their reporting on the Iraq invasion out of concerns about public reaction to graphic images and content.


Back to The Independent James of Brighton e-mails to alert us to Andrew Grice's "One quarter of voters uncertain as Labour sag at the final post:"

The survey suggests Labour is on course for a third successive term but that a last-minute advance by the Liberal Democrats leaves Tony Blair uncertain that he will secure a big enough majority to serve the "full term" he wants before standing down.
Labour's 10-point lead in NOP's poll last week has slumped to three points after the closing stages of the campaign were dominated by Iraq.


Ruth e-mails Joe Conason's "Must-flee TV: How the GOP is taking over at PBS:"

Conservatives have long warned us that someday the commissars of political correctness are going to take over in Washington and impose their opinions on us with our own tax dollars. What they didn't tell us is that they would become those commissars, and that their politically correct orthodoxy would be the Republican Party line -- as they are now proving at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
With all the subtlety of an old-style Soviet bureaucrat, C.P.B. chairman Kenneth Tomlinson is extending partisan political control over public television. As a former Reader's Digest editor and Republican appointee, Mr. Tomlinson clearly understands what he was appointed to do.


From BuzzFlash, Zach e-mails Greg Palast's "Impeachment Time: "Facts Were Fixed:"

Here it is. The smoking gun. The memo that has, "IMPEACH HIM" written all over it.
The top-level government memo marked "SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL," dated eight months before Bush sent us into Iraq, following a closed meeting with the President, reads, "Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam through military action justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WDM. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Read that again: "The intelligence and facts were being fixed...."
For years, after each damning report on BBC TV, "Isn't this grounds for impeachment?" Vote rigging, a blind eye to terror and the bin Ladens before 9-11, and so on. Evil, stupidity and self-dealing are shameful but not impeachable. What's needed is a "high crime or misdemeanor."


To continue reading click the link above or click here.

Brenda e-mails "Protesters Occupy University of Hawaii Admin Building" from IMC:

Since 10 a.m. on Thursday, April 28th, a coalition of Native Hawaiian groups, students, faculty, anti-war activists, environmentalists, and religious organizations have joined forces to occupy the University of Hawaii administration building, to demand the University cease all work on a secret Navy research project, UARC. This research is for the development of space-based laser systems, surveillance technologies, and sea-based mines. Since September 11, 2001, the US military has embarked on the largest expansion onto Hawaiian land, since World War II. The Army plans to take 28,000 acres of this precious land to station a Stryker Brigade.

Brenda notes that there is a live cam with this link.

Democracy Now! covered this story on Monday with their segment entitled "Students Occupy Univ. of Hawaii Building to Protest Construction of Military Center" which is a read, watch, listen.

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