Curated knowlege, trenchant insights & witty bon mots
An NYT story reports the U.S. National Security Agency is sitting on a historical study completed in 2001 that found some of its agents “deliberately distorted critical intelligence to cover up their mistakes” in the 1964 Tonkin Gulf incident that triggered the Vietnam War. An excerpt: The historian's conclusion is the first serious accusation that communications intercepted by [...]
Mon, October 31 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off
Seymour Hersh, the legendary U.S. reporter, talked to The Globe and Mail about what the Plamegate scandal is really all about. Some excerpts: He's going to save America,” Hersh predicted, on the phone from his home in Washington, just days before Fitzgerald announced indictments against I. Lewis (Scooter) Libby, U.S. Vice-President Dick Cheney's chief of [...]
Mon, October 31 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
The Globe and Mail on the latest flare-up in the interest of certain magazine titles — that appeal to a “psychographic” rather than a demographic — in charitable status. Current case in point: The Walrus. Some excerpts: It's not a new gambit for Canadian periodicals. The Canada Revenue Agency has, on a case-by-case basis, given charitable [...]
Mon, October 31 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
Tim Russert, NBC's Washington bureau chief and host of Meet The Press, is a key witness in the indictment against I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. An excerpt from the NYT story: It was Mr. Russert's 20 minutes of sworn testimony to the special prosecutor, Patrick J. Fitzgerald, in a Washington law office on a summer Saturday [...]
Mon, October 31 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
This article by NYT media writer Katharine Q. Seelye explores why 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq seemed to resonate much more than the first 1,000 did. An excerpt: Other papers, too, that had dutifully acknowledged the first 1,000 dead seemed to give greater emotional weight to the loss of the second 1,000. Single columns gave [...]
Mon, October 31 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Media » Comments Off
Saw these two: Public transport 'drink ban plan' Teototalling Tony Blair's gov't is considering banning the consumption of liquor on all forms of public transport — not just automobiles, but planes and trains too. A night out in Helsinki An excerpt: It's Friday night in Helsinki, and the object of the exercise seems to be to get as [...]
Sun, October 30 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page, Minutiae » Comments Off
Fast Food Nation,the seminal book by American journalist Eric Schlosser, is forming the basis of a forthcoming film by director Richard Linklater (Slacker, Dazed and Confused) that will star Catalina Sandino Moreno (Maria, Full of Grace). But they're trying to make it by stealth so they can get into some actual fast food restos. An excerpt [...]
Sun, October 30 2005 » Film, Main Page » Comments Off
A new law that forbids news broadcasts and criticisms of Nepal's king has triggered a general strike call on Friday by the country's opposition parties. Another part of the story is the government's threat to close a leading private radio station, Kantipur FM. See the BBC story for details. Here's an earlier news release on [...]
Sun, October 30 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
Linking the al-Sliba tribe to Saddam Hussein, even by calling him their dog in a satirical TV show, was enough to trigger a visit to the originating TV station by hundreds of angry people. An excerpt from the Oct. 27 BBC story: The protestors scuffled with staff and broke windows at al-Rai's offices in Kuwait City, [...]
Sun, October 30 2005 » Main Page, Media » Comments Off
Salon's Aaron Kinney rounds up reaction from the U.S. conservative commentariat on the indictment of “Scooter” Libby in the Plamegate affair. Some excerpts: (free with a day pass) Reaction from conservative pundits to the news of “Scooter” Libby's indictment on Friday varied — some stuck with positive spin, but a number of others struck a [...]
Sat, October 29 2005 » * Big Picture Stuff, Main Page » Comments Off