News Dump - My top stories from the Ü.S press.
News from our cousins over the pond :
The first article is an excellent one; the main protagonist is the guy responsable for way that Bolivia fell apart after the last elections in 2002.
He was the strategist for the candidate that the whole population absolutely hated. He got his man in by using smear and fear campaigns.
One year later, after much bloodshed and corruption charges looming, the then president fled to the ü.s seeking exile - where to this day, he still lives / hides /creeps around in dark glasses at night.
In 2002, Evo Morales came from way behind to finish third ...
There is a great documentary about this whole episode called "A President under the influence"
The Word at War Propaganda ?
Nah, Here's the Scoop, Say the Guys Who Planted Stories in Iraqi Papers
By Lynne DukeWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, March 26, 2006; D01
Oh, no, not at all -- the Lincoln Group does not do propaganda. Sure, the firm's been tarred by some in Congress, the media and the defense establishment for paying Iraqi newspapers to publish hundreds of "news" stories secretly written by U.S. troops.
But Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president, says the practice is not propaganda. The word carries such baggage, such suggestions of mind control. So in an industry in which euphemism thrives, a more elegant word is deployed.
"We call it 'influence,' " says Craig, whose business has 12 U.S. government contracts totaling more than $130 million.
The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His name is Andrew Garfield. Over lunch near the group's Pennsylvania Avenue offices, he also tries to steer the lexicon at play around the table and to clarify what he calls the "tradecraft" of "influence."
Take "psyops," for instance. That's short for "psychological operations." Like the word "propaganda," it, too, conjures mystery, deception.
But that's not what the Lincoln Group does, says Garfield. The company has been contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops.
That word, Garfield protests, refers to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops. ... (a great article)
Wapo
whoooooo ... be afraid, be very afraid ... whoooooo
Happy Doomsday to You !
By Dana MilbankFriday, March 24, 2006; A02
Washington was about one horseman short of an apocalypse yesterday.
It began with a breakfast meeting in a Senate office building where, over fruit salad and bagels, government and academic experts discussed the coming avian flu pandemic. "Currently it has a fatality rate of 56 percent," reported Nancy Cox, flu expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "An increasing number of countries have reported human cases. The severe cases are really quite severe."
Pointing to slides of some nasty chest X-rays, she added: "Death from this particular pathogen is not a pleasant death."
Next: the mid-morning news conference on mad cow disease at the National Press Club. There, a beef producer explained why he is suing the government for not letting him test his cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, an "invariably fatal, progressive, incurable, neurodegenerative disease" that can be transmitted to people. The feds say the testing is unnecessary, but the rancher, John Stewart, warned that "BSE is not understood enough today to really come to scientific conclusions." ... (more)
Wapo
love stories like this one :
Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder
HOLYOKE, Mass. -- To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush.
Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.
Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon.
"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me."... (much more)
Wapo
Bbbut ... i thought democracy and freedom were on the march ... is someone tellin' porkies ?
Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Revenge in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in southern Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.
In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.
Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"
Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.
In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 bodies, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.
There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half .... (more)
NYT
Breaking news
Seven people dead in Capitol Hill shooting
By Seattle Times staff Seattle Police investigate the scene where six people, including the gunman, died this morning during a murder-suicide at a blue rental home in the 2100 block of East Republican Street. Another victim later died at Harborview.William Lowe, who lives across the street from where the shootings occurred, called 911 when he heard the shots just after 7 a.m. "The first person I saw was obviously wounded, and he looked disoriented," he said.
Seattle Police investigate outside the Capitol Hill home. Investigators believe the gunman knew his victims. He had been at a party there earlier in the night
Police don't know yet why a gunman in his late 20s shot six people to death and then killed himself just after 7 this morning at a home in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. At a news conference in the stunned neighborhood this afternoon, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said the shooter, a local man whose name has yet to be released, killed six young men and women inside and outside the house "execution style." ... (more)
Seattletimes
The first article is an excellent one; the main protagonist is the guy responsable for way that Bolivia fell apart after the last elections in 2002.
He was the strategist for the candidate that the whole population absolutely hated. He got his man in by using smear and fear campaigns.
One year later, after much bloodshed and corruption charges looming, the then president fled to the ü.s seeking exile - where to this day, he still lives / hides /creeps around in dark glasses at night.
In 2002, Evo Morales came from way behind to finish third ...
There is a great documentary about this whole episode called "A President under the influence"
The Word at War Propaganda ?
Nah, Here's the Scoop, Say the Guys Who Planted Stories in Iraqi Papers
By Lynne DukeWashington Post Staff WriterSunday, March 26, 2006; D01
Oh, no, not at all -- the Lincoln Group does not do propaganda. Sure, the firm's been tarred by some in Congress, the media and the defense establishment for paying Iraqi newspapers to publish hundreds of "news" stories secretly written by U.S. troops.
But Paige Craig, the West Point dropout and former Marine intelligence specialist who is the Lincoln Group's president, says the practice is not propaganda. The word carries such baggage, such suggestions of mind control. So in an industry in which euphemism thrives, a more elegant word is deployed.
"We call it 'influence,' " says Craig, whose business has 12 U.S. government contracts totaling more than $130 million.
The Lincoln Group even has a "senior director for insight and influence." His name is Andrew Garfield. Over lunch near the group's Pennsylvania Avenue offices, he also tries to steer the lexicon at play around the table and to clarify what he calls the "tradecraft" of "influence."
Take "psyops," for instance. That's short for "psychological operations." Like the word "propaganda," it, too, conjures mystery, deception.
But that's not what the Lincoln Group does, says Garfield. The company has been contracted by a psyops division of the U.S. military, but Garfield insists that Lincoln's work cannot be considered psyops.
That word, Garfield protests, refers to a military operation. And Garfield is very familiar with military psyops, as he is a former British military and intelligence official who regularly teaches a course at the U.S. Army base at Fort Bragg -- a course on . . . psyops. ... (a great article)
Wapo
whoooooo ... be afraid, be very afraid ... whoooooo
Happy Doomsday to You !
By Dana MilbankFriday, March 24, 2006; A02
Washington was about one horseman short of an apocalypse yesterday.
It began with a breakfast meeting in a Senate office building where, over fruit salad and bagels, government and academic experts discussed the coming avian flu pandemic. "Currently it has a fatality rate of 56 percent," reported Nancy Cox, flu expert with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "An increasing number of countries have reported human cases. The severe cases are really quite severe."
Pointing to slides of some nasty chest X-rays, she added: "Death from this particular pathogen is not a pleasant death."
Next: the mid-morning news conference on mad cow disease at the National Press Club. There, a beef producer explained why he is suing the government for not letting him test his cattle for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, an "invariably fatal, progressive, incurable, neurodegenerative disease" that can be transmitted to people. The feds say the testing is unnecessary, but the rancher, John Stewart, warned that "BSE is not understood enough today to really come to scientific conclusions." ... (more)
Wapo
love stories like this one :
Near Paul Revere Country, Anti-Bush Cries Get Louder
HOLYOKE, Mass. -- To drive through the mill towns and curling country roads here is to journey into New England's impeachment belt. Three of this state's 10 House members have called for the investigation and possible impeachment of President Bush.
Thirty miles north, residents in four Vermont villages voted earlier this month at annual town meetings to buy more rock salt, approve school budgets, and impeach the president for lying about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and for sanctioning torture.
Window cleaner Ira Clemons put down his squeegee in the lobby of a city mall and stroked his goatee as he considered the question: Would you support your congressman's call to impeach Bush? His smile grew until it looked like a three-quarters moon.
"Why not? The man's been lying from Jump Street on the war in Iraq," Clemons said. "Bush says there were weapons of mass destruction, but there wasn't. Says we had enough soldiers, but we didn't. Says it's not a civil war -- but it is." He added: "I was really upset about 9/11 -- so don't lie to me."... (much more)
Wapo
Bbbut ... i thought democracy and freedom were on the march ... is someone tellin' porkies ?
Bound, Blindfolded and Dead: The Face of Revenge in Baghdad
BAGHDAD, Iraq, March 25 — Mohannad al-Azawi had just finished sprinkling food in his bird cages at his pet shop in southern Baghdad, when three carloads of gunmen pulled up.
In front of a crowd, he was grabbed by his shirt and driven off.
Mr. Azawi was among the few Sunni Arabs on the block, and, according to witnesses, when a Shiite friend tried to intervene, a gunman stuck a pistol to his head and said, "You want us to blow your brains out, too?"
Mr. Azawi's body was found the next morning at a sewage treatment plant. A slight man who raised nightingales, he had been hogtied, drilled with power tools and shot.
In the last month, hundreds of men have been kidnapped, tortured and executed in Baghdad. As Iraqi and American leaders struggle to avert a civil war, the bodies keep piling up. The city's homicide rate has tripled from 11 to 33 a day, military officials said. The period from March 7 to March 21 was typically brutal: at least 191 bodies, many mutilated, surfaced in garbage bins, drainage ditches, minibuses and pickup trucks.
There were the four Duleimi brothers, Khalid, Tarek, Taleb and Salaam, seized from their home in front of their wives. And Achmed Abdulsalam, last seen at a checkpoint in his freshly painted BMW and found dead under a bridge two days later. And Mushtak al-Nidawi, a law student nicknamed Titanic for his Leonardo DiCaprio good looks, whose body was returned to his family with his skull chopped in half .... (more)
NYT
Breaking news
Seven people dead in Capitol Hill shooting
By Seattle Times staff Seattle Police investigate the scene where six people, including the gunman, died this morning during a murder-suicide at a blue rental home in the 2100 block of East Republican Street. Another victim later died at Harborview.William Lowe, who lives across the street from where the shootings occurred, called 911 when he heard the shots just after 7 a.m. "The first person I saw was obviously wounded, and he looked disoriented," he said.
Seattle Police investigate outside the Capitol Hill home. Investigators believe the gunman knew his victims. He had been at a party there earlier in the night
Police don't know yet why a gunman in his late 20s shot six people to death and then killed himself just after 7 this morning at a home in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood. At a news conference in the stunned neighborhood this afternoon, Seattle Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske said the shooter, a local man whose name has yet to be released, killed six young men and women inside and outside the house "execution style." ... (more)
Seattletimes
posted by Damiel | 11:41 AM
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