Happy St Paddy’s Day, Today At the Left Forum, Latest News From Afghganistan, Obama In The Money
March 17th, 2012 - by: Danny
Happy St Patrick’s Day Fifth Avenue Closed For Parade In New York Today. Boston urges “restraint By Revelers in Tomorrow’s parade. Professor of Law Francis Boyle: The Irish Potato Famine Was Genocide Listen: Podcast of Friday’s News Dissector Radio Show on PRN.FM. Journalist Glenn Greenwald on coverage of Iran; Yanni on the economic crisis in Greece and Seth Adler, Left Forum Director on the this year’s forum. Saturday: I will be speaking on an Ethics panel discussing media coverage of Occupy at 3 PM at the Left Forum at Pace University, Room E 305. Occupy is Six Months Old:HP: How To Assess its impact? NY Daily News: NYC Claims It Spent $17 Million on Police Overtime To Watch Occupy Protest: Actor-activist George Clooney Arrested At Sudanese Embassy I was at the Left Forum in New York last night. Opening panel quite brilliant. Moderated by organizer extraordinaire and scholar Stanley Aronowitz, featuring a Nigerian activist, Labor Leader of Militant Nurses, Occupy Theorist of “Horizontalism,” American Economist and Bill Strickland, former director of the Northern Student Movement back in the day, and with whom I worked closely in the civil rights movement. This is the biggest Left Forum ever with 1400 Speakers. 1400! Don’t miss it. Leftforum.org. Michael Moore speaks tonight. strong> Other news of note NYTimes: It Was A Hate Crime Daily Kos, Recalls Working in Wisconsin: Scott Walker has now lost the Republican majority in the Wisconsin state senate. This morning it was announced that state Sen. Pam Galloway, one of the four Republican state senators facing recall, will resign her seat. Since Democrats had already winnowed the Republican majority to 17-16 with their two recall victories last summer, this now makes the Wisconsin state senate a 16-16 tie. The recall election against Galloway will still move forward, although her name will not appear on the ballot. Republicans will nominate a different candidate, while state Rep. Donna Seidel, who was already challenging Galloway in the recall election, will be the Democratic candidate. Rolling Stone, Matt Taibbi: Bank of America Too Crooked To Fail Bales was being transferred Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. His attorney, John Henry Browne, raised issues of stress and multiple deployments that hinted at a possible defense strategy. Earlier in the day, Afghan President Hamid Karzai cast doubt on the account of events given by U.S. authorities as he met with families of the slain civilians. KABUL – (Reuters) – A NATO helicopter crashed into a house on the outskirts of the Afghan capital, Kabul, on Friday, killing 12 Turkish soldiers on board and four Afghan civilians on the ground, Turkey’s military and a senior Afghan police official said. Karzai Sharply Criticizes U.S. Over Shooting Inquiry KABUL, Afghanistan — President Hamid Karzai chastised the United States on Friday, saying that he was at “the end of the rope” over what he termed the United States’ lack of cooperation in investigating the American soldier accused of going on a rampage earlier this month and killing 16 civilians in southern Afghanistan. CLG: Claim–Up to 20 US troops executed Panjwai massacre: probe says Lawmaker: Attack lasted one hour involving two groups of American soldiers in the middle of the night on Sunday 15 Mar 2012 A parliamentary probe team on Thursday said up to 20 American troops were involved in Sunday’s killing of 16 civilians in southern Kandahar province. The team spent two days in the province, interviewing the bereaved families, tribal elders, survivors and collecting evidence at the site in Panjwai district. Hamidzai Lali, a probe delegation lawmaker, told Pajhwok Afghan News that their investigation showed there were 15 to 20 American soldiers who executed the brutal killings. ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — President Obama has telephoned Afghan President Hamid Karzai to discuss Karzai’s call for NATO troops to withdraw from rural villages. Fluent News: ‘David Ignatius: Bin Laden’s plot to kill Obama’ KABUL, March 16 (Xinhua) — In an apparent chain reaction to the shooting spree by a U.S. soldier in south Afghanistan, Washington and Kabul both wanted to speed up the security transfer from NATO troops to Afghan army, coupled with a Taliban decision to suspend talks with the United States on Thursday. Twitter: @Zara khaled on Freedom of Religion FAIR: IS President Obama Trying To Keep A Journalist In Prison Jason Russell, co-founder of Invisible Children, allegedly vandalised cars and made sexual gestures while wearing his underwear. Daily Beast: Retracted! Damning Apple Foxconn Story ‘Partially Fabricated’ The program This American Life is retracting one of its most popular episodes—a story by playwright Mike Daisey dedicated to exposing the allegedly poor labor practices of Apple—because it was found to be partially fabricated. TAL said it was devoting “the entire hour to detailing the errors” from the retracted show this week. The episode includes an interview with Daisey, who issued a response today on his personal site: “I stand by my work … What I do is not journalism … I regret that I allowed This American Life to air an excerpt from my monologue … But this is my only regret.” Primary Election: Media Tenor Reports Economy Returns As An Issue Coverage of politics in US TV news, March 1 – 13, 2012 Boston, March 16, 2012: As the media increasingly focuses on employment and gas prices, President Obama’s visibility increases and his approval rating becomes more vulnerable as voters assess future economic prospects, according to Media Tenor International. “Although Obama’s approval rating is at an all-time high since the killing of Osama Bin Laden last May, his ability to maintain this trend is unlikely given the negative tonality on his policies across the major news networks,” says Casey Smith, analyst at Media Tenor. “March finally sees a higher focus on economic issues overall, but the positive rating on employment numbers is not overcoming the more negative coverage on gas prices, indicating that Obama is not convincing the public of long-term success with his policies.” ABC’s primetime news shows an increasingly negative perspective on economic issues despite the Consumer Confidence Index showing an upward trend. “The CCI level is residual from positive employment numbers in previous weeks,” Smith adds. “But Obama’s topic focus has shifted in March, centering less on broader economic issues and more on international conflicts, such as Iran. Mixed media ratings on future economic prospects make Obama particularly vulnerable to criticisms on his performance.” Meanwhile, Santorum remains in discussion as a viable option against Romney, despite Romney’s more positive tonality as a front-runner due to his substantial wins in the Super Tuesday primaries. Santorum’s momentum slightly slowed during the last week, as Gingrich continued campaigning and splitting the GOP vote. However, Santorum’s wins in Alabama and Mississippi last Tuesday keep his visibility well over Gingrich’s, and fuels the intra-party debate between Republicans over who will be able to beat Obama in the general election. Republican candidates are still not focusing on the pressing economic issues.” Mail&Guardian:Obama banks a cool $5-mill in one-day campaign blitz In a five-event, two city, 1 700 mile fund-raising odyssey, US President Obama managed to amass over $5 million in funding for his electoral campaign. Financial Times: Silence is no longer Goldman The traditional code of silence at Goldman Sachs makes public criticism from a departing employee all the more stinging. Goldman bankers keep quiet as a matter of corporate culture and because it is in their financial interests to do so. But, as the departing derivatives salesman Greg Smith argued, there are cracks in the culture. More bankers are now prepared to speak, at least privately, about their worries that life at the bank will not be as lucrative or as fun as it was in the past. The threat to the business model from new regulation has caused many to question the company’s future and their future at it. Some, like Mr Smith, express concern about the way clients are treated. Perhaps most worryingly for Lloyd Blankfein, the bank’s chief executive, some think change is needed at the top. “Lloyd is a big millstone around our neck,” says one managing director who asked not to be quoted by name. “People are tired of his management style and I think people want a change. Lloyd sent the signal he’s not going anywhere soon and there’s a lot of people who are dissatisfied.”‘ •Fluent News: ‘Foreclosure whistleblower earns $18M’ Nuclear Energy: Going, Going, Gone? Nuclear Power’s Green Mountain Grassroots Demise, by Harvey Wasserman In the wake of Fukushima, grassroots citizen action is shutting the worldwide nuclear power industry. A Solartopian tipping point is upon us in the US, Europe and Japan which will re-define how the human race gets its energy. States rights and local democracy are at the core of the battle. The definitive breaking point looms in Vermont. By mid-March a state board is likely to deny the Yankee reactor licenses to operate or to create radioactive waste. If that happens, a Vermont shutdown could mark a critical moment in establishing state power over an atomic reactor. A critical domino would fall—as it has in Japan and Europe—and we will begin taking down old reactors all across the US. Four new reactors barely under construction will go down with them, making inevitable the end America’s age of atomic power. In Vermont, the New Orleans-based Entergy bought the Yankee reactor in 2002. Entergy agreed to shut it if the state’s Public Service Board denied it a Certificate of Public Good to continue to operate and generate radioactive waste. That decision is due by March 21, the forty-year anniversary of the reactor’s 1972 opening. Thank you for joining me today newsdissector.net. Comments to dissector@mediachannel.org
May your blessings outnumber
The Shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go!
NEW BRUNSWICK, N.J. — A former Rutgers University student was convicted on Friday on all 15 charges he had faced for using a webcam to spy on his roommate having sex with another man, a verdict poised to broaden the definition of hate crimes in an era when laws have not kept up with evolving technology.
Military Suspect Identified
CNN/LBN: The suspect in last weekends shooting deaths of 16 Afghan civilians is Staff Sgt. Robert Bales, a military source and a senior defense official told CNN.
More News From The AfghanistanNewsCenter.com
NATO helicopter crash kills 16 people in Afghanistan
By Hamid Shalizi and Jack Kimball Fri Mar 16, 2012
By MATTHEW ROSENBERG and SHARIFULLAH SAHAK The New York Times March 16, 2012
In phone call, Obama talks to Karzai about demand for NATO to pull back from Afghan villages
By Associated Press,
American frustration exposed over Afghan war leads to Afghan anger
by Abdul Haleem, Yangtze Yan
RT @EgyIndependent Brotherhood MP says freedom of religion “God-granted right” http://ow.ly/9IhUM #FreedomofExpression #MB #Egypt @EgyIndependent Brotherhood MP says freedom of religion “God-granted right” http://ow.ly/9IhUM #FreedomofExpression #MB #Egypt
Guardian: Kony 2012 Filmmaker Said To Be Arrested
Wall Street Retreat
- About Danny Schechter
Danny Schechter is an Emmy award winning journalist, television producer and independent filmmaker who also writes, blogs and speaks about media issues.
His latest film is PLUNDER The Crime Of Our Time.
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