Related Posts

ACTION ALERT: Support CBS

Recently CBS aired a piece on peace options in the Israeli-Palestinian debacle. I thought the segment was fair and universally irritating, doing the job our press is supposed to do: tell the stories, based on reality, that make-up conflict, not make-up stories, based on a desired reality, to tell a conflict. J Street is telling me that they are getting slammed for doing their job. You can see clips of the show and sign a petition supporting CBS on their site. I altered the language of their form letter, and have pasted my version below, for others to use. The…

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com

Unfit for Democracy? – NYTimes.com. We Americans spout bromides about freedom. Democracy campaigners in the Middle East have been enduring unimaginable tortures as the price of their struggle — at the hands of dictators who are our allies — yet they persist. In Bahrain, former political prisoners have said that their wives were taken into the jail in front of them. And then the men were told that unless they confessed, their wives would promptly be raped. That, or more conventional tortures, usually elicited temporary confessions, yet for years or decades those activists persisted in struggling for democracy. And we…

Language Deemed Offensive Is Removed From F.B.I. Training Materials – NYTimes.com

Language Deemed Offensive Is Removed From F.B.I. Training Materials – NYTimes.com. The language suggesting that agents could bend the law was contained in 876 pages of training materials about Muslims and Arab-Americans the F.B.I. deemed to be offensive or inaccurate and removed after a review of about 160,000 pages of such material over the past six months, according to aides present at the briefing. Also removed was the admonition that agents should never stare at or shake hands with an Asian, and the assertion that Arabs had “Jekyll and Hyde” personalities making them more likely to have “outbursts and loss…