Microsoft’s need to beat Google and Rupert Murdoch’s desire to help newspapers survive could lead to an online news ice age
PCMAG
By Lance Ulanoff
News Corp. is shooting itself in the foot, and now Microsoft may be helping to aim the gun. Today, under the category of strange bedfellows, we have the story of Microsoft possibly offering to help delist News Corp. content and sites, such as The Wall Street Journal from Google’s search index. Doing so will, as I understand it, pull the content not only from the Google index, but search results and Google News as well. This, as Rupert Murdoch sees it, is progress.
For months, Murdoch has been telling anyone who will listen that Google News and other aggregation sites are going beyond the Fair Use Doctrine. His plan, already well under way, is to gate content—like The Wall Street Journal—and only allow paying subscribers to read the stories online (it’s actually been this way for a while, but until recently, you could get around the gate by searching for WSJ stories in Google News). I understand the desire, if not the act, of gating content—especially in today’s print-snuffing economy. However, Murdoch and Microsoft’s latest plan—if true—makes no sense at all. …
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2356245,00.asp
Are Microsoft and News Corp Hatching a Very Bad Idea?
November 28, 2009 by joejollyU.S. was ‘hell bent’ on Iraq war, U.K. envoy says
November 27, 2009 by joejollyBush administration didn’t care about getting U.N. support, he tells inquiry
AP Associated Press
Nov. 27, 2009
LONDON – The United States was “hell bent” on a 2003 military invasion of Iraq and actively undermined efforts by Britain to win international authorization for the war, a former British diplomat told an inquiry Friday.
Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, said that President George W. Bush had no real interest in attempts to agree on a U.N. resolution to provide explicit backing for the conflict.
The ex-diplomat, who served as Britain’s envoy in Iraq after the invasion, said serious preparations for the war had begun in early 2002 and took on an unstoppable momentum.
As diplomats frantically attempted in early 2003 to agree upon a U.N. resolution approving a military offensive, Bush’s key aides grew impatient — criticizing the process as an unnecessary distraction, he said.
‘Waste of time’ alleged
Grumbling from Washington “included noises about ‘this is a waste of time, what we need is regime change, why are we bothering with this, we must sweep this aside and do what’s going to have to be done anyway — and deal with this with the use of force,’” Greenstock testified before the inquiry into the Iraq war. …… Jeremy Greenstock, British ambassador to the United Nations from 1998 to 2003, said that President George W. Bush had no real interest in attempts to agree on a U.N. resolution to provide explicit backing for the conflict.
The ex-diplomat, who served as Britain’s envoy in Iraq after the invasion, said serious preparations for the war had begun in early 2002 and took on an unstoppable momentum. …
There is a reason why the start of the Iraq war is unknown – six years after it happened. The Iraq war, center-piece of neocon wars, was almost like a private war waged for private reasons using America’s resources and claiming lives “everywhere”. And like the plundering NAZIs of WWII, the neocons show no remorse. Actually the neocons have always blamed others for their “bungling, illegal” activities. Effectively, they have “thumbed their noses” at the world’s system of justice. And they have gotten away with it.
The reason for the start of the Iraq war has been a mystery for some six years. The Bush team wasn’t talking after that initial assertion about Niger selling uranium oxide to Iraq fell into “disrepute”. The “Left Coaster” posted a Jul 30, 2005 article here. And CBS’s 60 Minutes posted a Tyler Drumheller article here.
The mine that was supposed to have produced the uranium oxide was said to be under French management and as you’ll see in the Left Coaster post, one mine was said to be under water. And some in the CIA were puzzled how 500 tons of uranium oxide could be smuggled out of a French managed facility.
But the neocons have been politically strong in America – strong enough to force their wrong-doings to be “swept under the rug”.
But it’s beginning to look like the British are serious about the truth. And if that be the case, a powerful voice will make statements about the start of the Iraq war – which is the only war that does not have an official, truthful reason for its start.
And another interesting point is that the British people can bring war-crimes charges against officials. Recently an Israeli official “high tailed” it out of Britain after discovering that British citizens were waiting for him with a war-crime charge. There was political talk of taking that right away from the British people but I never heard that happened.
Palin to Headline ‘TEA Party Convention’
November 27, 2009 by joejollyNovember 25, 2009
ABC News’ Teddy Davis reports:
Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin is planning to headline an event which is being promoted as the “First National TEA Party Convention,” according to Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton.
The “TEA party convention”, which is taking place in Nashville, Tenn., from Feb. 4-6, is an understandable target for Palin.
In her new book, “Going Rogue,” Palin repeatedly heaps praise on a TEA party movement that vigorously opposes the tax, spending, and borrowing policies of President Barack Obama. …
http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/2009/11/palin-to-headline-tea-party-convention.html
And the neocons keep displaying their RHETORIC talents. Not a one, starting from the original neocon has a positive, constructive performance to show to America. And likely none would want investigative reporters hanging around. But it’s ok for FOX News people to show up as cheerleaders in their FAIR and BALANCED coverage of the news. And if the FOX news family can KILL Google prior to the “event”, perhaps the world will be forced to PAY for the fair and balanced reporting of FOX News.
And apparently the neocons have decided that Ronald Reagan is the most brainy of their lot. They want to dedicate the Republican Party to the original neocon - Ronald Reagan. His administration, in addition to selling cocaine to America, must have sold the neocon idea.
How in Hades can a political faction, start out selling cocaine and end up by crashing America’s economy – still picture itself as a viable political faction? One might reasonably wonder if they retained some of the cocaine that they intended to sell to minority Americans. The IN-DENIAL idea is inadequate to explain neocon behavior.
The Palin type neocons want to brainwash America into believing they are fiscal conservatives. If Americans believe that – then America deserves what it gets from the neocons. It is truly difficult to save America from itself! When we meet the enemy – and the enemy is us, then we have a problem.
Obama is spending on America’s population. Neocons are likely to call that socialism. What the neocons want is something that is the image of fascism. Putting money in the hands of America’s citizens rather than America’s businesses is not the idea of neocons even after the neocons bankrupted many in America’s population. The neocons, with perhaps one exception, are in a class by themselves.
Some politically connected companies “made out like bandits” as a result of the Iraq war. And the Iraq Oil! Anyone who believes the Iraq war was not about Iraqi OIL may be a neocon. The Halliburton Company made out nicely in Iraq’s hydrocarbon industry.
It is appalling how little the brains of the neocons thinks of the brains of Americans.
But, actually, the neocons are taking a page from Winston Churchill’s book: Never give up; Never Ever Give Up; Never Ever, Ever Give Up. However, the neocons are nowhere near Winston Churchill’s performance but – neither has Satan given up. And so long as the neocons have escaped prosecution for tons of illegal actions, why give up? Why not pull America DOWN to the neocons level?
Palin will headline – FOX News will likely byline. And America will once again be fed a dose of neocon RHETORIC. AT NO TIME WILL THE NEOCONS GIVE THEIR PERFORMANCE AS AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO DO SOMETHING. And they have been leading America’s government for twenty-four years. Surely, they must have accomplished something of note – RIGHT?
A fool and his country are soon parted
Germany’s top soldier quits over Afghanistan raid
November 26, 2009 by joejollyGermany’s top soldier has resigned over allegations of a cover-up related to a deadly Nato air strike in Afghanistan.
BBC News
November 26, 2009
Wolfgang Schneiderhan’s move followed reports that key information about the 4 September action was withheld, the defence minister said.
The strike, which was ordered by a German commander, targeted two fuel tankers hijacked by Taliban militants.
But dozens of civilians were also killed in the attack, which happened in the northern province of Kunduz.
Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg told parliament that Gen Schneiderhan had failed to provide proper information about the incident and had “released himself from his duties at his own request”.
Another senior Defence Ministry official, Peter Wichert, has also resigned.
The announcement came as Germany’s parliament debated whether to extend its military mission in Afghanistan, amid growing domestic opposition to involvement in the conflict. …
The above news report by the BBC does not blame, either directly or obliquely, the Obama administration for this disaster.
But some TELL AMERICA news sources will likely attempt to tie the policies of the Obama administration to this disaster.
Neither the Obama administration nor the Clinton administration is responsible for what the Afghanistan war morphed into as the neocons directed America’s resources toward their own war in Iraq.
While the soldiers went to Iraq, the drones went to Afghanistan. Neither war had the manpower required but the neocons did not dare restart America’s military draft. So, manpower-wise, both Iraq and Afghanistan suffered. And the results of both wars showed it.
Under the neocons the “kill rate” in Afghanistan increased over what Bill Clinton’s administration did. President Bill Clinton’s administration was blowing up caves along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The neocons decided to send drones to where-ever people congregated. Perhaps there was a terrorist or two in a large gathering of Afghanistan people. So, when crowds formed the drones came. Men, women, children all perished as the neocons killed terrorists.
And some in America may have felt – “better them than our soldiers”. But America has never been known to put civilians in harms way in order to protect America’s soldiers. And it is not alright to sacrifice civilians for soldiers if there is less than a best effort put forth to save the civilians. Leaving civilians to the “luck of the draw” is not the American way.
The neocons did a lot of their Afghanistan killing from the air. Long ago, joejolly asked “What if”:
What If
By joejolly
What if you were in a sports stadium in Afghanistan and all 50,000 of you were watching a favorite sport. What if one of the sports announcers leaned over to the other sports announcer and whispered, “two high ranking Al-Qaeda members are in attendance.”
And What if the announcer who whispered, did not know that he spoke near a HOT microphone.
Now everyone in the stadium has been told of an Al-Qaeda presence in the stadium.
You look to the skies and see two fighter planes heading toward the stadium. What would you do, and how fast would you do it?
[Upon my first attempt to post “What if” it wound up on the “cutting room floor” but eventually it was published.]
Could America better understand the above Afghanistan killings if a cash-carrying armored truck overturned and spilled cash all over the street. Civilians would descend upon that truck and the cash. And what if law enforcement came in with guns blazing.
Reckless and lethal behavior by those in charge makes it bad for all.
Celebrating the Sale of Cocaine to America’s Minorities
November 26, 2009 by joejollyThe neocons now want to claim the Republican Party for Ronald Reagan
Man has never been short on ideas. Some ideas, once adopted, made a positive statement to the world. Some did not. But what kind of a statement would claiming the Republican party for Ronald Reagan make?
Would it make the statement that “government selling of cocaine is ok – if done in minority neighborhoods”? Should selling the illegal drug cocaine be something that a political party should embrace. Should Christian America embrace the selling of illegal drugs to its own people by a legitimate American political party?
No, the devil did not make them do it(sell cocaine). The neocons sold the illicit drug cocaine to American citizens in order to fund a war in the jungles of South America. Neocons love wars. Wars are destructive and that is in line with the kind of work the neocons do – even when they are attempting to do something constructive.
Now the neocons want the Republican conservatives to de-emphasize the party that did not sell cocaine to its citizens and emphasize the party that did sell cocaine to its citizens.
A fool and his country are soon parted
From the “Land of CZARS” comes this Question: Did Government Move Too Slowly on crib recall?
November 26, 2009 by joejollyComing from the land of CZARS, one is likely to ask which government moved too slowly – the Bush government or the Obama government or both?
Sometimes the headlines coming from the “Land of CZARS” misleads. In a recent case the “Land of CZARS” said “PEOPLE” , when CZAR-land actually was talking about a precise sub-set of people – “Republicans and Conservatives”. Now, there is no denying that Republicans and Conservatives are people. “People” is a given. But if the “people” are Republicans, Democrats or Conservatives then that should have been made clear early-on.
Somehow 2.1 million cribs, of dubious safety quality, got into America’s baby market. That many cribs, even for America, are hard to sell over-night. How long did it take to sell all those cribs. Ideally, one should not even need to ask this question but a “CZAR-land” news source, for reasons of its own, has associated politics with the crib problem. Using the word “GOVERNMENT” like using the word “PEOPLE” can mean many different things.
The neocons have wrecked much of America but have yet to admit it. The neocon mouthpieces, the TELL AMERICA press and the neocons themselves don’t admit to “nothing”. In way-too-many cases, the neocons try to BLAME others for their “train-wrecks”. And since the neocons’ political bent is “business-centric”, like the fascists, they have many supporters.
If 2.1 million cribs have already made it into the bedrooms of America then government isn’t the only one that moved too slowly. America’s press also moved too slowly. There was a time when America’s press wasn’t as politicized as it is today. There was a time when an investigative reporter would have spotted the deadly baby crib trend and alerted America to the problem – likely before 2.1 million cribs got into America’s bedrooms.
How many lessons will America need before it realizes that the “business-centric” political focus of the neocons is killing America. The sellers of those 2.1 million baby cribs would have stopped the sales instantly if their profits had been killed. Their focus is their bottom line. The government’s focus should be its citizens – but the neocons, via their lassie faire business attitudes and their voodoo economics have wrecked America.
A fool and his country are soon parted
Inquiry told Iraq could not ‘use’ chemical weapons
November 25, 2009 by joejollyThe UK received intelligence days before invading Iraq that Saddam Hussein may not have been able use chemical weapons, an adviser has said.
BBC NEWS
November 25, 2009
Foreign Office official Sir William Ehrman told the war inquiry that a report suggested that such weapons may have been “disassembled”.
A separate report suggested Iraq might also “lack” warheads capable of spreading chemical agents, he added.
But Sir William defended the invasion, saying Iraq had flouted UN resolutions.
‘WMD surprise’
Sir William, the Foreign Office’s director general for defence and intelligence between 2002 and 2004, insisted that the role of intelligence in the decision to go to war was “limited”.
He also said it was a “surprise” no weapons of mass destruction (WMD) were ever found in Iraq.
“It was not what we had expected,” he added.
The reasons for going to war in Iraq – including the now discredited claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction which could be used within 45 minutes of an order being given – remain a long-standing source of controversy.
In its second day of public hearings, the inquiry looked into Iraq’s weapons capability and its influence on the decision to go to war.
During this, Sir William revealed that on 10 March “we did…get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn’t yet ordered their assembly.”…
But Sir William defended the invasion, saying Iraq had flouted UN resolutions.
Flouting of UN resolutions, of course, is something the UN, not the Bush team, should address. If the UN failed to go to war over “flouting” of its resolutions why should the Bush team do otherwise? Was it the OIL?
The UN resolution was not the first choice for a war with Iraq but after the WMD assertion had served its purpose and “kick-started” the Iraq war – the WMD assertion was discovered to be a lie.
How could two “high tech” countries(US and Britain) fail to detect something as bogus as that WMD document might require yet another inquiry. But it only took the UN’s IAEA hours to discover that the document that caused a war was a fake. And the neocons showed no emotion!
But looking further at that second choice would demand that one assert that an assortment of allies were empowered by “something” to act on behalf of the United Nations. What was that something? Is it in the UN Charter or something.
The United Nations refused to go to war with Iraq so the Bush team and its allies went it alone. It was aggression but the power of the pen changed “aggression” to “pre-emptive self defense”. And because there were no repercussions, the world’s system of law, order and justice was broken. The NAZI era of MIGHT MAKES RIGHT returned. And the Arabs of the Middle East were told not to even try to develop a nuclear deterrent against this kind of aggression. The IAEA was watching them.
But the British inquiry is likely to be of value – since so little value has come from America’s neocons.
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POLL: Fewer People Believe Global Warming is Happening
November 25, 2009 by joejollyThe above headline is what you see first. But after you click on the above headline, you see this:
POLL: Fewer Republicans and Conservatives Believe Global Warming Is Happening
The headline writing CZAR at abc News “coulda” fooled me. The first headline made it appear that the poll was taken via random sample of a whole population. But the second headline changed all that.
It is easier to believe that Republicans and Conservatives(neocons) toe the Bush team mark. The Bush team went to great lengths to muzzle NASA’s weather scientists. Had that not been exposed, there might be quite a few others who had doubts about the scientific approach to predicting possible weather events. And speaking of people and their beliefs I believe that among the Republicans and the Conservatives(neocons) there are still believers in Iraq’s WMDs.
Faith based beliefs are different from logic/reasoning based beliefs. If faith anchors a belief in one’s mind, it is likely that faith will be the only tool that can remove that belief. Since Mr. Bush said – and never retracted the Iraq WMD belief, there are likely still believers out there who are waiting for the EUREKA of WMD discovery in Iraq.
Sometimes it’s probably fun for the BIG BRAINS to manipulate the thought processes of the LITTLE BRAINS. Fascists might see that as the natural order of things.
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Selling Cocaine to “Less Qualified Minorities”
November 25, 2009 by joejollyAmerica’s neocons have made much use of “Less Qualified Minorities”. Less Qualified Minorities were used as customers for the sale of the illegal drug – cocaine. America’s government, via the secret CIA, was engaged in drug running to help the Reagan neocons finance a beloved war in the jungles of South America. The Reagan neocons were killing their own people in order to get their “jollies” in the jungles of South America.
Although Reagan sold his contraband in minority neighborhoods, retail sales of the contraband were not restricted to minority neighborhoods. There have been stories of suburbanites driving their sleek long limousines into the city and queuing-up to purchase the illicit drug originally provided by the Reagan neocons.
And now the current neocons want to bathe the Republican party in the aura of cocaine. How low can they go? No other American political party has come close to the criminal type behavior of the neocons. And the current neocons, who have yet to display competence in a major task, wants to put their indelible mark on the Republican party.
A fool and his country are soon parted
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