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Archive for the 'News' Category

Does He Have a Chance?

by mm, posted to Chicago / Illinois / News / Our Government

I first heard about Alexi Giannoulias about a year ago. His father started a bank near my neighborhood in Chicago in the late 70s. Alexi has been the bank’s VP and Senior Loan Officer for the past four years, and his name sometimes comes up in conversations about local businesses.

I heard about him […]

Damn Yankees!

by michael, posted to News

Just this past year, with an assist from the International Olympic Committee, Mayor Mike Bloomberg gave up his idea of building a multi-use sports stadium on Manhattan’s west side. The New York Yankees and their owner George Steinbrenner had taken the hint long ago and had revamped their future stadium plans: […]

US Propping Up Yet Another Dictator to Overthrow in Uzbekistan

by derek, posted to News / Our Government

It seems the Bush administration and US interests are helping to prop up another ruthless dictator and creating of another terrorist hotbed over in Uzbekistan. I was just reading through telegrams written by former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, Craig Murray. “The Register“:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/12/30/murray_lets_slip_blogs/ has the story on the documents. Below are some excerpts from Murray’s telegrams. […]

It’s All In Your Mind

by mm, posted to News / Us

While visiting my parents, I asked my dad (who used to work for the National Security Administration) what he thought about their spying on civilians. He said with a wink, “There’s no such thing as the NSA.

Then I returned home and saw this:

“We are not in a good place.”

by michael, posted to New York / News

Update: We are still not in a good place here in NYC, but most of us are at work, the Mayor still has a temporary residence in Brooklyn, and the Governor is inexplicably in New Hampshire. At 7:15 a.m. TWU Local 100 leader Roger Toussaint announced “a series of strikes” that would begin with two […]

“You cannot build apartments at Ground Zero.”

by michael, posted to News

The Daily News reports that Larry Silverstein, the principal developer of the World Trade Center site, let these words fall from his mouth yesterday. He also stated, “And I don’t think, after all of this time, all of this delay … people in New York want any more uncertainty.” But Silverstein surely cannot think that […]

“Broken Windows” Rules at the MTA

by michael, posted to News

The rules go into effect today on New York City’s subways and buses. The rules look innocuous and some, like Gene Russianoff of the Straphangers Campaign in a comment to New York Newsday, have noted that they are an obvious matter of common courtesy. What is obvious, of course, is that in NYC no rule […]

Secret CIA Prisons Only The Beginning?

by derek, posted to News / Our Government

Yesterday on Democracy Now, Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh played down the story of secret CIA prisons and torture as “not where the real game is.”
AMY GOODMAN: By the way, do you believe that the secret prisons are in Romania and Poland, as Human Rights Watch believes, that the Washington Post won’t name, but exposed?

SEYMOUR […]

‘Trophy’ video exposes private security contractors shooting up Iraqi drivers

by derek, posted to News / Video

The Telegraph reported Sunday on this video taken by unknown “private security contractors” as they fired machine guns randomly at people in cars as they drive around Iraq.

According to the Telegraph:

The video first appeared on the website www.aegisIraq.co.uk. The website states: “This site does not belong to Aegis Defence Ltd, it belongs to the […]

2008 Presidential Hopeful Pataki vs. NYC

by michael, posted to New York / News

This a.m.’s Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC discussed the disagreement between Governor George Pataki and Mayor Mike Bloomberg over the development of lower Manhattan. Along with New York Post state editor Fred Dicker and WNYC reporter Andrea Bernstein, Lehrer rehearsed the dispute and then elicited some interesting insights into the dispute:

1. The current real […]