By Ed Kent
Kent, a retired Brooklyn College philosophy professor, is writing in reference to the New York Times article, headlined: “Studies Halted at Brain Lab Over Impure Injections”
I am appalled to learn that Columbia (where I earned my Ph.D.) has been injecting mental patients with dangerous drugs as research.
*Criminal: Ed Kent’s original usage on his blog.
In 2007, the NYCLU started the campaign to challenge this heinous NYPD “practice of keeping a computer database of completely innocent people who have been stopped, questioned or frisked by police officers.” Since 2004, the NYPD has stopped and interrogated people nearly 3 million times, predominately people of color, African Americans and Hispanics.
“We applaud Governor Paterson for pulling the plug on the NYPD’s sprawling database of innocent black and Latino New Yorkers,” said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman, according to a statement posted at the NYCLU website. “Innocent people stopped by the police for doing nothing more than going to school, work or the subway should not become permanent criminal suspects. By signing this bill, the Paterson administration has put itself on the right side of history and leaves an important legacy in support of civil rights, civil liberties and common sense.”
By New York State Office of the Governor – Press Release
Governor David A. Paterson today signed into law A.11177-A/S.7945-A, or the “Stop and Frisk” legislation, which prohibits the retention, in an electronic database, the personal information of individuals who are stopped, questioned and frisked by police, but are not charged with a crime or violation. The “stop, question and frisk” technique is used when a police officer reasonably suspects that an individual has committed or is about to commit a misdemeanor or felony. While this law does not prohibit the use of that technique, it ends the practice of storing the personal information that is collected in the New York City Police Department’s (NYPD) database. The bill applies only to stops in New York City.
At the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism, today, beginning at 10 a.m. Co-sponsored by New York Community Media Alliance:
With the economy and politics in turmoil, what are the election trends? Who do we watch, why and how do we get the story? Please join a panel of experts who can help shed light on how state and city governments work; who holds the purse strings; how to measure what’s happening on the ground; what all this could mean to your community.
Legions are happy that Lebron is going to Miami. Other legions are unhappy and some are real sourpusses.* And, not to be overlooked, are the legions and legions and legions that feel unaffected, one way or the other, and would say that if they were polled (though it isn’t difficult to believe that, imagining their seconds of news recognition à la Andy Warhol, that many might sigh or gripe or offer critique to the camera/mikes in their faces because it isn’t everyday that a news organization is interested in what they opine).
{ Google: Lebron James, About 22,300,000 results (0.15 seconds) – July 11, 9:43 a.m.}
The short version:
Before hunterword.com there was theword.hunter.cuny.edu and early on with the latter there were Alieu Sheriff and Rodney Sieh, who, as teens, had been chased out of, first, Gambia, then Liberia because of their news critical of government practices and policies. In Liberia, when word went out that they were to be shot on sight … Read the rest of this entry »
Advisory says mainstream news media missed major point of the Rolling Stone profile by Michael Hasting, that is, the damning portrait of the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And, according to the Advisory, Hastings concluded that the media have mostly “given McChrystal a pass” on several controversies and scandals in the recent past.
Entire article follows.
If this writer had been thinking clearly, he would have known that there would have to be a Part 2. And maybe even a 3. Braggadocio definitely on center stage but there is more. Tomorrow, Sunday, CNN’s Reliable Sources, will feature some pundits talking about the McChrystal affair. I can’ wait to see it.
However, I still like what I wrote in Part 1, that the General’s mooning of the Obama administration was contempt expressed in act of desperation. Regardless of what others have, might or will say. And I especially like this excerpt from Frank Rich of the New York Times:
There were few laughs in the 36 hours of tumult, but Jon Stewart captured them with a montage of cable-news talking heads expressing repeated shock that an interloper from a rock ’n’ roll magazine could gain access to the war command and induce it to speak with self-immolating candor. Politico theorized that Hastings had pulled off his impertinent coup because he was a freelance journalist rather than a beat reporter, and so could risk “burning bridges by publishing many of McChrystal’s remarks.”
That sentence was edited out of the article — in a routine updating, said Politico — after the blogger Andrew Sullivan highlighted it as a devastating indictment of a Washington media elite too cozy with and protective of its sources to report the unvarnished news.
Love it.
Full Rich Op Ed – The 36 Hours That Shook Washington – here.
General Stanley McChrystal, Commander of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) and Commander of U.S. Forces Afghanistan (USFOR-A), described in several news accounts as being a fearless if not hedonis snake eater, did not cut-off-his-nose-to-spite-his-face. Rather, what he did (and I believe I understand why the pundits offering sycophantic explanations about his aggressive posturing missed this occurring faux pas) was moon the administration and he did it because …
FAIR Activism Update: PBS Ombudsman Agrees That PBS Series Turmoil and Triumph Has a “Credibility Problem”
July 20th, 2010Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: FAIR, George Shultz, PBS, PBS Ombudsman, Turmoil and Triumph
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