Afghan Leader’s Brother Is On Payroll Of CIA

No wonder President Obama is taking his time making a decision regarding Afghanistan.  The New York Times has just revealed that the brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai has been on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) and is in also a major player in the illegal opium drug trade.

According to the New York Times:

‘More broadly, some American officials argue that the reliance on Ahmed Wali Karzai, the most powerful figure in a large swath of southern Afghanistan where the Taliban insurgency is strongest, undermines the American push to develop an effective central

government that can maintain law and order and eventually allow the United States to withdraw.”

To read more, here’s the link:  Brother of Afghan Leader Is Said to Be on C.I.A. Payroll – NYTimes.com

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan,government,Obama,NY Times,opium trade,CIA,war,Karzai

 

What’s Wrong With a Single-Payer System? – The Conversation Blog – NYTimes.com

What’s Wrong With a Single-Payer System? – The Conversation Blog – NYTimes.com

This article from the NY Times written by David Brooks and Gail Collins gives us something to think about regarding health-care reform.  Before we let the politicians convince us to accept an expensive program that will ultimately cater to the insurance companies and other big-business lobbyists, we should look at creating a health-care system that would be answerable to the American people.

Technorati Tags: single-payer system,health-care,NY Times

 

Internet Hate Sites Fueled Holocaust Museum Shooter

Free speech is one thing, but hate speech which threatens death and destruction against someone else should not come under the protection of the First Amendment.

Unfortunately, many Internet content providers, including Facebook among others, have not made the distinction between free speech and hate speech and, because they are allowing their sites to be used to promote hateful agendas, they are enabling haters  like the Holocaust Museum shooter, according to a contributor to the New York Times.

Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, in a NY Times article, said that websites which allow hate speech encourage haters “to find validation and empowerment, in effect incubating and multiplying the hate” and that they, the haters, are eventually “consumed by it.”

It is true that the Holocaust Museum shooter had an active website and, according to Rabbi Cooper, his “online activity were well known…for years.”

Making laws against sites which allow hate might help but it is up to the individual sites to determine what to allow and what to reject.  Guidelines should be set by content providers that clearly define the line.  Equally important, it’s up to individual users of these sites; if you see something that is obviously objectionable and beyond the purview of free speech, go ahead and contact Facebook or the content provider.

Read this:  Hate Crimes and Extremist Politics – Room for Debate Blog – NYTimes.com.

 

In the O’Reilly / NY Times War, Who’s Right?

It’s not a surprise that Fox’s Bill O’Reilly doesn’t like the New York Times; he considers the paper left-leaning and has targeted it many times throughout the years of his broadcasts both on radio and TV.  But, after last night’s program, in his own words, O’Reilly’s complaint against the NY Times has turned into outright “war” against the venerable newspaper.

O’Reilly’s “war” regards his claim that the NY Times “killed” a story regarding alleged ties between then-candidate Obama and the controversial ACORN group before the presidential elections and that, if the paper had run a story outlining alleged corruption within ACORN, it could have affected the results of the November elections.

O’Reilly’s attack last night against the NY Times came after an editorial in Sunday’s paper by Clark Hoyt who O’Reilly calls an “ombudsman” for the NY Times in which Hoyt briefly refers to O’Reilly.

Who’s right?

Your answer will probably depend on which side you lean more toward.  But to be fair about this, they both are valid in their claims although O’Reilly tends, later on, to jump off into the deep end leaving reality behind.

This beef centers around an interview by the Times that was being conducted with a former ACORN employee, Anita Moncreif, who claimed that ACORN broke the law by having partisan ties with Obama and that ACORN was actually supporting him for president.

To be fair to the Times, they were hesitant to run with the story based only on Moncreif’s claims because of her credibility:  Moncreif, according to the Times, had been “fired” because of misusing an ACORN credit card.

The NY Times did run another alternate story about potential corruption within ACORN from a more credible source.

O’Reilly has blasted the Times for not running Moncreif’s claims, accusing them of conspiring to throw the elections.

While it’s true that it might look better now, in retrospect, if the NY Times had run Moncreif’s story too, and also inserted that her claims weren’t entirely verified because of her credibility issues, O’Reilly is not being realistic in claiming that the Times decided to “kill a story” because they are, according to O’Reilly, “a dishonest publication” who were behind Obama’s election!

The links to both O’Reilly’s and the New York Times are below so you can check it out for yourself and decide.  A note about the Fox link:  go about 1 minute 40 seconds into the 5 /18 video for O’Reilly’s side of this issue.

Fox News Bill O’Reilly Link:

http://www.foxnews.com/oreilly/index.html

NY Times Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/opinion/17pubed.html?scp=3&sq=stephanie%20strom&st=cse

 

Technorati Tags: ACORN,politics,FOX News,NY Times,O’Reily