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My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

theintercept.com

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Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#81

Post by scottlocklin »

ceejayoz wrote: post #79
scottlocklin wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Probably so, but nobody else with his reach was covering this. Seems kind of important to me!

That's simply false. NYT in 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/us/popular-pesticide-faul... BBC in 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1930658.stm

Humor me for a minute here:

1) Google Atrazine (I get 1.7m hits)

2) Google "making frogs gay" (I get 4.9m hits)

I'm pretty sure this means Alex Jones did a better job of informing humanity that atrazine might be a problem than the NYT or any other news organization. I'm assuming Alex Jones is the source, or at least the main popularizer of the meme "making frogs gay." I could be wrong about that, and maybe it was someone else! Or maybe everything Alex Jones does is bad. But it looks like he raised an important issue and effectively put it into people's brains.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#82

Post by tivert »

syedkarim wrote: post #47
SlowRobotAhead wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The UniParty. However... This is where I'll make a point. The GOP and Dems absolutely both hate Trump. That's the funny thing about bubble types and die-hard liberals is that it seems neither can see just how little the GOP wanted Trump. They just didn't have a riggable system like the DNC did. That like him or not, Trump is very much disrupting the many of the plans of those politicians that while pretending to be a…

If the GOP has such disdain for Trump, then why do traditional conservatives in Congress continue to support him?

> If the GOP has such disdain for Trump, then why do traditional conservatives in Congress continue to support him?

Probably two reasons:

1) They fear his base, which can mount primary challenges to unseat them when they're open with their distain (see: Flake, Jeff).

2) Trump has been useful in allowing them to pursue much of their traditional agenda: tax cuts, deregulation, court picks, etc.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#83

Post by sbov »

ALittleLight wrote: post #75
verall wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm curious, why do you believe Trump's decision to withdraw from Syria is a good one? I support the eventual withdrawal from Syria, but packing up now will place a large burden on Kurdish minority groups in the region, who deserve better. It will not be the first time we supported the Kurds while they advanced US goals and then pulled out ASAP. It also seems the decision was motivated by conversations between Trump…

I think a basic problem with your analysis is that there will always be an emotionally compelling reason to commit troops to enterprises like this. We have to support our allies, the Kurds. Saddam Hussein and his sons are cruel dictators. Iranian theocrats are intent on destroying Israel. There are concentration camps in North Korea. Gaddafi is a dictator and sponsor of terrorists. Etcetera. These reasons aren't wron…

So much this. The "great" thing about the world being a mostly terrible place, is the government can pick and choose where to intervene for reasons other than helping people. This gives the government some cover because people say "well Hussein is a bad guy" even though we ignore the bad guys in a bunch of other countries out there for completely mysterious reasons.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#84

Post by sDlEzAtyoNAz »

resters wrote: post #17

The major takeaway is that one can't count on the NYT to challenge powerful interests. This makes the NYT a powerful conservative force in US culture. It follows that most of the articles that appear opposed to powerful interests are a) inconsequential, or b) used as a distraction, helping to create the impression that the paper is anything but a powerful conservative force. It's no accident that the paper ran the Ju…

>If one were to ask "what kind of coverage might we expect from a paper controlled by a billionaire industrialist?", we might actually predict a right-wing perspective.

That depends on what he's selling, and also on what his allies in government or elsewhere want him to publish.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#85

Post by ceejayoz »

scottlocklin wrote: post #81
ceejayoz wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's simply false. NYT in 2003: https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/19/us/popular-pesticide-faul... BBC in 2007: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1930658.stm

Humor me for a minute here: 1) Google Atrazine (I get 1.7m hits) 2) Google "making frogs gay" (I get 4.9m hits) I'm pretty sure this means Alex Jones did a better job of informing humanity that atrazine might be a problem than the NYT or any other news organization. I'm assuming Alex Jones is the source, or at least the main popularizer of the meme "making frogs gay." I could be wrong about that, and maybe it was som…

That's a major goalpost move.

Let's evaluate it for a moment, though. You posit Jones helped inform humanity about atrazine... but your tallies indicate that at least 3.2M of the 4.9M (65%) "making frogs gay" search results don't mention the chemical (as they'd show up in both queries if they did).

edit: https://www.google.com/search?"making+frogs+gay"+atrazine

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#86

Post by owenversteeg »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #67
jackpirate wrote: post #25

I found the following passage remarkable: In another recent incident that gave me chilling insight into the power of government surveillance, I met with a sensitive and well-placed source through an intermediary. After the meeting, which occurred a few years ago in Europe, I began to do research on the source. About an hour later, I got a call from the intermediary, who said, “Stop Googling his name.”

I think the implication is clearly that there existed a government survalence dragnet and that the source was well placed enough to have unfettered access to it. However, it strikes me that there are a number of other possibilities: perhaps his own computer had been specifically compromised; maybe they targeted his hotel room or WiFi network; or, one which I find really compelling, it was simply a well timed ruse int…

[edit] Ok, so I actually read the whole article now. I still have a small amount of skepticism but two things sway me towards thinking this is real: 1) the author got called to the White House to sit down with the CIA director and Condoleezza Rice to shut down an earlier story, so clearly there are high-up people watching him and trying to shut him up at all costs. 2) there are a surprising amount of people in the CIA doing idiotic and more career-risky things here.

My original idea of how it went down was that some mid-level Joe Schmoe looks him up and calls him to spook him, which I didn't believe for a number of reasons. But if, say, Condoleezza Rice was personally watching this guy (which she was) and ordered someone to go intimidate him, then I would not be surprised.

[original comment] Yeah... I'm a little skeptical. I completely believe that there's horrifyingly extensive dragnet surveillance out there and something like this is _possible_. But if you've got access, why would you risk it with some stupid comment like this, to a reporter of all people? Seems a little fishy.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#88

Post by kevmo »

herbstein wrote: post #15

I think people would do well to read about the propaganda model. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_model

Propaganda by Ed Bernays and Public Opinion by Walter Lippmann are two great books on the subject, as well.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#89

Post by iaw »

jackpirate wrote: post #25

I found the following passage remarkable: In another recent incident that gave me chilling insight into the power of government surveillance, I met with a sensitive and well-placed source through an intermediary. After the meeting, which occurred a few years ago in Europe, I began to do research on the source. About an hour later, I got a call from the intermediary, who said, “Stop Googling his name.”

Hypothesizing how this could be done... The simplest method may be to plant a web page that has high ranking for the sources name that phones home details about all requests the the site.

If the site normally only receives standard webcrawler traffic any human traffic after such a meeting would serve as a canary of sorts.

I mean, presuming that they don't have an inside line with google.

Re: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror (2018)

#90

Post by blindwatchmaker »

sDlEzAtyoNAz wrote: post #77
blindwatchmaker wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty fair to say that the leadership of both major parties, elites in and outside the government, and the military/intelligence services are right wing, and have been historically so in the United States barring the brief period between the New Deal and the destruction of Keynesianism in the 80s.

How do you explain the policies where the right wing has been steadily losing ground for the past 50-100 years? For example on immigration, on gender equality, or sexual liberation? Are the elites just losing those battles? Because it doesn't seem like they mind.

Not sure that contradicts what I said? For example, Richard Nixon was a social conservative that ran on a backlash against socially progressive causes, but was still a left wing president. Supported industrial regulation with the EPA, instituted price controls, governed fully within the Keynesian framework of the day. He was to the left of most of the modern day Democratic party.
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