Blogstorm descending on CNN ( Easongate situation )

Reply for #78,79.

Damn good questions...but I don't have the answer....guess he must be a friend of the Leftists...

Thanks for the ping on this. First time I have been on the blogger portion of the site. I find the whole thing uplifting...the fact that the MSM is finally being held accountable for their deceit. I wonder if there are any blogs discussing the MSM bias on natural resource topics?

Good, I came to this story late , which kind of explains my posting of a lot of fragments on this thread. I was trying to understand what the heck was going on.,..

David Gergen, the moderator, was taken aback, but could not manage to change the subject

"Why did he attempt to change the subject? Why should any moderator who changes the subject about such an important vetting of whispered rumor be "greatly respected"? Why do many DC/Davos types claim "repesct for" Gergen. Is he a Don?"

Not a Don, a Talleyrand. David Gergen is the morally bankrupt but brilliant (and fortunately, powerless) Talleyrand of our times.

I'm gettin ready to post a Dan Walters column from the Sacramento BEE from 2/7/05 about CEQA and how the Yooonyuns are abusing it in some resource areas, but mainly energy and of course... WallyMart!!!

Reference:

Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord

February 09, 2005

Long History Of Hostility Towards Military By CNNi Executive

Chris Cramer, managing editor of CNN's International news division and a chief lieutenant of Eason Jordan, has made similar allegations about the military targeting journalists as his boss, as outlined here earlier and on Slublog. Alert CQ reader David D remembered Cramer from a famous hostage-rescue case in London in 1980, and pointed the way to other inflammatory comments Cramer made towards the men who rescued the hostages.

On April 11, 1980, six armed Iranians opposed to the rule of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini invaded the Iranian embassy in London, taking everyone inside hostage for a six-day siege. Two of the hostages were BBC reporter Chris Cramer and his partner and soundman, Sim Harris:

The hostages were mainly Iranian embassy staff, but also included a number of tourists and two BBC employees - journalist Chris Cramer and sound recordist Sim Harris - who had stopped by to pick up visas.
Later that day Mr Cramer telexed a shopping list of demands to the police from inside the embassy. ... If their demands were not met the gunmen threatened to execute all the hostages and blow up the embassy.

The British activated the Special Air Service (SAS), their commando unit that had been under the budget knife to that point, in an attempt to free the hostages. For the first five days, the SAS planned but remained on standby while British negotiators tried to get the terrorists to surrender. Unfortunately, on the sixth day, the terrorists lost patience and killed an Iranian hostage, an embassy staffer and supporter of Khomeini. After the terrorists pushed the body out a window, the Brits sent in the SAS, which took the embassy back in 15 minutes, killing all but one of the terrorists and saving all but two of the 21 hostages.

Operation Nimrod, as it was designated, became widely hailed as one of the SAS' most successful operations. The SAS earned a reputation as one of the world's best counter-terrorist units and the British still point to Nimrod with pride to this day. Well, most of the British do. Cramer, who got released after the first day by faking a heart attack (on his own admission) and leaving behind his partner, doesn't think too much of the men who eventually rescued Sim Harris and the other 18 hostages. Here's what Cramer told a seminar of media editors for the Crimes of War Project in 2002 (emphases and break points mine):

I won't roll out the victim syndrome for you at all -- well, maybe I will for two or three minutes. My own humbling experience was 20 years ago last week. Not, of course, as I remember it. It was actually last Wednesday at about 4 o'clock in the afternoon. Not, of course, that I remember it because it has no affect on me. Tomorrow I fly to London for a reunion, the first in 20 years. And I'll come back to you and let you know how that feels next year, if you like.
My experience was very brief. I was stupid enough to apply for a visa inside the Iranian Embassy in London in April 1980. I was stupid enough to be there when Iraqi terrorists stormed it. I was there for a very, very short time. I was there for precisely 28 hours. Not that I remember it, because I'm a member of your profession. We don't do PTSD [post-traumatic stress disorder].
I was fortunate enough to have a slightly troubling stomach condition, having been in Zimbabwe, which manifested itself in a very short space of time. It's a most incredible heart attack. And I do fantastic heart attacks. I do great heart attacks. So convincing with my heart attack that the people there were embarrassed and threw me out.
And I was released after 27 hours into the hands of the Metropolitan Police in London and two days later into a dreadful bunch of terrorists called the SAS, who were probably worse than the terrorists inside the Iranian embassy.
And four and a half days later, Maggie Thatcher, in one of her rare moments of triumph, deployed the SAS in broad daylight to storm the embassy and they rescued all but maybe one or two of the hostages. Two were murdered. The SAS conveniently took out five members of the terrorist group and forgot to take out the sixth. So that was my brief, humbling experience.

So Chris Cramer, president of CNN International and a former hostage of terrorists himself, appears to have gotten a lifetime case of Stockholm Syndrome from the experience. He considers British commandos to be terrorists -- actually, worse than terrorists, because they freed people from the clutches of murderous thugs. Had Cramer not faked a heart attack, of course, he would have owed his life to the SAS, but apparently his sympathies lie with the gunmen who caused him all of his PTSD.

Now the man who considers these British commandos to be worse than terrorists says much the same thing about the American military -- and CNN put him in charge of its international news coverage, including everything we and the world see coming from such places as Iraq and Afghanistan. No wonder Eason Jordan hired him to run CNNi. With his twisted sense of judgment and his sympathetic ear for conspiracy theories, he seems a perfect fit for the CNN chief who likes to make up wild accusations overseas about the American and Israeli military.

These are the people who have given us the news for the past several years on CNN. Now you understand the origins of the bias that you see in their "version" of the news. CNN has a lot of housecleaning to do, and firing Jordan won't be enough to restore their credibility. Chris Cramer has to go.

UPDATE AND BUMP, 2/9: Cramer describes the terrorists as Iraqi in this quote. The research I found on Operation Nimrod suggests that he was correct, but officially the British maintain that the six terrorists were disaffected Iranians who opposed Ayatollah Khomeini. The scuttlebutt was that Saddam attempted to extend his war against Iran to London, although I'm not terribly clear on the motive. The British maintained diplomatic relations with Iran after the Islamic Revolution and our own hostage crisis in Teheran; perhaps Saddam wanted to shake that relationship.

Posted by Captain Ed at 07:58 AM |

I wonder if there are any blogs discussing the MSM bias on natural resource topics?

There may very well be one, there are so many. And you could always start your own. The Blogosphere is an awesome happening! Check out these guys, they are trying to keep statistics, on the traffic but may have some search capability:

The Truth Laid Bear

"On his appointment as Minister of Foreign Affairs he preserved to France its frontiers of 1792, and at the Congress of Vienna he broke the union of the great powers by secretly concluding a treaty with Austria and England. Again appointed minister of Louis XVIII (1815) he preserved his country from dismemberment, but left the presidency of the Council after the election of 22 August, 1815."

Your link brushes over it, but he expanded France's territorial holdings and power in the negotiations *after* Napolean had lost his wars. Talleyrand was entirely dangerous, even in defeat.

Thanks for the link Ernest, but my clunky old version of netscape siezes up on it. Looks like like my entry into the blogosphere may require new software lol! Can I just google forest + blogs and get a list, or is there a better way to do it?

Ok, TLB does have a crude search capability:

Using the keyword environment:

Searching for blogs with keywords 'environment'

32 pages of results.

Well your questions have started some interesting exploring on my part. So my answer is mostly I don't know.

Did find this on the other side of what you seem to be looking for:

Inventing for the sustainable planet

Now this is interesting:

Create a blog in 3 easy steps:

The Waspman could have his own blog....called "Some Great Rants"...I'd visit.

Well googling blogs + forest got me Blogs for Bush as the #1 match (Healthy Forests Intiative) Again, my netscape program is garbling the data from their archive (super-imposing images, java-script error etc). Very interesting these blogs.

Is Firefox an option for you?

More background Items from the Blogosphere:

captainsquartersblog

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February 09, 2005

Nik Gowing, The Philosophical Guru Of Eason Jordan And Chris Cramer

The Baron did more investigating of Nik Gowing, whose book Dying To Tell The Story appears to have prompted Eason Jordan and Chris Cramer, executives at CNN, to issue multiple unsubstantiated allegations of deliberate targeting by US and Israeli militaries of journalists in war zones as policy. Baron found this sample from the book, a lengthy essay written by Gowing to summarize the arguments he presents. From the start, Gowing makes clear that he has no intention of using temperate rhetoric to make his case:

Excerpted, see Link for the rest.

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And his reference:

thebaron

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2/9/2005

Sample of ‘Dying to Tell the Story’

Politics

—Posted @ 12:29 pm

Chris Cramer, managing editor of CNN’s International news division and a chief lieutenant of Eason Jordan, highly recommends the book “Dying to Tell the Story,” by Nik Gowing. Here is a sample of the book he edited and endorsed:

There is a growing fear in our business that some governments – especially the most militarily sophisticated like the US and Israel – are sanctioning the active targeting of journalists in war zones in order to shut down what we are there to do – to bear witness and report what they are doing.
The fear is that an apparent culture of impunity by at least two nations is already actively encouraging others to believe they can get away with targeting and eliminating journalists, or at least turn a convenient blind eye to the issue. More than ever, we are inconvenient eyes
and ears who monitor and report what some in power and command would much prefer we did not.
There is evidence that media activity in the midst of real-time war fighting is now regarded by commanders as having ‘military significance’ which justifies a firm military response to remove or at least neutralise it. From the media’s perspective, the core guiding principles of reporting
must remain accuracy, impartiality, objectivity and balance in a time of armed conflict.Yet if some worst case fears are shown to be justified, then on the political and military side some senior officials seem to view our 24 hour/7 day-a-week presence as a real-time military threat that on some occasions justifies our removal by the application of deadly force. Despite
expressions of sympathy, the fact that journalists and technicians are killed or injured appears to be of barely marginal concern.
The suspicions suggest a disturbing trend to be challenged and reversed. At the extreme it is the sanctioning of murder in violation of sovereign, humanitarian and international laws. Article 79 of the Additional Protocol to the Geneva Conventions states specifically that
“journalists engaged in dangerous professional missions in areas of armed conflict shall be considered civilians”.

This is the first evidence I have seen yet as to “why” Eason Jordan and others believe the US targets journalists. They believe the US fears their reporting. Worse, it assumes the US is doing something they would rather not have reported.

In other words, to say the US targets journalists, is to say the US has something to hide. It is a double-whammy indictment. First, the US is doing something wrong. Second, they are willing to kill to cover it up.

The Baron

Yes. My system is capable of running it. Do you recommend it?

Yes, absolutely.

Does not have E.Mail however.

Are you running Windows 95 or 98?

As Jack Benny used to say to Rochester.... "NOW CUT THAT OUT!!!" (smirk)

Windows 95 with windows 98 & windows office 2000 upgrades. No e-mail? Can I keep using netscape for e-mail and use the firefox for 'surfing'? My son uses the explorer program, but I avoid it.