Turkey Diners

Steal (er...aggregate) This Article

A Look At All The Sites Owned By Rupert Murdoch That 'Steal' Content
from the who-ya-gonna-block-now,-rupert? dept

As Rupert Murdoch talks about how he wants to cut off Google, while claiming that aggregator sites are "parasites" and "stealing" from him -- and that fair use would likely be barred by the courts, it seemed like a good time to examine at least some of the sites that are owned by Rupert Murdoch that appear to aggregate content from other sites and which rely on the very same fair use argument. We've mentioned a few in the past, but figured it wouldn't hurt to explore them more thoroughly.

Well, let's start with the flagship Wall Street Journal itself. It integrates its own "aggregator" with headlines and links to other stories. For example, on the WSJ's tech news page if you scroll down, you'll find a bunch of headlines and links to other sources -- without permission:
Oops. Looks like the WSJ is "parasiting" and "stealing" according to Murdoch. Perhaps he should cut them of too.

Okay, how about Fox News itself? Yup. It's got an aggregator as well. Here's its Politics Buzztracker that aggregates and links to stories from a variety of different publications, including the NY Times, the Washington Post, MSNBC and others:
Murdoch can't be too happy about all that thieving.

Then we've got the folks over at AllThingsD, who I actually think do excellent work, and who have built up a nice part of their site called "Voices." I actually quite like this and find it useful (and yes, every so often, they are kind enough to "parasite" one of my posts). In fact, it helps keep AllThingsD in my RSS reader because it's so useful. But, damn, if that doesn't look just like what Murdoch is complaining about. Not only does it have headlines, but also a fair bit of intro text (no summary, no commentary) and even the links are hidden at the bottom, rather than using the headlines as links:
Of course, it's not just with news either. The folks at AlarmClock remind us that Murdoch's News Corp. owns IGN, which has a variety of properties, including the ever popular RottenTomatoes movie review aggregation site. Yes, the entire site is based on "parasiting" (according to Murdoch) movie reviews off of every other site, and pulling them all together:
Good thing Murdoch is planning on working on ways to get the court to ban that sort of "fair use."

Some other IGN sites don't quite have aggregators, but I do find it interesting that they've integrated in Google search, such that you could do searches for things across the web and have them remain in a totally News Corp./IGN-branded experience. Effectively, on these pages, Murdoch's own properties are able to "parasite" back Google's own "parasite" engine. Here are two examples:


I'm sure there are probably more examples of various News Corp. properties regularly doing exactly what Murdoch and other News Corp. execs are now decrying as illegal and which must be stopped. So, it has to be asked, Mr. Murdoch, will you pull down all of these sites?

NATO Storms Red Crescent Compound in Aghanistan

Afghan Red Crescent angry after NATO-led forces storm compound
Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:01pm IST
By Nita Bhalla

source

NEW DELHI (Reuters AlertNet) - The Afghan Red Crescent Society (ARCS) expressed anger on Tuesday at NATO-led troops who used explosives to storm a Red Crescent compound and temporarily detain two aid workers.

Saleem Wardak, manager of the media division of the ARCS, said NATO-led forces attacked their office in Qalat in the southern province of Zabul during a military operation against Taliban insurgents on Friday night.

"There was an attack by the security forces and two staff members were arrested, but were released after 24 hours," Wardak told AlertNet by telephone.

He said security forces used explosives to break into the compound with the blasts shattering windows and breaking doors.

"It is the first time that the ARCS has been attacked like this and we are very angry about it as we are only here to help the people and what the security forces have done is illegal," Wardak said.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said it had been looking for a Taliban contact responsible for funding militant activities and transporting improvised explosive device materials and weapons into the area.

"He was discovered hiding in a building later discovered to be a Red Cross office on the compound. Further questioning of the Taliban facilitator revealed he is a relative of a local Red Cross worker," said an ISAF statement issued on Saturday.

ISAF said one militant was killed during the operation.

However, unconfirmed reports suggested the dead man was an Afghan policeman.

Since U.S.-backed Afghan forces ended the five-year rule of the Islamist Taliban regime in 2001, hundreds of aid agencies have deployed to help respond to the needs of millions of people in a country crippled by a quarter-century of violence.

ATTACKS FROM BOTH SIDES

But attacks by militants persist, hampering relief and reconstruction work in much of the country. Aid workers are increasingly at risk of being targeted for kidnappings and killings from Taliban insurgents, as well being caught up in military operations against the Taliban.

The Swedish Committee for Afghanistan reported that on Sept.2, security personnel forcefully entered a hospital in Wardekprovince, where they broke equipment, tied up employees and forced staff and patients from their beds during an operation.

In August, Afghanistan's health ministry said a clinic in Paktika province was attacked by NATO-led forces, who believed members of the Taliban were there seeking medical assistance.

Phillip Charlesworth, head of delegation for the International Committee for Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies in Afghanistan, said he was concerned about the way ISAF was conducting its operations.

"The way the security forces conducted this operation in Qalat was unfortunate, and there were probably other options that they could have been pursued instead of launching an attack on the compound," said Charlesworth.

"I think its always a concern when organisations like ours get caught up in military operations and it is an issue about respecting our humanitarian space."

Attacks on aid workers by militants are also on the rise.

On Oct. 28, six U.N. staff were killed when Taliban militants attacked a guesthouse in Kabul. It was the second attack against the United Nations in Afghanistan this year and prompted the world body to temporarily relocate 600 expat staff.

Aid agencies are revising their security arrangements in the wake of the attack.

But many aid workers say their work is unsustainable in this increasingly insecure environment.

"I don't know what is going to happen, but we are now beginning to wonder how long we can realistically stay here in Afghanistan," said one aid worker, who did not want to be named.

Rupert Murdoch's Plans for Net News Control

Murdoch's plan for web pay walls 'raises questions of anti-trust law'

source

Talks with other publishers to introduce charging on news websites will undoubtedly attract the attention of competition authorities, warns UK expert

Murdoch admits delay in introducing newspaper website charges

Matt Wells: A desperate measure for desperate times


Murdoch: pay walls a "work in progress". Photograph: Saul Loeb/Getty Images

Questions over competition in the media industry have been raised by Rupert Murdoch's admission that News Corporation is talking to other organisations about its plans to introduce web charging.

Murdoch this week admitted that it is proving harder than expected to introduce charges for readers browsing his newspaper websites and that News Corp may miss a target of next June for the introduction of so-called "pay walls" at papers including the Sun, the Times, the New York Post and the Australian.

The initiative, which has divided the industry, is an attempt to recalibrate the business model for struggling print media businesses.

Three months ago, Murdoch announced that he intended to introduce website charges by the end of News Corporation's financial year, which runs to June 2010. Some rivals, including the New York Times, are planning similar moves.

He declined to comment on the reasons for any delay except to indicate that he was talking to rival publishers, including the Telegraph group in Britain. "It's a work in progress and there's a huge amount of work going on," Murdoch said.

But Murdoch's discussions could breach UK anti-trust regulations, according to a competition law specialist. Alan Davis of legal firm Pinsent Masons warned that if the conversations went as far as talking about pricing, then regulators would almost certainly get involved.

"Competitors should not be discussing business strategy for charging for online content and should certainly not be discussing pricing," he said. "Be under no doubt the competition authorities would be interested about why, and what, conversations are taking place. It is the nature of regulators to be suspicious."

However, Davis said that without knowing the exact nature of the conversations between News Corporation and the Telegraph, it was difficult to point to specific regulatory issues.

Anti-Olympic protesters blamed for virulent outbreak of media fever, diarrhea

Anti-Olympic protesters blamed for virulent outbreak of fever, diarrhea
Yesterday at 10:29pm
Cantrest News Service
November 9, 2009



MLA Harry Bloy, reportedly recovering after bout with anti-anti-Olympics flu

Anti-Olympic Torch marchers and their demands for indigenous rights, social justice, and free speech caused last week's epidemic of "spastic delirium" and "verbal diarrhea" in BC news offices, production studios and even the Legislature, reports say.

Toxic rhetoric began fouling newsrooms across Victoria last Saturday after No 2010 Victoria's successful rally and march that disrupted the Torch Relay and its one-day celebration that cost taxpayers an estimated half a million dollars.

The disease - known as "anti-anti-Olympic fever" - first felled CHEK News producer Kristin Robinson, then struck Times Colonist reporter Joanne Hatherly with a vengeance.

"She flatlined, basically," said a source close to the paper. "Her brain completely shut down."

Lucinda Chodan, Times Colonist editor-in-chief, disputed the reports.

"You're making a big assumption, that Hatherly even has a brain in the first place," she said, before refusing further comment.

Burnaby-Lougheed MLA Harry Bloy's attack of verbal diarrhea in the BC Legislature on Wednesday drew disgusted reactions from across the region.

"Yes, we've had lots of messages, dozens," said a constituency assistant at Bloy's office. "Harry is resting now and we hope he recovers."

Jody Patterson was the first Vancouver Sun journalist to fall victim to the fast-moving plague, which causes lapses in judgment, ethical breaches, and loss of cognitive function.

Most affected were the Sun's editorial staff, who spewed bile and vitriol of a particularly vile nature in Friday's edition, shocking thousands of readers.

"It's the readers who suffer most," said a source close to the Sun.

"It's traumatic to see once-respected news sources humiliate themselves like this. They attack people in public, foam at the mouth, piss themselves, and shriek like banshees. It's just horrific."

Experts say this new "anti-anti-Olympic fever" typically only lasts one to two days. But Robinson and other CHEK staffers were gripped by the malady for four full days, raising concerns that a longer-lasting, more virulent mutation is possible.

The epidemic is expected to peak in February of 2010 and will likely leave many major news agencies reeling from a loss of credibility, reports say.

The contagion may be a result of over-reliance on authority figures and over-exposure to corporate hype. Those affected suffer a severe form of cognitive dissonance when confronted with people protesting against the corporate agenda and in favour of civil liberties and indigenous rights.

News desks and opinion pages are equally vulnerable to the subsequent eruptions of toxic language and verbal excreta, which can infect anyone who comes into contact with them.

Doctors warn that while the epidemic continues, news from media conglomerates - especially corporate Olympic sponsors -- should be taken with a grain of salt. Citizens are urged to wash their hands and dose themselves with independent media sources like B Channel, subMedia, Victoria Indymedia, and No2010.com

Google Eyes Future of News Delivery

How news will change in Google's eyes

Google's Eric Schmidt gives eight ideas on the future of journalism

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt on where journalism is heading

When Google's CEO Eric Schmidt sat down on Thursday evening at the MIT in Boston, one topic that came up in the discussion with the audience was the future of news. As was reported by several journalists, Schmidt appeared to have a lot sympathy for newspapers and magazines and, well, interest. This might be no surprise, since delivering the news in the future seems to be an issue that Google is brainstorming about.

Their interest in news grew from a nice small idea that Krishna Bharat had about story ranking in 2001 to something which obviously keeps its CEO busy as it became a part of their future business. Indeed, Schmidt talked of "about 10 news stream ideas" they have for the future of news. What could they be?

To answer that, we need to understand fundamentally how Google addresses the issue, which is very much in a technology-driven way. As Schmidt joked at the Gartner Symposium, that in order to study the consumption of information in the future, you should find an early technology adopter, hence a teenager in your house, or borrow one, if you don't have one. So how can news be consumed in the future? The points Schmidt comes up with are convincing, although not totally new.

Always online: "...the reading will presumably be online not offline, just because of the scale of it."

Mobile: "The Kindle is a proto of what this thing could look like. People will carry these things around."

On a smallish display: "...probably on a tablet or a mobile phone"

Personalised: "It'll be highly personalised, right? So you'll know who the person is."

Semantic: "capable of deeper navigation into a subject"

Cross-financed: "It'll be advertising-supported and subscription-supported, so you'll probably have a mixture."

While we have heard of most of these ideas, there are two aspects which seemed to be new and less decrepit: integrated storytelling and differentiated news display.

"There'll be a lot of integration of media – so video, voice, what have you," said Schmidt rather briefly, but indeed, integrated storytelling might be the next step after the convergence of television, radio and newspapers. Since the way we told a news story has changed in the past, it is quite certain that it will change in the future as well.

While now we display text, video and audio next to each other there might be a future where the stories are told in a new medium that emerges out of a deep convergence of these three. Indeed, the development of integrated formats might change journalism fundamentally in terms of how to set out the line of a story, what to begin with and where to end, or how to provide additional information. The ways video games structure stories might give us a slight hint what could lay in front of us.

"...show me the differential. Since you know what you told me yesterday, just tell me what changed today. Don't repeat everything." What Schmidt is talking about here is a rather useful feature in a world of information overload. Indeed, every news site should have a button to mark articles as read or seen. Think of something like the "I like" button on Facebook, which would send an article to be stored in your personal archive.

In addition, the unsatisfied experience you make today when reading a news website could vanish by this feature. A list of looked at articles gives you a feeling that you have actually done something while now the only feeling that is left after scanning a website is that there is soo much more which you missed.

Of course, a flipped-through magazine or newspapers already gives you that satiesfied "been there, seen that" feeling today. Sometimes the future lies in the past.

(Via NiemanLab.)

No2010 Victoria calls event "a victory for rights and justice"

Anti-Olympic Festival and March disrupt Torch Relay send-off in Victoria:
No2010 Victoria calls event "a victory for rights and justice"

Victoria, Coast Salish Territories, November 1, 2009 - Over 400 people gathered to oppose the 2010 Olympic Torch Relay in Victoria on Friday, October 30th at an "Anti-Olympics Festival" and "Zombie March" organized by No2010 Victoria. The march succeeded in disrupting the relay, and security personnel were forced to extinguish the torch, load it in a van, and reroute it in order to reach the Legislature.

"Our events were a victory for rights and justice," said No2010 spokesperson Zoe Blunt. "We took a strong strand on respecting indigenous rights to land, defending civil rights, and ending poverty, and people across the country are thanking us for our dedication."

The day of action against Torch Relay celebrations began with a "Five Ring Circus" featuring speakers, performance art, puppets and satirical competitions such as the "Binners' Olympics," the "Tour de Misplaced Finance" and "Queer Wrestling."

"It was a lot of fun!" said Bitey the Bed Bug, one of the anti-Olympics mascots.

Later in the afternoon, a "Zombie March" replete with stilt walkers, a marching band and a giant "Ghost Salmon" puppet wove through city streets and blocked a major intersection outside an RBC bank for over 30 minutes. RBC is one of the Vancouver Winter Olympics' most important sponsors and a major investor in the tar sands, the most environmentally destructive project in Canada.

"We wanted to expose the empty rhetoric of a Green Games," said No2010 organizer Kim Croswell. "Parading a giant Ghost Salmon was our way of pointing out how wrong-headed government priorities are in the midst of global warming and the collapse of salmon runs on the West Coast."

Continuing along the relay route, hundreds of marchers braving rain and cold weather cheered loudly when it was announced that the Torch had been diverted in order avoid the procession. Marchers ended at the site of the corporate-sponsored Torch Relay Celebration, where they infiltrated the crowd chanting "No Olympics on Stolen Native Land" and "Homes Before Games."

"Disrupting the Torch sends a strong message that blowing $6 billion on a sports extravaganza is far from popular," said No2010 Victoria spokesperson Tamara Herman. "The people profiting from the Olympics are not the people most affected by cuts to sectors such as welfare, affordable housing, harm reduction, health care, education, the arts and-ironically-amateur sports."

"The day of action was a day of solidarity uniting a broach spectrum of people," added No2010 spokesperson Danielle Hagel. "It sent a strong message that the Olympic Torch Relay will face opposition right across the country."

"This action demonstrates how effective we can be when we act together, even in the face of police aggression and unwarranted surveillance", said Blunt. "The group was strong, and showed remarkable self-control and commitment to the cause. We want to congratulate everyone who joined in."

A Few Choice Words on the CPP IB

Notes for an Ape Interview
by Erik Andersen

A matter of "first Principles". The design of the CPP Investment Plan makes it impossible for the investment managers to comply with a cardinal rule for regular investment advisors; the "Know your client rule".

Given this non-compliance condition, making investments at the CPP IB should not include the use of public or private common shares or any other form of private investment.

The avoidance of conflict of interest situations should not be entertained if for no other reason than it has very bad optics. The temptation to "socialize" private sector losses, or as I call it, going to the CPP Fund as "investor of last resort", is too great for even the saintly to resist.

It was and is my hope that the Minister of Finance will soon accept my characterization of the dangers in the investment design they are presently using. So far the very few replies I have were mostly relying upon the Chief Actuary's report indicating the Fund was sound for at least 75 years. I have raised the issue of the now-invalid assumptions used by the Actuary and have had only deafening silence.

Several examples of investments that bear out my concerns and illustrate why I think the CPP Fund is in harms way. Extending this criticism to other pension funds is equally valid as they all "eat from the same bowl", one provided by the international banking community.

Emerging Investigative News Networks

An Emerging Investigative News Network

BY CHARLES LEWIS
http://www.investigativereportingworkshop.org/ilab/investigative_news_network/
June 29, 2009

According to a May 2009 report written by Jan Schaffer, executive director of J-Lab: The Institute for Interactive Journalism (“New Media Makers ”), “since 2005, 180 foundations, large and small, have contributed nearly $128 million to U.S. news and information projects.” And that excludes the substantial funding given annually to public broadcasting.

These surprising numbers reflect the precise extent of the philanthropic response to the current crisis in journalism and the widening perception that America faces a larger, civic crisis as well, for local communities and for the nation. For without information, without an informed citizenry, how can citizens hold their elected officials accountable in a representative democracy?

Roughly half of that philanthropic support has gone to support investigative journalism, and more than $56 million went to three nonprofit organizations: the Center for Investigative Reporting, begun in 1977, the Center for Public Integrity, founded in 1989, and ProPublica, which started in 2008. But more broadly, and in direct response to the commercial news media meltdown, something historically stunning has been occurring – nonprofit investigative reporting centers are proliferating throughout the nation, a new entrepreneurialism brought about largely by the diaspora of working journalists simply searching for a hospitable milieu in which to do their important work.

Increasingly, the most ambitious reporting projects will emanate from the public realm, not from private, commercial outlets. And if present trends continue, which appears likely, by 2010 the amount of nonprofit journalism funding annually supporting “public service journalism” via these centers may rival and possibly even exceed what America’s newspapers spent on investigative reporting “I-teams” in the apogee of print journalism. And that is a historically significant, tectonic shift in the working dynamics of investigative reporting in the United States.

Robert Rosenthal, executive director of the Center for Investigative Reporting, and Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the Center for Public Integrity, recently initiated unprecedented conversations about the growing need for collaboration among the nonprofit investigative centers. These efforts were applauded by the Columbia Journalism Review (“All Together Now,” May/June 2009): “Collaboration needs to become central to journalism’s mission – and the mainstream press needs to get on board. From foreign capitals to U.S. statehouses, it is a way to extend our shrinking newsrooms, begin to rebuild public trust, and ensure that the standards of the professional press help shape the development of new journalistic endeavors.”

On June 11, at the national Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE) conference in Baltimore, the founders and directors of several nonprofit investigative reporting centers met and talked over roughly 11 hours at a special session organized by Brant Houston, Knight professor at the University of Illinois and former IRE executive director, and Mark Horvit, IRE’s current executive director. Never before in the more than 30-year history of IRE national conferences have nonprofit investigative news publishers ever met for a day-long program of discussion panels and conversation. The special session [Special track: Building investigative journalism centers and funding your own projects ] was made possible by the Knight Foundation. Officials from the Ethics and Excellence Foundation and the McCormick Foundation also participated.
Historic Pocantico meeting brings nonprofits together

On June 29, 2009, roughly three dozen people including the leaders of 20 U.S. nonprofit news organizations began meeting over three days at the Pocantico Conference Center at the Rockefeller estate north of New York City. The co-organizers of this remarkable event were Buzenberg and Rosenthal, with Houston and yours truly also comprising the de facto “steering committee” for the conference and its agenda, and it was all made possible by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Surdna Foundation and the William Penn Foundation.

The setting for the historic meeting could hardly have been more ironic – the 120-acre estate created by John D. Rockefeller a century earlier, America’s richest man whose company was famously skewered by investigative reporter Ida Tarbell in her classic work, The History of the Standard Oil Company . With a conference website for participants auspiciously entitled “Building an Investigative News Network ,” not-for-profit muckrakers mulled over how to enlarge the public space for serious journalism. Several groups and individuals wanted to attend and participate in the conversation but could not because of the strict meeting space limitations of the Pocantico Conference Center – obviously there will be many more, larger discussions in the future.

Can the new collectivization but also increasing editorial, financial, operational collaboration of these nonprofit journalistic organizations result in greater dissemination and public impact? Can a new Investigative News Network platform provide creative new ways to generate earned, shared revenue which will improve the financial sturdiness and self-sustainability of these respectable, well-intentioned enterprises? That is certainly the hope.

Of course, the impulse toward organizing news outlets, into a news-sharing, not-for-profit cooperative is hardly new. It should be noted that some of our largest, oldest and most venerable media institutions in the U.S. are nonprofit corporations, such as the Associated Press (which began as a cooperative syndication service among a few newspapers in 1846), National Public Radio, the Public Broadcasting System (including the longest-running television documentary program Frontline ), National Geographic , Consumer Reports , Mother Jones , Foreign Affairs , Harper’s , the Christian Science Monitor and numerous other newspapers. The two largest, most respected nonprofit news organizations, AP and NPR, while certainly honored over many decades for the consistently high quality of their daily reporting, do not devote substantial resources to investigative journalism. Nonetheless, they and other major news outlets are becoming increasingly aware of the changing landscape of nonprofit, investigative news content.

For example, on June 13, 2009, the Associated Press announced that beginning in July, it will make investigative stories from four nonprofit news organizations – the Center for Investigative Reporting, the Center for Public Integrity, the Investigative Reporting Workshop and ProPublica – available to its member newspapers. That came six months after the December 8, 2008 announcement that the Pulitzer Prizes , for the first time since their inception in 1917, may be awarded not just to newspapers, but other news organizations that publish only on the Internet, which are “primarily dedicated to original news reporting and coverage of ongoing stories;” and that adhere to “the highest journalistic principles.” These two seismic events are a direct response to the incredible shrinking newspaper industry crisis and the new emerging ecosystem. What does it mean? That in the foreseeable future, more investigative content from more respected nonprofit news organizations will likely be added by the AP to its wire service offerings. And a story or series of stories published by a nonprofit investigative news organization will win a Pulitzer Prize.
Outlines of an Investigative News Network

One thing that is quite obvious from the recent months of exciting ferment is that there is confusion and ambiguity over exactly what an Investigative News Network ought to be and which organizations ought to be included. Some news organizations obviously are much more investigative-minded than others, for one thing – how and where is the line exactly drawn, and is that even possible or a good idea? After all, it has never really been done in traditional, commercial journalism. We are present at the creation of something significant and auspicious, yet in our nanosecond, warp-speed world, its precise definition is still unclear and cannot be glibly explained in a clever tweet. There is a public need to identify the most notable nonprofit news publishers operating today in the United States, some large, well-funded and established, some quite small and only just begun, some hard-core muckrakers to the exclusion of all other forms of journalism, winners of numerous national investigative reporting awards, some in just their first year of operation or only occasional publishers of investigative stories.

The epidemiology of quality investigative information from its original sources to its release into the major national news stream has not been precisely studied by anyone, yet. Some of the organizations included here are predominantly data, documents and research-oriented, their illuminative information made available online or in studies or books, sometimes making national or international news. Others also rely on primary source documents but also then contact and interview people who can shed additional light on the subject at hand, all combined into a written news story. Some publish investigative historical accounts, revealing insightful, contextual, longitudinal information going back decades to today. Others almost entirely do daily reporting, locally, regionally or nationally.

The media platforms for the content, along with the exact subject matter and even the inherent quality of the reporting and writing, vary as they always do from journalist to journalist, publisher to publisher. But all of the organizations represented at Pocantico and beyond are quite capable of producing serious, high quality journalism, and they thus represent an oasis in the growing desert of hollowed out newsrooms and facts-deficient, blogosphere blather.

Besides nonprofit legal and tax exempt status (directly or indirectly) and a serious, circumspect modus operandi to produce substantive research and reporting, all of the organizations which might presumably comprise a new, extraordinary Investigative News Network were founded or co-founded and are led by professional journalists, responsible for overseeing the editorial process from the very beginning, from the story idea and assignment stage to publication. None of the groups is an advocacy organization or a 501(c) (4) lobbying entity. And all of the member organizations would disclose their major sources of funding online.

As this new nonprofit investigative journalism world continues to develop, so too will its collective, de facto sensibilities become clearer, about building credibility and ensuring public trust overall, about the importance of basic organizational transparency and “best practices,” editorial independence and exacting standards regarding the newsgathering process.

However tangible and constructive the outcome of the Pocantico conference and its afterglow towards journalistic collaboration, whether or not an Investigative News Network of public service news publishers actually comes to pass, the Investigative Reporting Workshop will, at the very least, monitor, analyze and chronicle this fascinating evolution, in the United States and around the world. What else happens, and what precise leadership role the Workshop itself might play in helping to establish and develop this new model for investigative reporting, will become much clearer in the months ahead.

Il Duce Esq.: MI5 and Mussolini

Recruited by MI5: the name's Mussolini. Benito Mussolini

Documents reveal Italian dictator got start in politics in 1917 with help of £100 weekly wage from MI5



Tom Kington in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 13 October 2009


Benito Mussolini in Dress Uniform

Benito Mussolini was paid £100 a week by MI5 to keep Italy in the first world war. Photograph: Bettmann/Corbis

History remembers Benito Mussolini as a founder member of the original Axis of Evil, the Italian dictator who ruled his country with fear and forged a disastrous alliance with Nazi Germany. But a previously unknown area of Il Duce's CV has come to light: his brief career as a British agent.

Archived documents have revealed that Mussolini got his start in politics in 1917 with the help of a £100 weekly wage from MI5.

For the British intelligence agency, it must have seemed like a good investment. Mussolini, then a 34-year-old journalist, was not just willing to ensure Italy continued to fight alongside the allies in the first world war by publishing propaganda in his paper. He was also willing to send in the boys to "persuade'' peace protesters to stay at home.

Mussolini's payments were authorised by Sir Samuel Hoare, an MP and MI5's man in Rome, who ran a staff of 100 British intelligence officers in Italy at the time.

Cambridge historian Peter Martland, who discovered details of the deal struck with the future dictator, said: "Britain's least reliable ally in the war at the time was Italy after revolutionary Russia's pullout from the conflict. Mussolini was paid £100 a week from the autumn of 1917 for at least a year to keep up the pro-war campaigning – equivalent to about £6,000 a week today."

Hoare, later to become Lord Templewood, mentioned the recruitment in memoirs in 1954, but Martland stumbled on details of the payments for the first time while scouring Hoare's papers.

As well as keeping the presses rolling at Il Popolo d'Italia, the newspaper he edited, Mussolini also told Hoare he would send Italian army veterans to beat up peace protesters in Milan, a dry run for his fascist blackshirt units.

"The last thing Britain wanted were pro-peace strikes bringing the factories in Milan to a halt. It was a lot of money to pay a man who was a journalist at the time, but compared to the £4m Britain was spending on the war every day, it was petty cash," said Martland.

"I have no evidence to prove it, but I suspect that Mussolini, who was a noted womaniser, also spent a good deal of the money on his mistresses."

After the armistice, Mussolini began his rise to power, assisted by electoral fraud and blackshirt violence, establishing a fascist dictorship by the mid-1920s.

His colonial ambitions in Africa brought him into contact with his old paymaster again in 1935. Now the British foreign secretary, Hoare signed the Hoare-Laval pact, which gave Italy control over Abyssinia.

"There is no reason to believe the two men were friends, although Hoare did have an enduring love affair with Italy," said Martland, whose research is included in Christopher Andrew's history of MI5, Defence of the Realm, which was published last week.

The unpopularity of the Hoare-Laval pact in Britain forced Hoare to resign. Mussolini, meanwhile, built on his new colonial clout to ally with Hitler, entering the second world war in 1940, this time to fight against the allies.

Deposed following the allied invasion of Italy in 1943, Mussolini was killed with his mistress, Clara Petacci, by Italian partisans while fleeing Italy in an attempt to reach Switzerland two years later.

Martland said: "Mussolini ended his life hung upside down in Milan, but history has not been kind to Hoare either, condemned as an appeaser of fascism alongside Neville Chamberlain."

Afghanistan 'Mission' to Exceed 2011 Withdrawal "Deadline"

BREAKING: Harper Lies Exposed:
Afghanistan 'Mission' to Exceed 2011 Withdrawal "Deadline"
by C. L. Cook
The man whose friends need more than a little help from Canadian taxpayers, (already in the hole on the Afghanistan adventure to the tune of billions of dollars, albeit Canadian dollars, with no clear accounting discernible) now says the 2011 "withdrawal" agreement hammered out in the parliament is as illusory as the caves of Osama bin Laden.

State broadcaster, the Canadian Broadcast Corporation (CBC online) is today doing service for the "New Government of Canada," sending media trial balloons o'er the Autumnal Canadian skies declaring a redefinition of what they meant those long months ago when intoning the words "mission" and "withdrawal."

Quoting the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) spokesperson, Dimitri Soudas, the CBC reveals there will in fact be Canadian soldiers stationed in Afghanistan beyond the parliament mandated expiry date of late 2011. Soudas adds though a caveat, saying there will be "fewer."

"I would caution you against saying dozens or hundreds or a thousand, there will be exponentially fewer. Whether there's 20 or 60 or 80 or 100, they will not be conducting combat operations."

So much for parliament.

Of course, like Osama and the cave-dwelling masterminds of 9/11, Harper's promise of an end finally for Canadian entanglements within benighted Afghanistan is just so much shadow-play on the walls; to be shared for public consumption, and not to be taken seriously.

Plainly and simply, all said so far are lies told to incrementally continue Canada's relentless march towards a permanent state of militarization in union, (or harmonization) with the United States and the rest of the desperate West. Between the lines of the latest communique from his bunker in Ottawa, Harper asks us to keep faith in 'The Mission' and its missionary's position saying laying atop the people of Afghanistan with boots and bayonets will usher forth the birth of democracy, and all that prostituted term stands for.


How Many Bodies, How Many Billions?


"When we have men and women in uniform, diplomats and development workers who are putting their lives on the line, the government will spend what is necessary to make sure they are safe and successful."

"Well, let me be very clear …Canada's military mission in Afghanistan will end in 2011."

— Prime Minister Stephen Harper


Some in parliament that voted in 2008 to extend Canada's participation in Quagmiristan past the originally past due date of 2009 are squawking now about the New Government's shifting position-through redefinition. The CBC cites befuddled New Democrat foreign affairs critic, Paul Dewar begging, before the latest pronouncement for clarity, saying;

"We have one minister, minister MacKay, saying we're going to be there after 2011, there will be a role for the military. We have the prime minister and other ministers — minister [Lawrence] Cannon — getting up and saying, it's all over in 2011. What do you say to the men and women [serving there]? And what do you say to Canadians? And, finally, what do you say to our allies?"

Despite enjoying the political immunity low expectations confer, and confident it will likely never form a government within living potentiality, the NDP has still sat on the fence on the Afghanistan file. While NDP leader, Jack Layton has been the most forceful among the three national parties (the Bloc Quebecois being the most outspoken) against the war and continued occupation, he has consistently fallen short of calling for immediate withdrawal. That reluctance may be coming to an end, with Dewar demanding;

"We should be putting our allies on notice in written form that we are out and the date. If we don't do that, we're not being responsible to our allies, we're not being responsible to the men and women who are serving, and we're not being accountable to Canadians."

As of writing, 131 soldiers, two aid workers, and one Canadian diplomat are officially listed as killed in Afghanistan. Numbers of physically and emotionally wounded are more difficult to come by, but as with every war, the tally can never reflect the true costs to the individuals and their families, or to the nation. Canada does not release, if indeed it records, the estimated numbers of locals and fighters killed and maimed through its actions.

With two years left on the parliamentary "mandate" yet to run, the prime minister added his murky comments to the muddied waters of Canada's future intentions, saying;

"We set out some time-lines there for training and for exit and the government has no intention of asking for an extension of that mission. By the time we reach 2011, we will have been in Afghanistan longer than we will have been in both world wars combined, so I think it is time to transform that mission towards development and humanitarian efforts."


That Depends on the Definition of "That"


Though it's difficult to imagine Stephen Harper having had sexual relations with that mission, the "that" qualifier twice appearing in his parting statement are pure meal. Harper's sleight of hand and sidling into legalese regarding the nature of this mission and that is, in the opinion of one cynical reader, merely another slap in the face of parliament and the vaunted democratic process Harper and his allies repeatedly claim to wish for the people of Afghanistan.

It's also a bare-faced rebuke to the majority of Canadians who continue now to oppose Canada's involvement in this disastrous misadventure as they have from the beginning. And, if Mr. Harper's latest statement is to be believed, it means a coming of full circle too for how "The Mission" was first presented to Canadians as a humanitarian effort so long, and too many lives, ago.



Chris Cook is managing editor at www.pacificfreepress.com and broad/webcasts Gorilla Radio from the studios of CFUV Radio at: http://cfuv.uvic.ca

Dumb Intel

On the Unintelligent Uses of Intelligence
Written by Chris Floyd
Friday, 02 October 2009

I urge you most strenuously to repair immediately to Arthur Silber's site, and there set yourself to school on the dangerously unintelligent uses of "intelligence" – not only by ever-deceitful regimes and their sycophantic courtiers, but also, most grievously, by staunch opponents of the imperial system as well: "Fools for Empire (II): The Inescapable Pervasiveness of the Ruling Class Paradigm."

The essay is eloquent, cogent, deeply informed, insightful – and important. In addition to his own unique insights, Silber mines wisdom from such trenchant observers as Chalmers Johnson, Ray McGovern, Barbara Tuchman and Gabriel Kolko to give the lie to the corrosive belief that any output from the "intelligence" agencies can or should be relied upon – and the accompanying lie that our leaders and their spies possess super-secret knowledge which we peons must defer to. As Silber notes, the historical facts demonstrate overwhelmingly and irrefutably that "intelligence" always has been – and, more importantly, cannot avoid being – manipulated, incompetent, corrupted and wrong. Thus his observation:

This is why I maintain that you must always argue the policy, and that you must never argue about the intelligence. To the extent you argue the intelligence, you are doing the ruling class's bidding. They can change the intelligence quickly enough when they think doing so is necessary, as they have done in the past and as they will again. If you grant the legitimacy and accuracy of intelligence assessments on even one occasion, and if you utilize those assessments in making your own arguments, you're making your own work that much harder, and your future arguments will be far less convincing than they would be otherwise.


But a brief excerpt risks doing the post an injustice. You should head over there now, and read the whole thing.