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17:30:07 11/26/11
Updated: The Shocking Truth About Naomi Wolf's Factless Assertions
[LESS INFO] 5 VIEWS | ADDED 17:30:07 11/26/11
In an article for The Guardian , Naomi Wolf wrote this: >
In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors , the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.
This follows the ongoing meme that DHS has coordinated the Occupy crackdowns on a national level; that they are orchestrating the violence behind the clearing of Zuccotti Park and others. Wolf carries this to her conclusion: >
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
It's a factless, incendiary assertion dripping in hyperbole, grounded in speculation that's been going on for a couple of weeks now. It began with a tweet. A tweet from Michael Moore speculating that the coordination seemed like something being coordinated by DHS and sanctioned, nay, possibly even requested, by the Obama administration.
Here are the two links Wolf provides as evidence: One to Wonkette ; the other to Washingtonsblog.com . Both articles point back to this absurd article on the Examiner.com site (a very, very right-wing Phil Anschutz, write-out-of-your-butt-with-no-evidence kind of site). Washingtons Blog goes one step further, updating with this: >
(And for those who are understandably doubtful about Examiner.com as a news source, here’s an AP story from a couple hours ago that verifies everything except the specific mention of DHS coordination. )
Got that? The headlines on both of these stories (Wonkette and Washingtons Blog) were splayed across the sites in very large heading fonts: “Homeland Security Coordinated….” and yet the AP confirms everything BUT DHS coordination. Still, that didn’t stop Wolf from ignoring the AP story entirely and writing a piece for the Guardian that included links to bolster her argument that are as factless as her hyperbole, and stem from right-wing sites with anonymous sources.
No one has a source, no one has any evidence, and the originating story which Michael Moore and now Naomi Wolf breathlessly spread quotes an anonymous source with the promise of still more to come in the future, from a "reporter" for Examiner.com who no one seems to know . Miraculously, this "reporter" got a tip from DHS that no national reporter received, and even though Mr. Ellis walks back his original accusation, he promises updates in the future. Well, it’s the future. It’s two weeks later and crickets from Mr. Ellis. Mission accomplished, though. Ask people who are paying attention to the OWS movement and they’ll swear up and down that yes, it was coordinated by DHS because MICHAEL MOORE and now NAOMI WOLF say so.
Truth: We don’t know. It isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility for mayors to consult with DHS. After all, that’s what they’re there for. To help local and state governments deal with threats, real, rumored or perceived. At best, one can conclude that maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t coordinate, and if they did coordinate, no one knows to what extent they did or whether there was any sort of "blessing" and/or mandate from DHS to what they ultimately chose to do.
The best anyone can say is "maybe". But if Wolf were not trying to stoke an international narrative she has chosen, she would have had a look at Portland, where there is some evidence that DHS was consulted because the occupiers were adjacent to federal land. >
There is another line of thinking out there that runs directly counter to the federal-coordination theory: Ruiz wouldn’t comment on this, but one well-placed city source said, in fact, that the feds were mostly inclined to leave Schrunk Plaza open. It was city officials who cajoled them into getting on board—lest they watch most of Occupy’s camp merely move several hundred feet south onto federal land. Which would have been awkward for the city. But also interesting.
Should you accept as fact the idea that the feds were reluctant and the city pushed them along? NO. Why? Because it’s attributed to an anonymous source with nothing to back it up, which makes this theory as worthy as the DHS coordination theory, or just speculation with no facts behind it.
Josh Holland at AlterNet also notes: >
Ironically, the occupation that arguably maintains the best relationship with local officials is Occupy DC, and the Washington, DC government is directly overseen by Congress.
Look, if DHS somehow instructed these cities to dress up their cops in riot gear, pepper spray kneeling protesters, use billy clubs to keep them from crossing imaginary borders, and ultimately throw the lot of them out, then yes, by all means shake your fist. But it's irresponsible for Wolf to publish such incendiary accusations -- accusations of real, physical civil war -- in an international publication, to cite magical articles with unsourced accusations and call it fact. Some might actually call it a lie.
Wolf's hyperbole does harm to the OWS movement and those honest people out there conducting themselves peacefully and with clear intent, because she intentionally tried to stir the fires of anger and discontent and anti-government sentiment on an international level. She should have to either retract or clarify her accusations.
Update Joshua Holland has written his own excellent response to Wolf's specific accusations. >
When you don’t “connect” wholly disparate “dots,” what you get is far less dramatic. Mayors in a handful of cities, responding to local political pressures, decided to break up their local occupations — decisions that were announced to the press well in advance — and were advised as to how best to do so.
One doesn’t have to like that fact to recognize that it’s hardly shocking, and anything but a sinister assault on local communities’ autonomy.
Also, regarding PERF's* involvement, an interview with the director in The Boston Phoenix : >
But what is PERF? And what role, if any, did it play in the police actions? According to PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler, not the one he had hoped.
His organization is more concerned with improving police practices and policies, he said. He cited a report PERF published in June, which gives advice that runs exactly counter to how Occupy has been handled in most cities — emphasizing communication, respect for the First Amendment, and avoidance of violent methods at nearly all cost.
"Over the years, we've taken on racially biased policing, violent crime, the Gates-Crowley thing in Cambridge," he said. "It's not always pretty, and it's not easy, but I think we owe it to the public to identify best practices."
* PERF is the Police Executives' Research Forum, a group who views themselves as a progressive organization dedicated to reducing police brutality and establishing best practices for police officers in various situations. Until recently, they've been a big target of the right wing for their support of gun control laws.
2 Views
17:30:07 11/26/11
Updated: The Shocking Truth About Naomi Wolf's Factless Assertions
[LESS INFO] 2 VIEWS | ADDED 17:30:07 11/26/11
In an article for The Guardian , Naomi Wolf wrote this: >
In other words, for the DHS to be on a call with mayors , the logic of its chain of command and accountability implies that congressional overseers, with the blessing of the White House, told the DHS to authorise mayors to order their police forces – pumped up with millions of dollars of hardware and training from the DHS – to make war on peaceful citizens.
This follows the ongoing meme that DHS has coordinated the Occupy crackdowns on a national level; that they are orchestrating the violence behind the clearing of Zuccotti Park and others. Wolf carries this to her conclusion: >
So, when you connect the dots, properly understood, what happened this week is the first battle in a civil war; a civil war in which, for now, only one side is choosing violence. It is a battle in which members of Congress, with the collusion of the American president, sent violent, organised suppression against the people they are supposed to represent. Occupy has touched the third rail: personal congressional profits streams. Even though they are, as yet, unaware of what the implications of their movement are, those threatened by the stirrings of their dreams of reform are not.
It's a factless, incendiary assertion dripping in hyperbole, grounded in speculation that's been going on for a couple of weeks now. It began with a tweet. A tweet from Michael Moore speculating that the coordination seemed like something being coordinated by DHS and sanctioned, nay, possibly even requested, by the Obama administration.
Here are the two links Wolf provides as evidence: One to Wonkette ; the other to Washingtonsblog.com . Both articles point back to this absurd article on the Examiner.com site (a very, very right-wing Phil Anschutz, write-out-of-your-butt-with-no-evidence kind of site). Washingtons Blog goes one step further, updating with this: >
(And for those who are understandably doubtful about Examiner.com as a news source, here’s an AP story from a couple hours ago that verifies everything except the specific mention of DHS coordination. )
Got that? The headlines on both of these stories (Wonkette and Washingtons Blog) were splayed across the sites in very large heading fonts: “Homeland Security Coordinated….” and yet the AP confirms everything BUT DHS coordination. Still, that didn’t stop Wolf from ignoring the AP story entirely and writing a piece for the Guardian that included links to bolster her argument that are as factless as her hyperbole, and stem from right-wing sites with anonymous sources.
No one has a source, no one has any evidence, and the originating story which Michael Moore and now Naomi Wolf breathlessly spread quotes an anonymous source with the promise of still more to come in the future, from a "reporter" for Examiner.com who no one seems to know . Miraculously, this "reporter" got a tip from DHS that no national reporter received, and even though Mr. Ellis walks back his original accusation, he promises updates in the future. Well, it’s the future. It’s two weeks later and crickets from Mr. Ellis. Mission accomplished, though. Ask people who are paying attention to the OWS movement and they’ll swear up and down that yes, it was coordinated by DHS because MICHAEL MOORE and now NAOMI WOLF say so.
Truth: We don’t know. It isn’t completely out of the realm of possibility for mayors to consult with DHS. After all, that’s what they’re there for. To help local and state governments deal with threats, real, rumored or perceived. At best, one can conclude that maybe they did, and maybe they didn’t coordinate, and if they did coordinate, no one knows to what extent they did or whether there was any sort of "blessing" and/or mandate from DHS to what they ultimately chose to do.
The best anyone can say is "maybe". But if Wolf were not trying to stoke an international narrative she has chosen, she would have had a look at Portland, where there is some evidence that DHS was consulted because the occupiers were adjacent to federal land. >
There is another line of thinking out there that runs directly counter to the federal-coordination theory: Ruiz wouldn’t comment on this, but one well-placed city source said, in fact, that the feds were mostly inclined to leave Schrunk Plaza open. It was city officials who cajoled them into getting on board—lest they watch most of Occupy’s camp merely move several hundred feet south onto federal land. Which would have been awkward for the city. But also interesting.
Should you accept as fact the idea that the feds were reluctant and the city pushed them along? NO. Why? Because it’s attributed to an anonymous source with nothing to back it up, which makes this theory as worthy as the DHS coordination theory, or just speculation with no facts behind it.
Josh Holland at AlterNet also notes: >
Ironically, the occupation that arguably maintains the best relationship with local officials is Occupy DC, and the Washington, DC government is directly overseen by Congress.
Look, if DHS somehow instructed these cities to dress up their cops in riot gear, pepper spray kneeling protesters, use billy clubs to keep them from crossing imaginary borders, and ultimately throw the lot of them out, then yes, by all means shake your fist. But it's irresponsible for Wolf to publish such incendiary accusations -- accusations of real, physical civil war -- in an international publication, to cite magical articles with unsourced accusations and call it fact. Some might actually call it a lie.
Wolf's hyperbole does harm to the OWS movement and those honest people out there conducting themselves peacefully and with clear intent, because she intentionally tried to stir the fires of anger and discontent and anti-government sentiment on an international level. She should have to either retract or clarify her accusations.
Update Joshua Holland has written his own excellent response to Wolf's specific accusations. >
When you don’t “connect” wholly disparate “dots,” what you get is far less dramatic. Mayors in a handful of cities, responding to local political pressures, decided to break up their local occupations — decisions that were announced to the press well in advance — and were advised as to how best to do so.
One doesn’t have to like that fact to recognize that it’s hardly shocking, and anything but a sinister assault on local communities’ autonomy.
Also, regarding PERF's* involvement, an interview with the director in The Boston Phoenix : >
But what is PERF? And what role, if any, did it play in the police actions? According to PERF Executive Director Chuck Wexler, not the one he had hoped.
His organization is more concerned with improving police practices and policies, he said. He cited a report PERF published in June, which gives advice that runs exactly counter to how Occupy has been handled in most cities — emphasizing communication, respect for the First Amendment, and avoidance of violent methods at nearly all cost.
"Over the years, we've taken on racially biased policing, violent crime, the Gates-Crowley thing in Cambridge," he said. "It's not always pretty, and it's not easy, but I think we owe it to the public to identify best practices."
* PERF is the Police Executives' Research Forum, a group who views themselves as a progressive organization dedicated to reducing police brutality and establishing best practices for police officers in various situations. Until recently, they've been a big target of the right wing for their support of gun control laws.
0 Views
22:44:16 04/27/08
Episode 12 Win New Customers Using Local Online Newspaper Ads
[LESS INFO] 0 VIEWS | ADDED 22:44:16 04/27/08
The allure of local online newspapersIf you're wondering if an online news site is a good bet for your ad dollars I'm going to save you a lot of money by sharing some money-saving secrets with you. Done the right way an ad on your local newspaper web site can be effective but there are some major pitfalls that you need to know or else you'll get burned - your ad dollars that is.On April 9th, 2008 Borrell Research, a well known firm that collects and sells their research primarily to newspaper companies reported that NEWSPAPER-OWNED WEB SITES EARN MORE REVENUE THAN ALL LOCAL MEDIA COMPANIES COMBINED (capturing 26.9 percent of the market). The underlying message your local newspaper web site hopes you hear in this news is that their web site is the best vehicle to advertise on to attract new local business.I spent five and a half years on the online advertising side of the nation's second largest newspaper publisher where we had over forty online web sites. One of my jobs was to build their online ad operations where we used sophisticated ad targeting software to deliver over a billion ads per month across our network of sites. You really get to know what works and what doesn't work when you're running hundreds of ad campaigns at a time across a diverse set of web sites spanning small towns to major cities.Reach Does your product or service appeal to the majority of your local population? If so, it's hard to beat the broad reach of an online newspaper. You can really blanket a large segment of the population in your market, reach multiple ethnicities, age groups, and other demographics. If you answered no, then stop reading and start researching targeted online marketing methods like e-mail or blog marketing where you can dial up direct response and niche audiences with comparable ease.TargetingAs I mention above, a newspaper web site's real strength lies in its broad reach. The problem with that reach is that it's out of reach of your marketing budget. Even a week long ad campaign on a local news web site that's big enough to demand attention could run you $10,000 or more. The answer to this is to use targeting. Targeted ads do cost more but they're still way more efficient than an untargeted ad and almost always a lot less money in the long run. Using targeting does mean that you're no longer going to reach as BIG of an audience but that's OK - leave that to Circuit City who has the bucks for it. You can still reach a very diverse and large audience, and one that uses the online newspaper for local buying information.First, get rid of all those out-of-towners that can't buy from youLocal Na8ion is all about local online marketing which means that you're likely the type of business that gets all, or the vast majority of your business from people who live or work in your town or city.Newsflash: Local Newspapers aren't as Local as you think!Here's a big secret that is true of local online newspapers: up to 50% of the viewers are from outside the main area served by the paper's web site. Big city newspaper web sites typically have larger out-of-town web readership whereas small towns tend to have less out of town readership (expect 70-80% of your small town paper web site to be local viewers). This means there is a tremendous amount of built-in waste for any ad you run on a local newspaper web site. No sense washing your visiting Uncle's car with your garden hose if he just has to drive home on a dirt road.Think of it this way, if you sell exclusively to people in your town or city only $50 to $80 of every $100 you spend in your local online newspaper advertising will be seen by people who can actually buy your product.Let's talk about specific targeting methods to address thisThe best way to beat these poor odds is to ask your local online newspaper for your ad to be geo-targeted. Geo-targeting banner ads doesn't cost any more than other forms of ad targeting (e.g appearing on just the Real Estate section). Geo-targeting is highly efficient because your ads only get shown to locals that visit your local newspaper site. In this case, less is more! There are two kinds of geo-targeting: IP based geo-targeting and user-registration based geo-targeting. Typically only major web publishers like Yahoo! offer the latter and most newspaper web site will offer you IP based geo-targeting. Ask which version of targeting your local newspaper web site offers and chose user-registration based geo-targeting if it is available as it is more accurate. But don't fret that the more common IP based geo-targeting is less accurate, it's still miles ahead of delivering un-targeted ads to people who won't be interested in them.Here are some other tactics to target your ad or run effective banner ads on your local online newspaper web siteask if your newspaper has any fixed monthly sponsorships where you pay a monthly set dollar amount (e.g. $500 a month). These sponsorships can be a good value in high traffic areas of your local newspaper (even without geo-targeting) if you're looking to reach a big audience. Hint, local news sites get most of their traffic on sports and news. Ask to see a traffic report by section of the online newspaper (e.g. sports, business, travel, news, etc.) to get the specifics.buy a small ROS campaign (run-of-site) to test which areas of your local newspaper site actually perform for your business. Review the click-through rates of each section (the newspaper should give you an ad report free of charge) and then buy a geotargeted banner ad campaign on that section. Better yet, buy a geo-targeted fixed sponsorship where you pay a set monthly amount on that section.See if your local newspaper sells text link ads as they often perform better for direct response ads then banner ads do. Conversely, text ads DON'T work well for branding efforts (no logo or imagery to visually communicate your image, or an emotion that you're trying to tap into). If they sell text links, buy them geo-targeted.Don't worry about designing your banner ad, most newspapers will make your banner ad for your as part of their service.Ask your newspaper rep what e-mail sponsorships they offer. Because newspapers typically have strong trusted brands people don't mind giving them their email address. Better yet, many consumers opt in to receive 'special offers' from newspaper partners (that's you if you buy an email sponsorship). That means you can send out a tailored offer to your market and ride along on the coattails of your local newspaper's brand. Like Martha Stewart says "It's a good thing."If this sounds all together crazy, you'd be mostly right. Online newspaper advertising makes more sense for larger regional companies with bigger ad budgets or national advertisers with a local footprint. As a small business you can do much better with performance based methods of attracting new visitors to your web site like optimizing your site to increase your natural or organic search engine rankings. Buy ads on the major search engines with paid search engine marketing (SEM).If you want a free method to brand your business use blog marketing, it's the best branding tool around and it only costs your business the time you put into it. That can add up to a lot of time but if you're smart you'll read about "The best kept secret for quickly creating new content for your blog and web site." The specific content you put on your blog attracts people with very specific like interests - that's the kind of efficient targeting and branding you want! Just don't forget to put all your location information on your site or you'll get visitors from areas you may not be able to sell too!Lastly, if you have a small town, neighborhood, or community newspaper web site that competes with the 'big' newspaper in town they can occasionally present very good advertising options at substantially reduced rates. Give these a try to test effectiveness with a small ad buy.To comment or read more from Local Nation visit our post "Win new customers using local online Newspaper ads"Julian Seery Gude editor, Local Na8ionWhere you are is where it's at
1 Views
05:39:10 10/26/05
Episode 5: An Edited Debate Over Pre-War Intelligence
[LESS INFO] 1 VIEWS | ADDED 05:39:10 10/26/05
With potential indictments looming over Washington, here's a video of an edited debate of the different arguments surrounding the Niger uranium claims and pre-war intelligence that is at the center of Fitzgerald's CIA Leak Investigation featuring: >
* Greg Mitchell, Editor of Editor & Publisher
* Cliff Kincaid, Accuracy in Media
* John R. MacArthur: Publisher of Harper's Magazine
* Retired Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski, Department of Defense Policy Analyst
* Greg Thielmann, Retired State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research
Political junkies are anxiously waiting for the result of Fitzgerald's 22-month invesitigation, and it will be interesting to see whose arguments stand the test of time. These interviews were conducted in July 2004, but the gap between the two perspectives hasn't changed all that much since then.
(5:58 minutes / 14.4 MB)
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FULL TRANSCRIPT BELOW
GREG MITCHELL (Editor of Editor & Publisher):
This whole episode of the build-up to the war is going to turn out to be one of the most appalling periods in the history of the press -- which is not to say that there wasn't a lot of tremendous coverage, and a lot of tremendous work by various reporters, and so forth. But I think that when they look at the end result, which is a very costly war, it's going to have to rank as one of the worst press performances in recent time.
CLIFF KINCAID (Accuracy in Media):
I don't think there's any evidence that the reporters for The Washington Post or the The New York Times , which are big liberal, Democratic Party papers, gave too much leeway -- or prominence -- to what the Republican Bush Administration was saying.
JOHN R. MACARTHUR (Publisher of Harper's Magazine):
The main threat that the Bush administration propagandists were selling to get the Congress to vote for war authorization, was an atomic bomb threat -- a nuclear weapons threat. And The Times contributed mightily to that, to the belief, the popular belief, that Saddam was on the verge of getting a nuclear weapon.
CLIFF KINCAID (Accuracy in Media):
As far as the nuclear program is concerned, Mr. Duelfer has confirmed that Iraq did have a prohibited nuclear weapons program.
RETIRED LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI (Department of Defense Policy Analyst):
In the fall of 2002, the Office of Special Plans was formally split off from where I worked in Near East and South Asia to be its own entity. It was still under the same boss, Bill Lutie. But one of the services that they would provide to us -- to us the sister organization, and other staff officers throughout policy -- was a set of classified talking points that we would include. We were directed to include these talking points in all the papers that we would prepare for internal use up the chain.
CLIFF KINCAID (Accuracy in Media):
In fact, Joe Wilson, the ambassador, who was sent over by his CIA-employed wife to look into this question, actually confirmed that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa. But he did not emphasize that part of his report when he went public, and tried to bash the Bush Administration.
RETIRED LT. COL. KAREN KWIATKOWSKI (Department of Defense Policy Analyst):
They were written in a way that made them sound very believable. But the things which they were saying were not substantiated by intelligence in all cases. One of the -- An example of this is one of our talking points from OSP would say, "Saddam Hussein seeks -- actively seeks uranium in Africa." Well, the intelligence on that said that 'Saddam Hussein in the late '80's during the Iran/Iraq War actively sought uranium and other nuclear-type support materials in Africa.' But he hadn't done it during the '90's. He hadn't done anything like that since then. But that's not what the talking point was. The talking point would gloss over the fact that things have changed, and simply indicate that this was an actively, ongoing type program.
CLIFF KINCAID (Accuracy in Media):
So the fact is that Saddam Hussein had a nuclear weapons program. He was seeking uranium from Africa. And he was trying to reconstitute this program. The President had that information. He provided that information to the American people and the Congress. And it has stood the test of time.
GREG THIELMANN (Retired State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research):
One of the last and most dramatic things in this series of exaggerated and alarmist reports was the President's statement about the uranium from Africa in his January 2003 State of the Union message. And this hit me as a particular thunderbolt, because once I realized that what he was referring to was something that we had assured the Secretary was a very dubious report back in March of 2002, and the Intelligence Bureau's comment on this issue.
CLIFF KINCAID (Accuracy in Media):
The President's statement in the State of the Union Address about citing a British report that Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa was absolutely true. It was absolutely true from the time he made it to the time that we're taking today.
GREG THIELMANN (Retired State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research):
I realized that not only was the President conveying sensitive intelligence from foreign intelligence services, which was highly unusual to quote a British report as if we had no comment on it other than to present it as fact. But beyond that to put the kind of weight that he did on that report combining it with the aluminum tube story distortion to address the most worrisome of all of the categories of weapons of mass destruction -- that is the nuclear account -- I thought was simply unjustified. And in light of the use of this kind of comment to build a case for war was really a crime against the American people.
