Slovenian police have arrested four suspects over allegations that they developed the Mariposa botnet malware.
The arrests follow a joint investigation between the FBI and Slovenian police and come after the earlier arrest of three suspects in Spain, who are charged with distributing Mariposa and using it to hack into online bank accounts. The alleged East European VXers are suspected of developing the software for the Spaniards, Slovenian news agency STA reports.
Investigators reckon Mariposa compromised 12.7 million Windows PCs worldwide. Spanish police recovered stolen bank and login credentials of 800,000 people from systems seized during the arrest of three local suspects.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2010 00:00 ||
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Alleged Eastern Europeans? Is this some sort of sly dig at the betwixt-and-between character of Slovenians?
Posted by: Mitch H. ||
07/23/2010 11:00 Comments ||
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Schorr was born in the Bronx, New York City, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Tillie Godiner and Gedaliah Tchornemoretz. He began his journalism career at the age of twelve, when he came upon a woman who had jumped or fallen from the roof of his apartment building. After calling the police, he phoned the Bronx Home News and was paid $5 for his information.
In 1955, with the post-Stalin thaw in the Soviet Union, he received accreditation to open a CBS bureau in Moscow. In June 1957, he obtained an exclusive interview with Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Communist party chief. It aired on CBS's Face the Nation, Schorr's first television interview.
In January 1962, he aired the first examination of everyday life under communism in East Germany, The Land Beyond the Wall: Three Weeks in a German City, which The New York Times called a "journalistic coup".
Schorr reportedincorrectlythat Barry Goldwater was said to "travel to Germany to join-up with the right-wing there," and visit "Hitler's one-time stomping ground" in Berchtesgaden, immediately after he became the Republican nominee for president. For obvious reasons, this did not fare well with Goldwater, who demanded an apology for the "CBS conspiracy" against his campaign for president.
Schorr attracted the anger of the Nixon White House, and later provoked intense controversy in 1976 when he received and made public the contents of the secret Pike Committee report on illegal CIA and FBI activities. Called to testify before Congress, he refused to identify his source on First Amendment grounds, risking imprisonment.
Schorr died on July 23, 2010 at a Washington, D.C. hospital. He was 93 years old.
#3
Nixon made him. If he doesn't get on the enemies list, he's just another commie worshipping network foreign correspondent, which are a dime a dozen.
I don't know if the good die young, but lately it seems the evil b*stards die old.
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/23/2010 16:51 Comments ||
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#5
History will teach that Daniel Schorr was a journalist. In reality, ever since his ink stained wretch years he was whats commonly known as a news analyst. Thats the niche of the profession that weaves opinion and speculation into a narrative and then masquerades itself as news. It was always ironic when Schorr would regularly voice his contempt for the low standards of modern journalism. Especially considering he was one of the early pioneers that not only made it acceptable - he helped create it.
#6
When we look back on a man's accomplishments during his life, his was reduced to four very short paragraphs. All four showing his lack of honor. He will not be missed.
Posted by: 49 Pan ||
07/23/2010 17:10 Comments ||
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#7
I'd like to say someting nice about him.
But I can't.
Dance with the Nazis fuckhead. Also say hai to bobby byrd.
#8
God damn but he did hate us good.... most of his damn breathing time was devoted to what we did wrong and why. I LOL hope his memory LOL is a blessing to his LOL progeny.
#12
If you can find out where Lesley Stahl's drinking tonight, she'll probably buy a few rounds...
When he turned to CBS for help, however, he did not get an immediate answer, so he offered the report to the Village Voice, a left-leaning weekly newspaper in New York. The Voice published a 24-page supplement with the headline: "The Report on the CIA That President Ford Doesn't Want You To Read."
The low point during this time came when Schorr "dissembled" his word by not disabusing a CBS executive of the notion that perhaps Lesley Stahl, who worked with Schorr and who was then engaged to (and later married) Village Voice writer Aaron Latham, was involved in getting the report to the Voice.
Schorr said later that he was stalling for time in order to figure out how best to protect the person who had given him the report. But Stahl, who felt he had fingered her or Latham as a thief, was furious. Their colleagues took her side.
Though Schorr called Stahl to say he was sorry, his behavior engendered so much ill will that he was no longer welcome in the Washington bureau where both had been working.
#13
But Stahl, who felt he had fingered her ..... was furious.
ya know?....tu? you are evil. But so was Schorr. Whenever I heard his voice I immediately knew something that would hurt America was coming, and probably based on lies and half-truths, like my editing above. Schorr would've approved. To the POS, I'm glad you're dead.
Posted by: Frank G ||
07/23/2010 19:46 Comments ||
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#14
He was that creaky old voice they'd wheel out on NPR of late, right? The amount of time I've spent listening to NPR in the last 10 years is probably shorter than the time I've typed this. And I'm a fairly quick 10 fingered typist.
Women's breasts are larger than ever - and it's not due to implants. As stars like Christina Hendricks flaunt their curves, Erika Woods investigates a phenomenon of va-va-voom proportions.
Many women may have long suspected it, just as many men have secretly hoped for it. But it's official: women's breasts, and particularly those of younger women, are getting bigger. While implants have been putting that little extra va-va-voom into some busts, mostly it's a phenomenon that has occurred naturally in women, and exponentially so over the past 50 years. In fact, their cup size has tripled.
In 1960, the average bra size in Australia was 10B. Ten years ago, it was 12B. Today, it's 14C. "It's six to seven sizes up in a comparatively few number of years," says Sally Berkeley, the general manager of bra company Berlei, which next month launches a new super-sized range of cups, up to an H, to add to the traditional A-to-E dimensions. Rival Eveden now has a K cup, while Triumph is up to a G and is trialling a new cup size, J, for the next season.
"Twenty years ago, women couldn't buy this sort of fashion product with support in these sizes," says Triumph spokesperson Alana Jones. "But we've been getting so many requests from consumers, and we've now even got a sports bra coming out in a J cup. I don't have anything to say. I'm gobsmacked.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/23/2010 08:00 ||
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Walked by the bra rack in Wal Mart the other day with Mrs. JohnQC. I noticed a large selection of huge bras and asked my wife about these. They looked like they were manufactured in a 1950s Communist factory for the front end of a 1950s Cadillac or Buick. Looks like the human dimensions of people are increasing over time--(heterosis or diet?).
#2
...I, for one, welcome our new larger-breasted mistresses.
I mean, who wouldn't?
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
07/23/2010 9:54 Comments ||
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#3
A few weeks ago my wife went for her annual Mammogram,
(I provided Taxi service, she's near blind)
When the doctor was examining her I suddenly got the thought,
"That Man has the best job in the World"
Gorb, He's got you beat, there IS a better job than "Bicycle Seat Inspctor"
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/23/2010 10:29 Comments ||
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#4
i think it likely a combination of people being fatter during development ages, and the hormone content in foods.
total off the cuff opinion. would love to hear from someone more expert on this.
Posted by: abu do you love ||
07/23/2010 11:17 Comments ||
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[Arab News] A 29-year-old Saudi in Makkah has been living in chains for over six years because he is, according to his father, possessed by a female jinn who refuses to leave him.
"Medical doctors and religious sheikhs have failed to diagnose my son. When he has fits, he has convulsions and his entire body twists and his eyes become completely white. Then the voice of a woman can be heard coming from him," said the father of the young man identified only as Turki.
"When my son first began suffering from this problem I took him to sheikhs to recite Qur'an on him but most of them became scared when they heard the female voice telling them that she was a royal jinn and that no one can exorcise her unless Turki dies," he said.
The father said a sheikh advised him to tie his son's arms and legs with iron chains and to read Qur'an on him. "We did this. My son became quiet but is totally unaware of what is happening around him. He does not talk and is now unable to harm anyone," he added.
The man divorced Turki's mother some time before he was possessed. His wife now lives with the couple's four children in a two-room apartment.
"I also used to be possessed and this began when I was nine. I used to see a woman who would at times appear very beautiful and at times extremely ugly. I also used to see her sometimes surrounded by fire and sometimes with animal limbs," he said.
The man said he suffered from this for over 40 years until a sheikh finally cured him. "My happiness was, however, short-lived because my son is now afflicted with a similar problem," he added.
Muhammad Al-Suhali, professor of Shariah at Umm Al-Qura University in Makkah and a member of the National Society for Human Rights (NSHR), said he visited the young man and found him to be in a miserable condition.
"Turki was in a semi coma. He did not know what was going around him. He could not eat, drink or use the toilet without the help of others," he said.
Al-Suhali said when he started reading some Qur'anic verses, Turki became furious and started shaking until he was about to fall out of his bed.
"When I stopped reciting, he became quiet again but was distant and unaware of what was happening," he said.
He said the family is very poor. "The young man lives with his mother in the basement of an old building. They only have two small rooms, a bathroom and a kitchen. Their furniture is old and they live in very primitive conditions," he said.
He called on the Ministry of Social Affairs to provide them with better accommodation and to include Turki in its social security program.
"The whole family lives on SR850 a month that they receive in social security," he said.
Al-Suhali commended the patience and determination of Turki's young wife, who remains with him in spite of his condition.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2010 00:00 ||
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#5
Papa had the problem for decades -- was he chained up, too? -- now it's Sonny's turn. And the idiot family provided both Papa and Sonny with wives, to breed another generation of defectives, thus preserving and extending the family line. This, my friends, is what Saudi Arabia is.
#1
I don't think anyone said they were the #1 oil consumer, I think the claim was #1 ENERGY consumer. China gets most of its energy from coal ... just like the US does.
It's quite a role reversal: The feds are complaining about getting dragged into court, having to file time-consuming paperwork, and generally being treated like any taxpayer who get crosswise with the IRS. What has the feds riled is this: Wal-Mart had spent more than a million dollars fighting a $7,000 fine from OSHA over the clerk trampled in a store's doorway by a mob in 2008, claiming no one could have foreseen the danger at the time, and that it's being punished for violating an arbitrary standard that didn't exist at the time. Ex Post Facto is the lawyerspeak for it.
The federal agency claims its precious time is being eaten up by Wal-Mart's legal maneuvers. Officials at the Department of Labor say that, over the past five months, 17 percent of the available attorney hours in its New York office have been devoted to this one little case, or the equivalent of five full-time lawyers.
Tell us about it. This kind of draining distraction may be new for OSHA, but private employers have to live with the threat of lawsuits every day.
#2
Good for Wal Mart. I've long advocated that all companies should fight frivolous lawsuits no matter the cost (to the utmost of the company's ability). I would rather spend $50,000 fighting a bull$hit charge than roll over and pay $5,000 to some slip-and-fall con man. If everyone did that, then lawyers wouldn't be so quick to file these suits.
#6
"I would rather spend $50,000 fighting a bull$hit charge than roll over and pay $5,000 to some slip-and-fall con man."
Lowspark, I agree with your sentiment, however...
how does paying $50k to lawyers to fight some BS case motivate them (as a group) away from filing the $5k case to start with? The lawyers as a group just end up getting more cash.
#7
This is because Wal-Mart lawyers are full time. They are paid no matter what they do, so Wal-Mart keeps them busy fighting every slip and fall lawsuit they get, most of which are killed as soon as the jury sees the store video.
Their lawyers are also a very feisty lot, because they get a huge amount of court time over similar cases, so know exactly what works. They usually beat the snot out of some local contingency lawyer.
Some 750 boats drafted in to scoop up oil from the Gulf of Mexico are having "trouble" finding any crude in the sea, a top US official said Wednesday, almost a week after a busted well was capped.
"We are starting to have trouble finding oil," US pointman Admiral Thad Allen, who is in charge of handling the government's response, told reporters.
The boats, which have been drafted in to skim oil off the surface of the Gulf, are "really having to search for the oil in some cases" around the area of the capped well, he added.
According to official US government figures, more than 270,000 barrels of oil (11.3 million gallons) have been burned in controlled operations since the start of the spill in April. That is more than all the crude that spilled into the seas off Alaska in the Exxon Valdez disaster in 1989.
The US government also said that some 34.6 million gallons of oil water had been recovered from the Gulf since the BP-leased Deepwater Horizon exploded and sank in April.
BP finally managed to stop the flow of oil into the Gulf on Thursday, when a new 30-foot (10-meter) giant cap was put in place. The government has allowed BP to keep the cap shut since then, extending permission in 24-hour stints.
Allen said some of the boats used in the skimming operations were being brought ashore for repairs, as attention turned more towards cleaning up the oil that has already washed ashore along five Gulf coasts.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2010 00:00 ||
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Some 750 boats drafted in to scoop up oil from the Gulf of Mexico are having "trouble" finding any crude in the sea.
OH HOH finally admitting the oil DISASTER might have been a wee bit exaggerated?
Posted by: Redneck Jim ||
07/23/2010 0:30 Comments ||
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#2
Yeah, it'd be interesting to see a stacked bar chart showing upper end of estimate of oil release on top, with total volume of the Gulf of Mexico below...
Posted by: M. Murcek ||
07/23/2010 9:29 Comments ||
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#3
Now had the government allowed them to start their work a couple months sooner....
Almost like they wanted the effort to fail.
Posted by: Mullah Richard ||
07/23/2010 10:02 Comments ||
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#4
While the media endlessly repeats the 'environmental disaster' meme, there is no evidence that large oil spills cause any medium to long term environmental harm, and overall they are probably beneficial to the environment, not least because they reduce the biggest marine environmental problem, commercial fishing.
#5
This is proof there was no spill. It's a conspiracy to hide an alien spaceship that was found in the gulf. Some oils was spilled and burned to make it look like a spill. Why do you think the government wouldn't allow overflights? why was press access denied?
Well, it makes a good conspiracy theory.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
07/23/2010 17:22 Comments ||
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#6
"Gulf boats having trouble finding any oil: US official"
Tell 'em to look on the beaches.
And if the Bambi gummint had allowed the foreign help offered to come in right away, it wouldn't be there either.
It's almost like the Bambi clowns wanted the Gulf states to be damaged. Why, some of 'em even had the gall to elect Republican governors! The nerve....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
07/23/2010 19:27 Comments ||
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A court has ordered that 102 people, including at least three retired military commanders, be arrested and jailed pending trial for conspiring in 2003 to overthrow the Islamic-rooted government in an alleged coup plot.
The court said Friday the trial will begin Dec. 16 in the town of Silivri, near Istanbul. On Monday, the court had indicted a total of 196 people. Police are now expected to round up 102 of them, including Ret. Gen. Dogan Cetin, former commander of Turkey's first army, former naval force commander Ozden Ornek, former air force commander Ibrahim Firtina.
They are accused of planning to create chaos to pave the way for a military takeover in an alleged conspiracy dubbed "Sledgehammer."
If you were one of the 400 members of the listserv Journolist, perhaps one of the most vicious insults you could hurl at a colleague is: Youre just like Bill OReilly and Sean Hannity. If the reader holds neutral or even positive views about the Fox News hosts, the insult may not sting. But in the cloistered world of liberal listserv enclaves, Hannityism is a cardinal sin. After all, Fox is a dangerous, deranged cesspool that, possibly, the FCC should be investigating.
The feelings against MSNBC host Keith Olbermann, then, must run deep. They smile in your face/all the time they wanna take your place/the back-stabbers...
The Nations Katha Pollitt began the groups rant. He and Michael Musto did this whole long riff about beauty contestant Carrie opposite marriage Prejeans breast implants, stupidity, breast implants, tacky clothes, earrings, breast implants. They went on and on about how she was part plastic and pathetic. Youd think they were celibate vegans who spent their lives zen meditating. It was just a whole TV humiliation of her, and it made me feel sorry for her, which wasnt easy, Pollitt said.... Go read all of it.
Posted by: Mike ||
07/23/2010 08:12 ||
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Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, and Chris Matthews (to a lesser extent) make their careers out of bashing conservatives, the Tea Party, and Fox News. Koolaide swallowers all of them. This is boring if anyone can stand to watch such tripe for more than a few minutes. Not viewed as reporters by their liberal peers. This has got to hurt.
#3
Even if all Olbermann and Maddow are doing is mirroring Hannity and OReilly from the other side (which is utterly preposterous, by the way), thats a far better situation than before they came along.
Just from a ratings point of view (Devil's Advocate), that might not be such a bad idea.
[Dawn] The Lahore High Court (LHC) on Thursday released a woman held without trial for 14 years on allegations of desecrating the Holy Quran, her lawyer and court officials said.
Despite "no evidence" being found against 60-year-old Zaibunnisa, she had been left to languish in the prison section of a mental asylum since 1996, the court said.
Zaibunnisa's family did not challenge her detention, her lawyer said.
Chief Justice of the Lahore High Court, Khawaja Mohammad Sharif, "has ordered the release of Zaibunnisa after no evidence was found against her," a court official told AFP.
"The chief justice expressed his dismay over keeping the woman confined for so long without any trial," the official said.
Zaibunnisa was arrested in the town of Rawat, near Islamabad, after a local resident filed a complaint at a police station that someone had desecrated the Holy Quran, defence lawyer Aftab Ahmad Bajwa said.
Bajwa said Zaibunnisa's name was not even mentioned in the police complaint.
"Nobody, not even her relatives, pursued the case. She was sent to jail and then forgotten by everyone," Bajwa told AFP, who took up her case last year.
Complainant Qari Mohammad Hafeez told reporters at the hearing that he had not specified anyone by name in his submission and that police had arrested Zaibunnisa of their own accord.
Pakistan's blasphemy law carries the death penalty although no one has ever been sent to the gallows for the crime, but religious extremists have attacked and killed several accused in custody.
Two Christian brothers accused of writing a blasphemous pamphlet were shot dead on Monday outside a court in Faisalabad.
Human rights activists want the legislation repealed, saying it is exploited for personal enmity and encourages religious extremism.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2010 00:00 ||
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#1
Gee, I bet he though he was in a world of sh*t there for the first 8 or 9 years.
U.S. defense company Raytheon Inc. is giving the first glimpse of its Scorpion helmet technology for F-16 and A-10 combat jets on a simulator at the Farnborough International Airshow after this week announcing a $12.6 million contract with the U.S. Air Force.
Raytheon is marketing the technology, which transmits data on a single-eye monocle attached to an existing helmet, as a more advanced but also cost-effective alternative to current full visor offerings from its competitors reflecting belt-tightening in the defense aerospace sector amid large cuts to national military budgets.
The monocle is both cheaper to produce than a full visor, and reduces operational costs because it is interchangeable between standard existing helmets. That means a unit can be equipped to full capacity by purchasing a smaller number of monocles that can be shared, instead of having to buy more expensive visor helmets to fit every pilot.
The monocle also improves on existing helmet vision technology by adding both color and night capability to a pilot's field of vision, allowing him to cue up weapons and access data from both on-board and remote sensors. The small size of the unit means that there's no noticeable extra weight on the pilot's head during long missions.
"On the modern battlefield, there is way more data out there than most people can use. If you are just trying to see it all through your eyes and read it in bits and bites, you're never going to understand it," said Todd A. Lovell, Avionics Department Manager at Raytheon, as he gives a demonstration of the Scorpion technology. "So the key to the modern technology is to take all that data and turn it into useful information that the pilot can recognize very quickly and act upon it."
That includes deploying weapons. Unlike pilots using a fixed display who must turn the nose of the plane to line up a shot, the helmet vision sends coordinates sighted by the wearer directly to the weapons system leaving pilots simply to confirm a decision to fire by joystick.
"If I get a symbol, I don't have to turn my plane all the way over there to get a sensor locked on it," says Lovell. "It reduces the amount of time and energy the pilot has to spend in acquiring a target, making sure he has the right target, and then taking a shot."
Raytheon revealed at Farnborough that it has won a contract for an initial integration and qualification of the helmet-mounted system for F-16 and A-10 aircraft flown by the U.S. Air Force and Air National Guard.
The contract, won against competition from U.S., European and Israeli companies, is part of a program with five one-year production options worth up to $50 million. Beyond the 1,000 F-16 fighters flown by the U.S. Air Force, Raytheon hopes to capture the market for the estimated 4,000 F-16 aircraft operated by foreign air forces.
In the weeks after the invasion of Iraq, National Guard shooter teams were dispatched across oil fields to protect Kellogg, Brown and Root contractors working to restore oil production. Some soldiers arrived at a decrepit water-treatment facility outside Basra. There, a corrosion fighter that contained hexavalent chromium colored the desert sand orange and was, according to Senate testimony, "piled like snow."
Troops who complained of the dust were told they had sand allergies. Months later, and after some soldiers developed holes in their nasal septums (called chrome nose), skin rashes or had other health problems, a KBR safety manager raised enough of an alarm to get the plant closed down. Units from Oregon, Indiana, West Virginia and South Carolina and individual soldiers from 17 other states had already guarded the plant between April and September, 2003.
The Army investigated Qarmat Ali in October -- after a cleanup -- and deemed there was little long-term risk to troops. It wasn't until former KBR employees complained of their own health problems to Senate Democrats in 2008 that the extent of exposure became known. Twenty-six Oregon Guard, most of whom only became aware of the hazard of exposure by stories reported in the Oregonian, and more than 140 Indiana Guard have sued the defense contractor, claiming KBR managers downplayed or deceived soldiers about the hexavalent chromium risk. KBR was racing to complete the $2.5 billion contract for Restore Iraqi Oil.
Meanwhile, VA Sec. Eric Shinseki has focused more attention on environmental hazards of military service. On Wednesday the VA announced $2.8 million in new research into Gulf War illness. The Qarmat Ali program is a subset of the Gulf War Registry, established in late 1992.
Cassano said she will be in Portland on Monday to train VA doctors, social workers and compensation and benefit employees on health markers of hexavalent chromium exposure. She plans similar trainings around the country.
#3
Chromium is the darndest stuff. This variety is terrible for the lungs, but it was discovered long ago that a simpler molecule is very good for the lungs.
Smeltermen inhale all kinds of the worst variety of nasty metals and chemicals. Typically you would think that most of them would die after just a few years, or at least have an epidemic of horrible cancers.
But they don't. Even those that smoke don't tend to get lung cancer as much as other people. It turned out that chromium has a potent protective effect for the lungs, both against other contaminants, and against pathogens.
But this molecule is so harsh that it burns a hole in your septum.
A ROBOT billed as a 'toaster on legs' has smashed a world record -- by walking 14.3 miles in 11 hours. The Ranger, built by US scientists, set the record for 'untethered robotic walking' earlier this month.
Guided by students using a remote control, the odd-looking robot strode 108.5 times around a 212m indoor track. It completed about 70,000 steps before it needed a recharge.
Andy Ruina, 57, lab manager on the project at New York's Cornell University, said: "The Ranger is nothing special to look at but the motion is rather graceful in a way you don't see in many robots."
The Ranger, whose parts alone cost £15,000, took four years to perfect -- but runs on batteries and cost less than 1p to travel four miles.
It smashed the previous world record set by Boston Dynamics' BigDog in Boston by 1.5 miles.
Posted by: Fred ||
07/23/2010 00:00 ||
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Muslim scholars in Malaysia have identified the latest menace to their faith: football shirts. Senior clerics have declared the official kit of some of the world's most celebrated soccer teams, including Barcelona and the national teams of Brazil and Portugal, have the power to erode religious faith and must not be worn by Muslims.
Worst of all is the Manchester United strip, with its trident-wielding red devil of the club's crest. "This is very dangerous," said Nooh Gadot, the mufti of the state of Johor. "As a Muslim, we should not worship the symbols of other religions or the devils. It will erode our belief in Islam." While a Red Devil jersey gift must be refused, "it is even more sinful when people realise this is wrong and still buy these jerseys to wear. These Muslims should repent, repent immediately."
Southeast Asia makes little impact in international football competitions, but Malaysians, Thais and Indonesians are passionate fans, with a particular fondness for the English Premier League. The most popular club of all is Manchester United, which has official supporters' clubs in several countries, including Malaysia, and an official merchandise shop in Kuala Lumpur. Last summer, thousands of fans mobbed the team on its arrival there.
Several other strips, including the kits of Brazil, Portugal, Serbia, Barcelona and Norway, have also been declared un-Islamic because they bear the image of the cross. "Devils are our enemies. Why would you put their picture on you and wear it? You are only promoting the devil," said Harussani Zakaria, the mufti of the state of Perak.
Social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook were flooded with comments from fans in the Southeast Asian nation. "Maybe the religious leaders are just fans of Liverpool?" tweeted one supporter.
Should there be a "gatekeeper" regulating internet bloggers? In the aftermath of the Shirley Sherrod incident, that's what CNN promoted on July 23.
Anchors Kyra Phillips and John Roberts discussed the "mixed blessing of the internet," and agreed that there should be a crackdown on anonymous bloggers who disparage others on the internet.
"There are so many great things that the internet does and has to offer, but at the same time, Kyra, as you know, there is this dark side," Roberts said. "Imagine what would have happened if we hadn't taken a look at what happened with Shirley Sherrod and plumbed the depths further and found out that what had been posted on the internet was not in fact reflective of what she said."
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But Phillips replied that the mainstream media "can't always do that."
"There's going to have be a point in time where these people have to be held accountable," Phillips said. "How about all these bloggers that blog anonymously? They say rotten things about people and they're actually given credibility, which is crazy. They're a bunch of cowards, they're just people seeking attention."
Phillips demanded to know what Andrew Keen thought needed to be done. Keen, author of "The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture," who suggested that there needs to be an internet "gatekeeper," had been interviewed by Roberts and quoted in the segment.
"Well what Andrew talked about with me was this idea of a gatekeeper but there are huge first amendment rights that come into play here - freedom of speech and all that. And he said the people who need to be the gatekeepers are the media to check into these stories," said Roberts.
Phillips wanted to go even further, asking if "there's going to come a point where something's going to have to be done legally" about anonymous bloggers.
"There has to be some point where there's some accountability. And companies, especially in the media have to stop giving these anonymous bloggers credit," she said.
Roberts responded that anonymous blogging might benefit from "checks and balances."
"If you're in a place like Iran or North Korea or something like that, anonymous blogging is the only way you could ever get your point of view out without being searched down and thrown in jail or worse," said Roberts. "But when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be some checks and balances, not national, but maybe website to website on who comments on things?"
CNN's two regulation-happy reporters, think the Sherrod situation can help bring attention to the "necessity" of blogging reform if she brings a defamation lawsuit against Andrew Breitbart.
According to Roberts, Sherrod has "the power now and she also has the profile to maybe bring this into a new light, so we'll see where this goes."
#4
"If you're in a place like Iran or North Korea or something like that, anonymous blogging is the only way you could ever get your point of view out without being searched down and thrown in jail or worse," said Roberts. "But when it comes to a society like ours, an open society, do there have to be some checks and balances, not national, but maybe website to website on who comments on things?"
So here you'd only be dragged through the civil courts and sued until you haven't a cent to your name, you'd die owing Shirley Sherrod $50 Million. Yeah, big difference. Gatekeeper my ass.
#6
Blogger posts video and commentary stating that the audience reaction is the point. The NAACP laughed that a white guy was denied help because of his color.
The lady in the video is fired because everyone felt her comments (out of context) were terribly racists and failed to even read the blogger's commentary.
So somehow that is the blogger's fault? It boggles the mind.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
Slovenian police have arrested four suspects over allegations that they developed the Mariposa botnet malware.
