There’s been some rumblings of late inside the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and PBS. Now their witch hunt is apparently spreading to NPR. It would appear that the CPB is going to start investigating their virtually nonexistent pro-Arab anti-Israel bias. How many NPR newscasts have you heard over the last four years in which a suicide bombing where very few or no one was injured was covered in depth and then there was the quick mention of several Palestinians killed by the Israelis with “the Israeli military is investigating the incident” line at the end? Pick a fight with NPR over its election coverage or their people’s infuriating cottonmouth. Not over Israel coverage.

If I were PBS or NPR (flush with that endowment they got from the widow of Ray Kroc last year), I would tell them to just fuck off. And they very well may do that. Perhaps the right wing at CPB can’t handle things like the truth, but it should go without saying that in an era when someone like Chris Matthews can pass for a “liberal,” the public really reallyneeds to have at least one place that it can go on the television or the radio for something with even the smallest semblance of objectivity. ...

Failure of Intelligence: Pakistan          darrel plant

As anyone following the Newsweek Koran/Quran flushing story knows by now, the Pentagon didn't have anything to say about it for ten days after the article was published, until people started dying in Afghan demonstrations. Apparently, the Muslim world reads American weeklies more closely than the US government does.

The New York Times article Tuesday contains this little bit of between-the-lines reporting showing just how out-of-touch (or duplicitious) the American intelligence services are:

The outcry over the Newsweek article apparently began in Pakistan, when Imran Khan, the legendary cricketer turned opposition politician, summoned reporters to a needs to have at least one place that it can go on the television or the radio for something with even the smallest semblance of objectivity. ...