Media Bias Example

Here a really good example of media with different biases spinning the same story different ways:

The Justice Department's decision to drop almost all of its investigations into CIA torture was headlined like this on Democracy Now!: "Justice Dept Drops 99 of 101 Cases Against CIA."

At the New York Times (7/1/11), though, the glass was 2 percent full: "U.S. Widens Inquiries Into 2 Jail Deaths."

The Supercommittee has failed

In late November the supercommittee, which had been appointed to create a plan that would effect a 1.2 trillion dollar budget cut, announced that it had failed.  This means that in 2013 the automatic budget cuts that were agreed of previously will take place. 


Source is here

And in local news...

Former Salt Lake City Mayor Rocky Anderson has formed a new political party called the Justice Party and plans to run for president because he doesn't like the way Obama and the democrats are running the country.

He is against the current wars, sympathizes with Occupy Wall Street issues, and supports socialized health care.  It's an extreme left ideology, but it is always interest to compare the extreme left and right to see if they can agree on anything, such as, in this case, how stupid our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are.


(Some of the comments on this story are pretty humorous too.)

Democracy Now!

If you have wondered why I like Democracy Now so much, in spite of its socialist worldview, Tuesday's show was very good. 

Among other things, they reported on the National Defence Authorization Act, which would effectively extend the definition of what’s considered the U.S. military’s battlefield to anywhere in the world, even the United States, and require anyone even suspected of terrorist activity in any way to be turned over to the military, which can detain them indefinitely without charge or trial.  This bill has already passed the House and Senate and is waiting for the president to veto or sign it.  One of the authors off this provision ran for president in 2008.

They also had an update on the situation in Egypt.  I've always been extremely impressed with their coverage of Egypt.  Their (former) producer is a well-connected Egyptian citizen and has now moved back to Egypt and occasionally does stories updating the situation, like this one.

Here is a few articles I found interesting

http://www.ksl.com/?nid=148&sid=18299091&title=dog-shoots-man
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/ct-scans-help-researchers-perfect-replicas-of-stradivarius-violins/
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/is-social-networking-the-ultimate-lost-and-found-tool/

Will we ever leave Afghanistan?

We have been in Afghanistan since October 2001.  During this time many US soldiers have died fighting the war on terror, which being impossible to win makes this war pointless.  There have been several times when people realized that either the war was pointless or stupid and have wanted to get out.  One of these times was when Bush was President, but instead of listening to the people Bush sent more troops.  Recently a plan has been put into place to remove 33,000 American troops, about 1/3, from Afghanistan and to get all the troops out in 2014.  Will this actually happen?  I do not know; I hope it will but I am inclined to believe that the Government will find an excuse to stay.  

Here is the Source for the latter part (the removal of the troops).

Fact Check: USA support of Egyptian Military

I heard a claim that 40% of Egypt's military budget comes from US Foreign Aid.

US Foreign Aid to Egypt consists of $1.3 billion in unconditional "Foreign Military Financing", and an additional amount of economic aid estimated to be around $0.7 billion.  Some argue for including that amount, because it frees up more Egyptian money to be used for military spending.

There are a variety of claims for Egypt's military spending.  Reasonable estimates are  between $7.1 billion (wikipedia) and $7.6 billion (computed from CIA Factbook figures), although numbers from $4.5 billion to $14 billion are seen.  Much of the confusion may come because Egypt's military is very entwined with the rest of the government, and it may be hard to determine which expenditures are for military purposes.

Using $7.1 billion as the number, the percentage is 18% for $1.3b and 28% for $2b.  The 28% is close to a 25% claim from CNN.  The claim of 40% must come from using the $2 billion for aid, and a very low estimate for spending of around $5 billion.

Why is this important?  The current military regime has killed 40 protesters in the past week.  If we are providing between 18% and 40% of the money for the Egyptian military, will the United States be culpable of supporting a military dictatorship, if the Egyptian military turns against the people?

Children are forced into walking through OWS protesters to get to school.

Children were forced in to walking through the occupy wall street protesters to get to school http://www.theblaze.com/stories/follow-those-kids-wall-st-occupiers-heckle-small-children-as-they-walk-gauntlet-to-get-to-school/. Many of the children were scared because many of the protesters were screaming and threatening to follow them. One of the parents said "these guys are terrorists yelling at little kids. The crowds got so bad that many children were late to school. I think that the wall street occupy should not be interfering with children and their education.

Syrian Protests May Oust The Current Regime

An AP Press article discusses the increasing concerns of foreign nations as embassies are stormed in Syria. They say that the riots are coming to a head as violation increases, and that the current regime of President Bashir Assad is going to have to step down. http://www.taiwannews.com.tw/etn/news_content.php?id=1761837

A lesson from the Austro-Hungarian Empire

I particularly like stories which relate historical events to modern problems.  Here is a story from planet money which compares the current economic crises in Greece and Italy to the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1918.  (They lost World War I, and got carved up into several smaller countries.)  Using this historical precedent, they are able to answer the question of what would happen of Greece were to try to leave the Euro-zone and return to its own national currency.

2008 Rice Bubble

In 2008, there was a brief food crisis and bubble in the price of rice.  Planet Money has an audio podcast where they describe the rice bubble and the ways in which governments interfered with the laws of supply and demand to cause the crisis.  They conclude that there was always plenty of rice, but it just wasn't getting to the people who wanted to buy it.

This is another good example of the applications of the laws of supply and demand that we talk about in class, so I highly recommend listening to it.

Welcome

This is the new blog for Scholar School Current Events class.

If anyone can think of a better name for this blog, send me nominations!