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According to L.A. Weekly’s Nikke Fink, both the Los Angeles Times and The New York Times are working on major stories about whether Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter is using his close ties to Hollywood to benefit financially. A source close to the action told Defamer that the investigations are likely to turn up some serious dirt, and it’s “last days of the Roman Empire” time for Graydon Carter’s ‘freewheeling’ Vanity Fair.
 On Tuesday, Michael Berg, center, hugs his daughter, Sara, as his son David stands nearby, after learning the details of the killing in Iraq of his other son, Nick. |
Farhad Manjoo, writing for Salon (free day pass available) theorizes as to why 26-year-old freelance contractor Nick Berg did not become a media story until video of his horrible decapitation was played on an Arab website.
From a government which has, for years, held sway with the American press, when spin control from the White House, since 9/11, has all but guaranteed favourable press for the Bush administration across the United States, times have certainly changed. The brutal realities of war have been brought home in a new and horrendous way, as digital age ‘travelogue’ pictures and videos are transmitted back home from the war front, sent by e-mail, or posted on websites.
And the senior ranks of the Bush administration reels with each new revelation.
“The video of Berg’s beheading that so dominated the news on Tuesday is just the latest example of how gruesome digital images are forcing us, and forcing the government, to confront the awful reality of war,” writes Manjoo.
We were never supposed to see the pictures that are now pouring out of Iraq. If the U.S. government had its way, ‘embedded journalists’ would have reported only on what the American administration wanted us to see and read. There would be no pictures of dead soldiers returning, of Iraqi prisoner abuse, or of Canadian and American civilians held at the mercy of the shadowy enemy.
That amateurs — American soldiers employing new technology — have emerged as the journalists who have created the iconic images of the Iraq war represents a watershed change in the way we receive news, and a shattering and revolutionary new way of documenting the world around us.
Iraqi detainees walk through shower runoff water while being transferred between compounds
at the Abu Ghraib Prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, today. Soldiers said that many of the
detainees have become sick because of the unhygenic conditions, but within the next week,
they are scheduled to be moved into a new and improved facility within the prison compound.
The CBS newsmagazine 60 Minutes II (8 p.m. Wednesday) has obtained the video diary of a soldier talking about conditions at Camp Bucca and Abu Ghraib in Iraq, where Iraqi prisoners are currently being held.
It was “60 Minutes II” that first aired pictures two weeks ago of prisoners being abused at Abu Ghraib, igniting a political firestorm.
“We’ve already had two prisoners die … but who cares?” the soldier says on the tape. “That’s two less for me to worry about.” The tape reflects the soldier’s ‘dislike’ for the prison camp and the prisoners, according to CBS.
“I hate it here,” she says. “I want to come home. I want to be a civilian again. We actually shot two prisoners today. One got shot in the chest for swinging a pole against our people on the feed team. One got shot in the arm. We don’t know if the one we shot in the chest is dead yet.”
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In this periodic round-up of the latest information on web/tech issues, and how new and wondrous computer facilities will enhance your computing life, we start with …
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A plan by Microsoft to include Windows-based, built-in worm removal tools as a new feature, tentatively called ‘Microsoft Update’, is on schedule for release by year’s end. With the proliferation of destructive worms like Blaster, NetSky and Sasser escalating daily to pose an ever-greater threat to home users, Microsoft will release the new Microsoft Critical Update as part of a larger Windows Update patch yet to come.
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From PC Mag: 68 Tips & Tricks for Windows, ranging from moving the My Documents folder to another partition (or another physical drive) so that in the event of a reformat you won’t lose this valuable information, to Windows keyboard shortcuts to help make your computing life much more efficient. And, as if these salutary hints weren’t enough, PC Mag also offers 106 tips and tricks for your Microsoft Word.
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Do you know what phishing is? Well, it’s a disturbing evolution in a fast-growing wave of e-mail scams that involves an attempt to get you, or others, to reveal a credit-card number, online banking password, or other personal information
Brian Livingston at Brian’s Buzz provides details on how to defeat the nefarious Internet scam artists who have developed a way to make your browser’s address bar say that you’re viewing a legitimate Web site — when you’re actually visiting a malicious site instead.
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As for that nasty Sasser worm that infected millions of computers over the course of the past month, Microsoft’s $5 million fund for rewarding informants for leads on virus attacks snagged its first success with the arrest of an 18-year-old man, Sven Jaschan, in Germany who has confessed to the release of the virus.
And, apparently, he did it all for his mom. A-a-h-h-h.
According to this C|NET News.com story the German whiz kid was simply trying to “drum up business for his mother, Veronika.” We don’t write this stuff, folks; we just report it (with thanks to Michael Klassen for passing along the C|NET story to VanRamblings).
Of course, as always, there’s more to report on the web/tech front. But VanRamblings will leave further reports for another time. See ya next week.