A narrative is a story that has a beginning, middle and end. It engages the reader's mind and heart. It shows actors moving across its stage, revealing their characters through their actions and their speech. At its heart, a narrative contains a mystery or a question-something that compels the reader to keep reading and find out what happens.
[...]
A traditional news feature starts with an anecdote or scene, moves to a nut graph that tells the reader where the story is going and then spends the rest of the piece explaining and supporting the nut graph.
A narrative, on the other hand, lets the story unfold through character, scene and action-usually without summing up the story and telling readers what it's about. A narrative also attaches a little story to a big story -- it is built around theme.
In journalism, a Nut graph is a paragraph, particularly in a feature story, that explains the news value of the story. [...] ie, "in a nutshell" paragraph http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
Over 1,000 architects and engineers have signed the Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth's petition demanding a real investigation into the destruction of the three World Trade Center skyscrapers on 9/11.
That's right, over 1,000 architects and engineers have gone on record saying the official story about the collapse of the Twin Towers and the WTC7 is not believable and think a new investigation is warranted. They think that the official theory is an extraordinarily unrealistic hypothesis and that the evidence does not support it. They have focused a significant amount of attention on WTC7 because it is the ONLY skyscraper in the history of the world to ever collapse just from fire.
Haven't posted anything in about a week or so on the Inquiry as I've had some other issues I've been following and there wasn't really much more coming out as to the tidbits of what was happening on this side of the pond, my interest in this as the Brits are holding these hearings and that's up to them to sort out there own leaderships guilt or innocence in justification for Iraq.
Tony Blair's turn to testify is today and that's already started, you can tune in here as he will be testifying for some six hours, these live video's are then archived.
Not much has been covered as to these hearings here in the states even when mention of our administration, and others, were talking about taking down Saddam before 9/11, on 9/11 and shortly after and more.
Democrats See GOP Hypocrisy in Health Care Debate Citing 2003 Medicare vote, Democrats see GOP hypocrites in debate over health care spending
Charles Babington, AP Writer
Dec 25, 2009
[...] when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House in 2003, they overcame Democratic opposition to add a deficit-financed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The program will cost a half-trillion dollars over 10 years, or more by some estimates.
With no new taxes or spending offsets accompanying the Medicare drug program, the cost has been added to the federal debt.
[...]
Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah.
A couple of months ago, the British High Court ruled that a document containing information on the torture of Binyam Mohamed should be disclosed in full. The original document supposedly contains seven paragraphs which describe the brutal methods used to interrogate Mohamed, including waterboarding and slicing his genitals with a scalpel.
David Miliband, the British Foreign Secretary who has been resisting the High Court's efforts to release the document, now describes the decision as irresponsible.
David Miliband accused the two senior judges of irresponsibly "charging in" to a diplomatically sensitive area over what happened to former terror detainee Binyam Mohamed while held by the Americans in Pakistan.
Jonathan Sumption QC, appearing for the Foreign Secretary, told the Court of Appeal the judges' stance was "both, in many respects, unnecessary and profoundly damaging to the interests of this country."
Mr Sumption added: "I would go so far as to say their views were irresponsible."
Tony, like our own leaders?, have found their excuses and justifications, they sound an awful lot like those of the bin Ladens and Saddam's of this world!
This is what this Country, the United States, should be doing now or had already done during the previous administration, investigating towards Impeachment and possible Indictments, depending on what evidence of crimes and lies surfaced. Especially if we really are what we like to think and demand others to believe we are and if our Constitution still exist as the leading Representative Democracy on this planet. But leave it up to 'Old Europe', hopefully, to seek answers that should be in the light of day and a part of the physical history added to the already known.
But it's never to late for us to try and minimize the blowback from our extremely destructive policies, or is it!
"My daughter got sick with cancer after her husband lost his job. She never told anyone she was sick because she knew the financial hardship it would cause and eventually the hospital would take their house for unpaid medical bills. We lost her in the following spring ... We read her diary and learned all she was feeling and thinking. Now I wonder how many others are just like her in this America? And how many before her?"
Deaths due to Preventable Diseases: Dead Last
Rankings 1st to 19th. France, Japan, Australia, Spain, Italy, Canada, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden, Greece, Austria, Germany, Finland, New Zealand, Denmark, Britain, Ireland, Portugal, United States
In the comment section, me and a poster named Patriot have been discussing terrorism, Iraq, oil, you name it. The article itself is crap, but, the comment sections may give people help in how to counter wingnut lunatics they encounter.
(Author note: Those here at docudharma have seen what my posts look like when I get a bit drunk. And no, I'm not now, but, do apologize for posting the last two drivels.)
"... Dick Cheney isn't sorry about any of it." In his ABC News interview he "betrayed no second thoughts - and certainly no remorse - about the policies pursued by the administration that he both served and, according to some, led.
But Cheney's role is an old, if still developing story. After all, he warned us five days after Sept. 11 that our government would work on the "dark side." He told the late Tim Russert, "We've got to spend time in the shadows in the intelligence world. A lot of what needs to be done here will have to be done quietly, without any discussion, using sources and methods that are available to our intelligence agencies." ...
Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations; to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Framing:
a frame refers to the way media and media gatekeepers organize and present the events and issues they cover, and the way audiences interpret what they are provided. Frames are abstract notions that serve to organize or structure social meanings. Frames [...] not only tells what to think about, but also how to think about it.
How Guantanamo's prisoners were sold The president of Pakistan's [Pervez Musharraf] attempts to publicise his memoirs throw light on the flawed and dishonest processes that the US uses in bringing "terrorists" to justice
by Clive Stafford Smith - NewStatesman - 09 October 2006
The payments help us see why so many innocent prisoners ended up in Guantanamo Bay. Musharraf writes that "millions" were paid for 369 prisoners - the minimum rate was apparently $5,000, enough to tempt a poor Pakistani to shop an unwanted Arab to the Americans, gift-wrapped with a story that he was up to no good in Afghanistan.
Usually they trade their knowledge, for money or power, and no one notices --
But not always:
Insider-Trading Ring Bust May Fuel Hedge-Fund Concern By David Scheer - March 2, 2007
March 2, (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. government's accusations that Morgan Stanley, UBS AG and Bear Stearns Cos. employees were central figures in an insider-trading ring illustrate why regulators and lawmakers are suspicious of Wall Street's relationship with hedge funds.
Prosecutors in New York and Washington yesterday brought criminal charges against 13 people, claiming that an executive at UBS and a former compliance lawyer at Morgan Stanley tipped off hedge-fund traders and brokers to new analyst ratings and secret takeover talks. Bear Stearns was home to at least four professionals who traded on information leaked from inside the two firms, according to a complaint filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
White Collar Crime, is not any less heinous, because they commit it with a Keyboard, instead of a Handgun. Yet more often than not, in the Wild West of electronic casinos, these criminals can make "a killing", without having to pull that trigger themselves ... without ever having to worry about ever facing their "day in court" ...
The new news is that there is a mounting body of evidence that Dick Cheney ordered waterboarding to produce the connections necessary to wage a war on Saddam Hussein. (See diaries by dday for a primer, and buhdydharma for a link to Rachel Maddow.) Our knowledge of Dick Cheney's penchant for torture now grows and convolves with the dubious War on Iraq. While the Bush team is morally reprehensible for creating evidence to strike, it is not clear that lying to wage a war is actually illegal in the United States. We do know that torture is illegal -- we signed the Geneva Convention. The Bush team must be breaking the law by ordering prisoners to the waterboard...
...except there is a contemporary controversey in the United States about whether or not waterboarding qualifies as torture...
What follows is not for polite company -- it is a graphic description and analysis of waterboarding.
(I just posted a version of this over at DailyKos and I thought it might be appreciated here.)
This is interesting. I don't know how much relevance it actually has at this point but I end up researching odd things throughout the day and I found this.
There have been a few instances of soldiers going AWOL and fleeing into Canada instead of fighting in Iraq. At the time this was happening, a lot of people were saying horrible things about these soldiers. That was stupid to say even without knowing what we know now but still, it's worth talking about.
When these soldiers were tried, they used the defense that it's an illegal war and violates international law. And still others used the defense that soldiers who would've gone to war would've been forced to participate in illegal acts.
One of the judges, in a ruling against one of these soldiers, in 2007 said there's no evidence the US "as a matter of deliberate policy or official indifference, required or allowed its combatants to engage in widespread actions in violation of humanitarian law."
So, maybe these cases are worth another look? We can argue that a lot of these people were using legal defenses and weren't actually able to see the future, or whatever. But they were, you know, right.
Harold Pinter died yesterday of cancer at age 78. He was one of the great playwrights of the twentieth century. In his plays, like The Homecoming, The Birthday Party, and Old Times, he caught the ambivalent and restless conflict, the striving for significant personal connection and the intricate by-play of emotion and memory, that lay at the heart of the human dilemma.
Pinter also was one of the great moral voices speaking for human justice and freedom the English-speaking world has seen in recent times. This is most evident in his final testament, his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature, which he received in 2005.
Reform Immigration -
March on Washington
