This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Not NWI!

I’d pretty much ignored the stories about Al Gore starting up a new cbale news network, until this caught my eye…

New Al Gore TV Hopes To Avoid ‘Liberal’ Label (Richard Linnett, AdAge)

The Gore-led group of investors is about two weeks away from forming an agreement with Vivendi Universal Entertainment to acquire Canadian-based cable network Newsworld International for about $70 million, said an insider at Universal Television Networks, the Vivendi unit that currently operates the network.

(via WSJ Opinion Journal Best of the Web)

He is going to do it by taking over NWI!!! Now, I can’t say that I watch a LOT of NWI. OK, I can’t say I’ve ever watched a full 30 minutes straight of NWI. But I do flip past it sometimes, and look at the listings for it on my Tivo. It is a quirky little news channel with half hour news shows from a variety of different countries and perspectives. They have some of their own shows too (Canadian based I gather) but then they also have news from ITV in the UK, NHK in Japan, DW in Germany, etc…

I’ve been meaning for awhile to check out more of their news programs. Guess I’d better hurry. Even though it wasn’t much watched by me (and I gather not by too many folks) it will be a shame to lose an outlet where you can easily get those varied perspectives.

Posted by Abulsme -- Wednesday 15 October 2003 18:29:57 UTC
Category: News | Leave a comment

Winning Hearts and Minds

As usual, W and company are taking situations that while not necessarily good, could have some potential for improving things in the future, and instead are taking the road that will lead to the most resentment of us in the future. Good job!

Jobs for the boys—and for foreigners (Economist)

The mass import of migrants to service the American-led armies further fuels resentment. Saudi caterers contracted by Kellogg Brown and Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, an American oil-services company, have shipped in hundreds of Indian and Bangladeshi cooks to avoid, they say, the risk that Iraqis might poison the food. Filipina maids hired in Jordan do the cleaning. […] To cap it all, a new investment law lets foreign contractors bring in labour from abroad but export all profits. Those Iraqis who do get contracts are often just back from exile. A recent tender for a mobile-phone franchise for southern Iraq was won by a consortium led by the son of the media director for Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress, who had just returned from Canada. And Iraqis fret at the lack of auditors and openness in Iraq’s Governing Council and over the UN’s Development Fund for Iraq, where Iraq’s oil revenues are supposed to go.

(via Nathan Newman)

Posted by Abulsme -- Wednesday 15 October 2003 18:11:28 UTC
Category: News | Leave a comment