TV News LIES

As violence in Israel and the Palestinian territories returns to the headlines, critics are complaining that many prominent U.S. news outlets often omit or misrepresent contextual information vital to understanding the conflict. And perhaps predictably, partisans on both sides are targeting media coverage for different reasons.

A common complaint among some critics concerns some major U.S. media outlets’ characterization of neighborhoods and the legal and political context of the Israeli presence in East Jerusalem and the West Bank. “The biggest problem … is total lack of context in reporting in which all of this is taking place,” said Yousef Munayyer, the executive director of the U.S. Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation.

'Tis the time of the wild-eyed Bewilderbeast which is nearly upon us, boys and girls -- thick as broomstick'd witches on candy bags, heavy as depleted uranium foil strewn on scrawny, screw-together tannenbaums.

You know where we are, calendar-wise:  It's that time of the year in which Life makes even less sense than usual, in an American post-Summer simmer and in a pre-sprung Spring.  Here we are, the lull between the Equinoxes -- the seasonal gap between locked and unlocked, as Vonnegut's sense of season would have it.  It is neither Fall nor Winter, more Hypnotic Lockdown than anything -- making it Hypdown or Locknotic, I suppose.  Up to you.

We're in the No-Sanity Zone betwixt the tart, fictional, Slack-jawed, Sourpussed War on KrissMuss and the all-too-real, tempting jar of Trick-or-Treat Sweetmeats and Jaw-breaker Bribes.

Mathew Ajibade died alone in an isolation cell, bound by the hands and feet, strapped into a restraint chair.

He had been brutally beaten, his body covered with bruises and abrasions. There were scrapes and bumps on his upper body and head, the result of being repeatedly punched and kicked by his jailers. Minutes later, secured and compliant in a special unit, a Taser was pressed directly into his genitals. Hit with 50,000 volts, the young man is heard on video screaming in pain.

And then, they left him there to die.

This was not a Guantanamo Bay or Abu Ghraib but South Georgia.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit Tuesday against two CIA contractors who designed and implemented the agency's harsh interrogation program, which has widely been denounced as torture.

According to the ACLU, James Mitchell and John “Bruce” Jessen — psychologists who had previously worked for the military — designed and participated in the CIA's interrogation methods, which the U.S. government has since renounced. The agency paid their company, Mitchell Jessen & Associates, $81 million, according to an unvarnished Senate report on the interrogation program, a summary of which was released last December.

The legal battle between the House Benghazi Committee and its former investigator, Todd Podliska, escalated Monday afternoon, when Podliska’s lawyers alleged that Chairman Trey Gowdy violated government confidentiality rules and federal law in responding to allegations made by Podliska.

“Both Representative Gowdy and the committee have clearly violated terms of the confidentiality agreement and the Congressional Accountability Act,” said Peter Romer-Friedman, one of Podliska’s attorneys, to MSNBC on Monday afternoon.

Research published in the medical journal The Lancet says one in three of all the young men in China are likely to die from tobacco, but that the number can fall if the men quit smoking.

The studies, conducted by researchers from Oxford University, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences and the Chinese Center for Disease Control, show that two-thirds of the young men in China start to smoke, mostly before age 20, and that half of those will eventually be killed by tobacco unless they stop permanently.

Steven Jones, 18, reportedly pulled out a handgun and started shooting in a parking lot fight between students. As one victim died in a friend's arms, he fired again.

One student was killed and three others were wounded during a shooting near the Delta Chi fraternity at Northern Arizona University early Friday morning. Early reports indicate that the incident was a fight between students on the Flagstaff campus. Police Chief G.T. Fowler said there was a confrontation between frat members.

John McCone came to the CIA as an outsider. An industrialist and an engineer by training, he replaced veteran spymaster Allen Dulles as director of central intelligence in November 1961, after John F. Kennedy had forced Dulles out following the CIA’s bungled operation to oust Fidel Castro by invading Cuba’s Bay of Pigs.

McCone had one overriding mission: restore order at the besieged CIA. Kennedy hoped his management skills might prevent a future debacle, even if the Californian—mostly a stranger to the clubby, blue-blooded world of the men like Dulles who had always run the spy agency—faced a steep learning curve.