Soup

reuters:

Ask Reuters political correspondent Sam Youngman your burning questions at 2pm Eastern Time on the Reuters Politics Facebook page.

From Gothamist

Yesterday’s “Million Hoodie” rallyat Union Square Park got a lot of media attention, as it should, with even conservative media outlets estimating there were at least several hundred protesters in attendance. But CBS 2 reporter Sean Hennessy is a newscaster, not a mathematician, dammit, and he counted “a few dozen.” For this, he was heckled (perhaps by this master debater?) and heckled again, until he revised his count up to “a few dozen, maybe a hundred.” But the hecklers weren’t having it, and in this rather amusing video, the angry bystanders ultimately reduce Hennessy into admitting, “You’re right. We lie. That’s what we do.”

mehreenkasana:

In the days following the rogue US soldier’s shooting spree in Kandahar, most of the media, us included, focused on the “backlash” and how it might further strain the relations with the US.

Many mainstream media outlets channelled a significant amount of  energy into uncovering the slightest detail about the accused soldier – now identified as Staff Sergeant Robert Bales. We even know where his wife wanted to go for vacation, or what she said on her personal blog.

But the victims became a footnote, an anonymous footnote. Just the number 16. No one bothered to ask their ages, their hobbies, their aspirations. Worst of all, no one bothered to ask their names.

In honoring their memory, I write their names below, and the little we know about them: that nine of them were children, three were women.

The dead:
Mohamed Dawood son of  Abdullah
Khudaydad son of Mohamed Juma
Nazar Mohamed 
Payendo
Robeena
Shatarina daughter of Sultan Mohamed
Zahra daughter of Abdul Hamid
Nazia daughter of Dost Mohamed
Masooma daughter of Mohamed Wazir 
Farida daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Palwasha daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Nabia daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Esmatullah daughter of Mohamed Wazir
Faizullah son of Mohamed Wazir
Essa Mohamed son of Mohamed Hussain
Akhtar Mohamed son of Murrad Ali 

The wounded:
Haji Mohamed Naim son of Haji Sakhawat
Mohamed Sediq son of Mohamed Naim
Parween
Rafiullah
Zardana
Zulheja

A prayer for all sixteen martyrs. May their souls rest in peace and may justice be served one day, some day. Amin.

I’d like to see less stories about the shooter and more about the people whose lives he took.

Ira Glass: What does that mean, unpack the complexities?

Mike Daisey: Well it means, it means that, you know, just, like the hexane thing. I mean I think I’m agreeing with you.

Ira Glass: I mean with the hexane, we approached you and asked you specifically
about that. There’s an email that, that Brian sent you, about the hexane. He
wrote, “Apple’s 2011 report” – this is the responsibility report – “acknowledges
the hexane problem at two plants, one at Wintek and another at a logo supplier but not at Foxconn. These workers you were talking to, in the monologue, were they from Foxconn do you remember or from other plants?” And, and at that point you could have come back to us and said ‘oh no no no I didn’t meet these workers, you know, this is just something I inserted in the monologue based on things I had read and things I had heard in Hong Kong’ um, but instead you lied further and you said, you wrote, “The workers were from Wintek and not Foxconn.” Why not just tell us what really happened at that point?

[long pause]

Mike Daisey: I think I was terrified. [breathing]

Ira Glass: Of what?

[long pause]

Mike Daisey: – That—-

[long pause]

Mike Daisey: I think I was terrified that if I untied these things, that the work,
that I know is really good, and tells a story, that does these really great things for making people care,