How Moon of Alabama Is Made
In one of the interviews Seymour Hersh gave last year about his life as a reporter he was asked to give advice for other writers. He had three tips:
- Read before you write.
- Know more than you write.
- Get yourself out of the way of the story.
Moon of Alabama writings try to follow those rules. This though is a meta piece about our writing for Moon of Alabama. The third rule therefore does not apply.
To publish some five to six original pieces per week, each on a different issue, requires appropriate tools, time, and a disciplined workflow.
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The first half of my days is spent with gathering news. It starts at at 7:00 or 8:00 am with scrolling through the last night's tweets of the 600 or so Twitter accounts I follow. If there are links of interest they get opened for later reading. After that comes a walk through the major newspapers' headlines and news agency sites. At the end of this process there are 20 or more open browser tabs that require further attention.
After a quick glance these get either closed or saved. Their links and headlines will be copied into Notepad++ where each general current issue - Syria, Boeing 737 MAX, China tarrifs, etc - has its own file. If there are usable excerpts or quotes they are added too. It is pretty much noon by the time this general news gathering is finished.
After a quick lunch comes a short check of Moon of Alabama. Comments caught in the spam folder want to be liberated. The last night's treads might be in a need of a clean up.
Another reading round follows through the dozens of blogs on our Links page. In between more stuff comes up on Twitter that again deserves some attention. Now, six hours after the workday's start, the information gathering phase is mostly finished.
Then comes the big question of the day. What should I write about? What is the issues where I could make an interesting point that others have missed?
At times the answer is obvious. On other day there is absolutely no idea and even a walk through the neighborhood does not help to make that decision.
Luckily there are also days where I get help from my neighbors and friends.
The writing itself is rather quick. To type up the raw version of an 800 word post takes only about two hours. Most of the details come from earlier research or from previously collected links. The following editorial and production process now often takes longer than that.
The first reading through the raw story checks for the basic logic and completeness of a piece. Does it really make the point it is supposed to make? Are there claims in it that need to be substantiated? Is this or that detail necessary to make the point or is it just fluff? Do the quotes or excerpts make sense? If necessary details and links get added, or cut, at this time. Pictures will have to be found, cropped, resized, uploaded and linked.
So far all this is is done in basic HTML directly in the editor the Typepad system provides. Only now follows the switch to the better readable rich text mode.
The second reading includes style and layout issues. Are there boring repetitions or long nested construct over which a reader might stumble? Does this sentence use the right tense? As English is not my first language and as I never lived in an English speaking country I often need help with this. I use Leo.org to find synonyms or better English expression for whatever meaning I have in mind.
The last reading is abstract from the content and strictly to eliminate typos. Inevitably some will escape.
Time to publish? Not yet. Now a break is necessary to distance oneself from the text. Filling the cloth washer or running some errant helps with that.
Then follow the last three tasks - find a headline, write a summarizing intro sentence, and formulate the last sentence. All three are most important for the attractiveness of a piece to readers and commentators.
Only after all three are edited and rechecked for mistakes the 'Publish' button gets pressed. The day's work is finally on its way to you, the readers of this site.
It is also you, the readers, who make Moon of Alabama possible.
Your writer and host lives alone and is quite frugal. My apartment is in a small town that has now became part of a big city. Everything I need is within easy walking distance. This is the ideal place to do such time consuming work.
But there is also a need for income. I depend on you who read this to contribute to that. Email 'MoonofA @ aol.com' for my address and bank connection. Or use the Paypal button below to send whatever you might be willing to spare down my way.
Thank you. - b.
Odd NYT 'Correction' Exculpates British Government And CIA From Manipulating Trump Over Skripal Novichok Incident
A piece in the New York Times showed how in March 2018 Trump was manipulated by the CIA and MI6 into expelling 60 Russian diplomats. Eight weeks after it was published the New York Times 'corrects' that narrative and exculpates the CIA and MI6 of that manipulation. Its explanation for the correction makes little sense.
On April 16 the New York Times published a report by Julian E. Barnes and Adam Goldman about the relation between CIA Director Gina Haspal and President Donald Trump.
Gina Haspel Relies on Spy Skills to Connect With Trump. He Doesn’t Always Listen.
The piece described a scene in the White House shortly after the contentious Skripal/Novichok incident in Britain. It originally said (emphasis added):
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the “strong option” was to expel 60 diplomats.To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the only victims of Russia’s attack.
Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.
The 60 Russian diplomats were expelled on March 26 2018. Other countries only expelled a handful of diplomats over the Skripal incident. On April 15 2018 the Washington Post reported that Trump was furious about this:
The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials — far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on. The President, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.
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Growing angrier, Trump insisted that his aides had misled him about the magnitude of the expulsions. ‘There were curse words,’ the official said, ‘a lot of curse words.
In that context the 2019 NYT report about Haspel showing Trump dead duck pictures provided by the Brits made sense. Trump was, as he himself claimed, manipulated into the large expulsion.
The NYT report created some waves. On April 18 2019 the Guardian headlined:
No children or ducks harmed by novichok, say health officials
Wiltshire council clarification follows claims Donald Trump was shown images to contrary
The report of the dead duck pictures in the New York Times was a problem for the CIA and the British government. Not only did it say that they manipulated Trump by providing him with false pictures, but the non-dead ducks also demonstrated that the official narrative of the allegedly poisoning of the Skripals has some huge holes. As Rob Slane of the BlogMire noted:
D-Day And The Myth That The U.S. Defeated The Nazis
Each D-Day anniversary the same question comes up. Who defeated Germany and its allies? The answer is, without any doubt, the Soviet Union.
But after decades of western propaganda the claims that the U.S. defeated the Reich has taken over many minds. Polls show that such propaganda works. More than half of the French people now believe that the U.S. contributed the most to the defeat of Germany.
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The U.S. lost 411.000 people due to World war II, Great Britain lost 450,000, Germany some 7 million and the Soviet Union more than 20 million.
Many people think that the Soviet Union, now "the Russians", were always the bad guys and that Germany was a loyal ally during that war. That is at least what the verified account of the British Royal Family seems to believe.
The Royal Family @RoyalFamily - 10:30 utc - 5 Jun 2019The Queen was introduced to leaders by the Prime Minister @10DowningStreet - each representing the allied nations that took part in D-Day. #DDay75
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The Russian President Vladimir Putin was not invited to the royal reception commemorating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Instead the Queen shook hands with German Chancellor Merkel. Merkel should have rejected to be there unless Putin would also be invited. The leaders from other Soviet countries, Vladimir Zelensky of the Ukraine and Alexander Lukashenko from Belarus, should also be there.
There is of course some truthiness in saying that a few German divisions took part in D-Day. And a few dozens sub-par German division later joined the fight at the Western front. But at the same time some 200 division of German led forces were engaged in the east.
Two weeks after D-Day the Red Army launched Operation Bagration and attacked the German Army Group Centre lines in the east on a thousand miles long front. Within eight weeks the German led forces were pushed back some 200 miles. Most of the 30 some divisions under Army Group Centre's command were destroyed. It was that attack that broke the back of the German Wehrmacht. Cynically said - the U.S. led invasion in the west was a mere diversion for the much larger attack in the east.
Ten years ago Anatoly Karlin wrote in The Poisonous Myths of the Eastern Front:
Cont. reading: D-Day And The Myth That The U.S. Defeated The Nazis
How Others See MoA: "Politically Neutral And Most Distant To Power"
The Swiss Propaganda Research group is an independent nonprofit organization investigating geopolitical propaganda in international media. Its major articles are available in English language.
One of its recent projects is the Media Navigator. It classifies more than 70 English language news outlets based on their political stance and their relationship to power.
The relationship to power on the X-axis varies for 'Close' to 'Distant', the political stance from 'Conservative' to 'Liberal'.
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According to their judgment Moon of Alabama is neutral in its political stance while being most distant to power.
Your host is quite happy with this classification. It reflects our effort to base our analysis on facts and logic, and not on feelings or a personal agenda.
If you believe that a neutral medium with due distance to power is of value, please consider to contribute to this effort.
You send cash or a check to keep Moon of Alabama going. You can also use a bank-wire transfer. Send email to MoonofA @ aol.com for the necessary details. To use a credit card or other means please donate through the PayPal button below.
Thanks you very much.
Tian An Men Square - What Really Happened (Updated)
Since 1989 the western media write anniversary pieces on the June 4 removal of protesters from the Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The view seems always quite one sided and stereotyped with a brutal military that suppresses peaceful protests.
That is not the full picture. Thanks to Wikileaks we have a few situation reports from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing at that time. They describe a different scene than the one western media paint to this day.
Ten thousands of people, mostly students, occupied the square for six weeks. They protested over the political and personal consequences of Mao's chaotic Cultural Revolution which had upset the whole country. The liberalization and changeover to a more capitalist model under Deng Xiopings had yet to show its success and was fought by the hardliners in the Communist Party.
The more liberal side of the government negotiated with the protesters but no agreement was found. The hardliners in the party pressed for the protest removal. When the government finally tried to move the protesters out of the very prominent square they resisted.
On June 3 the government moved troops towards the city center of Beijing. But the military convoys were held up. Some came under attack. The U.S. embassy reported that soldiers were taken as hostages:
TENSION MOUNTED THROUGHOUT THE AFTERNOON AS BEIJING RESIDENTS VENTED THEIR ANGER BY HARASSING MILITARY AND POLICE PERSONNEL AND ATTACKING THEIR VEHICLES. STUDENTS DISPLAYED CAPTURED WEAPONS, MILITARY EQUIPMENT AND VEHICLES, INCLUDING IN FRONT OF THE ZHONGNANHAI LEADERSHIP COMPOUND. AN EFFORT TO FREE STILL CAPTIVE MILITARY PERSONNEL OR TO CLEAR THE SOUTHERN ENTRANCE TO ZHONGNANHAI MAY HAVE BEEN THE CAUSE OF A LIMITED TEAR GAS ATTACK IN THAT AREA AROUND 1500 HOURS LOCAL.
There are some gruesome pictures of the government side casualties of these events.
Another cable from June 3 notes:
THE TROOPS HAVE OBVIOUSLY NOT YET BEEN GIVEN ORDERS PERMITTING THEM TO USE FORCE. THEIR LARGE NUMBERS, THE FACT THAT THEY ARE HELMETED, AND THE AUTOMATIC WEAPONS THEY ARE CARRYING SUGGEST THAT THE FORCE OPTION IS REAL.
In the early morning of June 4 the military finally reached the city center and tried to push the crowd out of Tiananmen Square:
STUDENTS SET DEBRIS THROWN ATOP AT LEAST ONE ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER AND LIT THE DEBRIS, ACCORDING TO EMBOFF NEAR THE SCENE. ABC REPORTED THAT ONE OTHER ARMORED PERSONNEL CARRIER IS AFLAME. AT LEAST ONE BUS WAS ALSO BURNING, ACCORDING TO ABC NEWS REPORTERS ON THE SQUARE AT 0120. THE EYEWITNESSES REPORTED THAT TROOPS AND RIOT POLICE WERE ON THE SOUTHERN END OF THE SQUARE AND TROOPS WERE MOVING TO THE SQUARE FROM THE WESTERN SIDE OF THE CITY.
The soldiers responded as all soldiers do when they see that their comrades get barbecued:
Cont. reading: Tian An Men Square - What Really Happened (Updated)
Trump Meets British Humor
U.S. President Donald Trump is currently visiting Britain. He is not much liked in that country. A recent poll shows that only 21% of the British people have a positive a opinion about him.
Some young man even prepared a special welcome message for Trump:
A teenager has mowed an anti-Trump message, complete with a giant penis, into the grass of his family home ahead of the US president’s UK state visit.
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The A-level student hopes that the US president will spot his creation as Air Force One approaches Stansted Airport, which is near Hatfield Heath, on Monday morning.
It is unlikely that Trump saw that picture from the air.
But the British security that escorted Trump from Stansted into London seems have borrowed the idea.
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Stansaid Airport @StansaidAirport - 9:32 utc - 3 Jun 2019Well done our security escort team! The President is now arriving at the U.S. Ambassador's residence off Regent's Park. Good work people.
Stansaid Airport is a humorous account. There are several other pictures that play with the theme. We can not vouch for their veracity.
Fundraiser - Please Support Moon of Alabama
Dear Reader,
Moon of Alabama provides news and analysis which other media cover late or not at all. It offers original thought and no-nonsense writing on a nearly daily basis. That is not an easy feat and it requires a lot of effort. This site is free. The comment section is open and lively. All this is the effort of this single person.
Your continued interest and your feed back keep me going. But I also need to eat and pay rent. There is no other income to rely on. Thus every donation to this Poor Poet, be it $5, $50 or $500, is welcome and needed. A recurring contribution or sponsorship would be great.
Transaction costs are smallest when you send cash or a check. You can also use a bank-wire transfer. Send email to MoonofA @ aol.com for the necessary details. (They as the same as before.) You can use a credit card or other means when you donate through the PayPal button below.
Thanks you very much
Bernhard aka b.
MoA Week In Review - Varios Issues - OT 2019-31
Last week's posts at Moon of Alabama:
- May 27 - New York Times Supports False Trump Claims About An "Iranian Nuclear Weapons Program" That Does Not Exist
- May 28 - U.S. Government Seeks NGO Help For Removing Iran From Syria
Other issues:
Reuters headlined today: U.S. prepared to engage with Iran without pre-conditions: Pompeo
Reading the very first sentence one immediately learns that the headline is lie:
BELLINZONA, Switzerland (Reuters) - The United States is prepared to engage with Iran without pre-conditions about its nuclear program but needs to see the country behaving like “a normal nation”, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Sunday.
What does Pompeo mean when he uses the phrase "a normal nation"? We can discern that by reading his May 2018 speech, After the Deal: A New Iran Strategy. In it Pompeo lays out twelve "requirements" that the U.S. wants Iran to fulfill. Together they are a demand to Iran to 'regime change' itself, to lay down and play dead. Pompeo then goes on to say:
So we’re not asking anything other than that Iranian behavior be consistent with global norms, ...
"A normal nation" is one that behaves "consistent with global norms". Pompeo will only talk with Iran after it fulfills all the "requirements" he set out a year ago. How Reuters can sells that as "without pre-condition" is a mystery.
The New York Times has a long new piece on the Boeing 737 MAX: Boeing Built Deadly Assumptions Into 737 Max, Blind to a Late Design Change
Apart from some new quotes I find no fact in there that was not mentioned in on of the 737 pieces on this site. Meanwhile not one mainstream outlet has written about the safety problems of the 737 NG trim which we extensively discussed here. That piece also noted that it will take quite some time for the 737 MAX to be allowed back into the air. Other agencies than the FAA will want to check it out and that will take some time. The president of Emirates Airline agrees with that view:
Boeing Co.’s 737 Max will likely not be back in the skies before the end of this year because of a fall-out in cooperation between the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration and other national regulators, according to Tim Clark, president of Emirates.“You’re going to have a bit of a delay in terms of regulators, Canada, Europe, China,” Clark told reporters at the IATA annual meeting in Seoul. “It’s going to take time to get this aircraft back in the air. If it’s in the air by Christmas I’ll be surprised.”
The proven FAA failure to appropriately check Boeing's designs will have additional consequences:
Clark also said regulators are now set to take a more stringent view on Boeing’s next plane, the 777X, which is targeted to begin commercial flights in 2020. Boeing is seeking regulatory approval for the jet which, just like the 737 Max, is an update of an existing model.
The Trump administration wants to discourage all those nasty foreigners who want to spend their vacation money in the United States:
The State Department is now requiring nearly all applicants for U.S. visas to submit their social media usernames, previous email addresses and phone numbers. ... In addition to their social media histories, visa applicants are now asked for five years of previously used telephone numbers, email addresses, international travel and deportation status ...
The new rule will affect some 15 million visa per year. That is a lot of new data for the NSA to crosscheck.
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Use as open thread ...
CNN Sees Saudi Success In Disunited Gulf Summits That Made No New Statements
Last week Saudi Arabia hosted three international summits in Mecca. The first was an emergency meeting of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) which includes six Arab countries of the Persian Gulf. It was followed by an Arab League meeting of its 22 countries minus Syria which is currently suspended. The third summit was of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) which has 57 member states.
The Saudis had hoped that they would be able to use those summits to demonstrate a united position against Iran. Saudi Arabia had accused Iran of ordering the recent drone attacks from Yemen on its trans-Saudi pipeline. The U.S. accused Iran of being behind the recent attacks on tankers near the UAE.
The Saudi King opened the first summit with an attack on Iran:
Saudi Arabia’s King Salman told an emergency Gulf Arab meeting on Thursday that Iran’s development of nuclear and ballistic missile capabilities threatened regional and global security.He said Tehran’s actions threatened international maritime trade and global oil supplies in a “glaring violation of UN treaties,” following attacks this month on oil tankers off the United Arab Emirates and on oil pumping stations in the Kingdom.
If one is to believe CNN's Nic Robertson, the Saudis succeeded in uniting all countries behind their position:
King Salman of Saudi Arabia has pulled off in Mecca what many had thought unlikely -- getting 20 or so disparate Arab nations to unite in a common position against Iran.And while this achievement came without bellicose threats or new red lines, it is an important milepost on a road that may yet lead to regional conflict. In middle-of-night, back-to-back summits at Islam's holiest of sites, the aging but still-attentive Saudi monarch got a double endorsement of his claims that Iran is destabilizing the Middle East and a backing of his call for "the international community to shoulder its responsibility.
The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council and 21 Arab League nations present called for Iran to stop "interfering in the internal affairs" of its neighbors and denounced Tehran's "threat to maritime security" in the Persian Gulf.
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What we saw in Mecca was a mark being set, that the status quo with Iran will no longer be tolerated by Saudi and its allies. What happens next is in Iran's court. Talks are an option, but terrorism, insofar as it is perceived as such by Tehran's neighbors, is not.
The Saudis must have bought Nic Robertson some of their rose-colored glasses. In fact each of the three summits failed to take a new position towards Iran. The GCC summit communique does not blame Iran for the recent attacks and uses only general language to note its concern:
Cont. reading: CNN Sees Saudi Success In Disunited Gulf Summits That Made No New Statements
Blog Housekeeping And Minor Renovations
Your host spent the last days fixing some minor issues with this blog.
Typepad, the hosting company for this blog, said that some of the software features used when I built this blog 15 years ago have now "depreciated for security reasons". That is their euphemism for "we screwed those up when we converted all blogs to use SSL." It took them seven month and some persistent niggling from me to come up with that excuse.
But using Typepad is the most convenient and cheapest way to run a blog. Their systems are reliable and the help desk, which one rarely needs, is generally responsive. If you want to run a blog I strongly recommend to use them. Their new web design system for blogs is also easy to work with.
Unfortunately I do not use new web design system. This blog uses the older software layer below those new design tools. That requires me to dig through stylesheet and templates coded in an incompletely documented control language. That is why it took me days to fix some minor issues.
You will not notice most of those changes. There are five issues though that you might want to know about.
- Half a year ago this blog received the Serena Shim Award for 'uncompromised integrity in journalism'. It is an encouragement to continue what we are doing. Click the award logo on the upper left of the homepage to read more about it.
- The blog should now resize properly for devices with smaller screen resolutions. Unfortunately I have no way to test this on multiple devices. If you find that it does not work properly on whatever you have please use the comments below to let me know.
- The commentators name, email and web-url can no longer be stored as a cookie to be re-used during the next visit. Most web-browser will now use 'autofill' to put in the values that were used during your last comment. (Using Firefox you can double click within each input field.) I preferred the old solution but it is no longer available.
- In long threads the permalinks for comments on subsequent comment pages were broken. That problem is fixed. The permalink to a comment is under its sequence number. All comments can be directly linked from anywhere.
- The 'Search' on the homepage of this blog finally works and also has a readable layout. The original search used here was based on a Google feature which that company unfortunately terminated a few years ago. The makeshift that replaced it was a crappy version of Typepad's old search feature which one of their people squeezed into the homepage layout of this blog. It was mostly unusable. The new search has its own template and uses a newer underlying engine. It works for blog posts and for the comments. Check it out.
If there are any additional layout or functional issues that need to be fixed please let me know so in the comments.
Are there features missing that I should think of to add?