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TYNDALL HEADLINE: HIGHLIGHTS FROM AUGUST 15, 2007
The four truckbombs that hit two remote villages of Iraqi Kurdistan were so far away from Baghdad that they could only be mentioned briefly when they occurred on Tuesday. Next day the catastrophic toll from the coordinated attacks in Sinjar and Qahataniyah started to sink in: at least 230 are dead, perhaps as many as 500. The villages are populated by adherents of the ancient Yazidi religion, which predates the conversion of the Kurds to Islam. Both ABC and NBC reported on the atrocity from Baghdad, with ABC choosing the Story of the Day as its lead. NBC and CBS opted instead to lead with Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell, closing below the 13000 benchmark.
TYNDALL PICKS FOR AUGUST 15, 2007: CLICK ON GRID ELEMENTS TO SEARCH FOR MATCHING ITEMS
ANCIENT SECT SUFFERS MODERN ATROCITY The four truckbombs that hit two remote villages of Iraqi Kurdistan were so far away from Baghdad that they could only be mentioned briefly when they occurred on Tuesday. Next day the catastrophic toll from the coordinated attacks in Sinjar and Qahataniyah started to sink in: at least 230 are dead, perhaps as many as 500. The villages are populated by adherents of the ancient Yazidi religion, which predates the conversion of the Kurds to Islam. Both ABC and NBC reported on the atrocity from Baghdad, with ABC choosing the Story of the Day as its lead. NBC and CBS opted instead to lead with Wall Street, where the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell, closing below the 13000 benchmark.
ABC's Miguel Marquez diagramed the truckbomb attacks with the help of his network's Virtual View computer animation: the first bomb was hidden in a water truck as residents stood in line to fill containers; the second was in a fuel truck where the line was for diesel; the third was a suicide attack as a truck plowed into a crowded bus station; the fourth exploded in a marketplace. NBC's Tom Aspell narrated footage of the destruction, calling Qahataniyah "obliterated…the force of an earthquake shattering more than 70 clay-built houses."
From the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin calculated that the death toll makes these bombs "the worst terrorist attack of the entire war," since the US military suspects that al-Qaeda is the guilty party. Martin quoted two conflicting explanations by Gen Benjamin Mixon for the motives behind the attack. Either publicity--"they are looking to gain worldwide attention to try to throw us off our plan"--or more plainly "genocide, there is no other way to put it." From Beirut, NBC's Richard Engel sided with the latter theory: radical Sunnis in Iraq are "trying to ethnically cleanse all the groups they believe are not Islamic. In this case it was the Yazidis but other minorities, including Christians, have been leaving Iraq in record numbers."
Engel and Martin then turned to a couple of other Iraq developments. Martin reported that Gen David Petraeus now has a timeline for when his misnamed surge of troops will end. He plans to pull combat brigades out of Iraq at the rate of one a month starting in December 2007, ending in June 2008, at which time US troop levels will have reverted to pre-surge numbers. What enables his plan is the estimate that 30,000 former Sunni insurgents have joined up, a force of equal size to the entire surge--"and with much better intelligence."
For his part, Engel previewed a future regional power struggle now that "Iraq has effectively collapsed, leaving a huge power vacuum in the center." He envisaged a "new Cold War" in the region between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Engel reported that US strategists expect a "frontline force" in this Cold War to be Teheran's Quds Force, funding and reinforcing militias in Iraq and supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. In an effort to block the Quds Force, the White House is considering designating it terrorist organization even though it is funded by the Iranian state.
FEAR OF INFECTION Wall Street completed "its worst five days in five years," as CBS' Anthony Mason put it, with another triple-digit drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Mason smelled "fear" that bad real estate loans were infecting the entire financial system: "You are hearing anything from maybe it is a $100bn problem, maybe it is a $500bn problem." Over at the CNBC financial news cable channel, anchor Erin Burnett agreed that "it is not just a Wall Street issue--it is a Main Street issue" but she offered the argument against fear: "This situation is still temporary as we work off the excesses of a very long period of extremely low interest rates."
On ABC, Betsy Stark (no link) concentrated on housing instead of the stock exchange. When Countrywide Financial, the largest lender of mortgages on the nation, was reported to have trouble raising capital, Stark offered this warning to any potential homebuyer: "Even if you have good credit, lenders want more money down and more proof that you are a good credit risk." CBS' Mason detailed the continued distressed state of real estate: "Existing homes sales fell in 41 states from April to June. Meanwhile foreclosures continue to soar."
TOY STORIES NBC and ABC both followed up on Mattel's recalled toys. Yesterday, NBC's Ian Williams and CBS' Barry Petersen both reported from Beijing on the quality of China's exports. Now ABC's Mark Litke (subscription required) traveled to the toymaking center of Foshan where he met with former Big Bird and Elmo assembly line workers, now out of work because of the sins of their employer's supplier. "It was not our fault," a worker told Litke. "The paint with the lead came from another factory but we are paying the price." Working 60 hours a week for no more than the equivalent of 50c an hour, Litke calculated that a Barbie doll, $20 retail, costs 35c to make in Foshan. So ABC sent Barbara Pinto (at the tail of the Litke videostream) to the Whittle Shortline Railroad factory in Missouri where workers earn an $18 hourly wage: one of its wooden trains costs $10 to manufacture, with $3 being the Chinese price for manufacture plus shipping. No wonder, as Pinto pointed out, that China boasts 10,000 toy factories; the United States "fewer than 50." On NBC, Kerry Sanders noted that the Consumer Product Safety Commission tests "only a fraction" of imported toys. He was told by the CPSC's Julie Vallese that to expect universal testing would be "quite naïve."
PIX & WONKS As Daniel Sieberg continues his picturesque treatment of global warming with his Arctic Ocean video for CBS' series Journey to the Top of the World, NBC took a contrasting wonkish approach for Anne Thompson's In Depth feature. Thompson traced the evolving rhetoric of global warming contrarians inside-the-Beltway. Experts at thinktanks like the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute used to deny the accuracy of models that demonstrated that human-generated greenhouse gases are causing the climate to change. Now they concede the phenomenon--they just contradict its catastrophic consequences: "Manmade pollution warms the Earth," Thompson paraphrased, "but will not melt Greenland or raise sea levels to wash away one third of Florida."
As for Sieberg, Monday he showed us shrinking glaciers; Tuesday he focused on arctic wildlife; now Sieberg turns to human interest, following oceanologist Eddie Carmack's technique for calculating how the melted ice ends up circulating through warmer waters. Carmack's "folk science" gimmick is the message in the bottle: on each research trip he throws bottles overboard hoping for finders to report where they wash up. Out of 4,000 dispatched, he has so far heard from 150, each taking about two years to be found. Some destinations are obvious--Alaska, Norway--but other bottles have bobbled from the Arctic to France, and even to Brazil.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE CBS News completed its latest Campaign 2008 opinion polling on the popularity of the candidates in each party. Monday's Republican standings had Rudolph Giuliani ahead with 38% support; the runner-up is not even an announced candidate, Fred Thompson. As for the Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton has a commanding (45% v 25%) lead over Barack Obama. Jeff Greenfield analyzed Obama's strategy: his dominant theme is "change" and his mantra on the stump is "time to turn the page." But CBS' poll numbers show "Obama's core argument is facing some rough going," Greenfield commented, going "to the heart of the experience-vs-change debate." Among voters who value experience Rodham Clinton "trounces Obama" but Obama fails to show any reciprocal advantage among voters who value fresh ideas. Even Rodham Clinton's campaign slogan--Ready for Change! Ready to Lead!--seems designed to defang the younger senator's edge.
GIANT STRIDES NBC's weeklong What Works series scored a hit as Robert Bazell visited a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where they are designing cutting edge prostheses for amputees. Traditional artificial legs create an unnatural posture, impairing balance and using more energy to walk, researcher Hugh Herr explained. How does he know that? Dr Herr lost both of his legs in a mountaineering accident as a teenager. Herr showed off his new foot with implanted microprocessors and silent electrical motors: "Walking immediately became easier."
GOOD DOG Hats off to Jim Sciutto (subscription required) for his imaginative story pitch for ABC. It is not bad work to be land an assignment to the beach resort of Pescara on the Adriatic Sea. His idea was the Italian Baywatch--and these lifeguards do not even have orange bathing suits to cover their private parts. They have fur instead. Borrowing from the ancient European tradition of fishermen's dogs, the coast guard in Italy trains Newfoundlands and Labradors to rescue drowning bathers. "It is their natural qualities that serve them best," Sciutto assured us. These breeds are adapted for swimming--flaps of skin that make their paws webbed--and retrieving too. "Labradors get very excited when they see a person in the water." They jump in towards them "without hesitation." Mission accomplished, Sciutto can now relax with a cool Campari.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: a spacewalk by an astronaut from the Shuttle Endeavour was cut short when his glove was shredded…the requirement by the State Department that passport applicants should have no outstanding child support debts is delivering backpayments…Donald Rumsfeld, in his letter of resignation as Secretary of Defense, made no reference to the war in Iraq.
ABC's Miguel Marquez diagramed the truckbomb attacks with the help of his network's Virtual View computer animation: the first bomb was hidden in a water truck as residents stood in line to fill containers; the second was in a fuel truck where the line was for diesel; the third was a suicide attack as a truck plowed into a crowded bus station; the fourth exploded in a marketplace. NBC's Tom Aspell narrated footage of the destruction, calling Qahataniyah "obliterated…the force of an earthquake shattering more than 70 clay-built houses."
From the Pentagon, CBS' David Martin calculated that the death toll makes these bombs "the worst terrorist attack of the entire war," since the US military suspects that al-Qaeda is the guilty party. Martin quoted two conflicting explanations by Gen Benjamin Mixon for the motives behind the attack. Either publicity--"they are looking to gain worldwide attention to try to throw us off our plan"--or more plainly "genocide, there is no other way to put it." From Beirut, NBC's Richard Engel sided with the latter theory: radical Sunnis in Iraq are "trying to ethnically cleanse all the groups they believe are not Islamic. In this case it was the Yazidis but other minorities, including Christians, have been leaving Iraq in record numbers."
Engel and Martin then turned to a couple of other Iraq developments. Martin reported that Gen David Petraeus now has a timeline for when his misnamed surge of troops will end. He plans to pull combat brigades out of Iraq at the rate of one a month starting in December 2007, ending in June 2008, at which time US troop levels will have reverted to pre-surge numbers. What enables his plan is the estimate that 30,000 former Sunni insurgents have joined up, a force of equal size to the entire surge--"and with much better intelligence."
For his part, Engel previewed a future regional power struggle now that "Iraq has effectively collapsed, leaving a huge power vacuum in the center." He envisaged a "new Cold War" in the region between the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Engel reported that US strategists expect a "frontline force" in this Cold War to be Teheran's Quds Force, funding and reinforcing militias in Iraq and supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon. In an effort to block the Quds Force, the White House is considering designating it terrorist organization even though it is funded by the Iranian state.
FEAR OF INFECTION Wall Street completed "its worst five days in five years," as CBS' Anthony Mason put it, with another triple-digit drop on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. On the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, Mason smelled "fear" that bad real estate loans were infecting the entire financial system: "You are hearing anything from maybe it is a $100bn problem, maybe it is a $500bn problem." Over at the CNBC financial news cable channel, anchor Erin Burnett agreed that "it is not just a Wall Street issue--it is a Main Street issue" but she offered the argument against fear: "This situation is still temporary as we work off the excesses of a very long period of extremely low interest rates."
On ABC, Betsy Stark (no link) concentrated on housing instead of the stock exchange. When Countrywide Financial, the largest lender of mortgages on the nation, was reported to have trouble raising capital, Stark offered this warning to any potential homebuyer: "Even if you have good credit, lenders want more money down and more proof that you are a good credit risk." CBS' Mason detailed the continued distressed state of real estate: "Existing homes sales fell in 41 states from April to June. Meanwhile foreclosures continue to soar."
TOY STORIES NBC and ABC both followed up on Mattel's recalled toys. Yesterday, NBC's Ian Williams and CBS' Barry Petersen both reported from Beijing on the quality of China's exports. Now ABC's Mark Litke (subscription required) traveled to the toymaking center of Foshan where he met with former Big Bird and Elmo assembly line workers, now out of work because of the sins of their employer's supplier. "It was not our fault," a worker told Litke. "The paint with the lead came from another factory but we are paying the price." Working 60 hours a week for no more than the equivalent of 50c an hour, Litke calculated that a Barbie doll, $20 retail, costs 35c to make in Foshan. So ABC sent Barbara Pinto (at the tail of the Litke videostream) to the Whittle Shortline Railroad factory in Missouri where workers earn an $18 hourly wage: one of its wooden trains costs $10 to manufacture, with $3 being the Chinese price for manufacture plus shipping. No wonder, as Pinto pointed out, that China boasts 10,000 toy factories; the United States "fewer than 50." On NBC, Kerry Sanders noted that the Consumer Product Safety Commission tests "only a fraction" of imported toys. He was told by the CPSC's Julie Vallese that to expect universal testing would be "quite naïve."
PIX & WONKS As Daniel Sieberg continues his picturesque treatment of global warming with his Arctic Ocean video for CBS' series Journey to the Top of the World, NBC took a contrasting wonkish approach for Anne Thompson's In Depth feature. Thompson traced the evolving rhetoric of global warming contrarians inside-the-Beltway. Experts at thinktanks like the Cato Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute used to deny the accuracy of models that demonstrated that human-generated greenhouse gases are causing the climate to change. Now they concede the phenomenon--they just contradict its catastrophic consequences: "Manmade pollution warms the Earth," Thompson paraphrased, "but will not melt Greenland or raise sea levels to wash away one third of Florida."
As for Sieberg, Monday he showed us shrinking glaciers; Tuesday he focused on arctic wildlife; now Sieberg turns to human interest, following oceanologist Eddie Carmack's technique for calculating how the melted ice ends up circulating through warmer waters. Carmack's "folk science" gimmick is the message in the bottle: on each research trip he throws bottles overboard hoping for finders to report where they wash up. Out of 4,000 dispatched, he has so far heard from 150, each taking about two years to be found. Some destinations are obvious--Alaska, Norway--but other bottles have bobbled from the Arctic to France, and even to Brazil.
THE MORE THINGS CHANGE CBS News completed its latest Campaign 2008 opinion polling on the popularity of the candidates in each party. Monday's Republican standings had Rudolph Giuliani ahead with 38% support; the runner-up is not even an announced candidate, Fred Thompson. As for the Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton has a commanding (45% v 25%) lead over Barack Obama. Jeff Greenfield analyzed Obama's strategy: his dominant theme is "change" and his mantra on the stump is "time to turn the page." But CBS' poll numbers show "Obama's core argument is facing some rough going," Greenfield commented, going "to the heart of the experience-vs-change debate." Among voters who value experience Rodham Clinton "trounces Obama" but Obama fails to show any reciprocal advantage among voters who value fresh ideas. Even Rodham Clinton's campaign slogan--Ready for Change! Ready to Lead!--seems designed to defang the younger senator's edge.
GIANT STRIDES NBC's weeklong What Works series scored a hit as Robert Bazell visited a laboratory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology where they are designing cutting edge prostheses for amputees. Traditional artificial legs create an unnatural posture, impairing balance and using more energy to walk, researcher Hugh Herr explained. How does he know that? Dr Herr lost both of his legs in a mountaineering accident as a teenager. Herr showed off his new foot with implanted microprocessors and silent electrical motors: "Walking immediately became easier."
GOOD DOG Hats off to Jim Sciutto (subscription required) for his imaginative story pitch for ABC. It is not bad work to be land an assignment to the beach resort of Pescara on the Adriatic Sea. His idea was the Italian Baywatch--and these lifeguards do not even have orange bathing suits to cover their private parts. They have fur instead. Borrowing from the ancient European tradition of fishermen's dogs, the coast guard in Italy trains Newfoundlands and Labradors to rescue drowning bathers. "It is their natural qualities that serve them best," Sciutto assured us. These breeds are adapted for swimming--flaps of skin that make their paws webbed--and retrieving too. "Labradors get very excited when they see a person in the water." They jump in towards them "without hesitation." Mission accomplished, Sciutto can now relax with a cool Campari.
MENTIONED IN PASSING The network newscasts do not assign correspondents to all of the news of the day. If Tyndall Report readers come across videostreamed reports online of stories that were mentioned only in passing, post the link in comments for us to check out.
Today's examples: a spacewalk by an astronaut from the Shuttle Endeavour was cut short when his glove was shredded…the requirement by the State Department that passport applicants should have no outstanding child support debts is delivering backpayments…Donald Rumsfeld, in his letter of resignation as Secretary of Defense, made no reference to the war in Iraq.
