Cursor's Media Patrol - 12/08/05

As Der Speigel asks, "Does Anyone Believe Condoleezza Rice?," Robert Parry finds that she has something in common with her predecessor, and the Los Angeles Times reports that "a classified memorandum described in a court case indicates that the Pentagon has considered sending a captured militant abroad to be interrogated under threat of torture."

As the 'U.S. rejects new talks on climate change,' Inuit indigenous peoples file a complaint accusing the U.S. government "of violating their human rights by failing to do enough to fight a thaw of Arctic ice undermining their hunting cultures," reports Reuters. Earlier: 'The world's toxic waste dump.'

An Orlando man said to be returning from "a missionary trip in Ecuador" was gunned down by federal air marshals after running off a plane in Miami, in what a Homeland Security spokesman called a "textbook scenario." An ABC News report says that a "missing Egyptian may help explain why air marshals acted as they did."

'Acts of defiance against war turn ordinary people into criminals,' reports the Independent, including a conviction for "standing outside Downing Street and reading aloud the names of the 97 British soldiers who have died in the Iraq conflict."

Clarence Page can only "wonder how bad the real news must be," as "Iraqi children could be heard shouting ... 'Support George Bush,'" in what Slate calls another feel-good story from the Baghdad Post.

'Fitzgerald spends three hours with [new] grand jury,' and Lawrence O'Donnell explains why Time's Viveca Novak "may have more to answer for than any other reporter involved."

Referring to Matt Taibbi's "vicious, nasty name-calling" in his article, 'The End of the Party,' the Washington Post's magazine writer says, "there's absolutely no excuse for it -- except, of course, accuracy." Plus: Rep. Tom DeLay, home and away.

A Harris poll finds "Republicans, college graduates and people with incomes over $75,000" feeling less alienated than other Americans.

Weighing the case of 'The New York Times Versus The Civil Society,' Edward Herman cites the late John Hess as saying that "in all 24 years of his service at the paper he 'never saw a foreign intervention that the Times did not support.'" A book publisher also has a 'Bitch' with the Times.