'New York has lost its edge'Readers of Time Out magazine recently voted New York to be the greatest city in the world. Stefanie Marsh begs to differ

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  Robert Gibbs, rattled by Telegraph story, lashes out at British press  Posted By: Toby Harnden at May 29, 2009 


It's difficult to know where to start with the extraordinary outburst by Robert Gibbs, White House press secretary, after he was asked about the Telegraph story based on an interview with Maj Gen (Retd) Antonio Taguba, author of a 2004 report into the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Gibbs didn't feel he was on sure enough ground to attack Taguba or deny the Telegraph's story so he attempted to throw up a smokescreen by launching into what Daily Kos called a "cheap hacktastic smear attack on the British Press in general". Anticipating the question and preparing his attack, Gibbs came up with a plodding (and botched - it's not the Champion's League "Cup") quip about British football (aka soccer): "I will speak generally about some reports I've witnessed over the past few years in the British media, and in some ways I'm surprised it filtered down.  Let's just say if I wanted to look up -- if I wanted to read a write-up today of how Manchester United fared last night in the Champion's League Cup, I might open up a British newspaper.  If I was looking for something that bordered on truthful news, I'm not entirely sure it would be the first stack of clips I picked up." Later on, he said: "Again, I think if you do an even moderate Google search, you're not going to find many of these newspapers and truth within, say, 25 words of each other." But notice that when Gibbs was asked a direct question, he obfuscated:   Q: So are you saying that the report is completely false? MR. GIBBS:  I would refer you very closely to the statement that DOD put out that the article is wrong and mischaracterizes the photos that are in question.  Note that at no point does he deny the existence of the photographs. As Alex Massie notes, all this amounts to a classic non-denial denial. It's funny, but I seem to remember Gibbs and the Obama campaign had no qualms with trumpeting my reporting on Hillary Clinton and her exaggerations about her foreign policy experience in Northern Ireland, or British newspaper coverage of Clinton's First Lady schedules. As Jeremy Scahill points out Gibbs is using the tired old press flack's tactic of attacking the messenger, with a new twist: "[He] is really embodying the idea that when the message is devastating, you attack the messenger. Except in this case, Gibbs is not even attacking the messenger, but rather the newspaper that quoted the messenger." Scahill says that Gibbs is too cowardly to go after Taguba: "Go after him, Gibbs. Call him a liar. Say he is a dirty propagandist that wants to hurt US troops. Oh, right, you can't. Taguba actually agrees with Obama on this issue..." The Obama White House seems to view the British media…

 U.S. Cracks Down on ‘Contractors’ as a Tax DodgeBy STEVEN GREENHOUSE Jodi Hilton for The New York TimesFritz Elienberg, who was a contract worker for RCN, sued the company after he was injured.Federal and state officials are pursuing firms that try to pass off regular employees as independent contractors Read Article   

  
ROBERT CAPA The Falling Soldier by Robert Capa  Shot down - Capa's classic image of war For decades the authenticity of these classic Spanish Civil War photographs has been debated. But a new study claims to have settled the argument By Elizabeth Nash The photograph of a soldier falling to his death after being shot on a grassy hillside is probably the best known image of the Spanish Civil War, the photographer hailed as the founder of modern photojournalism. But the authenticity of Robert Capa's dramatic photo has been repeatedly disputed since it appeared in September 1936, with regular efforts made to establish exactly where it was taken, and of whom. New evidence revealed this week suggests that the young Hungarian hailed as one of the world's finest war photographers may have staged his classic picture after all. Related articles Tom Sutcliffe: Can we ever be sure that a picture is telling the whole story? Leading article: Caught in the act
The so-called "falling soldier" was not photographed near Cerro Muriano in Andalusia, as has been claimed, but about 50km to the south-west, near the town of Espejo far from the frontline on a day when there was no military action, a Catalan newspaper claims. "Capa photographed his soldier at a location where there was no fighting," wrote the daily El Periodico on Friday. The paper carried out a detailed study of Capa's pictures taken in September 1936, three months after the conflict broke out. "The real location, some 10km from an inactive battle front, demonstrates that the death was not real," the paper says. The claim is backed with photos taken very recently on a hillside near Espejo that show a mountainous skyline that appears to match exactly that of Capa's photo. The background to the falling soldier never pointed conclusively to its location. The key to unlocking the decades-long mystery rather lies in two other photos taken by Capa in the same series, which is currently on show in Barcelona. One shows a militiaman lying on the ground, and the next, a line of kneeling soldiers aiming rifles. The background landscape threads continuously across the three photographs, and this is the skyline echoed in the new photos. Capa's photos purport to show movements of a group of young milicianos in action against Franco's troops who rebelled against Spain's republic. "But the location proves beyond reasonable doubt that the sequence was a flagrant fake, a setup," Ernst Alos, who wrote the report, told The Independent yesterday. The Capa photos form part of the acclaimed exhibition "This is War" that opened recently in Barcelona, having travelled from New York and more recently from London. There was fighting in Espejo only on 22 and 25 September, nearly three weeks after Capa and his companion Gerda Taro had left Cerro Muriano. The photo of the falling soldier had by then appeared in the French magazine Vu. Franco's troops were at least 15…