If you’re looking for pieces on Jack Idema and his team, please click on this link.

Ted Kavanau writes:

I have been on AOL a long time and AOL regularly twists their use of News to damage Bush and the GOP. Many people count on the Internet for their News and Information. Today was a typical misuse by AOL. Those in the media may be especially interested in this example of how they do it.

Think of the impact of AOL news with, I think, about 25-million subscribing homes meaning they probably reach about 60-million people with one or two or more people in each home using the same service. Plus, with any number of multi-impressions because these people turn on and off their computer and often go back to the AOL Home page and see the AOL news.

Today, here are the main (large and changing back and forth) headlined stories on AOL;
*The House Of Beyonce’
*Wrap Home In Holiday Style
*A ‘Berlin Wall’ on the Border

Then there are the smaller Headlines in the, “Today on AOL, section of the Homepage.
At the top of the list you will read the same headline they had all day yesterday and the headline that is still there all day to this evening as I write this letter. It still says (at 6:48 PM):

Top News: President Bush Authorized Secret Eavesdropping”.

Many AOL subscribers will not go further then that, since if they are interested in news they know all about that story after two days of heavy reporting on it by the media. So, since they will not look/click further they will not be as surprised as I was by what I found when clicking on that headline. What you get is the following AP story:

“President Forcefully Defends Wiretap Policy. Says Lawmakers Were Briefed More Than a Dozen Times”.

Now you would think that major ‘today’ story would be on the Home Page as the Top News but, AOL is making the continuing negative impression with the earlier story that remains on their Home Page.

Next we get to the way AOL cleverly writes the polls they attach to major stories so the results have to end up looking bad for Bush and the GOP.

As an example. we have the AOL poll questions associated with the AP story, “President Forcefully Defends Wiretap Policy”.

The AOL poll questions are phrased this way:

1) How would you characterize any domestic spying without a warrant?
(AOL subscribers then get various choices to vote)

2) Do you think such eavesdropping should be legal?
(AOL subscribers again get various choices to vote on that one too)

Of course, what AOL is NOT allowing for in either of those questions is that Bush has said that what he approved the NSA doing was, “consistent with US law and the Constitution”. So the first question AOL used about domestic spying without a warrant is not relevant, given what Bush is saying, since if what Bush says is true then a warrant may not have been necessary.

And as far as the second question is concerned, that question itself implies eavesdropping is not now legal, which is not the case and AOL already acknowledges that it is legal with a warrant. Plus the kind of spying which NSA was doing of foreign callers talking to American citizens, is something Bush claims was perfectly legal.

Now AOL has run a biased operation for many years and no one in major media or the media critics seems to be bothered by it. But, AOL reaches a mass audience, many of that audience not getting any news elsewhere. I have tried to get this story told by media critics and told it myself when I was on Barry Farber’s radio program, but so far it is widely ignored, to the peril of a nation already inundated by biased news from other sources.

Recently I talked about Google’s biased “news sources” and even the bias in the google search engine. Rightmarch did a test.

Well, we saw that if you typed in “Tom DeLay”, all of the ads were ANTI-DeLay ads. So, we took the time and spent the money so that our PRO-DeLay ad would show up too — first.

But then we wanted to also put up an ad that exposed the hypocrisy of the Democrats — basically, showing how the Democrats are going after Congressman DeLay for things that they’ve done MUCH WORSE in. So, we copied one of the ads posted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee almost WORD FOR WORD, but changed “Tom DeLay” (the GOP leader) to “Nancy Pelosi” (the Democrat leader, who violated ethics rules much worse than what DeLay is accused of - Click Here to learn more about the Democrats hypocrisy, and Click Here to learn more about Nancy Pelosi).

That’s all we did — we took the LIBERAL ad, and changed the words to make it a CONSERVATIVE ad.

And Google CENSORED our ad.

They pulled the ad, and the reason they gave was, “Google policy does not permit ad text that advocates against an individual, group or organization.”

But the LIBERAL ad is still up. Click Here to take a look at the liberal ad; then look at our ad (and Google’s rejection) by clicking here.

What Ted’s talking about as far as AOL goes hand in hand with Google Bias–there are definitely unseen hands behind the scenes that are guiding this–and some belong to the programmers in the search engines..

Google News includes more than a few sites with, to say the least, serious credibility problems —including hard-core anarchist site Infoshop, Justin Raimondo’s paleocon antisemitic site antiwar.com, barking moonbat lunatic asylum Democratic Underground, radical Islamic jihadi sites khilafah.com and Jihad Unspun, and extremist pro-Palestinian site electronic intifada, to name only a few.

So out of curiosity, JET encouraged me to do a search for “Idema”.

These are the pieces about Jack that show up when I do a search for “Idema”

Democracy Now! | The Mysterious Case of Jack Idema: Was the Former …

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Profile: Jonathan ‘Jack’ Idema

US Bounty Hunter on Trial in Afghanistan

Jack Idema

Keith Idema’s Operation Desert Fraud

on the first page. I think you could say–”yes” there’s bias to the detriment of Jack on the first page–although I thought the Democracy Now piece was very comprehensive and the interview with Fogelnest excellent.

These are the pieces that show up when I do “Jonathan Keith Idema”

Keith Idema’s Operation Desert Fraud (at the top)

CJR January/February 2005: Tin Soldier (Mariah Blake’s hit piece comes in at #2)

US Bounty Hunter on Trial in Afghanistan (military.com)–but that site also regularly features Tom Hayden and his talking points about Iraq so I consider it trash

The Case of Keith Idema Newsmax comes in next that one’s not bad–that’s Barry Farber’s piece

Jack Idema this one’s a bio highlighting his “criminal” background

Jonathan Keith Idema - SourceWatch sourcewatch pretty much the same

Be The Media: Tin Soldier: Jonathan Keith Idema regurgitating Mariah Blake so she’s featured TWICE on the same page

Cao’s Blog » Blog Archive » Jonathan Keith aka “JACK” IDEMA: Green … I’m on the first page but I’ve almost cycled off

www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A3653-2004Aug15?… washington post (The title to this one is “In Kabul, Private Jail Leads to Trial” but it doesn’t show)

People’s Daily Online — Private jail case on trial in Kabul Englishpeople.com (I am not familiar with this one but the title kind of says it all)

Yes, a majority of negative articles! So what about PRO Idema? Well, since I can’t type in “pro Idema” and get the results I’m looking for, I have to start cherry picking through the majority of negative pieces out there. “Pro” Idema meaning the truth, not the media lies that have been spread.

When I’m looking for “pro” Idema I go further than the first page, but how many people are going further than the first page in a search for his name?

Ok let’s see the results for looking for pro pieces on Idema

2nd page we’re still not doing very well and take a look at the words that come up under my blog…they’re STACY SULLIVAN’S PIECE

Jonathan Idema - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema, born c.1956 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is an
American vigilante and bounty hunter, who formerly operated in Afghanistan, …

Jonathan Idema - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Jack Idema). Jump to: navigation, search. Jonathan Keith “Jack”
Idema, born c.1956 in Fayetteville, North Carolina, is an American …
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Idema - 19k - Cached - Similar pages

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Profile: Jonathan ‘Jack’ Idema
BBC News Online profiles Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema, who has been jailed for 10
years in Afghanistan for torture and hostage-taking.
news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/3569552.stm - 40k - Cached - Similar pages

Keith “Jack” Idema caught in Afghanistan torturing people
… they raided a house in Kabul that had been turned into a prison by “former”
U$ Green Beret Jonathan Keith “Jack” Idema and at least two other Amerikans. …
www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/agitation/milit/ idema.html - 11k - Cached - Similar pages

IDEMA
LONDON — Jonathan Keith Idema, the American being tried in Afghanistan on charges
of running a private jail where prisoners were tortured, was a different …
www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies204.htm - 30k - Cached - Similar pages

CFLCC Media Release
Detainee received from Jonathan Keith Idema. July 22, 2004 … The advisory
stated: US citizen Jonathan K. Idema has allegedly represented himself as an …
www.arcent.army.mil/media_releases/2004/july/jul22_02.asp - 3k - Cached - Similar pages

Cao’s Blog
The source of the tapes, a former US Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith
Idema; known familiary as Keith, was more than a little dubious. …
caosblog.com/ - 101k - Dec 16, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

GlobalFreePress- Dep. INN - News
The source of the tapes, a former US Special Forces soldier named Jonathan Keith
Idema—known familiarly as Keith—was more than a little dubious. …
inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=891 - 23k - Dec 17, 2005 - Cached - Similar pages

WRAL.com - Fayetteville News - Fayetteville Man Gets Court Recess ...
US Government Denies Ties With Jonathan Keith Idema. POSTED: 11:37 am EDT August
16, 2004. UPDATED: 9:03 pm EDT August 16, 2004 …
www.wral.com/fayettevillenews/3656700/detail.html - 33k - Cached - Similar pages

Asia Times Online - The trusted source for news on Central Asia
Reports indicate that in 1991, when the Soviet Union fell apart, Sergeant Jonathan
Keith Idema was sent to Lithuania to gather information. …
atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/FI29Ag01.html - 40k - Cached - Similar pages

The interesting part about my blog showing up on that second page is–the words that show up are directly from Stacy Sullivan’s “Operation Desert Fraud” (and not what I wrote) and it doesn’t show up as a link to the specific piece–of me ripping up Stacy Sullivan’s article, it just brings the individual to my front page. So in essence, if the individual clicks on that link, they’re not going to find the piece here where Stacy Sullivan’ s article is getting ripped apart–and at any point in this, I’m thinking the individual would lose interest and not pursue it. By all appearances, I’m talking the same garbage as Stacy Sullivan in her hit piece on Idema, and the person clicking on the link won’t necessarily find out anything differently.

On the other hand, if you click on any of the hit pieces, it takes you to that particular link instead of the front page.

Jack Idema

Colonel Bob Morris

Knightsbridge International