This web site has been my first venture into the world of blogging and it has been fun. However, it is limiting in several ways and I am going to shut it down. I chose a subject that is somewhat narrow (monitoring the Austin American Statesman), but at the same time it was a good way to get readers because many people have issues with the Statesman while not too many care about Gregg Geil's personal opinions. Second, this zoomshare site is very limiting. I cannot even install a counter to determine the number of hits. I hope to return with a better site sometime soon. Meanwhile, thanks for reading and for all of the feedback. GREGG

Buried inside Section A of today's Austin American Statesman (in the World Digest section) is a huge international story that is effectively being buried. Its two short sentences read, "Armed men in Yemen kidnapped a former German ambassador to Washington and four members of his family and pressed the Yemeni government to release jailed members of their tribe, officials said. The Germans - Juergen Chrobog, who was Germany's ambassador from 1995 to 2001, his wife and three children - were vacationing in Yemen at the invitation of the former Yemeni ambassador to Germany." Not only was Mr. Chrobog an Ambassador to the U.S., but until the recent election in Germany, he was Germany's Deputy Foreign Minister. So, why is it that the Mainstream Media, which enthusiastically re- broadcasts all of al-Jazeera's hostage footage from Iraq, isn't trumpeting this story. Simple. Mr. Chrobog is a huge critic of America and our war effort. He is by far the most famous hostage taken by radical Islamics, but since he was not captured in Iraq and since he is an America- basher, this is therefore not a front page story. There is also tragic irony in his family's situation, because Mr. Chroboc himself was instrumental in negotiating the release of nine German hostages held by Saharan Islamics in 2003. At washingtonpost.com I read that Mr. Chrobog "personally delivered a cash ransom worth several million dollars to intermediaries in Bamako, Mali, in exchange for the hostages' safe return." The hostage-takers have clearly learned from that experience that hostage-taking is profitable, and because Mr. Chrobog and his German government chose to negotiate and pay ransom to hostage-takers, it became an almost-certainty that many more Germans would be taken hostage. Tragically for Mr. Chrobog's family, he became one of them. This story should not be buried by the MSM, but because the hostage takers' actions cannot be blamed on America or President Bush, don't expect to read much more about it. GREGG

A few days ago, Bill Bunch and Colin Clark of "Save Our Springs" penned an editorial in the Austin American Statesman (http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editoria l/stories/12/21bunch.html) urging Advanced Micro Devices not to build its new facility on a piece of property in Southwest Austin which sits in the Edwards Aquifer Recharge Zone. I wanted to write about it at the time but I didn't have the opportunity that day. Today's Statesman has an outstanding letter to the editor from Ed Ferguson. I appreciate the Statesman publishing it. It reads in part, "As much as the Bunch bunch would like Austin to be a dictatorship, the mayor does not have the power to tell Advanced Micro Devices that it cannot build on the Lantana site. The land is privately owned, and like it or not, it will be developed by somebody. AMD's plan, going far beyond what is legally required for environmental protection, is likely the best- case scenario for all concerned." Exactly. Unless the Nature Conservancy or some other potential owner were to buy the land, it will be developed. Just pleading for all land development to be stopped is an effort in futility. SOS makes its irrelevancy even more clear by not offering any alternative uses for the land nor compensation for its owners. GREGG

In today's Austin American Statesman editorial (http://www.statesman.com/opinion/content/editoria l/stories/12/23delay_edit.html), the Statesman gleefully editorializes that the indefinite postponement of Tom Delay's trial may result in Mr. Delay's fall from power. Rules of the U.S. House of Representatives prevent someone under indictment from serving as Majority Leader. As the editorial notes, "once he was indicted in September, he had to give up his post until the charges are resolved. The longer he's out of office, the less likely he can get it back." The Statesman has forsaken its Clinton- era editorial stance that no one should be punished or even held in judgment unless actually convicted of a crime. Nope, now the Statesman is thrilled that an innocent-until-proven-guilty person is suffering punishment because of a grand jury indictment. Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle has often been called an inept partisan who routinely humiliates himself with his political witch hunts, but this time he has scored big. That is because Earle doesn't need to have a conviction. Of course, he'll ultimately drop the charges again or a judge will laugh them out of court. So for Earle to be successful, all he needs to do is keep Delay under ongoing indictment but avoid actually going to trial. A conviction would not be any more effective for Earle's political purposes than the indictment he has already shopped for and obtained with his three grand juries. Finally, there is great irony in the final paragraph of the Statesman's editorial, "One other aspect of this flurry of appeals pushed by DeLay's lead lawyer, Dick DeGuerin, should be noted: Imagine if every felony criminal defendant had a legal team with the same skills and resources to maneuver on his or her behalf as does DeLay. Of course, few do. Though DeLay is entitled to employ all the defenses at his disposal, the courts should treat him like any other defendant, even those who must rely on court-appointed lawyers: innocent unless proved guilty, but due no preferential treatment." Why then does the Statesman opine and revel in the fact that Mr. Delay , who is "innocent unless proved guilty", should face punishment and loss of his job because he cannot get his day in court? GREGG

Today's Austin American Statesman ran an AP story (actually more of a press release disguised as a news story from the left wing activist group Human Rights Watch) with this inflamatory headline, "Group: U.S. tortured detainees in secret." The story is located at http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared- gen/ap/Asia/Afghan_Secret_Prison.html. The press release, excuse me, AP story starts off, "The United States operated a secret prison in Afghanistan as recently as last year, torturing detainees with sleep deprivation, chaining them to the walls and forcing them to listen to loud music in total darkness for days, a human rights group alleged Monday." The most dramatic example of "torture" in the article reads, "'They were chained to walls, deprived of food and drinking water, and kept in total darkness with loud rap, heavy metal music, or other sounds blared for weeks at a time, the report said. 'Some detainees said they were shackled in a manner that made it impossible to lie down or sleep, with restraints that caused their hands and wrists to swell up or bruise.'" Now I dislike rap and heavy metal as much as any al Qaeda terrorist, but I never realized that rap music is understood to be a form of torture. A few weeks back, my wife was watching the MTV Music awards with the volume up loud. It was pretty much all rap for several hours. I found it to be extremely annoying, but until today I didn't realize that my wife was actually subjecting me to torture! And just this morning she woke me up at 2AM to get on the computer and sign her up for a 6AM flight. I couldn't get back to sleep and then I took her to the airport at 4:15 AM. I am sleep deprived as I type and I realize yet again that I have been subjected to torture by my wife. The woman I love! Seriously, I think the mainstream media is making a dangerous alliance with international America-bashers in re-defining the word "terrorism". If sleep deprivation and subjecting captives to rap music are forms of "torture", then we have reached the point where incarceration itself could be considered torture. And therefore we have also reached the point that the MSM should simply be ignored when it throws the word "torture" around. GREGG