well folding star and kat both beat me to posting c.i.'s editorial. i'll congratulate my two friends on their ability to hustle. And I'll post the editorial because it is important.
common ills community member michael e-mails me a lengthy e-mail.
Michael: Love the way assorted brave souls took a pass on the Toad & the Times yesterday (I don't mean you, you linked to C.I.'s editorial) to discuss the "news" that college Republicans are better funded. That is shocking! That's probably even breaking news! If the year is 1977. But it's as though the paper put it on the front page knowing lefty bloggers would see red and focus on that while ignoring Toad's idiot reporting. That's where the focus should have been. That's why so many of us count on The Common Ills. We haven't had one word about "developments" in the Jackson case. We didn't waste time on Terry Schiavo. I love these non "issues" when we're supposed to be focused. I utilized my e-mail list of members to get a petition going asking that for the rest of the week certain sites that took a pass not be linked to. I don't know if C.I. will do it or not. But I'm furious. I'm fucking furious. It's bad enough that no one wants to talk about the goddamn "night letter." Oh poor Newsweek, they wrung their hands over that repeatedly. Now there's proof of why the riots happened in Afghanistan. And maybe if The New Yorker had made the article available online it would have torn up the blog world? But apparently no one's paying for magazines or reading them. So now when they should be discussing a very important article in The New Yorker about life on the ground in Afghanistan, they're discussing nonsense. After having made Newsweek an issue! I'm sick of the shit. That's why I started the petition.
c.i. says no comment when i asked about the petition. but michael, i do understand what you're saying. i would remind you that since eddie was mentioned in alternet's peek, c.i. has asked every 1 to stop e-mailing in items. that wasn't because, as some suspect, the e-mail was increasing. it's always going to increase and c.i. knows that. it was because eddie sent in a link to peek and then felt awful because peek says something like 'eddie at the common ills' or something. evan at peek misunderstood. c.i. laughed it off. and eddie, c.i. really did laugh it off.
but eddie felt awful so c.i. has said repeatedly in gina & krista's round-robin that every 1 needs to stop sending out things to people for links.
the other reason is because we (i'm a member of the common ills too) are so into the site. we know the community, we love the community. and when we see something that no 1 else has addressed, we want it to get attention. if it doesn't, we see it as an insult. and then we get upset and start thinking, as you did today, 'boycott.'
i think c.i.'s a little too nice about plugging some sites. that's my opinion. and you have to accept the fact that a cjr daily is never going to link to the common ills. it's not happening. they were called on their shit and they didn't like it. they got better (or c.i. thinks they have) so they'll get a link if a member sends it in. but that's something you won't see me doing.
take the magazine report. before c.i. called them on that crap, you had something like over 100 mentions of the weekly standard from all of their "magazine reports." you had zero mentions of the nation. the nation would have never been mentioned at all if c.i. and the third estate sunday review hadn't called them on that shit. but every other magazine report could mention the weekly standard. or take the fucking new republic. they were mentioning that every damn week. no 1 reads that rag. but the nation couldn't get a mention. the progressive still hasn't been mentioned nor has in these times. it's a 'magazine report.' and if they're highlighting the weekly standard, they should be highlighting mags from the left.
c.i. called them on their shit and they don't like it.
they probably also are embarrassed that they missed out on the 'night letter' in 1 of their magazine reports. so they'll never highlight the common ills. get used to it.
but that's why the common ills is the common ills. there's no pulling punches because it might mean no links. the community doesn't need links. word of mouth built up that community. c.i. has an independence that most other blogs will never have.
i'm not a friend of ron's but when i said that to c.i. i was told 'ron is very independent and doesn't suck up for links.' and that's true. i will agree with that. i'll also point out that his readership is not the size of the common ills community. and i don't mean that as an insult to ron.
but ron doesn't play the game and he won't get linked as a result. c.i. won't play the game but c.i. didn't know anything blogging so all the rules were broken from the beginning.
you have to realize that taking a stand against simon rosenberg while the blog world was acting like he was god and the only 1 who could chair the dnc was a big step to take.
or going after npr for that bullshit of having robert kagan come on and talk about john kerry's remarks without telling their listeners that his wife worked for dick cheney as his assistant on national security. of course kagan was going to trash kerry and did.
and that happened in october before the election.
but where were the internet on that?
the common ills started in november. if that idiot jeffery dvorkin hadn't excused away kagan being picked (and still not telling people who kagan was married to), c.i. wouldn't have had to do that entry. but c.i. didn't blink. c.i. didn't say 'oh no 1's talking about this i better be part of the clampdown too!'
and it's those brave stands, being the lonely voice, that has spoken to college audiences and international 1s. that's why c.i. has a following.
i think you'd be more effective, michael, if you just recommended that people didn't visit links to the sites you mention in your petition. c.i. really could care less who links and who doesn't.
and what cjr daily or the new york times fails to understand about c.i. is that c.i. will have a say. get it out of the system and the next day go back to rooting for you. that's how c.i. has always been. i've told you before, and jess is the same way at third estate sunday review, c.i. really doesn't carry a grudge.
even with dopey, all dopey would have to do is say 'maybe i made a mistake' in an e-mail and c.i. would link to a post of dopey's if dopey had 1 worth linking to. (you know my opinion on that.)
dopey wouldn't have to apologize in private or public. dopey wouldn't have to put up on his blog 'i called c.i. a liar for not putting up my comments but now that i've read over my e-mails to c.i. i see that i never asked to be quoted.'
c.i. was furious with some 1 2 weeks ago and told me about it and i was saying 'fire the asshole!'
but i knew c.i. wouldn't. the person comes back with an apology and c.i. acts like it never happened.
the issue isn't who can i grudge fuck. i mean look at the ho-ho queen jodi wilgoren. when she started writing like a reporter, c.i. didn't say 'the idiot lied about kerry and clowned throughout so she can go fuck herself.' instead c.i. noted the turn around and linked to articles by her and praised her.
cjr daily needed to be called on their shit. at least 4 people had tried to call them on it privately and they'd ignored it. they'd done a blog report all about people they knew and partied with week after week after week. that wasn't the bloggers fault, they weren't writing the items for cjr daily. that improved and c.i.'s never complained about it since. (c.i. doesn't go to cjr daily. that might be partly why c.i. doesn't give a damn but i don't think that's it.)
the magazine report? c.i. subscribes to a ton of magazines. (you know this if you're a member because they're the 1s that get mentioned on the site like the nation, the progressive . . .) any 1 who actually reads magazines was not going to be happy with the magazine report because it was so narrow: newsweek, time, the weekly standard, the new republic, washington monthly and the atlantic.
over and fucking over.
now to some netty types it might not have meant anything. they dont' pick up a magazine. they just go around the net via links. but if you're a magazine reader, there's no way you could think highly of what passed for a magazine report.
i do understand why you did the petition but based on what i know about c.i. and as long as i've known c.i., i don't think it will be implemented. maybe something c.i. wanted to highlight but no members e-mail about won't get highlighted. that's the most you can hope for.
but yeah, it does suck.
when the whole temptest went down in april, i was going to remove my link to ron. c.i. said that was nonsense. c.i. said it was a personal issue that had nothing to do with ron's work and that it should stay up because ron does good work. i was furious but i went along (if c.i. hadn't been so ill at the time, i might not have.)
c.i.'s gotten e-mails about some problem ron's having. i got asked about it and i don't know anything about it. but a number of people outside the community write in to laugh about ron's problems. i asked c.i. what the reply to those were? 'i don't dislike ron and i hope it's nothing serious.'
ron didn't kiss ass for links and c.i. will point that out repeatedly.
he didn't write a love letter to raw story or whomever to get a link. he's an independent voice and that's worth supporting. i think ron would have a lot more success and a bigger audience if he'd give up on being linked. ron will write a post (or used to) letting the world know how upset he is that something was ignored.
ron should say 'fuck 'em.' and just move on.
if you think about it, you know that c.i.'s got more reach than most of the 1s igorning the common ills. can you turn on the radio (you know which one i mean) and not hear "bully boy?"
is "operation happy talk" now not all over the place? and c.i. may not get linked but do you not see, days or weeks later, the issues c.i. raised somewhere else?
it has to do with reach. common ills community member p.j. (professional journalist who works for the washington post) will tell you that c.i. is read by journalists. partly because they want to see if they're praised or slammed, but that's about reach. and influence.
so attention's paid, it's just not recognized.
and c.i.'s ahead of the curve which is a problem for people who want to write about something in a paper that everyone is discussing that day. and you put that online publication on your list, slate. c.i. doesn't usually site slate to begin with. but look at their blog report - it's grab a water cooler topic and then go around the net finding people weighing on michael jackson or some other bullshit.
it belittles bloggers and people should be ashamed and embarrassed by their blog report.
or take ruth's morning edition report. ruth dared to mention the guardian's lack of coverage on the downing street memo. there were all these e-mails griping about that. ruth thought she was getting all e-mails until the thing happened with centrist ed and c.i. blogged that he didn't forward that kind of crap to isaiah or ruth. ruth read that and said, 'i can take it forward it all.'
she's got pissy, non members of the community saying 'how dare you criticize the guardian!'
and she calls c.i. and tries to apologize. c.i. says 'ruth, we're not here to say what every 1 else is saying. speak your mind and don't worry about it.'
and it's that independence that has built up the common ills.
and the fact that c.i. doesn't ask you to buy this or that or to do this or that is a relief as well.
the community doesn't have to worry that c.i.'s going to try to make money off of them or grab fame off of them. there's not attempt to ride the community onto the airwaves and become a pundit. and there's not an attempt to chase down a craze.
there never will be. c.i. didn't fall into the 'george of framing issues is my god' because while every 1 else was willing to go into the strong father or nurturing father bullshit, c.i. didn't buy into that crap. it has to do with having some perspective and knowing that children get abused and that the bullshit model treats the world as though it's bill cosby or archie bunker. it's for people who haven't lived very much and haven't seen the world around them.
i can remember when c.i. went to india. every 1 came back raving about this or that and full of stories of local color. c.i. talked about the extreme poverty. every 1 else seemed to think they were at disneyland. it has to do with perspective.
ron has perspective. i'm not real pleased about a recent e-mail and think he owes some 1 an apology but he has perspetive. if he turned that perspetive on the world, he could make a huge difference. he still wouldn't get linked anymore because independent voices aren't. but he would increase his reach and he would make huge differences.
ron's knows the game but refuses to play it. he'd do better to stop worrying about it. so would you michael. the net isn't open the way people think. it's the same bullshit hierarchy you find everywhere else. they play their favorites just like the mainstream media. if you're an indepedent voice, you're going to be shut out. so much time is spent sucking up to this mainstream news source or that mainstream writer that there's not any time to highlight a blog that's making a difference. and in some cases, the lack of highlighting has to do with the fact that you are independent. noam chomsky won't be picked to fill in for a vacationg new york times columnist for the same reason that ron won't be highlighted at some site. the truth isn't always pretty and you can't always dot the i with a smiley face.
so that leads to people being excluded.
c.i. came in not knowing the game and not caring and that's why c.i. writes anything and everything that needs to be said.
the site really is an outgrowth of all the work c.i. did in 2003 and 2004 talking to all of these college students. that's why we were all saying 'do a blog!' there was so much that was being accomplished talking to this group or that group. then c.i. does a blog and i don't even know about it until thanksgiving when elaine is on my ass because i've never gone to the common ills.
'i don't have time for blogs!' i whine. then elaine says, 'well this 1 is written by ___" and of course i visited.
you had a lot of people willing to shut up about every issue in the world during the election just to get the bully boy out of office. c.i. didn't do that. and on iraq, you really need to hear c.i.'s standard speech.
after the election, c.i. and a group of other activists were trying to figure out what worked and what didn't, what could have been tried and what should have been tried.
they're going over their polling data and that's a friday. by that friday night, c.i.'s got a blog up.
that was the purpose of the common ills and still is. to discuss the things that need to be discussed. that's why, michael, there's not any michael jackson talk and there never will be.
c.i. is an activist concerned with social justice and with increasing knowledge.
that's why they do indymedia on thursdays or the world on sunday.
let the others get caught up on water cooler talk, at the common ills they're dealing with issues. and not the issue that's in the morning paper and every 1 is talking about. but the issue people need to be talking about. that's why c.i.'s plugging the codepink book like crazy, because if people read that book, they would be better for it.
there's a thing up today about why iran's not being noted from the new york times. why would c.i. note that nonsense? the times has an agenda that is the state department's agenda. that's not reporting. and each day the paper tosses out some more trash trying to help the administration find something that will gain traction. c.i. is not going to add to that by noting nonsense as news.
i'll fuck this quote up but c.i. said to me when i was trying to think about what to write early on and feeling bad about it, 'rebecca, every day there will be a fire in the north and 1 in the west and you can get caught up in putting out that 1 fire or you can focus on the need to get at why these fires are starting to begin with.' now i screwed that up but the point c.i. made was that a daily paper or broadcast is going to toss a million things out and the bully boy knows how to mainipulate the news. some of the anger will be over stuff that you should be angry about but it's a 'that day's anger.' some of the things are long range.
and through it all, you have to remember to laugh. if you give up your humanity to them, you've destroyed yourself.
or, and this i'll probably get right because c.i.'s said it for years, 'don't fight the battle on their terms. you may win or you may lose the battle but you already lost yourself because you gave up on what you believed in. so if you win the battle, you lost because you became like them. if you lose the battle, you lost that and you lost yourself.'
some 1's going to come here and say, 'all you did was say nice things about c.i. and ron.' you need to read a little deeper if you think that because there's a lot of information here on who we are and what we need to be.
now i'll showcase the editorial as i promised i would last night. it's an important 1. and it doesn't get into the 'todd says this, i say that' and try to fight it on todd's grounds. it says 'todd wrote bullshit and now we're going to mock.' there's a reason for that and we'll discuss that tomorrow.
Editorial: Still Timid, the Times takes a dive
Punch drunk and scared, hiding in its corner and not wanting to come out, the New York Timid less and less resembles a news paper and more and more resembles Mike Tyson. See, it's a sports comparison so the Timid can more easily grasp it.
Who knows why, but apparently writing for the Times means wearing a cup to the office.Todd S. Purdum's cup is either too tight (maybe he bought a young boy's size?), too loose or maybe just needs a good washing (did the fumes from his smelly jock rot his brain?) because Coach Keller hollered, 'Purdum, you're up!" and Todd couldn't even make a run of the bases in "A Peephole to the War Room: British Documents Shed Light on Bush Team's State of Mind."
It's been labeled a "news analysis" and maybe this passes for that . . . in the little leagues.
Here's Todd trying to get the bat to connect with the ball:
But the memos are not the Dead Sea Scrolls. There has been ample evidence for many months, and even years, that top Bush administration figures saw war as inevitable by the summer of 2002. In the March 31, 2003, issue of The New Yorker, with the invasion just under way, Richard N. Haass, then the State Department's director of policy planning, said that in early July 2002 he asked Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, whether it made sense to put Iraq at the center of the agenda, with a global campaign against terrorism already under way. "And she said, essentially, that that decision's been made, don't waste your breath," he said then.
Yes, there has been ample evidence. And Todd is right to cite The New Yorker. I mean, it's not like he can cite the Times, is it?
There's nothing new here, TS tell us. Nothing to see.
That is exactly right. Provided, of course, that you depend on the Times for your coverage. On the Timid only and believe every word they print.
But even if you read the Timid, a few other things may come to mind. Like, gee, I don't know, Judith Miller (who's grudge f**king the U.N. one more time in today's paper). You know, the name that didn't make it into the mea culpa?
If you read the Times, did you know that evidence was being shaped? All along? Did you see what Todd feels was so obvious to everyone? Did you see it in the lead up? Did you see it after?
Hmm.
On September 8, 2002, what you knew was that "U.S. Says Hussein Intensifies Quest for A-Bomb Parts." You knew that because the Times printed that. That little "news" (still not "analyzed" by the Times proper) was courtesty of Judith Miller and Michael R. Gordon.
What did you know on September 13, 2002?
If you read the Times, you knew "White House Lists Iraq Steps to Build Banned Weapons." Who wrote that? Little Judy Miller. Is she happy at last?
Whether she was fooled, along with the people who trusted her reporting, or whether she just decided she knew where the money/access/fame lay, who knows? But what's the casuality toll right now?
Here's a fact for the New York Timid.
You did a poor job today. You did a god awful job.
Having pushed and sold the war, absolutely you need to count on and cite The New Yorker to point to some real reporting.
Absolutely. As a subscriber to The New Yorker, I say, "Go for it!' As a subscriber to the Times, I understand why you can't cite your own paper.
You certainly can't mention Judith Miller. We're not supposed to talk about her, are we?
Poor Judith facing jail time. Poor Judith, never hurt a fly. A regular Sally Field.
Perhaps if the film's Absence of Malice.
Having come on like gangbusters, now she wants to play the innocent, shy retiring type.
And we're supposed to play along, right?
Let's get back to Coach Keller's designated hitter. He was on strike one, when last we checked.
Possibly, being designated hitter and water boy for the Timid takes up more than Todd can muster. He's got his eye on the ball, but it sails right over the plate before he can swing. Which explains this:
The latest memo published, first in The Washington Post and The Times of London over the weekend, is from July 21, 2002. It warned that "a post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise," in which "Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."
Were those catcalls from the parents of the other team?
Regardless, they were embarrassing. And Todd should be embarrassed.
But remember, they don't have fact checkers at the Times. (They farm that out to the editors.)
Who "published" the memo? Not the Washington Post which did a story on the memo. (Note to the Times, that would be "reported on." Even "quoted.") As did the Times of London. But only the Times of London published the memo. (Leaving off the last page to protect the source apparently.)
When even chronology and basic facts escape the Times (of New York), pay attention because something's happening. And it's not the beauty of truth.
For the Timid, which can't seem to find its ass with both hands these days, let's note the Washington Post article that Todd is referring to:
That memo and other internal British government documents were originally obtained by Michael Smith, who writes for the London Sunday Times. Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post, and the material was confirmed as authentic by British sources who sought anonymity because they are not authorized to discuss the matter.
Get it? How hard is it to grasp that? Excerpts were made available to The Washington Post. Wash Post wrote a story on it. Wash Post didn't publish the memo. What kind of a "reporter" would insist that they did? It's got the be the fumes from that smelly jock. But does everyone at the Timid have their nose in Todd's jock? How else can you explain that the paper couldn't even get that basic fact correct?The Timid, like a good lap dog wants to tell you nothing to see here, move along.
It wants you to trust them to analyze a period of time that they didn't get right in real time.And the mea culpa didn't cover the mistakes/errors/lies/whatever.
Why is Judith Miller still at the paper?
They want sympathy for her now.
But they want to continue to distort reality.
I bit my tongue yesterday when David Sanger (who's part of the Elite Fluff Patrol) took a crack at explaining the Downing Street Memo.
MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.
The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.
The briefing paper, for participants at a meeting of Blair’s inner circle on July 23, 2002, said that since regime change was illegal it was “necessary to create the conditions” which would make it legal.
This was required because, even if ministers decided Britain should not take part in an invasion, the American military would be using British bases. This would automatically make Britain complicit in any illegal US action.
The above is left out of Todd's "analysis." (It's from Michael Smith's "Ministers were told of need for Gulf war 'excuse.'" Maybe if we wait a month, the Timid can get around to informing us about this?)
Todd's article tells you that the memos aren't the Dead Sea Scrolls.
What the Times doesn't tell you is why we couldn't offer "regime change" as our reasoning for going to war.
Since the Times won't tell us, let's go over it here. From the Downing Street Memo:
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
What was it sold to us as? You don't need to flip through Judy Miller's bylines to know it was sold as self-defence.
Now obviously, if we were increasing our bombings in 2002 to force Hussein to declare war (Michael Smith's May 29th article which we'll link to below), it wasn't self-defence. And we knew that. Our government did.
If we really thought that, as Miller reported on December 3, 2002, "Iraq obtained a particularly virulent strain of smallpox from a Russian scientist" or the mushroom cloud nonsense, or the drone planes or the chemical or biological nonsense, if we (our government) really thought that was true, then increasing the bombings in 2002 was risking national security.
Isn't that what the word-mangling Bully Boy's supposed to be so famous for, national security?
Why won't the Times tell it's readers about that?
Let's go real slow because the Times is either willing to obsure the truth or they're just plain stupid (or think we are). While Cheney and the cheerleaders are doing WMD splits, we're actually increasing our bombing of Iraq. We haven't declared war. (We won't until the following year.) We're increasing our bombing on a supposed madman who holds all these WMDs that could destroy us.
If that was true (the "we all got it wrong" defense/b.s. that our government truly, honestly, deeply belived that Iraq had WMD), then the Bully Boy put your life at risk. He put my life at risk. He put all Americans at risk.
It doesn't work both ways.
You can't say, "He's a madman with WMDs! He could destroy us all!" while at the same time snickering nah-nah-nah while you increase the bombings.
If he's all you said he was (and let's include dear Judith in the "you") and we're in as much danger as you say we were, why the hell are we poking the bear before we're going to war?
So which is it, New York Timid. Did Bully Boy put us all at risk or did he (and Miller) present falsehoods? It's a simple enough question. One easily covered in a "news analysis."
It's odd that Todd has time to crack wise about Dead Sea Scrolls considering all that the Times hasn't noted from any of the Sunday Times of London's reporting.
Let's make it real simple, What did Bully Boy know and when did he know it?
If he knew there was no risk of damage to Americans on our soil, then his increased bombings put no American at risk. (That's not to be read as approval for the bombings on my part.) But to hold that belief, you have to agree that he knew the American people were being lied to.
So did he put us at risk or did he lie to us?
That's something the news analysis doesn't address.
THE RAF and US aircraft doubled the rate at which they were dropping bombs on Iraq in 2002 in an attempt to provoke Saddam Hussein into giving the allies an excuse for war, new evidence has shown.The attacks were intensified from May, six months before the United Nations resolution that Tony Blair and Lord Goldsmith, the attorney-general, argued gave the coalition the legal basis for war. By the end of August the raids had become a full air offensive.The details follow the leak to The Sunday Times of minutes of a key meeting in July 2002 at which Blair and his war cabinet discussed how to make "regime change" in Iraq legal.
That's from Michael Smith's "RAF bombing raids tried to goad Saddam into war."
That's only sixteen days ago and we'll assume the Times is made up of slow readers. But at what point does the Timid intend to address this issue?
Not today. Today they selectively pull quote and make jabs about the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Some might wonder where the Timid gets the audacity to make snarky little jokes like that. After all, they never fired Judith Miller. They never ran corrections on her stories.
Even today, Todd has to go to The New Yorker to find establishing proof that things were reported. Reported elsewhere than in the paper.
What's in the paper today is embarrassing. Not for you or me, but for the Timid.
This could have been a turn around for the paper. This could have been where they stood up for the truth. Where they made up the debt they owed America after the Judith Miller stories.
The Timid and Todd strike out. They strike out so badly, that it feels like they're taking a dive. But maybe they've just been overpowered by the fumes from Todd's dirty jock? Who knows?
