i want to say thank you for all the e-mails on yesterday's post. i've still got some more to read but i think it's a topic we will be revisiting soon.
loretta's was the last e-mail i read before starting this post so i'll note her story.
in july of 2003, it was obvious her choice was not going to win the democratic primary. so she got behind john kerry. that meant devoting at ten to fifteen hours a week to spreading the word on john kerry. but 1st she had to learn his voting record and all these details. then it was important to defeat the bully boy, we didn't know then that ohio was rigged, so as soon as the primaries were in the bag, she was reaching out even further with the people she knew. she registered voters. she called old classmates from high school and college. she worked with her local democratic chapter. from that moment until the day after the election she never gave less than 30 hours a week. this was on top of her time spent with her family, her time spent working outside the home.
when kerry conceeded she was furious. 'and i feel like i've been driving on anger ever since.'
loretta said yesterday's post made her stop a minute to reflect.
at lunch she was planning on buying the codepink book. she says she's ready to explore some new ideas and find some more ways of dealing with the madness.
a lot of you are sharing and i think this is a topic we can explore some more.
until i can read all the e-mails i want to toss out some things to focus on.
1st, tomorrow i'll post c.i.'s editorial. you can go read it right now.
it's hilarious, it's to the point. it's funny. i talked to c.i. today and asked how it came about.
c.i.: that was really hard. that's not the original draft. the original draft didn't have the sports nonsense or the jokes. it was 1 long yell. and i just felt there was some other way to say it.
i'd worked an hour on it and i needed to hurry up because there were other things to do. but every sentence was coming out in the same manner. so i took a quick walk. came back after 15 minutes and pretty much rewrote the whole thing stripping out most of what was already in it.
if i had posted what i had it would have been nothing but a reaction. the paper does this, i do that. i think it's better the way it is now and fits the 'don't knock the mock' principle.
so read it.
i want to note that betty has a new entry up. she posted last night. thomas friedman is nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!
check out folding star because there are posts going up.
why isn't any 1 telling you about the "night letter?"
Did the "Night Letter" cause the riots in Afghanistan? Have you heard of it?
If this has been all over the net, my apologies. I'm reading The New Yorker and, because I subscribe, my new issue is an old issue. There's an important story in this issue and I know most members who surf would have passed this along if they'd seen it. So if it's been discussed, it's not been discussed a great deal. We're going to note it here.
It's from the June 6, 2005 issue. Jon Lee Anderson's "The Man In the Palace." (For Doug, pages 60 to 72.) I'm not finding a link for it at the magazine's web site. You may have more luck.
But, as most people know, coverage from Afghanistan is sparse in the mainstream media because so many have either pulled their reporters out completely or reduced the numbers.
(Carlotta Gall reports on Afghanistan for the New York Times.)
There's a detail about the riots in Afghanistan that's not getting out. Maybe because the press wanted to circle the wagons? Maybe because enough reporters aren't on the ground there.
From page sixty, here's the opening of Anderson's "The Man In the Palace: Hamid Karzai and the dilemma of being Afghanistan's President:"
On May 11th, riots broke out in the city of Jalalabad, in eastern Afghanistan. The violence followed a Newsweek story -- which has since been retracted -- on new allegations that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay had desecrated the Koran. In the next few days, the protests spread to the capital, Kabul, and throughout the country. In some provincial towns, police fired into crowds. But early on there were signs that the violence had less to do with Newsweek than with Afghanistan's President, Hamid Karzai.
On the first night of rioting, copies of an anonymous letter circulated in the streets of Kabul. This Night Letter, as it was called, was a vehement exhortation to Afghans to oppose Karzai, whom it accused of being un-Islamic, an ally of the Taliban, and a "U.S.A. servant." The letter said that Karzai had put the interests of his "evil master" ahead of those of Afghans, and it called for leaders who were proven patriots, mujahideen -- a synonym, in this case, for members of the Northern Alliance, many of whom are now warlords and regional strongmen -- to defy him. The timing was opportune: Karzai was on a trip to Europe, in search of financial backing. His next destination was Washington, where he planned to discuss a pact that would guarantee the United States a long-term military presence in Afghanistan.
Karzai seemed unsure of how to respond. Even as the unrest continued, he stuck to his itenerary and, from Brussels, called the riots a "manifestation of democracy." When he finally arrived home, several days later, he held a press conference, at which he blamed unspecified "enemies of peace" for the violence. He asked, "Who are they who have such enmity with Afghnistan, a nation that is begging for money to build the country and construct buildings and during the night they come and destroy it?"
That's not quite the way it played out in the press. We noted here that Newsweek's reach wasn't enough to have carried the news everywhere. Common sense dictated that all the talking points from Bully Boy and his cohorts were a distraction. And obviously, it was easier to slam Newsweek than to deal with what it was reporting. But could, possibly, the distraction also have buried an embarrassing truth for the administration?
Anderson's dealing with a number of issues. The above isn't the focus of the article. (And sorry to Anderson for reducing a complex article to just the above but maybe it will cause people to go to their libraries and look the story up.) Read the article to get a better picture of reality in Afghanistan.This is a detail that's not been out in the mainstream very loudly (if at all). Again, that might be the result of not having enough (or, in some cases, any) reporters in Afghanistan. But I think it's worth noting.
and lastly, we'll note this (turn your radios on):
Chip Pitts on The Majority Report tonight
Chip Pitts will be on The Majority Report tonight. The Majority Report is an Air America Radio Program. For more information click here (remember, if you don't have an Air America Radio station in your area -- and don't have satellite radio -- you can listen online).
Chip Pitts is the chair of Amnesty International USA and, hopefully, he will also discuss his work with the Bill of Rights Defense Committee.
