took my chances on a big jet plane
never let them tell you that they're all the same
the sea was red and the sky was gray
wondered how tomorrow could ever follow today
the mountains and the canyons started to tremble and shake
as the children of the sun began to wake
- led zeppelin's 'going to california'
so we're in california, all together for the summer. we'll be grouping up again in september for the protests but this is the last time we've all been together since may. betty's not here yet, but her plane lands soon (kat, fly boy and i are going to pick her and her kids up). it's going to be fun and busy so i'm excited but i'm not that ... california's nice to visit but it's not home for me. elaine and i were talking about this flying out here with ruth, tracey, jayson, mike and wally (fly boy flew us) and we're more visitors. we can enjoy it but we need our leaves that change colors with each season and our chilly winters. great if california is the place for you, but for us it's more of a nice place to visit.
mike swears at some point during our time here, jess, jim, ty, ava and dona are going to tell us they're bailing on the east coast. that would be so weird and i can't imagine that happening, but you never know. i want to say thank you to betty for the wonderful job she did filling in for me while i was vacationing and honeymooning. i know kat caught some days too so thank you to kat.
if you felt like you got something extra with betty, i'd be the 1st to agree with you. she did a wonderful job. is there a topic she didn't cover in the four weeks plus? and, from the e-mails i've seen since i got back, every 1 enjoyed hearing about her life. i think those details were my favorite as well. at her site (thomas friedman is a great man) she doesn't get to write what she wants really because she's doing an online novel with various characters and working from an outline. by the way, she did another chapter and it's called '"Nobody pushes Thomas Friedman around!"' so check that out.
she is very down on it. she was trying to drum up the vote for cynthia mckinney in the run off election and that didn't end happily (mckinney lost). she felt she needed to get something up before she came out here. she'd written a few lines, out of order, and wasn't sure she was going to be able to add to them because she was really depressed about the results of the run off. at her request (she doesn't think it will be noted elsewhere), i will note her thanks to kat and c.i. who helped her out on thursday by listening and by finding things she'd cut from earlier chapters. the struggle over davy brooks between gail collins and thomas friedman was actually written a few months back and betty cut it out. c.i. and kat went back through their e-mailed copies of her drafts and found that and a few lines they though she could use now. from that, she was able to 'force' (her word) a chapter.
for those who are thinking, 'i enjoyed betty' - i did too. and she knows she can blog here any time she wants. that's if i'm gone, if i'm blogging. i change my password regularly but i'll be passing that on to her and any time she has time and wants to, she's free to blog here. if she had the time to do it even once a week, i'd make a point to add her to the profile. i won't do that right now because i don't want to add any pressure to her ('she put my name up there, now i have to blog.') but i'm pretty sure she'll be blogging here from time to time.
in the gina & kirsta round-robin and at the third estate sunday review (especially in roundtables), you get a sense of who betty is but her site is really written through the eyes of her novel's main character (betinna). so i think she enjoyed sharing her and i know all my readers who matter (the regulars) loved her writings.
so let's talk democracy now and amy goodman. ricky clousing was interviewed (mike barber broke the story of ricky clousing turning himself in). c.i. delayed the snapshot for a number of reasons, including airport pick ups. but the main reason for the delay was we were all saying, 'oh don't hand out a gold star for that.' so c.i. ended up rewriting a section to note that there has been silence on iraq from indymedia. is amy goodman going to do anything?
1 day? i won't applaud that. and i think the point c.i. makes is an important 1. ricky is 1 of many and, of course, ehren watada needs/requires coverage right now. next week he faces that article 32 hearing.
so was this a shift back to providing coverage on iraq or was it an effort by the program to grab a 'new.' if this was 1 day, if we're supposed to think, 'wow it was covered today and they covered it on july 26th too!' that's not cutting it.
it's not just democracy now dropping the ball. fair's counterspin didn't cover the press coverage of abeer (or what passed for it) today. they were off on the mexico elections and lebanon. iraq's not an issue to them either. fair's scope is media criticism so i'm not expecting 'today in iraq' but i am expecting that they will critique iraq. fair can send out action alerts on any number of topics. that they didn't bother to send 1 out when a 14 year old girl (who is dead) was rendered invisble in the coverage is really sad.
oh god, someone on kpfa praising mad maddie. mad maddie said that the bully boy plans for international relations aren't bad per se, but it wasn't about smacking some 1 in their face with it.
no, the problem is the bully boy doctrine. how desperate is kpfa to cover the issue of israel's actions that they're presenting an 'expet' who would endorse mad maddie and the bully boy doctrine on paper?
i've heard it most of the day (c.i.'s radios are all on it and that's usually not a problem because in the past when i've visited, there's never been such a one-note quality to their broadcast - and i've visted for years and years, decades). it's now the all israel, all the time network.
iraq's not important in this coverage. i know from kat's closest friends (dak ho, sumner, maggie and toni) that they're sick of the non-stop coverage of what israel's done today. i can't imagine that most listeners aren't.
i've listened to flashpoints this week and enjoyed it but i'm not going to cover it because i think there's too much online about israel as it is. i think iraq's equally important and there's so much silence on iraq. when the snapshot started, the hope was it would be a brief thing in every way. brief note and briefly done because iraq would become a main focus again. that hasn't happened.
it's so 1 note and it's so awful and it's not what independent media is supposed to be.
c.i. is very supportive of indymedia (in words and donations). i'm not. and this is why.
i don't have any faith that indymedia's going to provide meaningful coverage. i heard a guy today trying to defend the coverage (which he thought was overdone) by saying that indymedia has to be a counter weight to big media. that argument goes like this, big media sides with israel and has so much bias (i agree so far) that it's important for indymedia to respond.
i can accept that to a degree. i can accept that it's important to respond to a degree. i don't think indymedia should let big media set the agenda. that's why they did. big media said israel was the only story and indymedia followed.
i don't think they trusted their audience. i don't think they grasped that the audience wouldn't get the points unless they were hit over the head with them over and over.
it's important for indymedia to go where the silence is. when the silence greeted iraq (by silence, i'm noting big media pulling correspondents out of iraq and sending them to lebanon and israel - not gaza, gaza's always the forgotten region).
kpfa, with a lot of nerve, just quoted ricky clausing and noted 'high profile' crimes such as '14 year old girl' - well i know from kat that kpfa hasn't done any real coverage of abeer and that they didn't even mention her name tonight.
'high profile' - quit fucking kidding.
it should have been high profile, it wasn't.
there are other reasons to rip apart the report but i'm not a kpfa listener. (c.i. has no problem with kat's critiques of kpfa because kat is a regular listener. i'm not. if kat's critizing, regardless of how, it comes from the fact that she likes kpfa and she is bothered by what it's done.)
back to my point i was making. this is why i don't grab the checkbook for indymedia. there's always this big talk and big promises and they never follow through.
at some point, they usually become schill's for the democratic party. maybe they suddenly sit down with bill richardson and treat him with soft questions?
if indymedia (i'm not referring to the websites 'indymedia') was serious about what they say they are, i'd be happy to support them but i've seen all this 'we are independent' talk before. print or broadcast, they all start schilling. (exceptions to the rule would include dennis bernstein, nora barrows friedman and bonnie faulkner.) but take ruth conniff of the progressive. what the hell is progressive about her senate kisses? what the hell is progressive about her coverage?
i don't see it. i see some 1 who wants so bad to be an insider that she avoids the tough questions and the tough issues. like when she blew off iraq on kris welch's program and claimed (wrongly according to polls at the time) that iraq wasn't making it home.
if indymedia was really independent, they wouldn't need me or any 1 else to point out that they'd dropped iraq. they wouldn't have dropped it. and they wouldn't be presenting centrists and center-left as left. (mike will be writing about one such person tonight.)
but what in ruth conniff's superficial writing is progressive? she's chopped off abortion rights with her nonsense about what is and isn't allowed. (her stance on abortion wasn't that different from the democrat's new stance - are we surprised?) when you wade through her nonsense, you're left to ask yourself, 'am i reading the progressive or the moderate?'
i like ellen goodman. her writing is usually funny and always insightful. but she's writing in the mainstream (she's a syndicated columnist) and she's got more fire and more passion than ruth conniff. that should raise an eyebrow.
c.i.'s asked for at least 2 months now (repeatedly) in entries, do the war hakws & cheerleaders want the war to drag on more than the left wants to end it? by actions, the answer is 'yes.' the left is quite happy to drop coverage of iraq anytime, for any reason. this time it was israel.
they have no focus. they don't do follow up. they grab something 'hot' (just like big media) and run with it at the expense of everything else. that's why i don't support independent media financially. i did think, due to iraq, that would change. i saw a lot of passionate statements, i didn't see a lot of follow up.
there was an interview recently, in print, with a wonderful war critic and critic of the system that passes for democracy in america, a historian. i read that 'interview' and thought it was the dumbest thing i'd ever read. the answers in the q.a. were obviously heavily edited because the person being interviewed speaks in detail and offers examples. but not in that 'interview.'
with iraq, i thought something was changing and was glad about that. but there's been too many times where the ball has been dropped. too many times where iraq was dropped completely.
i give to a number of charities and to a number of feminist organizations. i stopped giving to ___ after they carried water for hillary in januray of 2005. but the majority of the organizations i give to have a proven track record of not playing partisan in terms of a party. they're left ogranizations and they're not going to slobber all over a weak-ass democrat. we did give to independent media last go round, fly boy and i, last pledge drive. we won't be doing that again.
with charities, i focus on the children's charities. i've never felt they've let down their stated goals.
but independent media doesn't do it for my check book. it starts out with all these promises and pretty soon, it's middle of the road. we end up with the bill clinton triangulators because we buy into the lie that we have to water down to be practical.
i'd love an independent media that's not afraid to demand more and insist on more. that would change the whole dynamic. but instead we get the 'lefties' telling us, 'well we have to do this because ...' and we don't have to do anything. fdr didn't have to water down.
we have no big ideas in the democratic party because we've settled for settling. jimmy carter was a settler, bill clinton even more so. the damage bill clinton did to welfare is so huge. and we were told it had to be done. no, it didn't have to be done. it could have been fought. we didn't have to give everything to corporations and take everything from the people.
but when you hear over and over that we have to be 'practical' then you don't get fighters and you don't get dreamers. you get pencil pushing ceos who worry only what can be done easiest.
i loathe jane alexander. when she became the head of the nea, she immediately started caving in. that was 'practical.' we had to be 'practical.' no, it should have been fought, bravey should have been shown. and if that means congress wants to threaten to pull funding, let them threaten, confront them with it. instead, the nea is the same as pbs today. that's jane alexander's fault.
she 'saved' it. you know what, let's be willing to lose. let's be willing to fight our hardest and risk losing. let's stop letting things be watered down and then claiming 'well we "saved" it.' no, it's not saved. it's not what it was. you didn't compromise, you took their offer. you were scared and frightened and you took their offer instead of fighting.
we don't have a public broadcasting system in this country because of that cowardice. every cave has further weakened npr and pbs. now those aren't staples. no 1 will die because they can't watch pbs or listen to npr. so we should be willing to risk it. let them attack and respond to those attacks. take it to the people. argue for pbs and npr to be what they're supposed to be.
if you can't make the case for it, then maybe you don't need funding?
the right wing echo chamber didn't push the country's conversations to the right alone. selling out helped. the lee hamiltons and their nonsense helped destroy the left. it's past time for those who identify as left to accept that we have to settle.
joe lieberman's trying to build his 'new' campaign on that. he's saying we have to settle for some 1 who will get along as opposed to some 1 who stands for something (ned lamont).
now ned lamont is not a radical. in earlier times, he'd probably be seen as a rather weak lefty. that's because our notions have been so screwed up by people selling out their beliefs (and ours) while telling us that it was necessary to 'save' something.
we've got to the get to the airport so let me put in the snapshot. c.i. did a wonderful job. and don't miss the molly ivins quote!
"Iraq snapshot"
Chaos and violence continue in Iraq today, Friday, August 11, 2006 with two police officers dead from a roadside bomb in Kirkuk, another police officer shot dead in Mosul and a man on his way to work in Baiji shot dead. In the United States Ricky Clousing says no to war; in a sotto voice US military flacks give statements about the two US soliders who died in Tuesday helicopter crash and while recruiters struggle to meet their lowered targets, some applicants remain unwelcome.
Starting with the last item, the AP reports on Haven Herrin who would like to serve in the military but she is a lesbian and wink-wink-nudge-nudge no gays or lesbians have ever served in the US military. Reading the report which begins and ends with the Clinton era "Don't Ask Don't Tell," news consumers are probably left unaware that an openly gay man has served in the US military.
While some can't get in, others refuse to serve in an illegal war based on lies.
Writing for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Mike Barber broke the news today that Ricky Clousing would turn himself in. Ricky Clousing, 24-years-old, checked himself out of the military after serving in Iraq. Speaking to the AP, Clousing stated, "My experience in Iraq really made me second-guess my ability to perform as a soldier and also forced me to question my beliefs in associating myself". Clousing's announcement comes on day two of the Veterans for Peace convention in Seattle (which concludes Sunday the 13th). Clousing questions the legality of the illegal war and "I came to the conlusion that I could not train or be trained under a false pretense of fighting for freedom." Barber notes that Clousing went AWOL from "Fort Bragg in 2005 after returning from Iraq with the 82nd Airborne Division."
Barber broke the news, the AP is all over it. And gold stars for others? They'll have to demonstrate that they're going to cover it. Not, "Look how much I care, today I'll make time for this issue and then next week . . . Back to Israel non-stop!" (or whatever the topic is). Too much isn't being covered.
Clousing is one of many war resisters. This week, Meredith May (San Francisco Chronicle) took a look at some who had decided to do a self-check out and go to Candada -- mentioned were Ryan Johnson, Patrick Hart, Christian Kjar, Brandon Hughey, Darryl Anderson. Brandon Hughey and Jeremy Hinzman will learn shortly whether they're appeal will allow them to remain in Canada or not. Other war resisters include Camilo Mejia, Pablo Paredes, Aidan Delgado, Kevin Benderman. Katherine Jashinski. Camilo Mejia is generally considered to the the "first Iraqi War Resister." Benderman is attempting to appeal the Court-Martial and has been designated a "Prisoner of Conscience" by Amnesty International. Benderman's case hasn't vanished, just any coverage of it. That's true of Hinzman and Hughey as well. Let's be really honest, that's true of the independent media attention on all things having to do with Iraq. (And remember it was Mike Barber who broke the story.)
Two names more recently in the news are Suzanne Swift and Ehren Watada. Their cases haven't vanished just because, for example, an announced and filmed interview with Swift's grandfather never aired as Iraq fell off the radar. Watada faces an article 32 hearing on August 17th which is next Thursday. Courage to Resist and ThankYouLt.org are organizing and trying to get the word out for "a National Day of Education" on August 16th. Writing of Watada, Cedric (Cedric's Big Mix) noted Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq was a "no" and that: "When we say 'no' the war ends.Ehren is saying 'no.' He can make a difference. He is making a difference but it will be a huge difference with quick impact if we show our support." Noting the work of his parents, Courage to Resist and ThankYouLt.org, Cedric wondered where the coverage was?
Attending the conference in Seattle was Cindy Sheehan who is offering Camp Casey III "as a refuge for U.S. troops who desert to resist the war in Iraq." As The State News notes on Bully Boy's low approval numbers, "Clearly, Sheehan is not alone in her position. But while a large population within the United States disapproves of Bush and the war in Iraq, it seems only a small population is doing something about it." Sheehan does her part and then some but it "seems" others aren't because of the lack of media attention. Watada and Swift are 'doing something.' Across the country, across the world, people are engaged in attempting to end this war, day in and day out. It's the media that can make it appear nothing is happening or report what's actually going on. Credit to Barber, AP, May and others in big media who've been covering these issues (especially the press in Hawaii) while others had other things to emphasize (non-stop). Or, as Molly Ivins points out: "The more surprising development is how completely one story drives out another. At other times, the collapse of Iraq would have been news." A collapse that has included, as Riverbend (Baghdad Burning) wrote, "There are no laws that say we have to wear a hijab (yet), but there are men in head-to-toe black and the turbans, the extremists and fanatics who were libearted by the occupation, and at some point, you tire of the defiance. You no longer want to be seen. I feel like the black or white scarf I fling haphazardly on my head as I walk out the door makes me invisible to a certain degree -- it's easier to blend in with the masses shrouded in black. If you're a femal, you don't want the attention -- you don't want it from Iraqi police, you don't want it from the black clad militia man, you don't want it from the American soldier. You don't want to be noticed or seen."
Reuters notes six corpses were discovered in Baghdad ("bound and blindfolded") Of the six, AP notes that they had all ben shot execution style. This was the week that, as the BBC noted, the body count at Baghdad's central morgue for July only had been 1,855. AP noted Dr. Sabah al-Husseini's declaration that "two-thirds of the deaths reported in Baghdad since January were due to violence."
This was the week of the Article 32 hearing to determine whether or not to file rape, murder and arson charges against US soldiers James Baker, Jesse V. Spielman, Bryan L. Howard and Paul Cortez. (Steven D. Green, who is also accused in the incident will stand trial in US federal court because he was discharged before the incident was uncovered. Anthony W. Yribe is accused of dereliction of duty for not reporting the incident.) The incident? Abeer Qasim Hamza. Presenting his closing argument in the hearing, Captain Alex Pickands stated, "They gathered over cards and booze to come up with a plan to rape and murder that little girl. She was young and attractive. They knew where she was because they had seen her on a previous patrol. She was close. She was vulnerable." The defense (and the New York Times) offered stress of combat and fatigue. Pickands response? "Murder, not war. Rape, not war. That's what we're here talking about today. Not all that business about cold food, checkpoints, personnel assignments. Cold food didn't kill that family. Personnel assignments didn't rape and murder that 14-year-old little girl."
It was the story that should have gotten intense coverage. Rebecca (Sex and Politics and Screeds and Attitude) has argued Abeer's story is the story of the illegal occupation boiled down to one person. Instead, as Mike (Mikey Likes It!) has pointed out, you had the New York Times offering the defense's argument and Abeer? Silence. She wasn't even named.
This was also the week of yet another poll finding where respondents echoed earlier polls by standing strongly against the illegal war. CNN found that 60% of Americans responding in their poll were against the war -- the highest opposition since the war began in March 2003.
Those were among the Iraq related stories that should have received coverage, discussion and exploration.
Another, in Australia, would be the military inquiry into the April 21st death of Jake Kovco in Baghdad. Belinda Tasker (Herald Sun) reports on Solider 1's testimony which resulted in tears for Shelley Kovco (widow of Jake Kovco) and Judy Kovco (mother of Jake Kovco). While the family of Kovco has every reason to well up when their lost one is spoken, the press has no excuse to go soft and mushy but, apparently, despite repeated testimony to the contrary, the nonsense of the 'buddy system' is back. Soldier 1 tossed off a few words (via video-link) and then used Jake Kovco to argue that they'd reworked the "buddy system" since his death. The press runs with it, failing to note that there witnesses' testimony (as opposed to the statements the military wrote and submitted in their name) that there was no "buddy system" in place. Ian McPhedran (Courier-Mail) offers a less sentimental view as he weighs in on Jake Kovco's death and Australia's involvement with Iraq: "We're being kept in the dark."
