have you noticed the push back coming from some losers for little david shuster?
shuster was suspended (not fired) by nbc.
david shuster: Bill, there's just something a little bit unseemly to me that Chelsea is out there calling up celebrities saying, 'Support my mom.' And, apparently, she's also calling these super delegates.
bill press: Hey, she's working for her mom. What's unseemly about that? During the last campaign, the Bush twins were out working for their dad.
david shuster: Didn't it seem like Chelsea's sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?
that took place on msnbc.
bill press clearly shot down shuster's 'theory.' press clearly pointed out an example where children campaign for their parents. that should have been the end of it.
the 'discussion' that tries to absolve shuster acts as if the line came out from nowhere.
he'd tried to involve press in the trash and press hadn't bitten.
an abc news story brings up petraeus. did any 1 say a word about petraeus pimping his child? no. what shuster did was offensive.
saying 'bully boy pimped dick cheney' is not offensive. saying 'al gore pimped bill clinton' is not offensive. they are grown ups who chose to be in public life. a child of some 1 public is not open game just because their parents are. and to say a parent pimps their child leaves ha-ha territory and enters the objectionable. i'd feel that way if they'd said it about cheney's young daughter. (i assume he's got a young 1. i don't know the ages of the cheney children.) i loathe dick cheney and will smile serenely when he dies. but i would never accuse him of 'pimping' his child. i might accuse him of 'pimping' kbr. or scooter libby. but i wouldn't go there on some 1 and their child.
when you do, you've entered into an offensive field.
that's really obvious and some people want to play dumb.
it's interesting that the 1st time that sort of remark is made by 'news' people (by 1, bill press refused the bait), it's about hillary clinton. how many years have we had male candidates for president. where's the news person saying 'pimp' before? 'pimp' is not a 2008 word. it was around in 2000 and in 2004. it was popular then. it was popular when carter ran for the white house. these people who want to act like it just entered the popular dialogue are insane. and find me 1 who was accused of 'prostituting' their child or 'whoring'? you won't. not from a respected news source.
this crossed a line. bill clinton is correct and people are correct to be outraged by it.
shuster is not a comic. if a comic had said it, no 1 would care.
shuster is supposed to be in the news business. the fact that he was hosting a msnbc talk show does not change the fact that he is supposed to be a news person. and what he did crossed a huge line.
fair's trying to drum up some sympathy for him by re-releasing their 2005 story (or maybe older) about how he was shocked when he went to fox 'news,' shocked, by the slant. a person with a brain wouldn't have been shocked.
now when it was time to finally sort-of apologize, as media matters documents, he lies and claims he was praising chelsea before the remark.
some people born during 1 of reagan's terms or after may not get it.
they won't, for instance, remember that amy carter was ripped apart while the nixon daughter's were never called ugly. they won't remember the way poor amy carter - a child then - was beat up. it doesn't happen with republican children. it was a shock that it would happen with a nice looking young girl. there is a double standard and when bill clinton was elected in 1992, most of us remembered how amy was treated and the evil things she was called.
with chelsea, it started immediately and rush did his infamous 'joke' where he compared her to a dog. there was a push back. and there should have been.
so that probably does go into it. the way chelsea's been treated before and the way amy carter was; however, the reality is that the line was tasteless and out of bounds. it never should have been said. when it was an apology should have been made immediately.
instead shuster wanted to argue. when msnbc made him apologize, he lied.
david shuster deserves no sympathy.
he has yet to make an honest apology.
i am so frustrated by the way some are trying to defend shuster and justify what he did. it is not acceptable. it is never acceptable.
and, again, it never happened until we had a woman run for president and be a serious contender. suddenly, in their efforts to pass her off as 'so evil' they went with the notion that she'd even stoop to 'pimping' her daughter.
that's disgusting.
and remember (a) i voted for cynthia mckinney on super duper tuesday and (b) i don't like hillary and never have.
it's offensive and people need to stop kidding themselves that it's not.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, February 13, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, one CBS News employee is released by kidnappers, it sounds like a treaty when Iraqi government spokespeople describe it, and more.
Starting with war resistance. Courage to Resist notes a new campaign for Andrew Hegerty, Jeffrey Gauntt and James Blanks, all US service members, all in Mannheim, Germany in a US military prison for refusing to deploy to Afghanistan. They note Agustin Aguayo's confinement there earlier and how much letters meant to him. Aguayo went to Iraq as a medic. He found that training and ethics were disregarded (that's putting it mildly and Aguayo's comments are echoed by many others who were sent to Iraq as medics). While serving, Aguayo had a religious awakening or deepening. Seeing death and destruction strengthened previous beliefs and led him to contemplate additional issues. Not surprising and not uncommon. But the military command attempted to play dumb, attempted to act as though such a thing never happened, could never happen. Aguayo applied for CO status.
He was then informed that his CO status would be determined AFTER his second tour of Iraq. On his first tour, he'd refused to load his gun due to his religious deepening. While this was going on, his fight for CO status was also going through the federal courts. Despite that, the US military told him he was going back to Iraq. Aguayo self-checked out briefly trying to demonstrate how serious he was about not returning to Iraq. When that message was not received, he self-checked out again and was gone for less than the 30-day rule of thumb (30 days or more usually is seen by the US military as desertion, less is generally seen as AWOL). Aguayo turned himself in. He was court-martialed and charged with desertion which was only one of the many violations in the military 'justice' system. He is appealing the verdict from his court-martial (he has already served the time the judge sentenced him to).
Courage to Resist provides contact info for James Blanks (due out this month), Jeffrey Gauntt (due out April 2008) and Andrew Hegerty (due out in August 2008) are reachable at: Unit 29723, Box LL, APO, AE 09028-9723, USA -- Just put the name of whichever of the three you are writing to.
And while you're writing, Canada's Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals on the issue of safe harbor status for war resisters in Canada. The country's Parliament remains the best hope for safe harbor war resisters may have. You can make your voice heard by the Canadian parliament which has the ability to pass legislation to grant war resisters the right to remain in Canada. Three e-mails addresses to focus on are: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration. A few more can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.
Monday's snapshot notes the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy and the protests taking place which included war resister Chris Capps who was an awarded a peace medal from the Munich American Peace Committee. Tim Slater (Media with Conscience) provides some of Capps speech:
To all of you here, at this protest: I would like to thank you, not just for awarding me this prize, but also for exposing and standing up to the arrogance of those leaders who commonly make decisions that destroy the lives of those who certainly are not a threat to their nations' security. To be certain, it is the legitimate right of a just government to protect the lives of its citizens. However, this is not accomplished by bombing and invading countries on the other side of the world where the majority of their citizens live in poverty. The kind of 'security' policies my country, the United States, has pursued over the last few years has enraged much of the world's Muslim population, and brought more desperation to Iraq and Afghanistan; it has led to loss of privacy and liberty for American citizens, and it has reverted my country to the dark ages when torture was an acceptable form of interrogation. Today, as it stands, America has invaded Iraq supposedly to defend its "national security". The allegations that Iraq was a threat to America have since been proven false. As a result, four thousand American soldiers have died in Iraq, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis are dead over thirty thousand Americans are wounded, and millions of Iraqis have become refugees. It is time to show the people in there [indicating the location where the Munich Security Conference was being held] that military force should only be a very last resort, that it should not be used until all other options are exhuasted, and until it is completely transparent and evident that we truly must take these actions to defend ourselves. Thousands of soldiers have made the same decision I have: the decision not to do the bidding of those who consider them Federal property. Many more people have refused to pay their taxes until these wars come to an end; and then there are people like you who have taken to the streets to show their outrage about these destructive policies. It is going to take all of us and all of our efforts to put these policies to an end and hold our leaders accountable for them.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
Meanwhile IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC action:
In 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.
Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam. They called it the Winter Soldier investigation, after Thomas Paine's famous admonishing of the "summer soldier" who shirks his duty during difficult times. In a time of war and lies, the veterans who gathered in Detroit knew it was their duty to tell the truth.
Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into increasingly bloody occupations. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming "a few bad apples" instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.
In March of 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in our nation's capital to break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for these wars. We hope you'll join us, because yours is a story that every American needs to hear.
Click here to sign a statement of support for Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 13th through 16th are the dates for the Winter Soldier Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Dee Knight (Workers World) notes, "IVAW wants as many people as possible to attend the event. It is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand. 'We have been inspired by the tremendous support the movement has shown us,' IVAW says. 'We believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members'." As part of their fundraising efforts for the event, they are holding houseparties and a recent one in Boston featured both IVAW's Liam Madden and the incomprable Howard Zinn as speakers.
Earlier this month David Ovalle (Miami Herald) reported on 21-year-old Alex Lotero, an Iraq War veteran who has been disagnosed with PTSD but still could not get treatment forcing him to self-check out (they did, however, offer him a discharge that would strip him of all of his benefits -- an offer that should result in a Congressional investigation). Lotero was in jail at the time. Today Ovalle reports that Lotero remains in jail after "nearly two weeks without seeing a judge after his arrest on charges of going AWOL" and quotes Anady Lotero (his mother) explaining that during this two weeks, he hasn't been receiving "his usual medications for anxiety, sleep disorder and back pain." Ovalle explains, "On Monday, Maj. Nathan Banks, an Army spokesman in Washington, said the rules actually allow for 30 days to pick up a soldier who is absent without leave. Often, the military will ask a jail to release a soldier and send him a bus ticket to his home base. Lotero, however, will be picked up by an 'extradition team' sent from Fort Benning, Ga., Banks said." AP quotes Adrieen Willis of Veterans for America who says the transfer should have taken place already ("within 72 hours"), "He hasn't seen a lawyer, he hasn't had any of his medication, he hasn't had any of the rights of an American citizen, so it's a little concerning. It's very odd that he can be sitting there without representation, without seeing a judge for 30 days." Very odd and that also describes a soldier Erin Emery (Denver Post) reported on Sunday: "A Fort Carson Soldier who says he was in treatment at Cedar Springs Hospital for bipolar disorder and alcohol abuse was released early and ordered to deploy to the Middle East with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team. The 28-year-old specialist spent 31 days in Kuwait and was returned to Fort Carson on Dec. 31 after health care professionals in Kuwait concurred that his symptoms met criteria for bipolar disorder and 'some paranoia and possible homicidal tendencies,' according to e-mails obtained by The Denver Post. The soldier, who asked not to be identified because of the stigma surrounding mental illness and because he will seek employment when he leaves the Army, said he checked himself into Cedar Springs on Nov. 9 or Nov. 10 after he attempted suicide while under the influence of alcohol. He said his treatment was supposed to end Dec. 10 but his commanding officers showed up at the hospital Nov. 29 and ordered him to leave."
Turning to other abuses, from the front page no less, James Risen (New York Times) reports on women working for US corporations reporting sexaul assaults in "by co-workers while working as contractors in Iraq but now find themselves in legal limbo, unable to seek justice or even significant compensation. Many of the same legal and logistical obstacles that have impeded other types of investigations involving contractors in Iraq, like shootings involving security guards for Blackwater Worldwide, have made it difficult for the United States government to pursue charges related to sexual offenses. The military justice system does not apply to them, and the reach of other American laws on contractors working in foreign war zones remains unclear five years after the United States invasion of Iraq." UPI notes Jamie Leigh Jones was among those offering testimony to the US House Judiciary Committee. Maddy Sauer (ABC News) reports Jones and other victims of sexual assault explained how the arbitration clause in employment contracts for KBR and others requires victims "to argue their cases of sexual harassment, assault and rape before secretive arbitration panels rather than in an open court before a judge and jury." Feminist Wire Daily recaps, "Jamie Leigh Jones, a former KBR employee testified again on Tuesday at a congressional hearing that she was drugged and gang-raped by a group of her co-worker in the Green Zone KBR camp in Iraq in 2005" and reports on the second woman offering testiomny: "Mary Beth Kineston, an American truck driver for KRB, says she was sexually assaulted by a fellow driver, who continued to work for KRB even after she made a complaint. Subsequently, she was groped by another KRB worker and was fired when she attempted to place a second complaint." Maddy Sauer quotes US House Rep Ted Poe who opposes the arbitration route (at least in sexual assault cases) and states, "Air things out in a public forum of a courtroom. That's why we have courts in the United States." Risen notes, "Ms. Jones and her lawyers said 38 women who worked as contractors in Iraq, Kuwait and other countries had contacted her since she testified" in December "to discuss their own experiences. Now Congressional leaders are seeking answers from the Pentagon, the State Department and other agencies to try to determine the scope of the threats facing women who are contractors." Risen also quotes Pamela Jones who worked for KBR in Kuwait and reported her sexual assault even though she knew that doing so meant "that you could lose your job."
Not a lot of respect for health care in Iraq either. Which is how Sunday reports included of a US raid on a hospital. Reuters reported that the al-Rashad mental hospital in Baghdad was raided (citing an official at the hospital and an official with the Iraq Health Ministry) and the hospital's "acting director [was arrested], accusing him of workining with al Qaeda and recruiting mentally ill women and using them in suicide bombing operations" which revolves around the unproven claim that the February 1st Baghdad pet markets bombings were the result of women who were mentally challenged/disabled. Today Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) reports on the arrest that US Rear Adm. Greg Smith briefed on today, "A senior American official who asked not to be named because he wasn't authorized to discuss the case publicly said American investigators now thought the bombers were adults -- one in her 20s, the other in her 30s -- with long histories of psychiatric conditions including depression and schizophrenia. . . . The administrator who's being questioned is suspected of using his access to mental-patient records and possibly providing them to Islamic extremists, the official said." Smith's remarks on this today were:
On Sunday, Iraqi and coalition forces detained a hospital administrator in connection with the possible exploitation of mentally impaired women by al-Qaeda. On February 1st, two women were used to deliver a backpack filled with explosives and a suicide vest into the crowded pet markets in Baghdad. As part of the investigation into these tragic events, last Sunday, Iraqi and coalition forces detained the acting administrator of the al-Rashad Physciatric Hospital of Baghdad at his office and conducted a thorough search of the facility. The administrator remains in coalition force detention and is being questioned to determine what role, if any, he may have played in supplying al-Qaeada with information regarding patients at the al-Rashad Psychiatric Hospital or from other medical facilities in Baghdad. Because this is an ongoing investigation, I'm not at liberty to discuss any more details on this particular incident but will provide more information as it becomes available.
99 was the number of people who died in the two Baghdad bombings at the start of the month, according to CBS and AP who also note, "Iraq's parliament on Wednesday passed three key pieces of legislation that set a date for provincial elections, allot the US $48 billion for 2008 spending, and provide limited amnesty to detainees in Iraqi custody. The three measures were bundled together for one vote to satisfy the demands of minority Kurds who feared they might be double-crossed on their demand that the budget allot 17 percent to their semiautonomous regional government in the north." Reuters apparently received a new pair of pom-poms thereby explaining their use of the term "breakthrough" to describe the passage of the 2008 budget . . . The budget for 2008 that should have passed last year but instead was passed February 13th of 2008 and only after threats to disband the Iraqi Parliament.
Staying with legislatures, in the US, the House Appropriations Committee's subcommittee on Defense, chaired by US House Rep John Murtha, met this morning and heard begging from government officials for more money. Apparently explaining why the US does not have health care or an adequately funded educational system, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates declared that "we must make the choices and investments necessary to protect the security, prosperity and freedom of Americans for today and future generations." Gates declared? Via Gordon England, the deputy of the department. When begging for a $35,9 billon increase, you'd think the head of the department could show up. But he does have an excuse, he has "a fracture to his right shoulder sustained when he slipped on some ice. . . Secretary Gates has been examined by a physician and is receiving treatment for this injury. He continues to perform all other duties and responsibilities of his position."
In Diyala Province and Anbar Province, the 'Awakening' Councils have been on strike. The US collaborators, paid approximately $300 a month, are the focus of a posting by a McClatchy Newspapers correspondent at Inside Iraq:
I believe the Americans tried to follow the steps of the awakening council in Anbar which was created by the sheikhs of Anbar province tribes. The mistake of the Americans was not studying the psychological side of Anbar experience. People of Anbar are almost from one main tribe and they all suffered from Qaida. When they decided to fight Qaida, they gathered their efforts to work as one real team because they wanted to end their suffering. They formed their awakening council and they succeeded because they had an exact goal. There is no way to compare between the awakening council of Anbar and any other awakening council whether its formed by Iraqis or American. Anbar awakening council is the real copy while the others are imitations.
Since almost one weak, the awakening council in one of Baghdad 's neighborhood and in Diyala province suspended their cooperation with the government. They both accuse the official security forces (police and army) of attacking these councils. The awakening council in Amiriyah neighborhood west Baghdad says that a joint force of the Iraqi and the US armies arrested some of its members. The supporters of the awakening council in Diyala demonstrate for the last four days demanding to depose the police chief of Diyala accusing him with the sectarian violence.
The 'Awakening' Council was addressed in the press conference (held by M-NF with Smith leading) today by Iraqi government spokesperson Dr. Ali al-Dabbagh who declared, "The Iraqi government supports all the Awakening Groups whether they were in Tikrit, Salah ad Din, Diyala, Anbara or even in Mosul. According to the potentials that the Government of Iraq views so that the security issue could be under the responsibility of the Iraqi forces. This is the policy of the Iraqi government with the Awakenings. We think that the Iraqi forces cannot perform the security services in the hot zones without the support from those people including the Awakenings and the members in the Awakenings." Rear Adm. Smith then went on to assure that the US military has always been in a "strong partnership" with that striking 'Awakening' members in Diyala Province and that talks "are ongoing". al-Dabbagh noted the treaty the White House hopes to structure and enter into with the puppet government (without any consent from the US Congress), "The negotiations with the United States; we still haven't set a date for that. Of course there are some points that the Iraqi government will take into consideration because Iraq seeks to build some really good relationships with the Americans. And the current relationship between the United States and the Multi-National Forces and Iraq is actually a relationship imposed on Iraq because Iraq lost the war. And that's why Iraq has been imposed by resolutions by the Security Council. And Iraq now is gaining back its sovereignty. Iraq wanted to be removed from the 7th Chapter from the United Nations so that it will enter some negotiations as a country that has full sovereignty so that it can maintain the best interests of the . . . of his people. We don't want Iraq to be a source or a starting point to any attack to any other countries. And we don't want any kind of military bases, long-term military bases in Iraq in addition to many other detailed things that needs much more sessions of negotiations so that we can reach to the best interests . . . to something that serves the best interests of both the United States and America . . . and Iraq." Good he remembered to work in Iraq there. What he's describing is involved and does require the US Congress. Meanwhile, the wounded Robert Gates got another blow today when another Iraqi official spoke publicly. Peter Graff (Reuters) reports that Mowaffaq al-Rubaie, the country's National Security Advisor, states that US forces should continue the drawdown as planned, without the 'pause' that Robert Gates and US Gen. David Peteraeus favor. He wants the figure below 100,000 (100,000 US service members stationed in the country). And, possibly most interesting, he declared that regardless of whether the Democratic Party's presidential nomination went to Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and that the chosen then went on to win, he didn't see US forces leaving: "When they are in the oval office, they will think twice and they will consult with commanders on the ground." Wow, more truth than 'anti-war' 'leaders' like Tom Hayden can offer as they rush to cheerlead Obama. But then the 'anti-war' 'leader' Hayden is writing about such end-the-war issues as . . . super-delegates.
In some of today's reported violence . . .
Bombings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad mortar attack wounded one person and that two US service members were injured in a Baghdad bombing. Reuters notes a Falluja roadside bombing left two people injured.
Shootings?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 5 people were shot dead ("building workers" en route to work) by unknown assailants in Diyala Province and -- included in this section because the unknown assailants are described as "gunmen" -- an invasion of al Somood primary school outside Baghdad resulted in a school guard's wife being beaten and her son hung. In addition to the five construction workers shot dead, Reuters notes two more were injured.
Corpses?
Laith Hammoudi (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Baghdad while a head was discovered in Khalis and, falling back to yesterday, a corpse was discovered in Kirkuk.
Damien McElroy (Telegraph of London) reported this morning that talks "with members of a faction of" the Mahdi Army, were supposed to lead to the release of the two employees of CBS News kidnapped on Sunday. Michael Holden and Mohammed Abas (Reuters) report that the translator has been released but the CBS correspondent has not and, as Heather Langan (Bloomberg News) notes, "The U.S. television network hasn't identified them."
The January 24th snapshot noted Martha Burk's "Gender Budgets, Anyone" in the new issue of Ms. magazine, Winter 2008. It is now out and the magazine's issued a press release on the issue now on the stands:
MEDIA ADVISORYFor immediate releaseCONTACT: duVergne GainesSusie Gilligan310-556-2500dgaines@feminist.orgsgilligan@feminist.orgNew Ms. Features Exposé on Ward Connerly and His Deceptively Named"Civil Rights Initiatives"The winter issue of Ms. magazine-on newsstands 1/29/08- features an in-depth investigation of Ward Connerly, the mastermind behind the deceptively named "civil rights initiatives" designed to eliminate state affirmative action programs for women and minorities in public contracting, employment, and education. As Connerly gears up to target five states with ballot measures this November (AZ, CO, MO, NE, OK), Ms.'s investigation uncovers Connerly's:-Extensive ties to big government contractors. Connerly has long served as a lobbyist and consultant for the good ole boys network of big contractors that want to shut out women- and minority-owned businesses from competing for government contracts. With more and more government services and functions being privatized, hundreds of billions of dollars are at stake.-Eye-popping compensation package. Connerly and his firm have taken in $8.3 million in compensation from his nonprofits since 1998 or nearly half of the organizations' total revenue. Last year, his compensation topped $1.6 million, amounting to a whopping 66% of his non profits' total revenue-possibly in violation of federal tax laws that prohibit individuals from using charitable organizations to enrich themselves.-Deceptive campaign tactics. Renowned legal scholar Kimberle Crenshaw exposes Connerly and his supporters' deliberate attempts to mislead voters into believing their initiatives are pro-civil rights and pro-women. She examines the current dispute in Missouri over proposed ballot language, revealing how vitally important it is that supporters of affirmative action sound the alarm on Connerly's tactics of deception."Voters need to know what's really going on," says Ms. Executive Editor Katherine Spillar. "Connerly is a well-paid front man for the good ole boys network of large public-works contractors who don't want to compete with women- and minority-owned firms."Note to editors: Executive Editor Katherine Spillar and Kimberle Crenshaw are available for interviews. If you want to request a copy of the article or inquire about reprint opportunities please contact Jessica Stites
(jsites@msmagazine.com; 310-556-2515).
The articles noted above run from page 34 to page 41. Currently, only Michele Kort's "Are U.S. Policies Killing Women?" is available online from the Winter issue but the issue itself is now available at book stores, newstands and magazine racks everywhere.
Quickly, US politics. Ted Rall explains what the 'anti-war' leaders won't regarding their beloved. Delilah Boyd (A Scrivener's Lament) notes the data on the Viriginia primary -- exit polls for those voting in the Democratic primary which finds that 72% of Republicans who voting in the DEMOCRATIC primary voted for Obama, those self-identifying as conservative brought the number to 73%. Larry Johnson (No Quarter) puzzles about who showed up to vote and the exit polling Boyd's referring to backs up what he was observing. SusanUnPC (No Quarter) highlights a disturbing article on the Bambi 'followers'. Today in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd wants to speak sisterhood and expects someone to take her seriously. Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler) critiques Dowd's pose (which is nothing but a tactic to allow her more slams at Hillary Clinton) and -- near the end -- continues to address the media silence on MSNBC. Delilah Boyd addresses the sliming of Chelsea Clinton by MSNBC here. Also on politics NOW on PBS (which airs on Friday in most markets) interviewed Donna Edwards last month -- she just beat out incumbent Al Wynn in Maryland's Democratic primary.
Finally, Ian Bell (UK's The Herald) writes about what's at stake in the case Rose Gentle and Beverly Clarke are arguing for their late sons:
Mr Blair will never face any sort of trial over Iraq: that would be the silly part. Such things do not happen to British prime ministers. These days, even impeachment is unthinkable, for better or worse. The western democracies insulate their leaders from such possibilities. There is no accident in that. Equally, if Mr Blair conducted himself according to the dictates of his conscience throughout the Iraq affair, as he continues to insist, insults and impertinence might sound callow. Errors are not equivalent to bad faith. If the then prime minister also acted from the sincere assumption that edited intelligence reports could always be trusted, the case for his defence could begin to seem credible, morally at least.The trouble is that none of this has anything to do with war crimes. There is a ton of legal argument on that subject, obviously, but the basic criteria can be put crudely. When is war justified? The first justification is banal: if you are under attack. Secondly, you can fight legally if there is clear, demonstrable evidence that an attack upon you is in preparation. Thirdly, you can wage war if you have received the explicit support of the United Nations. Anything else is unlawful. Hence, perhaps, the unusual spectacle of fully nine Law Lords gathering to hear the appeal lodged by Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke. It will take some smart legal thinking to extricate the government, and Mr Blair's reputation, one suspects, from this one. The bereaved pair's lawyers argue that soldiers, given their unique relationship with the state, have a right to know that the cause in which they are ordered to fight is lawful. Mr Blair, they say, did not perform that duty of care.
2/13/2008
2/12/2008
the disappointing dave lindorff
if you missed it, dave lindorff made an ass of himself today.
he did so by endorsing obama.
he shows his ass in 2 ways.
1st off, i have never based my vote for any candidate on their spouse.
i have never said, 'oh ___ has a strong wife/husband, i like __!'
why?
because the spouse doesn't get into office. the spouse does not make the decision.
as trina has noted, the republican wives of presidents love to say nice pro or semi-pro choice statements. who gives a damn? barbara bush, nancy reagan, etc. aren't appointing supreme court judges. it's nonsense.
so when dave lindorff says obama's a chance for progressive change (as he does today), he needs to base that on the candidate, the person who will be the office holder.
instead, like a total ass, he bases it on the 'movement' (there is no movement, only republicans, communists, socialists and greens passing themselves off as 'independents') behind obama. some 1 tell dave that president of the united states is 1 person job and not only will the 'movement' not be going to d.c., they won't be in the oval office.
the 2nd way he shows his ass-ness is by endorsing obama's campaign (though not obama himself) to begin with.
as c.i. likes to say, 'i'm sorry, did i drop acid over the weekend?' for those who have forgotten (or maybe did drop acid over the weekend), in september of 2007, dave lindorff was having his quit the democratic party.
dave lindorff, you ass. i plugged that here. i not only plugged it, i took it seriously. on super duper tuesday, i voted for cynthia mckinney and i might not have changed my party registration were it not for the right-on effort by lindorff.
now here's lindorff getting all frothy over corporatists obama and the nut jobs behind obama.
he made a real ass of himself.
that's from some 1 who was happy to highlight him and always read him.
i can't believe the same person who ran the campaign for us to quit the democratic party is now kissing democratic corporatist ass.
maybe dave's forgotten these words he wrote:
I'm talking about mass resignations from the Democratic Party, with every person who resigns and becomes an independent or who changes their registration to a third party sending a message to the DNC explaining why he or she is quitting.
maybe he's forgotten his praise for cythia mckinney in that column?
again, i voted for cynthia. i'm not now kissing bambi's ass.
i have no idea why dave lindorff is.
maybe he dropped acid over the weekend.
but the reality is that the faux 'movement' will not be elected.
at best, people are going to be disillusioned. the way that works is we get 2 years of being trashed and destroyed at which point some minor criticism pops up in the nation and other of the garbage magazine. by the start of year 4, we're ticked off. then come the soothsayers to get us all back on board for the coming election.
so i find it disgusting what dave lindorff's done. i find it really, really disgusting.
steer people to cynthia mckinney - a real progressive.
don't carry bambi's water for him. each time some 1 does that it makes it all the harder for him to be called out with his 1st sell-out (which usually comes in the 1st 30 days).
sorry dave, i'm not stuck on stupid.
1 more thing, impeachment is an issue with dave lindorff. mckinney supports impeachment. bambi? he hasn't said a word publicly.
so why lindorff is endorsing the non-existent movement is any 1's guess.
i say he either dropped acid or just had a need to show his ass today.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Tuesday, February 12, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraqi Parliament may split up, one journalist turns up dead the two from CBS News remain missing, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Linchpin's "US AWOL's in Canada -- Let them stay" (Anarkismo) provides the background on war resisters in Canada:
Hear any of the Toronto based war resisters speak at a public meeting and patterns become clear in their experiences. Kim Rivera, a red head in her early twenties, served in an Artillery unit in Baghdad, that shipped out first in August 2006. Tales of gore, IED's and guts quickly changed her mind about the mission. The dehumanisation of Iraqi workers forced to etch out employment inside forward operation bases added to it.Another of the Toronto based war resisters is Phil McDowell. He joined straight after the September 11th attacks during his senior year majoring in IT. He was discharged in June 2006, some months later while traveling, he got notice he was being stop lossed back to Fort Hood, Texas for yet another deployment to Iraq.The Stop Loss policy is designed to offset the ebb and flow of recruiting patterns. It allows the military to forcibly re-enlist soldiers or involuntarily extend their tour of duty in a war zone -- it's a virulent source of antagonism for soldiers.
Canada's Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals on the issue of safe harbor status and the country's Parliament remains the best hope for safe harbor war resisters may have. You can make your voice heard by the Canadian parliament which has the ability to pass legislation to grant war resisters the right to remain in Canada. Three e-mails addresses to focus on are: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration. A few more can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
Meanwhile IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC action:
In 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.
Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam. They called it the Winter Soldier investigation, after Thomas Paine's famous admonishing of the "summer soldier" who shirks his duty during difficult times. In a time of war and lies, the veterans who gathered in Detroit knew it was their duty to tell the truth.
Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into increasingly bloody occupations. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming "a few bad apples" instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.
In March of 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in our nation's capital to break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for these wars. We hope you'll join us, because yours is a story that every American needs to hear.
Click here to sign a statement of support for Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 13th through 16th are the dates for the Winter Soldier Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Dee Knight (Workers World) notes, "IVAW wants as many people as possible to attend the event. It is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand. 'We have been inspired by the tremendous support the movement has shown us,' IVAW says. 'We believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members'." As part of their fundraising efforts for the event, they are holding houseparties and a recent one in Boston featured both IVAW's Liam Madden and the incomprable Howard Zinn as speakers.
As Steve Lannon (McClatchy Newspapers) explains today, "Violence is increasing In Iraq . . . Car bombs in Baghdad on Monday killed at least 11 people and injured a prominent leader of one of the country's most influential American-allied tribal militias. The Ministry of Electricity announced that power to much of the nations, already anemic, is likely to lag in coming days because insurgents had blown up transmission facilities and natural gas pipelines that fuel generators." And on the 12th day of the month, there have been 16 US service members announced dead thus far this month. The stated purpose of the escalation, stated by the White House, was to allow 'breathing space' for the puppet government in Baghdad to reach benchmarks -- those would be benchmarks that they failed to reach in 2007, White House defined benchmarks. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who earlier was seen as in a battle with other members of the cabinet over his insistence that the drawdown start and proceed smoothly so that the approximately 30,000 US troops sent over to Iraq as part of the escaltion return as they were supposed to, has now declared that a 'pause' can be taken in the drawdown -- indicating that he either had a mysterious change of heart or he is not calling the shots for the department he heads. Thom Shanker (New York Times) observes that Gates' turnabout "was something of a surprise," that he was once "seen as a potential counterpoint to General Petraeus's calls for caution about withdrawing troops" and notes Gates previous public statements about the drawdown (which he then favored). Anna Mulrine (US News and World Reports) opines, "Gates's statement yesterday make it clear that the pause will likely last for some months and become the operative word in Iraq -- and it may become as overused as the now-familiar term surge." This as Richard Cowan (Reuters) reveals Gordon England, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, informed the Senate Budget Committee today that in addition to the $70 billion planned for funding the illegal war in 2009, the White House will be asking "Congress for more money".
AFP addresses the realities of what's been accomplished during the escalation (nothing): "The reconciliation program was supposed to hang on three main pieces of legislation: a relaxation of the law to bar former Baathists from public office, a provincial election law and a law to distribute oil revenue. Of the three, only one has been passed." That would be the de-de-Baathification program. At the start of the month, Amit R. Paley and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) reported on the passage/approval of that law while Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported on the criticism coming from CIA asset and Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi that the result of passage would be "all former Baathists now serving in the security services would lose their jobs, a total of 7,000 people" and, of the Iraqi Parliament, "People should pay attention to what they are discussing and voting on." One of three and the one is a nightmare (as all will no doubt be -- illegal occupations do not make for pleasant dreams). Working from agency reports, The Daily Star reports Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Iraqi Parliament's Speaker of the House, revealed that the country's treasury had thrown away $3 million by still not approving the 2008 budget and "threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature" which is permitted by the Constitution provided the move has the support of at least a third of the Parliamentay members (which he says it does) and this action "would further undermine Premier Nuri al-Maliki's shaky government, which is currently limping along with nearly half of the 40 government departments without ministers." Ahmed Rasheed (Reuters) maintains that an "absolute majority" of Parliament must favor dissolution for the body to be dissolved and quotes a member of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, Bahaa al-Araji, stating, "The crisis of conficence in parliament has grown. I think we should admit the failure of the (political process), dissolve parliament and hold new elections."
Today, Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, the corpse of Husham Mijoud was discovered. AFP explains, "Underscoring the perils, the Young Journalists League said the body of an Iraqi journalist was found in Baghdad on Tuesday, two days after he disappeared after heading out shopping. According to League president Haider Hassoon, the body of Hisham Mijwit Hamdane, a 27-year-old married father of two, was found by police in the Bab al-Sheikh neighborhood of central Baghdad." The discovery comes as two CBS News employees remain missing (and unnamed). Deborah Haynes (Times of London) notes an ongoing hunt "for a British journalist and his Iraqi interpreter who were kidnapped at gunpoint from a hotel in Basra at the weekend. The two men, who were working for the American network CBS, were seized in the early hours of Sunday morning from the Qasr al-Sultan Hotel in the centre of the city by a gang of five to ten men." AFP explains, "Police on Tuesday threw a cordon around the Palace Sultan hotel in Basra, searching for clues and restricting movement in and out of the premises". Michael Howard (Guardian of London) takes the history route, noting, "If the accounts of the latest kidnapping in Basra are confirmed, it would be the first abduction of a western reporter in Iraq since Jill Carroll of the Christian Sciene Monitor was seized and her driver killed in western Baghdad in Janurary 2006. She was released two months later."
In other violence . . .
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing that wounded one police officer, a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 2 lives and wounded eight people a Diyala Province bombing that claimed the life of nine-year-old girl
Shootings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 2 girls and 1 boy were shot dead in an attack on a studen bus in Diyala Province with the driver and two boys also wounded while an armed clash in Mosul claimed the life of 1 police officer and seven unknown assailants and 2 police officers were shot down in separate incidents outside Basra. Reuters notes 'Awakening' Council member Ahmeda Mahmoud al-Nattah was targeted with an unsuccessful assassination attempt today outside Ramadi (two of his body guards were wounded).
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Baghdad and 13 in Diyala Province.
As noted yesterday, Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke are fighting for the truth in England. This is Great Britain's Socialist Worker's "Military Families challenge war in House of Lords:"
Two women whose sons were killed serving in Iraq took their case for a public inquiry into the legality of the war to the House of Lords on Monday of this week.
Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed by a roadside bomb in 2004, and Beverley Clarke, whose son David was killed in a 'friendly fire' incident in 2003, are asking the law lords to overturn a court of appeal judgement. This ruled that the government is not obliged to hold an inquiry into the deaths of the two soldiers. Rose and Beverly want an inquiry into government decisions in the run up to the invasion.
In particular they want to know why 13 pages of "equivocal" advice from the attorney general was reduced to one page that stated that the war would be legal.
Lawyers for Rose and Beverley argue that they should be granted an inquiry under Article 2 of the Europen Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life.
The case is being heard by nine law lords and a judgement is expected to take six months.
Just before she attended court on the first day of the hearing, Rose Gentle told Socialist Worker, "We want the right to have a public inquiry -- not just for us and our families, but for everyone. The whole world is watching what happenes.
"We are still not allowed to know the truth about the war. What does the government have to hide?"
Rose has campaigned tirelessly for justice for her son and for other victims of the war -- including the many thousands of Iraqis skilled.
She said, "We need to make sure the government can't get away with doing this again. I will be marching on 15 March to say we want all the troops back home."
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
Turning to US politics with a qualifier. Politics don't belong in the snapshot unless it has to do with Iraq. We are a feminist community and we will note attacks on women regardless of Iraq-related or not. At the request of the community, we're addressing the sexism one more time since it's being ignored by many in Little Media. On MSNBC, David Shuster raised the 'issue' of Hillary Clinton's daughter in an offensive, insulting and sexist manner. Democracy Now! refuses to report on it. Free Speech Radio News refuses to report. Smut Merchant Matthew Rothschild, so eager to link to the neocon bible The Weekly Standard and to do so with "RECOMMENDED" hasn't said a word. Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler) notes that Tapped (American Prospet) has stayed silent as well. That's not a surprise. They know who writes the pay checks and they know Robert Kuttner was lying hard on Democracy Now! last Friday when he claimed 'evil' Hillary has mandates in her health coverage and, as usual, Amy Goodman let him get away with that nonsense. It took Juan Gonzalez, citing Paul Krugman, to point out that Obama's plan also has mandates. Ooops. Called on, the idiot Kuttner offers a lot of nonsense rushing to this laughable conclusion, "Now, we can split hairs and argue whether Obama is being principled or tactical, but I think his discomvort with the ieda of a mandate is something that I applaud." In that laughable statement you can see how Little Media has repeatedly LIED and repeatedly DISGRACED themselves. Yes, Obama has mandates and Kuttner knew that before tearing into Hillary. Confronted on the reality, what happens? Obama's uncomfortable with them. That's good enough for Kuttner. Yes, Obama has mandates just like Hillary and if forced to acknowledge that, Kuttner will allow they exist but rush in to offer an excuse that attempts to create a difference where there is none. Or take, as Ava and I noted, Allan Nairn's ridiculous response when forced to admit that Obama's taking Big Bucks from Big Business: "He actually doesn't need to finance his campaign, to go to the hedge funds, to go to Wall Street. But he does anyway. And he does, I think, because if he doesn't, they wouldn't trust him [. . .] because he doesn't want to be attacked by those corporations." As Ava and I pointed out, "Nairn is (illogically and with no basis in reality) arguing that, yes, Obama does take big money but he only does so because, if he didn't, big money would attack him. It's a laughable 'theory' and a generous one -- one that's not extended to other candidates." But that's how it goes over and over. Kuttner thinks mandates are awful. Kuttner's forced to admit Obama's plan has them and offers that he feels they make Bambi uncomfortable. Nairn invents an excuse for why Bambi's taking huge monies from Big Business. This is how it plays out over and over.
Take Slate which features Guy Branum. For what reason? Because there are no journalistic standards. Guy Branum's infamous for a number of things. This includes being in the closet when everyone knew reality but that didn't prevent from writing a column on a 'date' with a man who won a contest (and that Branum had expected was a woman) where he made nasty little Crying Game jokes and presented himself as straight. He has issues. He has always had issues. His latest trash (no links to trash) is entitled "It's time for the press to scrutinize Chelsea" and Branum kind-of (not really) explains why he loathes Chelsea Clinton (without ever admitting that he loathes Chelsea). When he was in college (and still in the closet) and a football game was coming p, it was time for him to pen a column asking that his school "show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied carcass" and that she "must be destroyed." He can offer any excuse he wants but you don't write that about any individual going to another school on the eve of a campus match up. The smart thing to do would be to admit, a decade later, that you were in the wrong. Instead Branum's showing up to distort reality again. He's probably not lying, to make such a fool of yourself probably requires a level of sincerity. He says of his 1997 column today, "The comments made their way to Mrs. Clinton, who asked the Secret Service to search my apartment and quiet me down, according to Chris Van Holt, one of the nice agents who visited. The Clintons later denied any involvement, but I did manage to get the agent's claim otherwise on a tape recorder I had with me." Again, he's not lying, he's just delusional. What he has on tape is a Secret Service agent responding to his whines of "WHY!" and at one point the agent states that his boss told him and his boss said Hillary told him. Setting aside the fact that it sounds like the Secret Service agents are trying to humor a delusional paranoid, if Branum would think about it, all he actually has is a game of telephone. He has: 'We were told by and he was told by and . . .' Apparently journalism didn't sink in while he was in college because he has no source. (At best, he has a lead. A decade later, his lead has gone cold.)
He shows readers just how much he hates women -- should have been clear by the 1997 column on Chelsea -- by calling Elizabeth Edwards' a "primary attack dog." I guess b**tch was off limits because she has cancer? Here's the reality Branum can never face -- his column was out of bounds regardless of which college freshman he was going after. But Big Bad Guy didn't care. Well, no one cares that after you write a column that can be seen as threatening to the daughter of the then-president, the Secret Service came to visit you. That's to be expected when you encourage others to "show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied caracass" -- and no, Hillary didn't have to make any phone calls for such a visit to take place. (He does realize, right, that the Secret Service was on Chelsea's campus and that the tip-off to the San Jose office most likely came from those agents who would have, in fact, been doing their job.)
It helps Guy to believe that Hillary sicked the Secret Service on him because it allows him to avoid responsibility for his own actions. The same way looking at trannies and putting them down helps him feel like he's just a little gay and not really out there. (He's written of that, I'm not outing him on anything here.) Slate chooses to publish him when the only thing they should have done was encourage him to get help. Guy did something that required an investigation. An investigation by the Secret Service took place. It wasn't the end of the world. Ten year (and three months) later, you'd think the 28-year-old would be able to apologize to the 27-year-old (yes, Chelsea wasn't even an adult when Guy launched his attack on her). Instead he wants to offer up his nutso, watered-down. sort-of-almost Hinckley account and argue that the press is too kind to Chelsea. Crawl back under your rock, your basic cable rock.
Jesse Sheidlower (Slate) attempts to navigate the history of the term used. What Sheidlower doesn't grasp is that for the 'new' meaning to be used, there would be a workable substitute. "Pimp my ride" or "Pimp my car" can be seen as similar to your ride being "tricked out." Is that what David Shuster was suggesting on MSNBC, that Hillary had given Chelsea a makeover? No, that's not what Shuster was attempting to say. There's also where it was said. As Somerby points out, "As noted, the gentlemen at MSNBC have been piling up quite a track record lately . . . . In less than a year, three of the network's major male screamers have been forced to apologize for rude comments about women; one of the three has been fired, another has now been suspended. But then, Jack Welch's king of cable, Chris Matthews, has been gender-trashing Hillary Clinton for more than a year at this point." That would be the same MSNBC that Joan Walsh (Salon) was characterizing last week (before the remark was made by Shuster), "My frineds at MSNBC were getting ready for a big party Tuesday night when the first results came in, showing Barack Obama winning handily in Georgia. There was genuine news, and very good news in the results: Obama carried more than 40 percent of white Georgia voters . . . But it was really good news at MSNBC. You could see the expectations grow that finally they would be able to finish the dance on Clinton's grave they'd begun on Jan. 8, when she denied them the fun by winning New Hampshire." That is the climate in which Shuster made his comment. Somerby's dealing with what's being beamed across America, Walsh is talking about the behind-the-scenes mood. It does go into it. A comment wasn't just made, it was made on a network with a history and pattern of similar remarks.
Now a lot of older women who should know better write nonsense online (no names, we'll be kind) and fail to convey the importance of how Hillary's campaign is handled by the press. You don't have to be for, you don't have to like her. But you do need to grasp that she is now the template for media coverage. And what's done to her will be done to women who come later. Then the excuse will be, "What's your problem? That's how we covered the first female candidate for president that was seen as viable." So if sexism is okay with you for all women, by all means, go ahead and pile on. If that's how PATHETIC you are, pile on. But the reality is what is accepted from the press right now will be used on all other women with the defense that, "Well that's how we covered Hillary." A lot of damage is being done currently and it makes some fools gleeful (fools and half-wits) because it's Hillary in the cross-hairs. That's not what feminism's about. And think about how Uncle Tom Laura Flanders could call out the press coverage of Condi Rice but doesn't have a thing to say today (other than ga-ga-ga-goo-goo-Bambi). It's pathetic. And we do have a responsibility not to make things worse for those who come after. (We should be responsible for a great deal more than that but hopefully even half-wits like Laura Flanders can agree that we have a responsibility not to make things worse for those come after.) If the coverage of women doesn't matter, why did Flanders waste our time talking about and writing about the way the press responded to Condi Rice? It does matter. And if it's not called out, it makes things worse for every woman that comes after.
Equally true is who is fueling this. It's not the right-wing. They're focused on their own primary. It's the left and 'left' that's fueling it and they've done it over at The Nation, The Progressive, Democracy Now!, etc. There's nothing wrong with holding Hillary accountable. And it doesn't just have to be for her record. People should speak in their own voices with their own type of criticism. But that's not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is Hillary is held to standards and Obama's not to held to any. And that's come from the alleged 'independent' media. Sombery often refers back to the damage The Nation, in particular, did to Al Gore. It would probably be helpful for him to show his readers what they're doing to Hillary currently, what they've been doing. Show it as it happens in real time, not after the election's over. For how Amy Goodman skews the race, you can see Rebecca's post from last night. And let me echo what Elaine wrote about the closeted last night. It is amazing to see a Communist or Socialist or Green self-present as a Democratic in their endorsement columns of Bambi. It's amazing and it's a lie. Day after day, they pop up, people who never even could endorse John Kerry during the ABB mood of 2004 but there are a number of behind the scenes deals taking place. And we've got a lot of non-Democratic Party types making endorsements which isn't really a good idea. If you're building your endorsement around "I'm just like you" then you better be honest about who you are or else you're begging for voters to make the connection that frauds and phonies hope on the Bambi train. (You're also begging for someone to go digging in your own backyard.) SusanUnPC (No Quarter) documents what the right-wing is doing with a Che flag hung at an Obama campaign office. You better believe closeted types offering endorsements are creating a future problem for his campaign. (As one political reporter at a daily paper put it yesterday, "Oh look, another Red for Obama.") There is no reason for anyone to hide in this day and age. Grace Lee Boggs is a radical and doesn't hide that. Her endorsement doesn't hurt. But, for instance, when you're a Socialist and you pen a "I'm a feminist for Barack Obama" column, you're not only being laughed at the mainstream media, you're creating a future problem should Obama get the nomination. That's not when this stuff needs to come out. If you're in the closet politically and you favor Obama, you're not doing him any favors by endorsing him publicly. [To be clear, Obama is just another corporate Democrat. He is not in the closet politically. He is not the issue, the issue is supporters creating an embarrassment if you're in the closet politically.] (Again, Grace Lee Boggs is not a problem. She's not in any closet. Others can't say the same.) By the same token, Obama needs to worry less about Hillary's tax returns and a little more about Antoin "Tony" Rezko (and the Landmark commission which will be big news in a general election). Pressed yesterday, Alex Koppelman (Salon) writes, Hillary responded stating if she got the nomination, she'd release them and noting Obama's ties to the nuclear industry as well as, "We still don't have a lot of answers about Senator Obama and his dealings with Mr. Rezko." As Wally, Cedric and Mike noted yesterday, David Roeder (Chicago Sun-Times) reported Sunday that the FBI's "mole" (John Thomas) on the Rezko investigation reportedly "logged frequent visits to Rezko from Gov. Glagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) . . . Sources said Thomas helped investigators build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru's Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005."
Joe Wilson used to a topic of 'independent' media and it often that the only time Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders, et al could shut about him was if they were speaking with him for their programs. Wilson endorsed Hillary in December. Suddenly the name Joe Wilson appears 'banned' by Little Media. In today's Baltimore Sun, he writes:
Sen. Hillary Clinton is one of the few who fully understood the stakes in that battle. Time and again, she reached out to my wife - outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson - and me to remind us that as painful as the attacks were, we simply could not allow ourselves to be driven from the public square by bullying. Mrs. Clinton knew from experience, having spent the better part of the past 20 years fighting the Republican attack machine. She is a fighter.
But will Mr. Obama fight? His brief time on the national scene gives little comfort. Consider a February 2006 exchange of letters with Mr. McCain on the subject of ethics reform. The wrathful Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of being "disingenuous," to which Mr. Obama meekly replied, "The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you."
Mr. McCain was insultingly dismissive but successful in intimidating his inexperienced colleague. Thus, in his one known face-to-face encounter with Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama failed to stand his ground.
Again, once upon a Little Media couldn't shut up about Joe Wilson. Somerby notes Paul Krugman's blog where he explains, "Folks you've been played like a fiddle by people in the media who just plain hate the Clintons." That says a great deal. For more you can read his Monday New York Times column.
he did so by endorsing obama.
he shows his ass in 2 ways.
1st off, i have never based my vote for any candidate on their spouse.
i have never said, 'oh ___ has a strong wife/husband, i like __!'
why?
because the spouse doesn't get into office. the spouse does not make the decision.
as trina has noted, the republican wives of presidents love to say nice pro or semi-pro choice statements. who gives a damn? barbara bush, nancy reagan, etc. aren't appointing supreme court judges. it's nonsense.
so when dave lindorff says obama's a chance for progressive change (as he does today), he needs to base that on the candidate, the person who will be the office holder.
instead, like a total ass, he bases it on the 'movement' (there is no movement, only republicans, communists, socialists and greens passing themselves off as 'independents') behind obama. some 1 tell dave that president of the united states is 1 person job and not only will the 'movement' not be going to d.c., they won't be in the oval office.
the 2nd way he shows his ass-ness is by endorsing obama's campaign (though not obama himself) to begin with.
as c.i. likes to say, 'i'm sorry, did i drop acid over the weekend?' for those who have forgotten (or maybe did drop acid over the weekend), in september of 2007, dave lindorff was having his quit the democratic party.
dave lindorff, you ass. i plugged that here. i not only plugged it, i took it seriously. on super duper tuesday, i voted for cynthia mckinney and i might not have changed my party registration were it not for the right-on effort by lindorff.
now here's lindorff getting all frothy over corporatists obama and the nut jobs behind obama.
he made a real ass of himself.
that's from some 1 who was happy to highlight him and always read him.
i can't believe the same person who ran the campaign for us to quit the democratic party is now kissing democratic corporatist ass.
maybe dave's forgotten these words he wrote:
I'm talking about mass resignations from the Democratic Party, with every person who resigns and becomes an independent or who changes their registration to a third party sending a message to the DNC explaining why he or she is quitting.
maybe he's forgotten his praise for cythia mckinney in that column?
again, i voted for cynthia. i'm not now kissing bambi's ass.
i have no idea why dave lindorff is.
maybe he dropped acid over the weekend.
but the reality is that the faux 'movement' will not be elected.
at best, people are going to be disillusioned. the way that works is we get 2 years of being trashed and destroyed at which point some minor criticism pops up in the nation and other of the garbage magazine. by the start of year 4, we're ticked off. then come the soothsayers to get us all back on board for the coming election.
so i find it disgusting what dave lindorff's done. i find it really, really disgusting.
steer people to cynthia mckinney - a real progressive.
don't carry bambi's water for him. each time some 1 does that it makes it all the harder for him to be called out with his 1st sell-out (which usually comes in the 1st 30 days).
sorry dave, i'm not stuck on stupid.
1 more thing, impeachment is an issue with dave lindorff. mckinney supports impeachment. bambi? he hasn't said a word publicly.
so why lindorff is endorsing the non-existent movement is any 1's guess.
i say he either dropped acid or just had a need to show his ass today.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Tuesday, February 12, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the Iraqi Parliament may split up, one journalist turns up dead the two from CBS News remain missing, and more.
Starting with war resisters. Linchpin's "US AWOL's in Canada -- Let them stay" (Anarkismo) provides the background on war resisters in Canada:
Hear any of the Toronto based war resisters speak at a public meeting and patterns become clear in their experiences. Kim Rivera, a red head in her early twenties, served in an Artillery unit in Baghdad, that shipped out first in August 2006. Tales of gore, IED's and guts quickly changed her mind about the mission. The dehumanisation of Iraqi workers forced to etch out employment inside forward operation bases added to it.Another of the Toronto based war resisters is Phil McDowell. He joined straight after the September 11th attacks during his senior year majoring in IT. He was discharged in June 2006, some months later while traveling, he got notice he was being stop lossed back to Fort Hood, Texas for yet another deployment to Iraq.The Stop Loss policy is designed to offset the ebb and flow of recruiting patterns. It allows the military to forcibly re-enlist soldiers or involuntarily extend their tour of duty in a war zone -- it's a virulent source of antagonism for soldiers.
Canada's Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals on the issue of safe harbor status and the country's Parliament remains the best hope for safe harbor war resisters may have. You can make your voice heard by the Canadian parliament which has the ability to pass legislation to grant war resisters the right to remain in Canada. Three e-mails addresses to focus on are: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration. A few more can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
Meanwhile IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC action:
In 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.
Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam. They called it the Winter Soldier investigation, after Thomas Paine's famous admonishing of the "summer soldier" who shirks his duty during difficult times. In a time of war and lies, the veterans who gathered in Detroit knew it was their duty to tell the truth.
Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into increasingly bloody occupations. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming "a few bad apples" instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.
In March of 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in our nation's capital to break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for these wars. We hope you'll join us, because yours is a story that every American needs to hear.
Click here to sign a statement of support for Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 13th through 16th are the dates for the Winter Soldier Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Dee Knight (Workers World) notes, "IVAW wants as many people as possible to attend the event. It is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand. 'We have been inspired by the tremendous support the movement has shown us,' IVAW says. 'We believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members'." As part of their fundraising efforts for the event, they are holding houseparties and a recent one in Boston featured both IVAW's Liam Madden and the incomprable Howard Zinn as speakers.
As Steve Lannon (McClatchy Newspapers) explains today, "Violence is increasing In Iraq . . . Car bombs in Baghdad on Monday killed at least 11 people and injured a prominent leader of one of the country's most influential American-allied tribal militias. The Ministry of Electricity announced that power to much of the nations, already anemic, is likely to lag in coming days because insurgents had blown up transmission facilities and natural gas pipelines that fuel generators." And on the 12th day of the month, there have been 16 US service members announced dead thus far this month. The stated purpose of the escalation, stated by the White House, was to allow 'breathing space' for the puppet government in Baghdad to reach benchmarks -- those would be benchmarks that they failed to reach in 2007, White House defined benchmarks. US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who earlier was seen as in a battle with other members of the cabinet over his insistence that the drawdown start and proceed smoothly so that the approximately 30,000 US troops sent over to Iraq as part of the escaltion return as they were supposed to, has now declared that a 'pause' can be taken in the drawdown -- indicating that he either had a mysterious change of heart or he is not calling the shots for the department he heads. Thom Shanker (New York Times) observes that Gates' turnabout "was something of a surprise," that he was once "seen as a potential counterpoint to General Petraeus's calls for caution about withdrawing troops" and notes Gates previous public statements about the drawdown (which he then favored). Anna Mulrine (US News and World Reports) opines, "Gates's statement yesterday make it clear that the pause will likely last for some months and become the operative word in Iraq -- and it may become as overused as the now-familiar term surge." This as Richard Cowan (Reuters) reveals Gordon England, the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, informed the Senate Budget Committee today that in addition to the $70 billion planned for funding the illegal war in 2009, the White House will be asking "Congress for more money".
AFP addresses the realities of what's been accomplished during the escalation (nothing): "The reconciliation program was supposed to hang on three main pieces of legislation: a relaxation of the law to bar former Baathists from public office, a provincial election law and a law to distribute oil revenue. Of the three, only one has been passed." That would be the de-de-Baathification program. At the start of the month, Amit R. Paley and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) reported on the passage/approval of that law while Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported on the criticism coming from CIA asset and Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi that the result of passage would be "all former Baathists now serving in the security services would lose their jobs, a total of 7,000 people" and, of the Iraqi Parliament, "People should pay attention to what they are discussing and voting on." One of three and the one is a nightmare (as all will no doubt be -- illegal occupations do not make for pleasant dreams). Working from agency reports, The Daily Star reports Mahmoud al-Mashhadani, the Iraqi Parliament's Speaker of the House, revealed that the country's treasury had thrown away $3 million by still not approving the 2008 budget and "threatened Tuesday to disband the legislature" which is permitted by the Constitution provided the move has the support of at least a third of the Parliamentay members (which he says it does) and this action "would further undermine Premier Nuri al-Maliki's shaky government, which is currently limping along with nearly half of the 40 government departments without ministers." Ahmed Rasheed (Reuters) maintains that an "absolute majority" of Parliament must favor dissolution for the body to be dissolved and quotes a member of Moqtada al-Sadr's bloc, Bahaa al-Araji, stating, "The crisis of conficence in parliament has grown. I think we should admit the failure of the (political process), dissolve parliament and hold new elections."
Today, Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, the corpse of Husham Mijoud was discovered. AFP explains, "Underscoring the perils, the Young Journalists League said the body of an Iraqi journalist was found in Baghdad on Tuesday, two days after he disappeared after heading out shopping. According to League president Haider Hassoon, the body of Hisham Mijwit Hamdane, a 27-year-old married father of two, was found by police in the Bab al-Sheikh neighborhood of central Baghdad." The discovery comes as two CBS News employees remain missing (and unnamed). Deborah Haynes (Times of London) notes an ongoing hunt "for a British journalist and his Iraqi interpreter who were kidnapped at gunpoint from a hotel in Basra at the weekend. The two men, who were working for the American network CBS, were seized in the early hours of Sunday morning from the Qasr al-Sultan Hotel in the centre of the city by a gang of five to ten men." AFP explains, "Police on Tuesday threw a cordon around the Palace Sultan hotel in Basra, searching for clues and restricting movement in and out of the premises". Michael Howard (Guardian of London) takes the history route, noting, "If the accounts of the latest kidnapping in Basra are confirmed, it would be the first abduction of a western reporter in Iraq since Jill Carroll of the Christian Sciene Monitor was seized and her driver killed in western Baghdad in Janurary 2006. She was released two months later."
In other violence . . .
Bombings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad roadside bombing that wounded one police officer, a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 2 lives and wounded eight people a Diyala Province bombing that claimed the life of nine-year-old girl
Shootings?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 2 girls and 1 boy were shot dead in an attack on a studen bus in Diyala Province with the driver and two boys also wounded while an armed clash in Mosul claimed the life of 1 police officer and seven unknown assailants and 2 police officers were shot down in separate incidents outside Basra. Reuters notes 'Awakening' Council member Ahmeda Mahmoud al-Nattah was targeted with an unsuccessful assassination attempt today outside Ramadi (two of his body guards were wounded).
Corpses?
Hussein Kadhim (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Baghdad and 13 in Diyala Province.
As noted yesterday, Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke are fighting for the truth in England. This is Great Britain's Socialist Worker's "Military Families challenge war in House of Lords:"
Two women whose sons were killed serving in Iraq took their case for a public inquiry into the legality of the war to the House of Lords on Monday of this week.
Rose Gentle, whose son Gordon was killed by a roadside bomb in 2004, and Beverley Clarke, whose son David was killed in a 'friendly fire' incident in 2003, are asking the law lords to overturn a court of appeal judgement. This ruled that the government is not obliged to hold an inquiry into the deaths of the two soldiers. Rose and Beverly want an inquiry into government decisions in the run up to the invasion.
In particular they want to know why 13 pages of "equivocal" advice from the attorney general was reduced to one page that stated that the war would be legal.
Lawyers for Rose and Beverley argue that they should be granted an inquiry under Article 2 of the Europen Convention on Human Rights, which protects the right to life.
The case is being heard by nine law lords and a judgement is expected to take six months.
Just before she attended court on the first day of the hearing, Rose Gentle told Socialist Worker, "We want the right to have a public inquiry -- not just for us and our families, but for everyone. The whole world is watching what happenes.
"We are still not allowed to know the truth about the war. What does the government have to hide?"
Rose has campaigned tirelessly for justice for her son and for other victims of the war -- including the many thousands of Iraqis skilled.
She said, "We need to make sure the government can't get away with doing this again. I will be marching on 15 March to say we want all the troops back home."
© Copyright Socialist Worker (unless otherwise stated). You may republish if you include an active link to the original and leave this notice in place.
Turning to US politics with a qualifier. Politics don't belong in the snapshot unless it has to do with Iraq. We are a feminist community and we will note attacks on women regardless of Iraq-related or not. At the request of the community, we're addressing the sexism one more time since it's being ignored by many in Little Media. On MSNBC, David Shuster raised the 'issue' of Hillary Clinton's daughter in an offensive, insulting and sexist manner. Democracy Now! refuses to report on it. Free Speech Radio News refuses to report. Smut Merchant Matthew Rothschild, so eager to link to the neocon bible The Weekly Standard and to do so with "RECOMMENDED" hasn't said a word. Bob Somerby (The Daily Howler) notes that Tapped (American Prospet) has stayed silent as well. That's not a surprise. They know who writes the pay checks and they know Robert Kuttner was lying hard on Democracy Now! last Friday when he claimed 'evil' Hillary has mandates in her health coverage and, as usual, Amy Goodman let him get away with that nonsense. It took Juan Gonzalez, citing Paul Krugman, to point out that Obama's plan also has mandates. Ooops. Called on, the idiot Kuttner offers a lot of nonsense rushing to this laughable conclusion, "Now, we can split hairs and argue whether Obama is being principled or tactical, but I think his discomvort with the ieda of a mandate is something that I applaud." In that laughable statement you can see how Little Media has repeatedly LIED and repeatedly DISGRACED themselves. Yes, Obama has mandates and Kuttner knew that before tearing into Hillary. Confronted on the reality, what happens? Obama's uncomfortable with them. That's good enough for Kuttner. Yes, Obama has mandates just like Hillary and if forced to acknowledge that, Kuttner will allow they exist but rush in to offer an excuse that attempts to create a difference where there is none. Or take, as Ava and I noted, Allan Nairn's ridiculous response when forced to admit that Obama's taking Big Bucks from Big Business: "He actually doesn't need to finance his campaign, to go to the hedge funds, to go to Wall Street. But he does anyway. And he does, I think, because if he doesn't, they wouldn't trust him [. . .] because he doesn't want to be attacked by those corporations." As Ava and I pointed out, "Nairn is (illogically and with no basis in reality) arguing that, yes, Obama does take big money but he only does so because, if he didn't, big money would attack him. It's a laughable 'theory' and a generous one -- one that's not extended to other candidates." But that's how it goes over and over. Kuttner thinks mandates are awful. Kuttner's forced to admit Obama's plan has them and offers that he feels they make Bambi uncomfortable. Nairn invents an excuse for why Bambi's taking huge monies from Big Business. This is how it plays out over and over.
Take Slate which features Guy Branum. For what reason? Because there are no journalistic standards. Guy Branum's infamous for a number of things. This includes being in the closet when everyone knew reality but that didn't prevent from writing a column on a 'date' with a man who won a contest (and that Branum had expected was a woman) where he made nasty little Crying Game jokes and presented himself as straight. He has issues. He has always had issues. His latest trash (no links to trash) is entitled "It's time for the press to scrutinize Chelsea" and Branum kind-of (not really) explains why he loathes Chelsea Clinton (without ever admitting that he loathes Chelsea). When he was in college (and still in the closet) and a football game was coming p, it was time for him to pen a column asking that his school "show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied carcass" and that she "must be destroyed." He can offer any excuse he wants but you don't write that about any individual going to another school on the eve of a campus match up. The smart thing to do would be to admit, a decade later, that you were in the wrong. Instead Branum's showing up to distort reality again. He's probably not lying, to make such a fool of yourself probably requires a level of sincerity. He says of his 1997 column today, "The comments made their way to Mrs. Clinton, who asked the Secret Service to search my apartment and quiet me down, according to Chris Van Holt, one of the nice agents who visited. The Clintons later denied any involvement, but I did manage to get the agent's claim otherwise on a tape recorder I had with me." Again, he's not lying, he's just delusional. What he has on tape is a Secret Service agent responding to his whines of "WHY!" and at one point the agent states that his boss told him and his boss said Hillary told him. Setting aside the fact that it sounds like the Secret Service agents are trying to humor a delusional paranoid, if Branum would think about it, all he actually has is a game of telephone. He has: 'We were told by and he was told by and . . .' Apparently journalism didn't sink in while he was in college because he has no source. (At best, he has a lead. A decade later, his lead has gone cold.)
He shows readers just how much he hates women -- should have been clear by the 1997 column on Chelsea -- by calling Elizabeth Edwards' a "primary attack dog." I guess b**tch was off limits because she has cancer? Here's the reality Branum can never face -- his column was out of bounds regardless of which college freshman he was going after. But Big Bad Guy didn't care. Well, no one cares that after you write a column that can be seen as threatening to the daughter of the then-president, the Secret Service came to visit you. That's to be expected when you encourage others to "show your spirit on Chelsea's bloodied caracass" -- and no, Hillary didn't have to make any phone calls for such a visit to take place. (He does realize, right, that the Secret Service was on Chelsea's campus and that the tip-off to the San Jose office most likely came from those agents who would have, in fact, been doing their job.)
It helps Guy to believe that Hillary sicked the Secret Service on him because it allows him to avoid responsibility for his own actions. The same way looking at trannies and putting them down helps him feel like he's just a little gay and not really out there. (He's written of that, I'm not outing him on anything here.) Slate chooses to publish him when the only thing they should have done was encourage him to get help. Guy did something that required an investigation. An investigation by the Secret Service took place. It wasn't the end of the world. Ten year (and three months) later, you'd think the 28-year-old would be able to apologize to the 27-year-old (yes, Chelsea wasn't even an adult when Guy launched his attack on her). Instead he wants to offer up his nutso, watered-down. sort-of-almost Hinckley account and argue that the press is too kind to Chelsea. Crawl back under your rock, your basic cable rock.
Jesse Sheidlower (Slate) attempts to navigate the history of the term used. What Sheidlower doesn't grasp is that for the 'new' meaning to be used, there would be a workable substitute. "Pimp my ride" or "Pimp my car" can be seen as similar to your ride being "tricked out." Is that what David Shuster was suggesting on MSNBC, that Hillary had given Chelsea a makeover? No, that's not what Shuster was attempting to say. There's also where it was said. As Somerby points out, "As noted, the gentlemen at MSNBC have been piling up quite a track record lately . . . . In less than a year, three of the network's major male screamers have been forced to apologize for rude comments about women; one of the three has been fired, another has now been suspended. But then, Jack Welch's king of cable, Chris Matthews, has been gender-trashing Hillary Clinton for more than a year at this point." That would be the same MSNBC that Joan Walsh (Salon) was characterizing last week (before the remark was made by Shuster), "My frineds at MSNBC were getting ready for a big party Tuesday night when the first results came in, showing Barack Obama winning handily in Georgia. There was genuine news, and very good news in the results: Obama carried more than 40 percent of white Georgia voters . . . But it was really good news at MSNBC. You could see the expectations grow that finally they would be able to finish the dance on Clinton's grave they'd begun on Jan. 8, when she denied them the fun by winning New Hampshire." That is the climate in which Shuster made his comment. Somerby's dealing with what's being beamed across America, Walsh is talking about the behind-the-scenes mood. It does go into it. A comment wasn't just made, it was made on a network with a history and pattern of similar remarks.
Now a lot of older women who should know better write nonsense online (no names, we'll be kind) and fail to convey the importance of how Hillary's campaign is handled by the press. You don't have to be for, you don't have to like her. But you do need to grasp that she is now the template for media coverage. And what's done to her will be done to women who come later. Then the excuse will be, "What's your problem? That's how we covered the first female candidate for president that was seen as viable." So if sexism is okay with you for all women, by all means, go ahead and pile on. If that's how PATHETIC you are, pile on. But the reality is what is accepted from the press right now will be used on all other women with the defense that, "Well that's how we covered Hillary." A lot of damage is being done currently and it makes some fools gleeful (fools and half-wits) because it's Hillary in the cross-hairs. That's not what feminism's about. And think about how Uncle Tom Laura Flanders could call out the press coverage of Condi Rice but doesn't have a thing to say today (other than ga-ga-ga-goo-goo-Bambi). It's pathetic. And we do have a responsibility not to make things worse for those who come after. (We should be responsible for a great deal more than that but hopefully even half-wits like Laura Flanders can agree that we have a responsibility not to make things worse for those come after.) If the coverage of women doesn't matter, why did Flanders waste our time talking about and writing about the way the press responded to Condi Rice? It does matter. And if it's not called out, it makes things worse for every woman that comes after.
Equally true is who is fueling this. It's not the right-wing. They're focused on their own primary. It's the left and 'left' that's fueling it and they've done it over at The Nation, The Progressive, Democracy Now!, etc. There's nothing wrong with holding Hillary accountable. And it doesn't just have to be for her record. People should speak in their own voices with their own type of criticism. But that's not what we're seeing. What we're seeing is Hillary is held to standards and Obama's not to held to any. And that's come from the alleged 'independent' media. Sombery often refers back to the damage The Nation, in particular, did to Al Gore. It would probably be helpful for him to show his readers what they're doing to Hillary currently, what they've been doing. Show it as it happens in real time, not after the election's over. For how Amy Goodman skews the race, you can see Rebecca's post from last night. And let me echo what Elaine wrote about the closeted last night. It is amazing to see a Communist or Socialist or Green self-present as a Democratic in their endorsement columns of Bambi. It's amazing and it's a lie. Day after day, they pop up, people who never even could endorse John Kerry during the ABB mood of 2004 but there are a number of behind the scenes deals taking place. And we've got a lot of non-Democratic Party types making endorsements which isn't really a good idea. If you're building your endorsement around "I'm just like you" then you better be honest about who you are or else you're begging for voters to make the connection that frauds and phonies hope on the Bambi train. (You're also begging for someone to go digging in your own backyard.) SusanUnPC (No Quarter) documents what the right-wing is doing with a Che flag hung at an Obama campaign office. You better believe closeted types offering endorsements are creating a future problem for his campaign. (As one political reporter at a daily paper put it yesterday, "Oh look, another Red for Obama.") There is no reason for anyone to hide in this day and age. Grace Lee Boggs is a radical and doesn't hide that. Her endorsement doesn't hurt. But, for instance, when you're a Socialist and you pen a "I'm a feminist for Barack Obama" column, you're not only being laughed at the mainstream media, you're creating a future problem should Obama get the nomination. That's not when this stuff needs to come out. If you're in the closet politically and you favor Obama, you're not doing him any favors by endorsing him publicly. [To be clear, Obama is just another corporate Democrat. He is not in the closet politically. He is not the issue, the issue is supporters creating an embarrassment if you're in the closet politically.] (Again, Grace Lee Boggs is not a problem. She's not in any closet. Others can't say the same.) By the same token, Obama needs to worry less about Hillary's tax returns and a little more about Antoin "Tony" Rezko (and the Landmark commission which will be big news in a general election). Pressed yesterday, Alex Koppelman (Salon) writes, Hillary responded stating if she got the nomination, she'd release them and noting Obama's ties to the nuclear industry as well as, "We still don't have a lot of answers about Senator Obama and his dealings with Mr. Rezko." As Wally, Cedric and Mike noted yesterday, David Roeder (Chicago Sun-Times) reported Sunday that the FBI's "mole" (John Thomas) on the Rezko investigation reportedly "logged frequent visits to Rezko from Gov. Glagojevich and U.S. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill) . . . Sources said Thomas helped investigators build a record of repeat visits to the old offices of Rezko and former business partner Daniel Mahru's Rezmar Corp., at 853 N. Elston, by Blagojevich and Obama during 2004 and 2005."
Joe Wilson used to a topic of 'independent' media and it often that the only time Amy Goodman, Laura Flanders, et al could shut about him was if they were speaking with him for their programs. Wilson endorsed Hillary in December. Suddenly the name Joe Wilson appears 'banned' by Little Media. In today's Baltimore Sun, he writes:
Sen. Hillary Clinton is one of the few who fully understood the stakes in that battle. Time and again, she reached out to my wife - outed CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson - and me to remind us that as painful as the attacks were, we simply could not allow ourselves to be driven from the public square by bullying. Mrs. Clinton knew from experience, having spent the better part of the past 20 years fighting the Republican attack machine. She is a fighter.
But will Mr. Obama fight? His brief time on the national scene gives little comfort. Consider a February 2006 exchange of letters with Mr. McCain on the subject of ethics reform. The wrathful Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of being "disingenuous," to which Mr. Obama meekly replied, "The fact that you have now questioned my sincerity and my desire to put aside politics for the public interest is regrettable but does not in any way diminish my deep respect for you."
Mr. McCain was insultingly dismissive but successful in intimidating his inexperienced colleague. Thus, in his one known face-to-face encounter with Mr. McCain, Mr. Obama failed to stand his ground.
Again, once upon a Little Media couldn't shut up about Joe Wilson. Somerby notes Paul Krugman's blog where he explains, "Folks you've been played like a fiddle by people in the media who just plain hate the Clintons." That says a great deal. For more you can read his Monday New York Times column.
2/11/2008
amy goodman's not so little bias
this isn't really the 3rd part but we're staying on the topic we visited twice last week.
an idiot wrote into ms. magazine (as i noted last week) to whine that poor amy goodman of democracy now hadn't been profiled by ms. as i noted then, a woman who chooses to publish in larry flynt's hustler doesn't belong in ms. a woman who turns over an hour to larry flynt on her program and lets him praise his trashy magazine doesn't belong in ms.
but if you doubted that, stick around.
this is from the feminist wire, 'MSNBC Suspends David Shuster over Chelsea Clinton Comments:'
MSNBC anchor David Shuster was suspended from the network last week following his offensive comments about Chelsea Clinton's work for her mother’s candidacy. While guest hosting on "Tucker," Shuster remarked that Chelsea's efforts to support her mother were unseemly and that it was like she is being "pimped out" by the campaign.
Shuster has been suspended from all NBC network appearances other than to issue his apology. He also apologized to the Clinton family. NBC News President Steve Campus said in a statement: "David Shuster... made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate...NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks."
"I am a mom first and a candidate second and I found the remarks incredibly offensive," said Senator Clinton said at a news conference over the weekend, reports Reuters. "I have sent a letter to the head of NBC expressing the deep offense that I took." Senator Clinton did not say whether or not she would participate in the debate scheduled for February 26th on MSNBC. Take Action to tell network presidents that sexist comments like Shuster's are not acceptable.
friday, i noted this topic via an e-mail. that went out late friday. we toyed with writing about it at 3rd this weekend but (a) we were short on time (and had to kill a green party feature) and (b) we assumed it would be covered at length come monday.
c.i. includes the entire brief in the snapshot. like c.i., i generally don't do that. i pull a few sentences when i quote from feminist wire daily, provide the link and hope people interested will check it out. but this is too important to take that risk. (my apologies to the feminist wire - if you use the link, there are many more briefs on important news you may not have heard about.)
a friend in charge of an npr station broadcasting democracy now, a friend of c.i.'s, is now tracking that show. that's a direct result of ava and c.i.'s 'TV: Democracy Sometimes?'. as they note, they spoke to friends at npr about the ethics guidelines. for those who haven't read it, melissa harris-lacewell was presented as a professor who was just a professor, 1 who apparently hadn't made up her mind. she had a student project where she was taking students around to campaign for the candidates of their choice. she seemed objective. she did manage to plug a speech by barack obama, to praise it through the roof. she had no comments on hillary.
then, 1 week later, she's back on the show and it turns out she's campaigning for obama. she's always been campaigning for bambi. and amy goodman knew that before she brought melissa harris-lacewell on the program the 1st time. amy goodman knew that and didn't tell viewers and listeners even when melissa harris-lacewell was praising a speech bambi gave. of course she'd praise it, she's with the campaign (as she admits on her 2nd appearance where she tries to rip gloria steinem to pieces). if amy goodman had just known that melissa planned to vote for obama, that would have been a breach of ethics and a huge no-no on npr. but melissa is with the campaign, as she admitted in her 2nd appearance (bragged, actually). amy goodman knew that. she brought on some 1 from a politician's campaign, she knew all about that, and let the person praise the candidate without ever noting that 'melissa harris-lacewell is with the obama campaign.'
that gets you fired. that's not a suspension, it's a firing. c.i. and ava discussed this with friends at npr - some npr stations carry democracy now - and they were told that if it were an npr program, amy goodman would have been fired. she broke every rule of journalism ethics on that 1 guest. she wouldn't have a job. she wouldn't be able to whine or beg for it. she'd be out the door. but it's not an npr program and npr doesn't distribute it.
so c.i. called some friends who manage npr stations to find out their stance. the friend in question didn't really get it on the phone. he was making jokes and taking it lighlty (and according to ava, pissing c.i. off). when 'TV: Democracy Sometimes?' went up, he read it because the thing got e-mailed to his station by different members or pledgers or whatever npr calls their volunteer subscribers.
reading it, he got it. reading it, he understood that it wasn't a joke, that amy goodman had just trashed her journalism career and credentials. that is what she did.
she can not let any 1 from a campaign come on and praise their own candidate without telling people that the person is with a campaign. even if they don't praise their candidate, if she knows they are with a political campaign, she is required to disclose it to her audience. not to do so is HUGE.
so he read it and called c.i. (who responded, according to ava, 'i didn't send the damn thing to you' - c.i. was still pissed). the guy apologized and said it was late when c.i. called and he was tired and didn't get what c.i. was talking about. he said reading it, he got it.
he is now monitoring the show. and the show's in serious danger of being pulled. that's amy goodman's own fault. if more complaints come in from listeners, it's gone. (i believe there's a contract or some formal agreement and that what's planned if this continues is that it will be dropped when that comes to an end. that may not be correct, it may be dropped sooner.) he's also sharing it with other npr stations that carry the program.
c.i. didn't catch democracy now now today. (i'm sure if you asked, you'd get c.i.'s 'life's too short' for crap answer.) that's near the end of the snapshot (the feminist wire daily item) and, if you pay attention, it doesn't really fit with other things before it or after. that's because c.i. had dictated the snapshot already. c.i. returned the call from npr guy and npr guy told him what had happened.
what happened was amy goodman didn't include the news on democracy now today. she had time for 2 items on bambi and 1 on hillary. the npr guy told c.i. (according to ava) that the 1 item on hillary was the non-story about 1 person in her campaign stepping down from a post. that's horse race nonsense, it's not news.
now i use the word 'pimped.' we all do. (at our sites.) but search them for any time when we've accused a parent of pimping their child?
that's what the issue is. when you're accusing a parent of pimping their child, you're no longer using it in the way that's popular today. you're using it in a very derogatory manner. it was offensive.
it was said on air. it was said on air and msnbc suspended the man who said it.
either of those two things alone makes it news. if you're amy goodman who allegedly holds the msm accountable, it's got to be news for you. but somehow amy goodman couldn't find the time for that, not even in headlines.
she could find time to make it look like hillary's campaign was in trouble. she could find the time for 2 items on bambi. she just couldn't find time for that.
what was said on msnbc was sexist. it was appalling. it was offensive.
it's not said on msnbc about male candidates for president.
it was out of bounds.
where was laura flanders, by the way? this is the woman who said the press needed to stop writing about condi rice's wardrobe. but she loves obama and she's not going to write any story that might require her to be sympathetic to hillary.
same with amy goodman.
when c.i. was informed by npr guy that this very big media story didn't even make it into headlines, that's when c.i. said 'i'm calling you back' and stopped the snapshot from going up. c.i. added that item then.
now for the deluded fool whining to ms. magazine that poor little larry flynt roll dog amy goodman hasn't been profiled by ms., i have a question: do you think the pimped remark was offensive, do you think it was news that msnbc supsended the man who said it?
if you're reading ms., i would assume you do think that.
but amy goodman didn't include it.
she slants the entire program against hillary and has done that repeatedly. but on this topic, on this news, i think even amy's staunchest defenders have to agree it should have been included.
the fact that it wasn't goes to her long pattern of devaluing women. and, no, she doesn't belong in any issue of ms. magazine.
a vagina doesn't make you a feminist. amy goodman is not a feminist. she doesn't need to be interviewed by a feminist publication. she does need to be called out by 1.
she's not practicing journalism. she can give her b.s. speech about how the mainstream's doing 'advocacy' journalism just like she is, but notice who she suddenly no longer books. some 1 comes out as a hillary supporter and they're no longer on democracy now (though dolores huerta was on, she was matched up against 2 obama supporters and ripped apart the same way gloria steinem was ripped apart). paul krugman, joe wilson, larry johnson, go down the list. all these people who are regular guests on the program and suddenly they're not on anymore.
let's not pretend what's going on isn't happeneing.
here's paul krugman's 'Hope Springs Eternal' (new york times):
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton's entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.'s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother's campaign -- as adult children of presidential aspirants often do -- asked, "doesn't it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
now krugman's among many shut out today by amy goodman. for more on that, you can read 'What you didn't hear on Pacifica last week.' for more on the way 'independent' media is stacking the deck against hillary, you should read 'Editorial: State of 'Independent' Media.' and you know you better read ava and c.i.'s 'TV: What's the measurement?' because it is being discussed. don't want to be late to the party. tomorrow, my plan is to revisit this topic. i've got an infant so bear with me if i forget. feel free to remind me. but that is my plan.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot' (and read marcia noting what c.i. brings to the table as opposed to amy goodman; and kat also tackles goody tonight):
February 11, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the death toll for US service members in Iraq gets closer to 4,000 since the start of the illegal war, Captains Of War meet but who notices that or the protests, yesterday in Iraq saw so many deaths it's been dubbed "Bloody Sunday," Blue-Light special in Iraq, British mothers push for answers regarding the illegal war and more.
Starting with war resisters. Over the weekend, the Captains Of War met in Germany for the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy. Among the attending was US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Also 'representing' the US were US Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- who no doubt made a delightful traveling couple -- with Turkey represented by its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Little Kenny Roth of Human Rights Watch among others. We'll come back to what was stated at the conference. But while Captains Of War gathered to plot continue war, people rose up en mass to protest. Amy Bradley (Indybay IMC) reports that Friday saw "several hundred activits" protesting and the number increased the following day as "several thousand protesters gathered in Marienplatz to continue the protests" including Iraq War veteran and war resister Chris Capps who the Minuch American Peace Committee awarded a peace medal and who is starting an IVAW chapter in Germany. Bradley reports 14 arrests while an estimated "3,700 police monitored the marchers." Bradley provides a number of photos of the two day protests and this one probably depicts the size of the crowd best. Courage to Resist profiles Chris Capps here and a quote we'll note is his stating, "If the politicians refuse to listen to the people, then the people need to take action. If we had resistance throughout the military then we could finally end this war here and now."
Among those who have resisted, the ones in Canada need help. The country's Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals on the issue of safe harbor status and the country's Parliament remains the best hope for safe harbor war resisters may have. You can make your voice heard by the Canadian parliament which has the ability to pass legislation to grant war resisters the right to remain in Canada. Three e-mails addresses to focus on are: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration. A few more can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
Meanwhile IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC action:
In 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.
Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam. They called it the Winter Soldier investigation, after Thomas Paine's famous admonishing of the "summer soldier" who shirks his duty during difficult times. In a time of war and lies, the veterans who gathered in Detroit knew it was their duty to tell the truth.
Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into increasingly bloody occupations. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming "a few bad apples" instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.
In March of 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in our nation's capital to break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for these wars. We hope you'll join us, because yours is a story that every American needs to hear.
Click here to sign a statement of support for Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 13th through 16th are the dates for the Winter Soldier Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Dee Knight (Workers World) notes, "IVAW wants as many people as possible to attend the event. It is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand. 'We have been inspired by the tremendous support the movement has shown us,' IVAW says. 'We believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members'." As part of their fundraising efforts for the event, they are holding houseparties and a recent one in Boston featured both IVAW's Liam Madden and the incomprable Howard Zinn as speakers.
Returning to the Munich Conference on Security Policy for a number of reasons including that it is news. The protests against it are news and what was stated is news. We'll focus on a few speeches briefly and then move to US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Lindsey Graham was making his tenth trip and apologizing for being "a poor substitute for Senator [John] McCain" and, as if to make clear how poor, he made a non-funny joke about Russia that wasn't well received and his "I'll buy you a beer after" didn't smooth things over. Even with a crowd that didn't boo his white-washing/minimizing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, he managed to get off on the wrong foot immediately. Graham offered this look-for-the-rainbow praise: "when NATO expands, the war is enriched." Joe Lieberman wants war with Iran very, very badly. It was the focus of his speech and just because there is no "covert work on bomb design" going on, Lieberman's up in arms over the "overt work on enrichment" as Iran established a nuclear power industry. Human Rights Watch's Little Kenny Roth bragged about the "expertise" his organization has allegedly developed. "We do not deal with the nuclear question. But we look at weapons systems that are used," explained Roth. "Cluster munitions caused more civilian casualities," in Iraq, he declared, "than any weapons other than small arms." He spoke of his concern with "the failure rate" of cluster munitions. Yes, that is a serious concern -- those pesky things do not go enough immediately. So he's not opposed to the indiscriminate deaths they cause immediately, just the deaths they cause days, weeks or years later? Someone needs to watch Human Rights Watch. Bobby Gates declared his focus was the Afghanistan War (for his speech -- before the British and Canadian governments protest, it was the focus for his speech only) and that would be the war that started in 2001 and continues today. He offers a revisionary history -- in bulletin points -- on the 'justification' for the war (no, he doesn't mention Osama bin Laden -- which, for anyone with a memory, was why the US began bombing -- after the Tailaban asked for proof of crimes before turning over bin Laden, the US response was to begin bombing). That war celebrated its sixth anniversary last fall so pay attention to this statement by Gates, "As many of you know, a Strategic Vision document is being drafted that will assess NATO's and our parenters' achievements in Afghanistan, and will produce a set of realistic goals and a roadmap to mee them over the next three to five years." Three to five years? The US Secretary of Defense is stating that the Afghanistan War could last through 2013 or even later? He went on to bemoan "bureaucratic hurdles" that "hinder our progress in Afghanistan" and advoacted for the passage of the NATO Commander's Emergency Response Fund which "will, for NATO, require a more flexible approach to budgeting and funding." Considering the millions, billiions and trillions being spent on both the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War presently, it's hard to see what "bureaucratic hurdles" Gates imagines side-stepping unless he means Congress itself? Walter Pincus (Washington Post) reports on US House Rep John Murtha's take on the huge financial cost of the illegal war and whose being effected -- Murtha: "You can't put a trillion-dollar war on a credit card and leave the bills for our children to pay. The same Americans suffering in Iraq today will be paying for this borrowed war for the rest of their lives." Pincus reports, "Noting that the administration is spending $343 million every 24 hours on the Iraq war, Murtha said that 11 hours in Iraq 'could restore $156 million cut by the president's Defense Department budget for the Family Advocacy Program'."
Back in Munich, Secretary Gates insisted that "we are applying a comprehensive strategy" in Iraq and then declared the following:
We have leanred that war in the 21st century does not have stark divisions between civilian and military components. It is a continuous scale that slids from combat operations to economic development, governance and reconstruction -- frequently at the same time.
The Alliance must put aside any theology that attempts clearly to divide civilian and military operations. It is unrealistic. We must live in the real world. As we noted as far back as 1991, in the real world, security has economic, political, and social dimensions. And vice versa. In the future, the EU and NATO will have to find ways to work together better, to share certain roles -- neither excluding NATO from civilian-military operations nor barring the EU from purely military missions. In short, I agree entirely with Secretary General [Jaap] de Hoop Scheffer and Minister [Herve] Morin's comments yesterday that there must be a "complimentarity" between the EU and NATO.
We could go on and on regarding that push for war-more-war-always-war. Instead, we'll note that Oliver Rolofs found Gates "ostentatiously concillatory towards Germany during the conference.In his contribution on the future of Aghanistan on the Sunday morning, he said that he had not intended to point a figner at Germany at all, explaining that the request for more commitment in Afghanistan had been issued to all the members of the Alliance." Secretary Gates next jaunted off to Iraq where, Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "A few hours before he landed in Baghdad, a big suicide car bomb exploded near a local market in Yathrib, north of Baghdad in Salahuddin province, killing at least 23 and injuring 45. . . . Another car bomb exploded near Ramadi, killing three, and further north two car bombs were reported in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. Both of them targeted Iraqi soldiers and four were killed in one of the explosions, police said. To the west of Mosul, 21 people were killed in fighting between insurgents and members of the U.S.-funded local awakening council militia." "Awakening" Councils are the US effort at Rent-An-Ally, whereby they toss coins around in an attempt to buy loyalties from those against centeral government in Baghdad, those against the illegal US occupation of Iraq, etc. They're more like Rent-A-Thugs and Ian Fischer (New York Times) explains, "At least 100 Awakening members have been killed in the last few weeks." Fisher goes on to detail the US government's latest attempt to control the news cycle by having the military selectively releasng two documents one allegedly portions of a diary but it's no The Diary of Anais Nin. Maybe they tell something, maybe they don't. Maybe a full release would. But, to be sure, the US government thinks this is the story to inject into the news cycle. Probably a 'happier' thought than letting people focus on the latest problems with the "Awakening" Council. Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) reported Saturday that the US collaborators in Diyala Province went on strike and that "A leader of the group said that brigade members, most of them Sunni Muslims, wouldnt' resume working with U.S. and Iraqi government forces until the Shiite police feisng or is indicted." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) picked up the story on Sunday noting that the Diyala "walkout" wasn't the only problem, there were problems in Anbar Province as well where the conflict is over the outcome of elections which the Iraqi Islamic Party won and that outcome is not pleasing the 'Awakening' Council or helping with the turfs war. (Both the IIP and members of 'Awakening' are Sunni.) In Diyala, Rubin notes, while the 'Awakening' Council members want the police commander gone (he's Shi'ite and they declare he's a bagman for Moqtada al-Sadr while he stated that the problem is that they are "continuing their past activies of killing and displacing Shiite families."
We're not done with Gates. He announced Lieapalooze 2008 today. CNN reports that Gates has held a press conference this morning in Baghdad and declared it "makes sense" to halt the return of US troops from Iraq and "A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad told CNN recently that Petraeus feels strongly there should be a period of review before he makes any decisions about additional troop withdrawals." BBC notes it as well but notes that Gates himself "favours a 'pause' in troop reductions in Iraq". Demetri Sevastopulo and Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) quotes Gates stating, "I think that the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense" and the reporters remind, "Until recently, Mr Gates repeatedly said he hoped the military could continue to pull out troops at the same pace over the second half of 2008, which would have left about 100,000 forces in Iraq when the next US president takes office in January 2009." Yes, he did take that position publicly . . . once. Apparently, despite Gates quoting Alexis de Tocqueville in Munich, he actually packed Jerry Hopkins' trashy No One Here Gets Out Alive? That seems to be US Senator John Ensign's opinion as well. CBS and AP report that the senator "rejected calls Saturday for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of the year".
Meanwhile Alex Spillus (Telegraph of London) reports on Senator John McCain, in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, voicing his regrets that British forces withdrew (somewhat) from the southern part of Iraq -- that's how to appear presidential, whine about the actions of one of the US allies! "Obviously I would like to have seem stay longer and larger," declared McCain who previously stated (video link) that if the US remained in Iraq for 100 years it "would be fine with me." No word yet on whether he's prepping for a role in Broadway bound musical of Dr. Strangelove. Two would disagree with McCain are UK citizens Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke. Michael Herman (Times of London) reports the two women were in the House of Lords today with their attorneys who "will argue before an enlarged panel of nine law lords that the Government is obligated to hold an independent review of the decision to go to war under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which protests the 'right to life'. They will argue that the Government is bound by the convention to safeguard soldiers' lives by not sending them to fight in an illegal war. If the mothers win their appeal, it could result in Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmit, QC, the former Attorney-General, and Geoff Hoon, the former defence minister, called upon to give evidence in public." Beverley Clarke's son David Clarke died in Basra in March 2003 while Rose Gentle's son Gordon Gentle died in Basra June 2004 (both men were 19-years-old). The Express & Star notes, "The hearing at the Lords is expected to last three days." Tim Castle (Reuters) states it "will continue for the rest of the week after which judgement will be reserved to be given in writing later, probably in two to three months' time." ITN quotes Rose Gentle stating, "I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie. He just agreed with George Bush right away. They didn't even give it a second thought" and the father of the late Shaun Brierley, Peter Brierley, stating, "My son always used to say he would defend his country. This was not defending his country. The country was not under any threat of attack." Hasan Suroor (The Hindu) notes concerns that British troops were not also not supplied with adequate equipment (the inquiry into Gordon Gentle's death found he would have lived had the vehicle he was in been up to standard) and quotes Rose Gentle explaining, "It's really important to us to find out why my son was sent there and why he was killed in this right equipment, we believe they should never have been there in the first place." BBC cites attorney Rabinder Singh and notes, "Mr Singh said it had become clear the overwhelming body of legal advice had been the invasion would not be lawful without a second resolution from the UN Security Council, in addition to Resolution 1441 on 8 November, 2002." The UK's Military Families Against The War notes Rose Gentle's speaking at the London College of Communication as part of an action that includes the screening of the documentary Battle for Haditha directed by Nick Broomfield.
CBS and AP term yesterday in Iraq "Bloody Sunday" and adds today, "In all, 70 people were reported killed or found dead by police on Sunday, one of the highest nationwide death tolls in recent months." Today?
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad car bombing that claimed 1 life and left two people wounded, a Baghdad roadside bombing that wounded two people, a Baghdad car bombing that wounded three people as well as two police officers, a Mosul mortar attack that left two people wounded, a Mosul roadside bombing that wounded "a woman and a child" and what may be a coordinated Baghdad car bombing where one went off not far from a Sheikh's office and, five minutes later, as police were headed there, another car bombing took place at an intersection resulting in at least 11 deaths and thirty more people wounded including Sheik Ali Hatem. Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) notes that the Sheik is with the US collaborating 'Awakening' Council, that Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha ("Ali Hatem's predecessor") was assassinated in September (two weeks after meeting with the Bully Boy of the United States) and describes the bombing scene, "In neighborhoods nearby, dark gray smoke could be seen lifting in the air from the site of the bombs. Gunshots from security forces trying to ward off crowds were also heard."
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an armed clash in Diyala Province in which 3 apparent assailants were killed by the Iraqi army, a shooting outside of Mosul that left one person wounded, an armed clash in Mosul where 3 people were killed and an Iraqi soldier was wounded.
Kidnappings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Dr. Ahmad Al Jubouri was kidnapped in Muqdadiyah in Diyala Province and also, "Gunmen kidnapped a foreign journalist and his translator Sunday night. An Iraqi police captain identified the kidnapped to be a journalist who works for CBS news and said the gunment using two civilian cars kidnapped the two men near Qasr Al Sultan hotel in Basra." On the latter, CBS and AP note, "Two journalists working for CBS News in Basra are missing and efforts are underway to find them. A statement released by the network said CBS News had been in touch with the families and asked that their privacy be respected." Reuters notes, "The Committee to Protect Journalists in a recent report called the Iraq war 'the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history,' with 125 journalists and 49 support workers killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion."
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today, the US military announced: "DIYALA PROVINCE, Iraq -- A Multi-National Divison -- North Soldier was killed Feb. 10 when the Soldier's vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Two MND-N Soldiers were wounded and were evacuated to a Coalition Force medical facility for treatment." So on the 11th day of the month, 16 US service members have thus far been announced dead. And the total since the start of the illegal war is currently 3960 which is 40 from the 4,000 mark.
And as the illegal war drags on, never forget what's being fought for -- Roland Gribben (Telegraph of London) explains, "Foreign investors are being offered joint venture and production-sharing agreements in 400 state-owned factories and plants in Iraq in an effort to break the industrial reconstruction log jame. Forty contracts, described as the 'most productive and lucrative', are being offered in an initial programme that Fawzi Hariri, minister of industry and minerals, hopes will yield $2bn in foreign investment." They paved paradise . . . and held a tag sale. Worked so well in Argentina -- oops, didn't. Selling off the people's property -- a puppet government is selling off the people's property (or at least trying to). The theft of Iraq continues. Roula Khalaf (Financial Times of London) notes, apparently with approval, that "The US has been bypassing the Iraqi government, trying to revitalise economic life at the community level. Charles Ries, the US co-ordinator for economic transistion in Iraq, says the US has given grants of $1,000 to shopkeepers in pacified areas and employed 70,000 in community programmes." Note the salary for 'Awakening' Council members (approximately 60,000 people): $300 a month -- this when unemployment is at over 35% in Iraq.
Turning to US politics -- mainly because 'media critic' Amy Goodman didn't see it as news on Democracy Now! today -- Feminist Wire Daily explains:
MSNBC anchor David Shuster was suspended from the network last week following his offensive comments about Chelsea Clinton's work for her mother's candidacy. While guest hosting on "Tucker," Shuster remarked that Chelsea's efforts to support her mother were unseemly and that it was like she is being "pimped out" by the campaign. Shuster has been suspended from all NBC network appearances other than to issue his apology. He also apologized to the Clinton family. NBC News President Steve Campus said in a statement: "David Shuster . . . made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. . .NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks." "I am a mom first and a candidate second and I found the remarks incredibly offensive," said Senator Clinton said at a news conference over the weekend, reports Reuters. "I have sent a letter to the head of NBC expressing the deep offense that I took." Senator Clinton did not say whether or not she would participate in the debate scheduled for February 26th on MSNBC. Take Action to tell network presidents that sexist comments like Shuster's are not acceptable.
Apparently the treatment of women by the media is of little concern to Amy Goodman? Meanwhile Liliana Segura (via CounterPunch) examines Barack Obama's endorsement from "Habeas Lawyers for Obama" and explains how constitutional lawyer Bambi just doesn't get what's going on at Guanatanamo and Segura notes, "In April of 2007, Obama gave a speech in Chicago at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in which he outlined five ways he would lead if he were elected to the White House. Restoring habeas corpus was not among them. Neither was eradicating torture in the War on Terror. Neither for that matter, was closing Guantanamo. To be fair, this does not mean he wouldn't do these things. But his argument rested on a sort of benevolent militarism and an expansion of U.S. involvement across the world -- as Noam Chomsky called it, 'the military humanism'."
Goodman did make time today to wrongly state that a US army sniper was convicted of "killing" an Iraqi. No, he was convicted of murder. You expect bravery from independent media and they had none. But they didn't even need bravery, they just needed to use the same terms that the US military did in this instance. M-NF's announcement on the verdict:Sgt. Evan Vela was found guilty Feb. 10 on one specification of unpremeditated murder during a general courts martial at Camp Liberty Courthouse.Vela, a Soldier in 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was on trial for the murder of an Iraqi man as part of operations May 11 in Jurf as Sakhr.Vela was found guilty under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline -- wrongfully placing an AK-47 on the remains of a deceased person.He was also found guilty under UCMJ Article 107 for making a false official statement.The proceedings are currently in the sentencing phase.From M-NF's announcement of the sentencing:Sgt. Evan Vela was sentenced Feb. 10 in a general court-martial at Camp Liberty Courthouse.Vela was sentenced to 10 years confinement. He was also sentenced to a reduction in rank to E1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge from the Army.Vela, a 24-year-old Soldier in 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was on trial for the murder of an Iraqi man during operations May 11, 2007 in Jurf as Sakhr, Iraq.Vela was found guilty on one specification of unpremeditated murder.In addition, Vela was found guilty under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline (wrongfully placing an AK-47 on the remains of a deceased).He was also found guilty under UCMJ Article 107 for making a false official statement.The next step in the process is an automatic appeal. Solomon Moore (New York Times) reports, "Sergeant Vela, of Idaho, slumped in his chair as he heard the verdict, and his wife, Alyssa Carnahan, broke down in tears." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report, "Outside the courthouse, the brother of Ghani Naser Janabi, the man killed by Vela, rejoiced at the ruling. 'It is proof that my brother is not guilty. It was the sergeant,' Fadl Janabi said."
an idiot wrote into ms. magazine (as i noted last week) to whine that poor amy goodman of democracy now hadn't been profiled by ms. as i noted then, a woman who chooses to publish in larry flynt's hustler doesn't belong in ms. a woman who turns over an hour to larry flynt on her program and lets him praise his trashy magazine doesn't belong in ms.
but if you doubted that, stick around.
this is from the feminist wire, 'MSNBC Suspends David Shuster over Chelsea Clinton Comments:'
MSNBC anchor David Shuster was suspended from the network last week following his offensive comments about Chelsea Clinton's work for her mother’s candidacy. While guest hosting on "Tucker," Shuster remarked that Chelsea's efforts to support her mother were unseemly and that it was like she is being "pimped out" by the campaign.
Shuster has been suspended from all NBC network appearances other than to issue his apology. He also apologized to the Clinton family. NBC News President Steve Campus said in a statement: "David Shuster... made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate...NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks."
"I am a mom first and a candidate second and I found the remarks incredibly offensive," said Senator Clinton said at a news conference over the weekend, reports Reuters. "I have sent a letter to the head of NBC expressing the deep offense that I took." Senator Clinton did not say whether or not she would participate in the debate scheduled for February 26th on MSNBC. Take Action to tell network presidents that sexist comments like Shuster's are not acceptable.
friday, i noted this topic via an e-mail. that went out late friday. we toyed with writing about it at 3rd this weekend but (a) we were short on time (and had to kill a green party feature) and (b) we assumed it would be covered at length come monday.
c.i. includes the entire brief in the snapshot. like c.i., i generally don't do that. i pull a few sentences when i quote from feminist wire daily, provide the link and hope people interested will check it out. but this is too important to take that risk. (my apologies to the feminist wire - if you use the link, there are many more briefs on important news you may not have heard about.)
a friend in charge of an npr station broadcasting democracy now, a friend of c.i.'s, is now tracking that show. that's a direct result of ava and c.i.'s 'TV: Democracy Sometimes?'. as they note, they spoke to friends at npr about the ethics guidelines. for those who haven't read it, melissa harris-lacewell was presented as a professor who was just a professor, 1 who apparently hadn't made up her mind. she had a student project where she was taking students around to campaign for the candidates of their choice. she seemed objective. she did manage to plug a speech by barack obama, to praise it through the roof. she had no comments on hillary.
then, 1 week later, she's back on the show and it turns out she's campaigning for obama. she's always been campaigning for bambi. and amy goodman knew that before she brought melissa harris-lacewell on the program the 1st time. amy goodman knew that and didn't tell viewers and listeners even when melissa harris-lacewell was praising a speech bambi gave. of course she'd praise it, she's with the campaign (as she admits on her 2nd appearance where she tries to rip gloria steinem to pieces). if amy goodman had just known that melissa planned to vote for obama, that would have been a breach of ethics and a huge no-no on npr. but melissa is with the campaign, as she admitted in her 2nd appearance (bragged, actually). amy goodman knew that. she brought on some 1 from a politician's campaign, she knew all about that, and let the person praise the candidate without ever noting that 'melissa harris-lacewell is with the obama campaign.'
that gets you fired. that's not a suspension, it's a firing. c.i. and ava discussed this with friends at npr - some npr stations carry democracy now - and they were told that if it were an npr program, amy goodman would have been fired. she broke every rule of journalism ethics on that 1 guest. she wouldn't have a job. she wouldn't be able to whine or beg for it. she'd be out the door. but it's not an npr program and npr doesn't distribute it.
so c.i. called some friends who manage npr stations to find out their stance. the friend in question didn't really get it on the phone. he was making jokes and taking it lighlty (and according to ava, pissing c.i. off). when 'TV: Democracy Sometimes?' went up, he read it because the thing got e-mailed to his station by different members or pledgers or whatever npr calls their volunteer subscribers.
reading it, he got it. reading it, he understood that it wasn't a joke, that amy goodman had just trashed her journalism career and credentials. that is what she did.
she can not let any 1 from a campaign come on and praise their own candidate without telling people that the person is with a campaign. even if they don't praise their candidate, if she knows they are with a political campaign, she is required to disclose it to her audience. not to do so is HUGE.
so he read it and called c.i. (who responded, according to ava, 'i didn't send the damn thing to you' - c.i. was still pissed). the guy apologized and said it was late when c.i. called and he was tired and didn't get what c.i. was talking about. he said reading it, he got it.
he is now monitoring the show. and the show's in serious danger of being pulled. that's amy goodman's own fault. if more complaints come in from listeners, it's gone. (i believe there's a contract or some formal agreement and that what's planned if this continues is that it will be dropped when that comes to an end. that may not be correct, it may be dropped sooner.) he's also sharing it with other npr stations that carry the program.
c.i. didn't catch democracy now now today. (i'm sure if you asked, you'd get c.i.'s 'life's too short' for crap answer.) that's near the end of the snapshot (the feminist wire daily item) and, if you pay attention, it doesn't really fit with other things before it or after. that's because c.i. had dictated the snapshot already. c.i. returned the call from npr guy and npr guy told him what had happened.
what happened was amy goodman didn't include the news on democracy now today. she had time for 2 items on bambi and 1 on hillary. the npr guy told c.i. (according to ava) that the 1 item on hillary was the non-story about 1 person in her campaign stepping down from a post. that's horse race nonsense, it's not news.
now i use the word 'pimped.' we all do. (at our sites.) but search them for any time when we've accused a parent of pimping their child?
that's what the issue is. when you're accusing a parent of pimping their child, you're no longer using it in the way that's popular today. you're using it in a very derogatory manner. it was offensive.
it was said on air. it was said on air and msnbc suspended the man who said it.
either of those two things alone makes it news. if you're amy goodman who allegedly holds the msm accountable, it's got to be news for you. but somehow amy goodman couldn't find the time for that, not even in headlines.
she could find time to make it look like hillary's campaign was in trouble. she could find the time for 2 items on bambi. she just couldn't find time for that.
what was said on msnbc was sexist. it was appalling. it was offensive.
it's not said on msnbc about male candidates for president.
it was out of bounds.
where was laura flanders, by the way? this is the woman who said the press needed to stop writing about condi rice's wardrobe. but she loves obama and she's not going to write any story that might require her to be sympathetic to hillary.
same with amy goodman.
when c.i. was informed by npr guy that this very big media story didn't even make it into headlines, that's when c.i. said 'i'm calling you back' and stopped the snapshot from going up. c.i. added that item then.
now for the deluded fool whining to ms. magazine that poor little larry flynt roll dog amy goodman hasn't been profiled by ms., i have a question: do you think the pimped remark was offensive, do you think it was news that msnbc supsended the man who said it?
if you're reading ms., i would assume you do think that.
but amy goodman didn't include it.
she slants the entire program against hillary and has done that repeatedly. but on this topic, on this news, i think even amy's staunchest defenders have to agree it should have been included.
the fact that it wasn't goes to her long pattern of devaluing women. and, no, she doesn't belong in any issue of ms. magazine.
a vagina doesn't make you a feminist. amy goodman is not a feminist. she doesn't need to be interviewed by a feminist publication. she does need to be called out by 1.
she's not practicing journalism. she can give her b.s. speech about how the mainstream's doing 'advocacy' journalism just like she is, but notice who she suddenly no longer books. some 1 comes out as a hillary supporter and they're no longer on democracy now (though dolores huerta was on, she was matched up against 2 obama supporters and ripped apart the same way gloria steinem was ripped apart). paul krugman, joe wilson, larry johnson, go down the list. all these people who are regular guests on the program and suddenly they're not on anymore.
let's not pretend what's going on isn't happeneing.
here's paul krugman's 'Hope Springs Eternal' (new york times):
During the current campaign, Mrs. Clinton's entirely reasonable remark that it took L.B.J.'s political courage and skills to bring Martin Luther King Jr.'s dream to fruition was cast as some kind of outrageous denigration of Dr. King.
And the latest prominent example came when David Shuster of MSNBC, after pointing out that Chelsea Clinton was working for her mother's campaign -- as adult children of presidential aspirants often do -- asked, "doesn't it seem like Chelsea’s sort of being pimped out in some weird sort of way?" Mr. Shuster has been suspended, but as the Clinton campaign rightly points out, his remark was part of a broader pattern at the network.
now krugman's among many shut out today by amy goodman. for more on that, you can read 'What you didn't hear on Pacifica last week.' for more on the way 'independent' media is stacking the deck against hillary, you should read 'Editorial: State of 'Independent' Media.' and you know you better read ava and c.i.'s 'TV: What's the measurement?' because it is being discussed. don't want to be late to the party. tomorrow, my plan is to revisit this topic. i've got an infant so bear with me if i forget. feel free to remind me. but that is my plan.
let's close with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot' (and read marcia noting what c.i. brings to the table as opposed to amy goodman; and kat also tackles goody tonight):
February 11, 2008. Chaos and violence continue, the death toll for US service members in Iraq gets closer to 4,000 since the start of the illegal war, Captains Of War meet but who notices that or the protests, yesterday in Iraq saw so many deaths it's been dubbed "Bloody Sunday," Blue-Light special in Iraq, British mothers push for answers regarding the illegal war and more.
Starting with war resisters. Over the weekend, the Captains Of War met in Germany for the 44th Munich Conference on Security Policy. Among the attending was US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Also 'representing' the US were US Senators Lindsey Graham and Joe Lieberman -- who no doubt made a delightful traveling couple -- with Turkey represented by its prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Little Kenny Roth of Human Rights Watch among others. We'll come back to what was stated at the conference. But while Captains Of War gathered to plot continue war, people rose up en mass to protest. Amy Bradley (Indybay IMC) reports that Friday saw "several hundred activits" protesting and the number increased the following day as "several thousand protesters gathered in Marienplatz to continue the protests" including Iraq War veteran and war resister Chris Capps who the Minuch American Peace Committee awarded a peace medal and who is starting an IVAW chapter in Germany. Bradley reports 14 arrests while an estimated "3,700 police monitored the marchers." Bradley provides a number of photos of the two day protests and this one probably depicts the size of the crowd best. Courage to Resist profiles Chris Capps here and a quote we'll note is his stating, "If the politicians refuse to listen to the people, then the people need to take action. If we had resistance throughout the military then we could finally end this war here and now."
Among those who have resisted, the ones in Canada need help. The country's Supreme Court has refused to hear appeals on the issue of safe harbor status and the country's Parliament remains the best hope for safe harbor war resisters may have. You can make your voice heard by the Canadian parliament which has the ability to pass legislation to grant war resisters the right to remain in Canada. Three e-mails addresses to focus on are: Prime Minister Stephen Harper (pm@pm.gc.ca -- that's pm at gc.ca) who is with the Conservative party and these two Liberals, Stephane Dion (Dion.S@parl.gc.ca -- that's Dion.S at parl.gc.ca) who is the leader of the Liberal Party and Maurizio Bevilacqua (Bevilacqua.M@parl.gc.ca -- that's Bevilacqua.M at parl.gc.ca) who is the Liberal Party's Critic for Citizenship and Immigration. A few more can be found here at War Resisters Support Campaign. For those in the US, Courage to Resist has an online form that's very easy to use.
There is a growing movement of resistance within the US military which includes Josh Randall, Robby Keller, Chuck Wiley, James Stepp, Rodney Watson, Michael Espinal, Matthew Lowell, Derek Hess, Diedra Cobb, Brad McCall, Justin Cliburn, Timothy Richard, Robert Weiss, Phil McDowell, Steve Yoczik, Ross Spears, Peter Brown, Bethany "Skylar" James, Zamesha Dominique, Chrisopther Scott Magaoay, Jared Hood, James Burmeister, Eli Israel, Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Clara Gomez, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Agustin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Abdullah Webster, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder, Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Stephen Funk, Blake LeMoine, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Dale Bartell, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Kjar, Kyle Huwer, Wilfredo Torres, Michael Sudbury, Ghanim Khalil, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, at least fifty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline [(877) 447-4487], Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters. Tom Joad maintains a list of known war resisters. In addition, VETWOW is an organization that assists those suffering from MST (Military Sexual Trauma).
Meanwhile IVAW is organizing a March 2008 DC action:
In 1971, over one hundred members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War gathered in Detroit to share their stories with America. Atrocities like the My Lai massacre had ignited popular opposition to the war, but political and military leaders insisted that such crimes were isolated exceptions. The members of VVAW knew differently.
Over three days in January, these soldiers testified on the systematic brutality they had seen visited upon the people of Vietnam. They called it the Winter Soldier investigation, after Thomas Paine's famous admonishing of the "summer soldier" who shirks his duty during difficult times. In a time of war and lies, the veterans who gathered in Detroit knew it was their duty to tell the truth.
Over thirty years later, we find ourselves faced with a new war. But the lies are the same. Once again, American troops are sinking into increasingly bloody occupations. Once again, war crimes in places like Haditha, Fallujah, and Abu Ghraib have turned the public against the war. Once again, politicians and generals are blaming "a few bad apples" instead of examining the military policies that have destroyed Iraq and Afghanistan.
Once again, our country needs Winter Soldiers.
In March of 2008, Iraq Veterans Against the War will gather in our nation's capital to break the silence and hold our leaders accountable for these wars. We hope you'll join us, because yours is a story that every American needs to hear.
Click here to sign a statement of support for Winter Soldier: Iraq & Afghanistan
March 13th through 16th are the dates for the Winter Soldier Iraq & Afghanistan Investigation. Dee Knight (Workers World) notes, "IVAW wants as many people as possible to attend the event. It is planning to provide live broadcasting of the sessions for those who cannot hear the testimony firsthand. 'We have been inspired by the tremendous support the movement has shown us,' IVAW says. 'We believe the success of Winter Soldier will ultimately depend on the support of our allies and the hard work of our members'." As part of their fundraising efforts for the event, they are holding houseparties and a recent one in Boston featured both IVAW's Liam Madden and the incomprable Howard Zinn as speakers.
Returning to the Munich Conference on Security Policy for a number of reasons including that it is news. The protests against it are news and what was stated is news. We'll focus on a few speeches briefly and then move to US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
Lindsey Graham was making his tenth trip and apologizing for being "a poor substitute for Senator [John] McCain" and, as if to make clear how poor, he made a non-funny joke about Russia that wasn't well received and his "I'll buy you a beer after" didn't smooth things over. Even with a crowd that didn't boo his white-washing/minimizing Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, he managed to get off on the wrong foot immediately. Graham offered this look-for-the-rainbow praise: "when NATO expands, the war is enriched." Joe Lieberman wants war with Iran very, very badly. It was the focus of his speech and just because there is no "covert work on bomb design" going on, Lieberman's up in arms over the "overt work on enrichment" as Iran established a nuclear power industry. Human Rights Watch's Little Kenny Roth bragged about the "expertise" his organization has allegedly developed. "We do not deal with the nuclear question. But we look at weapons systems that are used," explained Roth. "Cluster munitions caused more civilian casualities," in Iraq, he declared, "than any weapons other than small arms." He spoke of his concern with "the failure rate" of cluster munitions. Yes, that is a serious concern -- those pesky things do not go enough immediately. So he's not opposed to the indiscriminate deaths they cause immediately, just the deaths they cause days, weeks or years later? Someone needs to watch Human Rights Watch. Bobby Gates declared his focus was the Afghanistan War (for his speech -- before the British and Canadian governments protest, it was the focus for his speech only) and that would be the war that started in 2001 and continues today. He offers a revisionary history -- in bulletin points -- on the 'justification' for the war (no, he doesn't mention Osama bin Laden -- which, for anyone with a memory, was why the US began bombing -- after the Tailaban asked for proof of crimes before turning over bin Laden, the US response was to begin bombing). That war celebrated its sixth anniversary last fall so pay attention to this statement by Gates, "As many of you know, a Strategic Vision document is being drafted that will assess NATO's and our parenters' achievements in Afghanistan, and will produce a set of realistic goals and a roadmap to mee them over the next three to five years." Three to five years? The US Secretary of Defense is stating that the Afghanistan War could last through 2013 or even later? He went on to bemoan "bureaucratic hurdles" that "hinder our progress in Afghanistan" and advoacted for the passage of the NATO Commander's Emergency Response Fund which "will, for NATO, require a more flexible approach to budgeting and funding." Considering the millions, billiions and trillions being spent on both the Iraq War and the Afghanistan War presently, it's hard to see what "bureaucratic hurdles" Gates imagines side-stepping unless he means Congress itself? Walter Pincus (Washington Post) reports on US House Rep John Murtha's take on the huge financial cost of the illegal war and whose being effected -- Murtha: "You can't put a trillion-dollar war on a credit card and leave the bills for our children to pay. The same Americans suffering in Iraq today will be paying for this borrowed war for the rest of their lives." Pincus reports, "Noting that the administration is spending $343 million every 24 hours on the Iraq war, Murtha said that 11 hours in Iraq 'could restore $156 million cut by the president's Defense Department budget for the Family Advocacy Program'."
Back in Munich, Secretary Gates insisted that "we are applying a comprehensive strategy" in Iraq and then declared the following:
We have leanred that war in the 21st century does not have stark divisions between civilian and military components. It is a continuous scale that slids from combat operations to economic development, governance and reconstruction -- frequently at the same time.
The Alliance must put aside any theology that attempts clearly to divide civilian and military operations. It is unrealistic. We must live in the real world. As we noted as far back as 1991, in the real world, security has economic, political, and social dimensions. And vice versa. In the future, the EU and NATO will have to find ways to work together better, to share certain roles -- neither excluding NATO from civilian-military operations nor barring the EU from purely military missions. In short, I agree entirely with Secretary General [Jaap] de Hoop Scheffer and Minister [Herve] Morin's comments yesterday that there must be a "complimentarity" between the EU and NATO.
We could go on and on regarding that push for war-more-war-always-war. Instead, we'll note that Oliver Rolofs found Gates "ostentatiously concillatory towards Germany during the conference.In his contribution on the future of Aghanistan on the Sunday morning, he said that he had not intended to point a figner at Germany at all, explaining that the request for more commitment in Afghanistan had been issued to all the members of the Alliance." Secretary Gates next jaunted off to Iraq where, Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) reports, "A few hours before he landed in Baghdad, a big suicide car bomb exploded near a local market in Yathrib, north of Baghdad in Salahuddin province, killing at least 23 and injuring 45. . . . Another car bomb exploded near Ramadi, killing three, and further north two car bombs were reported in Mosul, Iraq's third-largest city. Both of them targeted Iraqi soldiers and four were killed in one of the explosions, police said. To the west of Mosul, 21 people were killed in fighting between insurgents and members of the U.S.-funded local awakening council militia." "Awakening" Councils are the US effort at Rent-An-Ally, whereby they toss coins around in an attempt to buy loyalties from those against centeral government in Baghdad, those against the illegal US occupation of Iraq, etc. They're more like Rent-A-Thugs and Ian Fischer (New York Times) explains, "At least 100 Awakening members have been killed in the last few weeks." Fisher goes on to detail the US government's latest attempt to control the news cycle by having the military selectively releasng two documents one allegedly portions of a diary but it's no The Diary of Anais Nin. Maybe they tell something, maybe they don't. Maybe a full release would. But, to be sure, the US government thinks this is the story to inject into the news cycle. Probably a 'happier' thought than letting people focus on the latest problems with the "Awakening" Council. Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) reported Saturday that the US collaborators in Diyala Province went on strike and that "A leader of the group said that brigade members, most of them Sunni Muslims, wouldnt' resume working with U.S. and Iraqi government forces until the Shiite police feisng or is indicted." Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) picked up the story on Sunday noting that the Diyala "walkout" wasn't the only problem, there were problems in Anbar Province as well where the conflict is over the outcome of elections which the Iraqi Islamic Party won and that outcome is not pleasing the 'Awakening' Council or helping with the turfs war. (Both the IIP and members of 'Awakening' are Sunni.) In Diyala, Rubin notes, while the 'Awakening' Council members want the police commander gone (he's Shi'ite and they declare he's a bagman for Moqtada al-Sadr while he stated that the problem is that they are "continuing their past activies of killing and displacing Shiite families."
We're not done with Gates. He announced Lieapalooze 2008 today. CNN reports that Gates has held a press conference this morning in Baghdad and declared it "makes sense" to halt the return of US troops from Iraq and "A senior U.S. military official in Baghdad told CNN recently that Petraeus feels strongly there should be a period of review before he makes any decisions about additional troop withdrawals." BBC notes it as well but notes that Gates himself "favours a 'pause' in troop reductions in Iraq". Demetri Sevastopulo and Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) quotes Gates stating, "I think that the notion of a brief period of consolidation and evaluation probably does make sense" and the reporters remind, "Until recently, Mr Gates repeatedly said he hoped the military could continue to pull out troops at the same pace over the second half of 2008, which would have left about 100,000 forces in Iraq when the next US president takes office in January 2009." Yes, he did take that position publicly . . . once. Apparently, despite Gates quoting Alexis de Tocqueville in Munich, he actually packed Jerry Hopkins' trashy No One Here Gets Out Alive? That seems to be US Senator John Ensign's opinion as well. CBS and AP report that the senator "rejected calls Saturday for the withdrawal of U.S. troops in Iraq by the end of the year".
Meanwhile Alex Spillus (Telegraph of London) reports on Senator John McCain, in the race for the GOP presidential nomination, voicing his regrets that British forces withdrew (somewhat) from the southern part of Iraq -- that's how to appear presidential, whine about the actions of one of the US allies! "Obviously I would like to have seem stay longer and larger," declared McCain who previously stated (video link) that if the US remained in Iraq for 100 years it "would be fine with me." No word yet on whether he's prepping for a role in Broadway bound musical of Dr. Strangelove. Two would disagree with McCain are UK citizens Rose Gentle and Beverley Clarke. Michael Herman (Times of London) reports the two women were in the House of Lords today with their attorneys who "will argue before an enlarged panel of nine law lords that the Government is obligated to hold an independent review of the decision to go to war under Article 2 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR) which protests the 'right to life'. They will argue that the Government is bound by the convention to safeguard soldiers' lives by not sending them to fight in an illegal war. If the mothers win their appeal, it could result in Tony Blair, Lord Goldsmit, QC, the former Attorney-General, and Geoff Hoon, the former defence minister, called upon to give evidence in public." Beverley Clarke's son David Clarke died in Basra in March 2003 while Rose Gentle's son Gordon Gentle died in Basra June 2004 (both men were 19-years-old). The Express & Star notes, "The hearing at the Lords is expected to last three days." Tim Castle (Reuters) states it "will continue for the rest of the week after which judgement will be reserved to be given in writing later, probably in two to three months' time." ITN quotes Rose Gentle stating, "I think Tony Blair sent our boys to war on a lie. He just agreed with George Bush right away. They didn't even give it a second thought" and the father of the late Shaun Brierley, Peter Brierley, stating, "My son always used to say he would defend his country. This was not defending his country. The country was not under any threat of attack." Hasan Suroor (The Hindu) notes concerns that British troops were not also not supplied with adequate equipment (the inquiry into Gordon Gentle's death found he would have lived had the vehicle he was in been up to standard) and quotes Rose Gentle explaining, "It's really important to us to find out why my son was sent there and why he was killed in this right equipment, we believe they should never have been there in the first place." BBC cites attorney Rabinder Singh and notes, "Mr Singh said it had become clear the overwhelming body of legal advice had been the invasion would not be lawful without a second resolution from the UN Security Council, in addition to Resolution 1441 on 8 November, 2002." The UK's Military Families Against The War notes Rose Gentle's speaking at the London College of Communication as part of an action that includes the screening of the documentary Battle for Haditha directed by Nick Broomfield.
CBS and AP term yesterday in Iraq "Bloody Sunday" and adds today, "In all, 70 people were reported killed or found dead by police on Sunday, one of the highest nationwide death tolls in recent months." Today?
Bombings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports a Baghdad car bombing that claimed 1 life and left two people wounded, a Baghdad roadside bombing that wounded two people, a Baghdad car bombing that wounded three people as well as two police officers, a Mosul mortar attack that left two people wounded, a Mosul roadside bombing that wounded "a woman and a child" and what may be a coordinated Baghdad car bombing where one went off not far from a Sheikh's office and, five minutes later, as police were headed there, another car bombing took place at an intersection resulting in at least 11 deaths and thirty more people wounded including Sheik Ali Hatem. Steve Lannen (McClatchy Newspapers) notes that the Sheik is with the US collaborating 'Awakening' Council, that Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha ("Ali Hatem's predecessor") was assassinated in September (two weeks after meeting with the Bully Boy of the United States) and describes the bombing scene, "In neighborhoods nearby, dark gray smoke could be seen lifting in the air from the site of the bombs. Gunshots from security forces trying to ward off crowds were also heard."
Shootings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports an armed clash in Diyala Province in which 3 apparent assailants were killed by the Iraqi army, a shooting outside of Mosul that left one person wounded, an armed clash in Mosul where 3 people were killed and an Iraqi soldier was wounded.
Kidnappings?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports Dr. Ahmad Al Jubouri was kidnapped in Muqdadiyah in Diyala Province and also, "Gunmen kidnapped a foreign journalist and his translator Sunday night. An Iraqi police captain identified the kidnapped to be a journalist who works for CBS news and said the gunment using two civilian cars kidnapped the two men near Qasr Al Sultan hotel in Basra." On the latter, CBS and AP note, "Two journalists working for CBS News in Basra are missing and efforts are underway to find them. A statement released by the network said CBS News had been in touch with the families and asked that their privacy be respected." Reuters notes, "The Committee to Protect Journalists in a recent report called the Iraq war 'the deadliest conflict for journalists in recent history,' with 125 journalists and 49 support workers killed since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion."
Corpses?
Mohammed Al Dulaimy (McClatchy Newspapers) reports 3 corpses discovered in Baghdad.
Today, the US military announced: "DIYALA PROVINCE, Iraq -- A Multi-National Divison -- North Soldier was killed Feb. 10 when the Soldier's vehicle was struck by an improvised explosive device. Two MND-N Soldiers were wounded and were evacuated to a Coalition Force medical facility for treatment." So on the 11th day of the month, 16 US service members have thus far been announced dead. And the total since the start of the illegal war is currently 3960 which is 40 from the 4,000 mark.
And as the illegal war drags on, never forget what's being fought for -- Roland Gribben (Telegraph of London) explains, "Foreign investors are being offered joint venture and production-sharing agreements in 400 state-owned factories and plants in Iraq in an effort to break the industrial reconstruction log jame. Forty contracts, described as the 'most productive and lucrative', are being offered in an initial programme that Fawzi Hariri, minister of industry and minerals, hopes will yield $2bn in foreign investment." They paved paradise . . . and held a tag sale. Worked so well in Argentina -- oops, didn't. Selling off the people's property -- a puppet government is selling off the people's property (or at least trying to). The theft of Iraq continues. Roula Khalaf (Financial Times of London) notes, apparently with approval, that "The US has been bypassing the Iraqi government, trying to revitalise economic life at the community level. Charles Ries, the US co-ordinator for economic transistion in Iraq, says the US has given grants of $1,000 to shopkeepers in pacified areas and employed 70,000 in community programmes." Note the salary for 'Awakening' Council members (approximately 60,000 people): $300 a month -- this when unemployment is at over 35% in Iraq.
Turning to US politics -- mainly because 'media critic' Amy Goodman didn't see it as news on Democracy Now! today -- Feminist Wire Daily explains:
MSNBC anchor David Shuster was suspended from the network last week following his offensive comments about Chelsea Clinton's work for her mother's candidacy. While guest hosting on "Tucker," Shuster remarked that Chelsea's efforts to support her mother were unseemly and that it was like she is being "pimped out" by the campaign. Shuster has been suspended from all NBC network appearances other than to issue his apology. He also apologized to the Clinton family. NBC News President Steve Campus said in a statement: "David Shuster . . . made a comment about Chelsea Clinton and the Clinton campaign that was irresponsible and inappropriate. . .NBC News takes these matters seriously, and offers our sincere regrets to the Clintons for the remarks." "I am a mom first and a candidate second and I found the remarks incredibly offensive," said Senator Clinton said at a news conference over the weekend, reports Reuters. "I have sent a letter to the head of NBC expressing the deep offense that I took." Senator Clinton did not say whether or not she would participate in the debate scheduled for February 26th on MSNBC. Take Action to tell network presidents that sexist comments like Shuster's are not acceptable.
Apparently the treatment of women by the media is of little concern to Amy Goodman? Meanwhile Liliana Segura (via CounterPunch) examines Barack Obama's endorsement from "Habeas Lawyers for Obama" and explains how constitutional lawyer Bambi just doesn't get what's going on at Guanatanamo and Segura notes, "In April of 2007, Obama gave a speech in Chicago at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in which he outlined five ways he would lead if he were elected to the White House. Restoring habeas corpus was not among them. Neither was eradicating torture in the War on Terror. Neither for that matter, was closing Guantanamo. To be fair, this does not mean he wouldn't do these things. But his argument rested on a sort of benevolent militarism and an expansion of U.S. involvement across the world -- as Noam Chomsky called it, 'the military humanism'."
Goodman did make time today to wrongly state that a US army sniper was convicted of "killing" an Iraqi. No, he was convicted of murder. You expect bravery from independent media and they had none. But they didn't even need bravery, they just needed to use the same terms that the US military did in this instance. M-NF's announcement on the verdict:Sgt. Evan Vela was found guilty Feb. 10 on one specification of unpremeditated murder during a general courts martial at Camp Liberty Courthouse.Vela, a Soldier in 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was on trial for the murder of an Iraqi man as part of operations May 11 in Jurf as Sakhr.Vela was found guilty under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline -- wrongfully placing an AK-47 on the remains of a deceased person.He was also found guilty under UCMJ Article 107 for making a false official statement.The proceedings are currently in the sentencing phase.From M-NF's announcement of the sentencing:Sgt. Evan Vela was sentenced Feb. 10 in a general court-martial at Camp Liberty Courthouse.Vela was sentenced to 10 years confinement. He was also sentenced to a reduction in rank to E1, forfeiture of all pay and allowances and a dishonorable discharge from the Army.Vela, a 24-year-old Soldier in 1st Battalion, 501st Airborne, was on trial for the murder of an Iraqi man during operations May 11, 2007 in Jurf as Sakhr, Iraq.Vela was found guilty on one specification of unpremeditated murder.In addition, Vela was found guilty under Article 134 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice for conduct prejudicial to good order and discipline (wrongfully placing an AK-47 on the remains of a deceased).He was also found guilty under UCMJ Article 107 for making a false official statement.The next step in the process is an automatic appeal. Solomon Moore (New York Times) reports, "Sergeant Vela, of Idaho, slumped in his chair as he heard the verdict, and his wife, Alyssa Carnahan, broke down in tears." Ned Parker (Los Angeles Times) report, "Outside the courthouse, the brother of Ghani Naser Janabi, the man killed by Vela, rejoiced at the ruling. 'It is proof that my brother is not guilty. It was the sergeant,' Fadl Janabi said."
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