Betty here filling in for Rebecca who, along with Wally, Mike, Elaine, Trina and others are attending a conference (is that the word?) this weekend. Kat's filling in for Mike tonight and Cedric will be filling in for Elaine. I'm not sure if Trina's doing her own post tomorrow or if someone's filling in but there will be a new post at Trina's Kitchen so be sure to check that out. Wally and Cedric will be doing a joint-post by tomorrow morning.
I did a post here on Tuesday and I need to thank everyone for the amazing feedback on that. As Rebecca pointed out: I have "rewrote" and I was so ticked off at myself when I saw that the next day. Rebecca calls me to tell me how much she enjoyed that and I said, "Rewrotes! Rewrotes!" I was so embarrassed. But, as she noted here, I was writing that while laying down the law with my oldest who thinks summer (no school) means no bed time. Now I am fine with a later bed time (and we go through this every summer) but I am not fine with no bed time. When he's older, maybe so. He'd have to be home, of course, but he could stay up as late as he wanted. But he's not even a teenager and, no, we're not playing that game.
This started up because three New Years Eves ago, his grandfather (my father) told him he could stay up. The party was at my parents' home (it usually is) and he wasn't read to go home and the whole "I'm not sleepy" act. So my father said take the others on home and don't worry about it. I love my father very much but he's stubborn as a mule. I could've told him it wasn't going to work and I would've been wasting my breath. He had to live through it.
And my son did stay up all night.
He was up when I went by in the morning. And my father was exhausted. He'd kept saying, "Aren't you tired yet?" He tried the whole, "Let's rest our eyes." Nothing had worked. Now when we got back home a little after noon, my son was crashed out immediately, slept through the rest of the day, the night and didn't want to get up the next morning.
But every summer since, he has been sure that it was time for him to go without a bedtime.
I honestly don't blame him in some ways. It is actually quiet at night. When I get all three of the kids down, it's like I'm in a different house. I usually don't have the TV on and I'm not putting music on or they'll all be up. So it is very different. He knows that too because he's got a later bedtime since he's the oldest. But for him two things would be at play (a) proving he could stay up all night and (b) the thrill of having the run of the house. Neither's a bad thing. (And he is not a bad kid. He's a wonderful kid.) But the end result is that he's going to be sleeping all day and I don't have time in the morning, when I'm getting dressed for work, getting everyone fed and rushing to drop them off, to play, "It is time to get up and I mean now" over and over.
As it is, he's the first one up and taking care of getting his brother out of bed (who is as a dawdler the same way I was at his age) and I get to focus on getting my daughter up (the youngest so she's got that excuse). Many mornings, just the fact that they hear him up means the other two will get up.
Now if we're over at my parents during the summer or on vacation, a little later is fine. But we did our talk already this summer. He wanted midnight, I wanted eleven and we split the difference on eleven thirty. But I told him I was going to be in my room writing and I expected him to have his teeth brushed and ready for bed on time. I had just started typing when he came with his, "Mom, I've been thinking."
That's how he usually opens his important conversations. And usually, they are important. But school's been out for some time and not only did we agree to this for this summer, we agreed he could have 15 minutes more next summer and the summer after he could stay up until midnight (provided he was up by himself each morning).
But he's been checking with all of his friends, he told me, and some of them "my same age" do not have bedtimes and others stay up until one.
I wanted to the pick up the phone but it was too late to bother any parent.
He is like me in that someone tells him something and he believes it. And I certainly pestered my parents about what other kids were doing until my father grabbed the phone and called my best friend's parents and exposed the fact that some kids lie to look cool.
With my son, I proved this the next day. There is not one kid that was in his class that doesn't have a bedtime. And only one is staying up until one in the morning. (His father is a school teacher and has the summer off so the whole family is getting up later.) However, some of my son's big talking friends are going to bed at ten. When he found that out, I told him I'd been thinking.
I didn't change the time. He can handle this time.
But I think that's an important lesson. It was for me growing up and I hope it will be for him as well. I remember being a kid. I remember being so embarrassed about having to do this or that one time when a friend declared she didn't have to do any chores around the house at all. Then everyone rushed to agree and I'm thinking, "What? I think Abe Lincoln forgot about a few of us." And when I got home, my parents heard the longest whine before dinner, all through dinner. My mother would suggest I drop it. At the end of dinner, my father called my best friend's father and spoke to him. Then he put me on the phone and I was told that yes, she did do chores.
That really came in handy in life. I think, in terms of childhood, it was most important when we all started junior high and it was "we kissed" or "we did this" or that. (But never it!) I'd listen to those stories and remember that there was a difference between what your friend told you when it was just the two of you and when it was a bunch of girls. I'm sure it's the same way with boys. And I should point out that I had friends who were boys and one of the things I see these days that is different is that they boys and girls aren't off in different groups.
I think that's smart. We all have to live together, let's learn to play together. Maybe that way, grown ups will know how to get along better.
All through elementary school, I had five friends. Two were boys and three were girls and I remember getting really ticked off when a teacher would tell me to go play with the other girls or tell them to go play with the boys. So I'm glad that's not an issue. We were just playing not experimenting. We were just friends and to have some teacher make us feel like something was wrong with that -- I still remember that.
And it still makes me mad.
And all of that from "rewrote." If only my own site came this easily!
What do you get in a Bully Boy economy (to use Ava and C.I.'s phrase)? This is from the Associated Press' "Consumer Prices Up Sharply:"
Consumer prices surged in May at the fastest pace in 20 months, fueled by another big rise for gasoline and an increase for food as well.
[. . .]
While investors were happy, the big increases in energy and food still meant consumers were falling behind in the cost-of-living struggle. The government said in a separate report that weekly earnings for non-supervisory workers, after adjusting for inflation, fell by 0.2 percent last month. That was the fourth decline in the past five months, reflecting the bite inflation is taking out of paychecks.
Are you feeling it because I am and this isn't news this week. The kids drink a lot of milk, for which I am grateful, but have you checked the price of a gallon of milk?
At this rate, I may need to find a dairy cow to turn into a house pet.
I hope you read C.I.'s "And the war drags on . . ." from last night already. If you haven't, please make a point to do so. They (C.I. and Jim) did a lot of speaking this week. I got to hear about some of it on Wednesday when they were in my area and stayed with me. But I really love that entry. Here's C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"
Friday, June 15, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military announces the deaths of more US service members, a US jet crashes in Iraq, gas shortages plauge Iraq and more.
Starting with US service members. Today, the US military has announced multiple deaths of US service members. They announced: "Three Task Force Lightning Soldiers were killed as a result of injuries sustained from an explosion near their vehicle while conducting operations in Kirkuk Province, Thursday." And they announced: "One Task Force Lightning Soldier was killed as a result of injuries sustained from small arms fire while conducting operations in Diyala Province, Thursday." And they announced [PDF format warning]: "A Task Force Lightning Soldier died Wednesday in a non-combat related incident, which is currently under investigation." That was five announced deaths which took the current ICCC total for the number of US service members killed in the illegal war since it began (March 2003) to 3519 with the total for the month of June thus far at 42.
That was before a F-16 crashed in Iraq today. CBS and AP report that the US Air Force is calling the crash "an accident" and not giving out any details which includes the status of the pilot. CNN reports that plan "crashed in Iraq at 12:27 a.m." and that "Pentagon sources" have told them the pilot died in the crash. Reuters notes the crash comes as 9 helicopters have already crashed in Iraq this year. The Toledo Blade reports, "A fighter pilot from Toledo's 180th Fighter Wing, Ohio Air National Guard, is unaccounted for after a crash while flying an F-16 today during a mission in Iraq."
Turning to war resistance. In June of 2006, Ehren Watada became the first US officer to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq and in February of 2007 his kangaroo court-martial ended in a mistrial over the objections of the defense when Judge Toilet sensed (rightly) things weren't going well for the prosecution. As noted Tuesday, Mike Barber (Seattle Post-Intelligencer) reports the second court-martial is set to start July 23rd. Barbara Kelly (Juneau Empire) covers the issue of war resistance in a recent column (June 12th) and notes "those who take such a stand are execrcising a certain kind of moral courage . . . In speaking of Lt. Ehren Watada's refusal to deploy to Iraq, Maj. Gen. John Batiste who has been outspoken in his criticism of the president's Iraq policy, recentlyl stated that Watada followed his conscience. Batiste says he respects Watada even though he does not agree with what the lieutenant did. Batiste does not consider Watada a coward." But he has become a cultural touchstone. Zbignew Zingh (Dissident Voice) uses Watada as one of his examples of how we have now arrived at "Cola Crime." Also today, Megan Kung (Asian Week) writing about an exhibit of Tezuka Osaumu's artwork notes: "With Guantanamo Bay, Karl Rove, Iraq and 9/11, it does seem like we're living an anime. Too bad fighting those 'shadowy' forces in real life is not that easy -- remember Ehren Watada?" A lot do. His story has traveled far and wide and, if the military does attempt another court-martial, even more people will be paying attention than in February.
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
This week, Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh learned that the kangaroo 'court' on him had rendered a verdict: the honorably discharged marine was informed he'd received a general discharge from the IRR. Earlier, Geoffrey Millard (Truthout) reported on Kokesh and the compilation tells the story up through the news that came out Wednesday -- this is a video report. Kokesh states at the end, "I think what they were hoping to achieve with this decision is that because it won't effect my benefits the way an other-than-honorable-discharge would that I would go away quietly but that's not but that's not the case and I don't think they understood or any of the things that I've written or bothered to read the e-mail responses to the plea bargain but I'm standing on principle and we're going to contest this on principle and it's not going to go away."
Liam Madden and Cloy Richards are also targeted for speaking out against the illegal war.
Cloy's mother, Tina Richards wrote (at Grassroots America) about their recent Memorial Day march, "He [Cloy] could have chosen to march with the Marines and received numerous cheers. For him, it's not a choice. He has a moral imperative to speak out to end this war, and for this he is booed. It is not an easy route to take, but the one our family has chosen. Our children are being killed and maimed as others celeberate and we will not let them forget it. That Memorial Day was one of distress; I waited to see if my son was going to make it through another tough day. Another memory of what Iraq wrough him. Would I walk in and find him with a gun in his mouth, or even worse, I didn't come in time. Every day I fear my son will not survive this war." The US military has no such concerns. They've been happy to launch a witch hunt and a campaign of intimidation and silence at Cloy Richards despite knowing full well that he suffers from PTSD. That was the US military's own 'special thank you' to Cloy Richards.
In different ways, it's a thank you they hand out to many as Aaron Glantz (IPS) demonstrates as he explores the realities for today's returning Iraq veterans which already includes at least 400 homeless while Vietnam homeless veterans "did not usually become homelss until nine to 12 years after their discharge." Today, the Pentagon announces more money is needed for veterans. Kristin Roberts (Reuters) reports that the Pentagon announced today that America's "military's mental health system fails to meet the needs of troops and is too short of funds and staff to help service members sent to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan . . . Repeated and extended deployments to those war zones over the past five years have driven the need for mental health services higher, but resources have not climbed in response, members of a Defense Department task force said." Are you shocked and suprised? Then you must work for the alleged FactCheck.org which made a point of denying this issue in 2004. Aaron Glantz notes, "A recent study by Harvard's Kennedy School of Government found that by the time the Iraq and Afghanistan wars end, there will be at least two and a half million vets. Because of that, the Harvard study concluded, Congress will have to double the VA's budget simply to avoid cutting services."
In Iraq, John Ward Anderson and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) report the escalation has reached its target and 28,500 additional US service members have been put on the ground and quote Giddy Gabor Sister II of the Green Zone, Chris Gaver, declaring the "we'll be able to execute the strategy as it was designed." Such a Happy Talker. In the real world, Andrew North (BBC) reports that fuel shortages in Baghdad are leading to massive lines (including one where the people went out at daybreak and over 900 were in line), notes that the Ministry of Oil has declared it "a crisis," and that the "attacks on bridges . . . have seriously disrupted fuel tanker traffic into the city." What, what? Didn't the US military, Garver in fact, at the start of the week assure the world that the bridge bombings were of little effect? Alissa J. Rubin (New York Times) reported Tuesday on Garver's reassurance that it was of no great consequence "because we have other resources, we have 20,000 troops on each side of the river" but did allow it may be "inconvenient for the people who live there". You think? (It's more than 'inconvenient' for the US military -- no matter how Garver spins it.)
This is the sort of thing Matthew Rothschild (The Progressive) is addressing when he notes Iraq is "going to hell" while other things are focused on. Rothschild goes on to recount Admirall Fallon and John Negroponte 'lobbying' al-Maliki on the oil law "which would turn over Iraqi's liquid treasure to foreign corporations like ExxonMobil. This is the paramount concern of the Bush administration. It is being sold to the American people as a way to equalize revenues to various segments of Iraqi society. But the true reason for it is to line the pockets of U.S. oil executives." Marilyn Bechtel (People's Weekly World) notes that, in the US, "We rarely hear that a powerful labor movement is defending workers' rights, campaigning for an end to the U.S.-led occupation and for better daily living conditions for ordinary people, and upholding the Iraqi people's right to keep control of their country's great oil resources. This month, people across the U.S. are getting a glimpse of that other reality, as they hear from two Iraqi trade union leaders, Faleh Abood Umara, general secertary of the Oil Workers Union, and Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union and the first woman to head a national union in Iraq." The tour continues through the 29th and information is available at US Labor Against the War. Bechtel notes that during the tour thus far, they have met with AFL-CIO's John Sweeny as well as US Congress members Lynn Woolsey and Dennis Kucinich -- Kucinich is, of course, both a member of Congress and running for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.
From the criminal theft of Iraqi oil to violence . . . It's Friday. Most are following the F-16 story or Robert Gates surprise visit.
Bombings?
Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports a roadside bombing in Baghdad that left seven Iraqis injured. the mosque attacks continue today with Reuters noting that one in "Basra was destroyed" John Ward Anderson and Joshua Partlow (Washington Post) report "At least 13 Sunni mosques were attacked on Thursday" and today the mosque attacks continued with Reuters noting that one in "Basra was destroyed" today. AP informs that the attacks on the mosque began on Thursday with some damage and then, on Friday, a new attack ("planting bombs inside the structure and exploding it completely"). Deborah Haynes (Times of London) reports: "Only the front gate of the Talha Ibn Abdellah mosque was left standing after the gang planted bombs around the compound, blowing up two domes and a minaret."
Corpses?
CBS and AP note, "The remains of a Brazilian engineer who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2005 have been found and positively identified, the Brazilian foreign ministry said Thursday. The remains of engineer Joao Jose Vasconcellos were identified by forensic experts in Kuwait with support from Brazilian embassy personnel, the ministry said in a statement. It did not say when or where the remains were found, which arrived Thursday in the Brazilian city of Sao Paulo." From CNN: "Baghdad authorities also reported finding 25 bodies." [Reuters notes 5 corpses discovered in Baghdad yesterday.]
Robert Gates, US Secretary of Defense, made a surprise visit to Baghdad today. This follows an incident yesterday. Thomas E. Ricks (Washington Post) reports that US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid stated David Petraues "isn't in touch with what's going on in Baghdad" after he saw Thursday's USA Today Q&A where David Petraues gushed over alleged "astonishing signs of normalcy" in Baghdad. Senator John McCain, naturally, clutched his chest, wept and soldiered on as only Senator Crazy can do: with High Drama. CBS and AP report that, in Baghdad, Gates attempted to find a middle between the general and Senate Majority Leader Reid declaring the results to be "a mixed bag." No confirmation to rumors that Gates then hollered "Hit me! Papa's got a mixed bag!" while breaking it down old school with the Mashed Potato.
Meanwhile, one of McClatchy Newspapers' Iraqi correspondents has posted (at Insided Iraq) about Falluja noting, "The city is under seige. You cann not go in only through certain checkpoints witha badge issued by the marines. The main soccer field in the city is now a cemetery. The only amusement park in the city was looted and destroyed; its trees were used by the locals to bake their bread. Now the former amusment park is intended to be the next cemetery. Instead of being the city of mosques it will be the city of cemeteries and this will be another achieveement of the invasion that residents of Fallujah will remember through generations." The correspondent goes on to note the need for burials, for cell phone service to be restored, electricity, water and notes that the US military does not allow people to come and go freely: "In a prison you can enter but you can not leave. In Fallujah you can not enter and you can not leave."
In media news, the latest episode of Bill Moyers Journal airs on PBS in many markets tonight (check your local listings) and in a commentary in the latest episode, he notes:
We have yet another remarkable revelation of the mindset of Washington's ruling clique of neoconservative elites--the people who took us to war from the safety of their Beltway bunkers. Even as Iraq grows bloodier by the day, their passion of the week is to keep one of their own from going to jail.
It is well known that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby--once Vice President Cheney's most trust adviser--has been sentenced to 30 months in jail for perjury. Lying. Not a white lie, mind you. A killer lie.
Scooter Libby deliberately poured poising into the drinking water of democracy by lying to federal investigators, for the purpose of obstructing justice. Attempting to trash critics of the war, Libby and his pals in high places -- including his boss Dick Cheney-- outed a covert CIA agent. Libby then lied to cover their tracks. To throw investigators off the trail, he kicked sand in the eyes of truth. "Libby lied about nearly everything that mattered," wrote the chief prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.
The jury agreed and found him guilty on four felony counts.
And?
You'll need to check out Bill Moyers Journal. Remember, Hilda (Hilda's Mix) notes that, online, Bill Moyers Journal is welcoming to all -- it has text, audio and video. And that can't be stressed enough.
In other media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). His next stop is Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
iraq
liam madden
adam kokeshiraq veterans against the war
aaron glantz
tina richardscloy richardsmatthew rothschild
the new york timesalissa j. rubin
bill moyers journalthe washington postjohn ward andersonjoshua partlow
thomas e. ricks
6/15/2007
6/14/2007
fair, (mama) michelle phillips, katie couric
like mike, i really wasn't in the mood to blog tonight. then i read kat's post and saw about michelle phillips being on npr today. that gets a link. michelle phillips and the mamas and the papas always get a link at my site. michelle phillips is a very sweet woman and a very funny 1 too. she has many hilarious stories and my favorite will always be the 1 about the 80s and a judge in el paso, texas. keep rocking, mama michelle, always! click here if you want to hear the npr story on the 40th anniversary of the monterey pop festival with some (not enough) commentary by michelle phillips.
sherry wrote to say she was glad i removed a program and a person from my links and would not be plugging them. she didn't see gina's requests for comments until after the deadline today so she wanted to note them here, which is cool.
sherry: This nonsense of we're all going to act like a woman doesn't exist while she pushes us and promotes us is nonsense and I'll keep it clean. It really is something the way they all show up in need but never feel the 'need' to return the favor. Tuesday's broadcast was the last straw and the glee in the two voices was just too damn much for me. I hope they both rot in hell. Slowly and painfully.
sherry, you didn't have to keep it clean. you should see the e-mails goldie and marlene passed on where they pretend they've never heard of the common ills. of course, it's easy to pretend. but we all know better. beth's column in tomorrow's gina & krista round-robin is a listing of all that have asked for favors (excepting friends of c.i.'s - it's a listing of those who e-mailed the public account asking for favors) and you can peruse that and figure out who is full of it and who isn't.
you know they, and that entire station, had an online presence and that was solely due to c.i. things should be really interesting for them from now on. they'll need to build their own arcs to float in because a storm's - no, a change is gonna come.
switching topics (sort of), on monday i wrote a post that i rewrote on tuesday. in the original, i noted that fair issued an action alert on monday that emphasized the things c.i. noted on may 29th and the correction piece at the third estate sunday review that c.i. steered on sunday. i stated that it could be a coincidence but it did not seem like 1 to me. i have now heard from fair and i will state that they got their information on their own and were not ripping off c.i. (i state that freely, by the way. i'm not under any duress and had told jess tuesday that when i heard from them i would note a correction here.) my apologies to fair. repeating, they got their information independently. they did not rip off c.i.
i rewrote the post on tuesday (monday's post) to avoid any conflict or tensions from c.i. and, to repeat there, c.i. didn't ask me to. it's still not been discussed between the 2 of us. not even tonight during the roundtable.
and for any katrina vanden heuvel's (aka late to the party), sherry's not speaking of fair. on the issue of katrina vanden heuvel, i hope you read c.i. and ava's 'adam kokesh' (ava went in and added her own commentary after the friend c.i. dictated that to - it was much longer - saved a copy of c.i.'s original comments and e-mailed it to ava, elaine, myself and a mutual friend at a network other than cbs). did any 1 notice 1st of all that the editor and publisher of the nation doesn't know how to spell ann richards? it's 'ann,' not 'anne.' hey my finger nails are as long as streisand's, what's katrina's excuse?
second of all, way to go front for every 1. i'm not sure if dan rather is going to be addressed at the third estate sunday review or not. it's still up in the air of whether or not we're doing an all fiction issue this edition (plus ava and c.i.'s tv commentary - don't worry, and my father-in-law asked me to link to this 1 by ava and c.i. saying it's perfection - which is true - use the link to see if it's 1 of your favorites), so i'll confine my remarks to katrina's assertion that the criticism isn't about sexism.
her false and stupid assertion.
of course it's about sexism. brian williams and charlie gibson both took over the anchor desks at nbc and abc. did you see months of jaw boning on that before they grabbed their chairs? no, you didn't. now this wasn't flattering press. katie couric was attacked before she ever sat in the anchor chair at cbs. she was attacked non-stop. and still is. even today, this week, buzzflash - a left wing site - links to a right winger that's slamming katie couric.
apparently hatred towards her will heal the nation and have us all come together.
katie couric (who i don't know - ava and c.i. do and elaine may, but i've never met her) is a flop! that's what the cackles say, right? she's the lowest rated and cbs is at an all time low.
is that surprising after every man and a hell of a lot of women have gone on a rampage tearing her apart before she ever did her 1st newscast?
week after week, month after month, she has been savaged. (and the tarnishing, as ava and c.i. pointed out in december of 2005, took place before she went to cbs - when nbc was playing the 'let's take her down a bit and maybe cbs will lose interest game').
now charlie gibson has his job how? oh, that's right. elizabeth vargas, who said she was thrilled to do the anchor job and the pregnancy wouldn't be a problem, suddenly learned that abc didn't want her. a pregnant woman was kicked out of her job by the network and that's sexism and it's illegal.
now katrina didn't write about that - ava and c.i. did twice. they wrote about it a month or more before it happened and they wrote about it after it happened. and, in the 2nd piece, they pointed out charlie gibson's comment, about how he didn't like to share the anchor duties. i guess not.
and i guess if sexism was truly called out, ava and c.i. wouldn't have been alone in sounding the alarm on what was done to elizabeth vargas. but the reality is that they were.
and cbs covered iraq more in their evening news last week. but the 1s foaming at the mouth don't note that. they don't note exactly how much more cbs covered iraq than did abc's evening news.
it's really funny. and as ava and c.i. pointed out the last time they wrote about this at the third estate sunday review, the things katie couric is blamed for, the 'shake ups' at the evening news when she became anchor, cbs had announced those ahead of time. even when anderson cooper was being considered for the job, they were announcing these changes would be made. cbs wanted to 'shake things up' but somehow that's proof of katie and not of cbs.
that's cute and it's cute the way katrina says it's not about sexism. now she's an idiot but i don't think even she can be that dumb. for over a year, katie couric has been attacked. ava and c.i. noted the attacks in their 1st piece on the topic, 'Katie Was a Cheerleader,' which ran in april of 2006 and couric didn't even get behind the anchor desk until the fall of 2006. so let's not act like this hasn't been a case of women bashing from day 1.
cbs has a new producer now (who i have met once but i don't know him, c.i. does) and they've given up on the ideas they were pushing long before they ever decided who would be anchor.
it's no surprise to me that cbs evening news is dead last. katie couric has been trashed non-stop since april of 2006.
you know what it reminds me of? michael gordon and judith miller. both wrote the pre-war stories and gordo came out smelling like a rose. now not at the common ills because c.i. always pointed out miller's co-writers. but for every 1 else it was act like it was just judy until gordo started doing the same thing on iran that he did on iraq.
most people do not know his name but they know 'judith miller.' why is that? they were equal offenders?
it's because this society loves to play bash the bitch and they will invent a witch if need be. in judith miller's case, she provided them all the ammo they needed and then some.
but it's amazing to see the same energies that went into the takedown of judith miller going into the takedown of katie couric. for the record, charlie gibson cheerleaded the war as did brian williams.
as ava and c.i. pointed out, katie couric actually moderated a discussion - of people, not generals - on the iraq war before it started.
but what's going on is that judith's been run off from the new york times (and rosie's gone from the view) so america needs a bitch to bash.
you can carry that over to paris hilton.
c.i. and ava went back and forth over writing about that last week. it's junk news and i understand their reluctance to write about it. i also understand why they were torn because it's another attack a woman trend.
you know christian slater bit a cop. he bit a cop and he got less attention for that then paris hilton has for driving without a license. robert downey jr.'s many arrests did not result in this kind of press. robert downey jr. was treated as a troubled man, a young rebel, a tortured artist. do you remember that with winona - who bit no police officer. no. didn't happen.
a woman is still held to a different standard and the standard exists for 1 reason only - ridicule.
katrina vanden hevuel wanted to join in the fun and prove she was 1 of the guys so she said that it wasn't about sexism. 'tart up the news.' oh yeah, that has multiple meanings! it was exactly about sexism.
and dan rather cheerleaded the illegal war, bragged - on letterman - about he takes his orders from the president and then, recently, tried to back off from that statement too. that very clear statement didn't mean what it obviously did, if you believe dan rather's new invention.
elaine, c.i. and i hate dan rather (who we all know) for mulitple reasons but chief among them, the day gerald ford pardoned richard nixon, dan rather (as a correspondent) ... i can't say reported. he didn't report it on the evening news. he editorialized and applauded. it would heal the nation. dan rather wasn't about news then and he never was. and his fights with connie chung were all about sexism, he undermined her and he destroyed her. she came into that show being considered a pro and left with her image in ruins. now, the same dan rather, wants to claim that 'tart' has another meaning.
it was sexism and for katrina to front and put a woman's face on the obviously false denial is a stab in the back to women every where.
it was about sexism. but here's katrina to front and try to 'heal' the nation. i'm surprised she didn't drag out that idiotic 'sweet victories' for her post again.
and i love how she's talking about standards when alexander cockburn and jeffrey st. clair ran the story she promised to run on 9-11. suddenly that was too hot for katrina and she dropped it, after giving her word months prior. so she's truly the last to lecture about news standards.
i hope katie couric pulls it out. i think she can. but if she doesn't, i heard on the radio today that this is really about how america doesn't want a woman behind the anchor desk. i remember that same argument with barbara walters and connie chung. so we'll have to wait another decade apparently. this is women bashing, not woman bashing. this is about all of us. i'm not saying, 'we gotta stick together.' if you don't like couric for whatever reasons, don't watch. but at least have the honesty to admit that the year plus of attacks - which began before she ever started anchoring - were not about what she was doing. they were about attacking women. and katrina's not the only woman to engage in that. if you hate katie couric for some reason, hate her away but don't engage in this nonsense of bash the bitch. have enough respect for yourself (or for women, if you're a guy) to say 'enough' and move on to a new topic. besides, it's obviously not even a 'cool' topic anymore. by the time losers like katrina vanden heuvel are writing about it, it's had to have lost all 'cachet'. c.i. was right, katrina needs to return to writing her dopey pieces on reality tv. isn't that what the editor and publisher of a political magazine should be obsessed with? it's not. well she's not much of an editor or publisher, is she?
this is late partly because it's so long but also because i had to stop twice to nurse the baby. we'll all just handle the delay. closing with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, June 14, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, mosques are attacked throughout Iraq, Adam Kokesh continues fighting, the Pentagon releases a report and more.
Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh who has been the subject of witch hunt by the US military that 'ended' (it's not over yet) yesterday with Kokesh receiving a general discharge from the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Normally, service members are not discharged from the IRR. They are discharged from service (as Kokesh was, honorably, in November). Now the military prepares to set their sights on Liam Madden and Cloy Richards. (You can sign the petition to support of Madden.) Veterans for Common Sense (in a letter posted at Kokesh's website) demonstrate they are far wiser than the press by noting: "Neither marine wore a full uniform. They wore camouflage fatigues without themarine insignia, a right they have earned in blood. There is no law, or regulationagainst wearing camo. A camo shirt, pants, and hat is not a uniform. You cansee people wearing camo everyday all around America. The corps claims that is against regulations to wear a uniform, or apparently a part of a uniform, at political events. If that is correct, the regulation is selectively enforced by the Department of Defense. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other politicians often have soldiers in full dress uniformstanding behind them for the cameras at political events. In short, the Marine Corps is attempting to stifle legitimate pro-American speech, which should not be tolerated. Are we fighting in Iraq to lose our freedoms at home?" That's still too much for the press to grasp.
And Heather Hollingsworth (AP) appears to be competing for prize pig in this county fair judging by a hideous article where she states Kokesh has been "kicked out of the Marines" (he was discharged in November) and pretending to not grasp that Kokesh was participating in street theater, among other things.
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to the Pentagon's report [PDF format, click here]. Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers) informs that the report "acknowledges that violence in Iraq has not diminished, despite the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad," that McClatchy Newspaper figures show a "70 percent increase in sectarian murders in Baghdad from April to May," and that the Pentagon report places the average daily death figure in Iraq (from February through May) at 100 a day. Also filing on the report was Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) who observed that the Congressionally mandate report "tempers the early optimism about the new strategy voiced by senior U.S. officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, for instance, in March described progress in Iraq as 'so far, so good.' Instead, it depicts limited gains and setbacks and states that it is too soon to judge whether the new approach is working." The Pentagon report has many sections and one of interest considering one of the 2007 developments may be this: "There are currently more than 900 personnel in the Iraqi Air Force. . . . The fielding of rotary-wing aircraft continued with the delivery to Taji of five modified UH II (Iroquois) helicopters, bringing the total delivered to ten. The final six are scheduled to arrive in June. Aircrews are currently conducting initial qualifications and tactics training. The Iroquois fleet is expected to reach initial operation capability by the end of June 2007." By the end of June 2007? One of the developments of 2007 was the (admission of) helicopter crashes. US helicopters. British helicopters. Some may find comfort in the fact that evacuations and mobility will be handled by Iraqis . . . whenever they are fully staffed and trained. Four years plus to deliver the equipment, training should be done in ten or twenty years, right?
Remarking on yesterday's bombings, Lara Logan (CBS News) wrote: "No one knows for sure how it will play out this time. But there is one thing I do know for sure: tonight, somewhere in Baghdad, on one of those blackened streets, someone will pay for this act. Someone innocent, someone unarmed, someone who does not deserve to die this way. They will go into a house, wearing masks and carrying weapons, maybe even wearing police or army uniforms. They will take an innocent man from his bed, or from his family, and they will execute him. If he's lucky, they will be quick. But if not, they may torture him. Maybe they won't have time. Or maybe they will have too many others to kill. But if they do have time, most likely they will use an electric drill." Meanwhile, John F. Burns (New York Times) announced in this morning's paper that "appeals for calm by Shiite political and religious leaders, as well as by moderate Sunni politicians and the top two American officials in Iraq, appeared to have headed off the risk of a new sectarian convulsion, at least for now." At least for now transferred to "as I write." As Debroah Haynes (Times of London) notes, "A wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques hit Baghdad last night in retaliation for a devastating attack on a revered Shia shrine in Samarra". AFP counts three mosques, all Sunni, bombed today -- two in Iskandiriyah, one Mahawil and it was the second day in a row of attacks on the Iskandiriyah mosque. CBS and AP note that a total of six mosques have either been "attacked or burned Thursday" and that an attack on a Basra mosque resulted in 4 deaths (6 wounded). And CNN notes, "Hilla police said five mosques have been bombed in Babil province, three on Thursday and two on Wednesday."
Meanwhile, Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports on the demonstrations going on in the Sadr section of Baghdad where "thousands of protesters marched peacefully, many carrying Iraqi flags and photographs of [Moqtada al] Sadr." Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) notes that "[d]emonstrations also took place in Kut, Diwaniyah, Najaf and Basra -- all predominately Shiite cities in the south." CNN describes the Baghdad demonstration as "angry but peaceful" and notes: "The protesters carried banners, Iraqi flags and pictures of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his father. Al-Sadr has called for three days of mourning to mark the destruction of the two minarets at the Askariya shrine. 'We demand of our Sunni brothers help us rebuild Askariya Shrine,' one of the banners said. Shouting 'No, no for the devil' and 'Yes, yes for unity,' the crowd marched to al-Sadr's office." CNN puts the total number of mosque attacks, since the one in Samarra was attacked yesterday, at nine and notes the Askariya mosque, as the Samarra one before, lost both minarets (columns/towers).
In other reported violence today . . .
Bombings?
McClatchy Newspapers reports that a police station in Baghdad was "fully destroyed" today by bombings. Reuters reports a Mussayab bombing that left 4 Iraqi soldiers dead, while a Riyadh bombing left three Iraqis soldiers wounded as well as three police officers Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports a Kirkuk bombing outside a government builidng in which the bomber also claimed the the lives of three police officers, 2 security guards and a civilian.
Shootings?
McClatchy Newspapers reports that three people were injured in shootings in Baghdad today. Reuters reports that two police officers were shot dead in Diwaniya, and, outside of Balad, two farmers were shot dead (3 more wounded).
Corpses?
Reuters reports that 25 corpses were discovered in Baghdad yesterday, 4 were discovered in Mosul today with another one (also discovered today) found in Latifiya.
And McClatchy Newspapers reports that "the head of Diyala university" is missing and this follows a phone call where he discussed the deaths of 12 university professors and the fact that 44 other ones had been "transferred to other universities in the south and north seeking" safety.
Turning to US politics. Mary Frances Berry utilized some of that 'wisdom' she's not famous for to explain on NPR that, basically, for non-White, non-males, it's all a choice between senators Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama when it came to the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Confronted with polling that had Clinton ahead of Obama by 10%, Mary Francis Berry reached back into her shallow pool of wisdom to come back explaining that "people like me who are intellectual" respond more to Obama. Intellectual? The campaign who appears to rip off Chicken Soup for the Soul is now the home of the intellectuals? Or maybe Mary Francis Berry was just attempting to get a dig in at Maya Angelou who has recorded a video endorsement of Hillary Clinton? Regardless, hopefully the laughter greeting Mary Francis Berry's remarks, across America, allowed many to miss some troubling statements by Mary Francis Berry about Latinos and Asians -- don't worry, Mary Francis Berry just knows "their children are legal even if they're not"! To this day, no one sours a room faster than Mary Francis Berry. And both she and Farai Chideya seemed unaware that it is a requirement that you are a US citizen but wasn't it 'cute' for them to smear Latinos and Asians and wasn't it 'cute' for NPR to turn over public airwaves to those falsehoods?
In the real world, Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report) explains the basics on Obama as he and Bruce Dixon discovered while at The Black Commentator: " There followed a month-long series of interchanges - June 5, June 12, June 19, June 26, 2003 - in which Obama danced like Mr. Bojangles to get around the issues at hand. Was he a DLC Democrat, by affiliation or political affinity? Finally, tiring of the charade and the reflexive spin from Obama's mouth, Dixon and I compiled three questions to the wannabe senator, the answers to which would determine if he should be in the DLC and, therefore, unworthy of our support. Obama, a genius at double-speak, fudged all three, on the Iraq war, universal health care, and NAFTA/so-called free trade." At his campaign site, Obama continues to hide behind the James Baker Circle Jerk (whose authors are fudging in recent days). Meanwhile, Bill Richards has presented a plan for ending the illegal war and made the war a strong point in his campaign likening a vote for Richardson as a vote to "Get America Out Of Iraq" (click here to see the campaign bumper sticker). US House Rep Dennis Kucinich wasn't mentioned by NPR (nor were Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden) maybe Farai Chideya hosts a program entitled News & Notes as opposed to News? Kucinich's campaign commerical can be seen at YouTube and is entitled "No more blood for oil."
In the US Congress, Anne Flaherty (AP via Democracy Rising) reports, US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing for another vote on the Iraq war that would take place before Congress takes its next recess for the July 4th holiday and this is being discussed because "[l]ast month, Democrats helped push through legislation funding the war for four more months, triggering a backlash from liberal voters who helped Democrats take control of Congress in the November elections." Meanwhile, in Iraqi politics, Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foriegn minister, did his own song and dance. Al Jazeera reports that the illegal war has been exteded by Zebari who went to the United Nations Secuirty Council to ask that the "mandate for US-led forces in Iraq" be extended. The UN Security Council quickly agreed and apparently never took a moment to think about how angry the Iraqi parliament was when the mandate was previously extended without their input or request. This also ignores the recent (nonbinding) action by the Iraqi parliment expressing their desire that the US forces leave. The mandate is actually up for renewal in December, this was a review. Along with Zerbair, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also spoke at length to the Security Council and what was the first 'economic' thing he emphasized? Did you guess "passage of legislation on the hydrocarbons sector with regulations governing oil revenue sharing"? More likely, you didn't pretty it up and just guess, "Theft of Iraqi oil."
In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). His next stop is Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
sherry wrote to say she was glad i removed a program and a person from my links and would not be plugging them. she didn't see gina's requests for comments until after the deadline today so she wanted to note them here, which is cool.
sherry: This nonsense of we're all going to act like a woman doesn't exist while she pushes us and promotes us is nonsense and I'll keep it clean. It really is something the way they all show up in need but never feel the 'need' to return the favor. Tuesday's broadcast was the last straw and the glee in the two voices was just too damn much for me. I hope they both rot in hell. Slowly and painfully.
sherry, you didn't have to keep it clean. you should see the e-mails goldie and marlene passed on where they pretend they've never heard of the common ills. of course, it's easy to pretend. but we all know better. beth's column in tomorrow's gina & krista round-robin is a listing of all that have asked for favors (excepting friends of c.i.'s - it's a listing of those who e-mailed the public account asking for favors) and you can peruse that and figure out who is full of it and who isn't.
you know they, and that entire station, had an online presence and that was solely due to c.i. things should be really interesting for them from now on. they'll need to build their own arcs to float in because a storm's - no, a change is gonna come.
switching topics (sort of), on monday i wrote a post that i rewrote on tuesday. in the original, i noted that fair issued an action alert on monday that emphasized the things c.i. noted on may 29th and the correction piece at the third estate sunday review that c.i. steered on sunday. i stated that it could be a coincidence but it did not seem like 1 to me. i have now heard from fair and i will state that they got their information on their own and were not ripping off c.i. (i state that freely, by the way. i'm not under any duress and had told jess tuesday that when i heard from them i would note a correction here.) my apologies to fair. repeating, they got their information independently. they did not rip off c.i.
i rewrote the post on tuesday (monday's post) to avoid any conflict or tensions from c.i. and, to repeat there, c.i. didn't ask me to. it's still not been discussed between the 2 of us. not even tonight during the roundtable.
and for any katrina vanden heuvel's (aka late to the party), sherry's not speaking of fair. on the issue of katrina vanden heuvel, i hope you read c.i. and ava's 'adam kokesh' (ava went in and added her own commentary after the friend c.i. dictated that to - it was much longer - saved a copy of c.i.'s original comments and e-mailed it to ava, elaine, myself and a mutual friend at a network other than cbs). did any 1 notice 1st of all that the editor and publisher of the nation doesn't know how to spell ann richards? it's 'ann,' not 'anne.' hey my finger nails are as long as streisand's, what's katrina's excuse?
second of all, way to go front for every 1. i'm not sure if dan rather is going to be addressed at the third estate sunday review or not. it's still up in the air of whether or not we're doing an all fiction issue this edition (plus ava and c.i.'s tv commentary - don't worry, and my father-in-law asked me to link to this 1 by ava and c.i. saying it's perfection - which is true - use the link to see if it's 1 of your favorites), so i'll confine my remarks to katrina's assertion that the criticism isn't about sexism.
her false and stupid assertion.
of course it's about sexism. brian williams and charlie gibson both took over the anchor desks at nbc and abc. did you see months of jaw boning on that before they grabbed their chairs? no, you didn't. now this wasn't flattering press. katie couric was attacked before she ever sat in the anchor chair at cbs. she was attacked non-stop. and still is. even today, this week, buzzflash - a left wing site - links to a right winger that's slamming katie couric.
apparently hatred towards her will heal the nation and have us all come together.
katie couric (who i don't know - ava and c.i. do and elaine may, but i've never met her) is a flop! that's what the cackles say, right? she's the lowest rated and cbs is at an all time low.
is that surprising after every man and a hell of a lot of women have gone on a rampage tearing her apart before she ever did her 1st newscast?
week after week, month after month, she has been savaged. (and the tarnishing, as ava and c.i. pointed out in december of 2005, took place before she went to cbs - when nbc was playing the 'let's take her down a bit and maybe cbs will lose interest game').
now charlie gibson has his job how? oh, that's right. elizabeth vargas, who said she was thrilled to do the anchor job and the pregnancy wouldn't be a problem, suddenly learned that abc didn't want her. a pregnant woman was kicked out of her job by the network and that's sexism and it's illegal.
now katrina didn't write about that - ava and c.i. did twice. they wrote about it a month or more before it happened and they wrote about it after it happened. and, in the 2nd piece, they pointed out charlie gibson's comment, about how he didn't like to share the anchor duties. i guess not.
and i guess if sexism was truly called out, ava and c.i. wouldn't have been alone in sounding the alarm on what was done to elizabeth vargas. but the reality is that they were.
and cbs covered iraq more in their evening news last week. but the 1s foaming at the mouth don't note that. they don't note exactly how much more cbs covered iraq than did abc's evening news.
it's really funny. and as ava and c.i. pointed out the last time they wrote about this at the third estate sunday review, the things katie couric is blamed for, the 'shake ups' at the evening news when she became anchor, cbs had announced those ahead of time. even when anderson cooper was being considered for the job, they were announcing these changes would be made. cbs wanted to 'shake things up' but somehow that's proof of katie and not of cbs.
that's cute and it's cute the way katrina says it's not about sexism. now she's an idiot but i don't think even she can be that dumb. for over a year, katie couric has been attacked. ava and c.i. noted the attacks in their 1st piece on the topic, 'Katie Was a Cheerleader,' which ran in april of 2006 and couric didn't even get behind the anchor desk until the fall of 2006. so let's not act like this hasn't been a case of women bashing from day 1.
cbs has a new producer now (who i have met once but i don't know him, c.i. does) and they've given up on the ideas they were pushing long before they ever decided who would be anchor.
it's no surprise to me that cbs evening news is dead last. katie couric has been trashed non-stop since april of 2006.
you know what it reminds me of? michael gordon and judith miller. both wrote the pre-war stories and gordo came out smelling like a rose. now not at the common ills because c.i. always pointed out miller's co-writers. but for every 1 else it was act like it was just judy until gordo started doing the same thing on iran that he did on iraq.
most people do not know his name but they know 'judith miller.' why is that? they were equal offenders?
it's because this society loves to play bash the bitch and they will invent a witch if need be. in judith miller's case, she provided them all the ammo they needed and then some.
but it's amazing to see the same energies that went into the takedown of judith miller going into the takedown of katie couric. for the record, charlie gibson cheerleaded the war as did brian williams.
as ava and c.i. pointed out, katie couric actually moderated a discussion - of people, not generals - on the iraq war before it started.
but what's going on is that judith's been run off from the new york times (and rosie's gone from the view) so america needs a bitch to bash.
you can carry that over to paris hilton.
c.i. and ava went back and forth over writing about that last week. it's junk news and i understand their reluctance to write about it. i also understand why they were torn because it's another attack a woman trend.
you know christian slater bit a cop. he bit a cop and he got less attention for that then paris hilton has for driving without a license. robert downey jr.'s many arrests did not result in this kind of press. robert downey jr. was treated as a troubled man, a young rebel, a tortured artist. do you remember that with winona - who bit no police officer. no. didn't happen.
a woman is still held to a different standard and the standard exists for 1 reason only - ridicule.
katrina vanden hevuel wanted to join in the fun and prove she was 1 of the guys so she said that it wasn't about sexism. 'tart up the news.' oh yeah, that has multiple meanings! it was exactly about sexism.
and dan rather cheerleaded the illegal war, bragged - on letterman - about he takes his orders from the president and then, recently, tried to back off from that statement too. that very clear statement didn't mean what it obviously did, if you believe dan rather's new invention.
elaine, c.i. and i hate dan rather (who we all know) for mulitple reasons but chief among them, the day gerald ford pardoned richard nixon, dan rather (as a correspondent) ... i can't say reported. he didn't report it on the evening news. he editorialized and applauded. it would heal the nation. dan rather wasn't about news then and he never was. and his fights with connie chung were all about sexism, he undermined her and he destroyed her. she came into that show being considered a pro and left with her image in ruins. now, the same dan rather, wants to claim that 'tart' has another meaning.
it was sexism and for katrina to front and put a woman's face on the obviously false denial is a stab in the back to women every where.
it was about sexism. but here's katrina to front and try to 'heal' the nation. i'm surprised she didn't drag out that idiotic 'sweet victories' for her post again.
and i love how she's talking about standards when alexander cockburn and jeffrey st. clair ran the story she promised to run on 9-11. suddenly that was too hot for katrina and she dropped it, after giving her word months prior. so she's truly the last to lecture about news standards.
i hope katie couric pulls it out. i think she can. but if she doesn't, i heard on the radio today that this is really about how america doesn't want a woman behind the anchor desk. i remember that same argument with barbara walters and connie chung. so we'll have to wait another decade apparently. this is women bashing, not woman bashing. this is about all of us. i'm not saying, 'we gotta stick together.' if you don't like couric for whatever reasons, don't watch. but at least have the honesty to admit that the year plus of attacks - which began before she ever started anchoring - were not about what she was doing. they were about attacking women. and katrina's not the only woman to engage in that. if you hate katie couric for some reason, hate her away but don't engage in this nonsense of bash the bitch. have enough respect for yourself (or for women, if you're a guy) to say 'enough' and move on to a new topic. besides, it's obviously not even a 'cool' topic anymore. by the time losers like katrina vanden heuvel are writing about it, it's had to have lost all 'cachet'. c.i. was right, katrina needs to return to writing her dopey pieces on reality tv. isn't that what the editor and publisher of a political magazine should be obsessed with? it's not. well she's not much of an editor or publisher, is she?
this is late partly because it's so long but also because i had to stop twice to nurse the baby. we'll all just handle the delay. closing with c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Thursday, June 14, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, mosques are attacked throughout Iraq, Adam Kokesh continues fighting, the Pentagon releases a report and more.
Starting with Iraq Veterans Against the War Adam Kokesh who has been the subject of witch hunt by the US military that 'ended' (it's not over yet) yesterday with Kokesh receiving a general discharge from the Individual Ready Reserve (IRR). Normally, service members are not discharged from the IRR. They are discharged from service (as Kokesh was, honorably, in November). Now the military prepares to set their sights on Liam Madden and Cloy Richards. (You can sign the petition to support of Madden.) Veterans for Common Sense (in a letter posted at Kokesh's website) demonstrate they are far wiser than the press by noting: "Neither marine wore a full uniform. They wore camouflage fatigues without themarine insignia, a right they have earned in blood. There is no law, or regulationagainst wearing camo. A camo shirt, pants, and hat is not a uniform. You cansee people wearing camo everyday all around America. The corps claims that is against regulations to wear a uniform, or apparently a part of a uniform, at political events. If that is correct, the regulation is selectively enforced by the Department of Defense. President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other politicians often have soldiers in full dress uniformstanding behind them for the cameras at political events. In short, the Marine Corps is attempting to stifle legitimate pro-American speech, which should not be tolerated. Are we fighting in Iraq to lose our freedoms at home?" That's still too much for the press to grasp.
And Heather Hollingsworth (AP) appears to be competing for prize pig in this county fair judging by a hideous article where she states Kokesh has been "kicked out of the Marines" (he was discharged in November) and pretending to not grasp that Kokesh was participating in street theater, among other things.
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Turning to the Pentagon's report [PDF format, click here]. Nancy A. Youssef (McClatchy Newspapers) informs that the report "acknowledges that violence in Iraq has not diminished, despite the arrival of thousands of additional U.S. and Iraqi troops in Baghdad," that McClatchy Newspaper figures show a "70 percent increase in sectarian murders in Baghdad from April to May," and that the Pentagon report places the average daily death figure in Iraq (from February through May) at 100 a day. Also filing on the report was Ann Scott Tyson (Washington Post) who observed that the Congressionally mandate report "tempers the early optimism about the new strategy voiced by senior U.S. officials. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, for instance, in March described progress in Iraq as 'so far, so good.' Instead, it depicts limited gains and setbacks and states that it is too soon to judge whether the new approach is working." The Pentagon report has many sections and one of interest considering one of the 2007 developments may be this: "There are currently more than 900 personnel in the Iraqi Air Force. . . . The fielding of rotary-wing aircraft continued with the delivery to Taji of five modified UH II (Iroquois) helicopters, bringing the total delivered to ten. The final six are scheduled to arrive in June. Aircrews are currently conducting initial qualifications and tactics training. The Iroquois fleet is expected to reach initial operation capability by the end of June 2007." By the end of June 2007? One of the developments of 2007 was the (admission of) helicopter crashes. US helicopters. British helicopters. Some may find comfort in the fact that evacuations and mobility will be handled by Iraqis . . . whenever they are fully staffed and trained. Four years plus to deliver the equipment, training should be done in ten or twenty years, right?
Remarking on yesterday's bombings, Lara Logan (CBS News) wrote: "No one knows for sure how it will play out this time. But there is one thing I do know for sure: tonight, somewhere in Baghdad, on one of those blackened streets, someone will pay for this act. Someone innocent, someone unarmed, someone who does not deserve to die this way. They will go into a house, wearing masks and carrying weapons, maybe even wearing police or army uniforms. They will take an innocent man from his bed, or from his family, and they will execute him. If he's lucky, they will be quick. But if not, they may torture him. Maybe they won't have time. Or maybe they will have too many others to kill. But if they do have time, most likely they will use an electric drill." Meanwhile, John F. Burns (New York Times) announced in this morning's paper that "appeals for calm by Shiite political and religious leaders, as well as by moderate Sunni politicians and the top two American officials in Iraq, appeared to have headed off the risk of a new sectarian convulsion, at least for now." At least for now transferred to "as I write." As Debroah Haynes (Times of London) notes, "A wave of revenge attacks on Sunni mosques hit Baghdad last night in retaliation for a devastating attack on a revered Shia shrine in Samarra". AFP counts three mosques, all Sunni, bombed today -- two in Iskandiriyah, one Mahawil and it was the second day in a row of attacks on the Iskandiriyah mosque. CBS and AP note that a total of six mosques have either been "attacked or burned Thursday" and that an attack on a Basra mosque resulted in 4 deaths (6 wounded). And CNN notes, "Hilla police said five mosques have been bombed in Babil province, three on Thursday and two on Wednesday."
Meanwhile, Tina Susman (Los Angeles Times) reports on the demonstrations going on in the Sadr section of Baghdad where "thousands of protesters marched peacefully, many carrying Iraqi flags and photographs of [Moqtada al] Sadr." Sameer N. Yacoub (AP) notes that "[d]emonstrations also took place in Kut, Diwaniyah, Najaf and Basra -- all predominately Shiite cities in the south." CNN describes the Baghdad demonstration as "angry but peaceful" and notes: "The protesters carried banners, Iraqi flags and pictures of anti-American Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and his father. Al-Sadr has called for three days of mourning to mark the destruction of the two minarets at the Askariya shrine. 'We demand of our Sunni brothers help us rebuild Askariya Shrine,' one of the banners said. Shouting 'No, no for the devil' and 'Yes, yes for unity,' the crowd marched to al-Sadr's office." CNN puts the total number of mosque attacks, since the one in Samarra was attacked yesterday, at nine and notes the Askariya mosque, as the Samarra one before, lost both minarets (columns/towers).
In other reported violence today . . .
Bombings?
McClatchy Newspapers reports that a police station in Baghdad was "fully destroyed" today by bombings. Reuters reports a Mussayab bombing that left 4 Iraqi soldiers dead, while a Riyadh bombing left three Iraqis soldiers wounded as well as three police officers Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports a Kirkuk bombing outside a government builidng in which the bomber also claimed the the lives of three police officers, 2 security guards and a civilian.
Shootings?
McClatchy Newspapers reports that three people were injured in shootings in Baghdad today. Reuters reports that two police officers were shot dead in Diwaniya, and, outside of Balad, two farmers were shot dead (3 more wounded).
Corpses?
Reuters reports that 25 corpses were discovered in Baghdad yesterday, 4 were discovered in Mosul today with another one (also discovered today) found in Latifiya.
And McClatchy Newspapers reports that "the head of Diyala university" is missing and this follows a phone call where he discussed the deaths of 12 university professors and the fact that 44 other ones had been "transferred to other universities in the south and north seeking" safety.
Turning to US politics. Mary Frances Berry utilized some of that 'wisdom' she's not famous for to explain on NPR that, basically, for non-White, non-males, it's all a choice between senators Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama when it came to the 2008 Democratic presidential primary. Confronted with polling that had Clinton ahead of Obama by 10%, Mary Francis Berry reached back into her shallow pool of wisdom to come back explaining that "people like me who are intellectual" respond more to Obama. Intellectual? The campaign who appears to rip off Chicken Soup for the Soul is now the home of the intellectuals? Or maybe Mary Francis Berry was just attempting to get a dig in at Maya Angelou who has recorded a video endorsement of Hillary Clinton? Regardless, hopefully the laughter greeting Mary Francis Berry's remarks, across America, allowed many to miss some troubling statements by Mary Francis Berry about Latinos and Asians -- don't worry, Mary Francis Berry just knows "their children are legal even if they're not"! To this day, no one sours a room faster than Mary Francis Berry. And both she and Farai Chideya seemed unaware that it is a requirement that you are a US citizen but wasn't it 'cute' for them to smear Latinos and Asians and wasn't it 'cute' for NPR to turn over public airwaves to those falsehoods?
In the real world, Glen Ford (Black Agenda Report) explains the basics on Obama as he and Bruce Dixon discovered while at The Black Commentator: " There followed a month-long series of interchanges - June 5, June 12, June 19, June 26, 2003 - in which Obama danced like Mr. Bojangles to get around the issues at hand. Was he a DLC Democrat, by affiliation or political affinity? Finally, tiring of the charade and the reflexive spin from Obama's mouth, Dixon and I compiled three questions to the wannabe senator, the answers to which would determine if he should be in the DLC and, therefore, unworthy of our support. Obama, a genius at double-speak, fudged all three, on the Iraq war, universal health care, and NAFTA/so-called free trade." At his campaign site, Obama continues to hide behind the James Baker Circle Jerk (whose authors are fudging in recent days). Meanwhile, Bill Richards has presented a plan for ending the illegal war and made the war a strong point in his campaign likening a vote for Richardson as a vote to "Get America Out Of Iraq" (click here to see the campaign bumper sticker). US House Rep Dennis Kucinich wasn't mentioned by NPR (nor were Mike Gravel, Chris Dodd, Joe Biden) maybe Farai Chideya hosts a program entitled News & Notes as opposed to News? Kucinich's campaign commerical can be seen at YouTube and is entitled "No more blood for oil."
In the US Congress, Anne Flaherty (AP via Democracy Rising) reports, US Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing for another vote on the Iraq war that would take place before Congress takes its next recess for the July 4th holiday and this is being discussed because "[l]ast month, Democrats helped push through legislation funding the war for four more months, triggering a backlash from liberal voters who helped Democrats take control of Congress in the November elections." Meanwhile, in Iraqi politics, Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's foriegn minister, did his own song and dance. Al Jazeera reports that the illegal war has been exteded by Zebari who went to the United Nations Secuirty Council to ask that the "mandate for US-led forces in Iraq" be extended. The UN Security Council quickly agreed and apparently never took a moment to think about how angry the Iraqi parliament was when the mandate was previously extended without their input or request. This also ignores the recent (nonbinding) action by the Iraqi parliment expressing their desire that the US forces leave. The mandate is actually up for renewal in December, this was a review. Along with Zerbair, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad also spoke at length to the Security Council and what was the first 'economic' thing he emphasized? Did you guess "passage of legislation on the hydrocarbons sector with regulations governing oil revenue sharing"? More likely, you didn't pretty it up and just guess, "Theft of Iraqi oil."
In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). His next stop is Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
6/13/2007
friendship is the theme, whiners are the subtext
how to start? how about thank you to Betty for the wonderful post she did here last night.
and?
did you see i know what you did last summer? jennifer love hewitt's character's name was something like julie james. and at 1 point, she runs out in this yard or street and throws her arms out to the side while screaming something like, 'what do you want?'
flyboy and i have both checked the e-mails repeatedly today (and responded to regular readers) but i'm not seeing any e-mail to me about the post that originally ran here monday. where's that e-mail?
your reasons for running to c.i. on me, for acting like a little snitch saying, 'teacher! teacher! i'm telling on somebody!' was that you didn't know my e-mail. well, jess wrote the reply to you yesterday and included my e-mail. and i've checked off the new feature so my e-mail address is on my profile again.
and, of course, as mike noted in 'Pissed,' all you had to was google me to find it. you didn't even have to click on a link, it shows up right in the search. (the only change since mike wrote about that is i've moved up from number 8 to number 1 on the google search.)
so where's my e-mail?
do you really think it's your place to dump a disagreement you have with me over something i wrote onto c.i.? i don't think it is.
so come on, big boy, send that e-mail already.
or is that it's easier to tattle and go whining to c.i. about how mean i am than it is to e-mail me directly?
this isn't the 1st time this has happened as long time readers know. it first happened with the idiot centrist whose right leaning centrist group wants to privatize social security. i called out that b.s. think tank and him as well. i even noted his hideous hair cut and said it was embarrassing for a grown man and looked as though mommy had placed a bowl on it and cut his hair.
to which, this 40 plus year old man writes - not to me, he goes whining to c.i. - my mommy is dead!
well golly gee are you accusing me of killing her?
i really don't see what that has to do anything. you're a 40 plus year old man posing for a professional photograph. get a grown up hair cut.
that was probably a 60-plus line post and in 1 line, i mention that ridiculous hair cut and, rightly, note that it looks like a little boy's hair cut, a chili bowl haircut and he wants to whine how unfair that is because his mommy died several years ago.
guess what. that happens as we get older. it's a tragedy when it happens to some 1 young, as it did for elaine who lost both of her parents at an early age, but the rest of us, the 1s who are supposed to be grown ups, we're all going to lose our parents unless we die 1st.
and then there are the people who will never know their parents because of death while they were still tiny children or babies or because they were given up for adoption.
you had a mother for 45 years? you're 1 of the lucky 1s. and as we get older, our parents die off. i'm not making light of that fact. i'm not saying you don't have the right to cry. i am saying, outside your friends and family, no 1 really needs to hear about it.
but he wrote about how mean i was for that 1 comment, wrote about that for nine paragraphs in an e-mail not sent to me but sent to c.i. when my e-mail address was posted on my profile. this was the 2nd or 3rd month of posting. probably march of 2005.
and it's probably 60 other people that have gone whining to c.i. since. centrist was the 1st but i'm getting damn sick of it.
i write this blog, no 1 else. i write what i want the way i want.
if you have a problem you take it up with me or you deal with it on your own. you do not go running to my best friend with an e-mail about how mean i am.
that's chicken shit and it's nothing but tattling.
c.i.'s busy enough and shouldn't have to deal with your chicken shit e-mails.
that's like madonna writing something that makes me mad and me e-mailing gweneth and saying, 'this is so unfair.'
if you've got a problem with something up here, you e-mail me. don't you drag my friends into it. i have no respect for that shit.
i don't 'approve' my posts with c.i. c.i. doesn't sign off on them. betty will read her chapters to c.i. and kat and wally will read his posts to c.i. but that's to make sure they're funny (betty and wally both do comedy writing - so does cedric, he does joint-posts with wally but wally started reading those to c.i. the minute wally's site became a humorous 1). now with mike and i especially, we sometimes have very different opinions than c.i. on some topics. and we certainly word things very differently than c.i. would.
so it is bullshit for you to try to put c.i. into the middle by whining to c.i. when you've got a problem with something i wrote.
what chicken shit babies so many grown men are. and, excuse me, but i thought we all learned that no 1 like a snitch in grade school. apparently, some never learned that lesson.
c.i. was martha stewart today. 'i'm cutting my salad' or whatever she said on the cbs morning show when she was asked - pre-prison - about the charges. c.i. just kept the head down and went about the common ills business.
and that's all c.i. should have to do on any given day. c.i. did not cross post my post, did not link to it, did not say 'i applaud this' or anything else. so the notion that you're going go whining about me to c.i. is just bullshit.
when i was pregnant and headed to texas on the long road trip c.i. did e-mail me many, many articles to make it easier for me to post. but even there, i was writing my own comments.
i think you negate your hurt feelings and any opinion you may have when you are willing to run and tattle to my friend but you don't have the guts to e-mail me directly - even after you are provided with my e-mail address.
goldie and marlene both weighed in that i shouldn't have rewritten my monday post (i rewrote it tuesday). goldie & marlene, you are the coolest and i love you both. i want to be clear that c.i. didn't ask that. if i had run it by c.i. (i didn't - i felt the little whining baby had already bothered c.i. enough with my site), i would've been told not to. that's standard. we're all told don't change something that's up. if you feel differently, do another post and say so.
but the thing is c.i.'s tired and c.i. doesn't have time to deal with this sort of crap so the easiest thing for my friend was to rewrite the post. if i'd asked, i would have been told, 'don't you do that, becky.' and c.i. would've meant that. but i know how much pressure c.i. already has.
what's really funny, what these men never get, is that they cannot now or ever come between c.i., elaine and me. our friendship was forged years ago in college. they had my back then, i had their backs. we have been through everything together, divorces, the death of spouses, you name it. and certainly, until the last pregnancy, they were there everytime to help me pick up the pieces after each miscarriage. we have never gone after the same type. c.i.'s not obsessed with looks. sadly, i am. elaine likes tall men. that's why the mike hook up made so much sense and i still cannot believe i didn't not see that those 2 were falling in love. c.i. saw and when we talked, it all made sense. they are the perfect couple, elaine and mike. but i mean, we have been through everything. we have seen each other at our bests and at our worsts.
no man has ever come between our friendship and no man ever will.
so these little tattle tale boys who go running to c.i. aren't just stupid, they are pathetic.
now the man e-mailing got what he wanted so you'd think at the very least i would get a 'thank you' e-mail. i don't even get that.
some men are apparently intended to be little boys all their lives.
my 1st marriage cured me of the need to play mommy to a little boy. (my 1st husband will read that and laugh. he'll also agree.)
and i mean, look at it this way. i've got a child and i've got a man i love. elaine's got a wonderful relationship with mike. what does c.i. have?
c.i. ended a relationship because the world was getting serious and what needed to be done couldn't be done with a relationship. i mean, i can list a hundred, no a million things, that c.i. has sacrificed to do everything possible to end this illegal war and some little whiney ass wants to go running and e-mail 'rebecca's mean'?
i mean grow the hell up. seriously, grow the hell up.
if we all did 1 thing to end the war each day, the world would be a better place but c.i.'s doing more than 1 thing a day and never rests, is run ragged. and it really pisses me off that some 1 who has a problem with me, instead of addressing it with me, wants to run to c.i. whose plate is more than full presently.
i think that pisses me off more than anything else. knowing what all c.i.'s doing, how limited c.i.'s time is and that some little boy wants to go whining.
now i was ticked off about this yesterday. but was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say, 'okay, the guy wasn't able to find my e-mail address.' seems pretty lazy, but, hey. however, since no e-mail has arrived, since no e-mail has still to arrive, i think the guy is a tiny little boy who can't deal with a woman directly so he runs to her friend.
if there's shit between you and me, don't shove it over to c.i. be a grown up and take it up with me.
and if that pisses you off:
what's the matter with the truth
did i offend your ears?
that's from aimee mann's 'that's just what you are.' and what i think you just are is a little boy who needs to grow up.
in the monday post, i stated my conclusions and noted i could be wrong and it could all be a coincidence. but he didn't want to make that case to me. he didn't want to deal with me directly then or now.
that's a little boy whose got some issues with women, if you ask me.
and there's no need to dash off an e-mail to c.i. saying 'rebecca called me a wittle boy!'
i wrote that. i wrote it all by myself. if you don't like it, you know how to reach me.
and really, what is it with you? does every 1 in the world need to love you?
i mean come on, i'm surely not the 1st person whose ever had a complaint about you.
did you run to every 1 else's best friend too?
yesterday saw some amazing posts in the community and i would strongly recommend that you read elaine's 'Indymedia, bad hair and bad manners' which is hilarious. you really have to piss elaine off to get her writing or talking like that. she has the longest fuse. (i have the shortest.)
it's hysterical. and betty's 'I've lost my faith in independent media (Betty)' which i found both beautiful and heart breaking. (betty's only comment is she has 'rewrotes' - she was dealing with her oldest who thinks summer means a much later bedtime than she did and also writing that post at the same time. i said, 'betty, it's brilliant, let it go.' she's such a perfectionist.) i already noted mike's so let me move on to kat's 'Wow' which i love and think kat has a natural ability to open and grab you with the opening. i don't. kat does. and i was so glad she shared that story. we wanted to write a thing on that at the third estate sunday review but c.i. nixed it. kat's right that only she or elaine could get away with telling that story. i would get a heavy sigh from c.i. and of course there is wally & cedric's 's joint post of 'THIS JUST IN! YOU DON'T MEAN SH*T TO A TREE, INDYMEDIA!' and 'The ungrateful' which is amazing for what's written as well as for being written. as betty noted here yesterday, wally has a really strong sense of right & wrong and a slow fuse but when some 1 does wrong, wally gets mad, if they do really wrong, wally gets very quiet and just shuts down. i wasn't expecting to hear from those 2. not on this topic or a joke. i know how wally is. (and by the way centrist whiner, if you still lurk around here, wally has talked about losing his father at a very early age. and how hard that was. so go whine elsewhere about the fact that as a middle aged adult you lost your parent.) i also suspected (and cedric confirmed it) that this was a post that didn't go by c.i. that was because it was so late and because they didn't want to put c.i. in the middle. something that little whiners might try emulating.
c.i. writes wonderfully all the time of course so i'll just link to the common ills.
that's it for me tonight. if you missed the point, this post is about valuing your friends and not letting any 1 try to destroy that. even if they don't stand a chance of doing so. they will try. and you'll be surprised because you'll think all this crap ended in high school but some grown ups never even make it to the high school mentally, they're stuck in grade school.
here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, June 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military annouonces the deaths of more service members, the US military and government play The Al-Maliki Squeeze while the puppet babbles incoherently, the mosque bombed in Samarra in February of 2006 is bombed again, and more.
Starting with news of war resistance, Kim Johnson, Duluth's WDIO, reports on Luke Kamunen who, like his two twin brothers Leo and Leif, self-checked out of the US military on the Christmas break and notes, "The brothers' story is not an isolated one. In fact, the Department of Defense reports desertions have risen 35 percent in the past two years -- from more than 2,400 in 2004 to about 3,300 in 2006" and notes that Luke Kamunen "was surprised" to encounter many others who had done the same "when he was detained by the military". (As noted here before, Luke is now discharged, his brothers state they will turn themselves into the US military at some point.)
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Resistance to the illegal war isn't limited to one segment of the population. Amy Goodman (writing at Truthdig) reports on the off broadway production Voices in Conflict -- a high school production that Wilton High School (in Connecticut) decided wasn't fit for the school's theater. As disturbing as the attempted censorship of the play was, Goodman reports on equally alarming detail -- in the high schol clases, these students are not allowed to discuss Iraq even in US history whether they each have "to bring in a current-event news item" -- Jimmy Presson explains, "We are not allowed to talk about the war while discussing current events." Who teaches that class? And do they also work at The Nation? (Democracy Now!, by the way, spends the hour today with Vanessa Redgrave discussing art, politics and more.)
Turning to Iraq . . .
This morning Damien Cave (New York Times) reported on the latest ravings of the madman installed by the US as puppet of the occupation -- al-Maliki declaring that, "We have eliminated the danger of sectarian war." Sounds like someone needs to check their Desoxyn dosage. But reality can sometimes break through even the thickest drug induced fog even if it can be processed correctely. Look at Nouri al-Maliki's statements today. AP reports he's now likening events into Iraq to the American Civil War which would seem indicate that Iraq has not "elimated the danger of sectarian war" as al-Maliki claimed yesterday.
What semi-snapped out of his drugged stupor? A bombing in Samara. BBC calls the site "one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari shrine in Samarra." The Scotsman notes that bombing "was a repeat of last year's bombing that shattered the Askariya shrine's dome" while Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) explains that bombing "destroyed the minarets of the Askariya shrine." Minarets? Those are the two towers or columns that previously stod on either side of the mosque. Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports, "It wasn't clear how the attackers evaded the shrine's guards to mount the stunning operation, detonating the blasts aound 9 a.m., and bringing down the two slender golden minarets that flanked the dome's ruins at the century-old mosque." Sam Knight (Times of London) notes two reactions -- the puppet "declared a curfew in Baghdad and asked for American reinforcements to be sent to the mainly Sunni town, which has been under a military blockade in recent weeks, to contain any violence" and Moqtadr al-Sadr "called for restraint, declaring three days of mourning and peacful demonstrations." Deborah Haynes (Times of London) notes the reaction of some Iraqis in Baghdad -- shop keeper Shiras Assem decalres, "We are preparing for any attack by the Mahdi Army. We closed the street and we expect to be attacked. Maybe they will hit the local Sunni mosque. We have set up a night watch until this morning. We will not sleep tonight."; and broker Marwan Faled who declares, "We have gather together the young me[n] in our street, each one has a weapon. We told them to be ready if anyone attacks us we will all open fire. We expect an attack during the curfew because we don't trust the checkpoint at end of our road. I plan to stay at home over the next few days because I believe more people will be killed." Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) notes that the Iraqi police have stated the columns were brought down by "mortar rounds fired by unknown fighters" while "witnesses said the explosions seems to have come from inside the church" and that despite appeals "for calm" already "five Sunni mosques in the southern port city of Basra were attacked, apparently in reprisal, and Sunni mosques were also struck in Zaiyuna and south of Baghdad." AFP reports that yesterday "there had been a row between the security forces" with two different groups (one from Baghdad, the other from Tikrit) present and saying they were in charge of security as well "some exchange of [gun] fire too" before the Baghdad contingent assumed security responsibilities and they quote an eye witness who states, "I was near the shrine when I heard big explosions that sent a thick cloud of dust in the sky covering the entire area. I quickly ran to the street from where I could see the shrine clearly. I saw one of the minarets was down. Seven minutes later as I was watching the shrine, another explosion occured and the second minaret came crumbling down." Al Jazeera notes that al-Maliki announced that the security team guarding the mosque (that would be the forces sent from Baghdad) would be arrested. Along with the curfew, ban on public demonstrations and driving in Samarra that has been imposed, Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times and the link also contains an AP Television clip) adds that Moqtada al-Sadr's 30 member parliament bloc has walked out in protest and this "could present a major challenge to Maliki, who is under intense pressure to deliver political and economic reforms aimed at appeasing the Sunni Arab minority". In addition to the Samarra curfew and bans, Mariam Karouny (Reuters) details the "three-day curfew in Baghdad" that has resulted from the Samarra attack though how a capital under crackdown for over a year can be further 'cracked down' may be open to question. Since Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for public, peaceful demonstrations, al-Maliki's "three-day curfew" may be an attempt to circumvent al-Sadr.
Zavis noted the "intense pressure" al-Maliki was facing from non-Iraqis. War Pornographer Michael Gordon (New York Times) noted yesterday that he accompanied US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Admiral William J. Fallon to a face-to-face with puppet Nouri al-Maliki and the point of the meeting was to pressure on the 'benchmark' of getting the oil legislation privatized (turning over as much as 70% of the profits to foreign corporations) passed in July.
Today, Damien Cave (New York Times) reported that the deputy US Secretary of State John D. Negroponte showed up out of the blue in Baghdad yesterday to pressure al-Maliki who released a statement following the meeting attesting that he would use all of his limited power "to persuade Parliament to approve several proposals that the Americans had identified as benchmarks, including an oil law". The law, like 'liberation' has always been just around the corner and you can drop back a year ago when al-Maliki was first 'rolling up the sleeves' to push through the US written oil law that would then be imposed upon the allegedly soveign nation of Iraq. Andy Rowell (Oil Change) observes that the privatization "seems to be in real trouble" and notes Tariq Shaif telling "a news conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank" some unpleasant realities while Rowell notes that al-Maliki's cabinet's Happy Talk of 'give us one month' is vaguely familiar: "If my memory serves me right, that's what he said about three months ago." Which is true and, again, al-Maliki was installed claiming the theft of Iraqi oil was top of his list but he's still 'trying', all this time later.
Bombings?
Reuters reports a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 4 lives (10 more wounded), a Taji bombing that killed an Iraqi soldier (4 more wounded), a Mandili bombing that killed three (five more wounded), and a Ramadi car bombing that killed 4 Iraqi police officers (11 more wounded).
Shootings?
Reuters reports one college student shot dead
Meanwhile, on the heels of yesterday's news from IRIN that Iraqi children are having to work to support families comes Tina Susman and Zeena Kareem (Los Angeles Times) report on the rise of cholera in Iraqi children with five reported case "in the last three weeks, a worrying sign as summer sets in and the war leaves sewage and sanitation systems a shambles. All of the cases were among children younger than 12 in the southern city of Najaf and were reported by medical officials on alert for signs of the potentially lethal ailment, Claire Hajaj of the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said Tuesday."
In addition, the US military announced today: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an eastern section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an easter section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed June 12 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." ICCC's current count for the total number of US service members who have died in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3513.
In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of
Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com." From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
and?
did you see i know what you did last summer? jennifer love hewitt's character's name was something like julie james. and at 1 point, she runs out in this yard or street and throws her arms out to the side while screaming something like, 'what do you want?'
flyboy and i have both checked the e-mails repeatedly today (and responded to regular readers) but i'm not seeing any e-mail to me about the post that originally ran here monday. where's that e-mail?
your reasons for running to c.i. on me, for acting like a little snitch saying, 'teacher! teacher! i'm telling on somebody!' was that you didn't know my e-mail. well, jess wrote the reply to you yesterday and included my e-mail. and i've checked off the new feature so my e-mail address is on my profile again.
and, of course, as mike noted in 'Pissed,' all you had to was google me to find it. you didn't even have to click on a link, it shows up right in the search. (the only change since mike wrote about that is i've moved up from number 8 to number 1 on the google search.)
so where's my e-mail?
do you really think it's your place to dump a disagreement you have with me over something i wrote onto c.i.? i don't think it is.
so come on, big boy, send that e-mail already.
or is that it's easier to tattle and go whining to c.i. about how mean i am than it is to e-mail me directly?
this isn't the 1st time this has happened as long time readers know. it first happened with the idiot centrist whose right leaning centrist group wants to privatize social security. i called out that b.s. think tank and him as well. i even noted his hideous hair cut and said it was embarrassing for a grown man and looked as though mommy had placed a bowl on it and cut his hair.
to which, this 40 plus year old man writes - not to me, he goes whining to c.i. - my mommy is dead!
well golly gee are you accusing me of killing her?
i really don't see what that has to do anything. you're a 40 plus year old man posing for a professional photograph. get a grown up hair cut.
that was probably a 60-plus line post and in 1 line, i mention that ridiculous hair cut and, rightly, note that it looks like a little boy's hair cut, a chili bowl haircut and he wants to whine how unfair that is because his mommy died several years ago.
guess what. that happens as we get older. it's a tragedy when it happens to some 1 young, as it did for elaine who lost both of her parents at an early age, but the rest of us, the 1s who are supposed to be grown ups, we're all going to lose our parents unless we die 1st.
and then there are the people who will never know their parents because of death while they were still tiny children or babies or because they were given up for adoption.
you had a mother for 45 years? you're 1 of the lucky 1s. and as we get older, our parents die off. i'm not making light of that fact. i'm not saying you don't have the right to cry. i am saying, outside your friends and family, no 1 really needs to hear about it.
but he wrote about how mean i was for that 1 comment, wrote about that for nine paragraphs in an e-mail not sent to me but sent to c.i. when my e-mail address was posted on my profile. this was the 2nd or 3rd month of posting. probably march of 2005.
and it's probably 60 other people that have gone whining to c.i. since. centrist was the 1st but i'm getting damn sick of it.
i write this blog, no 1 else. i write what i want the way i want.
if you have a problem you take it up with me or you deal with it on your own. you do not go running to my best friend with an e-mail about how mean i am.
that's chicken shit and it's nothing but tattling.
c.i.'s busy enough and shouldn't have to deal with your chicken shit e-mails.
that's like madonna writing something that makes me mad and me e-mailing gweneth and saying, 'this is so unfair.'
if you've got a problem with something up here, you e-mail me. don't you drag my friends into it. i have no respect for that shit.
i don't 'approve' my posts with c.i. c.i. doesn't sign off on them. betty will read her chapters to c.i. and kat and wally will read his posts to c.i. but that's to make sure they're funny (betty and wally both do comedy writing - so does cedric, he does joint-posts with wally but wally started reading those to c.i. the minute wally's site became a humorous 1). now with mike and i especially, we sometimes have very different opinions than c.i. on some topics. and we certainly word things very differently than c.i. would.
so it is bullshit for you to try to put c.i. into the middle by whining to c.i. when you've got a problem with something i wrote.
what chicken shit babies so many grown men are. and, excuse me, but i thought we all learned that no 1 like a snitch in grade school. apparently, some never learned that lesson.
c.i. was martha stewart today. 'i'm cutting my salad' or whatever she said on the cbs morning show when she was asked - pre-prison - about the charges. c.i. just kept the head down and went about the common ills business.
and that's all c.i. should have to do on any given day. c.i. did not cross post my post, did not link to it, did not say 'i applaud this' or anything else. so the notion that you're going go whining about me to c.i. is just bullshit.
when i was pregnant and headed to texas on the long road trip c.i. did e-mail me many, many articles to make it easier for me to post. but even there, i was writing my own comments.
i think you negate your hurt feelings and any opinion you may have when you are willing to run and tattle to my friend but you don't have the guts to e-mail me directly - even after you are provided with my e-mail address.
goldie and marlene both weighed in that i shouldn't have rewritten my monday post (i rewrote it tuesday). goldie & marlene, you are the coolest and i love you both. i want to be clear that c.i. didn't ask that. if i had run it by c.i. (i didn't - i felt the little whining baby had already bothered c.i. enough with my site), i would've been told not to. that's standard. we're all told don't change something that's up. if you feel differently, do another post and say so.
but the thing is c.i.'s tired and c.i. doesn't have time to deal with this sort of crap so the easiest thing for my friend was to rewrite the post. if i'd asked, i would have been told, 'don't you do that, becky.' and c.i. would've meant that. but i know how much pressure c.i. already has.
what's really funny, what these men never get, is that they cannot now or ever come between c.i., elaine and me. our friendship was forged years ago in college. they had my back then, i had their backs. we have been through everything together, divorces, the death of spouses, you name it. and certainly, until the last pregnancy, they were there everytime to help me pick up the pieces after each miscarriage. we have never gone after the same type. c.i.'s not obsessed with looks. sadly, i am. elaine likes tall men. that's why the mike hook up made so much sense and i still cannot believe i didn't not see that those 2 were falling in love. c.i. saw and when we talked, it all made sense. they are the perfect couple, elaine and mike. but i mean, we have been through everything. we have seen each other at our bests and at our worsts.
no man has ever come between our friendship and no man ever will.
so these little tattle tale boys who go running to c.i. aren't just stupid, they are pathetic.
now the man e-mailing got what he wanted so you'd think at the very least i would get a 'thank you' e-mail. i don't even get that.
some men are apparently intended to be little boys all their lives.
my 1st marriage cured me of the need to play mommy to a little boy. (my 1st husband will read that and laugh. he'll also agree.)
and i mean, look at it this way. i've got a child and i've got a man i love. elaine's got a wonderful relationship with mike. what does c.i. have?
c.i. ended a relationship because the world was getting serious and what needed to be done couldn't be done with a relationship. i mean, i can list a hundred, no a million things, that c.i. has sacrificed to do everything possible to end this illegal war and some little whiney ass wants to go running and e-mail 'rebecca's mean'?
i mean grow the hell up. seriously, grow the hell up.
if we all did 1 thing to end the war each day, the world would be a better place but c.i.'s doing more than 1 thing a day and never rests, is run ragged. and it really pisses me off that some 1 who has a problem with me, instead of addressing it with me, wants to run to c.i. whose plate is more than full presently.
i think that pisses me off more than anything else. knowing what all c.i.'s doing, how limited c.i.'s time is and that some little boy wants to go whining.
now i was ticked off about this yesterday. but was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and say, 'okay, the guy wasn't able to find my e-mail address.' seems pretty lazy, but, hey. however, since no e-mail has arrived, since no e-mail has still to arrive, i think the guy is a tiny little boy who can't deal with a woman directly so he runs to her friend.
if there's shit between you and me, don't shove it over to c.i. be a grown up and take it up with me.
and if that pisses you off:
what's the matter with the truth
did i offend your ears?
that's from aimee mann's 'that's just what you are.' and what i think you just are is a little boy who needs to grow up.
in the monday post, i stated my conclusions and noted i could be wrong and it could all be a coincidence. but he didn't want to make that case to me. he didn't want to deal with me directly then or now.
that's a little boy whose got some issues with women, if you ask me.
and there's no need to dash off an e-mail to c.i. saying 'rebecca called me a wittle boy!'
i wrote that. i wrote it all by myself. if you don't like it, you know how to reach me.
and really, what is it with you? does every 1 in the world need to love you?
i mean come on, i'm surely not the 1st person whose ever had a complaint about you.
did you run to every 1 else's best friend too?
yesterday saw some amazing posts in the community and i would strongly recommend that you read elaine's 'Indymedia, bad hair and bad manners' which is hilarious. you really have to piss elaine off to get her writing or talking like that. she has the longest fuse. (i have the shortest.)
it's hysterical. and betty's 'I've lost my faith in independent media (Betty)' which i found both beautiful and heart breaking. (betty's only comment is she has 'rewrotes' - she was dealing with her oldest who thinks summer means a much later bedtime than she did and also writing that post at the same time. i said, 'betty, it's brilliant, let it go.' she's such a perfectionist.) i already noted mike's so let me move on to kat's 'Wow' which i love and think kat has a natural ability to open and grab you with the opening. i don't. kat does. and i was so glad she shared that story. we wanted to write a thing on that at the third estate sunday review but c.i. nixed it. kat's right that only she or elaine could get away with telling that story. i would get a heavy sigh from c.i. and of course there is wally & cedric's 's joint post of 'THIS JUST IN! YOU DON'T MEAN SH*T TO A TREE, INDYMEDIA!' and 'The ungrateful' which is amazing for what's written as well as for being written. as betty noted here yesterday, wally has a really strong sense of right & wrong and a slow fuse but when some 1 does wrong, wally gets mad, if they do really wrong, wally gets very quiet and just shuts down. i wasn't expecting to hear from those 2. not on this topic or a joke. i know how wally is. (and by the way centrist whiner, if you still lurk around here, wally has talked about losing his father at a very early age. and how hard that was. so go whine elsewhere about the fact that as a middle aged adult you lost your parent.) i also suspected (and cedric confirmed it) that this was a post that didn't go by c.i. that was because it was so late and because they didn't want to put c.i. in the middle. something that little whiners might try emulating.
c.i. writes wonderfully all the time of course so i'll just link to the common ills.
that's it for me tonight. if you missed the point, this post is about valuing your friends and not letting any 1 try to destroy that. even if they don't stand a chance of doing so. they will try. and you'll be surprised because you'll think all this crap ended in high school but some grown ups never even make it to the high school mentally, they're stuck in grade school.
here's c.i.'s 'Iraq snapshot:'
Wednesday, June 13, 2007. Chaos and violence continue, the US military annouonces the deaths of more service members, the US military and government play The Al-Maliki Squeeze while the puppet babbles incoherently, the mosque bombed in Samarra in February of 2006 is bombed again, and more.
Starting with news of war resistance, Kim Johnson, Duluth's WDIO, reports on Luke Kamunen who, like his two twin brothers Leo and Leif, self-checked out of the US military on the Christmas break and notes, "The brothers' story is not an isolated one. In fact, the Department of Defense reports desertions have risen 35 percent in the past two years -- from more than 2,400 in 2004 to about 3,300 in 2006" and notes that Luke Kamunen "was surprised" to encounter many others who had done the same "when he was detained by the military". (As noted here before, Luke is now discharged, his brothers state they will turn themselves into the US military at some point.)
The movement of resistance within the US military grows and includes Joshua Key, Ehren Watada, Terri Johnson, Luke Kamunen, Leif Kamunen, Leo Kamunen, Camilo Mejia, Kimberly Rivera, Dean Walcott, Linjamin Mull, Augstin Aguayo, Justin Colby, Marc Train, Robert Zabala, Darrell Anderson, Kyle Snyder , Corey Glass, Jeremy Hinzman, Kevin Lee, Joshua Key, Mark Wilkerson, Patrick Hart, Ricky Clousing, Ivan Brobeck, Aidan Delgado, Pablo Paredes, Carl Webb, Jeremy Hinzman, Stephen Funk, Clifton Hicks, David Sanders, Dan Felushko, Brandon Hughey, Clifford Cornell, Joshua Despain, Joshua Casteel, Katherine Jashinski, Chris Teske, Matt Lowell, Jimmy Massey, Chris Capps, Tim Richard, Hart Viges, Michael Blake, Christopher Mogwai, Christian Care, Kyle Huwer, Vincent La Volpa, DeShawn Reed and Kevin Benderman. In total, forty US war resisters in Canada have applied for asylum.
Information on war resistance within the military can be found at Center on Conscience & War, The Objector, The G.I. Rights Hotline, Iraq Veterans Against the War and the War Resisters Support Campaign. Courage to Resist offers information on all public war resisters.
Resistance to the illegal war isn't limited to one segment of the population. Amy Goodman (writing at Truthdig) reports on the off broadway production Voices in Conflict -- a high school production that Wilton High School (in Connecticut) decided wasn't fit for the school's theater. As disturbing as the attempted censorship of the play was, Goodman reports on equally alarming detail -- in the high schol clases, these students are not allowed to discuss Iraq even in US history whether they each have "to bring in a current-event news item" -- Jimmy Presson explains, "We are not allowed to talk about the war while discussing current events." Who teaches that class? And do they also work at The Nation? (Democracy Now!, by the way, spends the hour today with Vanessa Redgrave discussing art, politics and more.)
Turning to Iraq . . .
This morning Damien Cave (New York Times) reported on the latest ravings of the madman installed by the US as puppet of the occupation -- al-Maliki declaring that, "We have eliminated the danger of sectarian war." Sounds like someone needs to check their Desoxyn dosage. But reality can sometimes break through even the thickest drug induced fog even if it can be processed correctely. Look at Nouri al-Maliki's statements today. AP reports he's now likening events into Iraq to the American Civil War which would seem indicate that Iraq has not "elimated the danger of sectarian war" as al-Maliki claimed yesterday.
What semi-snapped out of his drugged stupor? A bombing in Samara. BBC calls the site "one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam, the al-Askari shrine in Samarra." The Scotsman notes that bombing "was a repeat of last year's bombing that shattered the Askariya shrine's dome" while Steve Negus (Financial Times of London) explains that bombing "destroyed the minarets of the Askariya shrine." Minarets? Those are the two towers or columns that previously stod on either side of the mosque. Qassim Abdul-Zahra (AP) reports, "It wasn't clear how the attackers evaded the shrine's guards to mount the stunning operation, detonating the blasts aound 9 a.m., and bringing down the two slender golden minarets that flanked the dome's ruins at the century-old mosque." Sam Knight (Times of London) notes two reactions -- the puppet "declared a curfew in Baghdad and asked for American reinforcements to be sent to the mainly Sunni town, which has been under a military blockade in recent weeks, to contain any violence" and Moqtadr al-Sadr "called for restraint, declaring three days of mourning and peacful demonstrations." Deborah Haynes (Times of London) notes the reaction of some Iraqis in Baghdad -- shop keeper Shiras Assem decalres, "We are preparing for any attack by the Mahdi Army. We closed the street and we expect to be attacked. Maybe they will hit the local Sunni mosque. We have set up a night watch until this morning. We will not sleep tonight."; and broker Marwan Faled who declares, "We have gather together the young me[n] in our street, each one has a weapon. We told them to be ready if anyone attacks us we will all open fire. We expect an attack during the curfew because we don't trust the checkpoint at end of our road. I plan to stay at home over the next few days because I believe more people will be killed." Leila Fadel (McClatchy Newspapers) notes that the Iraqi police have stated the columns were brought down by "mortar rounds fired by unknown fighters" while "witnesses said the explosions seems to have come from inside the church" and that despite appeals "for calm" already "five Sunni mosques in the southern port city of Basra were attacked, apparently in reprisal, and Sunni mosques were also struck in Zaiyuna and south of Baghdad." AFP reports that yesterday "there had been a row between the security forces" with two different groups (one from Baghdad, the other from Tikrit) present and saying they were in charge of security as well "some exchange of [gun] fire too" before the Baghdad contingent assumed security responsibilities and they quote an eye witness who states, "I was near the shrine when I heard big explosions that sent a thick cloud of dust in the sky covering the entire area. I quickly ran to the street from where I could see the shrine clearly. I saw one of the minarets was down. Seven minutes later as I was watching the shrine, another explosion occured and the second minaret came crumbling down." Al Jazeera notes that al-Maliki announced that the security team guarding the mosque (that would be the forces sent from Baghdad) would be arrested. Along with the curfew, ban on public demonstrations and driving in Samarra that has been imposed, Alexandra Zavis (Los Angeles Times and the link also contains an AP Television clip) adds that Moqtada al-Sadr's 30 member parliament bloc has walked out in protest and this "could present a major challenge to Maliki, who is under intense pressure to deliver political and economic reforms aimed at appeasing the Sunni Arab minority". In addition to the Samarra curfew and bans, Mariam Karouny (Reuters) details the "three-day curfew in Baghdad" that has resulted from the Samarra attack though how a capital under crackdown for over a year can be further 'cracked down' may be open to question. Since Moqtada al-Sadr is calling for public, peaceful demonstrations, al-Maliki's "three-day curfew" may be an attempt to circumvent al-Sadr.
Zavis noted the "intense pressure" al-Maliki was facing from non-Iraqis. War Pornographer Michael Gordon (New York Times) noted yesterday that he accompanied US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Admiral William J. Fallon to a face-to-face with puppet Nouri al-Maliki and the point of the meeting was to pressure on the 'benchmark' of getting the oil legislation privatized (turning over as much as 70% of the profits to foreign corporations) passed in July.
Today, Damien Cave (New York Times) reported that the deputy US Secretary of State John D. Negroponte showed up out of the blue in Baghdad yesterday to pressure al-Maliki who released a statement following the meeting attesting that he would use all of his limited power "to persuade Parliament to approve several proposals that the Americans had identified as benchmarks, including an oil law". The law, like 'liberation' has always been just around the corner and you can drop back a year ago when al-Maliki was first 'rolling up the sleeves' to push through the US written oil law that would then be imposed upon the allegedly soveign nation of Iraq. Andy Rowell (Oil Change) observes that the privatization "seems to be in real trouble" and notes Tariq Shaif telling "a news conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank" some unpleasant realities while Rowell notes that al-Maliki's cabinet's Happy Talk of 'give us one month' is vaguely familiar: "If my memory serves me right, that's what he said about three months ago." Which is true and, again, al-Maliki was installed claiming the theft of Iraqi oil was top of his list but he's still 'trying', all this time later.
Bombings?
Reuters reports a Baghdad mortar attack that claimed 4 lives (10 more wounded), a Taji bombing that killed an Iraqi soldier (4 more wounded), a Mandili bombing that killed three (five more wounded), and a Ramadi car bombing that killed 4 Iraqi police officers (11 more wounded).
Shootings?
Reuters reports one college student shot dead
Meanwhile, on the heels of yesterday's news from IRIN that Iraqi children are having to work to support families comes Tina Susman and Zeena Kareem (Los Angeles Times) report on the rise of cholera in Iraqi children with five reported case "in the last three weeks, a worrying sign as summer sets in and the war leaves sewage and sanitation systems a shambles. All of the cases were among children younger than 12 in the southern city of Najaf and were reported by medical officials on alert for signs of the potentially lethal ailment, Claire Hajaj of the United Nations Children's Fund, or UNICEF, said Tuesday."
In addition, the US military announced today: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an eastern section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "One Multi-National Division-Baghdad Soldier was killed when a roadside bomb detonated during combat operations in an easter section of Baghdad June 11." And they announced: "A Marine assigned to Multi National Force-West was killed June 12 while conducting combat operations in Al Anbar Province." ICCC's current count for the total number of US service members who have died in Iraq since the start of the illegal war is 3513.
In media news, as independent media continues to be under attack, News Dissector Danny Schechter's "Special Blog: Can Our Media Channel Survive?" announces the potential fate of
Mediachannel.org which may shut down: "If we can get 1500 of our readers (that means you) to give $25, we can keep going for another quarter. [PLEASE CLICK HERE TO MAKE A TAX-DEDUCTIBLE DONATION ONLINE]"
Finally, independent journalist John Pilger is on a speaking tour with his new book Freedom Next Time and his documentary Breaking the Silence: Truth and Lies in the War on Terror (which looks at DC, Afghanistan and Iraq). June 13th finds him in San Francisco showing his film and discussing his book at Yerba Beuna Center for Arts (beginning at 7:00 pm, doors open at 6:00 pm) and the price of admission is $15 general and $5 for students. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, and KPFA, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. For ticket information, call 415-978-2787 or order online at http://www.ybca.org/. In person tickets at YBCA Box office located inside the Galleries and Forum Building, 701 Mission Street at Third. (Hours: Tue, Wed, Fri, Sat & Sun: noon - 5 pm; Thu: noon - 8 pm.) For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org For more information, email pilgersf@gmail.com." From San Francisco, he moves on to Chicago for the 2007 Socialism conference. At 11:30 am Saturday June 16th, he and Anthony Arnove will participate in a conversation, audience dialogue and book signing (Arnove is the author most recently of IRAQ: The Logic of Withdrawal) and that evening (still June 16th) at 7:30 Pilger will be at Chicago Crowne Plaza O'Hare (5440 North River Road, Rosemont, IL 60018) as part of a panel of international activists. To attend the conference, the fee is $85. For Saturday and Sunday only, the price is $70. To attend only one session, the cost is ten dollars. "Presented by The Center for Economic Research and Social Change, The Nation Institute, with support from the Wallace Global Fund. Co-sponsors: Obrera Socialista, Socialist Worker, International Socialist Review, and Haymarket Books. For ticket information, call 773-583-8665 or e-mail info@socialismconference.org For media inquiries, contact (212) 209-5407 or ruth@nationbooks.org. For more information, email info@socialismconference.org." The Socialism 2007 conference will take place in Chicago from June 14-17. Along with Pilger and Arnove, others participating will include Laura Flanders, Kelly Dougherty, Joshua Frank, Amy Goodman, Sharon Smith, Dave Zirin, Camilo Mejia, Jeremy Scahill, Jeffrey St. Clair and many others.
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