BULLY BOY PRESS AND CEDRIC'S BIG MIX - DC.
THIS JUST IN!
BULLY BOY GOES 'WOOPS!'
SPEAKING IN THE NATION'S CAPITAL WITH LAP DOG AND HAND MAIDEN TONY BLAIR BESIDE HIM, BULLY BOY SAID WOOPS.
MAYBE SOME OF HIS 'TALK TOUGH' WASN'T SUCH A GOOD IDEA?
FOR INSTANCE, HE OFFERED, "I LEARNED SOME LESSONS ABOUT EXPRESSING MYSELF MAYBE IN A LITTLE MORE SOPHISTICATED MANNER, YOU KNOW. 'WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE', THAT KIND OF TALK. I THINK IN CERTAIN PARTS OF THE WORLD IT WAS MISINTERPRED."
MUST CREDIT BULLY BOY PRESS AND CEDRIC'S BIG MIX:
BULLY BOY SLIPS TO 1% IN APPROVAL RATINGS!
THROUGH SCIENTIFIC POLLING (POLLING METHODS TAUGHT BY THE NEW YORK TIMES), BULLY BOY PRESS AND CEDRIC'S BIG MIX HAVE DISCOVERED THAT AMONG THOSE "CERTAIN PARTS OF THE WORLD" WHERE BULLY BOY WAS "MISINTERPRED" WAS THE UNITED STATES.
WHEN ASKED IF THEY BELIEVED THAT THE BULLY BOY'S STATEMENT OF OSAMA BIN LADEN MEANT BIN LADEN WAS "WANTED, DEAD OR ALIVE,"
100 OF THE 100 POLLED RESPONDED IN THE AFFIRMATIVE.
ASKED IF THEY HAD ANY RESPECT FOR BULLY BOY, 99 OF THE 100 POLLED RESPONDED IN THE NEGATIVE. 1 RESPONDENT EXPRESSED APPROVAL FOR THE BULLY BOY. THE RESPONDENT ALSO EXPRESSED BELIEF IN SANTA CLAUSE, THE TOOTH FAIRY, THE EASTER BUNNY, WMD AND "REBA MCENTIRE'S GOOD NATURE."
IN A FOLLOW UP TO YESTERDAY'S "THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY AND BLAIR HAVE BEEN WHERE? " STRINGERS WERE SENT TO TIMES SQUARE TO CHECK THE VALIDITY OF WHITE HOUSE MOUTH PIECE TONY SNOW'S CLAIM THAT
"YOU KNOW, THERE AREN'T GOING TO BE PEOPLE KISSING IN TIME SQUARE TOMORROW."
STRINGERS RACHEL, MICAH, JONAH, DONA, JIM AND TY REPORTED THE SIGHTING OF AT LEAST 43 KISSES BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11:00 AM AND 2:00 PM. AT LEAST ONE KISS INVOLVED TONGUE AND FOUR WERE SAME-SEX KISSES. NOT INCLUDED IN THE COUNT WAS A WOMAN WHO SPAT ON A TISSUE AND THEN USED THE TISSUE TO WIPE THE CHEEK OF A CHILD. FURTHER MORE, TWO STRINGERS, DONA AND JIM, WERE INSPIRED BY THE ACTIVITY TO ENGAGE IN "A LITTLE KISSING AND GROPING OF OUR OWN."
TO RECAP, TONY SNOW HAS BEEN PROVEN WRONG.
Recommended: "And the war drags on . . . (Indymedia Roundup)"
"'Worse than Abu Ghraib' Thom Shanker, Eric Schmitt, Richard A. Oppel, Robert Burns & Thomas E. Ricks"
"Kat's Korner: Dixie Chicks Taking The Long Way home while NYT gets lost along the way"
"Iraq, Immigration, Dave Zirin on Barry Bonds & Babe Ruth, and Tom Hayden"
"flashpoints & ruth "
"Iraq, Norman Solomon, Immigration, Darfur, race "
Friday, May 26, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
Iraq, Norman Solomon, Immigration, Darfur, race
"Iraq VP Calls For Withdrawal Timetable Ahead of Bush-Blair Meeting" (Democracy Now):
In Iraq, a top leader has renewed calls for President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying troops.
Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi: "Two days ago we spoke with Tony Blair about this issue and the fact that it is necessary that the U.S. and British administration should put a timetable for its troops withdrawal from Iraq. We have discussed this thoroughly and I convinced him of the necessity of announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupying troops and told him frankly that Iraqis have a right to know when the last British or American soldier will leave Iraq." Bush and Blair have long rejected setting withdrawal timetables and vowed to withdraw troops at their own discretion. The two leaders will meet today in Washington with Iraq expected to top the agenda.
Contacted the reference librarian/researcher (reference to Elaine's "Long but is there a topic?") and asked about something I'd read but couldn't remember where? C.I. was kind enough to tell me the book, author and page number. It's pages 224-225 from Normal Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death:
In effect, the war had to go on because the war had to go on -- widely promoted as the least bad option, in contrast to the taboo of withdrawal. Meanwhile, a prerequisite for any Baghdad government to exist would be that it sufficiently satisifed the administration in Washington.
[. . .]
Pretense and realism were at war. Washington was preparing to hand over power to Iraqis while steadfastly refusing to do so; putting an Iraqi "face" on authority in Iraq while retaining ultimate authority in Iraq; striving for Iraqis to take up the burden of their country's national security while insisting that military control must remain in Uncle Sam's hands.
To some readers, the headline across the top of USA Today's front page on day in June 2004 must have been reassuring: "New Leader Asks U.S. to Stay." The banner headline was a classic of occupation puppetry and media gimmickry. Iraq's "new leader" Iyad Allawi -- selected and installed as prime minister by the U.S. government -- had shown distinct reliablity over the years. The USA Today story made only fleeting reference to Allawi's longtime U.S. entanglement, indentifying him as "a Shiite close to the CIA." The contradiction did not seem to trouble American media outlets, though they sometimes openly fretted that Iraqis might not be so accepting. Allawi "is the secretary general of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile group that has received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency," the New York Times reported. "His ties with the CIA and his closeness to the United States could become an issue in a country where public opinion has grown almost universally hostile to the Americans." A separate Times article noted that Allawi "lived abroad for 30 years and is not well known in Iraq." All in all, by Washington's lights, the man was eminently qualified to be Iraq's "new leader." And his superb judgement was immediately apparent: New leader asks U.S. to stay!
If you're not familiar with the book, it's one I recommend and we discussed it back in August "1 Book, 10 Minutes" (The Third Estate Sunday Review). It's an antidote not only to this adminstration's spin but to the lies that get us into war (by any adminstration) and keep us there.
"Senate Expected To Vote On Immigration Bill" (Democracy Now):
The Senate has agreed to end debate on a controversial immigration bill, setting the stage for a vote likely to come today. The bill would heighten enforcement measures, establish a temporary guest worker program, punish employers who hire undocumented immigrants and open a route to citizenship for at least some undocumented immigrants. If passed, the Senate bill would have to be reconciled with the Sensenbrenner bill passed by the House in December. That bill focuses strictly on enforcement and would consider undocumented immigrants to be felons. It would also make it a crime for priests, nuns, health care workers and other social workers to offer help to undocumented immigrants.
Big business always protects big business and with all the loybbing of Congress, it works for big business. Which is why immigrants got screwed over and will continue to be screwed over. C.I.'s covered how the New York Times has lied over and over about the Senate bill but there's a new liar in town and his name is David Espo who has obviously learned from the Times how to 'shape' opinion by playing the bill as opposed by racists and supported by do gooders.
Yesterday Mike wrote "Michael Hayden, FCC and spying, and more" and he covered Darfur great but I got an e-mail about it asking why he was saying it was harder to open our borders than to send force. Well the item above demonstrates the border issue. It's also true that we're dealing with Black people and you might want to send in some bullets and soldiers to fix the issue because anything's better than having one of us move next door to you, right?
It was the same thing with the Jewish race. 'Decent people' fretted what an influx of 'those people' might do to a nation's character and over six million Jews (as well as gypsies, gays and lesbians and others) would die in the Holocaust.
Sending force as opposed to welcoming the victims in Darfur into this country is the equivalent of sending a pie to someone's house because you don't want to actually invite them over to dinner. It's racism and xenophobia. We're willing to make sure they stay, just not willing to make them really safe.
Did you make a point to listen to KPFA's The Morning Show today? Robert Jensen was on addressing the issue of race and he brought up a point about how you hear people bemoan the underpriviliged but what about examing the realities of the overpriviliged? Were it not for economic class and skin color, do you think Bully Boy would be in the White House? He was a bad student and a bad businessman. They (Jensen and co-hosts Andrea Lewis and Philip Maldari) addressed affirmative action and a number of other things. (They also played some of Tim Wise's speech. Jensen had nice words for Wise.)
Go to Mikey Likes It! for Mike's take on the two headlines. I'm going to try to post tomorrow -- Wally and I have talked about doing a joint post again. Be sure to check out Wally's
"THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY AND BLAIR HAVE BEEN WHERE?"
Forgot to put in C.I.'s "Iraq Snapshot:"
Iraq snapshot.
As Amy Goodman noted, Tareq Al Hashemi, vice president of Iraq, has called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying troops" from Iraq. As Al Jazeera notes, Al Hashemi does not favor the notion of a set of conditions that would result in withdrawal of all foreign troops (US, British, et al) but instead favors a fixed date. The Irish Examiner reports that as Tony Blair and Bully Boy meet in DC, "the White House" has declared it "premature to talk about troop withdrawals."
This as Free Speech Radio News reports the Inspector General of Iraq's Oil Ministry has noted "that one billion dollars of Iraq's oil is being illegally smuggled out of the country every month." On the topic of the Oil Ministry, Steve Negus reports that Hussein al-Shahristani, exile installed as oil minister, has declared "the central government should handle all contracts related to petroleum exploration and production, putting him on a potential collision course with the autonomous Kurdish region which has recently begun to develop its own oil resources." What Kurds may read as a power grab occurs as the occupied nation is still without a minister of interior or defense.
In England, Matthew Tempest reports for the Guardian that "attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has been forced into disclosing further information relating to his decision that an ivasion of Iraq would be lawful." Goldsmith issues one ruling and then another (that was already known), the report traces the change of opinion to March 13th and he would inform Blair of the change in opinion (that the illegal invasion would suddenly be legal). March 17, 2003 was then the UN failed to endorse the Bully Boy's war lust, March 20th would see the start of the illegal invasion.
A battle in Baghdad (yes, in Baghdad) resulted in at least three people dead from
"[t]he ambush of Brig Gen. Khalil al-Abadi, head of the Defense Ministry logistics office" reports the Associated Press. Reuters notes several bombings taking place in Iraq -- one "planted inside a building wounded 13 people," another wounded two police officers in New Baghdad, and another injured two police officers on "patrol in northeastern Baghdad." Reuters also notes that four corpses were discovered throughout Baghdad ("torture . . . gunshot wounds in their heads").
The AFP reports that two more corpses were discovered in Baquba while Reuters notes an additional three ("bullet gunshot wounds") near Tikrit and that, in Balad, "U.S. forces handed over five decomposed bodies to the hospital." The AFP reports that a judge (Walid Ahmed) has been kidnapped while "traveling on a highway between Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and the city of Samarra." Reuters notes that Ali Hisham and his son were kidnapped not far from Kirkuk (Hisham is "head of the Turkmen Front party in town of Tuz Khurmato"). A "nine-year-old girl" died in Kirkuk from a roadside bomb, the AFP notes. Meanwhile the BBC reports that, James Cook has been determined to be not guilty ("by a jury panel of seven senior officers in Cochester") in the death of Ahmed Jabber Kareem -- three remain on trial. In the United States, Robert Burns reports that Gen. Michael W. Hagee is headed for Iraq as a result of concerns over "two recent cases of alleged killings of civilians in Iraq."
Finally, Reuters notes the Norwegian Refugee Council's report on Iraq:
Sectarian displacements received much attention in the mainstream world media in April 2006, yet equally large-scale population displacements caused by multiple military operations across the country have been largely unreported. Several hundred thousand people were displaced by military operations during 2005.
In Iraq, a top leader has renewed calls for President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair to set a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying troops.
Iraqi Vice President Tareq Al Hashemi: "Two days ago we spoke with Tony Blair about this issue and the fact that it is necessary that the U.S. and British administration should put a timetable for its troops withdrawal from Iraq. We have discussed this thoroughly and I convinced him of the necessity of announcing a timetable for the withdrawal of the occupying troops and told him frankly that Iraqis have a right to know when the last British or American soldier will leave Iraq." Bush and Blair have long rejected setting withdrawal timetables and vowed to withdraw troops at their own discretion. The two leaders will meet today in Washington with Iraq expected to top the agenda.
Contacted the reference librarian/researcher (reference to Elaine's "Long but is there a topic?") and asked about something I'd read but couldn't remember where? C.I. was kind enough to tell me the book, author and page number. It's pages 224-225 from Normal Solomon's War Made Easy: How Presidents and Pundits Keep Spinning Us to Death:
In effect, the war had to go on because the war had to go on -- widely promoted as the least bad option, in contrast to the taboo of withdrawal. Meanwhile, a prerequisite for any Baghdad government to exist would be that it sufficiently satisifed the administration in Washington.
[. . .]
Pretense and realism were at war. Washington was preparing to hand over power to Iraqis while steadfastly refusing to do so; putting an Iraqi "face" on authority in Iraq while retaining ultimate authority in Iraq; striving for Iraqis to take up the burden of their country's national security while insisting that military control must remain in Uncle Sam's hands.
To some readers, the headline across the top of USA Today's front page on day in June 2004 must have been reassuring: "New Leader Asks U.S. to Stay." The banner headline was a classic of occupation puppetry and media gimmickry. Iraq's "new leader" Iyad Allawi -- selected and installed as prime minister by the U.S. government -- had shown distinct reliablity over the years. The USA Today story made only fleeting reference to Allawi's longtime U.S. entanglement, indentifying him as "a Shiite close to the CIA." The contradiction did not seem to trouble American media outlets, though they sometimes openly fretted that Iraqis might not be so accepting. Allawi "is the secretary general of the Iraqi National Accord, an exile group that has received funds from the Central Intelligence Agency," the New York Times reported. "His ties with the CIA and his closeness to the United States could become an issue in a country where public opinion has grown almost universally hostile to the Americans." A separate Times article noted that Allawi "lived abroad for 30 years and is not well known in Iraq." All in all, by Washington's lights, the man was eminently qualified to be Iraq's "new leader." And his superb judgement was immediately apparent: New leader asks U.S. to stay!
If you're not familiar with the book, it's one I recommend and we discussed it back in August "1 Book, 10 Minutes" (The Third Estate Sunday Review). It's an antidote not only to this adminstration's spin but to the lies that get us into war (by any adminstration) and keep us there.
"Senate Expected To Vote On Immigration Bill" (Democracy Now):
The Senate has agreed to end debate on a controversial immigration bill, setting the stage for a vote likely to come today. The bill would heighten enforcement measures, establish a temporary guest worker program, punish employers who hire undocumented immigrants and open a route to citizenship for at least some undocumented immigrants. If passed, the Senate bill would have to be reconciled with the Sensenbrenner bill passed by the House in December. That bill focuses strictly on enforcement and would consider undocumented immigrants to be felons. It would also make it a crime for priests, nuns, health care workers and other social workers to offer help to undocumented immigrants.
Big business always protects big business and with all the loybbing of Congress, it works for big business. Which is why immigrants got screwed over and will continue to be screwed over. C.I.'s covered how the New York Times has lied over and over about the Senate bill but there's a new liar in town and his name is David Espo who has obviously learned from the Times how to 'shape' opinion by playing the bill as opposed by racists and supported by do gooders.
Yesterday Mike wrote "Michael Hayden, FCC and spying, and more" and he covered Darfur great but I got an e-mail about it asking why he was saying it was harder to open our borders than to send force. Well the item above demonstrates the border issue. It's also true that we're dealing with Black people and you might want to send in some bullets and soldiers to fix the issue because anything's better than having one of us move next door to you, right?
It was the same thing with the Jewish race. 'Decent people' fretted what an influx of 'those people' might do to a nation's character and over six million Jews (as well as gypsies, gays and lesbians and others) would die in the Holocaust.
Sending force as opposed to welcoming the victims in Darfur into this country is the equivalent of sending a pie to someone's house because you don't want to actually invite them over to dinner. It's racism and xenophobia. We're willing to make sure they stay, just not willing to make them really safe.
Did you make a point to listen to KPFA's The Morning Show today? Robert Jensen was on addressing the issue of race and he brought up a point about how you hear people bemoan the underpriviliged but what about examing the realities of the overpriviliged? Were it not for economic class and skin color, do you think Bully Boy would be in the White House? He was a bad student and a bad businessman. They (Jensen and co-hosts Andrea Lewis and Philip Maldari) addressed affirmative action and a number of other things. (They also played some of Tim Wise's speech. Jensen had nice words for Wise.)
Go to Mikey Likes It! for Mike's take on the two headlines. I'm going to try to post tomorrow -- Wally and I have talked about doing a joint post again. Be sure to check out Wally's
"THIS JUST IN! BULLY BOY AND BLAIR HAVE BEEN WHERE?"
Forgot to put in C.I.'s "Iraq Snapshot:"
Iraq snapshot.
As Amy Goodman noted, Tareq Al Hashemi, vice president of Iraq, has called for "a timetable for the withdrawal of occupying troops" from Iraq. As Al Jazeera notes, Al Hashemi does not favor the notion of a set of conditions that would result in withdrawal of all foreign troops (US, British, et al) but instead favors a fixed date. The Irish Examiner reports that as Tony Blair and Bully Boy meet in DC, "the White House" has declared it "premature to talk about troop withdrawals."
This as Free Speech Radio News reports the Inspector General of Iraq's Oil Ministry has noted "that one billion dollars of Iraq's oil is being illegally smuggled out of the country every month." On the topic of the Oil Ministry, Steve Negus reports that Hussein al-Shahristani, exile installed as oil minister, has declared "the central government should handle all contracts related to petroleum exploration and production, putting him on a potential collision course with the autonomous Kurdish region which has recently begun to develop its own oil resources." What Kurds may read as a power grab occurs as the occupied nation is still without a minister of interior or defense.
In England, Matthew Tempest reports for the Guardian that "attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, has been forced into disclosing further information relating to his decision that an ivasion of Iraq would be lawful." Goldsmith issues one ruling and then another (that was already known), the report traces the change of opinion to March 13th and he would inform Blair of the change in opinion (that the illegal invasion would suddenly be legal). March 17, 2003 was then the UN failed to endorse the Bully Boy's war lust, March 20th would see the start of the illegal invasion.
A battle in Baghdad (yes, in Baghdad) resulted in at least three people dead from
"[t]he ambush of Brig Gen. Khalil al-Abadi, head of the Defense Ministry logistics office" reports the Associated Press. Reuters notes several bombings taking place in Iraq -- one "planted inside a building wounded 13 people," another wounded two police officers in New Baghdad, and another injured two police officers on "patrol in northeastern Baghdad." Reuters also notes that four corpses were discovered throughout Baghdad ("torture . . . gunshot wounds in their heads").
The AFP reports that two more corpses were discovered in Baquba while Reuters notes an additional three ("bullet gunshot wounds") near Tikrit and that, in Balad, "U.S. forces handed over five decomposed bodies to the hospital." The AFP reports that a judge (Walid Ahmed) has been kidnapped while "traveling on a highway between Saddam's hometown of Tikrit and the city of Samarra." Reuters notes that Ali Hisham and his son were kidnapped not far from Kirkuk (Hisham is "head of the Turkmen Front party in town of Tuz Khurmato"). A "nine-year-old girl" died in Kirkuk from a roadside bomb, the AFP notes. Meanwhile the BBC reports that, James Cook has been determined to be not guilty ("by a jury panel of seven senior officers in Cochester") in the death of Ahmed Jabber Kareem -- three remain on trial. In the United States, Robert Burns reports that Gen. Michael W. Hagee is headed for Iraq as a result of concerns over "two recent cases of alleged killings of civilians in Iraq."
Finally, Reuters notes the Norwegian Refugee Council's report on Iraq:
Sectarian displacements received much attention in the mainstream world media in April 2006, yet equally large-scale population displacements caused by multiple military operations across the country have been largely unreported. Several hundred thousand people were displaced by military operations during 2005.
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
On Race
I woke up today thinking I'd blog about something that happened in the park yesterday. I really didn't think it was interesting enough last night and then C.I. called me after my post went up and asked why I didn't cover it. Honestly, I didn't know if it was serious enough. C.I. said, "'Go Your Own Way' Cedric is taking a pass on this!" And I had laugh too. (That's a reference to
"Into the e-mails.") Then I spoke to Ty this afternoon and he said, "That would make a great piece for our fiction edition this summer." (At The Third Estate Sunday Review.) I was already excited about the special edition and think it will work there. (It will also probably be better if it has some fiction to it and we can all input.)
Then, today, I read Samantha Power's "Why Can't We?" and thought I could write about that. I phoned Mike and suggested we both grab it. But I get home and go to Mikey Likes It! and read his "Michael Hayden, FCC and spying, and more" and there's nothing left to cover -- he's done a great job. I can't even think of anything to add to it.
So let me talk about a special on KPFA today called "Tim Wise Special" and co-hosted by Andrea Lewis of The Morning Show. What's The Matter With Kansas? Is that the name of Thomas Frank's book? We're all supposed to love it. I read it and didn't love it. I don't know a lot of people who read the book but one (C.I.) who did didn't care for it.
Tim Wise talked about it and put it perfectly. This isn't about teaching people to vote in their own interest (which is pretty "paternalistic" as Wise noted). It's one more thing about "We must bring the White Male back to the Democratic Party!" They're spitting on women already by running these anti-choice candidates. (I'm offended by that and I am pro-choice but I won't pretend that an issue which has to do with women's bodies could offend me more than it could a woman. I'm pro-choice and will say so loudly and clearly. But for women, I think it has another level since it is their bodies.) But it's also about, "Forget you African-Americans." Because African-Americans didn't abandon the party.
They didn't need to "learn" their interests. You can toss Condi on one side of Bully Boy and Colin Powell on the other and it's still just window dressing.
Does Kansas have no African-Americans?
This is another thing about how "We will get the White Males back! No matter how much we have to water down the issues." That was really a great special and you probably could only hear it on Pacifica Radio so if you have the money to donate and you haven't donated already, donate Thursday.
I don't want to pick on someone I've noted before has a White view. I think she means well. But she pushed that book like crazy. And I kept thinking, "Does this magazine have no African-American readers?" Wise made a point about a book and Lewis emphasized that after his speech was over. There was a period of time when Black Like Me was selling second only to the Bible. Why was that?
A white man takes some pills to be Black and suddenly it's worth reading to find out about African-Americans? Were they unaware that African-Americans had been writing about what it was like to be African-American for some time already?
I'd be willing to guess that most African-Americans have a better idea of what it's like to be White than than most Whites have an idea of what it's like to be African-American. Not because African-Americans are more aware by "nature" but because the White culture is the one that's all over the place.
I think Andrea Lewis was talking about something that had happened to her and not something in the speech Wise gave. (If he noted it, I missed it. I was listening at work so it's entirely possible that I missed it.) So she said that this man was just insisting to her that Columbia University had gone Black. 'They' were all over the place. Lewis gave a figure (under twenty-percent) to the friend about how that wasn't the case. But he was White and he sees five African-Americans and it's one of those 'They're taking over!' moments.
They weren't fifty-percent and he wanted to argue with her about her source for the figures (Columbia was her source) because when he looked around, what he saw made him feel like it was at fifty-percent.
I'm not making fun of him. I'm saying that this happens. It has to do with impressions.
I'll mess up (not spoil, mess up) the speech if I try to go into it more but if race matters to you, check it out. Because race does matter. Someone can whine, "Oh, you're playing the race card!"
Am I ABC, NBC or CBS? No. But they play the race card in their programming or maybe people don't notice how few African-Americans are on TV?
What does that say to kids growing up now? They can watch a host of White families, they can watch a ton of White lawyers and investigators. It's like we've dropped back to pre-I Spy and pre-Julia these days.
African-Americans are not in competition with Latinos and any who think they are should correct themselves. But it is true that the dominant society encourages us to think that there will be one lucky break extended so we all better fight for it -- all of us on the bottom, nonWhite rung.
So those are my thoughts for tonight. If I can, I'll blog tomorrow.
KPFA's The Morning Show tomorrow will feature another discussion on race. Make a point to listen if you have the time (and a computer that allows you to hear streaming audio if you aren't in their broadcast area).
"Into the e-mails.") Then I spoke to Ty this afternoon and he said, "That would make a great piece for our fiction edition this summer." (At The Third Estate Sunday Review.) I was already excited about the special edition and think it will work there. (It will also probably be better if it has some fiction to it and we can all input.)
Then, today, I read Samantha Power's "Why Can't We?" and thought I could write about that. I phoned Mike and suggested we both grab it. But I get home and go to Mikey Likes It! and read his "Michael Hayden, FCC and spying, and more" and there's nothing left to cover -- he's done a great job. I can't even think of anything to add to it.
So let me talk about a special on KPFA today called "Tim Wise Special" and co-hosted by Andrea Lewis of The Morning Show. What's The Matter With Kansas? Is that the name of Thomas Frank's book? We're all supposed to love it. I read it and didn't love it. I don't know a lot of people who read the book but one (C.I.) who did didn't care for it.
Tim Wise talked about it and put it perfectly. This isn't about teaching people to vote in their own interest (which is pretty "paternalistic" as Wise noted). It's one more thing about "We must bring the White Male back to the Democratic Party!" They're spitting on women already by running these anti-choice candidates. (I'm offended by that and I am pro-choice but I won't pretend that an issue which has to do with women's bodies could offend me more than it could a woman. I'm pro-choice and will say so loudly and clearly. But for women, I think it has another level since it is their bodies.) But it's also about, "Forget you African-Americans." Because African-Americans didn't abandon the party.
They didn't need to "learn" their interests. You can toss Condi on one side of Bully Boy and Colin Powell on the other and it's still just window dressing.
Does Kansas have no African-Americans?
This is another thing about how "We will get the White Males back! No matter how much we have to water down the issues." That was really a great special and you probably could only hear it on Pacifica Radio so if you have the money to donate and you haven't donated already, donate Thursday.
I don't want to pick on someone I've noted before has a White view. I think she means well. But she pushed that book like crazy. And I kept thinking, "Does this magazine have no African-American readers?" Wise made a point about a book and Lewis emphasized that after his speech was over. There was a period of time when Black Like Me was selling second only to the Bible. Why was that?
A white man takes some pills to be Black and suddenly it's worth reading to find out about African-Americans? Were they unaware that African-Americans had been writing about what it was like to be African-American for some time already?
I'd be willing to guess that most African-Americans have a better idea of what it's like to be White than than most Whites have an idea of what it's like to be African-American. Not because African-Americans are more aware by "nature" but because the White culture is the one that's all over the place.
I think Andrea Lewis was talking about something that had happened to her and not something in the speech Wise gave. (If he noted it, I missed it. I was listening at work so it's entirely possible that I missed it.) So she said that this man was just insisting to her that Columbia University had gone Black. 'They' were all over the place. Lewis gave a figure (under twenty-percent) to the friend about how that wasn't the case. But he was White and he sees five African-Americans and it's one of those 'They're taking over!' moments.
They weren't fifty-percent and he wanted to argue with her about her source for the figures (Columbia was her source) because when he looked around, what he saw made him feel like it was at fifty-percent.
I'm not making fun of him. I'm saying that this happens. It has to do with impressions.
I'll mess up (not spoil, mess up) the speech if I try to go into it more but if race matters to you, check it out. Because race does matter. Someone can whine, "Oh, you're playing the race card!"
Am I ABC, NBC or CBS? No. But they play the race card in their programming or maybe people don't notice how few African-Americans are on TV?
What does that say to kids growing up now? They can watch a host of White families, they can watch a ton of White lawyers and investigators. It's like we've dropped back to pre-I Spy and pre-Julia these days.
African-Americans are not in competition with Latinos and any who think they are should correct themselves. But it is true that the dominant society encourages us to think that there will be one lucky break extended so we all better fight for it -- all of us on the bottom, nonWhite rung.
So those are my thoughts for tonight. If I can, I'll blog tomorrow.
KPFA's The Morning Show tomorrow will feature another discussion on race. Make a point to listen if you have the time (and a computer that allows you to hear streaming audio if you aren't in their broadcast area).
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
Arundhati Roy speaks to truth to power while others stay silent
AMY GOODMAN: President Bush speaking in India. Arundhati Roy, your response?
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, look, let's not forget that this whole call to the free market started in the late 19th century in India. You know, that was what colonialism was all about. They kept using the words "free market." And we know how free the free market is. Today, India has -- I mean, after 15 years of economic liberalization, we have more than half of the world's malnutritioned children. We have an economy where the differences between the rich and the poor, which have always been huge, has increased enormously. We have a feudal society whose feudalism has just been reinforced by all of this.
And, you know, it's amazing. Just in the wake of Bush's visit, you can't imagine what's happening, say, in a city like Delhi. You can't imagine the open aggression of institutions of our democracy. It's really like courts, for instance, who are an old enemy of mine, are rolling up their sleeves and coming after us. You have in Delhi, for example -- I have just come from being on the streets for six weeks, where all kinds of protest are taking place. But you have a city that's been just -- it's just turned into a city of bulldozers and policemen. Overnight, notices go up saying tomorrow or day after tomorrow you're going to be evicted from here. The Supreme Court judges have come out saying things like, "If the poor can't afford to live in the city, why do they come here?"
And basically, behind it all, there are two facades. One is that in 2008, Delhi is going to host the Commonwealth Games. For this, hundreds of thousands of people are being driven out of the city. But the real agenda came in the wake of Bush's visit, which is that the city is being prepared for foreign direct investment in retail, which means Wal-Mart and Kmart and all these people are going to come in, which means that this city of millions of pavement dwellers, hawkers, fruit sellers, people who have -- it's a city that's grown up over centuries and centuries. It's just being cleaned out under the guise of sort of legal action. And at the same time, people from villages are being driven out of their villages, because of the corporatization of agriculture, because of these big development projects.
So you have an institution like -- you know, I mean, how do you subvert democracy? We have a parliament, sure. We have elections, sure. But we have a supreme court now that micromanages our lives. It takes every decision: What should be in history books? Should this lamb be cured? Should this road be widened? What gas should we use? Every single decision is now taken by a court. You can't criticize the court. If you do, you will go to jail, like I did. So, you have judges who are -- you have to read those judgments to believe it, you know? Public interest litigation has become a weapon that judges use against us.
So, for example, a former chief justice of India, he gave a decision allowing the Narmada Dam to be built, where 400,000 people will be displaced. The same judge gave a judgment saying slum dwellers are pickpockets of urban land. So you displace people from the villages; they come into the cities; you call them pickpockets. He gave a judgment shutting down all kinds of informal industry in Delhi. Than he gave a judgment asking for all India's rivers to be linked, which is a Stalinist scheme beyond imagination, where millions of people will be displaced. And when he retired, he joined Coca-Cola. You know, it's incredible.
That's Arundhati Roy speaking with Amy Goodman on today's Democracy Now! ("Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent"). I hope you already caught it but if you missed it, you can use the link and read it or listen to it or watch it. (I listen to Democracy Now! each day.) And if that part above doesn't make you want to listen, I don't know what will. How often do you get to hear anyone tell the truth? She tried to with Charlie Rose. Amy Goodman brought that up and Arundhati Roy said they taped the show, he just never broadcast it. I don't care for Charlie Rose. He's just too prissy and in love with his own voice. I hate it when he lands on a word and draws it out or when he plays with that coffee mug. When Bully Boy ordered the invasion of Iraq, I thought I should try to watch some news and I turned to PBS. I lasted about three weeks. If I thought I was going to see the cast of Sesame Street or Reading Rainbow, I lost that illusion quickly as one White face after another danced across the screen.
It wasn't worth it to me to have the visuals. So I went back to using the radio as my primary source of news. It's not like I got any strong visuals anyway, just a lot of close ups of White people. If there's footage on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman will usually note it and if she does, I'll usually go to the website later in the day and watch it. Otherwise, I'm a grown adult and I can usually picture something in my head.
I prefer to listen. I know some people love to watch Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez -- like Rebecca and Mike prefer to watch. C.I. prefers to listen, thinking you focus more. I think I agree with that. If I'm watching something, my mind's going to drift off. I'll focus on someone's face or the set or something and then think, "Wait, what did they just say?"
But however you prefer, you can do it with Democracy Now! -- you can watch it online or listen online or read it online. (And they do headlines each day in English and in Spanish.) And if you're lucky, you can listen or watch with your radio or TV. I bet you already know where but if you don't, click here and it will give you options to find out how to watch or listen.
If you need a laugh today, and who doesn't?, check out Wally's "THIS JUST IN! CONDI RICE FINALLY GETS IT!" -- Condi faces that she's not loved.
C.I. noted this from a PDF file ("AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens, 31 December 2005") and if I had time, I'd note something else -- but I know why C.I. put it up and I'm putting it up too (for the same reason):
To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting "research" using "artificial synthetic date" or information from "normal DoD intelligence channels" and hence there are "no U.S. citizen privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Admiral Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DoD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.
In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High speed fiber optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the infomration going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04 which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
The normal workforce of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special comination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replace by another.
Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after DARPA started awarding contracts for TIA.
Check out the following:
"NYT: A war hawk finds out it's not easy being sleazy (Kate Zezima)"
"It's a Monday"
"dixie chicks, flashpoints, attempting to privatize the bbc & more"
"KPFA's Radio Chronicles' 'John Ono Lennon' special""
ARUNDHATI ROY: Well, look, let's not forget that this whole call to the free market started in the late 19th century in India. You know, that was what colonialism was all about. They kept using the words "free market." And we know how free the free market is. Today, India has -- I mean, after 15 years of economic liberalization, we have more than half of the world's malnutritioned children. We have an economy where the differences between the rich and the poor, which have always been huge, has increased enormously. We have a feudal society whose feudalism has just been reinforced by all of this.
And, you know, it's amazing. Just in the wake of Bush's visit, you can't imagine what's happening, say, in a city like Delhi. You can't imagine the open aggression of institutions of our democracy. It's really like courts, for instance, who are an old enemy of mine, are rolling up their sleeves and coming after us. You have in Delhi, for example -- I have just come from being on the streets for six weeks, where all kinds of protest are taking place. But you have a city that's been just -- it's just turned into a city of bulldozers and policemen. Overnight, notices go up saying tomorrow or day after tomorrow you're going to be evicted from here. The Supreme Court judges have come out saying things like, "If the poor can't afford to live in the city, why do they come here?"
And basically, behind it all, there are two facades. One is that in 2008, Delhi is going to host the Commonwealth Games. For this, hundreds of thousands of people are being driven out of the city. But the real agenda came in the wake of Bush's visit, which is that the city is being prepared for foreign direct investment in retail, which means Wal-Mart and Kmart and all these people are going to come in, which means that this city of millions of pavement dwellers, hawkers, fruit sellers, people who have -- it's a city that's grown up over centuries and centuries. It's just being cleaned out under the guise of sort of legal action. And at the same time, people from villages are being driven out of their villages, because of the corporatization of agriculture, because of these big development projects.
So you have an institution like -- you know, I mean, how do you subvert democracy? We have a parliament, sure. We have elections, sure. But we have a supreme court now that micromanages our lives. It takes every decision: What should be in history books? Should this lamb be cured? Should this road be widened? What gas should we use? Every single decision is now taken by a court. You can't criticize the court. If you do, you will go to jail, like I did. So, you have judges who are -- you have to read those judgments to believe it, you know? Public interest litigation has become a weapon that judges use against us.
So, for example, a former chief justice of India, he gave a decision allowing the Narmada Dam to be built, where 400,000 people will be displaced. The same judge gave a judgment saying slum dwellers are pickpockets of urban land. So you displace people from the villages; they come into the cities; you call them pickpockets. He gave a judgment shutting down all kinds of informal industry in Delhi. Than he gave a judgment asking for all India's rivers to be linked, which is a Stalinist scheme beyond imagination, where millions of people will be displaced. And when he retired, he joined Coca-Cola. You know, it's incredible.
That's Arundhati Roy speaking with Amy Goodman on today's Democracy Now! ("Arundhati Roy on India, Iraq, U.S. Empire and Dissent"). I hope you already caught it but if you missed it, you can use the link and read it or listen to it or watch it. (I listen to Democracy Now! each day.) And if that part above doesn't make you want to listen, I don't know what will. How often do you get to hear anyone tell the truth? She tried to with Charlie Rose. Amy Goodman brought that up and Arundhati Roy said they taped the show, he just never broadcast it. I don't care for Charlie Rose. He's just too prissy and in love with his own voice. I hate it when he lands on a word and draws it out or when he plays with that coffee mug. When Bully Boy ordered the invasion of Iraq, I thought I should try to watch some news and I turned to PBS. I lasted about three weeks. If I thought I was going to see the cast of Sesame Street or Reading Rainbow, I lost that illusion quickly as one White face after another danced across the screen.
It wasn't worth it to me to have the visuals. So I went back to using the radio as my primary source of news. It's not like I got any strong visuals anyway, just a lot of close ups of White people. If there's footage on Democracy Now!, Amy Goodman will usually note it and if she does, I'll usually go to the website later in the day and watch it. Otherwise, I'm a grown adult and I can usually picture something in my head.
I prefer to listen. I know some people love to watch Amy Goodman and Juan Gonzalez -- like Rebecca and Mike prefer to watch. C.I. prefers to listen, thinking you focus more. I think I agree with that. If I'm watching something, my mind's going to drift off. I'll focus on someone's face or the set or something and then think, "Wait, what did they just say?"
But however you prefer, you can do it with Democracy Now! -- you can watch it online or listen online or read it online. (And they do headlines each day in English and in Spanish.) And if you're lucky, you can listen or watch with your radio or TV. I bet you already know where but if you don't, click here and it will give you options to find out how to watch or listen.
If you need a laugh today, and who doesn't?, check out Wally's "THIS JUST IN! CONDI RICE FINALLY GETS IT!" -- Condi faces that she's not loved.
C.I. noted this from a PDF file ("AT&T's Implementation of NSA Spying on American Citizens, 31 December 2005") and if I had time, I'd note something else -- but I know why C.I. put it up and I'm putting it up too (for the same reason):
To mollify critics, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) spokesmen have repeatedly asserted that they are only conducting "research" using "artificial synthetic date" or information from "normal DoD intelligence channels" and hence there are "no U.S. citizen privacy implications" (Department of Defense, Office of the Inspector General report on TIA, December 12, 2003). They also changed the name of the program to "Terrorism Information Awareness" to make it more politically palatable. But feeling the heat, Congress made a big show of allegedly cutting off funding for TIA in late 2003, and the political fallout resulted in Admiral Poindexter's abrupt resignation last August. However, the fine print reveals that Congress eliminated funding only for "the majority of the TIA components," allowing several "components" to continue (DoD, ibid). The essential hardware elements of a TIA-type spy program are being surreptitiously slipped into "real world" telecommunications offices.
In San Francisco the "secret room" is Room 641A at 611 Folsom Street, the site of a large SBC phone building, three floors of which are occupied by AT&T. High speed fiber optic circuits come in on the 8th floor and run down to the 7th floor where they connect to routers for AT&T's WorldNet service, part of the latter's vital "Common Backbone." In order to snoop on these circuits, a special cabinet was installed and cabled to the "secret room" on the 6th floor to monitor the infomration going through the circuits. (The location code of the cabinet is 070177.04 which denotes the 7th floor, aisle 177 and bay 04.) The "secret room" itself is roughly 24-by-48 feet, containing perhaps a dozen cabinets including such equipment as Sun servers and two Juniper routers, plus an industrial-size air conditioner.
The normal workforce of unionized technicians in the office are forbidden to enter the "secret room," which has a special comination lock on the main door. The telltale sign of an illicit government spy operation is the fact that only people with security clearance from the National Security Agency can enter this room. In practice this has meant that only one management-level technician works in there. Ironically, the one who set up the room was laid off in late 2003 in one of the company's endless "downsizings," but he was quickly replace by another.
Plans for the "secret room" were fully drawn up by December 2002, curiously only four months after DARPA started awarding contracts for TIA.
Check out the following:
"NYT: A war hawk finds out it's not easy being sleazy (Kate Zezima)"
"It's a Monday"
"dixie chicks, flashpoints, attempting to privatize the bbc & more"
"KPFA's Radio Chronicles' 'John Ono Lennon' special""
Monday, May 22, 2006
Questions the administration and others should be asked by Congress
The comic below is Isaiah's latest The World Today Just Nuts and it's Michael Hayden speaking before the Senate.
I really like the comic but in terms of the Senate, I think from now on, when anyone's been sworn in to testify before them that has any connection to the administration, someone should ask the following:
1) Do you know Valerie Plame?
2) Did you know she was CIA before it broke in the press?
3) If so, how did you find out?
4) Did you speak on the record or off the record with any members of the press about Valerie Plame?
If they'd had Alberto Gonzales under oath when he testified before the Senate the last time, that would have been the perfect opportunity. But everybody. Donald Rumsfeld comes in to talk about the military, anyone comes in, ask them about Plamegate.
Get them under oath when possible. But even if you can't get them under oath, ask them.
Condi Rice comes in to talk about the State Department, ask her about Plame.
Let's see if they pull a Michael Hayden and say they can only answer in closed testimony or if they'll give a denial?
That's my thought for today.
I was studying the comic at work today and we were all talking about how Hayden avoided so many questions.
It got us thinking what sort of questions we'd ask him? We agreed that the NSA was an important one and then we started thinking of other things like Hurricane Katrina and the spying on Americans.
When someone said spy, I thought, Valerie Plame.
The point isn't thinking someone will confess at some point to being involved (there are probably a lot of people involved).
The point is to get them on record. Plamegate is going to break at some point and it would be nice to see, for instance, Stephen Hadley on the news telling a senator that he has no knowledge would be an interesting clip for the nightly news programs to have handy if Hadley ended up indicted.
If Rove gets indicted, they better show that clip where Scott McClellan was saying that Rove had nothing to do with it.
Here's new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: Here it comes, here it comes again
TV Review: Will & Grace -- goodbye, good riddance
Senate plays "Don't Spook the Spook" with Michael Hayden
"Can an unindicted co-conspirator remain at the White House? Personally, I don't think so."
Into the e-mails
Laura Flanders spoke with Penny Lang about the importance of music and much more
Radio highlights for Sunday
"We were all wrong!" Not so fast
This is a short entry just to see how they go. Rebecca and I have been talking about doing some of these. I'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to blog more often than just Tuesdays and Thursdays? We'll see.
I really like the comic but in terms of the Senate, I think from now on, when anyone's been sworn in to testify before them that has any connection to the administration, someone should ask the following:
1) Do you know Valerie Plame?
2) Did you know she was CIA before it broke in the press?
3) If so, how did you find out?
4) Did you speak on the record or off the record with any members of the press about Valerie Plame?
If they'd had Alberto Gonzales under oath when he testified before the Senate the last time, that would have been the perfect opportunity. But everybody. Donald Rumsfeld comes in to talk about the military, anyone comes in, ask them about Plamegate.
Get them under oath when possible. But even if you can't get them under oath, ask them.
Condi Rice comes in to talk about the State Department, ask her about Plame.
Let's see if they pull a Michael Hayden and say they can only answer in closed testimony or if they'll give a denial?
That's my thought for today.
I was studying the comic at work today and we were all talking about how Hayden avoided so many questions.
It got us thinking what sort of questions we'd ask him? We agreed that the NSA was an important one and then we started thinking of other things like Hurricane Katrina and the spying on Americans.
When someone said spy, I thought, Valerie Plame.
The point isn't thinking someone will confess at some point to being involved (there are probably a lot of people involved).
The point is to get them on record. Plamegate is going to break at some point and it would be nice to see, for instance, Stephen Hadley on the news telling a senator that he has no knowledge would be an interesting clip for the nightly news programs to have handy if Hadley ended up indicted.
If Rove gets indicted, they better show that clip where Scott McClellan was saying that Rove had nothing to do with it.
Here's new content at The Third Estate Sunday Review:
A Note to Our Readers
Editorial: Here it comes, here it comes again
TV Review: Will & Grace -- goodbye, good riddance
Senate plays "Don't Spook the Spook" with Michael Hayden
"Can an unindicted co-conspirator remain at the White House? Personally, I don't think so."
Into the e-mails
Laura Flanders spoke with Penny Lang about the importance of music and much more
Radio highlights for Sunday
"We were all wrong!" Not so fast
This is a short entry just to see how they go. Rebecca and I have been talking about doing some of these. I'll see how it goes. Maybe I'll be able to blog more often than just Tuesdays and Thursdays? We'll see.
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