So far this "team" blog has been more of a duo effort: goopDoggy and Mytwords. We had hoped for at least 4 writers. Any takers? Email Mytwords if you're interested - click the Mytwords profile under "Contributors" in the sidebar to get in contact.
The President went into that meeting [with Karzai] determined to press the Afghan president on what he and his government need to do to match up with the military effort that the US [is] making on the ground here. Steps like rooting out corruption. Steps like doing more to root out the narco-traffickers. [..] The President was accompanied on this trip by General Jim Jones, his national security advisor who outlined what some of the goals were for the US and here on the ground he met with Gen. McChrystal [] now of course the President can talk with Gen. McChrystal via video conference and he gets weekly updates on how the US is doing with all its various efforts here in Afghanistan but this was a chance to get some on the ground intelligence and to meet face to face, both with Gen. McChrystal and with Michael Eikenberry, the US Ambassador. [] Gen. Jones says there are signs of progress here in Afghanistan, he's calling this a strategic moment [It's been six months since Jones last used that phrase, so now it's good for another go]. The battle for Kandahar will be very telling. That's what Gen. McChrystal has said will be the test for whether the strategy that President Obama has put in place is working here in Afghanistan. Kandahar is of course the city where the Taliban was born, there is still a good deal of Taliban sympathy in Kandahar and it's likely to be a bigger battle than the fight for Marjah was earlier this winter.As cartoonish as this all seems from afar, it's oddly reverberant with the opening chapter, "Loomings," of Moby Dick. Ishmael is explaining his allure for going to sea as a sailor, in which position "head winds are more prevalent than winds from astern" (and winds from Horsley's nether parts)
so for the most part, the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere second hand from from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first; but not so. In much the same way do the commonalty lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time as their leaders little suspect it.Ishmael imagines his whaling story as "a brief interlude and solo between more extensive performances" such as a "grand contested election for the presidency of the united states" and "Bloody battle in Afghanistan."
So far this "team" blog has been more of a duo effort - from goopDoggy and Mytwords. I had really hoped to get at least 4 or more writers involved. Any takers? Email me if you are interested - click the Mytwords profile under "Contributors" in the sidebar to contact me.
Dina Temple-Raston, author of The Jihad Next Door: The Lackawanna Six and Rough Justice in an Age of Terror was heard this ME to decry the use of secular incentives to promote jihad: Jihadi Cool: Terrorist Recruiters' Latest Weapon. She worries her audience with the thought that the appeals are "clearly aimed at young people nursing resentments and looking for thrills." I was reminded of this poster recently seen in a Long Beach window.
"The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It's our capital." [Morning Edition, 3-23-10]- you could hope for a gentle history lesson that would not leave such a steaming pile of racist propaganda sitting out there unchallenged. And given that ALL the Israeli settlements are illegal under international law, you might expect to hear the word "illegal" or the phrase "Security Council" in any one of the pieces on the East Jerusalem settlements aired on NPR in the past week. So how does NPR do? Let's have a look:
"...Jerusalem is sovereign Israeli territory, and it has the same status as Tel Aviv. And just as Israelis have a right to build anywhere in Tel Aviv, they have a right to build anywhere in the city of Jerusalem...."Seriously, one doesn't have to be a radical to state the obvious about Israel and its settlement policies. Regarding Jerusalem, UN Amb. George H. W. Bush (seriously) stated way back in 1971,
"We regret Israel's failure to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and the spirit of this convention,"and - as President - he and his administration continued to make almost identical points nearly twenty years later. I guess that was so pre-9/11 - you know, back when such quaint ideas as the Geneva Convention still held sway in some quarters of the Village.
There are topics in the shadows of the Main Stream Media, of which Alicia Shepard proudly proclaims NPR is a part. On topics such as (readers may suggest more)Part of this was revulsion and shock to the system. To the individual system and to the body politic. It was so disturbing on every possible level that it simply doesn't compute. What happens with this kind of trauma is you just shut down. [..] It's the same for the media. It's not that the media is in cahoots or is bad or anything like that, it's just that the media is a whole lot of people trying to cope, trying to do their jobs, trying to keep their jobs, trying to stay focused and so on - you've heard the expression "too big to fail" about Goldman Sachs and these sorts of places, well this story was too big to cover.Dramatic pause here. Which is well placed. "Too big to cover" is, in some sense, a new phrase for the "the big lie." Think of the sinking of The Maine, the attack on Pearl Harbor, Operation Gladio, the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the crack cocaine epidemic, the Niger forgeries - all these events have been exploited by opportunistic government propagandists to incite war. The instinct for it in government seems to undeniable. So Baker's assessment is fairly benign. He continues,
What bothers me about that is that no serious journalist should fail to cover [] the big stories. Somebody at the Washington Post was telling me - do you remember the couple that got into the White House dinner? Apparently they put together a team of 30 people to cover that. And this reporter pointed out to me, they said, we never had more than 3 people covering Iraq.But, repeatedly, NPR has characterized people who want answers to these questions as kooks and conspiracy theorists. It's akin to believing in Martians and/or that the moon landing was staged in Hollywood.
Journalists should always cover the big stories, and no serious journalist should out of hand reject any scenario as completely impossible or implausible, where human nature and power are concerned. It is our job to consider the evidence and to dig in.
[]
When you look at the reporting on things that are not in dispute, it is inadequate. [] You don't have to have a position on 9/11 to want answers. And you don't have to be a kook to wonder if, when the co-chairmen of The 9/11 Commission, a commission that itself has no credibility, basically claim that they were lied to, that there might be something going on.
One of the things you see [in totalitarian and authoritarian regimes] is that most people helped preserve the system, not because they were told to do it but simply because they were afraid. [] This exists in the most insidious form in our society where we bray about how free we are. Because if you're proud of yourself and how green your lawn is and how well you generally do investing and how cool NASCAR is [] you really don't want to hear that everything ain't hunky dory.To what degree is NPR self-censoring? Do they know there is a cover up of some sort and so they know better than to interfere with it? Do they just not want to know what's being covered up? Or do they assume the same of their audience? Are there any dissenters? How do they justify their own lack of curiosity and failure to investigate unexplained facts like, oh, the collapse of building 7?
According to Guy Raz, Republican Paul Ryan is "a rising star in his party," and so on Sunday's ATC he gets a fact-check free four minutes to promote his Bushrehash plan to slash taxes on the rich, cut Medicare, and redirect Social Security revenue to the stock market. For those of us dwelling on planet Earth, this all sounds vaguely familiar - but to our NPR villagers its dazzling innovation: "But if there's one Republican who Democrats can't accuse of having no ideas, it's Wisconsin Congressman Paul Ryan.Since Raz concludes this man-of-ideas introduction by noting that Ryan's plan is "controversial, even a little radical," you might expect to learn details of Ryan's roadmap - you know the basics of how extreme his tax policies will be, how it will end Medicare as we know it, and divert revenue away from Social Security. Not a chance. Raz does compare federal debt problems to climate change (curious) and asks how moving Social Security funds into a government guaranteed private market fund is still not a government-run program, but that's it. There's a good reason not to challenge Ryan's mythical revenue stream, because it reveals that Ryan's plan is nothing but a Trojan Horse that won't reduce any debt anytime in the foreseeable future.
He's written a plan called 'The Roadmap for America's Future,' and in it, he outlines his proposals to reform Medicare, Social Security and taxes." [Raz]
Hi, Dennis here. This week a privileged resolution will be brought to the floor of the House of Representatives. This resolution, which I wrote, requires the president to remove the troops from Afghanistan within 30 days of the time when the resolution was passed and no later than December 21, of 2010. There are many reasons we need to get out of Afghanistan, I just list a few.C-SPAN captured testimony from the debate, some of which is excerpt at Truth-Out. Donna Edwards points out that, "As national security director Jim Jones has told us, there are only 100 Al Quaeda left in Afghanistan. Who are we fighting?" But we didn't hear that on NPR.Now we have to determine whether or not America will take a new direction in Afghanistan. Not to go in deeper with a surge, but to get out. That's what's going to be discussed this week in Washington. Please help us. Please get the word out. Please contact anyone who you think will be influential in getting members of Congress to pay close attention to this vote.
- We're spending hundreds of billions of dollars: a total waste, because the Afghanistan central government of is totally corrupt.
- We have a thousand troops whose lives have been lost, and many more injured, some of them permanently.
- Countless individual Afghanistan citizens have been killed or injured as a result of this conflict.
- We should take heed of the Russian's experience in Afghanistan. Afghanistan is not going to be conquered. We have to understand that the weight of history has been against our efforts from the start.
It wasn't just liberals arguing this; they found an ally in libertarian Republicans such as Texas Rep. Ron Paul.After some audio of Rep. Paul arguing convincingly against occupation (see the TruthOut clip for more of this) and feeling scared nearly to death, we are reassured by Seabrook that
Ultimately though, these liberals and libertarians are outnumbered by members of Congress who support the president and the war.Pffew. For example, Missouri Democrat Ike Skelton, chair of the House Committee on Armed
Services, (right - no liberal, he) is heard to ask"Have we forgotten? Have we forgotten what happened to America on 9/11?"To which the answer screams, "No! We have not forgotten. How can you forget something you've never known?!"
When the Taliban ruled Afghanistan, it provided a haven to al-Qaida, which orchestrated the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.Well, that settles that. And in case the listener feels at all unsettled, a sequence of vacuous truisms ensue: Ted Poe of Texas saying that "War is hard," and California Democrate Bob Filner advising that "Peace is harder," and the article concludes with the reassurance by Prof. Siegel that,
Congress had an open, bipartisan debate about war and peace.This hermetically insulates the issue and so, ultimately, strident Kucinich's quixotic flail against the war machine is twisted by NPR into effectively sealing the deal: war's on, 'nuff said.
Almost every school year West Port High School junior [Jane Doe] has seen change. A new principal, a different curriculum, even a new superintendent.It looks like the teachers' Union has been backed into a corner after not receiving much of a voice. In any case, as Sasha Abramsky points out in The Guardian,Every year it's changing the system's changing, or they're trying to put us in a predicament. It's kinda hard to just stay focused.This year comes the biggest change of all, her school is one of 26 in the school district that will be boarded up. This follows one of the most ambitious attempts in the country to integrate schools. A court-ordered desegregation plan in the 1980's and 90's poured two billion dollars into the district to fix the schools. It created elaborate bus routes, magnet programs and some of the best facilities in the country including an Olympic sized swimming pool and a planetarium.
But families continued to flee to the suburbs and to private and charter schools. The district's population has plummeted from 70000 in the 1960's to about 17000 now. The new superintendent John Covington [below] proposed closing about half the buildings, and laying off about 700 employees.Right now we're failing students in large percentages, in large numbers, and that doesn't have to be.It's all an effort to redeploy resources. Covington calls it right-sizing. But opponents say it's anything but [voice (low volume) of Ajamu Webster in call and response with a crowd]:I said the "right size plan" is the wrong fit. I say the right size plan [response] is the wrong fit.At forums across the city over the past few months many parents and community members protested plans to close schools. The superintendent was determined that all schools would need to consolidate, even some of the district's better performing ones.
Ajamu Webster, who founded the district's three Afrikan Centered [Education] schools, (ACE) disagreed:Our campus is a growing institution, and a growing institution needs space.The district's flagship, Lincoln College Prep, was recently named among the top 150 public high schools in the country by Newsweek. But even Lincoln Prep is slated to merge its middle and high schools.
Dan Domonitch is director of the American Association of School Administrators. He says districts and cities like Washington D.C., Cleveland and Chicago are all closing under the old schools [sic - weird editing glitch in audio, I think].The economy being what it is, and school districts having to make major cuts, increasing class size, eliminating sports programs, cutting back on transportation - they don't have the luxury of maintaining a facility open unless it is 100% occupied.In Kansas City, civic institutions, the Chamber of Commerce, and even the teacher's union supported the school closure plan, though almost 300 teaching positions will be lost.
This morning Superintendent Covington laid out more details. Such things as longer school days, an extended year and an end to social promotion. He wants to use evaluations and early retirements to keep only the best teachers.I think in 5 years the Kansas City Community, I think they'll beam with pride as to where our schools have come.As for the buildings, the school board hopes to sell them, or some could be razed to make way for city parks. Either way, residents here hope that this radical public schools plan leads to radical change.
If there are lessons to be learned from Kansas City's dismal experiences, they are about the importance of holistic thinking: of looking for ways not just to desegregate schools but to preserve integrated, economically diverse urban cores; of providing middle-class families with reasons to continue using public services; of building up the notion of common community again so that the public sector flourishes rather than withers. Absent this, Kansas City might well represent a glimpse of a depressing American future: one in which those with resources opt out, en masse, from any and all public services, leaving the public sector to stumble drunkenly from one crisis to the next, a miserable-looking shadow of once-great glories.To practice holistic thinking, consider the Kansas City public schools story not only in the context of prioritizing foreign occupations over public schools, but also in the context of poverty, the War on Drugs, and the costs to the public sector of collateralized debt obligations and credit default swaps.
Gareth Porter recently had an excellent piece explaining how the Mighty Marja Offensive was more mirage-ah! than Marja - turns out that "Marja is not a city or even a real town, but either a few clusters of farmers' homes or a large agricultural area covering much of the southern Helmand River Valley." Of course a little detail like reality is not about to deter the Pentagon stenographers working for NPR. Take a look at an NPR search of "marjah" and "city" for on-air stories:
"We are driving past adobe mud huts and on our way for Secretary Gates to do something that, until a few months ago, might've been unthinkable.Golly, puts me in mind of a "market in Indiana in the summertime." After leaving the market, Kelly informs us that Gates reflected, "It has been a useful day." No kidding, even a dummy could have figured that out.
We're in a town market. Afghan men sit before small stalls selling pomegranates and potatoes, oranges and eggs. And what might have been unthinkable, not so long ago, is the sight of the U.S. secretary of Defense walking down the middle of the road. No body armor, just khakis and a buttoned down shirt and a Camp Lejeune baseball cap on his head. Marines are swarming the roofs of the mud huts around us, machine guns in hand, watching for trouble, but all is calm. And Gates chats politely through a translator with a couple of the locals."
NPR's Depiction of Waterboarding - Click the graphic for Truthiness"I came down saying 'OK, try to avoid the word torture and try to describe exactly what was done and let the people decide'....I think that, again, that you describe it for what it is, and let people decide." [You can listen for yourself here. Her claim begins at the 39:50 mark and continues to about 42:00]As morally and intellectually bankrupt as this argument is, let's hold it up to scrutiny. In other words, when it comes to waterboarding, has NPR ever tried to "describe exactly what was done" or "describe it for what it is"? An article just published by Mark Benjamin in Salon.com provides a glimpse into how powerful such a journalistic approach can be:
In the aftermath of Haiti's earthquake tragedy I noted NPR's typically amnesiac coverage of Haitian history. As Haiti works toward recovery, Wednesday's ATC featured NPR's Planet Money imbeciles [that would be Bank Whisperer Adam Davidson and Count von Count to a trillion Joffe-Walt] explaining how Haitian textile business representatives are out "to change the destiny of Haiti's economy.""six Haitian businesspeople, five men, one woman, flew to Las Vegas recently to - I don't think you can put this too grandly - to change the destiny of Haiti's economy."The entire piece was an uncritical paean to the benefits of US/neoliberal trade policies. Davidson introduces the US trade representative with this homage:
"Ladies and gentlemen, Ron Kirk, U.S. Trade Representative. The only reason Haiti even has a textile industry right now is because of this guy, or at least because of his office."Joffe-Walt soon chimes in with her I'm-lecturing-preschoolers voice as she explains the complexities of how Haiti's textile industry and US quotas work:
"Haiti wants the quota lifted. They want to be able to sell as many clothes to the U.S. as possible. To them, its simple: lift the quota and we get out of poverty."Joffe-Walt explains that "The U.S. really only gives out trade deals if it serves some purpose, some American purpose." She and Davidson have nothing but praise for the policy - even going so far as to tout its Middle East peacemaking power. Davidson finds an Egyptian textile dealer at the Las Vegas trade fair who says, "President Clinton wanted to make peace between Israel and Arab nations. So, he thought of this genius protocol..." Forgetting to mention that Egypt is dictator-run, torture state and that Israel is a "democratic" torture state bent on destroying Palestinian people - Davidson explains that
"the genius thing there is that Israel and Arab nations only get this special deal if they work together."If there's any confusion about whose viewpoint Davidson represents in the report, consider this gem when he is talking about Pakistan:
"Pakistan's apparel industry got a huge boost itself right after 9/11, when they got a sweet textile trade deal in exchange for helping us with the war on terror." [I hate to break it to Davidson, but neither "the war on terror" nor Pakistan's role in it has ever done squat for "us" - unless he means the cheerful militarists and war profiteers here in the land of the free.]And so it goes throughout the rest of the report. The voices never heard are those lucky Haitians who get $3.09 a day working in the exciting world of making clothes for "us" in Haiti. It also goes without saying that Davidson and Joffe-Walt present nothing of the general history of the European/US exploitation of Haiti or the US role in bringing that "sweet deal" of sweat shop life to Haiti.
Mr. Toad and Snarla Vulture
With her perched on his hand;
They stepped so as not to see
Such quantities of the poor:
"Keep them workers pacified,"
They said, "that would be oh so grand!"
"If All things Considered
Tittered and twittered
Do you suppose," said Mr. Toad,
"That that could keep them down?"
"I don't doubt it," said Snarla vulture,
Her frown turned upside down.
"O workers, come listen to us!"
Mister Toad did beseech.
"A peasant's lot is a pleasant lot,
In this here US of A:
Inskeep will talk of Lewinsky,
And how Gingrich saved the day."
And liberal listeners listened
All thinking they're elite:
Skipped Iran/Contra, for Contract on America,
Whose stories are clean and neat--
And thought it's not odd, when you know,
A different history they repeat.
"The time has come," Mr. Toad said,
"To talk of many things:
Of 94 and 95
How NAFTA saved--kept us alive--
And why we need banksters--
And whether G/Sachs can, in the end, thrive."
"But what about tea?" the NPR cried,
"Before we get health care;
For some of us are out of breath,
And caveat emptor beware!"
"Islamists!" said Mr. Toad.
And Snarla admired his hair.
"Let them eat cake," Ms. Vulture said,
"It's what the people need:
Poobahs and Pundits and the Fed
They'll propagate the seed--
And Oliver North rides Reagan's horse,
In the painting, A Charge to Keep ."
"Republicans!" NPR cried,
Turning a bright red.
"After you've heard us, be sure to remember:
Eat what you've been fed!"
"The right wing's fine," Mr. Toad said.
"Would you like to go to bed?
