Brian Conley leaves China

photo of Brian Conley(on the right) and Jeff Jarvis, c. 2006, courtesy somethingtobedesired.com

from a sequence of emails from Eowyn Rieke, Brian Conley's wife:

1.Brian Conley, founder of Alive in Baghdad was arrested Tuesday, August 19th while in Beijing. Press inquiries may be directed to press@aliveinbaghdad.org



2. According to the US Embassy (last update received 11:30 pm US EDT Saturday, August 23) there has been no big change. They still anticipate that the 8 US detainees will be deported on August 30. They are advocating for earlier release, but have not received a response from the Chinese authorities.

We can increase the likelihod of early release by continuing to apply political pressure. If you are close friends or family of any of the detainees, or have good contacts in the offices of US Representatives, US Senators or the State Department please contact them and ask them to press the issue with the State Department and the US Embassy in Beijing.

We can also continue the pressure via media coverage. The Washington Post published an excellent editorial on Friday, August 22 and an article on Saturday, August 23. That should help elevate the issue of Tibetan repression and Chinese intolerance of free speech. But more is better! Please, keep talking to any press contacts you have, especially those in major media outlets.

We're in a dangerous time in the press cycle -- the Democratic National Convention is about to start and the Olympics are about to end. As a result the Beijing detentions and issues of human rights in China may just get lost or ignored.

If you want to get really mad, listen to "Reviewing the Beijing Olympics." At about minute 04:30 they discuss freedom of the press and repression of protests, stating "we believe that the police here are under orders not to detain people immediately if they are not causing a public disturbance." How utterly ridiculous and totally irresponsible. That section of the report ends with "It looks like the iron fist is increasingly gloved in velvet." Please please consider writing a letter to NPR asking them to produce a story that presents the truth about press freedom in China during the Olympics.

If you are in the New York Area, there are a bunch of solidarity events planned for tomorrow (Sunday, August 24). See the end of the email for more information.

There will be a special episode of Alive in Baghdad this week, with a short segment on Brian and his detention. Thanks to Students for a Free Tibet for helping us gather some information and footage.

And finaly, I've spent a lot of today pondering a question that came to me sometime last night -- If this is how the Chinese government treats US citizens when the eyes of the world are focused on China, what do they do to Tibetan and Chinese activists, who have no real rights, when no one is watching? I can't even imagine.

Keep an eye on the Free Tibet 2008 website, where you can get the most recent updates.



3. and finally,
We just got word that Brian and friends are on a plane to Los Angeles, arriving Monday morning. He was released with 7 other US citizen detainees: Jeff Goldin, Tom Grant, Mike Liss, James Powderly, Jeff Rae, John Watterberg and Jeremy Wells.

They have been released 6 days early, largely (we believe) because of political pressure and media attention that forced the US Embassy to take action.

The fate of the other 2 international detainees, Florian Norbu Gyanatshang a Tibetan with German citizenship, and Mandie McKeown from Britain, is not clear. Please feel free to call their respective embassies and urge their immediate release. For more info on phone numbers and other action steps, see the Free Tibet 2008 website.

Was the Iraq war worth it? --UPI video

Although several of the respondents are clearly buying into the myth that the US presence is preventing greater instability, at least the UPI is asking people a question that remains mostly unspoken on American television news.

June 2nd CBS News story- Dover, Tenn

I tend to rag on domestic TV news for its superficiality, and naturally I still think it's mostly well-deserved. But I want to take note when they do good, like with this CBS News story from this evening's broadcast by Seth Doane about a foodbank in rural Tennessee. I've never heard of Doane before-- maybe he's a young and idealistic type.

"Are there days that you …" CBS News correspondent Seth Doane began asking.

"That we don't eat?" Liz Thomas said while standing in line at a food pantry. "Yeah."

Torture, inc and other items

Jonathan Schwarz calls attention to a FAIR fundraiser; I visited, and saw this:
TV’s Low-Cal Campaign Coverage: How 385 stories can tell you next to nothing about whom to vote for"
By Jon Whiten (May/June 2008)

as you may know, FAIR stands for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. I think they shouldn't change their name, but maybe change their acronym to FEAR, as in FairnEss and Accuracy in Reporting, even if that doesn't make a lot of sense. Because maybe then more people would tune in, and give them lots of money as Jon Schwarz advises. Besides, we seem to live in an age in which fear is the key.


Mister Schwarz also has a post by Nell Lancaster of A Lovely Promise, "No Torture. No Exceptions. Just a Few Qualms."

When I saw this the first thing, greedily, that I thought was, "Oh, great. Now Nell Lancaster is going to be a big shot, and won't want to join my new group blog." (more about this later.)
Lancaster criticizes the group she discusses, RejectTorture.org, for making a primarily utilitarian argument against torture, and not discussing the humanitarian aspect. She does this within an otherwise approving context, although she also notes their tangentially humanitarian argument, that torture "betrays our values", and seems to dismiss that as an appeal to American exceptionalism*.

I wonder if the Reject Torture people are right to de-emphasize the humanitarian aspect, not because it isn't valid but because of how aggressive the right-wing noise machine in (seemingly) discrediting arguments against torture, and if as a consequence people are less likely to be reached by such an argument because it's tied in with the conditioned response of liberals and liberalism being self-indulgent exercises in feel-goodism.(I sound like Ned Flanders all of a sudden!)

But it also occurs to me that part of the problem is that Americans don't know too much about the robust street-fighting tradition of liberalism, denatured as it has become by corporate media insistence that Martin Luther King was just a guy who wanted to hug everybody and Malcolm X is just a movie you can order through Netflix. And then there's the tradition, well before the days of Jerry Falwell and the Left Behind series, of American religious figures fighting the good fight for abolition.

(Whistler Blue in ATR's comments mentions the National Religious Coalition Against Torture)


Elsewhere, Rob Payne in
"Indoctrination Nation" says
"We believe ourselves to be more civilized because we have car keys and unmanned drones."

And Chris Floyd has an excellent piece, referenced by Rob,"Outer Darkness: The Gulag Cancer Grows, State Terror Intensifies"


*which inevitably reminds me of Rob Payne, as well as why I wanted to ask her and Rob and 1-3 others to try a group blog I've been mulling over.

It's True, you know*

photo copyright Brendan I. Koerner

Who, you may ask, is Brendan I. Koerner? Mr K. writes periodically for Slate, and Hugozoom's (two or three) regular readers may recall I posted this arresting image* from his website from last fall. He informs me he has a book out, Now the Hell Will Start, which he describes as a "non-fiction account of an American G.I. who married into a tribe of Indo-Burmese headhunters, circa 1944." The book's website is here, and he has an article, "The Greatest Manhunt of WW II" referencing it in Slate this week. Oh, and congratulations Brendan, on your new little one.

photo cropped from original for proper formatting.

the Real News in Kentucky

5/25: Elsewhere, Barbara O'Brien of the Mahablog writes:

I believe I read somewhere that African Americans are the only voting demographic that never gave George Bush a majority of popular support, even during his glory days after 9/11. This, I believe, gives African Americans bragging rights as the smartest voting demographic.

Conversely, we might ask ourselves, Why are so many white voters so stupid? I’ll give that some thought.

A recent Newsweek poll suggests a “lurking racial bias in the American electorate,” Darman writes. Do tell. I’m not surprised by racism. I’m surprised people are surprised by racism.

I note that some people seem to have become a bit untethered of their common sense about this because of their support for one candidate or another. Avedon Carol for example-- whom I generally value-- seems to have developed a blindspot here(as well an unwillingness to admit she favors Clinton over Obama.)

In January, apropos of the NH primary results, she wrote:

"But I don't believe for a minute that Democrats said they were going to vote for Obama because it sounded acceptable but they were too racist to actually do it. I just don't."

Again no to truce

In the summer of 2006 I watched David Martin on CNN tell Katie Couric:

"it's always the same pattern- first there is a period of calm, then Palestinians target and attack Israeli civilians, then a counterstrike." I paraphrase, but it so angered me that I wrote it down in a notebook, trying to get the wording right(I am TIVO-less, but I'm not complaining ).

I don't think that's the order at all, especially since he said those words in June as the 2nd Israeli war on Lebanon was starting, and he had to be aware of the shelling at the beach a few weeks earlier that killed the family of Huda Ghulia.

Anyway: here's another sequence of events in 2008. I wont say "first, thing x happens", because thing x is happening all the time in Israel and Palestine, and sometimes it gets reported over here, and sometimes not. Anyway, definitive starting points are very much in the eye of the beholder.

April 24th: Helena Cobban: Tahdi'eh-- Hamas says Yes

Israel rejects Hamas truce offer
(01:13) Report

April 25 - Reuters- A proposed six-month ceasefire is dismissed by Israel as a ruse by Hamas to re-arm and re-group after recent fighting. Hamas, after talks with Egyptian mediators, is calling for a mutual cessation of hostilities in Gaza along with an end to a crippling Israeli-led blockade of the territory.Paul Chapman reports.

Teen killed in Gaza clashes
(01:12) Report

April 26th- Reuters- Palestinians bury a 14-year-old girl killed in fighting between Israeli troops and militants during a raid in northern Gaza. The Israeli army confirmed the arrest raid but said it knew nothing about the girl's death. Israel frequently raids the Hamas-controlled territory in what it calls its campaign to stop cross-border rocket attacks. Susuan Flory reports.

NOW can we call her a monster?

I don't have a book of quotations handy, but I imagine somebody both cleverer and famouser than me has already observed that the things left undiscussed in a narrative are usually far more telling than the things spoken about.
Off the top of my head, the best I can do is Gershwin's line from Porgy and Bess:

The things you're liable
to read in the Bible,
They ain't necessarily so.

American politics is arguably like that. For example, I think about the controversy about Samantha Power calling Hillary Clinton a monster back around five or six weeks ago. Even though it was undoubtedly a spontaneous event(as you probably recall, Power tried to qualify it as off-the-record), but the various players in the Obama and Clinton camps and the media immediately knew how to respond to this, as if a script was ready, questioning Obama's judgment in selecting Power as an adviser, insisting Power apologize or resign, Obama dutifully apologizing for her remarks, etc.

I wondered how many people out there in Real-People-Land even paid any attention to the whole dustup. Not terribly many, I'm guessing. I also wondered, why precisely does Power feel Hillary is a monster? Should I automatically assume it's for reason x or y, and weren't other people curious about Power's reason(s)? I realize this is one of those mutually and tacitly agreed upon things, the rolling out of a familiar script by which to deflect the impertinent questions of people like me, as per the nonplussed onlookers at the parade when the naked emperor goes by.

I'm guessing the answer to my question wasn't necessarily that interesting, that it had to do with Clintonian campaign tactics, but that's not really my point. When the Clintons and Obamas and the TV press and the Powers respond in the preordained, scripted ways, it seems designed to avoid the question, because once you have Sam Power's answer, inevitably other persons with other reasons for regarding Hillary as monstrous might gain some scrutiny, and the next thing you know some of those brains out there in Real-People-Land might start ruminating, and that would be-- I don't know, monstrous.

Likewise, this afternoon I watched the nightly news, and it seemed as if people just stopped dying in Iraq and Afghanistan(just like Somalia), nobody objected to China hosting the Olympics, nobody lost their house, nobody was kidnapped in Colombia, and nobody was waterboarded or forced to evade questions about torture. The only thing worth discussing was the Pennsylvania democratic primary, the most important primary, the most important event ever, since Reagan freed the hostages or Grant surrendered to Lee at Appomattox. The world dutifully stood still. (And yes, this kind of sarcastic trope about a single event being made to dominate the news isn't original either-- just hard to resist.)

There was a sound bite of Hillary Clinton telling a crowd that with her 10 point win, she'd pulled ahead in the popular vote viz-a-viz Obama, and a chart graphic saying that Obama was ahead of her by 600,000 votes, but that Hillary was counting the disputed primary votes from Michigan and Florida, which Obama hadn't contested. The Penn primary, and various prognostications about which states Obama could win in the general election versus ones Clinton could win, was of course pretty much the whole news show. (I watched CBS, but I imagine the others were pretty much the same.)

I saw nothing about the ABC interview HRC gave (admittedly on Monday morning) with Chris Cuomo on Good Morning America-- I heard about that through Raw Story. (But if you knew about it, how could you not wonder about its impact?)

“I want the Iranians to know, if I am president, we will attack Iran,”( if they launch nukes against Israel), Clinton said. “I want them to understand that. … We would be able to totally obliterate them. That’s a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that.”

Clinton said she hoped her stern warning would serve as a deterrent from Iran doing anything “foolish and tragic.”

The quote in the Reuters article is somewhat misleading, suggesting in parentheses that she immediately added "if they attack Israel."(But to be honest, in referencing the video above, it looks as if it's been edited to take some pauses out.)

Again I find myself wondering about the people out there in Real-People-Land. Does the sickness of this register with them? You wonder how many people are even aware and paying attention to this, trying to be good citizens and keeping up with the news while they drown in the soporific horse-race minutiae of who would be more likely to beat McCain in Colorado or Tennessee, eventually giving up on the sucker's game of trying to stay informed.

Some of the articles about this have titles that say Hillary says she will obliterate Iran, while others note the "would be able" and reproduce the quote more accurately. I can't help but be reminded of Kerry's "for then against" position and Bill Clinton's tortuous question about what the word "is" means. If you look at the real-life pacing of her words and her body language, she has unamiguously threatened to attack Iran if she's elected. I think that's a violation of international law, and I'm sure that Mrs it takes-a-village has frightened a lot of ordinary people in Iran, including kids, who are now aware that one of the leading candidates of the opposition party is just as demented as George W. Bush.

In one way, however, the follow up by Cuomo and Clinton was even more disgusting:

Cuomo: Is it difficult to reconcile the logic of a statement like that, with the realities of what it would be like to make that desicion?

HRC: It is. It's very hard. And that's why you hope to deter such behavior.

Boo hoo. Isn't it horrible, when you have to kill thousands of people cause their gummint don't act right, the toll it takes on you? Years ago whenever the Labour party in Israel capitulated to demands from the right that they start yet another offensive against the Palistineans, somebody once referred to the rationalizing speeches offered in the Knesset as "shooting and crying." Only Mrs Clinton seems more gleeful than a good liberal should be about it.

The things you're liable
to read in the Bible,
They ain't necessarily so.

Simon Jenkins:Despite Iraq, America's love affair with war runs deep

Independent(UK): Tough-talking Clinton vows to 'obliterate' Iran if it ever dares to attack US ally Israel

CNN's political blog: "Clinton: Iran would pay a 'very high price' for nuclear attack"

El Baradei interview(from 2007)regarding Iran's nuclear program[video]

Marketwatch: "Has Hillary's tough talk increased pain at the pump?"

Clark(Montana)Chronicle:Ron Paul: Clinton 'doesn't understand the presidency'

Dennis Trainor, Jr: "Hillary: I can do war bigger and better than Bush"

ABC News:"Pennsylvania's Six Week Primary Ends Tonight"
[original title of this ABC article on Tuesday:
Clinton on Iran Attack: 'Obliterate Them']

I guess Slate doesn't exactly ♥ Hillary Clinton

The headline on the Slate article reads,"The Hillary Deathwatch Widget:Embed Clinton's sinking ship on your blog, iGoogle, or Facebook page."

I'm not going to put this on the sidebar as a permanent or semi-permanent fixture, just here for one post. As far as I'm concerned all three of the mainstream presidential choices stink, and HRC certainly is a corporatist, prowar phoney. But even as some of the humor directed at her amuses me, some, mostly photoshopped grotesquerie, is really off-putting.

Occasionally I wonder how much of it has to do with her simply being a woman, since-- inexplicably to me-- most people don't seem that bothered by the dynastic implications of two Bushes and two Clintons possibly ruling governing us for as much as 28 years in a row. Virtually none of the humor directed at her seems to touch upon that. And as far as humor about her ambition goes, well yes, it's certainly fair game, but all the men who ran and are still running are plenty ambitious too.

I guess gender equality means the soulless and power-hungry who would do their damnedest to persuade us to keep ruining our country (and others) via unbridled empire deserve to be blasted, irrespective of their sex. I'd prefer the kind of social progress that involves doing away with soulless and power-hungry leaders who want to wreck as many countries as possible, but perhaps I'm fussy.



(the inset panel above, regarding Scaife, is from Tom Tomorrow. The rest is from Get Your War On.)

The April fool is you

ok, in a nod towards thoroughness, the above links are here:

"Clinton n' Obama shake their fingers at oil guys"

• Oil executives defend soaring profits
• CNNMoney: Congress lays into oil execs
• CNNMoney: Issue #1: America's Money
• iReport.com: What would you ask Big Oil?

Senators Clinton and Obama care(a lot), and they're angry, and they're not afraid who knows it. When HRC voted for the Iraq war resolution in 2002, undoubtedly it had nothing to do with oil, any more than her subsequent unwillingness to defund the war or commit to ending the war in the next four years. Of course Obama has also demonstrated an unwillingness to defund the war or commit to getting out by 2012, but that's different-- he had the guts to oppose the war as a state legislator. Then, when he was running for the US Senate in 2004 and was invited to speak to the democratic convention that summer, he had a chance to reiterate his stance on the war before a national audience-- but he recognized that might embarrass the headliner, old for-it-before-he-was agin' it John Kerry, and decided not to. (I guess that's different too.)

But with the "off the books" financing of the Iraq debacle-- and the utter unwillingness of Obama and Hillary Clinton to publicly draw the connection between the war,the weakening dollar, and the ever-upward spiraling of dollar-denominated oil prices, I question whether the democrats represent a substantially more sober answer.(yeah, you care-- but who cares?)

I'm sure John McCain cares a lot too, but his nomination is nicely sewn up, so it's not so pressing for him to be so demonstrative this early.

I don't know when I first watched a tv report about congress calling executives in front of them to scold them and beat their chests in righteously populist fashion for the cameras. When I was 11? 12? I used to love watching the news when I was a kid, and although I don't remember for certain, I imagine I took these sorts of dog-and-pony shows at face value when I was a kid and I watched the CBS morning news with Hughes Rudd before going to school.

That was such a long time ago, and although I remember the news in the late 70s being less mediocre, journalistically speaking, than today's focus-grouped soft-edge presentations, I also wonder if that's just the natural consequence of a middle-aged man romanticizing something from his youth at the expense of the present. I DO remember that news about celebrities wasn't a big deal in those days, as well as Rudd's wizened, subtly sarcastic manner. CNN's Jack Cafferty is the closest thing on TV news to a similar sensibility, and he seems like something of an artifact, what with CNN having gone (fairly precipitously) downhill in the past eight to ten years, especially after Lynn Russell left(I often think that maybe she saw the writing on the wall and decided she didn't want to be part of the crappy new order.).


Was the news coverage better? In spite of today's 24 hour news channels, I'm inclined to think so. Does that mean that better news coverage makes for more sensible, skeptical citizens-- in other words, were people smarter back then? Well, they did foist Ronald Reagan on us in November of 1980, the start of our modern age of the unraveling social compact, but the Ayatollah had our hostages, and there was that botched rescue mission, etc. Besides, how were they to know Reaganism would have such far-reaching effects?

When I watch the news, especially when the reporter cherry picks one or two presumptively representative man in the street interviews, I wonder about whether or not people are dumber as a consequence of post-deregulation Potemkin village news. And of course, there's also the pressure of Reagan-style federal tax cuts, shifting spending to the states, which consequently spent less on education. I don't know how you'd objectively factor in the effect of the more extreme religious fundamentalists, who insist that science may not offend when kids come home with tales of degenerate relativism, etc.

(The fact that, in spite of how outrageously the domestic media has sucked up to Junior and protected him from our knowing more about the conduct of the war, the war and the president are still as unpopular as they are, suggests holding out some modest hope that our collective intellect still has some functioning grey matter.)

What I do know is, selective man in the street interviews and stories asking "what would you ask Big Oil" notwithstanding, certain questions wont get asked, on tv, or even in print(and in print online) . How about a story asking

"are the congressmen just covering for their own failures in trotting out the oil executives?" or
"When congress scolds big business on tv, does anything get done as a consequence?"

(The silence is part of the disinformation-- so when you have such thoughts, if you do, you are more likely to dismiss them, maybe out fear that you might be a crank, or seem like one to others.)

Or, "should we spend more on public transportation?"

Or, "do you think we should bring back the 55 mph speed limit to reduce oil consumption?"

Of course, the lawmakers could just do that without putting on a show. I'd favor a 100 kph(@61 mph) national speed limit, and maybe by getting people to learn the conversion they'd start using their noggins too.

Now, I don't believe the lawmakers mean to do any of those things-- they're boring and don't involve an immediate or certain political reward. So I'm inclined to think today's event on capitol hill may have been scheduled for April first by persons with a sense of humor, albeit humor that involves laughing at you and me.


see also, Christian Science Monitor: "With gas costly, drivers finally cut back:
A decline in miles driven is the first since 1980"

[922]

More from The Real News and Winter Soldiers

Winter Soldiers: Clifton Hicks and Steven Casey

The Real News main site, and their Youtube channel.

15 mar 2008

testimony from "Winter Soldier"(more here)

As you may already know, the A.N.S.W.E.R. coalition had a large demonstration scheduled for the mall in DC for this weekend, to commemorate and protest the fifth anniversary of the Iraq invasion, which they discuss here(see below, from their bulletin):

Regarding the March 15, 2008
Fifth Anniversary Mass March on Washington DC:
In December, the ANSWER Coalition sent out an email that contained an announcement from the Year5 Coalition (that included 17 anti-war organizations) about plans for a mass demonstration in Washington DC on March 15, 2008.

This announcement was the culmination of several national meetings hosted by Cindy Sheehan. The purpose of the Year5 Coalition was to create the maximum unity between many anti-war coalitions and organizations so as to mobilize a huge outpouring of the people in Washington DC on the fifth anniversary of the start of this criminal war and occupation.

The ANSWER Coalition was committed to doing everything in its power to support the effort to unify the movement for a massive mobilization. The fifth anniversary is a critical time and will be marked by protests around the world. Saturday March 15 was chosen for a huge march on Washington because the following weekend is Easter weekend and it was considered much more difficult to bring people from all over the country to DC.

Not all anti-war groups concurred that it was a good idea to carry out a mass march in DC on the 5th anniversary. That was the stated position of UFPJ for instance. But 17 organizations did issue a call for the March 15 national march in Washington DC. The day following the announcement by the Year5 Coalition a public letter was sent and circulated by the Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW) asking that there be no national mass march in DC or any protests at all in DC against the war from Thursday March 13 through the weekend ending Sunday March 16. The IVAW explained that it was planning its own event called Winter Soldier (that will take place in a DC suburb in Maryland.) Winter Soldier is an indoor event that will feature the live testimony from Iraq veterans and others about war crimes committed in Iraq. IVAW asked that there be no mass march during their four days of testimony.

Is this tactically astute? I don't know. I wonder, just as I wondered if the real reason the ANSWER people called off the march was because they were afraid that with the increased restrictions the government has instituted on demonstrations at the mall, the demonstration would either turn counterproductively tepid, or violent, and the request of the Winter Soldier group merely gave them cover. Besides, why should the Winter Soldier group insist that there be no march? The corporate media tends to downplay the marches as much as they can anyway, and they might have even given "Winter Soldier" more coverage as an example of "well-behaved" protest as a counter-example, if they just waited and had their events after the A.N.S.W.E.R. protest. Who knows?

I haven't been to a protest march, but I wonder if a lot of the people who put them down do so because they've never participated in one. As far as the question of whether or not protests are effective, I wish I knew a way to measure this objectively-- I am agnostic about it myself. Davis Fleetwood has some thoughts about protests, here, apropo of the 9.15.2007 protest[video].

God and country on the Real News

Listening to these people in this story talk about how they really believe the Iraq war has helped keep them safe is singularly depressing to me. Earlier today I spoke to Arvin Hill, not about this video but in general terms about people's capacity for willful gullibility and denial, and he compared it to drug addiction.

Monday 3-3

Xymphora writes:

Counterpunch continues its pathetic campaign of attempting to explain the abject failure of the traditional left (as exemplified by editor Cockburn) by blaming it on 'conspiracy theory'. We know that the real reason for the failure of the anti-war movement is the conscious decision by its leaders to abuse it for the partisan political purpose of getting Democrats elected. The worst thing that could happen for the Democrats is for Bush to authorize an end to the American presence in Iraq before the next election. The anti-war movement is a failure because it is really a pro-war movement.

(also, "Freud on Zionism")

(Emphasis mine. Although I disagree with his broader view of Counterpunch think he's right in the more particular view, insofar as the left has given up principles for tactics.)


King of Zembla: "It's Not Bad Apples, But Bad Barrel-Makers"


from Nir Rosen's "Myth of the Surge", in Rolling Stone:

"Before the war, it was just one party," Arkan tells me. "Now we have 100,000 parties. I have Sunni officer friends, but nobody lets them get back into service. First they take money, then they ask if you are Sunni or Shiite. If you are Shiite, good." He dreams of returning to the days when the Iraqi army served the entire country. "In Saddam's time, nobody knew what is Sunni and what is Shiite," he says. The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite.

Juan Cole:

McCain (and the US corporate media) manages to avoid noticing that Turkey has staged a major incursion into Iraq and still has ground troops there and is refusing US requests to withdraw! Ironically, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the Turkish chief of staff used McCain's own language against the Bush administration, rejecting the idea of any timetable for withdrawal.

Some things to read

1. Helena Cobban: "Israel terrified of Gazans' nonviolent mass actions"

2. Chris Floyd's recent meditation on Woodrow Wilson, whom he doesn't care for so much: "Hundred-Year Hangover: Betrayal and Blindness in the Making of the Modern World"

3.Think Progress:Pentagon pushes for more contractor immunity in Iraq.

4. Scalia fails to see what the big deal is about torture in a bbc interview.

Does your vote matter?

from yahoo news, news for yahoos: "everything you need to know about the election in 3 minutes"

and a reminder regarding John McCain:



Also this, from the town hall meeting in question. Note the looks on the faces in the audience.

The only one of you characters who has any balls is Dennis Kucinich, and you sorry sons-of-bitches had to run him out of the race

I have a lengthy post about the SOTU which will be up Wednesday night. In the meantime, here a 2 parts(out of 7) of a Real News interview with Gore Vidal from last year.

1.Gore Vidal on FDR: "he smiled benignly on the oil wells."




2.Gore Vidal on Truman:"Hiroshima was the end of the American republic"



3.Vidal on McCarthyism and the Military Comissions Act of 2006


4.Vidal on the US media: "the people have no voice because they have no information."

5.Vidal on the dems and religion.

If you want the other items they're at their site. I found the 1st two plus the one on the media the most interesting, the others less so.

in passing: Suharto

Initially I wanted to make the crack about how "only the good die young" upon hearing of Suharto's passing, but it occurs to me that in the recent geopolitical context that would suggest an appreciation of Benazir Bhutto that I never had.

While I didn't cheer her untimely death in December by any means, I recognize she and her husband were also judged to be kick-back dealing crooks, if on a somewhat smaller (and substantially less bloody) scale than Suharto and his family.

some additional thoughts[1.28]: occasional guest varmint Rob Payne has some pointed commentary about the US role in the subjugation of East Timor over at Halcyon Days.

Just as the US media tends to skip lightly over that, for some reason Suharto's US ties are also glossed over in The Year of Living Dangerously. Well, at least in the film. Anti-intellectual boob that I am, I dunno about the source novel. Then again, as Billy Kwan says, "If it's in focus, it's pornography, if it's out of focus, it's art." Maybe this is a guiding principle of journalism in some circles.

from Alive in Baghdad

I'll be gone for a few days, returning next week.
(I meant to post this last week...)

In the meantime, go check out the short documentaries at Journeyman Pictures(most under 1 hr). The following link is to their latest, on far-right groups in Russia(21 min.)

Marta discusses TV journalism

Here Marta Costello discusses some of her experiences working as a TV journalist-- it's very enlightening.

Meanwhile, I'm going to be gone for a few days, but I'll be back next week. Maybe I'll have a mysterious guest(no, not Marta.)in the interim...