Media Matters has an excellent post up entitled "Open Letter to the New York Times." Here's an excerpt below:


As a media watchdog, we believe self-examination by news organizations is always useful, so we welcomed the arrival of The New York Times' recent report, "Preserving Our Readers' Trust." Because a democracy cannot operate without an independent, critical, and responsible press, it is incumbent on news organizations to continually assess their own performance to see if they are fulfilling their obligations to the public. Nonetheless, we are concerned about some of the ideas expressed in the report, and we take issue with some aspects of the Times' reporting that the report does not address.
Because of its importance to the functioning of our political and social life, the press will always be subject to criticism and critique. It is the press' obligation to take such critiques seriously; doing so requires not only responding to legitimate criticism, but having the fortitude and integrity to reject baseless attacks designed only to serve a partisan agenda.
If tomorrow the Times ran an article on its front page headlined "Bush is Second Coming of Christ," conservative activists would charge that it proved the paper's liberal bias because it didn't compliment the color of the president's tie. While we do not doubt that many conservatives genuinely believe that the Times, and the press in general, is biased against them, the "liberal bias" charge is above all a political tool they use to obtain coverage more favorable to their goals. All too often, news organizations have reacted to this pressure from the right by attempting to prove them wrong -- not with more objective reporting, but by giving them what they want. "The press responds to critics on the right by bending over backward not to look liberal," noted former Washington Post ombudsman Geneva Overholser. "The cumulative effect is the opposite: They're tougher on Democrats" [Eric Boehlert, "The Press v. Al Gore," Rolling Stone, 12/6-13/01]. Though this tendency is not acknowledged in the report, it has been evident in the Times' reporting on numerous occasions.
While there is not space here to list every misstep the Times has committed recently, we would like to point out a number of problems, particularly as they relate to the concerns raised in the report. The first is Elisabeth Bumiller's "White House Letter," about which you have apparently heard from numerous dissatisfied readers but about which the report says nothing. In a recent interview at Salon.com, departing public editor Daniel Okrent said of Bumiller's reporting: "It just drives people who don't like [President Bush] crazy. It would have been the same if there had been a 'White House Letter' about Clinton 10 years ago." But of course, there was no "White House Letter" offering tender, soft-focus portraits of Bill Clinton. Had there been, conservatives would have been outraged -- and rightly so.
If the White House wants the American people to know what's on the president's iPod or how sweet his communications director is to reporters, it can turn to dozens of less serious news organizations that will happily pass that bit of fluff on to the public. But to waste a Times reporter's time and precious space in the paper on an endless series of People magazine-worthy portraits that read as though they were penned by the White House press office is, frankly, beneath you. This is not to say that every last article about politics in the Times must be serious and high-minded. But the "White House Letter" has been a steady stream of starry-eyed palaver, each installment more sycophantic than the last.

Again, the above is an excerpt, click here to read it in full.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

Democracy Now! (Marcia: "always worth watching"):

Headlines for May 16, 2005
- Military In Uzbekistan Kills Up to 600 People
- Bush Administration Maintains Close Ties To Uzbek Gov't
- Rice on Iraq: "This War Came To Us, Not The Other Way Around"
- Iraq Death Toll In Last Two Weeks Tops 450
- Rep. Waters Urges Bush To Intervene In Yvon Neptune's Release
- Trial Of Sami Al Arian Opens in Florida
- MOVE Marks 20th Anniversary Of Bombing

Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias: "We Were Getting it Right, But Not Right Wing"
In his first public address since leaving PBS six months ago, journalist Bill Moyers responds to charges by Kenneth Tomlinson - the chairman of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - of liberal bias and revelations that Tomlinson hired a consultant to monitor the political content of Moyers' PBS show "Now." We spend the hour playing an excerpt of Moyers' closing address at the National Conference on Media Reform in St. Louis, Missouri. [includes rush transcript]

And let's note a feature that I should have noted last week but it slipped through the cracks:

NEW FEATURE: Democracy Now! is now offering the program's daily news summary translated into Spanish. Los Titulares de Hoy

The daily news summary is a feature you can sign up for that will, among other things, provide you with the topics of each day's shows. When Amy Goodman's going to be on a TV show other than Democracy Now!, there's usually a head's up to that. In addition, you get updates on the Un-Embed the Media Tour.

And before this slips through the cracks of my cracked mind, let me note that in the first two breaks of Democracy Now! (if you watch or listen online), you'll get Patti Smith performing "People Have the Power" and "Dancing Barefoort" live. (If you watch, you'll see her performing it live.)

At The Daily Howler, Bob Somerby's dealing with a number of issues (including Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay). We'll focus on the Lincoln Bedroom. Somerby notes that figures of donors who have stayed over night at the Bully Boy White House barely caused a ripple. Using that as the entry point, Somerby charts the way the Lincoln Bedroom tales re: the Clintons was spun. And how that brave "liberal" New Republic addressed the issue. There's so much to read and the excerpt below is courtesy of Dallas (thank you, Dallas, I was scratching my head on what section to pull quote).

SPINNING THE LINCOLN: The story of the Lincoln Bedroom was a classic Clinton-era scandal--a story in which Washington's "press corps" quickly got busy reinventing basic facts. For the record, here are a few of the ways those facts were reworked and improved. As usual, major scribes lied in your faces--and their colleagues kept quiet about the deceptions. Even the fiery liberals at your "liberal" publications seemed to know that they mustn't speak up. But then, they ran and hid all through the years in which the press corps waged war against Clinton and Gore. Even today, they keep their mouths closed about what really happened. Here's a bit of what occurred when the "press corps" chose to spin this sweet tale. Here are some of the basic facts about this consuming scandal:
How many overnight guests were involved? 831. Or 938, depending on how clownish a newspaper wanted to be. In March 1997, the White House produced a list of overnight guests for the Clintons' four-plus years in the White House. 831 guests were listed. Beyond that, though, the White House noted that 35 family members had also stayed overnight, and that Chelsea Clinton--twelve to sixteen years old at the time—had hosted 72 additional guests (think: junior high slumber parties). Readers can probably guess what occurred. Wanting to make the scandal seem bigger, most news orgs took the relevant number (831), then added the 72 and the 35, producing a more pleasing total--938 overnight guests in all. There! That felt about twelve percent better! So when newspapers pimped the pleasing claim that the Clintons had hosted 938 guests, they were including 72 teen-aged friends of their daughter and 35 family members, although the papers almost never told readers that the numbers were being jacked up this way. In some ways, the Washington Post clowned most foolishly. On the first day of the story, the paper used the relevant number--831. After that, the paper switched to 938, apparently wanting to keep pace with its embellishing competitors. But as we've noted in the past, this is a standard practice in America's "press corps." Not uncommonly, news orgs which get a story right end up adjusting their accurate work to conform to conventional wisdom--to conventional tales which are wrong.

Lauren e-mails to note Katrina vanden Heuvel's latest at Editor's Cut, "Sweet Victory: Cleaning Up the Cosmetics Industry:"

Each day, women and girls use an average of twelve personal care products, according to a study by the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. "Users of these products might assume that somebody is watching to insure that potentially toxic ingredients are kept away from intimate contact with their body," Mark Schapiro wrote in The Nation in December. "They would be wrong."
Thanks to a longstanding loophole, the FDA neither monitors nor regulates ingredients used in cosmetics, many of which contain known or probable carcinogens [http://www.ewg.org/reports/skindeep/report/executive_summary.php]. Yet, in the wake of mounting pressure from a coalition of public health and environmental groups, the American cosmetics industry is finally cleaning up its act.

Tina notes that Corrente has commented on the Newsweek apology. Tina selected the section she wanted highlighted:

UPDATE: Lambert reminds me that plants aren't only found in pots. See his September '04 post here, on the CBS "scandal" that led to Rather's downfall, and the likely disinformation campaign at work there. And while we're reminiscing, check out an old post of mine from last December on how the Pentagon was circulating disinformation to the media, all for a good cause, mind you.

That's Riggsveda at Corrente and Tina wanted that highlighted because "to me it's the most important part of the story. I enjoy the whole thing but to me that's the kernal that makes it worth noting, those links and that 'plants aren't only found in pots.'"

Lastly, let's note Bill Scher and Liberal Oasis. It's Monday, he's giving you the breakdown of the Sunday Chat & Chews. Here's an excerpt:

The infamous "intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" memo, reported on widely in Britain, finally showed up on a Sunday show.
Just one show though, ABC's This Week.
And not during an interview with a Bush official (although National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was on Fox and CNN), but with war booster Sen. John McCain.
And McCain's famed straight talk was strangely absent (video at Crooks and Liars):
STEPHANOPOULOS: I want to show you a British memo ... it says, this is [a British intelligence official] reporting on Washington:
"Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."...
...Isn't that direct, and somewhat credible, evidence, that the Administration was manipulating intelligence here?
McCAIN: I have not seen evidence that the Administration was manipulating evidence. We're certain serious mistakes made, such as relying on a guy named Curveball --
STEPHANOPOULOS: But what about that memo though?
MCCAIN: Uh --
STEPHANOPOULOS: It says that's what was happening.
MCCAIN: I look at that -- well, first of all, I don’t agree with it.
[. . .]
And McCain went straight to the ye old talking points justifying the war, dodging the original question.
But everyone in the media should see this and recognize that “I don’t agree with it” is not an acceptable rebuttal.
It should not end the questioning. It should spark more.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.
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[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

We're grabbing five headlines from BuzzFlash today to demonstrate why you should make a point to check in with that site.

1) Right Wing Corporation for Public Broadcasting Chariman Now is Taking Steps to Make NPR a Subsidiary of the Bush Propaganda Machine. And Who Says the Comparisons to the Busheviks, Rove and Goebbels Were Over the Top? At Media Reform Conference, Bill Moyers Revealed Tomlinson Paid a Consultant $10,000 to Watch "Now" and Report Anything Considered Liberal Bias Back to Tomlinson. That's Our Money He's Wasting in His Totalitarian Efforts. Now Ombudsman, Like Soviet Minders, Will Watch Over NPR. Fascism Creeps Up on You, Doesn't It? Until One Day You Realize the Line Has Been Crossed and Democracy is Dead. We Are All Frogs Just Slowly Being Boiled Into a One-Party Franco/Stalin Style State.

2) Bill Moyers Stands Up for a Press That Enriches Democracy, Not Weakens It, at Conference for Media Reform in St. Louis. He Blasts CPB Chairman Tomlinson for Trying to Turn PBS Into Taxpayer Funded FOX News.

3) Dahr "Unembedded" Jamail says the military is lying about "foreign fighters" in Al-Qaim: "it doesn't look good in the press to admit that they are fighting Iraqis who are fighting for their independence" 5/16

4) DailyKos: A roundup of other sources for Quran-down-the-John claims. Has Newsweek retreated from integrity at the drop of a U.S. official's hat? 5/16

5) Where's the news that's fit to print? 5/15

And we'll note this exclusive to BuzzFlash article Sibel Edmonds tells BuzzFlash she's "gagged, But not dead."

I'm rushing this morning, sorry. We'll note a BuzzFlash premium that we haven't noted before,
DVD: "Sunset Story," The Highly Recommended Documentary About Two Activists (Ages 81 and 95) Who Advocate and Agitate Till Their Last Breath. Remember, Your Purchase Keeps the BuzzFlash Dream Alive and GROWING!

For those who missed it, yes, at some point when I can grab time to study it, we will try to automatically offer BuzzFlash headlines here. For now, make use of the permalink on the left. (And, this entry today.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

Friday, there were entries highlighting The Nation, In These Times and Rolling Stone. Ned e-mailed in to ask if there was a problem with The Progressive?

Actually there is. Here's the problem. There's a story that people should be interested in, in the current issue, but it's not available online. Friday I was out of pocket, Saturday and Sunday were catch ups (plus help Third Estate Sunday Review in whatever limited manner I can). So we'll do, quickly, a spotlight on The Progressive.

Let's start with the story that's not available online but should be, Nina Segal's "Bioethics, Bush Style."

"There's a black cloud that's been hanging over this research," says [Dr. Robert] Lanza. That cloud has been created by Bush and legitimized by Dr. Leon Kass, head of the President's Council on Bioethics, a panel of experts who advise the Administration on the ethical implications of biomedical innovation. Since Bush's panel was convened in August 2001, the council has politicized biotech research to an extreme previously unimaginable, say top scientists and progressive bioethicists. They charge that the council is promulgating Bush's
anti-scientific policy agenda, and making it all but impossible for scientists like Lanza to do their work.
Kass, a member of the Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago and a fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, promised to promote open debate about the important scientific questions of our time when he became head of the council in 2001. But critics say he hasn't quite kept his word.
[. . .]
Council member Janet Rowley, a professor of medicine, molecular genetics, cell biology, and human genetics at the University of Chicago Medical School, says she had concerns that staff members weren't adequately conveying the diseenting views in their published reports. "On occasion when these discrepancies were brought to their attention, they were more or less ignored." she said.
[Council members are let go who disagree. One possibly for saying that Bully Boy's Medicare proposal was "mysticism of the marketplace run amok." Their spots are filled. Including by Benjamin Carson who has offered "we live in a nation where we can't talk about God in public."
Yes, he was speaking of the United States. Yes, he's supposedly educated. No, I have no idea what he's whining about either.]
Rowley, who remains on the council, says the panel has become less diverse since the new appointments.
[. . .]
Rowley says Kass has discontinued the process of taking votes on issues and "runs this like a graduate seminar," she says. "You don't get council members who are expressing points of view that are at variance with the President's point of view."

A member serving on the panel, among others, was willing to go on record regarding what's happening with "Bioethics, Bush Style." Now granted, magazine "reports" at various sites ignore The Progressive. Lynda did a thing, for instance, on CJR Daily that she was wanting help with. I had no problem assisting in any way other than math. (You don't want me checking your figures, trust me.) If I remembering her figures correctly, she had over a hundred citations of The Weekly Standard and The New Republic in the CJR Daily "Magazine Report." There were no citations for The Progressive or In These Times. The Nation had less than ten (I'm thinking the number Lynda had was four). CJR Daily appears to be going beyond the repeated citations and expanding the "Magazine Report." But the new issue of The Progressive is about to come out and I doubt very seriously that they will address "Bioethics, Bush Style." (I could be wrong and wouldn't mind at all being wrong on this.)

Along with that article, Nina Siegal also conducted an e-mail interview with Kass which The Progressive runs as well. Readers of The Progressive (a large number of people, more so, than for instance, the amount that reads The New Republic) will no doubt pass the information on.
And, again, it's doubtful that any "Magazine Report" from any web site would have highlighted the article. But I do think readers of The Progressive would have e-mailed it to friends. And I suspect that BuzzFlash would have linked to it.

But I didn't have the time or energy to attempt an excerpt (like the bad one above) prior. Which is the reason for the delay. (And part of that problem with excerting was that my issue has no staples. Which, hopefully, is good for the environement but doesn't stop it from sliding around in my lap -- and falling apart -- as I'm trying to type up the excerpt.)

Also in the print edition (and also not available online) is Nancy Shepherdson's "Republican Wing of the Republican Party." In this article, Shepherdson attends a "national board meeting of the National Federation of Republican Assemblies . . . in the post St. Louis suburb of Frontenac." She meets a variety of people concerned with God & country. One 'kind soul' shares the 'Christian sentiment,' I'm sure, that Carol Mosely Braun, "was more like an ape." When not offering up examples of what Jesus wouldn't do, they work on things like "banning abortion for any reason." And we learn, from these psuedo scientiests, that "There's a worker shortage . . . Forty-two percent of the U.S. population isn't here -- they were aborted. When you look at NASA photos of the Earth [at night] from space, most of it is dark!"

Ruth Conniff takes on the book Perfect Madness: Motherhood in the Age of Anxiety. That's worth reading if you come across a print edition of the issue. I love The Nation, The Progressive and In These Times equally but I do find myself nodding more with the book reviews in The Progressive than any other. (And as I've noted here before, Matthew Rothschild is an excellent reviewer -- my opinion.)

And that's it. The issue's slid to the floor and fallen apart for the last time this morning. We'll note what's available online.

The Commentary is available online and worth reading. It's entitled "Musical Chairs:"

In retrospect, one of the pivotal moments of the last six years came after George W. Bush had secured the 2000 nomination and Papa Bush tapped Dick Cheney to find Georgie a Vice President who could run the shop on the day to day. As John Nichols notes in Dick: The Man Who Is President, Cheney looked high and low and then gazed in the mirror and declared himself the fairest of them all.
Cheney believes the President has unlimited authority to wage war. He believes that Bush Senior didn't even need Congress's approval to go to war against Iraq back in 1991. "I firmly believe to this day even if the Congress had voted no we had no option but to proceed," Cheney told The Washington Post on January 20 of this year.
To watch the way Bush and Cheney promote the wrong people is to glimpse the arrogance of power. They don't care what the reaction is to their choices. They believe they can appoint whomever they want. And the more galling, the better. If anyone disapproves, tough.
They dare the Democrats to stop them. They dare the media to squawk. They dare the American people to rise up in revulsion.
But for the most part, neither the Democrats nor the media nor the American people have bestirred themselves.
And until they do, the second Cheney Administration will keep going its unmerry way.

Molly Ivin's column entitled "The Whim of a Hat" is available online. From the opening of her column:

Hey, the sun is shining, the bluebonnets are out, our big music festival, South by Southwest, rocked, and the puppy wants to play. You expect me to write about Terri Schiavo, Iraq, and Paul ("There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq") Wolfowitz?
Instead, let us celebrate spring with a roundup of the President's verbal gaffes, boners, grammatical errors, and immortal contributions to logic. Remember, this is a contest between George Bush père and George Bush fils, with the old man still well ahead at this point, though I think you will agree, after reading the latest, that our boy is gaining on him.
These are, as always, taken straight from life and from W.'s mouth.
First of all, there's the ongoing situation in Iraq, where, as he put it, "it is a time of sorrow and sadness when we lose a loss of life." Our enemies in Iraq are very resourceful, he adds. "They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people and neither do we," says the Prez.

Also available online is Amitabh Pal's interview with the 2004 Nobel Peace Prize winner Wangari Maathai. From that interview, here's an excerpt:

Q: Why were you attacked for planting trees?
Maathai: Planting trees, per se, would not have been a problem. Nobody would have bothered me if all I did was to encourage women to plant trees. But I started seeing the linkages between the problems that we were dealing with and the root causes. And one of those root causes was misgovernance. The government had approved the clear-cutting of forests that were catchment areas for water and encouraged the cultivating of exotic plantations. It was the government that had allowed the people to go into the forests and to start cultivating food crops. All this had caused the massive destruction of forests, which could absorb water, which could give us normal rain patterns, and which could sustain the rivers. So I knew that even if I planted all the trees downstream, the stream itself was being destroyed by the government. It was important for us to address the government and to ask the government to stop destroying the catchment areas upstream.
The other problem we were facing was that a lot of our leaders in the government, especially in the 1980s, privatized a lot of these common goods. They would literally cut sections of the forest and privatize them, or they would take open spaces in the cities and urban centers and privatize them. So I knew that a major culprit of environmental destruction was the government. I started raising my voice and started holding seminars educating the public on how the environment was being destroyed and who was destroying it. And how it was important for us to hold our leaders accountable for the better management of resources.
This is what the government did not like because the ruling elite was the beneficiary of these malpractices. And so their reaction was to intimidate, arrest, harass, in the hope that I would give up, or the people with whom I was working would give up, and the movement would die. We knew they were greedy and corrupt. So it was a matter of fighting corruption and fighting greed among the ruling elite.
The women were the major force in the movement. We were the ones who were being harassed. We were the ones who were being prevented from meeting. We were the ones who were the victims of the destruction that was going on. We, therefore, eventually adopted a campaign for our rights, to assert ourselves and to demand better treatment from the government. So the tree planting campaign has always been in the forefront. It is the most visible campaign. But we branched into many other activities in an effort to deal with the root causes of environmental degradation.
[. . .]
Q: How do you respond to people who say fighting poverty takes precedence over protecting the environment?
Maathai: Poverty is both a cause and a symptom of environmental degradation. You can't say you'll start to deal with just one. You're trapped. When you're in poverty, you're trapped because the poorer you become, the more you degrade the environment, and the more you degrade the environment, the poorer you become.
So it's a matter of breaking the cycle. From the very beginning, that's what I was telling the women, that we cannot solve all the problems that we face: We are poor, we don't have water, we don't have energy, we don't have food, we don't have income, we're not able to send our children to school. There are too many problems we face. We have to break the cycle, and the way to break the cycle for us is to do something that is doable, is to do something that is cheap, do something that is within our power, our capacity, our resources.

There are other features available in print and it's worth checking out. If you're planning on purchasing the issue, you'd better do so soon because the next issue is about to come out.

Online currently, you can find Anne-Marie Cusac's "Saul Bellow Reconsidered" and Howard Zinn's "The Scourge of Nationalism." From the latter, here's an excerpt of the opening:

I cannot get out of my mind the recent news photos of ordinary Americans sitting on chairs, guns on laps, standing unofficial guard on the Arizona border, to make sure no Mexicans cross over into the United States. There was something horrifying in the realization that, in this twenty-first century of what we call "civilization," we have carved up what we claim is one world into 200 artificially created entities we call "nations" and armed to apprehend or kill anyone who crosses a boundary.
Is not nationalism--that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder--one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred? These ways of thinking--cultivated, nurtured, indoctrinated from childhood on--have been useful to those in power, and deadly for those out of power.
National spirit can be benign in a country that is small and lacking both in military power and a hunger for expansion (Switzerland, Norway, Costa Rica, and many more). But in a nation like ours--huge, possessing thousands of weapons of mass destruction--what might have been harmless pride becomes an arrogant nationalism dangerous to others and to ourselves.

Click the link above to continue reading (I'm waiting for it to arrive in the mail at which point I'll read Zinn and Cusac).

But, to note Ned's question again, the only "problem" with The Progressive was that the articles weren't available online and I didn't have the time to go through the issue typing things up.

Seek it out (there's an article on Columbia that's worth reading as well). And hopefully, at some point, they'll add Nina Siegal's "Bioethics Bush Style" to their Best of The Progressive archives.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

In this morning's New York Times, Kit Seelye reports that "Newsweek Apologizes for Report of Koran Insult." From Seelye's article:

Newsweek apologized yesterday for printing a small item on May 9 about reported desecration of the Koran by American guards at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, an item linked to riots in Pakistan and Afghanistan that led to the deaths of at least 17 people. But the magazine, while acknowledging unspecified errors in the article, stopped short of retracting it.

As the article notes, the allegation has been reporter previously in other publications and detainees have spoken of it.

So Newsweek offers an apology under what appears to be strong pressure. And the press suffers. What are they noting? That a source they had has retracted his statement that the Koran toilet flushing would appear in a Pentagon report. Not that it didn't happen (again the incident has been reported elsewhere for some time), the source is only retracting that an upcoming report from the Pentagon will address it. Are we all confused?

If so, what may confuse some is the apology:

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our sympathies to victims of of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in the midst."

In other related news, the nation's oldest newspaper, the New York Post, has announced that it will be apologizing for reporting that the Union won the Civil War while the Weather Channel has annouced that they regret all weather predictions, both the ones that they called correctly and the ones they got wrong.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

We'll start off this morning's New York Times post by noting Eric Lichtblau's "Senators Say Bush Lags on Creating Terror Panel:"

The White House has been slow to establish an oversight board charged with ensuring that the government's campaign against terrorism does not erode privacy and civil rights, a bipartisan group of senators said in a letter released Friday.
Five months after the board was created, President Bush has yet to name any members or an executive director, and the $750,000 budget for the board proposed by the White House is far less than the budgets of other federal panels, the senators said.
[. . .]
The Sept. 11 commission, in its final report last summer, noted the absence of any centralized federal office to protect civil liberties in the campaign against terrorism, and it urged the creation of such an office. Congress moved on the idea last December as part of a broader restructuring of federal intelligence operations, creating the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

On a related topic, there was an e-mail noting that Chip Pitts gave an interview on C-Span this weekend, the topic was Real I.D., and that it can be viewed online. (Pitts Bill of Rights Defense Committee Board Member and Amnesty International USA Board Chair.) (Disclosure, I've met Pitts several times. We both enjoy Lewis Lapham's Theater of War. So Pitts also has good taste in books.) The e-mailer didn't give permission to be quoted or named so I'll just say that he was very pleased with Pitts' remarks. (And here's a link to the Bill of Rights Defense Committe.)

Stephanie e-mails to note Larry Rohter's "Guru of Sadism, Safely in Jail, Leaves Cult to Fend for Itself:"

A winding dirt road leads to the compound where Chilean authorities say that Paul Schafer, a former Nazi Luftwaffe medic turned lay preacher, sexually molested scores of young boys. A few yards away is a hospital where, according to former cult members, those who drew Mr. Schafer's ire were drugged and tortured. And somewhere beneath the ground, human rights groups say, are the clandestine dungeons where Colonia Dignidad held the political prisoners who were entrusted to it in the 1970's by Gen. Augusto Pinochet's secret police.
Until he was arrested in March after years on the run, Mr. Schafer, now 84, dominated the life of this bizarre and isolated place, which Chilean officials have likened to Jonestown in Guyana or the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Tex. But with their notorious leader, known as the Permanent Uncle, now in custody, some 300 followers of his apocalyptic, anti-Communist and anti-Semitic creed have been left suddenly adrift.

Zach e-mails to highlight Shaila Dewan's "Political Split Leaves a Church Sadder and Grayer:"

From the pulpit of East Waynesville Baptist Church, the temporary pastor offered an unusual message for his adopted flock: "I don't mind telling you before I start off this morning, this is not where I want to be."
No one blames him. Over the past two weeks, the modest brick church with baskets of artificial lilies on the doors has found itself at the center of a national debate, a crash test site in the mixing of politics and religion. The Rev. Chan Chandler, the young minister who led the congregation of about 100 people for the last three years, is gone, having resigned under fire last week and taken his mostly younger followers with him. And nine longtime church members who said he ousted them because they did not support his increasingly political sermons are back.
When Mr. Chandler, 33, resigned on May 10, some said the battle had been won. But the congregation that regrouped on Sunday was smaller and grayer, teary-eyed and leaderless.

Tony e-mails to note Neil A. Lewis' "Rove Guided Career of Judicial Nominee in Filibuster Fight:"

Justice Priscilla R. Owen of the Texas Supreme Court declined a chance to be the court's first female chief justice last year so she could remain one of President Bush's nominees to a federal appeals court, Texas lawyers and political figures said in recent interviews.
The decision was one of three crucial moments in her judicial career in which she seemed to have been guided by the hand of Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political strategist.
Justice Owen, along with Justice Janice Rogers Brown of the California Supreme Court, is now at the center of the partisan battle in the Senate over changing the filibuster rules. Senator Bill Frist of Tennessee, the Republican leader, said Friday that the two state justices, whose confirmations have been blocked by Democrats, would be brought to the Senate floor as part of the fight over changing the rules.

Tony asked that we note "the earlier thing" on Priscilla Owens. I'm assuing he means the May 3rd post "Editorial: Justice Denied or Justice Delayed? Priscilla Owens wants on the federal bench." (If that's not it, let me know, Tony.)

Maria e-mails to highlight C.J. Chivers' "Uzbekistan Shaken by Unrest, Violence and Uncertainty:"

Skirmishing between armed Uzbeks and troops along Uzbekistan's border with Kyrgyzstan persisted Sunday, news agencies reported, as uncertainty grew about the circumstances and extent of bloodshed on Friday when the government suppressed a mass demonstration by force.
Reports of the number of deaths since the violence began varied widely, from dozens to hundreds of civilians.
The Associated Press reported that residents of the village of Tefektosh had said the latest clashes left several soldiers dead. Uzbekistan's president, Islam A. Karimov, said Saturday that 10 government soldiers and "many more rebels" had been killed.
None of the reports could be verified, and it was difficult to determine who was fighting, and with what ambitions, although in addition to elements of a general uprising against a repressive government, armed and newly freed inmates were in the area of strife. Telephone service has been intermittent, and the Uzbek government has forced many journalists to leave.

On that last note, we'll note this from Reporters Without Borders, "Reporters Without Borders 'extremely worried' as journalists expelled from Andijan:"

Uzbek security services enforced the expulsions. Reuters news agency reported that its correspondent in Andijan was ordered to leave the city in half an hour, failing which police would be unable to guarantee his safety.
The agency said that seven journalists had been made to leave, mostly working for foreign newspapers, but a reporter with local agency Ferghana and another working for an opposition website were also forced to leave.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]
 

We'll note two things (and that's probably it for the night).

First Amada e-mails to note that Dahr Jamail has a new post up at Iraq Dispatches entitled "A 'Welcome Parade' of Blood and Seething Anger:"


As if to add insult to injury, with over 400 Iraqis killed in violence during the first two weeks of the newly sworn in Iraqi "government," US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice made a surprise one day visit to the newest US colony.
After visiting northern Iraq which has been spared the brunt of the ongoing violence, Rice traveled to the heavily entrenched "green zone" in central Baghdad where the U.S. "embassy" is located. She addressed a crowd in the former Republican Palace, the perfect setting for her symbolic visit to Iraq where more and more Iraqis are referring to the devastating occupation which has beset their country as their new "bloodocracy."
"We are so grateful that there are Americans willing to sacrifice so the Middle East will be whole, and free and democratic and at peace," she announced before she returned to northern Iraq in her huge contingent of military helicopters to the mountain stronghold of Kurdish Democratic Party leader Massoud Barzani before exiting the war ravaged nation.
Rather than a welcoming parade with ticker-tape and rose petals for the US Secretary of State who was one of the architects of the invasion, 34 corpses of men shot, beheaded or with their throats slit were discovered across Iraq today.

Lynda e-mailed to share with the community.

Lynda: If anyone's not seen Monster-In-Law yet, please go this week. It's so funny. I saw it with my mother-in-law and we were laughing so hard. On the TV a few moments ago, it was reported that it was the number one movie for the weekend and took in over $24 million. They were saying this was the biggest opening for a Jennifer Lopez film. I was thinking, "And the biggest opening for a Jane Fonda film." It's a funny film that everyone will really enjoy. I was thinking all weekend I needed to see it and then I read the thing you [C.I.] and Ava wrote at The Third Estate Sunday Review this morning and knew I had to see it today. I called up my mother-in-law and asked her if she was interested so we both went. You and Ava were angry in your rebuttal but I also thought you two were pretty funny. Please post all of this.

I'll assume the last statement is because Lynda was worried that, due to the self-referential policy here, I would cut out the comments regarding what Ava and I wrote. But that's a Third Estate Sunday Review piece (not a Common Ills one) and Ava's wonderful so no problem in Lynda's comments being posted in full. (And if the rebuttal turned out well, credit Ava.)

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

I've got mulitple screens open right now so please make a point to scroll down from the top if you've been online for a bit and are looking for entries. (Mark e-mailed wondering where the Iraq entry is. It's posted below the Judy Collins' entry. Blogger puts on a time stamp based upon when you open the "Create" post window. Not when you actually publish the entry. I'll try to adjust the time but in case I forget, please scroll around if you're looking for something.)

In These Times has posted the article that a number of us have been waiting on. So this entry is just a head's up to Erin Mosely's "Light and Solidarity." Here's an excerpt:


Susan Plum is challenging the Mexican government's massive failure to effectively investigate and halt the killing spree in Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, which has taken the lives of more than 370 women in the past 12 years. Plum, an artist who lives and works in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, has decided to shed light on the mysterious string of female abductions and murders--one candle at a time.
Last summer she began circulating via e-mail the idea for "Luz y Solidaridad" ("Light and Solidarity"), an art project that calls for people everywhere to help her "bring light to Juárez, especially to the mothers and the families of the young women and girls who have been murdered." The installation exhibit and performance, set to open February 4, 2006, at the Museo de la Ciudad in Querétaro, Mexico, will incorporate photographs of votives that have been lit all over the world for the women of the Mexican border town.
According to Amnesty International, 137 of the 370 murders in Juárez and the surrounding area of Chihuahua, have involved sexual assault. Additionally, somewhere between 70 and 400 women and girls remain missing.
Many of the women killed have been abducted near their workplaces--the maquilas (factories) located on the outskirts of Juárez. Kari Lydersen writes in her new book, Out of the Sea and into the Fire, "They disappear while waiting for or leaving the buses that take them to and from work, or after visiting the bars that are popular with maquila workers on Friday nights." Pervasive machismo and a culture that demeans women are also to blame for the pattern of violence. As National Public Radio's John Burnett reported, "It's a common joke [in Juárez] when two men see a provocatively dressed woman, for one to elbow the other and say, 'She better watch out or she’ll end up in the desert.'"

Again, it's an excerpt, read the full article.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]

We're going to focus, this entry, on some of the resources and sites that are permalinks (on the left).

From CounterPunch, we'll note Saul Landau's "Wars Kill Empires as Well as People: Lessons from Vietnam:"


In 2005, the United States has become Communist Vietnam's single-largest trading partner. Vietnam's products permeate US stores. But the "Vietnam War trauma" remains central to US politics. Note how the Vietnam service record of presidential candidates became a contentious issue in the 2004 elections. People don't overcome traumas unless they understand them.
Since public education provides citizens with minimal context, we rely on mass media to reach into its collective attic and drag out "Fall of Saigon" stories. However, when the commercial press pushes the anniversary method of history teaching, the public tends to divorce rather than engage with its past connections.
Personal anecdotes overwhelm analysis. Relatives of dead soldiers weep at Washington's Vietnam Wall; others relive battles and deaths of comrades. Few media presentations offer the past as a way to learn for the future.
As the US occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan continue down their bloody paths, we should study the lessons of The Vietnam War. Vietnamese refer to that period between the early 1960s and April 1975 as "The American Phase." They suffered periods of foreign domination by Chinese, Japanese and French occupiers who, unlike the Americans, learned the painful lesson of trying to subdue and occupy that land.
US leaders adamantly refuse to learn that some people, like Koreans, Vietnamese and Iraqis, for examples, do not submit to force and brutality. How to teach that simple lesson? Teachers will have shared the experience of trying to educate students who have not ingested their own history. Instead of inculcating historical context from first grade on, US students learn a kind of patriotic mythology disguised with words like "unbiased" ­ as if along with critiques of US behavior in Vietnam ­ or Iraq -- one had to present the good side of torture, mass murder and the napalming of villages.

From Amnesty International, "Guantánamo Bay - a human rights scandal:"

Hypocrisy, an overarching war mentality and a disregard for basic human rights principles and international legal obligations continue to mark the USA's "war on terror". Serious human rights violations are the inevitable result. The detention camp at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba has become a symbol of the US administration’s refusal to put human rights and the rule of law at the heart of its response to the atrocities of 11 September 2001. Hundreds of people of around 35 different nationalities remain held in effect in a legal black hole, many without access to any court, legal counsel or family visits. As evidence of torture and widespread cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment mounts, it is more urgent than ever that the US Government bring the Guantánamo Bay detention camp and any other facilities it is operating outside the USA into full compliance with international law and standards. The only alternative is to close them down.

Clicking on the link above takes you to resources including a full report and video.

Over at Iddybud, the Jude wonders "Does the GOP Value American Freedom and Democracy?"
Excerpt:

When the state becomes the church, we no longer live in a free country. The government becomes similar to the one that spurred the American Revolution. Congress has the lowest public approval rating that it has seen in years.
The far right pundits will lead you to believe it is the fault of "Democratic obstructionists", but the reality is that moderate, liberal, and progressive citizens are disgusted with the radical right holding the reins of leadership in Congress - pandering to the Religious Far Right. John McCain denounced the Religious Far Right's influence today on ABC's This Week, yet he aligned himself closely with George W. Bush at last year's Republican Convention with fear-mongering rhetoric and an obvious ommission of any talk about domestic issues.
I don't see Bush denouncing the GOP leadership that is coddling the religious extremists. So, isn't McCain a hypocrite or a pathetic dodger, at best? In his Convention speech, McCain said "We have to love our freedom not just for the material benefits it provides, not just for the autonomy it guarantees us, but for the goodness it makes possible." What goodness comes of enriching the richest and creating a Godzilla-deficit with which our poor children will be enslaved?

As always, Jude's worth reading. And, as Richie noted when he sent this in, "Someone get her a weekly guest spot on Air America already!"

Over at Interesting Times, Chris weighs the issue of when to fight back and when not to:

Partisanship, the kind that everyone hates, is when politicians attack regardless of the impact those attacks may have on their country. It is the back seat driver who keeps banging the cabby over the head with their purse. That kind of blind assault, while it may feel good to those who have no real power, doesn't do anyone any good.
But isn't there an equal danger to sitting quietly back as you see your driver heading the wrong way down a one way street? Partisanship is not always bad, especially when your driver is drunk.
The solution to the quandry of the patriotic opposition is this: fight back is good when not fighting back creates an even more dangerous situation.
Democrats have tried for years to work with Republicans as they have steered the nation into the future. As much as they might have disagreed with their political philosophy, they were patriots and didn't want their differences of opinion do any further damage to their country.

From The Black Commentator, we'll note Paul Street's "Think Piece" ("'Before We Can Claim Our Future, We Have to Control Our Past': On History and Self-Defense"):


Driving around in my car with Chicago's WBBM News Radio (780 AM) recently, I got to hear two guttural syllables from the mouth of Fidel Castro. The full word and the Spanish language he was speaking were unintelligible. "That was Fidel Castro speaking to a throng in Havana, Cuba yesterday," the robotic corporate newscaster reported. "Castro was speaking to commemorate May 1st, which has traditionally been observed as a worker's day in other nations." This entire news item took about 15 seconds, in curious contrast to Fidel's notorious taste for giving 3-hour speeches.
"In other nations." Do WBBM's writers know or even care that May 1's status as "the workers' day" hit its stride in the United States, in connection with the American labor movement's 8-hour struggle in the 1880s, and especially by the way in...CHICAGO. The Anarchist International Information Service has attempted to rescue that little, forgotten piece of history from what Edward Palmer Thompson used to call "the enormous condescension of posterity." At the site you will also find the following prescient observation: "...it is not surprising that the state, business leaders, mainstream union officials, and the media would want to hide the true history of May Day. In its attempt to erase the history and significance of May Day, the United States government declared May 1st to be 'Law Day', and gave the workers instead Labor Day, the first Monday of September – a holiday devoid of any historical significance."
History, the real and radical record of the past is dangerous to rulers and masters the world over. It reminds us that contemporary social and political hierarchies are not "permanent," like the earth and wind and solar system. It tells us that existing power relations are in fact socially constructed products of human agency that can be subverted and supplanted over time...sometimes quite quickly (Cuba in the late 1950s, for example).
History shows patterns and origins and the nature of certain phenomenon – the nature of fascism or imperialism or what have you – that can't be properly understood except with observation over time.

At Liberal Oasis, Bill Scher addresses what could be learned from the latest developments in the fight over John Bolton's nomination:


Dems have avoided making ideological arguments against Bolton in hopes that his pattern of abusiveness would be more convincing to the other side.
Then GOP Sen. George Voinovich went ahead and opposed Bolton on ideological grounds anyway.
And then he made a mockery of his passionate arguments by refusing to kill the nomination.
(Voinovich weakly argued that it would "arrogant" for him to "impose" his sole "judgment and perspective" on the rest of the Senate, conveniently forgetting the eight other Senators in the room that agreed with him.)
So what should Dems take from this? Two things.
First, that they should feel emboldened to make the deeper, fundamental argument against Bolton.
To get away from inside baseball of whose toes Bolton stepped on, and instead articulate what a Bolton appointment means for our nation’s safety and security.
Voinovich showed how it’s done:
We will face more difficulties in conducting the war on terrorism, promoting peace and stability worldwide and building democracies without the help from our friends to share the responsibilities, leadership and costs.
To achieve these objectives, public diplomacy must once again be of high importance.
If we cannot win over the hearts and minds of the world community and work together as a team, our goals will be more difficult to achieve...
... But what message are we sending ... when in the same breath we have sought to appoint an ambassador ... who himself has been accused of being arrogant, of not listening to his friends, of acting unilaterally, of bullying those who do not have the ability to properly defend themselves?
These are the very characteristics that we're trying to dispel in the world community.
Second, that it's going to be a waste of time to try hustling up GOP votes on this one.
It’s patently obvious that half the GOPers on the Foreign Relations Cmte would vote against Bolton if it was a secret ballot, but they are too weak and wimpy to think for themselves and resist the intense White House pressure.

From Consortium News, we'll note Robert Parry's "Solving the Media Puzzle:"

For instance, there's no realistic way today to stiffen the spine of PBS, at least as long as. George W. Bush has the power to appoint right-wing apparatchiks to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The CPB was created to serve as a buffer between PBS and the politicians, but now it is acting as the Right's enforcement mechanism, scrutinizing each program for violations of a conservative-defined "balance."
At least for the short term, the most effective progressive strategy toward PBS would be to mount a campaign to convince PBS viewers to divert their donations to independent broadcasting operations, such as LINK TV or Free Speech TV, or to give to Internet outlets that are distributing or producing honest journalism.
That would not only help build independent media, but it would show PBS and CPB that there is a price to pay for the Right's "politicization" of public broadcasting. Then, at some future point, if and when CPB gets back to its original role, PBS would understand that it can't take its loyal viewers for granted.
It also would be a mistake to put much effort in trying to get the Federal Communications Commission to re-regulate the telecommunications industry or to re-apply the Fairness Doctrine. In the current political environment, progressives can expect almost nothing positive from the FCC.
While it makes sense to educate the public about the damage caused by the FCC in recent years, a reversal of its policies won’t occur until there is a clear shift in the political winds -- and that will require a far-stronger independent media.
So the starting point must be to build that independent media.

That is one of many solutions Parry is proposing. For others read the full article.

The e-mail address for this site is common_ills@yahoo.com.

[Note: This entry originally appeared at The Common Ills.]