Tuesday, September 12, 2006

Because of Kat, because of boredom with 'tales of every day housewife' . . .

I'm late blogging tonight because Ty phoned and Mike I both decided to wait and see what Kat wrote. Though Mike didn't have The Progressive on his blogroll, I did and I also had Ruth Conniff and Mr. Drip. They have been pulled. I know C.I.'s being supportive to Kat but I also know C.I. would prefer that Matthew Rothschild not be criticized (due to his work on the war) so applaud Kat for her bravery and C.I. for sticking with her. The Progressive of late, with their 'free lancer' being the best example (Pru loathes him and gave the dirt in the gina & krista round-robin), has had very little to do with progressive unless progressive means slightly to the left of the Democratic Party. Kat's piece is entitled "Enough of the Mindless Blather, Already" and you should read it.

This is not a slam at C.I. but I do think it bears noting that while C.I. would argue that Rothschild speaks around the country and whatever else, the fact of the matter is while Rothschild's largely sat on his butt, C.I.'s been speaking around the nation (everywhere but Alaska) since Feb. 2003. That's every month. Nobody pays a speaking fee, nobody pays for travel or pays for lodging. Rothschild is presumably paid to do what he does in print (possibly online as well) but C.I. doesn't get paid for it. C.I. was supposed to have minor surgery in July. That got postponed and it still is. It had been scheduled (in May) for July 5th. Then a number of things came up including Rebecca and I both deciding to go on vacation. Before the thought had been that, if there was any "out of it" moments post-surgery, the rest of the community could pick up the slack. As the date approached, too many things were coming up for C.I. to be able to risk being "out of it." That's only one example of how C.I. has put things on hold to stand and be counted in opposing the war -- none of which results in payment. So I'd argue that, when you're in charge of a left magazine, you should be doing more than what Rothschild has.

As I noted earlier here, the magazine has not been worth the cover price of late. I can get Howard Zinn elsewhere and be spared the "tales of the everyday housewife" via Ruth Conniff. I will be doing that. This was my decision and one Mike was in agreement with. (He was so in agreement, he was ready to pull his links as well and then he found that he didn't link to them on his blogroll.) That's not to put pressure on C.I. to do the same.

Quite the contrary, Kat will make that decision. But knowing how this will play in the community, and knowing that C.I. has been ill for the last two days, I'm pulling tonight and will hope that those who have an opinion on the issue will write Kat or someone else. (I'm saying: Don't bother C.I. with this.)

That's really all I have to say tonight. Possibly, if I lived on the "cutting center" or had a desire to rush towards "respectable" ground, I too could write line after line slamming people who are only attempt to get answers from a government that has so obviously lied to them. Lied about what exactly? I don't claim to know. But the same administration that blocked an investigation itno 9/11 is the same administration that demanded the Bully Boy and Dick Cheney testify together like conjoined twins. What they're hiding may be something very simple. It may be something large. I have no idea nor do I have the time to become a researcher. Therefore, I'll be the last to slam the very genuine, very heartfelt motive that drives those seeking answers. It's a shame that Matthew Rothschild feels he's given enough that he can take swipes at people who are dedicating so much time to finding out the truth of 9-11.

If he thinks his contributions re: Iraq put him in a position to criticize anyone, he needs to be aware of the fact that some people don't focus on Iraq on alternating weeks. Some people live with it every day. (I think Rebecca will probably touch on that tonight.)


"Iraq snapshot" (The Common Ills):
Tuesday, September 12, 2006 chaos and violence continue in Iraq with AFP estimating that at least 27 Iraqis were reported dead today, in the United States the divider shows his ugly/only face again, CODEPINK asks that you Give Peace a Vote,
In the United States, Bully Boy is coming under fire for a speech given Monday night in front of photos of his twin daughters who were apparently supposed to represent Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Speaking to the nation in a nineteen minute pitch during the second night of ABC's VOTE GOP! infomercial, Bully Boy attempted to sell his illegal war on the shaky grounds that "I know I said it would make things worse not to invade and I was wrong, but it will make things worse to leave, forget that I was wrong before."
Using his circular illogic in his seventeen minute pitch, as the AP notes, "most of his 17-minute speech was devoted to justifying his foreign policy since that day. With his party’s control of Congress at stake in elections less than two months away, Bush suggested that political opponents who are calling for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq would be giving victory to the terrorists."
Sounding like Ike Turner (or any other abusive husband), Bully Boy looked a nation of soul-surviving Tina Turners in the face and dared to offer, "Whatever mistakes have been made in Iraq, the worst mistake would be" to leave.
Leave it to David Stout (New York Times) to play Ben Fong-Torres, embrace the tawdry and notice nothing while concluding, "Democrats have long accused Mr. Bush and his top aides of disingenuously implying a link between the Iraq of Saddam Huessien and the 9/11 attacks."
To clarify for Stout and other would be Fong-Torreses, the two latest sections of the
Senate Intel Report (released Friday) once again found no link, none, between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda -- no links, none, between Saddam Hussein and 9-11.
On the fifth anniversary of 9-11, in the midst of a myth-series, Bully Boy elects to address the nation in some sort of effort to offer Frito Pie for the Soul and he is yet again spending "most of his time," talking about? Iraq.
It's not reporting. It's saying that Democrats called heads in the coin toss and now Democrats charge that they won the coin toss without ever noting the fact that, yes, heads won. [David Corn (The Nation) addresses Dick Cheney's only loose grasp of reality regarding the fact that there is no link.]
Among those Democrats rightly calling the Bully Boy out on his continued and false linkage of 9-11 and Iraq are US Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. Reid spoke of 9-11 on Monday at the Palo Verde High School in Las Vegas and nowhere in the nineteen lines did he seek to slam Americans or cite Iraq. Pelosi's sixteen line statement on Monday also failed to politicize the anniversary. By contrast, the Bully Boy offered 31 lines that directly brought Iraq, which, again, has nothing to do with 9-11, into the anniversary.
Even a he-said/she-said press could point out that obvious fact. Possibly all the time spent on Iraq prevented the Bully Boy from noting the obvious, which Greg Palast has,
"It's been five years and the Bush regime has not done that. Instead, the War on Terror is reduced to taking off our shoes in airports, hoping we can bomb Muslims into loving America and chasing journalists around the bayou. Meanwhile, King Abdullah, the Gambino of oil, whose princelings funded the murderers, gets a free ride in the President's golf cart at the Crawford ranch." No word on what's preventing the so-called mainstream press for noting that reality on the fifth anniversary of 9-11. An earlier BBC News Night report by Palast on the Bully Boy's blocking bin Laden probes can be viewed here.
Bully Boy did get one thing right in his Monday speech: "America did not ask for this war". No, but the administration did and resorted to lies, then and now, to have their request granted and continued.
In other "I can't believe it's not butter moment"s, Reuters reports that Richard Zilmer (Marine Major General in Iraq) declared from Baghdad, outside the al Anbar Province, that the Marines have not lost the province. Citing unspecified "areas," citing them from Baghdad, outside the al Anbar Province, Zilmer stated all was going swimmingly in some "areas" -- unspecified areas. Reuters notes: "The statement did not indicate which parts of the province he believed had effective local government." Prepare for tomorrow's audio-visual presentation where Zilmer, using a projection screen and pointer demonstrates that he can find the province on a map so, therefore, it has not been lost.
Zilmer was attempting to spin Thomas E. Rick's (Washington Post) Monday report of Marine Col. Pete Devlin's assesment that "that the prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim and that there is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there, said several military officers and intelligence officials familiar with its contents."
The violence and chaos continues throughout Iraq.
Bombings?
CNN reports six dead in Baghdad when "a car bomb exploded at a busy shopping district" and that fifteen were left wounded. AFP notes that a police officer and a civilian were killed by a roadside bomb "near Baghdad's University of Technology" and left seven more wounded, while, in Abu Sayda, a bomb took the life of "Brigadier General Ali Hassan Jubur, head of operations in Muqdadiyah's police headquarters" and the deaths from roadside bombings of a police officer (in Samarra) and an Iraqi soldier (in Kirkuk). CBS and AP report a bombing in Middadiyah resulted in at least 4 dead and 24 wounded (and that the same location resulted in gunfire Monday night leaving seven dead). Reuters reports that, in Kirkuk, a roadside bomb wounded Kassem al-Bayati and that three other roadside bombs in Baghdad left at least eight Iraqis wounded.
Shootings?
KUNA reports that, in Mosul, Iraqi police captain Ziad Ramzi was shot dead and, in a separate attack, four other people were shot dead. Reuters reports that they were four family members and that a fifth was wounded. CNN reports that a police officer was shot dead in Baghdad ("outside his house"). Reuters reports: "Dolonel Abbas al-Nuaimi was gunned down Monday outside a jail in Hindiya" while "in police custody" to stand "trial for crimes committed during Saddam Hussein's rule."
Corpses?
CNN reports that 60 corpses were discovered around Iraq and one severed head carried the message: "This is the fate of those who deal with the U.S. forces." AFP reports three corpses were discovered in the Diyala province. Remember that discovered corpses never make the media's daily tabulation of the death toll.
On the issue of corpses, CNN reports: "Of the bodies taken to the morgue last month, 90 percent had been shot, the official said. The other 10 percent were killed by other means, such as torture, beheading and stabbing, the official said. The official noted that the morgue figures do not include most bombing victims, as that number is calculated separately."
CBS and AP report that Sunnis in the parliament are attempting "to work together to prevent" a bill that would turn the occupied nation into a federation "from being implemented without changes." This as puppet of the occupation is once again out of the country. CNN notes that Nouri al-Maliki is in Tehran establishing relations with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran. As the BBC notes, al-Maliki "lived in Iran during the 1980s" and he will be meeting "Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, on Wednesday."
In peace news, Camp Democracy continues in Washington, DC. Today's events focus on the environmental crisis caused by global warming and this evening Mark Karlin (the editor and publisher of BuzzFlash) will be presenting. Tomorrow is verdict day and Ann Wright and Ray McGovern are among the scheduled participants of the Bush Crimes Commission and World Can't Wait sponsored events. While on Thursday, Danny Schechter is scheduled to be among the participants with a screening of his documentary WMD: Weapons of Mass Deceptions. On Sunday, Camp Democracy will host a number of events and the theme will be Impeachment Day. Among those participating: Elizabeth Holtzman, Michael Avery, Ray McGovern, David Green, John Nichols, Marcus Raskin, Elizabeth De La Vega, Dave Lindorff, David Swanson, Jennifer Van Bergen, Geoff King, David Waldman, Dan DeWalt, Steve Cobble, Anthony St. Martin, Cindy Bogard, Mubarak Awad, Susan Crane, Frank Anderson. The camp has daily activities and admission is free. A complete schedule can be found here.
Events are scheduled through September 21st, the same day that CODEPINK's Troops Home Fast concludes. Troops Home Fast is currently on day 69 with at least 5023 people participating. CODEPINK is also promoting Give Peace a Vote (Medea Benjamin: "Part of a coalition effort of Voters for Peace designed to create a strong anti-war voting bloc, the petition asks people to pledge that they will only vote for candidates who support a speedy withdrawal from Iraq and no future wars of aggression.") which over 14,000 people have currently pledged to support.
Writing in The Nation, John Nichols reminds Americans to watch the results of the primaries today and zooms in on the Maryland Congressional race John Sarbanes is running in. (He also notes other races.)
Meanwhile, in Australia, Dan Box (The Australian) reports that the government wants to up the army from 2,600 to 30,000 ("its biggest intake since the Vietnam war") and that this comes while there seems to be no accountability for officers as evidenced by the abuse of Charles Williams and the hearing into the April 21st Baghdad death of Jake Kovco ("Last week, the family of Private Jake Kovco accused a military board of inquiry into his death of being a 'face-saving exercise' to protect officers.").











Posted by at