CameraPlanetNews

2004-02-03T09:15:00.000-08:00

2004-01-26T08:18:00.000-08:00

CBS unmoved by MoveOn’s ad
posted by Aaron Barnhart January 21, 2004 10:28 AM

The heart stirs as soon as the lonesome guitar music starts. From a few feet away, through a dark and dismal restaurant kitchen, we see a boy no more than 10 years old spraying off dirty dishes.

The music quickens as a procession of solitary children performs other mind-numbing adult jobs: hauling garbage, changing tires, scanning groceries. Near the end of this 30-second TV commercial, a message appears: “Guess who’s going to pay off President Bush’s $1 trillion deficit?”

“Child’s Pay,” as the ad was titled, last week won the “Bush in 30 Seconds” contest sponsored by MoveOn.org, an advocacy group that wants Bush out of office. The competition made news because two of the 1,500 commercials submitted online compared President Bush with Adolf Hitler. (MoveOn.org distanced itself from those ads.)

Indeed, if there’s a lesson to be learned, it’s that making a 30-second attack ad is harder than it looks. The quality of the entries drops off sharply after “Child’s Pay,” which won both the online voting and the competition judged by a panel that included filmmaker Michael Moore and satirist Al Franken. The four runner-up commercials might play well with the Moby-Janeane Garofalo-Jim Hightower crowd, but they had all the subtlety of a Sunflower Dodge ad.

The understated “Child’s Pay,” by contrast, appeals effectively to every parent’s worst fears, even parents who will vote for Bush in November. Large budget deficits are, to many, an abstract evil. But a Dickensian vision of a future in which our heirs atone for our fiscal sins (toiling, the ad suggests, in the only jobs that haven’t been shipped overseas) hits people where they live.

You can watch the winning ads online at bushin30seconds.org. You won’t, however, see “Child’s Pay” during the Super Bowl. MoveOn.org’s $2 million buy was rejected by CBS. A network executive explained, “We have a policy against accepting advocacy advertising.”

Why?

2004-01-13T12:35:00.000-08:00

First post from Iowa
We've arrived. We're shooting. And now we're posting.

Day 1

2004-01-10T16:10:00.000-08:00

It's Day one for the STAFFERS crew - with teams on their way to Iowa, New Hampshire, and New York to beging to photograph the insiders view of life on the Campaign trail.

This will be a program like no other - for many reasons. And some of our posts will give you a early look at the program as it progresses.

So stay tuned!

2004-01-02T07:43:00.000-08:00

British Air Again Cancels DC-Bound Flight
Fri January 2, 2004 10:07 AM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - British Airways Plc, Europe's biggest airline, canceled its London-Washington afternoon service on Friday, the second consecutive day the flight has been suspended for security concerns.

"It has been canceled, that was based on advice from the UK government for a security reason," said a BA spokeswoman, referring to BA 223 to the U.S. capital which had been scheduled to depart at 1505 GMT from London's Heathrow airport.

The return flight, BA 222, was also canceled, she said.

The spokeswoman said an earlier flight, BA 217, for the same destination was delayed for around two hours after a U.S. government request "for information about the flight."

The carrier's third daily service between London and Washington, BA 225, was scheduled to depart as planned at 1840 GMT, the spokeswoman said.

Britain's Department of Transport declined to comment on the nature of the security risk, having told Reuters that its intelligence came from a number of sources.

"We would not comment on where those sources come from," a department spokesman said.

British Airways canceled the BA 223 service on Thursday, a day after the same scheduled flight was detained on the tarmac at Washington's Dulles International Airport for several hours.

In boosting the U.S. security alert level last month, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda movement appeared intent on matching or outdoing the September 2001 hijacked airliner attacks that killed about 3,000 people.

The U.S. government said this week it was ordering foreign airlines to place armed sky marshals on selected flights to the United States.

Two AeroMexico flights to Los Angeles from Mexico City were canceled this week because of suspicions would-be hijackers might have booked tickets, Mexican and U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials also confirmed on Thursday that U.S. warplanes have escorted several in-bound Air France flights.

Six flights between Paris and Los Angeles were canceled last week at the urging of Washington after it raised security concerns.

2004-01-02T06:46:00.000-08:00

Brazil judge orders US citizens fingerprinted

A Brazilian judge, furious at US plans to fingerprint and photograph Brazilians entering the United States, has ordered Brazil to do the same to US citizens.

The order, set to go into effect on January 1, came after a Government office filed a complaint in federal court over the US measure aimed at millions of foreign travellers.

"Unless the court order is contested in the justice system, it will be complied with," said a spokesman for Brazil's Federal Police, the agency overseeing immigration.

Starting on January 5, citizens of countries such as Brazil who need a visa to enter the US will be fingerprinted and photographed when they pass through immigration at major US airports and seaports.

The procedure is meant to identify people who have violated immigration controls, have a criminal record or belong to groups the US government lists as "terrorist" organisations.

The checks will not be carried out against citizens of 27 nations who do not need a visa to enter the United States.

"I consider the act absolutely brutal, threatening human rights, violating human dignity, xenophobic and worthy of the worst horrors committed by the Nazis," said Federal Judge Julier Sebastiao da Silva in the court order released on Tuesday.

Brazil currently requires US citizens to have a visa when entering the country.

-- Reuters

Friday, January 02, 2004 -
Brazil copies U.S. law, fingerprints Americans
By Vivian Sequera
The Associated Press

SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Police fingerprinted and photographed Americans arriving at São Paulo's airport yesterday in response to new rules requiring the same for Brazilians entering the United States.

Federal Judge Julier Sebastião da Silva ordered the measure Monday in response to the new U.S. anti-terror regulation requiring citizens from 27 nations, including Brazil, to be fingerprinted and photographed when entering America.

The U.S. anti-terror regulation takes effect Monday at all 115 airports handling international flights and 14 major seaports. It will allow instant checks on an immigrant's or visitor's criminal background.

On Wednesday, Brazil's Foreign Ministry requested that Brazilians be removed from the U.S. list, saying Brazil would consider treating U.S. citizens the same way upon their arrival.

"At first, most of the Americans were angered at having to go through all this, but they were usually more understanding once they learned that Brazilians are subjected to the same treatment in the U.S.," Wagner Castilho, press officer for the federal police in São Paulo, said of those arriving at São Paulo-Guarulhos International Airport.

Brazil also requires visas for U.S. citizens, in response to a similar requirement for Brazilians entering the United States.

2003-06-18T10:54:00.000-07:00

Since deciding not to make another race for the White House in 2004, former Vice President Al Gore has been devoting considerable time to another dream, one he shares with many Democrats these days — creating a media enterprise that could challenge the dominance of conservative voices in cable television and talk radio.

click to read

2003-06-02T19:52:00.000-07:00

Senators seek to reverse FCC ruling
FCC commissioners are expected to testify at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing on ownership rules.
June 2, 2003: 6:46 PM EDT WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A bipartisan group of senators opposed to television networks expanding their reach expressed confidence they had the votes to roll back a rule adopted by communications regulators Monday. The group said it was pressing ahead with legislation to retain limits keeping a network from owning stations that together reach more than 35 percent of the national audience.
Click to READ

2003-05-17T19:22:00.000-07:00

God and George W. Bush
By BILL KELLER
Is President Bush a religious zealot, or does he just pander to that crowd? That, crudely put, is probably the most persistent question I hear about Mr. Bush when I travel outside the country, and it comes up all the time in the less godly American precincts (universities, Bush-hater Web sites, Hollywood, the island of Manhattan). On issues from Saddam to sodomy, the assumption is that Mr. Bush is an evangelist for a moralistic agenda that grows from his born-again Christianity. Or else (the more cynical variation), regardless of what he believes in, he has handed over the presidential portfolio to the preacher pols of the religious right in exchange for their influence as campaign ward heelers. CLICK TO READ ARTICLE

2003-05-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

Texas GOP halts effort to arrest Democrats
By JAY ROOT and JACK DOUGLAS JR./ Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram

On the eve of a deadline for key legislation to live or die, the Republican-controlled Texas House of Representatives formally halted efforts to arrest the 51 Democratic legislators who fled to Oklahoma. CLICK HERE TO READ

ALSO: Read this CBS News Version/CLICK HERE

PHOTO CAPTION : Wearing red bandannas sent to them by "personal messenger" from country singer Willie Nelson, four Texas House Democrats walk out of their hotel in Ardmore, Okla., late Wednesday. From left are Reps. Barry Telford of De Kalb, Patrick Rose of Dripping Springs, Jim McReynolds of Lufkin and Mark Homer of Paris. McReynolds held up a note from Nelson that said, "Way to go ... stand your ground." Nelson also sent T-shirts and eight bottles of whiskey to the Democrats, who are trying to thwart a Republican redistricting plan.

2003-05-12T11:34:00.000-07:00

Disorder deepens in liberated Baghdad

The US administrator for central Iraq left the post Sunday after just three weeks in office.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

BAGHDAD – Fearful of going out after dark, waiting up to 10 hours to fill their cars with gas, spreading rumors in the absence of reliable media, watching landmark buildings set on fire and wondering who is in charge, the residents of this capital are growing increasingly impatient with the deepening disorder that is plaguing their lives more than a month after US troops took over the city. CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-05-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

audblog audio post

2003-05-09T18:35:00.000-07:00

audblog audio post

2003-05-08T07:39:00.000-07:00

U.S. TV lost focus on war, says editor
Mary E. O’Leary, Register Topics Editor May 06, 2003

NEW HAVEN — A senior editor at Newsweek, Michael Hirsh, told a Yale audience recently that he was "fairly appalled" by television’s coverage of the Iraqi war.
CLICK HERE TO READ

Also: At War With Ourselves

2003-05-07T06:51:00.000-07:00

The Pentagon wanted to attack Syria in the last days of the Iraq War,
but Rice and others stopped that. The story has been deleted from the
press. Click for article

2003-05-05T13:52:00.000-07:00

50 Years After, Opening Senator Joe McCarthy's Closed Files By JOEL BRINKLEY

ASHINGTON, May 5 — Fifty years after Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's communist witch hunt, the Senate today made public transcripts of his closed-door questioning of more than 400 witnesses that revealed a calculating side to McCarthy's public persona of a threatening bully who did not hesitate to destroy reputations and lives.
CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-05-02T19:03:00.000-07:00

Modem Madness By Howard Kurtz Washington Post
It seems this morning that bloggers have taken over the world.
Or at least the 2004 presidential campaign.
Or at least the not-so-invisible primary leading up to the campaign.
The pundits are blogging. The journalists are blogging. And now the candidates are blogging. Who needs television? Let's just eliminate the middleman.

Here's the deal: ABC's The Note (which went AWOL during the war but is now back) has gone beyond offering its cheeky interpretation of campaign spin. It now offers free space (hey, it's all free in cyberspace) to the '04 contenders to add their own cheeky interpretation of their own campaign spin. Click to read Article

2003-05-01T12:58:00.000-07:00

The Secrets of September 11
Newsweek
The White House is battling to keep a report on the terror attacks secret. Does the 2004 election have anything to do with it?
CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-05-01T07:24:00.000-07:00

BILL MOYERS: Many things can be said about Barry Diller. But what he says about himself goes right to the point. "I've not conducted my life in the service of smallness," understates the man who created Fox Broadcasting and ran some of the world's media giants: ABC Entertainment, Paramount, Vivendi Universal. And is even now chairman and CEO of USA Interactive, itself an empire of informational services from the Home Shopping Network to Ticketmaster. CLICK TO READ TRANSCRIPT

2003-04-30T19:38:00.000-07:00

Senator Barbara Boxer
112 Hart Senate Office Building Washington, DC 20510

Dear Barbara,

Peter Coyote's Letter to Senator Barbara Boxer I'm writing to you about a situation of the greatest urgency. Last year, I narrated a film called "Unprecedented" by American journalist Greg Palast (currently writing for the London Guardian). This film documents the illegal expunging of 54,000 black and overwhelmingly Democratic voters from the Florida rolls just before the presidential election. We interviewed the computer company that did the work, filmed their explanations of the instructions they received and their admissions that they knew that their instructions would produce massive error. That figure has now been revised to 91,000.CLICK to read Peter Coyote's Letter

2003-04-30T07:37:00.000-07:00

"The press has become an arm of the state," Mr. Belzer said. "The whole mind-set of the mainstream press seems to be strangely muted and cowardly. I was watching the BBC yesterday, and someone asked the question, ‘What will the Iraqis say when people in America can’t speak out without being criticized?’ Read Article

2003-04-29T13:43:00.000-07:00

The CameraPlanet team is now heading out of Jordan, having just spent two weeks shooting high-definition video that is revealing and important.

To get a look at what the team just reported from Turkey Click to view Video

2003-04-29T01:08:00.000-07:00

Banfield Lashes Out at Own Network
Mon April 28, 2003 02:31 AM ET
By Andrew Grossman

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - NBC News correspondent Ashleigh Banfield has ripped television news networks, including her own, for their "glorious" coverage of the Iraqi war and a lack of focus on international news overall. Click to Read Article

2003-04-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

A Flashback to the 60's for an Antiwar Protester
By LESLIE EATON

COLUMBIA, S.C., April 23 — At the time, Brett A. Bursey says, he seemed to be having a 60's flashback. There he was at the Columbia Metropolitan Airport with his antiwar sign. There were the thousands of Republicans gathering to welcome a president. There were the police officers arresting him for trespassing.
Click to Read Article

2003-04-24T13:21:00.000-07:00

BBC Chief Attacks U.S. Media War Coverage By Merissa Marr

LONDON (Reuters) - The head of the BBC launched a broadside against American broadcasters on Thursday, accusing them of "unquestioning" coverage of the Iraq war and blatant patriotism.
CLICK HERE to read story

2003-04-24T07:01:00.000-07:00

Dixie Chicks Get Death Threats by BBC News
The band say the backlash has gone "out of control"
The Dixie Chicks have said they fear for their lives following the backlash against singer Natalie Maines' comments about US President George Bush CLICK HERE to read

2003-04-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Judge Orders Potter Books Back On Shelves By CARYN ROUSSEAU Associated Press Writer

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- A federal judge ordered Harry Potter books back onto an Arkansas school district's library shelves Tuesday, rejecting a school board's claim that tales of wizards and spells could harm school children.

CLICK HERE to read

2003-04-22T11:49:00.000-07:00

FROM L.T. SMASH
LIVE FROM THE SANDBOX

My Humble Opinion
People are talking about boycotting celebrities who spoke out against the war.

You can count me out. I don’t look to celebrities to tell me how to think.

I make my own decisions. I volunteered to serve in the military. I worked hard to earn my officer’s commission. I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States. That includes the First Amendment.

Celebrities, like all Americans, enjoy the freedom of speech. I enjoy the freedom to not listen to what they have to say. Until they run for public office, their opinions hold no more weight with me than that of my garbage man.

Heard that Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins have taken some heat for speaking out.

I think they are fine actors. I loved Bull Durham – it’s a classic in my book. If Susan and Tim want to take advantage of their celebrity status to express negative opinions about my Commander-in-Chief, that’s their prerogative. I happen to disagree with their point of view.

Hey, I have people I call friends who have similar points of view to Susan and Tim. Some of them may have attended war protests, for all I know. We disagree, but they’re still my friends. I’m not going to stop returning their calls just because of their political opinions.

So why should I boycott actors, or musicians, just because they oppose what I’m doing? I think there’s room in our democratic society for dissent, as long as it is respectful.

So go ahead, boycott celebrities if it makes you happy. This American respectfully declines to participate. But that’s OK, I’ll continue to defend your freedom, just like I defend those celebrities.

Whether they want me to or not.
TRANSMISSION FROM LT Smash 1628Z | CLICK HERE to go to Lt. Smash's Blog

2003-04-22T08:16:00.000-07:00

A Bully Can be Stopped by Tim Robbins

Tim Robbins delivered the following speech on April 15, 2003 at a luncheon at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

"I had originally been asked here to talk about the war and our current political situation but I have instead chosen to hijack this opportunity and talk about baseball. Just kidding. Sort of." CLICK HERE to read the speech

2003-04-21T19:17:00.000-07:00

PBS President Pat Mitchell was honored at the Full Frame Documentary Festival in Durham, North Carolina. To a packed house of filmmakers and documentary lovers, Mitchell delivered a compelling arguement that asked us to hold media makers accountable, and challanged filmmakers to record history with passion and conviction.
READ text of speech

2003-04-21T10:28:00.000-07:00

Arabs in Kirkuk say forced to leave homes by Kurds By Mike Collett-White

KIRKUK, Iraq, April 21 (Reuters) - Some Arab families living in mainly Kurdish districts of Kirkuk said on Monday that armed Kurds had ordered them to leave their homes as ethnic tensions simmered in the northern Iraqi city. CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-04-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

Harlem's Anti-War Rally Eyes Troubles at Home By Mosi Secret Village Voice Writer

Last Saturday, demonstrators in Harlem braved hand-numbing cold and rain to raise their voices against the war. Organized by the Black Solidarity Against the War Coalition, the crowd was comprised largely of people of color, and their placards and chants stopped local residents in their tracks. It was the most successful demonstration in the city to date to organize blacks and Latinos against the war.

Demonstrators assembled at Marcus Garvey Park, at Madison and 122nd Street, and marched in a circuitous route through Harlem’s busiest streets to the Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. State Office Building. What was initially a crowd of only a handful grew to 1500 people, with large numbers from the Muslim community and various unions. Demonstrators walked almost three miles, drawing curious gazes from onlookers in shops and on stoops, and from residents perched in windows above the street. CLICK HERE TO READ

www.BlacksAgainstWar.com WEBSITE

2003-04-18T09:38:00.000-07:00

Judge Scolds Cheney Lawyers in Energy Case Appeal By Susan Cornwell

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An appeals judge told lawyers for Vice President Richard Cheney on Thursday they had no basis to ask the court to intervene in a suit seeking White House energy policy papers, saying "you have no case." CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-04-18T06:38:00.000-07:00

I was only asking

In the second of his dispatches from the million-dollar media centre at Qatar, Michael Wolff recounts how he angered the US right.
CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-04-17T18:04:00.000-07:00

The land that is now Israel has been locked in conflict for more than a hundred years -- with Jews and Arabs, Israelis and Palestinians fighting for control -- for what both believe to be rightfully theirs. As war raged on in nearby Iraq, Israelis are concerned that their country may absorb attacks similar to those it suffered during the 1991 Gulf War. Yet, with their long experience of violence and adversity, people here are convinced that life must go on. For some it's a matter of having no alternative. For others it's a matter of faith.
CameraPlanet reports from Israel for HDnet. This broadcast was recorded and transmitted in High Definition Television - this Quicktime movie is in standard definition.
CLICK HERE TO SEE VIDEO

2003-04-17T14:44:00.000-07:00

A crusade after all?

Plans of some Christians to evangelize as they offer aid pose dilemma for Iraqi reconstruction.

By Jane Lampman | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

When President Bush called his war on terrorism a "crusade," he backtracked quickly in the face of intense reaction at home and abroad. Now many people are worried that, in the case of Iraq, that inopportune choice of words may turn out to hold more than a modicum of truth... CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORY

2003-04-17T13:38:00.000-07:00

Bush Cultural Advisers Quit Over Iraq Museum Theft
Thu April 17, 2003 04:17 PM ET By Niala Boodhoo
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two cultural advisers to the Bush administration have resigned in protest over the failure of U.S. forces to prevent the wholesale looting of priceless treasures from Baghdad's antiquities museum.

Martin Sullivan, who chaired the President's Advisory Committee on Cultural Property for eight years, and panel member Gary Vikan said they resigned because the looting should never have been allowed to happen.CLICK HERE TO READ STORY

2003-04-16T13:04:00.000-07:00

EU takes major expansion step

EU leaders hailed the move to reunite a once divided continent
The treaty cements plans for the fifth enlargement of the union since the creation of the six-member European Community in 1957.
Ten new members, eight of them from the former communist bloc, will formally join the EU in May 2004, if ratification goes according to plan, taking the number of EU states to 25. CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY

2003-04-16T12:57:00.000-07:00

Elections Board Won't Fix Broken Voting Machines
Apr 16, 2003 11:30 am US/Eastern(1010 WINS) (NEW YORK)

The city's Board of Elections has rejected a plan to repair devices on 7,000 voting machines, which people mistakenly left without having cast a vote.
CLICK HERE FOR FULL STORY

2003-04-14T20:09:00.000-07:00

Americans defend two untouchable ministries from the hordes of looters
By Robert Fisk in Baghdad 14 April 2003
Iraq's scavengers have thieved and destroyed what they have been allowed to loot and burn by the Americans – and a two-hour drive around Baghdad shows clearly what the US intends to protect. After days of arson and pillage, here's a short but revealing scorecard.

CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORY

2003-04-14T10:14:00.000-07:00

Amman, Jordan
The City Between a Rock and a Hard Place

See our "World Report" for HD Net now
CLICK HERE TO VIEW VIDEO

2003-04-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

Kurdish looters attack Arabs, Turkmens By JONATHAN S. LANDAY and MARK McDONALD, Knight Ridder Newspapers
...Many experts have warned that an end to 24 years of Saddam Hussein's iron-fisted rule could unleash pent-up ethnic frictions that could tear Iraq apart. Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed or expelled from the Kirkuk area by Saddam's Arab-dominated regime. Their properties were given to Arabs resettled from elsewhere in Iraq, and now their kin are seeking revenge.
The rising ethnic tension could pose a serious challenge to the small number of U.S. troops deployed in Kirkuk and Mosul.
CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORY

2003-04-12T00:33:00.000-07:00

audblog audio postMichael Greenspan reports from Turkey

2003-04-11T13:21:00.000-07:00

'Unlilateral' Reporters See Different War in Iraq By Andrew Grossman NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter)
Scott Pelley and Jane Arraf are two of the Pentagon's worst nightmares.
Not because they have angered the military with their reporting in Iraq, but they have covered the war unencumbered from the Pentagon's grip as "unilateral" reporters free to roam Iraq as roving correspondents rather than being "embedded" with a particularly military unit. CLICK HERE TO READ FULL STORY

2003-04-11T08:46:00.000-07:00

Left behind

Tony Nave, 6, son of U.S. Marine Maj. Kevin G. Nave, hugs a teddy bear after an April 5 funeral service at St. Patrick Church in White Lake, Mich.

Maj. Nave was killed in action in Iraq on March 26

2003-04-10T13:26:00.000-07:00

Police Stop Collecting Data on Protesters' Politics By WILLIAM K. RASHBAUM

When a series of large antiwar protests began nearly eight weeks ago, the New York Police Department started questioning hundreds of people arrested at the demonstrations about their prior political activity and recording the information in a database.CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

2003-04-10T11:38:00.000-07:00

Bush's Voice of America By Wayne Barrett Village Voice Writer

Clear Channel Communications, the Texas-based media colossus that's fomenting pro-war rallies and submarining airplay for anti-war artists, has quietly become a brash and hungry player in New York politics. With the likes of GOP power broker Al D'Amato and Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf on the tab, the $8 billion conglomerate is chasing city deals, from a new concert hall on Randalls Island to a franchise on all sidewalk advertising...CLICK HERE TO READ FULL ARTICLE

2003-04-09T20:47:00.000-07:00

My Oscar "Backlash": "Stupid White Men" Back At #1, "Bowling" Breaks New Records
It appears that the Bush administration will have succeeded in colonizing Iraq sometime in the next few days. This is a blunder of such magnitude -- and we will pay for it for years to come. It was not worth the life of one single American kid in uniform, let alone the thousands of Iraqis who have died, and my condolences and prayers go out to all of them. Click to read entire letter

2003-04-09T19:16:00.000-07:00

By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN Hold Your Applause
UMM QASR, Iraq — It's hard to smile when there's no water. It's hard to applaud when you're frightened. It's hard to say, "Thank you for liberating me," when liberation has meant that looters have ransacked everything from the grain silos to the local school, where they even took away the blackboard.
Click to READ: Hold Your Applause.html

2003-04-09T05:03:00.000-07:00

Kevin Sites and the Blogging Controversy
CNN war correspondent was told to shut down his popular site, touching off an ongoing debate on blogging as a legitimate form of journalism.
Are Weblogs one more tool in the arsenal used by online journalists to report the news? Or does a blog’s typically individualistic voice and unfiltered attitude place it outside the journalist’s palette ? These rhetorical questions have exploded into a raging debate among online journalism watchers following CNN’s decision to force war correspondent Kevin Sites to stop posting items to the popular blog he created while on assignment in northern Iraq. Click Here to Read Article

2003-04-08T21:16:00.000-07:00

Journalists Killed In IRAQ
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) has issued a statement
criticizing both sides in the war for the death of journalists. They are
also calling for an inquiry. You can read the statement here .

To date 12 reporters have died covering the war and two are missing.
MEDIA DEATHS IN IRAQ

8 April: Jose Couso (Telecinco, Spain)
8 April: Taras Protsyuk (Reuters, UK)
8 April: Tareq Ayoub (al-Jazeera, Qatar)
7 April: Christian Liebig (Focus, Germany)
7 April: Julio Anguita Parrado (El Mundo, Spain)
6 April: David Bloom (NBC, US)
6 April: Kamaran Abdurazaq Muhamed (BBC, UK)
4 April: Michael Kelly (Washington Post, US)
2 April: Kaveh Golestan (BBC, UK)
30 March: Gaby Rado (ITN, UK)
22 March: Paul Moran (ABC, Australia)
22 March: Terry Lloyd (ITN, UK)

The U.S. also comes under fire today from Reporters Without Borders , which
has issued a statement accusing the US military of deliberately firing at
journalists. Reporters Without Borders called today on US defense secretary
Donald Rumsfeld to provide evidence that the offices of the pan-Arab TV
station Al-Jazeera and the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad were not deliberately
fired at by US forces earlier in the day in attacks that killed three
journalists.

"We are appalled at what happened because it was known that both places
contained journalists," said the organisation's secretary-general Robert
Ménard. "Film shot by the French TV station France 3 and descriptions by
journalists show the neighbourhood was very quiet at that hour and that the
US tank crew took their time, waiting for a couple of minutes and adjusting
its gun before opening fire."

12:51 PM

2003-04-08T06:25:00.000-07:00

Taliban Reviving Structure in Afghanistan
Mon Apr 7,12:06 PM ET - By KATHY GANNON, Associated Press Writer
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan - Before executing the International Red Cross worker, the Taliban gunmen made a satellite telephone call to their superior for instructions: Kill him?
CLICK HERE: READ ARTICLE

2003-04-07T19:27:00.000-07:00

You Say You Want a Revolution…
To spark a political change in America, we need to trade fear and anger for creativity and connection
—By Jon Spayde , Utne magazine - March / April 2003 Issue
Read Article

2003-04-07T17:46:00.000-07:00

War Highlights Rifts Among Democrats
Antiwar Faction Poses a Dilemma for Those Seeking to Unseat Bush in 2004
By Dan Balz /Washington Post Staff Writer /Sunday, April 6, 2003;
CLICK FOR STORY

2003-04-07T15:13:00.000-07:00

Oakland Protesters block arms shipments

Police violence shocks activists, others at Port of Oakland protest An anti-war demonstration at the Port of Oakland turned violent early Monday when Oakland Police opened fire with wooden dowels, ``sting balls,'' concussion grendades, tear gas and other non-lethal weapons when protesters at the gates of two shipping lines refused an order to disperse. An anti-war demonstration at the Port of Oakland turned violent early Monday when Oakland Police opened fire with wooden dowels, "sting balls,'' concussion grendades, tear gas and other non-lethal weapons when protesters at the gates of two shipping lines refused an order to disperse.

READ FULL TEXT: Mercury News

2003-04-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

(CBS) A weekly commentary by CBS News Correspondent Andy Rooney. I've lived a long while now and I don't remember any more unpleasant times than these. I'm not even interested in reading the sports pages. I hate everything about this war except that we're winning it. You can't even be critical, either, without sounding unpatriotic. It's why Peter Arnett got fired by NBC for speaking on Iraqi television. I'm patriotic but I wish our government would stop treating this war as if they had to sell it to us with slick advertising slogans.

The White House Web site puts out a bulletin about the war with this headline: OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM.

Come on, all we want is the news, not a sales pitch. They called our bombing campaign against Baghdad "Shock and Awe."

After the UN refused to approve the war, our government put together a list of countries it said supported us. They called it a "coalition of the willing." The generals don't talk about American soldiers. It's always "coalition forces."
It's as if there were no Americans there. Reporters have been sucked into it, too.

The word makes it sound as though we're just a few countries short of having the whole world on our side, and that isn't true. Most of the world is against us. The Administration says 49 countries are part of the coalition. I see that Eritrea, Uganda and Iceland are on our side.

The fact is, though, we're in this thing with the British, who have 45,000 soldiers there, and the Australians, who have 2,000. That's it. The other 46 wish us well or let us fly bombers over their country. Big deal.

We've practically bribed some of them. We offered Turkey $15 billion to let our troops go through there but they refused. President Bush won't be sending the president of Turkey anything for his birthday this year.

There aren't any good wars, but this one is especially bad. We want to win it quickly without more death but we're grown-up people, too. The President, Rumsfeld and the generals ought to stop treating us like children. Tell us the truth. We can take it even when it's bad.

And the only real good news will be when this terrible time in American history is over.

2003-04-06T14:31:00.000-07:00

A poem.

Plunging the innocents into the depths of hell,
A war for their freedom is what we tell,
Sending in men to kill their brothers,
Ignoring the children and the weeping mothers,
With our weapons and machines that fly,
But only seem to drop out the sky,
While some men pray just to keep their life,
Others openly welcome the strife,
It's pretty easy to support this war,
If you never leave your own front door.
How can I be proud of this spoiled country?
While Mr. Dubya sits on daddy's knee?
By Max R., age 13

2003-04-06T14:09:00.000-07:00

Neocons' espouse preemption policy
By DAVID BALLINGRUD, Times Staff Writer
St. Petersburg Times, April 6, 2003

With the resignation of Pentagon adviser Richard Perle a few days ago, the Bush administration lost one of its most visible, most vocal spokesmen not only for the war in Iraq, but for similar preemptive actions elsewhere in the world.
CLICK FOR FULL TEXT

2003-04-06T12:31:00.000-07:00

Our Man in Turkey
audio report
FROM TURKEY: MICHAEL GREENSPAN REPORTS

2003-04-05T16:07:00.000-08:00

Professors Protest as Students Debate
By KATE ZERNIKE, THE NEW YORK TIMES

AMHERST, Mass., April 4 "It is not easy being an old lefty on campus in this war"

At the University of Wisconsin at Madison, awash in antiwar protests in the Vietnam era, a columnist for a student newspaper took a professor to task for canceling classes to protest the war in Iraq, saying the university should reprimand her and refund tuition for the missed periods.

Click here for NY Times Article

2003-04-05T10:41:00.000-08:00

FROM THE BOARDS:
Re: Should we attack Iraq? [re: Why Attack? ]
No killing is not an answer. It only destroys more life. Life is of great value. It is all about drugs and money and power. I was in america. I am an american. I am very disturbed at what I have seen and heard. Even right here on these pages their is hate and death. Can no one here see that IT IS ALL ABOUT DRUGS AND POWER AND MONEY? How many really believe that these people could walk in and do all that they did to destroy human life in the U.S. without anybody even knowing what they were planning. Come on. Do you really think that it wasn't all planned out. Who really did this is what I want to know. Going after Ben Ladin? I am not really convinced that he did this. If he did, do you really think that they would not have found him by now. There are a lot of things that don't add up.
Click to Join the discussion

2003-04-05T10:10:00.000-08:00

Breaking Protocols
Saddam's suicide bombers aren't terrorists.

When Iraqi soldiers dress in civilian clothes and set off bombs at U.S. military checkpoints, or when they pretend to surrender and then pull out rifles and fire at U.S. troops, are they committing acts of "terrorism"?
Bush administration officials have invoked the word. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer recounted such incidents, then said, "We're really dealing with elements of terrorism inside Iraq that are being employed now against our troops." It is no mere matter of semantics to point out that these attacks, whatever else one might call them, have nothing to do with terrorism. Many definitions of that word are floating around, but they all agree that terrorism involves an attack on civilians or private property, not on soldiers or military installations.

Click Here for Article

2003-04-05T10:08:00.000-08:00

Al Jazeera
It's just as fair as CNN.
By Chris Suellentrop
Posted Wednesday, April 2, 2003, at 4:37 PM PT

If you doubt that Al Jazeera is the clear winner of the Iraq war so far (other than U.S. forces), check out the most recent Lycos 50 , a tally of the most-searched-for words and phrases on the Lycos search engine. The 24-hour Arabic-language TV news network rocketed to the top of the list for last week, outpacing Web standbys such as KaZaA and Pamela Anderson, not to mention hot topics of the moment such as POWs and the Dixie Chicks.

Click Here to Read Article

2003-04-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

WHAT TV CAN SHOW
By ADAM BUCKMAN

April 4, 2003 -- THE networks have been grappling with the question of what to show or not to show ever since the Iraqi war began. But with ground fighting looming in and around Baghdad, concerns over how far to go in depicting this new phase of fierce fighting are a hot topic of conversation in network newsrooms.

But they also say they have no desire to air such material anyway out of sensitivity to viewers and the families of servicemen and women. The problem is: When a battle is raging, how do you keep images of death from going out over the air?

CLICK TO READ FULL TEXT

2003-04-04T09:23:00.000-08:00

(SanJose) A 20-year-old gay Marine Corps reservist is seeking conscientious objector status. Lance Cpl. Stephen Funk turned himself in to military authorities in San Jose today. Outside the Marine Corps reserve center Funk told a small crowd of supporters that all wars are immoral.
Click Here for Article

2003-04-03T11:37:00.000-08:00

FACTBOX-List of Casualties in Iraq War
Thu April 3, 2003 02:06 PM ET
LONDON (Reuters) - Following are details of recent casualties in the Iraq war as announced by U.S., British and Iraqi authorities or independently confirmed by Reuters correspondents:

U.S. AND BRITISH MILITARY CASUALTIES -- 55 U.S. killed and 12 missing; possible further seven killed in helicopter crash. -- 27 British killed.

IRAQI CASUALTIES
-- Iraqi military -- no reliable figures. -- Iraqi civilians (Iraqi estimates) -- At least 1,250 killed.

2003-04-02T21:06:00.000-08:00

Fox News, MSNBC Scrap Over Arnett
Wed April 2, 2003 10:18 PM ET
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) - Fox News Channel and MSNBC tussled in a war of words Wednesday over a Fox promo spot that referred to former NBC News/MSNBC contributor Peter Arnett's appearance on Iraqi TV.

Click Here for Reuters Story

2003-04-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

Our View: Chalking-free speech essential on campus

In recent weeks, USM students have taken to the streets to make their voices heard. From the march on Kennard-Washington to commemorate black history month to the Take Back the Night rally this past week, and every pro and anti war protest in between, USM students have freely expressed their rights to freely express themselves.

CLICK HERE TO READ

2003-04-02T12:29:00.000-08:00

New Video from NYC March
CLICK HERE: New York 3/22 Video

2003-04-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

Why Arnett's work is worthy putting in context
CLICK HERE: Arnett Baghdad

2003-04-02T09:48:00.000-08:00

What a Girl Wants is to avoid making a political statement.
LOS ANGELES (AP)
Print advertisements for the teen comedy originally featured a photograph of star Amanda Bynes wearing a tank top with an American flag on it and flashing the peace sign with her fingers as she stands between two British royal guards.
CLICK HERE: Warner doesn't want to get political

2003-04-02T06:17:00.000-08:00

DIXIE CHICKS ARE SCARED
NYPost /Page 6
THE Dixie Chicks say they're in danger of bodily harm from folks who are taking their anti-Bush statements a little too personally. The country trio - who got in hot water three weeks ago for telling a London concert audience they were "embarrassed" that George W. Bush is a fellow Texan - told Australian radio they've been receiving threats and some of their property had been vandalized. "We've gotten a lot of hate mail, a lot of threatening mail," Martie Maguire said Saturday after a gig in Sydney. " Emily [Robison ] had the front gate of her ranch smashed in. We have to have security when we get back to the states. It puts my well-being in jeopardy." Even after seeing Dixie Chicks albums banned from radio playlists, Natalie Maines says she's still shocked at the amount of press her tantrum received, reports Sydney journo David J. Baird . "What is wrong with the world when what the Dixie Chicks say is more important than the war? Why does anyone care what we think?" The backlash has left Maguire with "a combination of emotions. Either I want to speak out more or I'm scared to say anything."

2003-04-01T16:37:00.000-08:00

According to Joshua Marshall writing in the Washington Monthly, we should be keeping an eye out for a shift in war rhetoric to include Syria as a possible next target/threat. Rumsfeld's comments Friday start to push in this direction. According to Marshall, Iraq may be the first step in a broad and risky Middle East strategy CLICK HERE: Joshua Marshall writing in the Washington Monthly

FROM: Severo M. Ornstein

2003-04-01T16:34:00.000-08:00

Jay Rockefeller, of West Virginia, senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee:

"There is a possibility that the fabrication of these documents may be part of a larger deception campaign aimed at manipulating public opinion and foreign policy regarding Iraq." CLICK HERE: SEYMOUR M. HERSH

2003-04-01T14:28:00.000-08:00

audblog audio post

2003-04-01T10:45:00.000-08:00

MAKE THEM SALUTE, CRY, "GET COLD CHILLS"
FROM: Danny Schechter News Dissector

This music and marketing echoes the advice of radio consultants who are advising clients to go red white and blue all the way. Reports the Washington Post: "Now, apparently, is the time for all good radio and TV stations to come to the aid of their country's war. That is the message pushed by broadcast news consultants, who've been advising news and talk stations across the nation to wave the flag and downplay protest against the war.

"Get the following production pieces in the studio NOW: . . . Patriotic music that makes you cry, salute, get cold chills! Go for the emotion," advised McVay Media, a Cleveland-based consultant, in a "War Manual" memo to its station clients. ". . . Air the National Anthem at a specified time each day as long as the USA is at war."

"The company, which describes itself as the largest radio consultant in the world, also has been counseling talk show stations to "Make sure your hosts aren't 'over the top.' Polarizing discussions are shaky ground. This is not
the time to take cheap shots to get reaction . . . not when our young men and women are 'in harm's way.'" Translation: Keep anti-war voices off the air.

2003-04-01T08:20:00.000-08:00

audblog audio post

2003-04-01T06:47:00.000-08:00

Speaking With the Enemy
By WALTER CRONKITE

Under the Constitution, giving "aid and comfort" to a wartime enemy can lead to a charge of treason. So far as I know no one has yet suggested that Peter Arnett be charged with that capital offense. But it seems that Mr. Arnett hangs by a rope of his own weaving.

CLICK HERE: NYTimes OPED

2003-03-31T08:45:00.001-08:00

Analysis: Advisers Split as War Unfolds
One Faction Hopes Bush Notes 'Bum Advice' .

The first 11 days of the war have brought back with a vengeance the deep splits that have long existed within the Bush administration and the Republican Party over policy toward Iraq.

CLICK HERE: Washington Post Ariticle

2003-03-30T18:03:00.000-08:00

audblog audio post

2003-03-30T17:32:00.000-08:00

On 3/30/03 8:35 PM, from Jerry:
"You know the world is going crazy when the best rapper is a white guy, the best golfer is a black guy, The Swiss hold the America's Cup, France is
accusing the US of arrogance, and Germany doesn't want to go to war."

2003-03-30T17:25:00.000-08:00

audblog audio post

2003-03-30T15:04:00.000-08:00

Free-speech fans petition on behalf of Dixie Chicks
By RANDY LEWIS Los Angeles Times
March 27, 2003

Fans of the Dixie Chicks have started a freedom-of-speech petition seeking support for lead singer Natalie Maines after the South Carolina Legislature
last week adopted a resolution requesting an apology and a free concert for military families when the trio opens its U.S. tour in Greenville, S.C., in
May. State Rep. Catherine Ceips said she introduced the resolution because military personnel from the state were offended by Maines' comment that she was "ashamed" that President Bush is from Texas.

2003-03-30T14:21:00.000-08:00

Attack on Colleges' Aid to Minorities Widens
By GREG WINTER

As the Supreme Court prepares itself to tackle affirmative action in university admissions this week, a new offensive is well under way against scholarships and summer programs intended to ease minority students into college life.

The Center for Equal Opportunity and the American Civil Rights Institute, two groups that oppose affirmative action, have threatened to file federal complaints against about 30 universities, contending that their reliance on race to determine eligibility for certain awards and academic enrichment programs violates civil rights law. The groups are also backing the case against the University of Michigan's admissions policies before the Supreme Court.

In the weeks since the letters have gone out, at least five universities have agreed to open their programs to white students or possibly cancel them. They are the University of Virginia, Iowa State University, the University of Delaware, Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the first to be challenged by the two groups and the only one under review by the Department of Education.

Another university put on notice, the Virginia Polytechnic Institute, unexpectedly eliminated virtually all its affirmative action policies this month under separate pressure from the state attorney general's office, but, after an outcry from students, faculty members and administrators that was swift and vociferous, its board has agreed to reconsider.

The challenge to minority scholarships and summer programs, often intended to encourage students who might otherwise not go to college, represents the widening of a separate but no less ideologically charged front in the fight over affirmative action.

Unlike Michigan's admissions policy, which considers race as one of many factors in reviewing applicants, many scholarships and enrichment programs serve minorities exclusively, often helping only a handful of students.

Though the value of such programs is not in dispute, their racial exclusivity creates what the two anti-affirmative action groups call "ill feelings, racial polarization and a general fraying of the fabric that holds our multiracial society together."

Edward Blum, legal director of the American Civil Rights Institute, said: "We're not out to kill these programs. What we're out to do is expand them to everyone." The institute's chairman, Ward Connerly, led the 1996 ballot initiative to ban affirmative action in California's government-sponsored programs.

Some colleges contend that their programs are not only consistent with federal law but essential to creating campuses in which minorities are not grossly underrepresented.

As federal figures show, more than 28 percent of whites over the age of 25 have completed at least four years of college, while fewer than 17 percent of blacks and 11 percent of Latinos have. Without taking steps to rectify that imbalance, the universities argue, parity may never come.

"This a core principle for us," said Marvin Krislov, general counsel for the University of Michigan.

Such programs often explicitly bar white students, making them "extremely difficult to defend" in court, the Department of Education says.

"It's unfortunate that the universities are caving in like this instead of defending what they believe in," said Angelo N. Ancheta, legal director for the Civil Rights Project at Harvard. "It would be one thing if the Supreme Court came out with a ruling that said `Your policy is unconstitutional.' But until that happens, why would you abandon it?"

The answer is simple, the anti-affirmative-action groups say: They have no intention of waiting to see what light, if any, the Supreme Court's ruling on admissions will shed on these auxiliary programs. Their complaints will be filed in weeks, not months.

"It was not necessary to take the legal risk we were taking," Paul Tanaka, university counsel at Iowa State, said, explaining why his school had opened a summer internship program to white students. "We have to face the fact that the direction of the courts has been very much against the consideration of race at all."

2003-03-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

Thousands in Boston Demand End of War
By FOX BUTTERFIELD - The New York Times

BOSTON, March 29 — About 25,000 people held a peaceful protest march through downtown Boston today in what organizers said was the largest antiwar march here since Vietnam.

The march snarled traffic for hours this afternoon in the fashionable Back Bay section of the city, as the police cordoned off streets to cars. At one point, the protesters laid down on Boylston Street for 10 minutes to symbolize people being killed in Iraq.

The marchers were orderly and there were no immediate reports of arrests, said David Estrada, a spokesman for the Boston Police Department.

One reason for the lack of arrests may have been that at the direction of Paul Evans, the city's police commissioner, hundreds of police officers walked beside the protest marchers, and when there were chance confrontations with other people shouting support for American troops in Iraq, the police swiftly stepped between the rival groups.

The antiwar marchers came from as far away as Connecticut, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, though many of them were students or professors at the numerous colleges and universities that provide an important part of Boston's culture and economy.

Typical of these marchers was Phyllis Freeman, a 54-year-old professor of public health at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "Even if the president isn't listening, we want people in other countries to know we don't agree with what our president is doing," Professor Freeman said.

There was also a large number of older people and children marching with their parents.

Mary Delavalette, a 67-year-old retiree from Peabody, a suburb north of Boston, said: "I'm ashamed to be an American. This is an illegal, immoral war. It's for evil, for empire."

Janet O'Connor, 68, from Worcester, said this was the first protest march she had ever joined. "I'm a pacifist," Ms. O'Connor said. "I don't believe in war. War is not the answer."

She came today because "I decided it was time to act upon my words and preach peace," Ms. O'Connor said. She was with her daughter, Cara O'Connor, 30, of Portsmouth, N.H.

"This is not the United States I want to be associated with," Cara O'Connor said. "I want us to be a peaceful, caring nation. We do so many wonderful things in this world, and they are overshadowed by war."

The march was organized by a group, United for Justice with Peace, that said it was discouraging any acts of civil disobedience or violence.

Hundreds of the marchers chanted or banged on drums. One placard read: "Why not bomb Texas? They have oil too."

Another read, "Bush is killing our country."

A police helicopter flew overhead during the four-hour march, which began and ended on the Boston Common.

On the edge of Beacon Hill, Norma Jones, a resident, was standing guard outside her brownstone to protect it from marchers who tried to sit on her stoop.

The march was "disgusting," Ms. Jones said.

"This is a terrible thing that we let them take over our streets while our boys are overseas," Ms. Jones said.

"Why don't they go over there and try to live?" she asked. "To me it's a slam against our country. Why can't they support our country and our president?"

2003-03-30T10:23:00.000-08:00

"What will this nation be in years to come?"
A historian foresees a United States that crushes opposition around the world and tolerates little dissent at home.

- - - - - - - - - - - -
By Andrew O'Hehir
March 24, 2003 | The president of the United States has just begun a military campaign of questionable legality against a nation that has not attacked us in any direct or obvious manner. A young Illinois congressman introduces a censure measure in the House of Representatives while the war is still in progress, arguing that the president's justification for war is "from beginning to end the sheerest deception." The president, this young congressman argues, would have "gone further with his proof if it had not been for the small matter that the truth would not permit him."

Challenging the commander-in-chief directly, the resolution continues: "Let him answer fully, fairly and candidly. Let him answer with facts and not with arguments ... Let him attempt no evasion, no equivocation."

The year, needless to say, is not 2003 and the war in question does not involve Iraq. The resolution was introduced in 1848 to challenge President James K. Polk's handling of the Mexican-American War, and the young Illinois congressman was named Abraham Lincoln. This example was brought to the public's attention recently by Stanley I. Kutler, a professor of history and law at the University of Wisconsin, in an angry opinion article published in the Chicago Tribune on March 19 and subsequently disseminated far and wide via the Internet.

In his article, Kutler bemoans the "passivity" and "sense of powerlessness" he sees everywhere in American life. "The freedom and diversity we so cherish for others is strikingly lacking in our public discourse," he argues, challenging his readers not to forget the "traditions of challenge and dissent" represented by Lincoln's scathing wartime denunciation of Polk.

To be sure, there is some genuine dissent to be found in America, even once the bombs started falling. A great deal of it has been in the streets of New York, San Francisco, Chicago and other major liberal-leaning cities, but some has even surfaced in Washington. Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va. and former President Jimmy Carter have spoken out openly against President Bush's campaign against Iraq. On Thursday, a group of six dissenting congressional Democrats, including Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., and presidential candidate Rep. Dennis Kucinich, D-Ohio, held a press conference to express their opposition to the Iraq war, at least until a representative of the House Democratic leadership reportedly tried to squelch them.

Those who tried and failed to stop the war against Iraq, whether in the streets or in the halls of Congress, may well be feeling dispirited and depressed in the face of the Pentagon's "Shock and Awe" campaign and the propagandistic, wall-to-wall war coverage of the major news networks. But when Salon reached Kutler at his home in Verona, Wis., he argued that the antiwar campaign could be viewed as the beginning of a struggle and not its end. The author of "The Wars of Watergate: The Last Crisis of Richard Nixon" (1990) and editor of "Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes" (1997) points out that the Iraq war is not likely to last long. While many commentators on both the left and right have begun to discuss the future of that troubled nation, post-Saddam, Kutler is more interested in the future of the United States.

In your Chicago Tribune article, you point out that many people have criticized sitting presidents during wartime, from the Mexican-American War to the Civil War and both world wars. Why do we see so little of that in the public discourse today?

Well, in days gone by, meaning the 1960s, we used to say he who controls the mimeograph controls the revolution. Now, the government controls the microphone and the camera.

I was in my car on Thursday, when all this was beginning, listening to Ari Fleischer on the radio. Listen, Josef Goebbels would have been proud of him! He talks about the coalition of the willing, when perhaps a better term would be the coalition of the coerced. He talked about the 45 nations or whatever it is, whose populations include X number of people and who represent Z trillion dollars in gross national product. I mean, what the hell is that about? It's utterly meaningless and irrelevant.

Basically, the media has not served us well in this crisis. It has been very, very passive. Essentially, they were eager to get this supreme television production and now they've got it, they're busy producing it.

So what lies ahead?

This war will be over in days, if not hours. How could anybody have doubted that? Now come the hard questions that we have to grapple with. First, of course is the question of what we do about Iraq. Second, and maybe more important, what are we going to do about us?

Meaning the United States and its international posture?

Yes. I mean, if we're going to go after every country with weapons of mass destruction, does that mean [Defense Policy Board chairman] Richard Perle gets to have his war with the Chinese now? Are we going to get rid of the Russians at long last? What about the French? I tell you what, Tony Blair better not look at us funny, or he's on the list too. I'm serious about this: Is Richard Perle going to run our lives now?

Fleischer had to remind reporters at a White House press conference that Perle doesn't actually work for the government in any official, paid capacity.

I'll bet he said all that with a straight face. Nixon at least did us the favor of perspiring on his upper lip when he lied. Fleischer is a hoot. As for Richard Perle, did you see the story about him today [March 21] in the New York Times? Perle is getting paid $725,000 to advise [the telecommunications firm] Global Crossing, and we're supposed to believe he's not peddling his influence with Donald Rumsfeld. In any other country, that would be a major scandal.

He also reportedly addressed a Goldman Sachs conference about how to make money off the war. The media is beginning to pay attention to him, certainly, in the wake of the Seymour Hersh piece in the New Yorker, which provoked Perle to call Hersh a "terrorist." Why isn't that a bigger story than it is?

The media can only do one story at a time. I don't know why. I mean, they all went to college and took at least four classes at the same time.

Let's get back to what you said was now the central question. Are you saying that what happens in Iraq is less important than what happens here at home?

I'm saying there are two questions: What are we going to do about Iraq? And what are we going to do about ourselves, the United States? Are we really in a new world order, where the United States can look around the world and say, "OK, you be evil, you be gone." Maybe we are, I don't know.

But the central question, I think, is what this nation will be in years to come. Saddam Hussein is a gnat, a pimple on the elephant's ass. He doesn't matter. Ants cannot defeat elephants.

But when things quiet down, after this war is over, you and the other people in the media should draw a road map explaining how we got here -- how we got from Sept. 11, 2001, to a United Nations resolution aimed at disarming Iraq that passed 15-0, to a point where no more than four members of the Security Council were willing to go to war.

I mean, I remember that after Sept. 11, President Bush promised us a "long twilight struggle" against terrorism, a war conducted in the shadows. That's a war, by the way, that the French and Germans have been very busy with. There was a recent article in the Wall Street Journal, oddly enough, commending them for their work in that area.

You're suggesting that the government is working through propaganda, essentially through lies. And you've already compared Ari Fleischer to Goebbels. What kind of a state is the United States turning into, in your view? What historical parallels suggest themselves?

I'm not going to answer that. I just refuse to do that. You can't study history by analogy. I tell my students you can study law by analogy, but not history.

You mean that every situation is different. OK, then without recourse to analogy. What kind of state is the U.S. becoming?

Well, we have an administration that says this is how we're going to protect the United States: We're going to engage in preemptive war, which is certainly against our tradition. We have unelected leaders like Richard Perle saying that the U.N. is dead and thank God it's dead. If you're not with us, you're against us. We have a Congress debating what it foolishly calls partial-birth abortion and changing the name of French fries to freedom fries. What is that?

We have made it clear we will brook no disagreement or dissension. We are no longer in a world of equals. Might is right and don't tread on me. That's what we're saying.

So you view this U.S. administration as dangerous to the rest of the world?

Well, their ideas are expressing contempt for rest of the world, and they are menacing the rest of the world. That speaks for itself, I think.

So you think the question now for people on the left, people who did not support the war ...

Never mind the left. Why are you asking me about the left?

Our standing in the world, and our behavior in the world to come, is really the question now. The question is what kind of opposition do we have, and what it's opposed to.

The line right now is that you can't criticize the president because we're under attack. I had a reporter from Newsweek call me for a comment about some protesters who vomited on the steps of City Hall in San Francisco. Why would you want to print that? They only wanted to print that in order to mock the protest movement, by paying attention to some asshole who's going to do that. In my day we called that "left infantilism."

What we need now is an opposition not just to this war but to this entire policy, this entire approach to the world. And I think there are people in both parties who are dubious about this whole range of issues. Sen. Chuck Hagel [R-Neb.] actually learned something from Vietnam. Sen. Charles Grassley [R-Iowa], I think, is pretty skeptical about this whole thing.

Hell, you can't rely on the Democratic Party. That's a joke.

2003-03-30T10:20:00.000-08:00

audblog audio post

2003-03-30T10:14:00.000-08:00

Delusions of Power
March 28, 2003
By PAUL KRUGMAN, New York Times

They considered themselves tough-minded realists, and
regarded doubters as fuzzy-minded whiners. They silenced
those who questioned their premises, even though the
skeptics included many of the government's own analysts.
They were supremely confident - and yet with shocking speed
everything they had said was proved awesomely wrong.

No, I'm not talking about the war; I'm talking about the
energy task force that Dick Cheney led back in 2001. Yet
there are some disturbing parallels. Right now, pundits are
wondering how Mr. Cheney - who confidently predicted that
our soldiers would be "greeted as liberators" - could have
been so mistaken. But a devastating new report on the
California energy crisis reminds us that Mr. Cheney has
been equally confident, and equally wrong, about other
issues.

In spring 2001 the lights were going out all over
California. There were blackouts and brownouts, and the
price of electricity was soaring. The Cheney task force was
convened in the midst of that crisis. It concluded, in
brief, that the energy crisis was a long-term problem
caused by meddling bureaucrats and pesky environmentalists,
who weren't letting big companies do what needed to be
done. The solution? Scrap environmental rules, and give the
energy industry multibillion-dollar subsidies.

Along the way, Mr. Cheney sneeringly dismissed energy
conservation as a mere "sign of personal virtue" and
scorned California officials who called for price controls
and said the crisis was being exacerbated by market
manipulation. To be fair, Mr. Cheney's mocking attitude on
that last point was shared by almost everyone in politics
and the media - and yes, I am patting myself on the back
for getting it right.

For we now know that everything Mr. Cheney said was wrong.

In fact, the California energy crisis had nothing to do
with environmental restrictions, and a lot to do with
market manipulation. In 2001 the evidence for manipulation
was basically circumstantial. But now we have a new report
from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which until
now has discounted claims of market manipulation. No more:
the new report concludes that market manipulation was
pervasive, and offers a mountain of direct evidence,
including phone conversations, e-mail and memos. There's no
longer any doubt: California's power shortages were largely
artificial, created by energy companies to drive up prices
and profits.

Oh, and what ended the crisis? Key factors included energy
conservation and price controls. Meanwhile, what happened
to that long-term shortage of capacity, which required
scrapping environmental rules and providing lots of
corporate welfare? Within months after the Cheney report's
release, stock analysts were downgrading energy companies
because of a looming long-term-capacity glut.

In short, Mr. Cheney and his tough-minded realists were
blowing smoke: their report described a fantasy world that
bore no relation to reality. How did they get it so wrong?

One answer is that Mr. Cheney made sure that his task
force included only like-minded men: as far as we can tell,
he didn't consult with anyone except energy executives. So
the task force was subject to what military types call
"incestuous amplification," defined by Jane's Defense
Weekly as "a condition in warfare where one only listens to
those who are already in lock-step agreement, reinforcing
set beliefs and creating a situation ripe for
miscalculation."

Another answer is that Mr. Cheney basically drew his advice
about how to end the energy crisis from the very companies
creating the crisis, for fun and profit. But was he in on
the joke?

We may never know what really went on in the energy task
force since the Bush administration has gone to
extraordinary lengths to keep us from finding out. At first
the nonpartisan General Accounting Office, which is
supposed to act as an internal watchdog, seemed determined
to pursue the matter. But after the midterm election,
according to the newsletter The Hill, Congressional
Republicans approached the agency's head and threatened to
slash his budget unless he backed off.

And therein lies the broader moral. In the last two years
Mr. Cheney and other top officials have gotten it wrong
again and again - on energy, on the economy, on the budget.
But political muscle has insulated them from any adverse
consequences. So they, and the country, don't learn from
their mistakes - and the mistakes keep getting bigger.

2003-03-30T09:17:00.000-08:00

Mar 27, 2:26 PM EST
House Approves National Day of Prayer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The House passed a resolution Thursday calling for a national day of humility, prayer and fasting in a time of war and terrorism.

The resolution, passed 346-49, says Americans should use the day of prayer "to seek guidance from God to achieve a greater understanding of our own failings and to learn how we can do better in our everyday activities, and to gain resolve
in meeting the challenges that confront our nation."

Under the resolution, President Bush would issue a proclamation designating a specific day as a day of "humility, prayer and fasting."

White House spokeswoman Claire Buchan said officials there had not looked at the resolution but "the president believes that faith and prayer are important and frequently references the importance of praying for American troops and for
freedom around the world."

A similar resolution approved on March 17 said it was the sense of the Senate that that day should be a national day of prayer and fasting.

During Wednesday's House debate, some lawmakers expressed concern about the measure.

Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, a presidential hopeful and an opponent of the war in Iraq, said the resolution "may be seen by some as an attempt to inject religion into this war at a time when some of America's enemies
abroad are asserting that this indeed is a war about religion."

2003-03-30T09:14:00.000-08:00

Lawmakers charge White House with stifling anti-war dissent

WASHINGTON (AFP) - A small but increasingly vocal contingent of Democratic lawmakers opposed to the US-led invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) accused the White House of stifling dissent by those who oppose the war.

"What we're beginning to see is a concerted attempt to attack anyone who dissents," Congressman Sam Farr said at a press conference called Thursday by a handful of Democratic politicians who feel that the war against Iraq is misguided.

Even among legislators in the Republican party, "there are consequences to pay if you don't go all with the administration's leadership," Farr said, arguing that Republicans who voted against the White House budget proposals have been threatened with the loss of coveted committee seats.

"Where are we going? Healthy dissent is as American as apple pie," Farr said.

The California congressman added that he saw a certain irony in the alleged White House pressure tactics, noting "our troops are fighting for (Iraq) to be able to have freedom of speech."

Another Democrat, Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, said alleged efforts by US leaders to hush the voices of dissenters extend even to other countries traditionally allied with Washington, citing in particular Mexico and Canada.

"I think we are making a very dramatic mistake to isolate longstanding allies on the basis of their sovereign decisions not to proceed in a coalition on the war in Iraq," she said.

With respect to street demonstrations in this country, Jackson Lee said: "We are doing a great disservice by maligning and disrespecting and accusing protesters of being filled with communist ideas."

Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich of Ohio, who has said he will run for the White House in 2004, organized the press conference, is a longstanding opponent to the war which he described to reporters as "unjustified."