Back to newsletter listDate:
Sun, October 07, 2007 11:02:37 PMFrom:
MediaChannel.org
Subject:
NEWS DISSECTOR: Right-Wing Launches Islamofacism Campaign To Stir Fear
NEWS DISSECTOR October 7, 2007
Right-Wing Launches Islamofacism Campaign To Stir Fear
ITS COLUMBIS DAY IN THE USA: IS IT TIME FOR CELEBRATION?
Yes, says the Ayn Rand Institute:"It is fitting that we have set aside a day to honor the Great Explorer. On one level, Columbus Day honors the man himself for his many virtues. Columbus was a man of independent mind, who steadfastly pursued his bold plan for a westward voyage to the Indies despite powerful opposition-a man of courage, who set sail upon a trackless ocean with no assurance that he would ever reach land-a man of pride, who sought recognition and reward for his achievements.
We need not evade or excuse Columbus's flaws-his religious zealotry, his enslavement and oppression of natives-to recognize that he made history by finding new territory for a civilization that would soon show mankind how to overcome the age-old scourges of slavery, war, and forced religious conversion.
Bah, humbug wrtes Edyega: sent by a Native American activist:
Even though Columbus never set foot in our country, we honor him with a holiday. But, there are seventeen states that do no celebrate it. WHY? Why are there always protestors at any event honoring Columbus? Why don't our public (or government) schools teach the truth about this man? The answer to that can only be that seventeen states know the truth about Columbus that the public schools don't teach and that is that Columbus was a land-stealing, slave-trading, murderer whose practices and policies set in motion of wave of genocide, colonialism and oppression against the indigenous peoples of the Americas that continues to this day.BURMA MILITARY LEAVES STREETS
DISCUSSING THE ISRAEL LOBBY
THREE BOOKS WORTH CONSIDERING
There were protests against repression in Burma this weekend in London and other capitals. Reuters reported Sunday Night that the Junta is now going low profile:
YANGON, Oct 7 (Reuters) - The Myanmar junta reduced security in Yangon sharply on Sunday, apparently confident it would face no further mass protests against military rule, but the streets remained unusually quiet and arrests continued.
The last barricades were removed from the centre of the former capital around the Shwedagon and Sule pagodas which were the starting and finishing points of protests soldiers crushed by firing into crowds and arresting monks and other demonstrators.
The few people on the streets said they were still fearful and the Internet, through which dramatic images of the protests and sweeping security force actions to end them reached an outraged world, remained cut off.
RECANTATION: Bush's Torturers Follow Where The Nazis Led
By Andrew Sullivan
I remember that my first response to the reports of abuse and torture at Guantanamo Bay was to accuse the accusers of exaggeration or deliberate deception. I didn't believe America would ever do those things. I'd also supported George W Bush in 2000, believed it necessary to give the president the benefit of the doubt in wartime, and knew Donald Rumsfeld as a friend.
Unmasking AIPAC
By William Cook
What does AIPAC's control of our Congress mean for the American people? Arguably, that influence propelled the U.S. into war against Iraq with its inevitable consequences in death, destruction and debt leaving the nation bereft of a resolution; it has solidified perception around the world that Israel's defiance of the UN resolutions demanding that it obey international law regarding right of return for Palestinians and return of occupied territory is not just condoned by the U.S. but is the policy of the U.S., making the United States a co-partner in international crime.
Judge reverses Guantanamo ruling
A judge Friday reversed his ruling that created new hurdles for some lawyers seeking to visit clients held prisoner at Guantanamo Bay.
Writer Milton Viorst On The Israel Lobby
EXPLORING OPTIONS FOR PEACE FROM PALESTINE-ISRAEL JOURNAL
Spotlight: "Promoting Peace through Dialogue" in Jordan
In June, we co-sponsored an international training seminar and conference in Amman, Jordan that brought together over 120 Israeli, Palestinian, Jordanian and international students, academics and civil society leaders, in an effort to debate the major issues facing the region and to develop a mandate for how to proceed toward peace. The conference included a two-week training seminar in negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution for Israeli, Palestinian and international students, and culminated in a three-day conference illuminating some of the problem areas we face in this (or any) conflict. The conference served to initiate dialogue regarding the development of an action plan that is both local and global. To learn more about the event, visit our website (www.pij.org) or the Global Majority website (www.globalmajority.com).
DAVID HOROWITZ AND WINGERS LAUNCH ISLAMOFACIST WEEK TO STIR FEAR AND BUILD SUPPORT FOR WAR ON IRAN
Aaron Hess reports:
"ISLAMOFASCISM Awareness Week" is designed, according to FrontPage, to "challenge most of what students are taught about the so-called War on Terror both in the classroom and on the quad."
In reality, Horowitz and friends Iincluding Ann Coulter) rely on standard right-wing myths and stereotypes-echoed by mainstream politicians and the media on a regular basis-to demonize Arabs and Muslims, and justify U.S. war atrocities in the Middle East, including a future attack on Iran, which is at the top of the Horowitz wish list.
A featured speaker on Horowitz's right-wing road show is the self-described "religious expert" Robert Spencer, author of the book Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't.
Spencer's book argues that the Koran is responsible for violence committed by Muslims against Western targets-but that "there is no justification for violent acts committed by Christians, either in the Christian Scriptures or the teaching of various Christian churches."
Really? What about the Crusades in the Middle Ages? The Spanish Inquisition? The genocide of Native Americans? The ongoing U.S. war on Iraq? All of these crimes were justified in their time by Christians-the Popes of the Catholic Church, Christopher Columbus, George W. Bush-who claimed to be doing "God's work."CHECK THIS SITE OUT FOR THE TONE TAKEN BY THE PATRIOT POLICE:
Here is a report from The Real News Network featuring an excellent reporter Pepe Escobar on the campaign against Iran
5 DEAD IN WISCONSIN: COP GOES NUTS
BIO LAB MISHAPS CONTINUE: LAB FINED FOR SHIPPING ANTHRAX
MOVEON CONTROVERSY REPORTING MISSES REAL STORY
ANOTHER DEATH IN POLICE CUSTODY IN PHOENIX
PERVASIVE MORTGAGE FRAUD IS THE PROBLEM
WORRIED ABOUT A DEPRESSION?
AFRICA: RWANDA JOINS PUSH FOR MORATORIUM ON EXECUTIONS
Rwanda has joined other countries in appealing for a global moratorium on executions, saying that if its government could abolish the death penalty while perpetrators of the 1994 genocide still await sentences, no country should use it. Diplomats and human right organisations met at the United Nations to push for a global moratorium on executions with the goal of ending the death penalty altogether.
GLOBAL: WORLD BANK WITH SERIOUS VIOLATIONS OF DEMOCRACY, HUMAN RIGHTS AND SOVEREIGNTY
In its preliminary findings, the first ever Independent People's Tribunal on the World Bank in India found that the Bank had an undue and disturbingly negative influence in shaping India's national policies disproportionate to its contribution, financial or otherwise. A four-day Independent People's Tribunal (IPT) on the World Bank found that the Bank's policies and projects in India have led to increased and needless human suffering since 1991, among hundreds of millions of India's poorest and most disadvantaged in rural and urban areas.
Dissector Forum: Letters and Books You Should Read
LETTER FROM NEW MEXICO: Bob Easton writes From Richardson country and the land of enchantment.
The big news in New Mexico for the last few days has been Pete Domenici's announcement that he will not seek another term in the Senate. I haven't noticed any mention of this in the online alternative media - have I just missed it? Domenici is a senator with 35 years under his belt. When the Republicans had control, he chaired the Energy and Natural Resources committee and the Budget committee. He's been a big Bush backer.
The implications of Domenici's departure will ripple through the state congressional delegation and likely into state government as well. Congresswoman Heather Wilson, another strong Bush supporter, who barely retained her congressional seat last year, has announced that she will run for his seat in the Senate. As an incumbent congresswoman, she's got the edge to win the Republican nomination. Who the Democrats will put up is a big question. Bill Richardson has said he won't run - he's concentrating on becoming our next president. (That's OK with me.) Northern New Mexico's congressman, Tom Udall, who retained his seat with around seventy percent of the vote is being talked about as one Democratic possibility. He'd be a great addition in the Senate, but some wonder if he's too far to the left for more conservative Albuquerque (Wilson's district) and the still more conservative southern congressional district. In any case, in the light of Domenici's failing popularity (low 30's approval rating), due in part to his attempted interference with former US Attorney David Iglesias' prosecutions and consequent involvement in his firing, the Democrats have an excellent chance of picking up another seat in the Senate.
Wilson barely squeaked by in '06 as an incumbent. In an open election, the Democrats will have a very strong chance of picking up her seat in the House as well. Udall's seat, should he run for Senate will surely remain in Democratic hands.
So, the Democrats now have a very good chance of picking up a seat in the Senate and another in the House, both of which have long been in Republican hands. How can this not be national news?
Maria-Threese Serana writes:
I'm sure you've heard about this "desperate housewives" episode hinting on Filipino med professionals as inferior.
Here's ABC's apology.
WRITER SAAB LOFTON ON THE STRUGGLE TO BE HEARD
MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THIS
Some years back, when I was in an Aids conference in South Africa, I met some HIV positive women from Uganda who had come up with the idea of memory books. Theirs were composed of photos, diaries, anectodes and family histories and meant for their children so they would never forget their parents who in many cases were already dying. I saw one of these "books"—that actually came in a box with memorabilia and was written with great care and much love,
Later. my brother Bill put together a memory book about our late Mother, the poet Ruth Lisa Schechter, to preserve and memorialize her many achievements, poems and thoughtful reminiscences. His book took this Africa idea in another direction, and brought it home to our family.
Fortunately, we still have small presses in America that will publish memoirs. My first book, the More You Watch The Less You Know published a decade ago by Seven Stories Press was a mediaograohy, an account of my experiences and reflections about working in, and then against, media companies.
Now there are three new books out that I want to tell you about, books that chronicle the experience of three men I consider colleagues and comrades who have now published accounts of their political experiences, journalistic adventures and movement work
The first is from Norman Solomon, whose work frequently appears on Mediachannel. Norman is prolific, pumping out pieces, books, and often appearing the media. His new book MADE LOVE, GOT WAR (PoliPoint Press) tells his story in the context of his reporting on the warfare state. He has reported from Iraq, traveled there with actor Sean Penn, His book is blurbed by Phil Donahue, Joe McConald of Country Joe and the Fish, and Josh Rushing the former Marine who became an AlJazeera correspondent,
I could identify and shared some of his experiences, but I found his thoughts bout memory itself most provocative. H is aware that mass media uses a synthetic form of media to actually induce amnesia about the larger meaning of events. He writes "What can be remembered can be buried. But is the reverse true? Memory excavation looks like a messy business. The writer Eduardo Galeano has commented that the greatest truth is the search for truth. Norman is an excellent reporter and wordsmith, passionate and committed—but he is also introspective. His book is focused on his concerns about war and has its introduction written by Pentagon Papers whistle blower Daniel Ellsberg.
The next memoir is from someone I know a bit better—Norman lives on the West Coast and I on the East—and that's Michael Allbert whose REMEMBERING TOMORROW (Seven Stories Press) has become #1 in my bathroom reading, a book I dip in and out of every day because I always discover something new about his journey from SDS—where we first met in Boston "back in the day" to the work he's done since on "Life After Capitalism." I can't tell you how much I admire his tenacity, nuanced analyses, low-key commitment to nourishing independent media and ability to fuse activist with strategic ideas on building social moevements and rethinking theory and practicel
Michael lives in Woods Hole, Mass with his partner and inventive running-mate Lydia Sargent He works closely with Noam Chomsky who calls his accomplishments "truly remarkable." You may not know Michael's name —he is an anti-celebrity at heart- but you may know The Z Magazine he co-founded and the website ZNET or heard about the school he runs for young activists. (I was happy to "teach" at it myself. I actually learn more there than I tought.)
Michael's book gets more personal than Norman's and is very candid and critical (and self-critical)in his assessment of his own problems with colleagues and other left magazines which tend to preach values they don't practice. Michael is far more than a critic—he applies his ideas in his work and uses his background to imagine other ways of organizing society and economic relatiosn. He has spelled out a vision of participatory economics and urges on live lives after capitalism. He is also one of the few left intellectuals I know with a giant TV screen (before they became fashionable) and a TIVO machine.
Michael is a bit frustrated about the book's distribution but his experiences are inspiring and thought -provoking because he is so down to earth, and common sensical about ideas that go beyond liberal reform and take us into the arena of personal and political transformation. I was part of some of the campaign he describes and he does them justice—but also asks important questions that we probably should have. Thank you Michael for sharing your story, pain, frustration and hopes.
Finally, the third book COMMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION (The New Press) is by Robert McChesney, a widely respected media historian and now the president of Free Press the media reform organization that he has built with Josh Silver, John Nichols and a team of activists. McChesney is a leading critic of media concentration and pretty soon colleges will be building libraries just to stockpile his detailed studies and thoughtful books There are many of them.
Bob does not suffer from academic arrogance. He hosts a media oriented radio show and speaks around the country. He is generous with his praise of other's work—and did write a preface for my first book and cites me in this one. (I also give him a plug and believe every word of it.
Yet I also learned things about him I didn't know—his proclivity for making lists, for one thing, and his long intellectual struggle inside universities with academics and experts who want to make communications studies, narrow, parochial and irrelevant.
In many ways, this book is an intellectual's biography in which he discusses the thinkers who influenced his thinking—and, bravely, does not exclude Karl Marx. His discussion of Marx's economic ideas worth reading if only because others ignore them or perhaps are afraid of confronting them.
In some ways his book is also a call to enlightenment and action for his colleagues and media students who wants to to see the role media plays in this world, and why it—and the academic discourse about it needs to be reformed.
These books should encourage us to explore the connection between the political and the personal. It is gutsy of these writers to stray from the objective to the subjective and share more about who they are, where they have come from and where they believe we should be going.
RE: 60 Minutes and Clarence Thomas
I feared I was alone in expressing disgust with their softball interview with Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas. (For "balance," this week they had Bruce Springsteen on. He's still the Boss to me. I did a similar story back in 85 on the song Born in the USA for 20/20. He was less accessible for an interview then but seems to need more marketing these days because the musiz biz has changed so much.) But happily Frank Rich tore into them in his column this past week.
CBS Sunday Morning did an adoring portrait of right-winner Lynne Cheney, yes HIS wife. One revelation, inorder to keep hubby Dicks interest back in High School, she had to buy a sexy dress. Mmmmmm.
BARLOW IN TOWN
I was one of the acolytes who celebrated the birthday of John Perry Barlow of Electronic Frontier Foundation fame on Saturday the Bungalow club in Chelsea. He's a rock star in his circles, and seems to have a party that moves with him wherevr he travels He told me about an exciting new new peer to peer LIVE TV system that's in development. He promised more info.
His presence attracted friends from around the world including a couple of Austria which I will be visiting again soon. They/he are distributing a fab concentrated energy drink described as "essence of Red Bull." Its called TAURIN concentrate imported from Thailand…Yum…Varooooom…..
Please keep your letters, and donations coming. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org
|
Make a tax-deductible donation today. You can send a check made out to our fiscal sponsor: or If you have ideas or suggestions, please write to Dissector@mediachannel.org REMEMBER: THE SITE YOU SAVE MAY BE YOUR OWN. Thank you! |
Spread The Word: Please forward this to interested friends and colleagues >>
----------------------------------------------
Become a Member | Send a News Tip | Subscribe to Other MC Emails | ***You are subscribed as ralrusu@gmail.com.
To modify your preferences, visit the subscription management page.
Concerned about the media? TELL A FRIEND!
© 2007 MediaChannel.org
