Reality TV

I was just rereading my responses to a survey I answered a few days ago. I said reality TV shows were "stupid." I'd like, for those of you here, to caveat that answer. I don't like the reality TV craze. I despise the return to popularity of the 80s and 90s symbol of capitalism run amuck--Donald Trump. I hate the roman circuses designed to distract the citizenry from the activities of Empire. In regards to Fear Factor and others, how can viewers take pleasure in watching the degredation and humiliation of their fellow human beings?

However, I think--in the words of Pacifica reporter Amy Goodman--when it comes to war, we could use a little reality. If we in America saw for just one week the images of war--widows with limbs sheared off and children blown up by cluster bombs, charred and burned bodies--we would abolish war. That kind reality TV, I would be ok with.

Women of Afghanistan

For a rather gut-wrentching accounting of what's the situation in Afghanistan is like today from a woman whose been there recently, go here. She includes photograhps of destroyed villages, children with typhoid in less than sanitary hospitals, and women protesting war.

Here's an exerpt from her account:

"Since returning from Afghanistan a few weeks ago, I am sickened everytime I open a newspaper. If there is any mention of Afghanistan at all, it is often a feel-good article focusing on superficial change. The media is completely missing the story on Afghanistan and its rampant warlordism, and the continuing political and social oppression of women, as well as continued health and educational problems. It's as if the media has deliberately chosen not to challenge the Bush administrations assertions of success in Afghanistan. It is job of the media to scratch below the surface and provide us with real facts. Instead, most major media have pulled their full time reporters from Afghanistan. This is a real injustice to the people of Afghanistan who were convinced that this time the world would not forget them."

Let's Not Go Nuclear

From UUA:

Religious Leaders Decry Attacks on Religious Liberty Inherent in Impending Senate 'Nuclear Option' Vote

(May 19, 2005) As the Senate begins debate on the nominations of Janice Rogers Brown and Pricilla Owen, a vote on the so-called nuclear option to cut off filibusters against judicial nominees is expected in the Senate in the next week. The leaders of many religious organizations have expressed deep concern over attacks on religious liberty which underly the legislative impasse which exists in the US Senate.

The Rev. William G. Sinkford, President of the Unitarian Universalist Association said in a statement issued last month , “No one religious group or political party can ever hold a monopoly on spiritual conviction,” said Rev. Sinkford. “In fact, political opinions vary widely even within particular faith communities. Within my own tradition, Unitarian Universalists experience diversity of opinion as a true blessing. Many different theological viewpoints are able to thrive within our congregations because we have agreed that we need not think alike to love alike.”

Sinkford continued, “To claim that minority-party senators and their supporters are acting ‘against people of faith’ because they wish to preserve the Senate filibuster is an affront to millions of devout Americans.”

“Senator Frist has crossed an important line in our American tradition,” concluded Rev. Sinkford. “The Constitution wisely ensures that there are no religious tests for political offices. While private groups, including churches, have a guaranteed right to speak out on social issues, a democracy's highest elected leaders must hold themselves accountable to all of ‘we, the people.' I believe that Senator Frist has a moral responsibility to declare unequivocally that the political views of the American people do not define the depth or quality of their faith. Our nation was founded on this inspired principle, and we imperil the precious freedoms of all our citizens when we cease to honor and protect the separation of church and state.”

The impasse in the Senate, and its wide-reaching implication for restricting diversity of opinion and religious beliefs from being heard and valued, provides an opportunity for Unitarian Univeralists to speak publicly on this issue.

For further information:
Action Alert from the UUA Washington Office for Advocacy - Download Action Alert Flyer
Talking Points for People of Faith from the Religious Action Center for Reform Judaism
Talking Points from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

Opinions:
Frist & Delay: Insulting Our Religions - And Outlawing Their Practice by Rabbi Arthur Waskow

Sermon:
"The Real Nuclear Option: Justice Sunday is Anything But" by Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Meadville/Lombard Theological School - Chicago, IL
Commentary in the media on the importance of maintaining Senate rules that permit the filibuster option from earthjustice.org

Correspondence:
UUA Letter Opposing Suppression of Filibusters (May 17)
UUA Letter Opposing Nomination of Judge Rogers Brown (May 18)
UUA Letter Opposing Nomination of Judge Owen (May 18)
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights from the African American Ministers in Action (May 10)
Letter to Sen. Frist and Sen. Reid from the African American Ministers in Action (May 6)
Press Release from the National Council of Churches (May 6)
Letter from Pennsylvania religious leaders to Sen. Arlen Specter (May 10)
Letter to Sens. Frist and Reid from 142 religious and civic organizations (April 12)

Additional Resources:
Petition from People For the American Way - available for signatures
Facts from Saveourcourts.org on the most controversial court nominees
Media Watch database on Saveourcourts.org with interactive map searching
Visit your senators this week alert

Write to your Senator today! (Sample Letter )
If you are a member of the clergy or lay leader interested in playing a key role in the fight to preserve the filibuster, please contact Megan Joiner in the UUA Washington Office for Advocacy at mjoiner@uua.org or (202) 296-4672, ext. 12."

Gitmo as Room 101

This post appeared in respected historian and blogger Juan Cole's Informed Comment. Posted by Juan @ 5/16/2005 06:25:00 AM


A reader with military experience in this area wrote me his own experience, with the Bible being trashed in a similar way. I was able to google this reader in such a way as to compare autobiographical statements and dates (stripped from the below) to the Web record, and they all check out. Even the history of attitudes, as revealed in letters to the editor, are confirmatory. So I'm sure of the authenticity of these comments:

"I'm a former US [military officer], and had the 'pleasure' of attending SERE school--Search, Evasion, Resistance, and Escape.

The course I attended . . . [had] a mock POW camp, where we had a chance to be prisoners for 2-3 days.

The camp is also used as a training tool for CI [counter-intelligence], interrogators, etc for those running the camp. One of the most memorable parts of the camp experience was when one of the camp leaders trashed a Bible on the ground, kicking it around, etc. It was a crushing blow, even though this was just a school.

I have no doubt the stories about trashing the Koran are true.I'm sure you must also realize that Gitmo must be being used as a "laboratory" for all these psychological manipulation techniques by the CI guys. Absolutely sickening . . .

1. My gut feeling tells me that the SERE camps were 'laboratories' and part of the training program for military counter-intelligence and interrogator personnel. I heard this anecdotally as far as the training goes, but have not dug into it. This is pretty much common sense.

2. Looking at Gitmo in the 'big picture', you have to wonder why it is still in operation though they know so many are innocent of major charges. A look through history at the various 'experimentation' programs of the DOD gives a ready answer. The camp provides a major opportunity to expose a population to various psychological control techniques. Look at some of the stuff that has become public, and this becomes even more apparent. Especially the sensory deprivation--not only sleep, but there are the photos of inmates in gas masks or sight/hearing/smell deprivation setups. There has already been voluminous research into sensory deprivation, and it seems this is another good opportunity for more. One note is that sensory deprivation is used to some degree in military basic training and to a greater sense in the advanced training courses--Rangers, SEALS, etc. All part of the 'breakdown' process before recruits are 'remade'.

3. This incident with the bible trashing. Camp was [in the late 1990s]. It was towards the end of the camp experience, which was 2-3 days of captivity. We were penned in concrete cell blocks about 4' x 4' x 4'--told to kneel, but allowed to squat or sit. There was no door, just a flap that could be let down if it was too cold outside (which it was--actually light snow fell). Each trainee was interrogated to some extent, all experienced some physical interrogation such as pushing, shoving, getting slammed against a wall (usually a large metal sheet set up so that it would not seriously injure trainees) with some actually water-boarded (not me).

The bible trashing was done by one of the top-ranked leaders of the camp, who was always giving us speeches--sort of 'making it real' so to speak, because it is a pretty contrived environment. But by the end it almost seemed real. Guards spoke English with a Russian accent, wore Russian-looking uniforms. So the bible trashing happened when this guy had us all in the courtyard sitting for one of his speeches. They were tempting us with a big pot of soup that was boiling--we were all starving from a few days of chow deprivation. He brought out the bible and started going off on it verbally--how it was worthless, we were forsaken by this God, etc. Then he threw it on the ground and kicked it around. It was definitely the climax of his speech. Then he kicked over the soup pot, and threw us back in the cells. Big climax. And psychologically it was crushing and heartbreaking, and then we were left isolated to contemplate this.

And all of these moods and thoughts were created in this fake camp--just imagine how it is for these guys at Gitmo. So many have tried to commit suicide....by now they all must have some serious psychological problems. This is without a doubt torture. Premeditated, planned....a fine lot of criminals we have in charge of the USA these days. Gitmo is so Orwellian--so Room 101. They are playing on the deepest feelings and fears."

This informed former officer has suggested the real reason for which some in the Pentagon are so angry about the Newsweek story. It may well so focus international outrage on Guantanamo that Rumsfeld will lose his little psych lab.

Amy Goodman's 'Empire'

Here is an article about the incredible Amy Goodman slated to appear in the upcoming article of The Nation. It opens with what Goodman was doing when the 9/11 attacks occurred and how the "war on terrorism" ushered in an unprecedented growth for her progressive-oriented show "Democracy Now!" From the measely 25 radio stations and internet broadcasting on 9/11/2001, Democracy Now! currently airs on over 330 Pacifica, NPR and community radio stations, cable access TV and PBS stations, and on DishTV and Direct TV satellite networks, and they do video and audio streaming on-line.

Here's the story.
Amy Goodman's 'Empire'
by LIZZY RATNER

[from the May 23, 2005 issue of The Nation]

Amy Goodman didn't know if anyone was listening.

It was the morning of September 11, 2001, and the host of the muckraking radio news program Democracy Now! was broadcasting from her studio in a converted firehouse just blocks from the World Trade Center. She was hunched over her microphone, intent on painting an audio portrait of the "horrific scene of explosions and fires," but the truth was she didn't know if anyone could hear her. The phone lines were dead or temporarily blocked, and she had already overshot her slated hourlong broadcast time. More serious, she had recently been banished from her professional home at Pacifica Radio after a hostile internal shake-up, and she was only being aired by twenty or so affiliate stations.

For the rest, click here.

U.S. Navy Places Fake Ads In Papers in Pursuit of New Recruits

From DefenseWatch: The U.S. Navy has pulled out all the stops to recruit hard-to-reach candidates using classified ads in newspapers across the country offering jobs as postal workers with "excellent pay & benefits" for high school graduates who respond to a toll-free "800" telephone number.

What has a number of critics seething is that the ads do not mention the Navy at all, or that the telephone number connects inquiries to a Navy recruiting team manning a nationwide telephone bank, a DefenseWatch inquiry has learned.

More on Newsweek

The media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) recently released it's statement and call to action on false reporting by Newsweek that cost lives: the printing of claims concerning WMD in Iraq.

FAIR recent action alert reads in part:

The inaccurate Newsweek report appeared in the magazine's March 17, 2003 issue, on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.

It read in part: "Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of 'the green mushroom' over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."

Newsweek has yet to retract this assertion that the US had to invade Iraq in order to prevent the "green mushroom." Let's be real here, Newsweek and virtually the whole of the mainstream media reported uncritically claims of the Bush Administration and those who supported the idea that force had to be used. These were the lies and omissions that paved the road for US troops into Iraq. We cannot retract the over 1600 American dead and the tens and possibily 100,000 Iraqi dead. But we can start to hold the US media accountable for having reported (no, served as stenographer) on bended-knee for President Bush.

The flushed Quran ought not even register on our radar screen, except in the context of investigating in along side the so many other claims of abuse by US soldiers. More evidence has emerged today in the New York Times concerning torture and murder of dentainees in Bagram Airbase in Afghanistan.

Fry Fish Not People

While in Washington, I got a shirt that says, "Fry Fish, Not People. Alaskans Against the Death Penalty." And it has a trout in the center. Love it.

Sorry to my vegetarian friends, but fish just don't carry the same weight as people, literally or metaphorically.

NCADP Conference is Coming...

Registration for the National Coailition to Abolish the Death Penalty's Annual Conference in Austin, Texas in October 2005 is now available.

Headlines, Halliburton and Shareholder Activism

From today's Democracy Now! Headlines:


16 Arrested At Halliburton Protest in Houston (my soon to be hometown!)

In Houston, police arrested at least 16 activists during a protest outside Halliburton's annual shareholder's meeting. Over 300 protesters gathered to protest what they view as Halliburton's war profiteering. Activists locked arms to block the entrance the meeting. Inside the meeting members of Code Pink confronted Halliburton CEO David Lesar. Police responded to the protests by riding horses into the crowd and tackling a number of activists in the street.

Here's a link to an article by CorpWatch's Pratap Chatterjee and Global Exchange's Medea Benjamin. Representatives from both their respective groups were present inside the Halliburton shareholders meeting. Global Exchange and CorpWatch "purchased shares in the company precisely to be able to attend the meeting" and raise questions that would have to be recorded, noted, and answered. The questions ranged from compensation for Dick Cheney ($195,000 last year alone) to illegal accounting practices.

One fascinating form of voicing dissent that has emrged over the last decade or so has been the practice of activists buying shares of stock in corporations for the purpose of gaining access to the annual shareholders meetings. There they can raise questions concerning unjust, illegal, and dangerous corporate practices, which must be recorded, noted, and answered. It was in this way that Pacifica reporter Amy Goodman got inside the Chevron shareholders meeting in April 1999 to confront its corporate executives over the practice of using the Nigerian police and paramilitary groups to shoot and remove indigenous protestors. She acted by proxy for a groups of religious Ursuline Sisters of Tildonk. Goodman asked Chevron CEO Ken Derr, "Have you ever asked for the Nigerian military not to shoot protestors...on your site...Will you officially demand it?" His response was, "No, it's ridiculous. Next question, please."

This exchange came the month after Paficia reproter Wendell Harper, a 20-year veteran in news reporting for station KPFA in Berkeley, California had been banned from covering a Chevron press conference with Senator Feinstein in San Francisco. Fred Gurrell of Chevron's Public Affairs office told KPFA station manager Nicole Sawaya, "Pacifica does not report news" and hung up on her.

All of this followed the initial September 1998 airing of the award-winning Democracy Now! documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship." The piece documents Chevron's role in the killing of two Nigerian activists. The San Francisco-based oil company helped facilitate an attack by the feared Nigerian Navy and notorious Mobile Police (MOPOL), also known as the "Kill and Go". In an interview with Democracy Now!, a company spokesperson acknowledged that on May 28, 1998, the company transported Nigerian soldiers to their Parabe oil platform and barge in the Niger Delta, which dozens of community activists had occupied. The protesters were demanding that Chevron contribute more to the development of the impoverished oil region where they live.

FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force Criticized For Questioning Activists

The FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force is coming under new scrutiny for a series of interviews it conducted ahead of last year's political conventions. Dozens of activists and antiwar protesters were questioned by local and federal authorities. At the time FBI officials and then-Attorney General John Ashcroft said that the interviews were based on indications that protesters may be planning violent disruptions. Authorities said one specific threat involved plans to blow up a media van in Boston. But now the FBI has begun releasing documents connected to the conventions and they tell a different story. According to the Washington Post, the new memos provide no indication of specific threat information. Instead, one heavily censored memo from the FBI's Denver field office, characterized the effort as "pretext interviews to gain general information concerning possible criminal activity at the upcoming political conventions and presidential election." Mark Silverstein, of the ACLU of Colorado, said "It's absolutely clear now that the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force -- the one right here in Denver -- is collecting information about peaceful political activity that has nothing to do with terrorism."

ACLU Seeks FBI Spy Files on Activist Groups & Individuals

Meanwhile the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts has requested the FBI hand over its spy files on several activist groups including the American Friends Service Committee, the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the International Action Committee. In addition the ACLU is seeing FBI records for 10 inviduals including Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky. The ACLU has alleged that all of the groups and individuals have been under FBI surveillance.

More from Media Reform Conference

One of the other concepts that was central in this past weekend's National Conference on Media Reform was the idea of media justice.

Media is framework that calls for organizing and debate with and within communities of color, women, GLBT, labor and other marginalized folks about how to use media to change society. It seeks to create a media system that increases justice. Media justice demands that people who care about forging a more just society also need to care about whether young people will become leaders for justice or soldiers for war, political forces or political prisoners, a generation of media masters or a generation without books and behind bars.

Media justice was the topic of Malkia Cyril spoke about in her comments during the opening plenary.

This framework seeks to surface the historical context of communications.

It sees media reform as crucial to traditionally marginalized groups (blacks, women, LGBT) because the struggle for a democratic media is often not just a struggle for the capacity to voice the concerns of a community, but is in fact a struggle for their lives.

Malkia Cyril spoke about the inadequate job done by those who have traditionally done media reform work in dealing with the question about what a free press is and how to garuntee it.

Cyril discussed how media justice challenges biased media coverage that ignore context. She said, "What remains both invisible and undeniable in the debate about US media is the colonial context of its birth." While Jefferson, Adams and Founding Fathers Inc. were articulating so eloquently their notion of a free press that would critique those in power and those would thirst after consolidated rule, they also were designing ways to maintian and protect a capitalist system dependent on slavery and white supremacist structures, which would inform media policy and practices for centuries.

She then posits that by using race, class and gender lens to examine the US media system, we can dispell 3 dangerous myths:

1 That the US once had a more democratic media and that over time it has become less so. For so many, there never has been a free and democratic press and there never will be until there is gender, economic and racial justice.

2 That communication rights are inidividual civil rights garunteed by citizenship. Malkia Cyril notes that for undocumented immigrants; prisoners with revoked citizenship; and for black, brown, and queer folks whose citizenship is dependent on consistently strong political movements, there is no secured right to communicate.

3 That a free press can be achieved without simultaneously working to end racial, class, and gender oppression.

Media justice is a system of media analysis and policy change that exposes various forms of oppression in the media system. It sees need to develop media workers and skills from within marginalized communities. Media Justice is grounded in local campaigns for accountability and alternatives. It seeks a "media reform movement that spins on an axis of self-determination and strategic alliance."

"From hip hop to advertising media corporations stereotype and exploit the culture of youth and people of color for profit."

Newsweek Retraction

The scandal over Newsweek running a story that contained accusations that US soldiers defiled the Quran during interrogations seems to me, in the words of British MP Galloway concerning Senate hearings on the Iraq Oil for Food scandal, the ultimate smoke screen.

There are so many reason why this outrage at Newsweek over the killings of 17 Afghans supposedly caused by the article is utterly foolish at worst and misguided at best. The Pentagon was given an advance copy of the article and asked to identity any objectionable portions. They rose no objections. Beyond that, the problem is not that the article is false or that the source Michael Isikoff used was wrong. It is that the particular claim of Quran defilement in the form of flushing it down the toilet cannot be definitively substantiated. The claim may still very well be true.

Even if this one instance were not true--and it's not clear that it's not--we cannot allow the verdict to be, as some popular right-wing hack Michelle Malkin wrote: "Newsweek Lied, People Died."

Let's be clear, Newsweek did not retract the possibility and the claim that Quran defilement has occured. They retracted the fact that it was mention in a military investigative report about to be released.

Beyond all of this, the level of confirmed abuse, exploitation, mistreatment, and torture that US soldiers have engaged in towards Muslim and Arab detainees is so staggering--is flushing the Quran really out of the realm of possibility?

Just recently a new book was published by a soldier who worked on the inside at Gitmo. A former U.S army linguist who worked as an Arabic translator at the U.S prison camp in Guantanamo is speaking out about what he witnessed. Erik Saar was stationed at the camp from December 2002 to June 2003. "Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo" describes a wide range of practices and techniques used by U.S military officers at Guantanamo and condoned by senior officers. These practices included female interrogators undressing to sexually intice male detainees and the smearing of what appeared to be menstrual blood on detainee's faces. You can read Saar's interview with Amy Goodman here.

The real issue here is not bad journalism that seriously missed the marked--except as a techincal, not substantive, point. As Michael Ratner, head of the Center for Constitutional rights noted, the real issue here is that "the United States should stop torturing people and stop abusing them. And their interrogators should stop exploiting religion." He also said, "You add to that the interrogation techniques that were actually approved by Rumsfeld at Guantanamo, and those are all about religious abuse. Those are about forcible shaving of Muslims. Those are about stripping of Muslims. Those are about exploiting phobias – these are words from Rumsfeld's own approved interrogation techniques – exploiting phobias, e.g., dogs. They are about taking away comfort items, e.g., religious items. So, we are talking about an entire system of interrogation that in part was based upon Muslim sensitivities."

Aside from exploiting Muslim sensitivities, they violate international law, the Geneva Conventions, the Conventions Against Torture and Degrading Treatment, and it's a slap in the face to all folks who believe in basic human dignity.

School Walk-Out

Tuesday May 17, 2005 Between two and four hundred of Oakland, California public school students have walked out of their classes today and marched to the downtown Frank Ogouwa Plaza. They are calling for:

1 No high school exit exams upon which graduation will be dependent.
2 Fully funding Prop 98 which calls funding public schools at certain levels.
3 Ending the policy of state control of Oakland public schools and return community autonomy.
4 Ending the unatainable goals and disasterous policy of No Child Left Behind.

These kinds of stories about young people identifying and organizing around their issues are quite inspiring. Some might know that this event comes on the anniversary of the Fast for Education when dozens gathered and fasted outside the California Assembly building for the purpose of dramatizing the desperate need for funding the public schools and ending the de facto "separate and unequal" nature of the school system.

Ex-CIA Sponsored Cuban Terrorist Now Held in US

Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles was arrested in Miami Tuesday by immigration authorities as he was preparing to leave the country. Posada is a 77-year-old former CIA operative who has been trying to violently overthrow Fidel Castro's government for four decades. He has been connected to the 1976 bombing of a civilian airliner that killed 73 passengers - the first act of airline terrorism in the Western hemisphere. He snuck into the United States in early March after years of living in hiding in Latin America and is seeking asylum. Hours before the arrest, Cuban President Fidel Castro led about a million Cubans in a protest march in Havana to demand that the United States act against Posada. Castro - who has accused repeatedly accused Washington of double standards in its war on terrorism - spoke to the crowd.

Posada gave a news conference at an empty warehouse near Hialeah where he denied the accusations against him.

Both Cuba and Venezuela have called for the Bush administration to extradite him to face charges of terrorism. In a statement, the Department of Homeland Security said "As a matter of immigration law and policy, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not generally remove people to Cuba, nor does ICE generally remove people to countries believed to be acting on Cuba"s behalf."

This claim that the US does not generally send people back to countries acting on Cuba's behlf was highly unusual given that this policy has never been heard of before by anyone involved in ayslum or extradition law. This was a purely political statement made to indicate that the US would not hand over Posada to Venezuela without specifically saying that. US officials know that they have no grounds to make that claim upon. unless they want to accuse Venezuela of torture and there is no evidence to that effect.

In an interview in Tuesday's Miami Herald, Posada said he was amazed the U.S. government had not been looking for him. He said "At first I hid a lot. Now I hide a lot less." He also denied any involvement in the airliner bombing although recently declassified documents from the CIA and FBI indicate he attended at least two planning meetings for the attack. Posada refused to confirm or deny involvement in other attacks, telling the newspaper: "Let"s leave it to history."

More at: http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/18/1434251

No Jail for War Resister Pablo Paredes

On Wednesday May 11, Iraq war resister Navy sailor Pablo Paredes has been sentenced to three months of hard labor for refusing deployment to the Persian Gulf. He was also demoted from petty officer third class to seaman recruit, the lowest rank in the Navy. His lawyers call it a victory for war resisters around the country.

Paredes refused to board the USS Bonhomme Richard as it was preparing to sail from San Diego with 2,000 Marines in December. He surrendered to military authorities a few days later and applied for conscientious objector status. The Navy has denied his request but that ruling is being appealed.
Paredes was convicted in a court-martial on Wednesday on a charge of missing his deployment. Prosecutor Lt. Brandon Hale said "He is trying to infect the military with his own philosophy of disobedience."

During the trial a military judge made the extrordinary move of saying that the government prosecutor proved that other service men and women may well have reason to believe that not only is the current Iraq war illegal, but so were the wars in Afghanistan and Yugoslavia. This moment came during the cross examination of Marjorie Cohn, professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego and executive vice president of the National Lawyers Guild. According to Cohn:

"The military prosecutor was trying to undermine my testimony about the legality of the Iraq War, and he had looked at some of the articles I had written...about the illegality of the war in Afghanistan and the war in Yugoslavia, as well. And so he asked me questions like: Well, you would also say then that the war in Afghanistan was illegal, right? And he expected me just to have a “yes” answer, and I think he expected that that would be such a ridiculous response that it would speak for itself. But I actually explained my answer and about why it violated the U.N. Charter...And so, because the prosecutor was eliciting this testimony from me, the judge then made that statement, that, in fact, the prosecution had just successfully proved that any seaman recruit has reasonable cause to believe those wars were illegal."

5-17-05 Today is the one year anniversary of the marriage of Hillary and Julie Goodridge (lead plaintiffs in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health). That was the case in which the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that same-sex marriages had had to be allowed under the state constitution. These two women were married at the corporate headquarters for the Unitarian Universalist Association in Boston. These two lovers, as well as 3 other UU couples who were plaintiffs in that groundbreaking case, returned to the UUA HQ to celebrate one year of wedded bliss. Here is the story on the UUA frontpage.

This was one of the untold or media invisible aspects of this story: the role of a religious community supporting same-sex couples seeking to join with one another in a bond of love and have that bond recoginzed before the law.

Media Reform

This past weekend was the 2nd National Conference for Media Reform. It was an amazing ensemble of folks from around this country and world working to transform the media into a democratic vehicle that serves society's interests. These people included low power FM operators, media critics, journalists, professors, Paficia Network folks, Air America Radio personalities, members of Congress, Democracy Now! devotees, anti-media consolidation workers, Indymedia activist and many more. They are people who are challenging the media at all levels. They refuse to have the national agenda--including issues of war and peace, life and death, freedom and civil liberites--to be decided and dictated by military generals, corporate executives, or establishment politicians.

***Links to online audio and video coverage of some of these panels is available here.***

The open panel included Mark Cooper, the funky Malkia Cyril of Youth Media Council, the amazing Amy Goodman (my heroine!) of Democracy Now!, Janine Jackson of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, and Robert McChesney author of Rich Media, Poor Democracy.

Amy Goodman was, as always, fantastic. It's good she came last. She's almost impossible to follow in a speaker line-up. She spoke about the bombing of, what will soon be my local radio station, KPFT 90.1 FM--the Pacifica station in Houston, TX. The bombing of the KPFT transmiter happened within weeks of the station's founding--this was the first radio station bombing in American history. Who did it? The KKK. Hate groups understand the need to perpetuate stereotypes and simplistic explinations of the world that separate people into categories that make that them easy to demonize. These caricatures that feed the KKK are precisely what Paficia dismanltes by providing space for kinds of people to tell their own stories.

Station KPFA was one of the few public spaces, outside of a few black churches, where whitelisted African American actor, singer, civil rights activist Paul Robeson knew he could go and be heard. WBAI in New York aired the great debate between Malcolm X and author James Baldwin on the effectiveness of nonviolence as a method of agitation for civil rights. The Pacifica archives has the largest collection of audio material of Fannie Lou Hamer, one of the founders of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and the originator of the phrase, "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired."

Pacifica went on the air in April 1949 with station KPFA in Berkley, CA. The first thing those who tuned in heard was the chain-smoking, pacifist founder Lewis Hill asking for money. Pacifica pioneered the notion of listner-sponsored broadcast that was later adopted by NPR and PBS. When Lew Hill emerged from the camps that held many of this nation's World War II conscientious objectors, he thought there needed to be a media oulet in America not owned or sponsored by corporations or men that profited from war.

This is what Goodman spoke about. More to come...

On April 30, I attended a meeting of the Board of Directors for the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. It is a remarkable group of people. We come from across this great nation of ours with one goal in mind: abolition. We are justice workers and friends of mercy. One of the folks I serve with and have come to call a friend is D.K.

I first met the rest of the Board in October when I was elected. That Saturday we were all in D.C. and had a working lunch. I was seated between two rather amazing fellows. One was DK, David Kaczynski--brother of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber. David was the one who thought his brother might be the Unabomber based on the writings and turned him over to the authorities. The guy to my other side was Bud Welch. Bud lost his daughter Julie in the Oklahoma City bombing. How amazing is it that I get to sit and work with these two guys with very different experiences of murder, bombings, and the criminal justice system, but who have come together say executions don't work and they insult justice.

Is it weird to say I find myself becoming friends with the brother of the Unabomber? Daivd is a Bhuddist vegetarian and Executive Director of New Yorkers Against the Death Penalty.

Graduation

At long last, I have graduated. I now have a B.A. in History and English from Lamar University. In August, I will be teaching middle school English in Houston, Texas as part of Teach for America. TFA is a program designed to serve those forgotten, under-resourced schools and student in this country. The vision is to eliminate the achievement gap between whiter, more affluent schools and those schools more heavily attended by ethnic minorities and children from the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder--not to suggest that there are no predominately minority and/or economically challenged school districts that perform at or above expectations.